Gaming destined for a crash?

This article really reminded me of one of the reasons I'm doing this year without new games. It's not so much about the money, but the fact that the market's flooded. Yes, I'm one of the lucky ones who can enjoy "generic WWII game #86676" but that doesn't mean I don't feel pissed off when that's all there is to choose from when I wander into Game.

Best gaming moment ever?

I'm sat here with the biggest game-induced grin I have ever ever had. I've just passed the 50% mark in King Kong on the Xbox and the latest trick it's thrown at me to get me to drop my jaw to the floor is letting me use dinosaurs as weapons! I can literally pick up velociraptors and THROW them at the fellas chucking spears at me! :-D

Make no mistake, it's linear as Scalextrik but this is one incredibly fun to play and impressive game. Someone on the forum described it as a rollercoaster, where you're sat just enjoying the ride. They absolutely hit the nail on the head. Linear or not, this game uses every trick in the book to wow you and it's nigh-on perfect in its attempts to do so. Whether I'd say it's worth £30 or not is debatable but if it drops to £25 or below (as most Ubisoft stuff does) then grab this game without a doubt.

Paint it black

It's just as well the "no new games" policy doesn't kick in until the new year - there are just too many bargains around at the moment :-D

This week I've been playing demos of Civ IV (not my sort of thing, removed from the wishlist), Need for Speed Most Wanted (very decently done) and the full games of King Kong and Vietcong. The latter's just been uninstalled in a fit of rage. It's been out three years, has been patched a few times and yet it STILL features game-breaking bugs that won't let you finish missions. It'll be getting traded in at the earliest opportunity, but I'll only get a quid or two for it (if that).

King Kong is different. It's something truly special. It's very much only rental material (due to a playthru time of only 8-9 hours) but it features an incredibly well assembled graphic engine that enables massive, seemingly very complex yet cunningly simple, environments to be rendered with ease. The set pieces are absolutely jaw-dropping (I encountered a "migration" today that had me gasping in disbelief) and the level of immersiveness when playing as Jack is impressive to say the least.

I had the "pleasure" of playing on an Xbox360 today and I left the demo pod feeling hollow. I'd heard complaints levelled at Microsoft that the 360 doesn't represent enough of a leap and that they're forcing the market into a position it needn't be put in yet and today simply confirmed it. It might sound cynical of me to describe the 360 games as "slightly higher res with a touch better lighting" but that is indeed all that I encountered. The transition from Xbox to the 360 was never going to be as pronounced as, say the jump from SNES to N64, but the apparent lack of improvements was pretty shocking. As always it'll take some time to show off the machine properly but when you recall that the launch of the Xbox had people gasping at Rallisport and before that the PS1 had Wipeout to demonstrate quite ably what the move to 3D could mean for gamers, it's disappointing to see such a minor upgrade in this instance.

Ho hum, time will tell whether people actually like the 360 or not but I feel it might not quite turn out to be what gamers really need right now. It's a sad day when the only things on the 360 that I know long-time gamers are looking forward to are Xbox Live Arcade offerings and Jeff Minter's Neon

Don't FEAR the deeper

I don't really know what to think of FEAR. On the one hand it's a very simple FPS with great graphics, superb special effects and a decent AI model.

On the other hand it's only a very simple FPS with great graphics, superb special effects and a decent AI model.

As I was finally uninstalling it this morning after only 6 hours of play in it, I was wondering what people saw in it that pushed it right up to the top of their game of the year lists and I'm still wondering a few hours later. True, the graphics engine was sparkly and yes, the AI was (at least in some places) very good indeed, but there was nothing to really get your teeth into. Much like the very highly regarded (by others, not by me) Halo, there was nothing to bulk up the game other than the fighting itself. Shallow isn't really even the best term for this level of non-immersion.

