Posts Tagged ‘Mass Effect 2’

Top title game releases are becoming a year round event. Gone are the days when a gamer could binge at Christmas and fast through the winter, surviving on the fat of Santa’s spoils. But while the release calendar has changed my buying habits have not, and that maybe about to become a problem.

It was no secret that the traditional lull really wasn’t coming in January this year. Initially my supposition was that the large number of delayed games had simply shifted the off-season to around March. With this in mind I kept buying games. I bought Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2 and MAG to name but a few. I ground my way through all of these, leaving aside titles from Christmas that I planned to return to later when the slump finally arrived. But my belief that the flood of releases would slow was wrong, because as March came and went, and the games kept coming.

I don't want to sound like I am complaining, this is not a bad problem to have.

Now I find myself sat with a pile of fantastic games that I am still itching to finish. They sit on my metaphorical coffee table, begging for attention. Yet even with this heap of games I have discovered that I continue to check new releases, unwilling to miss out on the next significant title.

Late in March it became apparent that it was getting beyond a joke. With games to review, articles to write and a life to lead, it had to stop. I had more than enough unfinished and unplayed titles to keep me going until sometime in October. Even big releases like God Of War 3 I knew I would not have time for; I could easily save myself effort and expense of buying it. I realized that once the buzz died and the price dropped I could come back to it, if I was still interested, but right now I don’t need it in my life. So I made a simple vow; no more new games until I finish the games I already own.

Kratos is just going to have to wait his turn.

Even as I made this promise I add clauses. I reasoned that games applicable to my ‘Scared Gamer’ page on Game People, would have to be bought for coverage. Plus any title that may be hard to find at a later date would have to be snapped up. Sensible provisos I could argue, but the more astute reader can no doubt see them as pre-made excuses for my purchases of Metro 2033 and Deadly Premonition. Yet even with these loopholes I have already broken my promise.

In many respects my actions were almost innate, see wanted game, I buy it. As an adult there is always enough money in my wallet for any game I want (which is different statement from actually having enough money). By simply having the economic means, the chance of me weakening to an impulse purchase rise exponentially. I was coping though; since I made the oath no new games had entered my house. Technically in fact I still have not gone back on my vow, but in my heart I know the preorder for Super Street Fighter 4 sat in my wallet is not sanctioned.

To make matters worse its the collectors edition.

My problem was that Street Fighter is something very special to me. In my youth this was a series that saw me saving for months to enable me to buy it day of release. A franchise that saw me hauling my tubby thirteen-year-old ass through Birmingham (at speeds it had rarely seen) go to Game, just to grab the latest instalment.

I could make a good many justifications to myself (some may even be convincing) to explain breaking my oath for the latest Street Fighter. Deep down I know however that, like so many others, this games will sit unwrapped for some time. My life has changed, I can no longer sit and play for hours on a Saturday with friends, and online play simply does not scratch the same itch. My time for this kind of gaming has passed, so while I can hope to one day relive it, the fact is I will be lucky to ever recapture this part of my youth even for a day.

On the plus side the bonus rounds are back.

Super Street Fighter 4 was simply the game that highlighted this problem that I, and I am sure many other committed gamers have, habitually buying games. Now as an adult I struggle to break the habit of buying games when I can, a pattern established during a time in my life when I could finish every game I could afford. As much as I try to rationalise it and excuse my purchases (‘its for review’ or ‘I have to keep up with the discussion’), I have to accept that I am now an adult with limited time. I am sure that I am not alone in having to take a long hard look at my hobby, its costs and my consumption of it, before conceding that many of my purchases are at best frivolous, and at worst wasteful, especially as the industry now appears set to feed my addiction all year round.

On the occasions my posts fall below one a week here on DoFuss, I start to feel guilty. I have so many ideas for articles littering my desktop that wish I had more time to realise them. One will be going up later today, and already have three more on the go, but whether I finish the next piece on time invariably does not fall to my passion but my schedule. Reviewing games, articles for other sites and life all to frequently obstruct me.

When the feeling of guilt becomes too great I put together these ‘DoFuss Link’ posts, which provides a handy list of my recent work on other sites where you see a little more of my writing if you so choose. These posts serve three purposes, inform you of my work, keep DoFuss a bit more up-to-date and most importantly make me feel better about it taking me ten days between posts.

Below are a list of reviews and articles that have been posted since my last update. Each site has more in the wings ready to go (Heavy Rain reviews in particular on both Game People and Play Devil should be interesting), so if you are eager to stay up to date with my writing keep an eye out there. If you are less inclined to keep on top of my work then I will of course have another one of these updates in April so you can just check back here, or just ignore these posts completely.

As always if you do pay theses a visit I would much appreciate you leave any thoughts or feedback on respective site.

Scared Gamer -

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition, Valkyria Chronicles, Valkyria Chronicles 2, Alien Breed: Evolution, Bayonetta (revisited), Mass Effect: Galaxy and Pitfall: The Big Adventure.

Haiku Gamer -

Valkyria Chronicles.

Sports Gamer -

Little League World Series Baseball 2008. (Yes, I did review the 2009 one last month).

Mass Effect 2, Polar Panic, Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond, Alien Breed: Evolution and South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense!

Post Natal Depression.

