How many games have you finished this year?

It’s OK if you don’t remember the exact number—that’ll mostly be an excuse for Fraser to show off, since apparently he writes them down. In a spreadsheet. Everyone else, give me a rough estimate, that’s fine. It’s not the number that matters—what I really want to know is, did you spend this year playing more games than usual or did you fall back on old favorite forever games to help you get through? Feel free to count games you didn’t finish on PC, if you want. A phone’s just a computer you can play in the bathroom anyway.

How many games have you finished this year?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK: I’ve finished 20 games so far this year, although most of those in the first six months. I did start the year planning to keep up with 2021’s releases, but that didn’t really pan out. The only ones I’ve actually completed are Hitman 3, Deathloop and Forza Horizon 5, two of which I reviewed. Instead, I spent more time trawling my backlog, and finally completing a couple of games I’d left languishing near the end. Mafia: Definitive Edition, Control, Yakuza: Like a Dragon and even Shadowrun: Dragonfall all finally saw completion. Then, a few months back, I got back into Apex Legends and Guild Wars 2, a couple of forever games that—along with Destiny 2—pretty much ensured I wouldn’t be finishing anything else for the rest of the year. Maybe next year, eh?

Mollie Taylor, Trainee News Writer: Uhh… maybe five or six? Turns out it’s a lot harder to churn out 30-odd games in a year when you’re an adult with a full-time job rather than a uni student in the middle of a pandemic. My playstyle’s also shifted quite significantly—I’m usually a huge single-player gal, but this year I’ve really embraced diving into multiplayer games with my pals. It means I’ve spent a decent amount of hours gaming in 2021, but not a lot of those spent in games that have a concrete end. I also really got back into Final Fantasy 14 a few months ago, so my body, soul, and all my free time now belong to the MMO overlords. Apologies to all the fantastic solo experiences I’ve let fall to the wayside.

Nat Clayton, News Writer: Does completing two Apex battle passes count? More than I reckon anyone else here, my year was defined by getting really, nonsensically obsessed with multiplayer shooters. I was a competitive Splatoon 2 player all through spring, and I’ve played so much Halo 3 that Master Chief keeps appearing in my dreams. Apex Legends has taken over my life absolutely, a fixation that’s seen me spend agonizing nights chasing ranked rewards and an irresponsible amount of money commissioning a Horizon costume.

Even the singleplayer games I played were largely endless—Teardown has a story but I’ve spent far more time messing around with mods, while Townscaper is less a game and more a coastal architecture toy. Unbeatable won’t be done for years, and Session probably never will be. The one game I can say with certainty I did beat was Sable, and god, I’m so glad I saw Sable through to completion. Please play Sable. 

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I think it genuinely might be none. I’ve really flitted from game to game this year, and put a lot of time into games that can’t be finished (like Legends of Runeterra and Stellaris) and games that can be finished but only by teenagers and the unemployed (Assassin’s Creed Valhalla). I think lockdown really made it hard to stay focused and stick with something, for me, as well as driving me towards familiar old games rather than new releases. And now that GOTY time is fast approaching, I’m jumping around more than ever trying to get a taste of all the big hitters I missed.