I have issues upon issues but one of the wholly dumbest issues I have is that I’m great at amassing games and god awful at actually playing them.

After having a bizarre dream only slightly involving Tetris (TETRIS IN LOVE), I had the urge to play Tetris Effect. Did I play it right away even though I’ve had it since it released?

NOPE.

A friend of mine keeps suggesting (a gentle word for it) I play Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. I’ve had it since it released. I thought about playing it earlier this week; did I play it when I was thinking about it?

NOPE.

I’d been so excited to play Rage 2 (and had it pre-ordered since it was announced), but that excitement was lessened by two things: the bevy of less than stellar reviews and an article I’m glad I read by Chris Plante at Polygon (which I wrote about earlier this week). Even so, I had the game just sitting on our coffee table waiting to be played. It arrived Tuesday morning; did I play it this week?

SUPER NOPE.

So.

Last night I got tired of my bullsh*t and decided: F*CK IT I WILL PLAY ALL THREE, so I started all three games and feel a teensy bit proud of myself for actually STARTING these games even though that’s such a silly and small thing to be proud of.

I’ve been good at Tetris since the NES days and all that went out the window with Tetris Effect. There are all kinds of things floating around and the controller is vibrating and half the time I was like OH WHAT THE CRAP and I made several rookie mistakes. I’m not a fan of the ghost image of where the pieces will fall so I went into the settings and turned it off but even with my preferred settings, I have a feeling it’s going to take me a bit to get the hang of Tetris Effect. I’m looking forward to playing through the rest of the campaign this weekend.

I have all kinds of mixed feelings about the hour or so I played of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. The location is lovely and the story is interesting, but the painfully slow movement speed (even the laughably slow “run”) is killing my interest. It is particularly frustrating when having to backtrack. I think the game could only have been improved with a movement speed at least twice as fast.

I’m sure I will finish the game today, I just wish I could move faster than the “run.”

Rage 2.

Oof.

I like the color palette and I like some of the music.

The rest of the game is a big woof from me so far.

I’m not a fan of the writing AT ALL; I’ve already completely stopped paying attention to any cutscene or NPC.

I knew id Software worked on the game and DOOM’s influence is everywhere. For the speed and gunplay, that’s all fine and well, however I had mixed feelings about DOOM when I played it upon release.

When you start the game, they throw SO MUCH information at you, it’s overwhelming and it stops the action at every turn. I decided all I wanted to do was drive to a particular NPC and on the way I stopped to take down a turret dude. The area he was in was somewhat large and I was supposed to look for supply crates. As far as I could tell, there was nothing on the radar to locate them and after a while I just gave up and left. Typically, when I play an open world game, I want to explore everything and collect all I can, especially at the beginning. The fact that I was ready to let it go after only playing an hour or so told me a lot about my interest in the game.

Let’s just say I’m glad the campaign is short (How Long To Beat has the main story listed at around 10 hours). I don’t often trade in games, but I feel like Rage 2 is headed for GameStop by next week.

Also, the hilarity of going from slow as molasses Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture to the jackrabbit fast Rage 2 gave me whiplash.

.

This weekend, my plans are to finish all three of those games; now that I’ve started them, I don’t want to lose momentum. Hopefully I can pepper in some Borderlands remaster to keep chipping away at the Knoxx DLC. If I can get to all that, I’ll consider myself “productive.”

With that I ask: what will YOU be playing this weekend?

Please be safe out there, friends. Cheers.