Rolled credits on Resident Evil which brings me to +3, likely my final score. I'm not going to bother with the online mode, but will post some thoughts in the thread later.
This whole event has really made me more conscious of how locked in a spending cycle I am with games, but honestly this is the best I have done in a while.
Might be projecting a lot here, but might this be a partial byproduct of how discourse around gaming often is very forward-looking? E3 predictions, pre-orders, watching Nintendo Direct, etc. all contribute to placing emphasis on (future) purchases. But once the initial reviews/podcast cycle is done for a game, its longer tail becomes spottier for anything that isn't a live service game.
Since people tend not to play the same things at the same time either, discussion quickly becomes fragmented. You play LightFall now, others may do so in a year or never - and so it can quickly fall from relevance.
This in contrast to forward-looking discussion, where everyone shares a similar outlook/position: nobody has played Future Game X, everyone has access to the same experience with it so far (trailers/announcements), meaning the audience attention for Future Game X is much more cohesive and shared. Discussion flows easily, as there is no imbalance of experience with the game between audience members.
It's also much easier to buy games (done in minutes), or research games you haven't played by checking reviews and footage, than it is to actually play them (easily a few hours). I think these factors play into our greedy impulses to
want more than we could reasonably ever play/finish, while there are social reasons to favor speculative discussions... Which may further fuel said greed?