Gaming Goals for 2018

I've had a look at the release schedule for January-March next year, and there's nothing really on there I desperately want. I'll be starting Zelda BOTW at some point, but I see that as a good opportunity to get through ~3+ pile games!

That time already?

Last year, I set some modest goals...

Single game goal: To play more of, and make better use of, Rocksmith 2014. My guitar is currently sitting in the corner of my living room... unplayed... and mocking me silently. I'm going to knuckle down and focus on using Rocksmith as my skills trainer for the next few months.

Multi game goal: To shrink the pile, of course! I am going to complete Shadow of Mordor, Dishonored and Binary Domain before I even consider buying/playing anything else.

Gaming growth goal: To educate my gaming palate. I am going to branch out beyond the triple-A action game comfort zone into the world of indies and less-traditional gaming experiences. Perhaps some Gone Home, some Life Is Strange...

I achieved all of them bar Rocksmith.

This year, I vow to:

(1) Continue to find and play games I missed last generation, and;
(2) by doing so, reduce my number of Full Price Day 1 purchases.
(3) continue to apply Advanced Pile Theory, and finish a majority of the games in any batch of purchases.
(4) Create a dedicated gaming room in my spare bedroom (50" 4K TV, Playseat chair, PSVR)

No major goals at the moment, but if I'm on teamspeak/groupchat I definitely want to work "Tell that to Kanjiklub" into the conversation.

SillyRabbit wrote:

I think my goal will be to play all of the Mass Effect games. Oh, and finish the Fallout games (I have DLC left in New Vegas and am near the end of FO 4).
/nods to Eleima and Bekkilyn

Be sure to use mods if you do that. There are great texture mods for ME1 and... wait for it... a Faster Elevators mod!

detroit20 wrote:

(3) continue to apply Advanced Pile Theory

Update. Prey £12 in Asda right now, if you didn't in the end pick it up

That's a nicely sly bit of enabling, bubblefuzz.

£12 is very close to 'too-cheap-not-to-buy'... but not quite there. After all-but stealing Dishonoured 2 from Sainsbury's for a tenner earlier this year, that's my new strike price.

(Also, I bought Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 for the PS3 earlier this week. Adding another game to batch would commit me to finishing at least two of three.)

detroit20 wrote:

That's a nicely sly bit of enabling, bubblefuzz.

£12 is very close to 'too-cheap-not-to-buy'... but not quite there. After all-but stealing Dishonoured 2 from Sainsbury's for a tenner earlier this year, that's my new strike price.

(Also, I bought Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 for the PS3 earlier this week. Adding another game to batch would commit me to finishing at least two of three.)

Just about everyone in the UK must have bought Dishonoured 2 for a tenner by now, it's posted pretty much every day on hotukdeals!

Oh,Bubblefuzz! You are a terrible person for planting that seed.

I couldn't help myself, and now I know that Prey is a tenner on Tesco Direct! I am now honour-bound to buy it.

And, Clusks... there is no need for you to get in on the act by mentioning hotukdeals!

#MadeYouLook

Aaaaaaaargh!! Get thee behind me, Clusks!

I just wandered on to HotUKDeals, purely out of curiosity. And discovered that Titanfall 2 had dropped to the magic £10 on Amazon. What is seen cannot be unseen, and now I have a copy arriving tomorrow afternoon...

Dishonored 2 is not on my Pile just yet. Yet to complete the first.

If you been wanting to add Rise of the To...

Hang on, I'll just put this over here

You may well, have taken my enablement, rolled it up in a ball, thrown it back at me and expanded my pile by 2 games Detroit. #backfire

In the past week I've set my 5 year old up with my old gaming computer, and after struggling quite a bit with sharing my Steam account, or doing family sharing between his computer and mine, my gaming goal for 2018 is to buy fewer games from Steam, and more from GOG

Love this thread idea.

  1. Play more games than I buy/download
  2. Buy an entry-level Freighter in No Man's Sky (probably ~150mil credits)
  3. Launch a rocket in Factorio
  4. Ding 50 in Borderlands 1 to get the achievement which will complete all achievements for the base game (and 80 TA points!)
  5. End Mass Effect 2 and start 3 *stretch goal*
  6. Finish any of the stupid-long JRPGs that I emulate on my phone (Final Fantasies various, Pokemons various, Lufia 2, etc.)
  7. Finish XCOM: Enemy Unknown (I triple dipped on this game and still haven't finished it) *stretch goal*
  8. Get a win in Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup during a tournament

1. See the credits on at least 24 games (individual episodes count). That's two a month. This used to be a piece of cake, but during the last few years I've barely passed that bar. As of right now, I'm still short one for this year, in fact.
Most of the following goals are subsections of this one.

