Summer Drought
It's been quite some time since I last updated this blog, so let's get caught up a bit, shall we?
I have a large backlog of unfinished games. So many, in fact, that I think if I took an entire month off of work with the sole activity restricted to playing games, sleeping, eating, and occasionally attending to personal hygiene I would STILL have a backlog when I returned to work. I've had a problem with compulsive game buying since I first entered the workforce and discovered the wonders of disposable income, so this backlog problem is certainly nothing new.
It is for this reason that I am actually happy about the traditional gaming "drought" of the summer, where companies are loathe to release games -- for fear of the dreaded "outdoors" I presume -- since this break gives me a chance to catch up with the games I've ignored for the last few months. Or so I always intend. After all, there's always some game that I was able to resist buying back in the busy pre-and-post-Christmas timeframe that just calls to me to be bought... but I digress.
Here's a bit of a quick recap on the games I have played thus far this summer, and why it is I still have not finished them:
Kingdom Hearts 2
I've actually written a bunch about this game already here so I'll keep it short: the game sucks. It's really that simple. A truly broken gameplay experience with some really nice production values. I tried and I tried, but in the end could not bring myself to suffer any longer and thus did not finish it.
Perfect Dark Zero
This is on the short list for "worst shooter I have ever played." In order to fully understand how vile this game is -- and this works only for people fond of the original -- take your memories from the heydey of the N64 PD and put them in a manila envelope. Seal the envelope using the tears of a child who just dropped their ice cream on the ground on a hot summer afternoon, then place the envelope against an electric fence (powered on). Now, unzip your pants and piss on the envelope. As the current washes through your nether regions, try as best as you can to picture Madeline Albright naked.
That is PDZ in a nutshell.
FIFA World Cup 2006
This is a sports game, so it doesn't really have an "end" persay, but suffice it to say that I did not complete a full World Cup. I am awful at FIFA games. It's completely inexplicable. No game (or series of games) have consistently confounded me in the way that FIFA has. I even took the time to learn as much about the game of soccer as I could throughout the course of watching the real World Cup, yet that only improved my skill by a fraction.
My record vs. my sister's fiancé: 1 win, I-Lost-Count-At-15 losses, 0 draws
My record vs. my roommate: 2 wins, 6 losses, 3 draws
My record vs. the computer: 1 win, 3 losses, 5 draws
I decided to throw in the towel on this one and attempt to make as much money back in trade-in value as possible. I will not give in entirely, though. You will not win the war, FIFA... I'll be back when FIFA 2007 releases!
Titan Quest
A PC game! Too bad it is an inefficiently-coded mess right now that chugs along on my PC. Granted I don't have the most powerful rig around, but I should at least be able to run it at my LCD's native resolution instead of the blurry, jaggy-filled 1024x768 I ended up with. Placed aside for a later patch that will hopefully fix my problem.
Galactic Civilizations 2
Eerily reminiscent of Master of Orion from back-in-the-day -- a game that I had a dangerous addiction to -- I squandered my free time for two weeks solid on this one. It's a hell of a fun game, but I have put it aside for fear of blowing another 30 hours of my life in the next few weeks...
Tales of Symphonia
This one is still really a work-in-progress, but has been pushed aside for a bit due to a large influx of new 360 game purchases. Tales is a very well done, polished RPG with an old-school bend -- had this game arrived back in the SNES days it would very likely have been up there with the Final Fantasy's and Chrono Trigger in the minds of gaming geeks everywhere. Instead, it arrived two generations late on a system that was not on the "must buy list" for hardcore RPG-ers, so it didn't get the attention it deserves from the gaming public. This is a temporary thing... I'll be back to finish this one for sure.
Burnout Revenge
I borrowed this from a coworker when he went on vacation. Ordinarily I hate racing games that involve some modicum of reality -- if I'm not racing a go-kart with some cartoony mascot riding it or a futuristic 1200-mph anti-grav racecar, I'll pass on that game nine times out of ten. Since trying Burnout was in this case at a wonderful cost to me of $0, I popped it into the 360 and gave it a whirl.
This game is fun.
Really fun.
Gleeful destruction, simple controls, fast pace, fun multiplayer modes -- I now understand why there has been such a big to-do about this series over the last few years. I'm going to try and put a lot of time into this game before returning it to my coworker, but it may not be in the cards (despite its high entertainment factor) because of...
Chromehounds, Madden 2007, and Ninety Nine Nights.
Since I'm currently playing those three, I'll leave discussion of them to a later post.
