Once every four years or so, a new Tales game comes around. For fans of the series, you understand the excitement. For non-fans, well … go play Mass Effect 3 or something.

As mentioned on this blog before, the Tales series is one of my favorites. Part of the added anticipation is the waiting game Namco Bandai puts fans through for each and every release. Will it make it to the States? Will it ever be localized? How long could it possibly take to translate everything into English? Why does four years seem unreasonable?

But once a release date is finally locked down, that’s when the true countdown can begin. And for me, the countdown is down to exactly one week.

Although I’m not exactly like Dave and his post from last week (where he talked about pretty much dropping games), I definitely don’t get as excited about stuff as I used to get. Watching E3 last year, I was struck by how few announcements really made much of an impact. There were a couple of games that piqued my interest, sure. But for the most part, I found myself underwhelmed.

Still, there’s a handful of titles each year that I get hyped about. Last year, that included stuff like Pokemon Black and Saints Row III. So far, Tales of Graces is the only game on that list for 2012 (although I’ll be picking up Street Fighter x Tekken tomorrow and expect to have fun with it). That means that I’m going to look to milk as much enjoyment out of it as possible.

Some folks I know love to plow through games as quickly as possible in marathon sessions (I’m looking at you, Jason). That’s not really my style, although I can certainly see the appeal — when you really enjoy a game, it’s tough to put it down sometimes because it’s either really fun, really engrossing or both. But for me, it’s about extending the experience. Games have evolved past the point where you can play through something in an hour or two, so my days of beating something like Final Fight or speed running Link to the Past have changed as well.

I suppose that’s just a part of getting older (and believe me, I’ll be talking about that more next week short of my birthday). But I don’t mind it. If anything, it lets me still enjoy video games without devoting quite as much time to them. Since I have less time overall, that sounds like a good deal to me.