Yes, its late, and we missed February completely, but with most of the regular cast having birthdays last month we can be forgiven right? Well maybe not, but we are back again now with added titillating missile silos. I say ‘we’ are back, but really it is me with a brand new cohort in the form of Scoot, a font of gaming knowledge and a welcome partner in podcasting crime.

So here is the twenty-fourth DoFuss Show, and if you can bear with a couple of small technical issues on Scoot’s end you will be treated to an hour an forty minutes of gaming news and discussion. Focusing our attention on online competitive play and games retail for the most part, we also dip in to some Nintendo conference talk and other news.

I suppose we are reaching a point where I may have to concede that a ‘regular’ schedule might never be possible, but I promise to keep trying and may hopefully even manage to get a three-man show going one day. Until I hope you keep listening to, and enjoying, our sporadic content.

The DoFuss Show – Dedicated to Claire and Miki [ 1:41:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Different sites have different mandates on the subject of at what point a review should be written. I used to believe that a reviewer should experience a game in its entirely before they could reasonably pass judgment. It is a view that has slowly eroded recently, leaving me unsure as to my own principles and questioning at what point I am qualified to write a review.

Initially my concept of finishing a game before reviewing was solid, every game on my own site has always been completed before anything was written. But playing Ultimate Band for review on Game People threw all of this in to question. Playing the Disney rhythm game I could be found repeatedly pumping my Wii remote above my crotch with no penalty for my constant, rhythmic ‘strumming’ which didn’t even come close to emulating the onscreen beat. I finished around half the songs offered with a variety of instruments, and concluded that it was fair to say I had seen enough.

The game that changed me.

It was peculiar how divided the decision made me. Maybe I was doing readers an injustice by not experiencing everything the game had to offer. But I knew that the template for the action wasn’t going to chance, and nor was my opinion. I set to writing the review feeling that I had been fair to both my readers and the developers.

I constructed a new internal guideline for my reviews. Based on the time I play and the genre/size of the game I ensure that on sites that do not require I finish a game that I at least give each it a fair amount of my time. I was happy with my new code until recently when the question was again reawakened by the narrative heavy Mass Effect 2 and Silent Hill: Shattered Memoires.

Narrative dependent titles have an implicit expectation that you will experience a story in its entirety. Similar to a movie it would be unfair to review it before it reached its conclusion. If I were to watch the first hour of The Sixth Sense and then review it my opinion would be very different to someone who watched it all. But it is impossible to dissociate a game’s narrative from its interactive elements. Again if The Sixth Sense required all of its audience have their toenails torn off while watching, then I would be justified in saying it doesn’t matter what the pay off is, it can’t be worth it and subsequently leaving after only five minutes.

Almost entirely incredible.

Looking at Silent Hill and Mass Effect 2 both game’s finales sit in contrast to my opinion of the rest of the experience. Mass Effect 2 was for me an incredibly involving forty-hour experience; every moment (bar the mining) was a joy, until my final confrontation. Any ending of a story or game with an expansive and involving plot will always struggle to meet the high expectations established throughout the rest of the experience, and thus they are almost uniformly anticlimactic. In Mass Effect’s case end sequence in its entirety is an emotional sequence of events, but the last tiny fraction was a let down. I couldn’t even say it tarnished the rest of the game, but it did hit something of a bum note when it should have reached its crescendo.

Silent Hill takes the opposite approach. Incorporating two game styles, creepy atmospheric adventure and running in terror my opinion throughout Silent Hill oscillated between amazement at what the developers were trying to achieve, and dismay at the infuriating action sections. Discussion of the emotions that the game’s infuriating controls induce and how intentional they were aside, every moment spent fleeing your enemies during these sections were soul crushingly bad, yet instantly forgive when you get to the end and begin to realize what it was building to.

A strong ending can make up for a lot.

Now I am stuck in a quandary. Mass Effect 2’s slight disappointment did not alter my feelings about the experience. Maybe it is due to the length of the title, or perhaps simple that the mechanics were solid enough to have overlooked weaker narrative elements. Silent Hill’s ending however totally altered my opinion. Lasting only six or eight hours perhaps I was inclined to be more forgiving of the hour or so spent in the games broken action segments; looking back I am even starting to appreciate the real sense of apprehension the scenes created in me. But what it boils down to is that I could have reviewed Mass Effect 2 after ten hours and bar a throw away comment about the ending my conclusion would have been unchanged. Where as if I hadn’t finished Silent Hill my feelings would have been inclined towards the negative, rather than the overwhelmingly positive view I now possess.

So it is back to the drawing board with my guidelines. Currently I am leaning towards the idea that when left to my own discretion I play a game until I just can’t bring myself to play any more, assuming of course that I at least have ensured a solid grasp of the concepts. I arrived at this formula because personally I would not feel ‘cheated’ if any writer supplied their opinion in this manner, providing they clearly indicated what their exposure to the game entailed. It seems many disagree with this methodology however feeling entitled to reviews that encapsulate the complete experience.

I can understand arguing for completion, but it seems that with both the industry and distribution of information changing as rapidly as it is, changes in coverage’s content should adapt also. With game media moving almost exclusively to websites, speed of coverage and personality of the review are becoming increasingly valuable. Following someone with the same tastes, or drawing from hundreds of voices, allows us to choose what suits us personally. As players have more games to play and less time available a review that tells me that one persons experience was so bad it made the player put down the controller and never return is invaluable providing the writer frames what their opinion is based on sufficiently.