Maybe I'd have felt more favourable of FEAR if it had worn its heart on its sleeve, a lá the likes of War World (which is essentially Robotron in 3D), but it had to try and wrap the whole experience up into a clichéd little "US-take-on-Japanese-horror" plot. Maybe I'd have been able to enjoy it more if the game hadn't been quite so much of a system killer. Who knows?

What I have learnt from this is that I definitely prefer FPS/action games with a bit of variation in them. The variety doesn't have to take the form of complex missions or completely different gameplay mechanics, but something to break up the action in a story is very much desireable. Resident Evil 4 had puzzles, "defend" missions and minecarts. Max Payne 2 had sniper sections and drug/dream sequences. Medal of Honour had bombing runs, gunner missions and stealthy "disguise" missions. All FEAR's got are fancy graphics and enemies that are so "smart" they won't even follow you out of a room when they should bloody well know that the direction you've just come from's a non-branching route and they could trap you all too well if they just used a bit of co-ordination.

Oh well, one game gets struck from the list but it's not exactly a good start to the "enjoy everything to the fullest level" concept, is it?

The problem, you see, is this:

I totalled up the games I have in my "waiting" list. Most of these have been played to some degree, some have even been completed. I want to make sure I enjoy each and every one of them to their fullest though. It shouldn't take a genius to work out why I'm looking at stopping myself buying new games :-)

Gamecube

REmake

Eternal Darkness

Super Mario Sunshine

The Legend of Zelda Collection

Metroid Prime

Metroid Prime 2

F-Zero GX

Pikmin 2

Donkey Konga

Donkey Konga 2

Mario Kart Double Dash

DS

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Advance Wars DS

Zookeeper

Tony Hawk Sk8land

Xbox

Hitman 2

The Elder Scrolls 3 - Morrowind

Brothers in Arms Road to Hill 30

THUG2

Operation Flashpoint Elite

Call of Cthulhu

Thief Deadly Shadows

Psi Ops

Quantum Redshift

Amped 2

Crash Bandicoot Wrath of Cortex

Halo

Sega GT 2002

Sega GT Online

Jet Set Radio Future

Forza Motorsport

Midnight Club 3

Moto GP 2

Links 2004

PGR2

Rainbow Six 3 Black Arrow

World Racing

Rallisport Challenge 2

Toca Race Driver 2

Flatout

Ghost Recon 2

Ghost Recon 2 Summit Strike

Splinter Cell

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory

PC

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines

The Dig

Max Payne 2

Syberia

Grim Fandango

GT Legends

Far Cry

The Movies

Call of Duty

Medal of Honour

Half-Life

Rome: Total War

Baldur's Gate

Baldur's Gate 2

Vietcong

Silent Hill 2

Freespace 2

Rise of Nations Gold

Civilisation 2 Test of Time

Phone

Redshift Legacy

It's an addiction

Not the playing, but the buying. I've been gaming since I was 4 but in the last couple of years things have taken a sour turn. It seems that I can't pass a game shop without popping in to see what bargains they have and most often I emerge with something too. The raft of online stores that want to give out new games for bargain amounts doesn't help much to limit purchases either. Gaming seems to have stopped being about enjoying what I'm playing and instead it's turned into a collecting habit.

At the moment I have well in excess of 30 games for various formats sat on my shelves. I've finished maybe two of them, which is weird given that when I play them through I'm enjoying them more than ever. I've decided this has to stop and so I'm instigating a self-imposed ban on new games.

Throughout the entirety of 2006 I'm not going to buy or download any games at all. Instead I'll be attempting to actually play through and appreciate the titles I already own. It's not a financial thing; this will only save me around £15-£20 a month, instead it's to do with avoiding consumerism for its own sake. I want to be buying these entertainment products because I actually want to enjoy them, not because I want to be part of some larger community or because I feel that I ought to own certain games to reflect the type of person I am.

So, the aim of this blog is to track my progress in this task. I'll be detailing games I'm playing, with opinions and mini-reviews, and I'll be expressing my feelings about any difficulties I encounter.