2. Finally finish at least five games that have been sitting "at least halfway done" for years now. Prime examples are the first GBA Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy XI, Zelda: Wind Waker, Clock Tower 3, Eternal Darkness and Remember Me. I would list Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, but I fear my reflexes just aren't up to the task (I've attempted the final boss probably easily over 100 times now).

3. Finish out the Xenosaga trilogy. I only have the third game to go, but I haven't even started it.

4. Finish up the mainline Doom games - I only have Doom 3 and its expansion left.

5. Play through a Metroid Prime game. I love 2D Metroid. 3D has yet to grab me, in spite of a few hours into the original Prime and Hunters.

6. Knock two or three open world games off the pile. Far Cry 2 will likely be one of them. Other candidates I keep thinking about are S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (any), The Saboteur, GTA San Andreas, Saints Row 3, The Simpsons: Hit and Run, No More Heroes, or Sleeping Dogs.

Gravey wrote:

I’m going to play all four Thief games to completion for once in my life.

7. I'm going to play A Thief game (hopefully beyond the first stage) for once in my life. This will most likely be Thief 3.

8. Restart and play through The Witcher, so I can move on to 2 and 3 in the coming years. I really liked the original and even got past the swamp area before getting distracted and dropping it. It's been on my mind off and on since.

9. Work on Wii games a bit. I bought a bunch of them, but most have barely been touched aside from the odd multiplayer night more than half a decade ago.

Stretch goal #1: Start and finish Panzer Dragoon Saga.

Stretch goal #2: Start and finish Deus Ex.

Stretchiest goal: (Re-)start and finish Persona 3: FES or Persona 4.

Aspirational goal: get back into online multiplayer beyond just dabbling once every five months.

AUs_TBirD wrote:
Gravey wrote:

I’m going to play all four Thief games to completion for once in my life.

7. I'm going to play A Thief game (hopefully beyond the first stage) for once in my life. This will most likely be Thief 3.

If I may be so bold, consider trying the first Thief: The Dark Project, it holds up very well and is easily modded to include some nice HD textures. Here's how it's done. It's sad in a way that the first mission -Lord Bafford's Manor- is also the ugliest, so feel free to zip through it on easy mode to get to the far meatier 2nd mission...and then on to the rest of the game.

Mixolyde wrote:

Love this thread idea.

  1. Get a win in Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup during a tournament

Excellent goal! January 5 and you'll have your chance!

Running Man wrote:
AUs_TBirD wrote:
Gravey wrote:

I’m going to play all four Thief games to completion for once in my life.

7. I'm going to play A Thief game (hopefully beyond the first stage) for once in my life. This will most likely be Thief 3.

If I may be so bold, consider trying the first Thief: The Dark Project, it holds up very well and is easily modded to include some nice HD textures. Here's how it's done. It's sad in a way that the first mission -Lord Bafford's Manor- is also the ugliest, so feel free to zip through it on easy mode to get to the far meatier 2nd mission...and then on to the rest of the game.

Pistols at dawn, sir! Lord Bafford's Manor is one of the singular achievements of game design, on par with Super Mario Bros. 1-1 and the Undead Asylum.

Play fewer games and read more books.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Running Man wrote:
AUs_TBirD wrote:
Gravey wrote:

I’m going to play all four Thief games to completion for once in my life.

7. I'm going to play A Thief game (hopefully beyond the first stage) for once in my life. This will most likely be Thief 3.

If I may be so bold, consider trying the first Thief: The Dark Project, it holds up very well and is easily modded to include some nice HD textures. Here's how it's done. It's sad in a way that the first mission -Lord Bafford's Manor- is also the ugliest, so feel free to zip through it on easy mode to get to the far meatier 2nd mission...and then on to the rest of the game.

Pistols at dawn, sir! Lord Bafford's Manor is one of the singular achievements of game design, on par with Super Mario Bros. 1-1 and the Undead Asylum.

I get it, but that mission is sort of the George Harrison of Thief 1. A brilliant musician and songwriter, but he was still only the third best Beatle.

Nah. The real problem with Thief: The Dark Project is that as brilliant as it is, it's never again as good as its first level.

They kinda go overboard with the undead and other weird creatures in the game where they would have been better to focus more on just the human factions, IMO. Creepy and atmospheric but a lot less fun to deal with than dumb guards complaining about when they're going to get their dinner

But yeah. Bafford's Mansion is always going to stick out in my mind as one of my most memorable moments of gaming ever (Although Constantine's Mansion, later in the game - with it's descent into surreal madness the deeper in you get - is pretty memorable, too).

