Quick note that I originally wrote this for another site, but thought I might as well share it here too.
It's been a while since I blogged here and I'm not sure anybody would even notice the fact I'm posting a blog here again, but what the hell. Somebody told me to do it and I did it. Peer pressure, yay.
If by chance you want to see this complete with pictures and blah blah, I'll toss a link in at the end of the writeup.
Sorry for such a bland blog. I'm just really tired and don't have the patience to upload all the pictures and insert them again. I'm not much of a formatter, so again, apologies.

We all have massive amounts of games we haven't played yet. You might have a brand new game sitting on your shelf right NOW that hasn't been touched. Might still be sealed too! Even worse, you might've paid FULL PRICE on launch day to play this game, and you still haven't done anything more than open it to check out the manual on the crapper.
I'm that guy too.
I've bought tons of games over the years and while I've played my fair share of awesome stuff, I've missed out on some real classics, many presently sitting on my shelves right now. This is my list of games that I own that I should REALLY play sometime soon. Like before I buy another game. Of course, we all know that won't happen. I will instead type up a list about those games and why I should play them. Then I'll go right back to ignoring those games.
LET'S BEGIN!



Number 10
CHRONO TRIGGER (NDS)
We're starting off with me cheating a bit. Yes, I own Chrono Trigger on the DS and yes it's still sealed, but TECHNICALLY I played it. I owned and beat it a number of times back on the SNES when it first came out. Then I did it again on the PSX despite the absolutely horrid load times. Bought this again when it came out on the DS and it just sat. Even more, this is actually my second copy of the game. I bought it on release day and opened it, hung the poster up even, and then never played it. Goozex'd the game and said my goodbye. Then newegg had it on sale around Christmas and I bought it again. Another first run with the poster, too! Still sealed... We'll play again someday, Crono. Don't worry... At least you know why I have this at Number 10. If YOU haven't played this game yet, it should be at the top of your list!

Number 9
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (PS2)
Another sealed game! Still havent' even opened the box to check out the plushie either. Instead I promptly put it on display, fully expecting to eventually buy another copy of the game to actually open up and play. Still haven't. I gotta be honest too, I haven't played the first game either, despite owning it at one time. Ended up selling it off a few months back when I sold off most of my PS2 games to help pay bills. Other casualties I never got to play? Pretty much every other Shin Megami Tensei game that was available on the PS2. That's right, I never played them. Neither Digital Devil Saga game, Persona 3, 3 FES, 4... None of them. Let's just consolidate and let Number 9 represent every SMT game to come out on the PS2 while we're here.

Number 8
MAGNACARTA (PS2)
Number 7
Valkyrie Profile 2: Slimeria (PS2)
Let's lump the next two together since we're still talking about PS2 games. Still got these hanging out though, so there's still a chance! Ended up grabbing MAGNACARTA off of Goozex a while back, complete box set, and I never touched it. I've played a good amount of MAGNACARTA 2 on the 360, sure, but never touched the original. Then we have Valkyrie Profile 2, still sealed. I'll admit I originally bought this and kept it sealed for the sole purpose of hoping it would be worth something. Played the original Valkyrie Profile and enjoyed it, but sold it when the money was good. Was REALLY hoping that VP2 would be worth the same eventually, but I don't think it's gonna happen. Considering I'll probably never get to any of these PS2 games, I'll probably just leave it sealed and hope that one day I can sell it on eBay for $20,000 or something. Stadium Events! Woo!

Number 6
Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil (PS2) and Klonoa 2: Empire of Dreams (GBA)
A tale of two Klonoa sequels. The original Klonoa on the PSX is one of my all time favorite platformers. The visuals, the gameplay, the story. Near perfection on a piece of plastic media. So Klonoa 2 comes out and I never bought it. It went unbought for years on end until I finally got it at a pawn shop a few years back and I never touched it. Always wanted to, but it kept getting pushed further and further back for me. Then it came out for the GBA and I enjoyed it quite a bit. A sequel comes and what happens? I ignore it. Once again I just never got around to buying it, up until I finally picked up a brand new copy off of eBay. Came in the mail and I put it on my shelf. Never even opened it. It's still sealed. Finally, Klonoa came out for the Wii. Bought it and played it a lot. I'm sure when Klonoa 2 comes out for the Wii, it will once again be a Klonoa sequel ignored.

Number 5
Enclave (Xbox)
When I first bought my Xbox, I was a hardcore Xbox hater. Yes, when the Xbox was announced I was 100% anti-Xbox. Why was Microsoft getting into the game console business? They can't get their shit together with PCs without tons of bugs and problems and they want to make a game system? Can't wait to get a virus on THAT! I was a Nintendo boy all the way. I grew up a Nintendo fanboy and I loved my GameCube sooooo much. I owned my PS2 as well (about 8 of them with how frequently they broke. RRoD? How about PS2's DRE's??). I eventually broke down and picked up an Xbox when the place I was working at, Rentway, had a pretty decent deal and since I worked there, I could buy it at cost, in installments. Sold. Got it with the Tetris/Star Wars bundle, but I wanted some more, so I picked up ToeJam & Earl III, Panzer Dragoon Orta and Enclave. Enclave was the one game I never got around to playing, despite the fact I thought it looked the coolest. I want to toss an honorable mention to Arx Fatalis here as well. I'd have properly included it, but I don't own it anymore.

