Limited Edition

OK so that title sounds kinds obvious, right?

Of course video games are about fun, why else would we play them. Well the truth of course is that they can become tiresome and sometimes feel like a chore if we continue to play them even though the company is good (in MMO’s) the keeping up and slaving away ruins the fun at times, for me at least.

So I made a decision. I am going to play games that are fun to me, not because they are new and shiny or because others are playing them. I am going to pick out titles I enjoy and enjoy them, no longer will I feel guilty about my game hopping habits. If that is what I need to do to maintain a level of enjoyment then so be it.

Of course I miss my static group, they are fun guys and gal’s to play with. I miss them, and naturally catch up with them in more casual games (mostly xbox live). I just can’t get enjoyment out of committing to a regular play night and this is what was missing for me. I’ve always been erratic in my gaming and this used to be OK before the MMO market was saturated hell I am pretty sure everyone I knew played SWG and SWG alone. Once that went bad, the influx of games grew and grew and people were either split across games or playing many games throughout the week. It was no longer easier for me to log in to 1 game and guarantee someone I knew would be on.

SO skip forward a million years and I am in my 30’s and want to get more enjoyment out of my gaming. Sounds simple? Well it was?

First decision in this process was for me to find a casual title. Naturally my love of comic books made me persist with Champions Online (something I originally disliked in Beta) I’m glad I persisted because I enjoy it now in a different light. I jump in casually for a few hours find a nice pick up group and can solo away if needs be. The game looks odd to some people, but I see it differently it’s not pretending to be anything clever it’s just being a fun environment to hang out in. At first I found it harsh, but once I turned off those black lines it got a whole lot better. Does it offer anything new over City of Heroes? No in fact it feels different when you play it. So why am I playing this instead of CoH with my friends? Well I am busy on the night they play so I figure find a gaming group who are playing Champions only and then I can find people all the time and also I get to play a game that does feel new. There is something about being part of a game from the beginning and watching it grow (or indeed fail). The Halloween event looks to be a good one if you haven’t tried champions you can log in for free over the Halloween event and I encourage you to do so. If you tried it in beta, try it again!

So after deciding on my ‘fun’ MMO I looked at other things to keep me occupied. My wife bought me the excellent PSPGo, sure it got some bad press, but the lack of UMD’s is great to me and the titles coming out recently on it like Monster Hunter, Gran Turismo and Possibly my favorite current game GTA: Chinatown Wars keep me occupied lots. I haven’t properly enjoyed a GTA title since Vice City, that setting was again more fun to me with its 80’s style and brightly coloured environment and sense of humor. China Town Wars goes back to it’s original over head roots and had some really fun mini games to make it more interesting whilst retaining the GTA game play. Driving the little micro machines around feels very cool and the almost comic book style of the cut scenes look great! Surprisingly I like the little drug trading elements. It adds a micro marketplace system to the game and you could easily be the gangster equivalent of an EVE Online trader in this title. It’s also got me thinking more about MMO’s on these platforms as the text looks readable, the thing has online play and a microphone built in and the game draws so much on screen at once it has to be possible!

After playing Arkham Asylum I figured I wouldn’t get a better single player experience this year, that may be true to a point but Uncharted 2 came along and totally surprised me. This game is legendary in that it retains a tomb raider style of game but throws in fantastic shooter elements and gears of war cover and shoot style combat along with Prince of Persia acrobatics. Elements of splinter cell creep in with sneak em up tactics too. As you play all these styles of game a decent story unravels and the exciting pace of the game makes it feel like a summer blockbuster movie.

2 great titles in a row for me, surely not? This cannot be beaten I must be out of games that are fun and good this year. Out of nowhere comes Borderlands, I mean seriously this game was very low on my radar. The week before it launches I pickup some chatter on twitter about it and look at it. It looks to be my perfect game. People have tried to do FPS 7 RPG hybrids before. To me they never quite feel right they are either too much in one direction and not enough of the other. This takes the prize and works. Even fallout 3 whilst being good, felt like you had to VAT’s your way through that game. The shooter element in this feels great, the game play feels like a MMO with great loot and weapons and quests. It really is something special and the Post Apoc environment really is one of the best I’ve played in. Playing this co-op with a few buddies made me realise that fun can be found in groups with friends again and we had a blast. Covering each other, healing each other, shooting, ducking for cover, jumping in vehicles and bombing around really was awesome. I struggle to admit this, but I wish MMO’s were more like this game; maybe it’s the fact the massive element is missing. Do I want more instances in my games? The fact is with our static group and no others in the way it was a ton of fun. No spawn camping, no hassles over loot or any of that shit. Just good old fashioned ‘fun’ <– There’s that word again?

I can see me getting a lot of game play out of Borderlands, Champions and GTA: Chinatown Wars, but today I picked up something else I absolutely could not resist DJ HERO. I have enough plastic instruments to fill a landfill, but this one still tempted me for many reasons. The first one is the music and style. I used to and still do DJ. Started in my bedroom then progressed to parties and stuff and really enjoy it. I gave it up for bit, got a bit rusty and then moved all over to digital formats and started getting back in to it. Naturally DJ Hero is a more obvious choice to me than guitar hero. The other reason is the size of it, its far more suited to being stashed away in a lounge or bedroom making more like to be used than something that gets put in another room or cupboard. I was worried it wouldn’t have the same charm as GH. GH makes you feel like a rock god! You pick up the plastic guitar and you do feel like you are playing it. How could this possible be done with something that requires 2 sources of music matched together and still feel fun and like you are actually doing it. Well I can certainly tell you it does, in fact because it’s relevant more so for me. 3 tracks down the screen, the usual rhythm game affair. Green is the left turntable, Blue is the Right and Red is effects you can trigger. Sounds too simple? That’s what I thought, that were the cross fader and turntable comes in to it. You don’t really have an equivalent of the strumming in DJ Hero, you trigger the ‘notes’ as they come down the screen and you don’t need to strum in time. The challenged comes from other elements in the form of the cross fader which as the green track moves left you fade left, the blue right you fade right and when they are both in the middle it has to be too. Sounds easy, but gets hard when you have to do fast cuts and fades and spikes in a mix master style. The turntable also adds an extra bit of fun with scratching you perform by holding down the same coloured button and scratching the turntable and releasing, again sounds easy but again with the fades and other stuff gets tricky, plus some scratches have to be in certain directions too. Euphoria and FX knobs do similar things like star power and the whammy bar and make for a great game. The tracks and mashups are good and I can’t wait for it to receive downloadable content as it has brought back my love for Rhythm games.

I’m also going to spend more time on games like Free Realms, Fusion Fall & Wizard 101 to keep my attention span amused along with the excellent Torchlight for my diabloesque fix.

No idea were my gaming will take me next, but Eurogamer Expo showed me a thing or two so watch out for that post & video next!

Tags: 2009, Batman Arkham Asylum, Borderlands, Champions, Chinatown Wars, DJ Hero, eurogamer, expo, Fun, GTA, Guitar Hero, MMO, Online, Uncharted 2