Behind the Curve Edition
There are, aside from the usual minor variations and exceptions that prove the rule, two ways for self-sufficient adults to play games: One can either be particularly selective about which new titles to pick up on or near launch day using previews, reviews and any number of buzz-tracking social mechanisms to determine potential enjoyment from an upcoming or newly released game or one can intentionally trail the release curve in order to maintain a steady diet of sub-retail priced software. Budget will play a significant role in either path, but I submit it is impossible to choose the lower-priced path without at some level playing a bit of a waiting game.
Obviously I fall firmly into the tail of the curve camp, using Goozex close to exclusively for new titles and supplementing occasionally with rentals or, rarely, a new game either as a gift or an uncommon purchase. As seen in the $60 a Month series, I have occasionally had the resources to spend extra money on games and that includes newer releases from time to time. But at heart I’ve always been more of the kind of person who plays quickly through as many titles as I can and that means I have had to make peace with sometimes missing out on the gaming zeitgeist. But it occurs to me that all you really miss out on by staggering your release time-frame backward six to twelve months is that sense of being “in” with other gamers who are all clamoring about the latest and greatest. BioShock is just as good now as it was two years ago and, conveniently, it sells new for at least 75% less than it did then but you won’t be party to the wave of exuberant glee that rippled through the subculture with it’s “Would You Kindly” mania.
Don’t let me try to suggest that this is an easy state to maintain. If you care at all about gamer culture (as I do) then you find it hard to resist the siren call of the holiday release season and it’s slew of tempting, tasty titles. My Goozex requests queue looks like a laughably improbable list of the here-and-now: Borderlands, Uncharted 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Demon’s Souls, Brutal Legend, FIFA Soccer 10, Dragon’s Age: Origins, Assassin’s Creed II. Collecting all these games in the next few months would cost me hundreds of dollars or thousands of Goozex points (I have neither). However, I have a back log of games from earlier in the year or even before that which I can acquire for a small amount of cash or trade: Saints Row 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Velvet Assassin, Prototype, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Overlord II. By the time I finish those, the crop that are sitting unfilled on my wishlist will probably be played out by the early adopters and ready to move on to their next thing, giving me access to my next in line.
The other effect of this is that I end up weeding out games I thought might be interesting but don’t hold lasting appeal to me outside the context of their launch hype. Street Fighter IV was once on my list but has since been dropped, for example. It can be had for dirt cheap now, but aside from the nostalgic push it had in my mind when SF4 was buzzing on every forum, there isn’t enough desire left to bother. The ancillary benefit is that I avoid $60 mistakes.
The idea of $60 mistakes came up this week as I was finishing Halo 3: ODST. I borrowed the game from a friend on Monday and played through it over the course of the week in short, maybe 1-2 hour chunks each night. I finished it Friday night which means all told the game was maybe 10 hours but I’d peg it more at about six. I’m not suggesting it was a bad game; on the contrary I liked it better I think than the trilogy-concluding Master Chief game from two years ago. But considering I had no inclination to a) play it again or b) engage in the online component, I have to say that if I’d spent $60 on launch day the way I did with both Halo 2 and Halo 3, I’d have been pretty bummed right about now.
I know some people get up in arms about the brevity of some single-player campaigns these days and I’ve even grumbled on occasion about certain games that were either obviously rushed or were incomplete but in truth I like that there are games out there like Uncharted and Halo 3: ODST that provide a few hours of entertainment and don’t demand more than I care to put into them. As I said I prefer to play a lot of different games a little bit as opposed to probing every nook and cranny of a few so games that are get-in-get-out are actually kind of welcome. I’d rather a game leave me wanting more than artificially pad its time-to-completion with repetitive sections.
Which is part of what I appreciated about ODST. At no point did it feel padded or repetitive, it had a story to tell and it told it using a nice blend of familiar mechanics and fresh adjustments. As usual, it was a Halo game that felt a bit like I wasn’t being let in on all the nuances of the story and only part of the problem seemed to come from the lack of subtitles on the in-game chatter. There is a weird disconnect with what I perceive to be competence on Bungie’s part to write a good story and a persistent difficulty in telling that story effectively in the context of gameplay. I mean, I got the gist, but I never really cared that much. Fortunately Bungie also makes a good shooter from a strict game perspective and there were plenty of enjoyable set pieces and fun times.
