Game Planning For 2020

I don’t really plan my gaming very much, I tend to just play whatever I feel like playing on any given day. But I decided to make a list of the games that are currently on my highest priority “to play” list at the start of 2020, along with a rough estimate of how long they’ll take to play, according to HowLongToBeat.

This list is in no particular order, by the way. As I write this, I’m deciding what to play next, after finishing with Death Stranding and Hellblade.

• Remember Me, est. 12 hours. A surprisingly fun game with an interesting story that I “discovered” in my Blaugust backlog bonanza. Would like to finish it.
• Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4), est. 5 of 50 hours. I’ve played some already, but I didn’t record all of it so I think I’m going to restart it so I can get a good, clean recording from the beginning.
• Nioh, est. 50 hours. I bought this game on sale after I finished with Sekiro. I’ve always wanted to play it for it’s Souls-like characteristics, so this will hopefully make a fun blind playthrough video series. Or else I’ll hate it and abandon it in hours.
• The Witcher 2 replay, est. 10 of 35 hours, in progress. I set a goal to replay and record all three Witcher games in 2018 (ahem before it was cool to do so), and I continue trudging through them a bit at a time. I often play Witcher games in between other games.
• The Witcher 3 replay, est. 100 hours. One of my favorite games of the previous decade, but I honestly don’t remember much of anything about the story. I think I also have some DLC to play that I haven’t seen before.
• The Last Of Us Part 2 (PS4), May 29, 2020. The only game I know of that I’ll be buying for sure in 2020.
• Demon’s Souls (PS3), est. 20 of 45 hours, in progress. The only game I have for my aging, decrepit PS3. I started this game once, then stopped, then restarted it again, then stopped again. It’s tough to play an old action game that runs at super slow frame rates, especially when it’s even more unforgiving than Dark Souls.
• Dark Souls III, The Ringed City DLC, in progress. Somehow I keep managing to put off finishing up the DLC for the last Dark Souls game ever. Have played through three-quarters of it twice now. Maybe I just don’t want to ever run out of Dark Souls?
• Guild Wars 2, Icebrood Saga Episode 2, est. I don’t know but probably a couple hours.

You young whippersnappers out there might not think this is a very big list to play for the entire year, but keep in mind I probably average only about an hour of gaming a day. (Some days I don’t play anything at all, and a day in which I go completely nuts and play games “all day” might only include 4 hours of gaming.)

So a 50-hour game, to me, is almost a two-month investment. (Assuming I like it enough that it holds my attention.) And if I have to use a controller to play that game, I probably won’t be able to play it on too many consecutive days in a row due to managing pain in my left thumb.

I typically only play one game at a time, too. I don’t often switch back and forth between games simultaneously anymore.

So when I add up the times of those games, I get, roughly, 275 hours, which equates to 275 days, which is a pretty big chunk of 2020. That’s not even counting Last Of Us Part 2, which I would guess is going to be around 20-25 hours if it continues to follow Naughty Dog standards. And it doesn’t include any other random games that might pop up during the year.

Incidentally, if anyone out there is following my YouTube channel, the above list also roughly corresponds to what you can expect me to upload in the future, too. Except I’m in a bit of a record-the-games-but-not-bother-uploading-them sort of mood at the moment. I’ve got at least three game playthrough series just sitting on my hard drive right now. It’s such a massive pain in the butt to upload large numbers of videos. That’s another topic, though.

You might notice a lack of MMORPGs on that list, and that’s because I’m not playing any. Guild Wars 2 is the only one that I make any effort to keep up with, mainly because it’s free, and it only takes a few hours a year to do so. Occasionally I log into Astellia Online, because it’s easy and the randomly bizarre translation issues always make me laugh. And occasionally I log into Lord of the Rings Online for a few hours to gain 1/10th of a level in Lothlorien. I don’t remember playing any others in 2019, and I don’t anticipate any changes in 2020 due to the general lack of movement in the genre.

I’m kind of jealous of all the people enjoying the new EverQuest stuff right now, but, I think I’ve mentioned this before, the EQ games are actively hostile to players who didn’t make a lifetime commitment to it back in the 90s. You simply can’t join in today unless you have the 20 years of institutional knowledge that comes from starting at the beginning. Actually that’s true of almost every MMORPG except World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2: If you take a year or two off of any MMORPG, you might as well plan on never coming back, because you can’t. I have to admit I feel like I’m kind of over that gaming model.