Why Can't I Commit.... To Video Games?!

I have a problem!!

I buy games that I never play!
Usually, these are because they are emblazoned with those magic words... "Collector's/Special Edition" and I can't resist forking out over the odds for that over-sized packaging with the promise of an extra costume for a character or an extra mission!

There are times, admittedly, where I refuse to buy anything less than the Special Editions for games that I really want to own and actually play such as Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed and Dragon Age, but invariably, I have been scouting through the games sections of online shops and seen a Special Edition of a game that I previously had no real interest in but feel compelled to buy just in case, ya know, I get round to it or it becomes quite valuable on eBay or something?

This would be fine if I could actually commit to playing them but at this time, especially now with having a 9-5 job and cherishing my weekends, I find myself struggling to sit down and say 'right, today I shall start a game and only play that game until I have finished it!' and this leads to a lot of games that I have hardly seen anything of.
There are games that I have done that with though, don't get me wrong.

I shall never forget the magical 4 days whilst I was unemployed where I clocked up 42 hours on Mass Effect while still somehow finding time to eat and sleep.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time on the Gamecube kept me playing for 2 evenings, clocking up in-game time of 7 hours, not accounting for the actual real-world time of dying again and again and again and again! (I had a lot of rage set aside for that game but I persisted anyway!)
Dragon Age was one of the rare games that I tried to play, didn't really enjoy that much, put away and then returned to only to find that including DLC I have notched up around 52 hours in total. I am just waiting for a chance to start Dragon Age 2 in case I get caught up in that too.
The 3d Legend of Zelda games have always kept me playing until completion along with the 3d Marios except, strangely, Super Mario Sunshine which I struggled to connect to.
And most recently, Uncharted on the PS3 managed to grab me enough to want to see it right through to the end.

There are games that I pick up and play, get really into and then leave and never return to and even more that I try, do the tutorial and then banish to the shelf to await the fateful day that I find time to give them another go. And there are games that I have never even removed from the box, let alone put anywhere near my disc-tray!
I have original Xbox games from about 8 years ago that I have never touched.
I bought GTA: San Andreas on my 21st birthday.
I am 29 in August 2011.
It has never been used.

All this leads me to ask myself: Why?
And it is a question I ask myself a lot.

I am pretty sure I have upwards of 350 physical games (those on discs) and adding in Game Boy, DS, Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and Nintendo Virtual Console downloads, I am easily looking at 400+.
I can probably count the number of games I have completed on my fingers and toes (possibly having to borrow another hand from somewhere, but I'd have to check that).

1) Is it that I don't enjoy video games?
2) Do I have the attention span of a goldfish with ADHD?
3) Is there something wrong with the games that prevent people from being able to connect on an intellectual level and want to stick with it?

The answers appear to be:
1) No, I do enjoy games or I wouldn't want to spend money on them in the first place.
2) Probably, but if I try and ignore shiny things I can generally concentrate on something for more than 10 minutes.
And 3) No, the games are fine. Some of the games I own are the best-selling games of their genre so there's probably nothing wrong with the games themselves in terms of drawing people in.

I honestly do not know what it is.
Some games seem fun at first but I hit a snag and put it away for months.
Some seem fun at first but then I get another game that I’ve been wanting and so that takes precedent and I never return.
Some games just fail to grasp me although everything about them tells me that I should, in theory, be enjoying it.

I feel it may be mostly due to the story or how the game flows from start to finish.
Studying film at University and being an avid collector of DVDs (gotta love those 2-disc Collector’s Editions!!), I think I just like to see an interesting and thought-provoking narrative throughout.
That is certainly what captured me in Mass Effect and Uncharted.
The Assassin’s Creed games are extremely well written and contain that ‘just-one-more-hour’ mentality which I generally reserve for TV shows such as 24.
The good-conquering-evil story is as old as time but Nintendo do a great job of interspersing that with side-quests that, again, make you yearn to see what happens when you get that new sword or go explore a mysterious dungeon that somebody just told you about in Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess.

I certainly am in the mind-set that if it can’t spin a good story around the gameplay and make me actually want to see how it ends, I will probably never see how it does end and that is a shame.

So how does that explain the small number of games that don’t really have such a huge cinematic aspect to them?
Prince of Persia compelled me to the finish but that can’t really be said to have a great storyline.
Dragon Age, while having a major plot-point and destination, seemed too fragmented and sparse to really lead you through from one point to the next but again, as I said earlier, 52 hours later I finished it.

There is a lot of talk about video game addiction but I don’t really think I have suffered from that even in the most extreme circumstances.
Yes, I played Mass Effect for 4 days straight but I wasn’t working so it’s not like it took over my life and I skipped work or whatever.
If I had other things to do I would have done them instead.

So I am still unsure about why certain games can drag me in while others fail to impress.
I cracked on with Uncharted and finished that quite quickly yet Uncharted 2 has been started and left for a few weeks while I do other things.
Is that a case of familiarity breeding contempt and I just yearn for something a little less similar?
My plan was to finish Uncharted 2 and then get onto Dragon Age 2 but will I see the same thing?
I finished Dragon Age months ago but will it just be too similar and bore me before I put in the time it deserves?

There are so many games I have to play that I own and still I have more pre-ordered yet to arrive so I could do with getting the answers soon!
I keep thinking to myself that I should play my games in order from A-Z and not play anything else until they’re done, but that would require me being in the right mood for whatever game came next, something I find myself lacking in for certain games these days.
Maybe that’s it.
Maybe I just require certain moods to play certain games?

If I just feel like playing something but not sure what, I’ll just put on something quick and silly like Joe Danger on PSN or IloMilo on XBLA.
Something I can dip in and out within the space of a level sometimes.
Other times I just fancy something I know I can play easily and not have to think about too much so I’ll stick in Rock Band and give it a few tracks or go for a full mammoth rocking session.
In rarer times I’ll sit down and play something a bit more in-depth and get into it, and on that occasion the minutes turn into hours and hours into days.
Those are the rarer times that I seek and will hopefully find again.

I really need to play GTA: San Andreas at some point!!!