In response to playing games JUST to get through them, vs taking time and enjoying them.

I think Jeff posed a very interesting question when he asked "Do you want to be able to say you've played game x, or do you actually want to PLAY game x?"

Personally, I admit that there have been times when I go out and buy a game that doesn't initially interest me, simply because I hear so much praise for it. Once and a while, I am pleasantly surprised, but more often than not I end up putting such games aside and going back to the games I love.

Games I have purchased due to feeling that "I should play them" over the past 6 months include:

Fable 3
Alan Wake
God of War 3
Uncharted 2
Mod Nation Racers
GTA 4 w/ Lost & Damned/Ballad of Gay Tony
Deadspace 2
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2011 (guilty pleasure)

plus a half dozen XBLA games that I can't even remember right now.

Out of that list, I've put maybe 3 hours into Vanquish, 30 minutes into Fable 3, an hour into Uncharted 2, and a couple races in Mod Nation with my wife. The rest of the list haven't even been booted up yet.

Why? Because every time I sit down to play a game, I ask myself "what do I really want to PLAY right now?". Over the past 6 months, that has been Halo Reach, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Mass Effect 2, and Bad Company 2.

This tells me 2 things:

1) I need to stop buying games unless I actually want to play them (duh)
2) The conceptual desire to say "I have played game x" might be strong enough for me to purchase a game, but when it comes time for me to sit down and pick up a controller, my brain turns to the game I am the most genuinely excited to play.