New Year's Gaming Resolutions

It's that time of year when Christmas begins to fade. The turkey is finally finished, I have rediscovered my carpet underneath the chaos my three kids have left, and my collection of geeky gifts have all been given homes. As we move into what I always consider a weird week thoughts begin to turn to New Year's Resolutions. This year I have made some gaming resolutions and I am going to share them with you. I hope that in doing this it will also shame me publicly into actually keeping them, but I guess time will tell.

This year I will:

Play the games in my Steam account

I'm pretty sure I am not alone in this one. Steam is such a sneaky sod. The sales jump out and tempt us all into buying random things which sound amazing. I mean who could resist that entire Tomb Raider collection at a super cheap price a while back? Nostalgia combined with the new reboot I have been dying to play? Sign me up! And what about those under £4 bargains that crop up time and time again? Terraria anyone? Or how about Magicka? That is before we even start on Space Pirates and Zombies and other Humble Bundle gems.

My Steam account is sitting at just under 100 games right now and I'm fairly sure I have only played about 30 of them since I bought them. This year will be the year I finally hit “install” and follow it up with “play”.

 

Learn to Play

Back in the day I used to be a first-person shooter fan. Unreal Tournament was my speciality, although I did play others. I loved the fast pace, the awesome weapons, the ducking and diving and I could headshot with the best of them. Now? I am usually found wibbling in the corner or being ganked at my spawn point. Too many years of playing nothing but World of Warcraft and the odd Real Time Strategy or Sim game have left me weak and jaded. I cannot function in first-person shooter land anymore. My responses are dulled through years of playing the healer and I am struggling to recover.

This is before we even touch on my recent experience with action adventure games. I grew up with Lara Croft. Tomb Raider was one of my first gaming loves and yet my mouse has never been the same since the Portal 2 “How on earth do I even exit the first damn building?” incident...

 

Become More Social

Once upon a time I held LAN parties in my house. A whole bunch of like minded friends setting up PCs on any available flat space, a tangle of Cat 5 cables spread across the floor and buckets of taunting and cursing. Those were the days and I want them back. This goes hand in hand with learning to play the traditional LAN games. I need to install, play, learn and then pwn. You never know, I may even make a GameOn LAN next year.

I do play a lot of World of Warcraft which is very social and I love my guild but sometimes I want to get back to shooting my own friends in the back of the head. In WoW that is frowned upon for some reason, especially as I am a healer in our progression raiding group. I make an exception for a few guildies though, I mean you would kill my Guild Master as well if you had the chance...

 

So these are my resolutions. What about yours? Do you also have a back catalogue the size of a small country on Steam? And am I the only out of practise FPS noob? Head to the comment section and let me know. I am also accepting any and all hints on how to exit the first building on Portal 2...