Looking back over the past year, scrutinizing the games I've played, I'm not entirely happy. We're still cultivating our '2006 Retrospective' piece but, to paraphrase my portion, with the exception of a handful of titles I'm really not too happy with a lot of I have played this year, nor the amount of time I spent playing. As a result, here's my effort to be a slightly more content gamer – my new year gaming resolutions:

• 5. Find an alternative to GameFly.

  I really do like GameFly. I depend on them for a lot of this site's content, and I have been a subscriber of their service for over three years now. But simply put, they can't ship to Chicago to save their lives. Turnaround time for a title takes at least a week, if not longer, which considering Netflix has a daily turn-around for my location, is practically unacceptable. I love buying titles from them via their 'buy it now' option, their site is (mostly) nicely designed, support has always been extremely responsive and understanding, but I just can't keep wasting money on shipping times, especially when there are so many other alternatives available.

• 4. Import more titles.

  Apart from Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Samba de Amigo 2000, my library contains very few imported titles. Granted, I don't go much for console modding, but I am a fan of playing games I haven't played before, and Nintendo's region-free policy towards their handhelds is still fantastic. I've already kicked things off this year by finally ordering a copy of Rhythm Tengoku and, while I still have a long list of other non-U.S. titles to go, it's a start.

• 3. Play more games outside of my 'comfort zone'.

  It's no secret that I love my action games, my platformers, my rhythm games, my survival horror and adventure games. But I really haven't spent much time with genres like strategy games, sport games (if it's not described as 'arcade-y', I usually ignore it) and other genres I often overlook. Hell, I've practically ignored web-based interactive games/art like Inanimate Alice, which is close to a crime in my book. I've been playing in a bubble recently and it's time to expand my horizons.

• 2. Play more missed classics.

  Thanks to my restrictive upbringing and game-less college days, I've missed out on a lot of classic games over the years – especially in the 32 and 64-bit generations. It's time to catch-up. It's not as if finding the titles are hard – via our garagesaling exploits we've found enough classics to keep me busy for some time. The main problem is that I need to...

• 1. Stop playing crap.

  I've realized that I spend way too much time playing mediocre or just plain bad games when I could have been doing something better with my time. I wasted 25 hours of my life playing Yakuza which, while it's technically not crap – it's a serviceable beat-'em-up in the vein of River City Ransom – it's little more than that, at least in its U.S.-localized form. The story, as it comes off through the U.S. dialogue, is little more than awkwardly-delivered & predictable pulp, and that's the best part of the game. I wouldn't sit through the story for three hours if it were being aired as a film on FX one Sunday afternoon, so why should I waste 25 hours playing through it? While I'm sure there's an article in the distillation of pacing via dubbing, it's probably best left to those who understand the source language of the material, and the full production costs of true localization.

  And while I lament the time I spent with Yakuza, it's really the handful of hours I wasted with unplayable dreck like Jaws Unleashed or wading through uninspired torture-porn dungeon-puzzles in the insipid Trapt that really make me feel like I'm wasting my time. I don't actually rue playing them, but it's the amount of time I spent playing them (hours instead of, say, an hour) when I could have been doing something useful, like playing a game that doesn't bore or frustrate me, or catching up on my reading.

  The truth of the matter is, half the time I spend time playing more recent, mediocre games as a way to try and keep the site content current and, apart from very rare cases, if the game's uninspired then similarly I'm going to be uninspired to write a piece about it. Then I sit down, try and milk something from the experience but it all just ends up as a total waste of days, if not weeks, of my leisure time. So, no more. No more playing games to completion 'just because there are only a few hours left'. No more time spent hoping 'maybe it'll improve after the fourth level' when the game's given me absolutely no reason to believe that might occur.

  There we are – my five gaming resolutions. I'll be keeping track, via this journal entry's comments or in a later entry as to just how well I've stuck to them. I certainly hope I do keep to 'em, or else I'll be one pretty miserable gamer this year. So what are your plans to improve your gaming experiences in the new year?