Video Masochism

I'm a video game Masochist.

I have a real problem. In spite of my video game thriftiness, or more likely because of it, I end up buying a lot of games. It's a problem I've had for a while, and my collection of Xbox (original) was embarrasing. I had a ton, and finished very few. When I upgraded to the 360, (and all the others of course) I made myself a deal that I was going to finish each and every game I bought. The deal was of course struck with the best of intentions. I'd only buy games that got good reviews, that seemed like I'd enjoy them, etc.

Naturally the road to hell blah blah blah good intentions, so of course I got out of control again. The good news is that most of the games that aren't really the cream of the crop were purchased at a significantly lower price than what I usually spend. The bad news is that they multiply.

I have been forcing myself to play through them, even still, whether I enjoy them or not, and its really led to some painful gaming experiences. One thing that certainly mitigates these experiences is the achievements on the 360. Being able to have something to show for my labour is definitely nice, and softens the blow considerably. Unfortunately, the PS3 trophy support isn't nearly as refined, and the PSP, DS and Wii are lacking in these regards altogether.

The most recent "triumph" over frustrating gameplay was the GTAIV expansion The Lost and Damned, and the DS localization port of Dragon Warrior Iv.

Don't get me wrong, these are both great games, and they are definitely worth playing. They just dragged on a bit to long for my personal tastes, and I have too many other great games calling my name.

TLAD was neat, and it was fun to revisit the world of Niko Bellic. What I found at fault with the game were many of the complaints I had with GTAIV as a whole. It was a bit too realistic and difficult. The missions could get frustrating very quickly. The dialogue and characters got convoluted and hard to follow. Most of these things were mitigated by the fact that the expansion was considerably shorter than GTAIV, but my biggest complaint of all was that the expansion was far to self referential. Many of the missions I was doing as Johnny Klebitz parallelled the exploits of former GTAIV anti-hero Niko Bellic. I understand that they were essentially doing fan service to the install base, and letting us see how things shook out on the other end of those missions, but the problem was there were far too many missions in GTAIV for me to remember specific ones in a play through of TLAD. I didn't take notice of Johnny Klebitz when playing as Niko because he was a small player in a huge cast. There was no "Oh yeah! This mission! I always wondered what happened to this guy when I played through before, now I get to see" moment for me when playing TLAD, and I really think thats what Rockstar was hoping for. Maybe I'm in the minority, i don't know, but in future installments, I'd much rather see independent stories that have nothing to do with former stories, than this attempt at intertwining narratives.

With DWIV, the biggest problem was the Nostalgia factor wearing off too quickly. I was younger, less experienced, and more easily impressed when I originally played the game, and as such, my pallete for games has become much more refined. Is it still a good game? Absolutely. Is it as revolutionary now as it was when it came out oh so long ago? Not at all. It was a pretty cut and dry JRPG with a nice mix of characters, and decent enough story, and not enough linearity to keep me from checking gamefaqs once and a while. I'm glad I played through it, but I don't know if I'm going to go back and do the bonus chapters.


Now on to the next games! Doing the fallout blog and watching Jenn play through has made me want to play again, so I'm going to try to run my two characters, and play through that. The 3rd expansion is coming out soon, with the increase in level cap, so I'm excited for that. On the portable side of things, my PSP has miracoulosy repaired itself, so I'm back into Puzzle Quest, and getting ready to try D&D tactics, and I'm playing a delightful little kid-friendly RPG on the DS called Master of the Monsters Lair. I'll blog more about that tomorrow.

In the meantime, I heard a rumour that there is a new post up of Tales Of A Vault Dweller up at www.talesofavaultdweller.blogspot.com. Not only that, but there will be another one up tonight!

EXCITEMENT!