My gaming goal for next year:

More board games and physical, non-digital stuff! Especially coop or solo games but Ideally I would also like to track down a local board or PNP RPG group to join (and if not, maybe start my own).

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Nah. The real problem with Thief: The Dark Project is that as brilliant as it is, it's never again as good as its first level.

The first level is actually what I bounced off of way back in....2000 or so I guess. I'm hoping with 17 more years under my belt that I'm in a better headspace for it.

So I’ve been tracking my time spent gaming over the past year and it looks like I spent about 350 hours gaming. That may seem like a lot but it’s far short of the years where I could realistically put in 15-20 hours a week (and to think my WOW guild gave me all kinds of grief for only playing 20 hours/week.) Also, at least a quarter of that time was spent playing with the kiddo. So faced with the new normal, here are my goals:

1. Be careful picking out big rpgs/strategy games. I’m going to for example play only one grand strategy game and maybe two meaty rpgs.
2. I’m going to try and do more console gaming now that I have a Switch.
3. I still want to do more coop but have given up on competitive play. I just don’t have the time.
4. I’m going to enjoy gaming time with my son more. He loves arcade and fighting games that I suck at, but I want to embrace the experience.

To be honest, I’m in the mindset right now is just to enjoy gaming more. I don’t expect to finish games anymore unless the family just lets me have a chuck of time.

I read more about games then I actually play them. I'd like to change that.
I'd also like to spend more time getting back into combat sims, like the DCS series.

This is going to help I think - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaMB...

Yoreel wrote:

I'm going to fully embrace my handhelds. I have a vita and a 3ds that get neglected in spare moments for phone surfing.

Also, I plan on some sort of journal effort to track what I have been playing. I discuss my current games through a Google Hangout with several friends and that really adds to the enjoyment and inhope writing about the games will add more as well.

Lastly, I want to play more multiplayer with the GWJ community. With 0 no physical friends in the area since my move to Indiana, I need to Branch out and embrace our online groups.

Buy less.... Play more.

I'm adding to this. I'm not buying any games in 2018. I picked up Pubg and a few PS4/Vita exclusives this and last week and that I'd going to be all I spend. I have more than enough to get me through 365 spending 0 dollars

I've been thinking about this quite a bit the past week, and have come up with the following so far...

1) Design, build, and ship a game.
2) Spend consistent time increasing my skills at game development: programming, art, game design theory, etc.
3) Connect more with the gamedev community, both locally and online. (Ideally I'd like to find a coach/mentor.)
4) Sample more games from a design perspective. Broaden my play.
5) Have fun with this all.

I had a similar set of goals last year and did pretty well in spurts, but eventually I lost my way. I think I know more about how to stay focused on things than I did a year ago, so I'm hopeful I can do better this time.

To get started, I've enrolled in the Game Design and Development Specialization from Michigan State University. The final course is a project where you have to design, build, and publish a game, so if I can complete the specialization, I'll have achieved goal number one.

So far I'm making steady progress in the first two courses. I built a Solar System in Unity earlier this week, so go me.

jdzappa wrote:

So I’ve been tracking my time spent gaming over the past year and it looks like I spent about 350 hours gaming. .......

1. Be careful picking out big rpgs/strategy games. I’m going to for example play only one grand strategy game and maybe two meaty rpgs.

This is a 'problem' I wrestle with. I would estimate that I spend about the same time per year gaming, since I tend to play about an hour a day. I've not specifically tracked it but on steam it usually says I've played approx 14 hours in the last two weeks. While I love big RPGs, if I play one exclusively it will take me two months to finish one. That's a long time to avoid distractions and explains why I don't finish many. So, I've decided to just not buy any more, and get my cool stories from the pile of unread fantasy novels I've got instead. I've gravitated to more open ended games that I can just jump into, leave for a couple of months and pop back to whenever the mood takes me, and I expect that trend to continue.

Buy 0 games in 2018. Only play games I already own.

AUs_TBirD wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Nah. The real problem with Thief: The Dark Project is that as brilliant as it is, it's never again as good as its first level.

The first level is actually what I bounced off of way back in....2000 or so I guess. I'm hoping with 17 more years under my belt that I'm in a better headspace for it.

Lord Bafford's Manor is what I played over and over and over and over way back in....2001 or so I guess. The next mission was a mine-prison, and I though, "No, I'd rather loot an aristocrat's manse." It'd be over a decade before I finally finished the second mission.

Rutherford Castle is a good one too, and AFAIC you can't go wrong with TDS.