I only have myself to blame...

So not only did I just get a Nokia N900 that, to be fair, I have been saving up to buy for a while. Play time with this phone probably won't be over for a few more weeks.

Not only am I really busy with work, meaning the grindstone now has the shape of my nose worn into it.

Not only that, I just bought Mass Effect 2. I know, I know. I don't know why.

I do not have the time to play this game. Other games I am in the process of playing an hour at a time: Bioshock, Grand Theft Auto 4, Far Cry, and Batman Arkham Asylum.

Generally I play a game obsessively, sometimes even straight through until I beat it. Since work schedules forbid me from doing that, I'm actually taking games in a tiny bite at a time. I also find myself sitting and thinking for a bit, "What am I in the mood to play?" Of course, there's no shortage of good games I haven't played yet.

Games I've bought recently (holiday sales!) and haven't played yet:

Deus Ex 1 and 2
Far Cry 2
Half Life 2 Episode 2 (Waiting for Ep 3 announcement before I play it)
Prey
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl
oh, I've played but haven't beat Torchlight, too.

This just compounds the importance of the question, why in the hell did I buy Mass Effect 2, a game I expect to take at least 30 hours to beat (probably much, much longer)? I don't know.

Yes I do.

The primary blame goes to Adam Sessler. His review was glowing, but it really only confirmed what everyone expected, that the game would be better than the first.

Then I saw yesterday's episode of Sessler's Soapbox, also about Mass Effect 2. Glowing might be a bit of an understatement. Maybe he said some bad things about the game, I haven't finished watching the whole video yet, I actually paused it halfway to go buy the game on Steam. (I bought the 'Digital Deluxe' edition, I'm a bit curious how the soundtrack and art book will be delivered. Are they accessible in-game only? Surely not.)

Then we get into the murky cloud of principle-driven actions. Here we have a game that, unlike GTA4, Batman AA, and Bioshock 2, will not require Games for Windows Live in order to install, play or save. We have a game in which the only DRM is in the form of a CD-check (or in Steam, only Steam's own login-based DRM). This reasonably DRM'd game, by the way, is also the sequel to a fairly good game and currently has a Metacritic rating of 94 (and a 9.3 user average). Of course I want to support the marriage of a good game and a good DRM policy by paying full retail price.

The only problem is, now I'm going to want to play the damned thing. It's downloading now (just under 13GB of disk space usage, I don't know what the compressed size is).

Hmm. 11 percent downloaded. I'm at least going to give it a few hours as soon as it installs. After that, I don't know.

David