My Pursuit to Finish the Games I Claim to Love

I’m a video game credits-chaser. I don’t just want to beat the game, I want to beat the next one. I start games and immediately look up the How Long to Beat. And if your game doesn’t have a win/end condition, I might not even try it. 

I love trying new games. I want to form an opinion on the year’s biggest titles and find the hidden gems. I’m constantly looking at release calendar after calendar. And every year, it never feels like enough. 

With one trait pulling me in to focus and the other pushing me out to explore, I find myself trapped in a whirlpool of my own making. It’s impossible to finish every game I try while trying every game I can. I have to pick and choose.

I’ve grown tired of my mistakes.

It’s not that I regret the games I’ve finished. It's that I regret the games I haven’t finished. But it’s impossible to completely separate the two. After all, when you say yes to something, you say no to something else.

Bravely Default 2, Patrick’s Parabox, Splatoon 3’s campaign, Pikmin 4, Lies of P, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, Metaphor: ReFantazio: these are just a few games I loved that I’ve tossed aside for less green pastures. 

I thought to myself, “Okay, but who doesn’t have a backlog? Maybe I’m being too hard on myself.” Guilt is a feeling; numbers are a fact. So I ran the numbers from last year, and the source of my dissatisfaction was confirmed. In 2024, I inadvertently beat a game I disliked for every game I loved.

Here’s the breakdown of the 21 games I beat in 2024. It's important to note that this is how I felt about the games, not what I thought of them from a critical standpoint. For instance, 1000xResist is one of the best games here, but I did not love it. I just really liked it, even though I think it's a brilliant video game and a must-play for narrative fans. Conversely, Lego Horizon Adventures is okay to barely good, but I really liked it.

No wonder my guilt over all my unfinished favorites reached a breaking point. 

Of course, when we break this down as just games I enjoyed and games I didn’t, it reads slightly more favorably. In 2024, I enjoyed over half the games I finished...

...but a 66% is still a failing grade, and it certainly felt like one. 

Rejecting the Obvious Solution

You may be reading this and think the solution is simple: don’t finish a game if you don’t like it. But for me, the value I get out of games isn’t solely enjoyment. It’s information, perspective, and taste-building; it’s a text to analyze. While not all my hate finishes are equally valuable (plenty are my own stubbornness), many of them contain points of interest for me.

For example: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a game I started out really enjoying, but over time, the repetition grated on me. Finishing it gave me insights into what caused this shift. It added to my understanding of the current JRPG landscape. And, with it being a game so many love, it allowed me to compare my perspective against opposite ones. It gave me a chance to explore where the gaps are while considering why they exist in the first place. That being said, I don’t plan to run headfirst into the final installment of this remake series. But since I was already partway through Rebirth, it felt valuable to see it through. 

I reject the obvious and most effective solution because I play for more than fun. For me, the answer to my problems must lie in moderation. 

With this being the last month of 2025, I — like most games media folks — am spending it making one final push to solidify my top 10 list and try out my peers’ favorites. But I’m trying to do it a little smarter this year. 

Less Games Unfinished; More Games Unbegun

Instead of starting last-second releases (like Metroid Prime 4), or finishing games I’m not enjoying just because they’re popular and easy to finish (like Dispatch), I’m making sure no (personally) beloved game goes unfinished.

And the thing I’m most proud of is sticking with games I loved that were wildly long. Namely, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (85 hours) and Hollow Knight: Silksong (61 hrs to beat Act 2). Historically, this has been a huge issue for me. Hour counts are intimidating because it means less time to play other games. But, at the time of writing this, I’ve beaten almost the exact number of games I did last year, so in some ways that fear was unwarranted. In fact, I’m on track to beat more. 

Beating longer games came at the cost of partaking in a few game conversations because I deliberately chose not to start anything while working through these longer titles. Ultimately, I think it was worth skipping what would’ve been a relatively shallow conversation in favor of a few fuller ones. And, as much as I missed some taste testing, it made cleaning up my backlog easier because I wasn't trying to pick from dozens of unfinished games (RIP to Blue Prince though; I put that down for too long). 

I know I won’t get to every game my peers have loved this year, but for the first time in a while, I’ve gotten to all the ones I loved, and that feels better.