Every­one has tra­di­tions that they fol­low every year.  Some peo­ple like to vis­it cer­tain loca­tions, eat par­tic­u­lar foods or lis­ten to a favorite song.  Sev­er­al of my tra­di­tions, as you might have guessed, involve video games and I’d like to share five of them with you right now.

The Resident Evil 2 Tradition

Some games real­ly tend to stick with you.  One such game for me per­son­al­ly is my favorite game in Capcom’s famed sur­vival hor­ror series.  Res­i­dent Evil 2 was one of the first things that ever exposed me to zom­bies.  From then on, I’ve always enjoyed expe­ri­enc­ing the decep­tive­ly diverse amount of zom­bie-based media that’s out there.  It would be easy to say that I usu­al­ly play through both the A and B cam­paign to see the true end­ing of the game, but I won’t lie to you here today.  My tra­di­tion for this game involves play­ing all the way through the A cam­paign play­ing as Claire.  This was the way I played through orig­i­nal­ly and it’s hard for me to see the sto­ry unfold the oth­er way.  Wor­ry not though, as I have a save file ready to go just before the end of Leon’s B campaign.

The Assassin’s Creed Tradition

One of the best things about a tra­di­tion is con­sis­ten­cy.  It’s good to have some­thing that you can count on to be the same every year.  For the last three years, the Assassin’s Creed series has been a great source for this con­sis­ten­cy.  Each year, a new game has come out around the same time, but this isn’t where my tra­di­tion lies.  Like clock­work, on infa­mous sale day black fri­day, the new game is dis­count­ed by near­ly half.  It’s then that I go into the store and pick up said game.  One last part of this tra­di­tion is that I haven’t quite fin­ished the game from last year.  So, I’ll go home and pop in the year old game and fin­ish it so I can get start­ed on this year’s title.

The Backlog Blowout Tradition

Every­one has that back­log of games that just haven’t made it high up enough on your list to fin­ish up.  Inevitably at some point in the year, I find myself in a posi­tion where my lack of respon­si­bil­i­ties and free time line up just per­fect­ly and I get a chance to get some seri­ous gam­ing done.  I always take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a look at my shelf and try to think about what I can get through dur­ing this rare window.

The Legend of Zelda Tradition

It’s no secret that this par­tic­u­lar series is my favorite.  As such, I’ve tak­en it upon myself to add this series to my tra­di­tions.  While I would love to say that I play every game in the series every year, this would be a lit­tle too large a feat to accom­plish every year.  What I am able to do is make sure that I play at least one game from the series from start to fin­ish.  My favorites to help accom­plish this task are the games playable on portable con­soles.  The release of Oca­ri­na of Time for the 3DS made it an even eas­i­er for me and I’ve been play­ing though it both years since.

The Game Rental Trial Tradition

I’ve found that around once a year, an online game rental ser­vice low­ers their prices just enough for me to give it a shot.  By now, I know what the end result will be, but I still enjoy the process nonethe­less.  The trou­ble with these rental ser­vices is that I end up using them to play the games I don’t want to com­mit to own­ing.  I’m still going to end up buy­ing the ones that I want, so what hap­pens is, know­ing that I only have a lim­it­ed time with the rent­ed games, I end up play­ing the games I like less instead of the ones I bought.  Still, every once in a while, a gem comes in through the ser­vice that I end up real­ly enjoy­ing and makes the whole process worth it.

So, what are some of your gam­ing traditions?