I have a large backlog of unfinished games. So many, in fact, that I think if I took an entire month off of work with the sole activity restricted to playing games, sleeping, eating, and occasionally attending to personal hygiene I would STILL have a backlog when I returned to work. I've had a problem with compulsive game buying since I first entered the workforce and discovered the wonders of disposable income, so this backlog problem is certainly nothing new.
It is for this reason that I am actually happy about the traditional gaming "drought" of the summer, where companies are loathe to release games -- for fear of the dreaded "outdoors" I presume -- since this break gives me a chance to catch up with the games I've ignored for the last few months. Or so I always intend. After all, there's always some game that I was able to resist buying back in the busy pre-and-post-Christmas timeframe that just calls to me to be bought... but I digress.
Here's a bit of a quick recap on the games I have played thus far this summer, and why it is I still have not finished them:
Kingdom Hearts 2
I've actually written a bunch about this game already here so I'll keep it short: the game sucks. It's really that simple. A truly broken gameplay experience with some really nice production values. I tried and I tried, but in the end could not bring myself to suffer any longer and thus did not finish it.
Perfect Dark Zero
This is on the short list for "worst shooter I have ever played." In order to fully understand how vile this game is -- and this works only for people fond of the original -- take your memories from the heydey of the N64 PD and put them in a manila envelope. Seal the envelope using the tears of a child who just dropped their ice cream on the ground on a hot summer afternoon, then place the envelope against an electric fence (powered on). Now, unzip your pants and piss on the envelope. As the current washes through your nether regions, try as best as you can to picture Madeline Albright naked.
That is PDZ in a nutshell.
FIFA World Cup 2006
This is a sports game, so it doesn't really have an "end" persay, but suffice it to say that I did not complete a full World Cup. I am awful at FIFA games. It's completely inexplicable. No game (or series of games) have consistently confounded me in the way that FIFA has. I even took the time to learn as much about the game of soccer as I could throughout the course of watching the real World Cup, yet that only improved my skill by a fraction.
My record vs. my sister's fiancé: 1 win, I-Lost-Count-At-15 losses, 0 draws
My record vs. my roommate: 2 wins, 6 losses, 3 draws
My record vs. the computer: 1 win, 3 losses, 5 draws
I decided to throw in the towel on this one and attempt to make as much money back in trade-in value as possible. I will not give in entirely, though. You will not win the war, FIFA... I'll be back when FIFA 2007 releases!
Titan Quest
A PC game! Too bad it is an inefficiently-coded mess right now that chugs along on my PC. Granted I don't have the most powerful rig around, but I should at least be able to run it at my LCD's native resolution instead of the blurry, jaggy-filled 1024x768 I ended up with. Placed aside for a later patch that will hopefully fix my problem.
Galactic Civilizations 2
Eerily reminiscent of Master of Orion from back-in-the-day -- a game that I had a dangerous addiction to -- I squandered my free time for two weeks solid on this one. It's a hell of a fun game, but I have put it aside for fear of blowing another 30 hours of my life in the next few weeks...
Tales of Symphonia
This one is still really a work-in-progress, but has been pushed aside for a bit due to a large influx of new 360 game purchases. Tales is a very well done, polished RPG with an old-school bend -- had this game arrived back in the SNES days it would very likely have been up there with the Final Fantasy's and Chrono Trigger in the minds of gaming geeks everywhere. Instead, it arrived two generations late on a system that was not on the "must buy list" for hardcore RPG-ers, so it didn't get the attention it deserves from the gaming public. This is a temporary thing... I'll be back to finish this one for sure.
Burnout Revenge
I borrowed this from a coworker when he went on vacation. Ordinarily I hate racing games that involve some modicum of reality -- if I'm not racing a go-kart with some cartoony mascot riding it or a futuristic 1200-mph anti-grav racecar, I'll pass on that game nine times out of ten. Since trying Burnout was in this case at a wonderful cost to me of $0, I popped it into the 360 and gave it a whirl.
This game is fun.
Really fun.
Gleeful destruction, simple controls, fast pace, fun multiplayer modes -- I now understand why there has been such a big to-do about this series over the last few years. I'm going to try and put a lot of time into this game before returning it to my coworker, but it may not be in the cards (despite its high entertainment factor) because of...
Chromehounds, Madden 2007, and Ninety Nine Nights.
Since I'm currently playing those three, I'll leave discussion of them to a later post.
posted by Paul at
1:57 PM
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