How Long Can One Game Last?

I've been on a break from video games for what will soon be a full week, which was a Valentine's Day gift to my girlfriend. Nice. Extra quality time. But we also had a small party at our apartment last night, which included a little Wii Sports and Brawl initiations. It was quite a lot of fun, and since it was a party, I got to play too without invalidating my present.

On to the point. In playing Brawl last night, I realized that I am and probably will always be much more of a single-player gamer than a multi-player gamer. I am much more interested in a good interactive story, with solid, fun game play mechanics than in trying to become an expert at a certain game or spend dozens of hours playing online matches against people. This inclination is probably a large part of why I often choose RPGs (like Final Fantasy), strategy games (Fire Emblem), or action/platformers (too many to name). I love Brawl, and I plan on playing it a lot more. I would also love to get really good with 1 or 2 characters (especially little Mr. Olimar). But deep in my heart, I know the reality is that I will probably slowly grow tired of Brawl over the next 3 or 4 weeks, and slowly move onto other story-driven games I have waiting, such as Hotel Dusk, Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, and even Final Fantasy III. I also want to play some of the old LucasArts adventure games, of which I just got Grim Fandango.

Maybe this would all be different if I had a couple of friends always wanting to play Brawl, but I don't. It's a lot of fun, but I tend to move on to other games quite quickly after finishing one, mainly because there are so many classic games I haven't played yet. Brawl will still last me a while, but not the several years that some people can get out of it.

On a side note, I absolutely love reading Michael Abbott's posts over at the Brainy Gamer. He's a theater/film professor and writes about games from a thoughtful, academic perspective. And you also easily get the obvious feeling that he really loves games. I highly recommend his blog.