A Library of Games and Nothing to Play

People often talk about game library fatigue: having a multitude of games to choose from but no desire to start a new game, or possibly to play anything at all.

Non-gamers may still understand this. Everyone knows what its like to scroll through a streaming service without the desire to watch any of the offerings. It can happen with books and movies, but I find it is most frequently a problem with tv shows. They can represent a similarly large time commitment to games.

With games though, the time needed to play everything that seems interesting to you is truly staggering. It would honestly be quite easy to watch the majority of movies that came out in a year. It would be more difficult, but still absolutely doable to watch most tv shows— maybe even most tv shows on top of most movies. But it’s difficult to play every game that releases in a year. Especially as more and more games (of the long and short variety) are released each year, it requires dedication to the cause.

It’s with this perspective that I’ve often looked back at my own history with games and pondered the gaps. What games I spent my precious time on seems like it must hold massive importance — along with which games slipped by my radar, knowingly or not. As I’ve already discussed, I now believe there is no perfect pool of games to play. I do think, however, that there is a lot to garner from how I spent my time as a kid.

The games from my childhood home have all been collected with the help of my mother and father, Lisa and Jon Crispi, and assembled into loose categories. This excludes games that I currently have with me in my home in Los Angeles, and digital games (that is, games on Steam that I currently have access to and digital games on consoles back home that I didn’t want to bother my family with the documentation of). Even so, this is going to be a large collection, so buckle up.

The categories span across consoles and release dates, but within each category they will be listed in loosely chronological order according to release date. The categories themselves are as follows: formative, beloved, entertaining, and unimportant. If these feel like quite vague denominations for categorization, it’s because they are. It’s quite hard to put so many games into categories; I would love to write about the importance or lack thereof of each individual game but there are simply too many for that.

In each category, however, there may be some subcategories providing greater insight into why a game is formative, for example. Then, all the games for which that applies will fall in that subcategory. Furthermore, certain games will get a short paragraph about what makes their inclusion in their category interesting.

Formative Games

A formative game is one that, even all these years later, I remember vividly. Whether it’s exploring their worlds, the feelings they created in me, or the stories they told, these games are all on my mind consistently. I use them as a gauge of what I still enjoy, and why. I use them to analyze my own biases and expectations — within and across genres.

Having vivid memories of these games means by necessity they help form (get it?) my critical opinions to this day.

My Favorite Games

Don’t worry, this subcategory is the least soundly defined one. They get better from here.

These are games for which I cannot quite explain why they are formative. They are my favorite for a reason, though. I would argue all of them have incredible gameplay mechanics, art styles, and stories. Some of them are the heights of their series — some even the height of thier genre. All I know is that they are all constant influences on me.

This game gets the special honor of being the first game I ever remember controlling for myself. Not with my fathers help, just me and the game. It is also, in a somewhat cliché way, my all time favorite game — or at least often cited as such (it’s hard to pick a favorite anything, let alone game).

The large number of games in this list — and in this section specifically — from the Legend of Zelda franchise probably seems like some sort of cliché cop-out. I have no “excuse” for why I love so many of these games. The answer is simply that the Nintendo Corporation has a history of pushing boundaries in the game space, which results in excellent games.

This game ties this spot in both favorite and formative games with Pokémon Emerald — but that game was excluded as I still have it with me. (I still have access to most of these games through certain methods, but I felt compelled to specify in this instance). I constantly replay both of these games.

This game is one of many in a loosely defined series by developer FromSoftware. It began with Demon’s Souls, and was popularized with spiritual sequel Dark Souls — and have since been known as “souls-likes”. They are known for being excruciatingly hard. And I love them all.

Games That I Spent Countless Hours Playing

This next group is of games that are by necessity formative, simply for the sheer amount of time I played them. They are burned into my brain. I can imagine them in pixel perfection.

Obviously there is some content overlap between these games and the ones in the previous category. I love all the formative games, I have played a huge amount of all the formative games, etc. However, these games didn’t earn a spot on my favorites list. I believe playing them for so long speaks for itself as a measure of importance; the things these games contain are a reflection of my preferences now.

These two games are representations of some of the first times I noticed myself enjoying games that not many other people did. My friends at school didn’t know about or particularly care about these games, as well as some others on this list. That was a strange feeling, and it helped inform my unique tastes for smaller, sometimes quirky games.

Fallout New Vegas, the sequel to Fallout 3 (right), really ought to be in the favorites category — but apparently it is lost! Oh well.

Call of Duty World at War (left) was my first Call of Duty game, and also the first M rated game I owned. I was not 17, but my parents trusted me. I played an awful lot of it, but mostly the single player — over and over. I did play a good amount of multiplayer, too, but didn’t use a microphone or enable other player’s microphones. Even so, I see that I’ve been very stubbornly blind to my own past enjoyment of “mindless” games that I sometimes criticize.

Games That I Shared With Loved Ones

This subcategory is defined by who I played these games with. You would not believe how often me and two, three, five friends played these games. They brought so much joy, and made me a lifelong lover of multiplayer games. These are the type of multiplayer games I preferred, and still prefer, and there's a distinct difference between most of these games and hardcore competitive multiplayer games of the modern E-Sports scene.