Number 4
Assassin's Creed Series (Xbox 360)
That's right, as you can tell by the figurines, I own BOTH Assassin's Creed Collector's Editions. Why didn't I play them yet? That's simple, because I thought the first game looked freakin stupid. Let me explain. In the months leading up to the release of Ass. Creed (as I like to call it), I thought it looked awesome. Being an assassin, stealth killing mofos, running rooftops, open world environment. Looked like a really cool game and I bought the Collector's Edition. Despite being 1000% disappointed with how friggin small that figure is, it was at the top of my list of games to play next. A buddy came over and saw it and wanted to play it, so I told him to fire it up. Then the game started and you were in a laboratory. My interest in the game ended right there. I'm not Altair? I'm some dick in a lab being experimented on or something?? Screw that. Then I watched him play and it seemed like some of the most complicated and convoluted controls I've ever seen in a game and I never cared from that point on. So why in the hell would I buy the second game? I'll be honest, at first I didn't. I figured I could skip it because the figurine would suck again and it would still be easy to find in a year when the price drops like crazy. Then it sold out and was impossible to find and had an awesome figure with it and all of a sudden I wanted it. Made a trade on Cheap Ass Gamer and it now sits on my shelf. Maybe I'll eventually try this one.

Number 3
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (Wii)
I feel guilty that I haven't played this yet. I LOVED Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube and played it for hours. A true sequel to the game was like a dream come true. Add in the fact that I just finished marathoning Tales of Vesperia on the 360 and was in need of even more "Tales of" goodness, this was a no brainer to buy. But I didn't buy it. Just didn't have the money at the time so I waited and played other stuff. Christmas came and Amazon had Dawn of the New World on sale so I finally ordered it, got it in the mail, opened it and then never played it. Just too many different games to play around the holidays and the Wii suffered for it. I'll get to you someday, Symphonia, I promise. Just not any time soon because Final Fantasy XIII is coming soon and I have too many other games to finish first...

Number 2
Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360)
Yes, another game where I own the Collector's Edition and never played. Why not? Most of the blame here lies on my previous blog where I talked about my once hatred for shooters. This is actually a more recent acquisition as it's only a few months old, but I still REALLY want to play this. The problem is I much prefer to play games like this co-op and I don't have anybody to play with! I went through Gears 1 with a guy who was helping me in a contest (I'll talk about that next) and while we planned to eventually get to Gears 2, it never happened and we eventually drifted apart and he deleted me. I no longer mattered. This is a game I plan on playing soon, as long as I can find somebody to play with me. I have a group of friends who occasionally rock Horde Mode too, and I'd love to be a part of that someday...

So here we are. Number 1. The biggest game that I own and still haven't played.
What game is it? What game was so important that I NEEDED to own it, but still haven't even put the disc in a system?
What game could possibly deserve to be played more than anything else on this list?
What game was so unjustly ignored for MONTHS now, while worse games have entered my game consoles??
How much longer can I delay getting to the top spot and padding my already massive word count (1,778 prior to the parenthesis)??


Number 1
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)
That's right. Once again I own a Collector's Edition of a game that I haven't played and this is the big daddy of them all. Well, I guess Bioshock would be, but you know what I mean... And check out C. Viper totally cockpunching Chris Redfield. EL OH EL and shit...
SO, why haven't I played this one yet? It's all because of a gamerscore contest on Goozex...
See, when the game was first coming out, Goozex was having a competition based on how much gamerscore you could amass in a month. The winner would get a brand spankin new copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum and everybody else would waste a month of their life playing really crappy games. The problem? I already had a preorder for the Collector's Edition of the game, but since the game didn't launch until after the competition began, I had some time to kill, so I got into it a bit. Then I saw I was in the Top 10. Then I was in the Top 5. Then I wanted to win. I would stop at nothing to win, so I played some of the worst games I've ever played just so I could try to win a game I already had waiting for me. Then the game released and I picked it up. Since I was playing in a competition for THAT GAME, I decided I wasn't going to be a douche and play that game for achievements in a contest to win that same game, so it sat. And sat. And kept sitting. Near the end of the competition I was within reach of the lead, less than 100 points to grab the lead and the guy in first claimed he was all out of easy gamerscore games. I felt victory nearing. Then he busted out a few more super easy games and increased his lead to over 1,000. I was crushed. He still had a reservoir of easy games and was just trying to lure me into a false sense of security. I was so put off from that move that I gave up trying for the rest of the competition. My runner up prize was 5 trade tokens on Goozex. Yay. I never had the desire to play the game after that crushing defeat and it still sits unplayed.


So there you have it. Ten games on my shelves that I should REALLY get around to playing sometime soon. Right after I finish playing Bioshock 2, Divinity II, Borderlands with it's new DLC, Dragon Age with it's new DLC, Mass Effect 2 needs another playthough, I should probably go back and finish Mass Effect 1, New Super Mario Bros is waiting for me to finish that, still gotta go out and pick up No More Heroes 2 and Aliens vs. Predator, might as well finish Mario Galaxy too, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has been waiting for me for a while, how about that Dark Void Zero for DSi? Then we still have Final Fantasy XIII and Splinter Cell coming out soon, Risen looked pretty cool, Sonic & SEGA Racing...
How many of those do you think will be on the next list?


Again, if you wanted to see this in it's original format complete with pictures, you can find it here:
http://www.thekartel.com/joecamnet/blog/2010/02/23/top_10_games:_i_should_probably_play_sometime_soon...