Amer Ajami | I Know People w/ Photoshop

RoninKengo would be proud that his hard work on the image above is being amortized across multiple blog posts. At any rate, being a natural born procrastinator that I am, the topic of a recent weekend's Pick 5 on GameSpot is a perfect fit for me. In the last four to five years, I've found myself putting off playing more and more games that I would have instantly picked up and played all the way through in my younger, more virile days (as a seventh grader). Whether it's a lack of time, lack of priorities, or perhaps a constantly dropping tolerance of games that I fawn over, the list of games that I should have played, but haven't for one reason or another continues to grow. The top five offenders are:

5. Resident Evil 4
I never got into the whole survival horror genre...thing. Games like Resident Evil, Clock Tower, Silent Hill, Parasite Eve, Dino Crisis, and others were just too slow and clunky and methodical for my taste. I played and enjoyed the original Alone in the Dark for PC when it first came out in the early 1990s, but my tastes since then have grown to acquire faster-paced and more traditional action games. I took care of my survival horror fix by watching my brother plow through every good and bad game in the genre to come out since the original Resident Evil, and I felt content enough never to pick up the controller. So when Resident Evil 4 came out for the GameCube a couple of years ago, I was intruigued by the fact that it eschewed the control and slow-paced mechanics of everything that had come before it, and that it, apparently, felt more like a traditional third-person shooter than anything else. Besides, I like to think that anything that breaks a 9.0 on GameSpot is worth playing no matter what type of games you're predesposed to.

So with all that in mind, I headed out to my local Best Buy about a week after the game's release, paid $50 for it, brought it home, popped it into my GameCube, got to the first town, ran into some house with angry Spaniards giving chase, got my head chopped off by the chainsaw dude...and never touched the game again. That's not entirely true -- I replayed it immediately, only to have the exact same thing happen to me. But from that moment on, I never played the game again. Something about dying within the first five minutes of starting the game turned me off on it completely. I knows lots of people who rant and rave about Resident Evil 4, but I can only take so many beheadings.

4. Final Fantasy X
I have to admit it: I'm not a Final Fantasy fan. At least, I'm not anymore. Back in the day, I played and finished the original Final Fantasy for the NES, and I liked it. Then I played Final Fantasy II (IV in Japan) for the SNES and absolutley loved it. I followed it up with Final Fantasy III (VI across the Pacific), and was immediately swallowed up by Final Fantasy Fever. I started collecting soundtracks, T-shirts, and anything related to the series; playing offshoots like the Mana series and Mystic Quest; and downloading sheet music and Midi files of Nobuo Uematsu's memorable music. The height of my fandom peaked with Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation, which I regard as the best game in the series. Final Fantasy VII was an amazing technical and design achievement that was massive in scope.

So why haven't I played Final Fantasy X? Well, VIII kind of soured the rest of the series for me. I was excited to attend the unveiling of Final Fantasy VIII at the 1998 E3 in Atlanta. However, I didn't know what to make of the pre-rendered footage that was shown at the event. There was this fruity guy with a sword for a gun (or a gun for a sword), who was filled with some kind of angst, and was trying to profess his love for this one chick in the middle of even more angst and some kind of world-destroying cataclysm...there was also a cliff and a bunch of feathers. Ultimately, I passed on the game -- it was simply too preachy and angsty. And then again on IX, and then again on X (and X-2 and XI afterwards). I'm still impressed by the scale of Final Fantasy games, and being a fan of Vagrant Stories, I'm intruiged by Final Fantasy XII and its combat system.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Where as I'm no longer a particularly big fan of Final Fantasy games, I am now and have always been a huge one of the Zelda series. I borrowed my neighbor's copy of Zelda when it first came out on the NES, and developed my first ever thumb/game blisters shortly thereafter. It was the summer between the seventh and eighth grades, and I'll always remember it: the expansive world of Hyrule; finding as many heart containers as possible; blue and red Links...it was the first game of its kind (or at least, the first of its kind that I ever played), and every Zelda game since has successfully captured the same essence of the first.

And I'm proud to say that I've happily played and finished every Zelda game since. Well, almost every one. I never played then two Oracle games for the Game Boy Color, nor the two Zelda games for the Phillips CDi. In the grand scheme of the Zelda lineage, though, those four aren't exactly the most memorable ones. However, I also never played Majora's Mask for the N64. By all accounts, it's a great game, and I know of some friends and relatives that think that it's the best Zelda game ever made (Wind Waker and Link to the Past are in a two-way tie for first in my book, thank you very much), but my perception of it was somewhat skewed. See, it came out a little less than two years after Ocarina of Time did. And while I realize that it was created using the same engine and a lot of the same art, thus dramatically cutting down its development time, I had always been used to the mainline Zelda games taking years and years to come out. A Zelda game that only took two years to make? That can't be good, right? Foolish thinking, I know. But the game's fiction wasn't compelling for me either. The man on the moon's collision course with Hyrule just didn't seem very Zelda-ish to me. For those reasons, Majora's Mask never piqued my interest enough to actually play it.

2. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
There are certain games that come out every now and then that deserve to be in one's collection, even if they don't really interest said person at all because they are so well executed within their genre, that they become shining examples of games done right. Oblivion is also one of those games. For me, I'm not really a role-playing game fan, pre-VIII Final Fantasy series notwithstanding. Naturally, I wasn't very big on Morrowind, the prequel to Oblivion, when it was released four years ago. But despite that fact, I rushed out and picked up Oblivion the day it came out because of the immense hype that it was circulating, and the wholly impressive score that Greg gave it.

I really wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, this would be the game that would transcend its genre walls and get me playing RPGs again. I was certainly impressed by its graphics, open-ended mechanics, countless quests, and vast world. Certainly, even a stubborn non-RPG player such as myself could see the promise held by this game's excellent execution. I put in about an hour into Oblivion, escaping from the initial dungeon and unlocking a shiny Xbox 360 achievement, before turning it off for good. That's because despite all the stuff I just mentioned, Oblivion is still a very traditional RPG: perform often mindless tasks so you can level up and perform more mindless tasks more effeciently (within the context of a compelling story, I suppose).

So while I can respect the fact that Oblivion is a shining example of a role-playing game done right, at the end of the day, it's still a role-playing game.

1. World of Warcraft
While this artsy game from a boutique developer might not be familiar to most of you, my sources tell me that it's going to be the next big thing! But seriously, douche-baggery aside, I'm probably one of the few people left in the civilized world that hasn't played World of Warcraft. Strange considering that the game has a special place in my heart since Greg and I were the first people outside of Blizzard to see it.But before you assume that I'm living underneath a rock, perhaps I should clarify my remarks: I've never played the retail version of World of Warcraft. And I have two perfectly good reasons why not.

First, I went to elementary school in the 80's, and Nancy Reagan taught me to just say no to drugs. A recurring monthly expense on something that is so addictive that you spend all of your time using it, or thinking about using it, or talking about using it, or day-dreaming about using it? I know a drug when I see one! I'm an anti-social nerd as it is. I don't need another excuse to spend all of my free time in front of yet another game.

Secondly, I was fortunate enough to have been included in the closed alpha and beta sessions of the game throughout 2003, about a year before WoW hit the store shelves. I spent money on a new laptop to play the game, and then more money to upgrade said laptop, and countless hours playing my Night Elf, and then later, Tauren characters. And while I never got to experience retail features like PvP, I was content with the time that I did spend before the servers got flooded with six million users worldwide.

Besides, as far as drugs go, Battlefield 2 is still my medicine of choice.

By the way, happy birthday to Giancarlo.