Five gaming addictions

Posted by admin on January 10th, 2014

Thinking about Time for my last post made me think back to a time when I had time to sink into games (sorry I couldn’t resist).  So this is my top five games that have pushed me closest to ‘gaming addiction’. You all know what I mean by gaming addiction, that feeling you get that the end of a game is only a few minutes away and then you look at the clock and realise it’s 3AM and you have to go to work in the morning. Let me get on with my list:

1. Crackdown on Xbox 360

2. Skyrim on Xbox 360

3. Just Cause 2 on Xbox 360

4. Assassins Creed II on Xbox 360

5. Colin McRae Rally on PS1

(6. Super Mario World on SNES)

Number six is in brackets because at some point I am going to do a video for my YouTube channel on this topic and as you know Nintendo have a strange problem with videos of their game properties appearing on YouTube.

Crackdown – what an awesome game this is.  I recently read a retrospective about this game on Eurogamer and it made me go and hunt for my copy. I couldn’t find it so I had to get another copy that’s how much I like this game. I must admit that it’s looking pretty dated now but the concepts of open world destruction alongside finding orbs is still fantastic.

Skyrim – I’ll be honest and say that this is the first Elder Scrolls game I have played much of and it’s a real time sink. I have to admit to being completely confused about how to play the game at all when I first started. I actually bought the strategy guide, which is a very fat book, so that I could understand what was going on and get started. Once I got into it though I sank many hours into building up my skills and completing side quests.

Just Cause 2 – who doesn’t want to be a super-human killing machine with an arm mounted grappling hook.

Assassin’s Creed II – I could have put any of the AC series down here but I think II was when I finally ‘got’ the game and started to truly enjoy it.

Colin McRae Rally – I played this for ages when I first bought my Playstation. Competing against yourself doesn’t sound that interesting but the game was great fun, the handling was easy to get to grips with and the drive to get first place on every level was what kept me coming back again and again.

Super Mario World – I could have put any Mario game in here as they are all fantastic. I probably played Mario 64 more but Super Mario is still my favourite and the one that I come back to every so often to play some more, so it’s still a time sink even now.

While writing this list down I saw some themes emerging which I’ll probably talk about in further posts.

Xbox 360 was when I got back into gaming properly. I have more games for and have played more games on my Xbox 360 than any other gaming platform I have ever used. You can see from the list that I played games before the Xbox 360 and actually that goes back as far as the ZX81 but gaming wasn’t that important to me in my late twenties and early thirties. Then the Xbox 360 comes around and I guess the quality and accessibility got me hooked.

I love open world games. I live for the moment when you go into the ‘map’ screen and there are so many objectives that the location of your character is obscured.

So five (six) addictive games that have impacted me. If you haven’t played them check them out as long as you have the time.