Since I finished ODST Friday night I had to find something from my archive to fill the rest of the weekend and I settled back into Fable II. I’m not sure why I keep drifting away from that game and coming back but I think it has something to do with a degree of analysis paralysis that plagued me a bit in other games like Oblivion and Grand Theft Auto where, when presented with a lot of options, I end up dithering around trying to get my bearings for so long that I end up feeling like I’ve played the game for hours and made zero progress. Some games combat this by at least offering a sense of achievement if not necessarily forward movement: Oblivion did this well. GTA and Fable on the other hand feel like they end up at a point where I say, “Enough, I’m just going to try to tear through the story missions because I’m getting too wrapped up in treasure hunts and side-missions.” At least with Fable II it allows you the option to just press on for the most part where other games—GTA IV especially—hounded me so much with background noise that eventually I gave up entirely.
I find it also helps me at least to sometimes go and grab an achievement guide or a walkthrough online not to make the play easier but to give me an ordered list of steps I need to take to accomplish certain tasks. For example in Fable I wanted to ultimately do the marriage action but as with almost everything in Fable II it’s a very fiddly process and rather than stumble through it for several nights in a row (remember I’m only playing an hour or two at the most per night these days) I was thankful to have step-by-step instructions to get me to where I wanted to be. Presented like that it’s actually pretty straightforward but sussing it out yourself isn’t intuitive.
I do notice about Fable II that, like it’s predecessor and like many, many games with morality systems, being Good is kind of a pain in the neck. It requires more patience, more finesse in combat most of the time, more ridiculous side-questing and more of the sort of upkeep tasks to keep everyone happy. Players who chose in these systems to go Evil almost universally get more devastating combat options, less concern about NPC happiness which translates into fewer annoying fetch quests and the like and the only price you pay is a sense that the game is preaching at you a bit. There is a point in Fable II where you’re taken out of the normal flow of the game for a time and you’re forced to take some actions that increase your corruption level. It occurred to me as I played it that my parallel narrative—the one that runs in my head alongside any game with the remotest amount of depth—could very easily accommodate this moment as a sort of breaking point: The once noble hero, loved and respected throughout the land, had a Bad Experience from which he returned changed. He’d now seen and done things—dark things—and his mind was splintered. His ultimate quest still burned in his soul, but his methodology shifted.
Whether by sharp turn of design or nefarious punishment (depending on your perspective) Fable II doesn’t allow you to do what Fallout and other PC-style games do and make arbitrary saves which you can stack up. Your choices are more or less permanent in the game and I’m so used to being a goody two shoes or at worst a noble thief that I’m reluctant to push into the wicked side of the scale on my first (and likely only) playthrough. On the other hand, the story that is represented by the opportunity does compel me and honestly I’m having a hard time really truly having fun as it stands. Maybe going Evil will turn the experience around for me a little. I can even see how it will happen: Following the return from the harrowing trial the next step in the Hero’s journey is to visit a prototypical wretched hive of scum and villainy. Where once he might have found the place repugnant and in need of salvation, he’s surprised to find that the disaffection he’s been feeling since he came back ebbs here in this place where ladies of the night coo from darkened alley and ruffians gamble idly in the filthy streets. He doesn’t mean to stay long, just take care of his business. In a moment of weakness he gives in to the temptation of an alluring harlot and finds himself robbed. A potent blend of righteous anger, guilty self-loathing and shameful vengeance leaves the whore dead on the end of his blade. Where once he might have looked at the scene as if disconnected from his body and run to the temple for pleading penance he instead stares coolly down at the stiffening corpse and feels a strange sense of peace. He decides to linger.
Ahem. Anyway.
I also played a little bit of Left 4 Dead in between ODST and Fable II which doesn’t bear a lot of mention but I did want to point out that there was a title update waiting when I launched the game for the first time in several months and found that the most noticeable change after the patch was installed ended up being that the in-game achievement tracking mechanism was broken and it no longer recognizes my previously unlocked achievements. It does somehow remember the counts for the cumulative ones and of course the achievements themselves are unlocked in my profile, but the utility of Valve’s in-game progress tracking is undercut with what I have to presume is some sort of bug. I’m largely over L4D at this point anyway, mostly just waiting for the sequel to drop. I was going to do some achievement hunting but this freaky bug makes me wonder if achievements are even working now.