This was one of the first Wii games my family got. The Wii was an absolute phenomenon in its success, and this game is a great example of why. It is, by all standards, mediocre. Yet, my family played it almost every day for weeks after getting it. It was a vision of a future where games were social and accepted, instead of isolating and niche.

You might be recognizing that LEGO brand games were a huge part of my childhood. I played them nonstop, to almost perfect completion, with my father, sister, and best friend. They were co-operative, but allowed just enough room to mess with each other.

Games That I Couldn’t Finish

This short section finishes the formative games section with games that I was too young to play properly, but which I tried so hard to play and finish.

I feel like this is an important section, because there were other games I played effectively on this list at an equal or younger age — but these games eluded me for some reason. The desire to play these games anyway strongly influenced my knack for repetition in games — be it by design or by difficulty.

I was deeply in love with both of these games — but I only ever played the first hour or so of each of them. I was too young to understand how the save data card of the PS2 worked, and I never asked my father. I never understood that ours was corrupted and refused to save data, so instead I replayed their beginnings countless times, yearning to see the rest of their contents. I’ve never gone back to see what I was missing… but maybe I deserve to.

These games were both staples of my very very young gaming, and I never really understood what I was doing in them. I am certain I never finished either of them, but loved to try and fail.

This one is a bit of a joke, but it seriously is a game that I was terrible at as a child. I loved it anyway, and I never stopped loving puzzle games because of it. The bestselling game of all time — a perfect way to end this section.

All the games in this formative section are important for their memorability and longevity. I believe most of them would hold up to scrutiny if returned to, and the ones that don’t? Well I love them how they are anyway.

Beloved Games

Beloved games hold a special place in my heart, though I may not think about them often. Many of them are games that others might not hold so dear, whereas most of the formative category consisted of widely acclaimed games.

When I think about these games, I recognize that they have numerous flaws but are still successful experiences. In some cases, a game is in this category because it is a worse repeated version of a game in the formative category.

More Games I Shared With Loved Ones

This is an incredibly important category, so I don’t feel bad repeating it. By playing games with people, I was socializing through games. Many of these games I played with my childhood best friend, and I can genuinely see the ways that some of them affected he and I in the long run.

This rudimentary fighting game has maybe 8 characters and 8 stages. And my best friend and I played each of them to death. 10/10, wouldn’t change a thing.

As you can see, I played a LOT of LEGO games. My best friend and I were exactly the type of kid you’d expect to play so many LEGO games. We were geeky kids, and these games were always silly in the best ways. They encouraged us to work together and to value each other, while instilling friendly competition.

There’s a lot of liscened material on this list. Looking back on it, I realize how much I loved games like these. They were only alright games, but their attachment to properties I already loved encouraged me to love them. Acknowledging this was an important part of getting off my high-horse. My taste in games has not always been pristine and better than other people’s. I played the Ghostbusters game, and loved it.

More Beloved Games

These games have no specific reason for being beloved, but they will be placed near games with similarities.

The games above represent a very specific of mediocre-at-best licensed game that I loved to play. Some were better than others, but they all included characters I knew and loved.

All Pokémon games hold a special place in my heart, but not every one can make the cut. These are some of my favorite.

Two Worlds II (left) is one of many poorly made RPG’s that I played a huge amount of. I was enthralled by any fantasy setting, and any game that let me customize a character and a method of play. I think I got that from my father.

Entertaining Games

These games are starting to get rather bad, but I am still glad to have played them. It’s important to know what you don’t like as much, or at all, in order to discover what you do like.

Some games in this section will be poorly made, some will not be my favorite type of game, and some just don’t have very much meat on thier bones. But all of them have value the way an entertaining action film does.

This is one of the most interesting games in the entire collection. God of War has serious problems with violence against women, and sexualization of women. It’s not a bright spot for the industry, to say the least. Even so, I owned it. And, I enjoyed it! I didn’t love it. I never finished either game, only about half of each. But this game is the nail in the coffin to any theory that I played a “special” batch of games, and that those games could give insight into what games are best for the industry’s health.

Games I Barely Remember

These games make an impact on me because of how little I remember about them. I remember seeing them played, but almost nothing else. Their aesthetics and emotional impact are a dreamlike swirl in my memory.

(Somehow we got two copies)

Unimportant Games

This section is mostly reserved for games that I barely played, or never even picked up. They were disappointing or uninteresting to me. However, they are only unimportant in my memory — disliking them is still a factor in how I value games today.

Baseball!

These are next to each other because they both feature penguins.

The games above and below speak to the era of games produced under the guise of being physically engaging. The Wii’ success is owed partly to this, but so is the downfall of the Xbox Kinect.

These are both games made by FromSoftware, and though I have now played and loved them both, i never really started either while I was still young.

Games I Wish I Had Played

This short, final section is games I never played, but which I wish I had.
Certainly I could still return to them — they are mostly known as great classics. However, I often feel that if I had played them while young, it would have massively shaped my gaming preferences as an adult.

Looking back on all of these games, I get a clear picture of myself as I grew. I can see the ways that my current preference for story-rich games began: with titles like The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker and Portal 2.

I will continue to play many games. Maybe now I’ll try harder to expand my horizons.