So many games on my Steam list to get around to, so many MMOs to choose from, and in the greatest of ironies, I find that I lack the impetus to play them.
It's not like I don't like the games, or hate them, or am uninterested in them. When I read the store page and the summaries, I'm thrilled by them, I think they would be nifty to play and explore their design and mechanics. When I play them, I do appreciate either their polish or their innovation, I can grasp the rules of the game and strive to play by them, but after a while, I get stuck, or I get turned off by the difficulty, or the grind, or the many many levels, or I run out of time to play so I shut the game down, fully intending to come back to it at some point again...
...Except that once it's off, I lose the desire to follow through on that.
It's a mixture of "been there, done that, recognize the pattern - do I really want to commit multiple hours to repeat the gameplay in order to get to a "win" end state?" and... something else.
In this case, I think the something else is the stronger pull.
It's hard to put into words, this "something else" feeling.
Partly, it's a desire for immersion. Not into a standard fantasy world, or stuff like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim (eventually), or Gothic or Risen (the demo of which wasn't half bad, so I'm waiting for a sale eventually) would suffice. Those games catch a little of the flavor, but the world is wrong. I'm tired of fantasy.
And yes, Steampunk counts. I can't get much headway into Arcanum either. Or various japanese RPGs which are all very good, I'm sure, but not quite feeding it.
An adventure game might work. Except the subject matter is wrong. Victorian. Steampunk. Surrealistic in the vein of Tim Burton or Neil Gaiman. Crime. Horror. Spooky mansions. That seems to be all the adventure game genre produces nowadays. Wrong story. I guess I might be ok with comedy - Jolly Rover was a good kick for about 3 hours, and I haven't exhausted all of my Telltale Game's games yet, but... it's not quite the story I'm yearning for either.
Cyberpunk or post-apocalyptic isn't working out too much either. I'm halfway through Beneath a Steel Sky, Fallout 3, and others. It's close to touching the flavor of what I'm looking for, but not quite.
It's part a desire for a good story, perhaps, except that not even Mass Effect 2 counts as a good story. Or Dragon Age (shudder). I don't want to sit and watch a bunch of cut scenes interspersed with gameplay. I want to actually be the person, feel the person, sort of roleplay.
Amusingly, Poker Night at the Inventory is a nice example (if very simple) of the kind of game I'm searching for. It sets a mood, there's four well-voiced characters, and you can sit there in a darkened room and face them in a very roleplay-y sort of mood (even though your main interaction with them is simply by playing cards, you cannot actually speak or control your avatar at all besides selecting card options.)
Another game I was having a decent time with was Uplink. This simulation of movie-style sci-fi-esque hacking is highly immersive, up till the point that I started up the game 24 hours later and discovered all my equipment and money had been confiscated (a lose scenario) because... I'm not sure why. Apparently some corporation managed to passive trace my location, except I seem to recall diligently erasing all traces of my existence in an OCD fashion, so I either missed that one time just before quitting to sleep the night before, or something else weird or buggy happened, but the abrupt unfairness in which my immersion was shattered has left a somewhat icky taste in my mouth. Faced with the prospect of repeating my footsteps to get to the point I was at, Uplink suddenly failed to be interesting any longer.
Perhaps a roguelike contains the depth of gameplay I'm craving. Except the graphics and the lack of roleplay/story leaves a little to be desired.
I like my casual piecemeal games. There's nothing like jumping down a few buildings in AAaaaaAAAaaaa (however you spell it), blowing up spaceships in eye-searing fashion in Beat Hazard to your own music, frying up a few towns being your own dragon in HOARD, and doing tower defend-y things in Dwarfs!, Defence Grid, Revenge of the Titans or Sanctum or what have you.
But as brilliantly polished as their gameplay is, they come in small bite-sized pieces and they are only good at that one thing, that one schtick that is the central point of their gameplay. Which is all very well when you have a craving that the one things sates. But, there's that "something more" feeling again...
I don't know. Maybe Minecraft's adventure update will hit the spot. Or Guild Wars 2 eventually (though it may just be a more polished MMO experience). That's hopelessly in the future though. I need that something NOW.
Problem is, I'm still struggling to figure out what that something IS.
1 comment:
I was kind of struggling with this problem when I gave up on CoH and was fooling around on Minecraft.
I finally decided that I'll have to work on making my own fantasies outside of whatever game framework there is, even if they are in my own head. Hence, the Minecraft 404 series.
It's like hunting around for a novel that will make me happy, or daydreaming/writing my own story.
Takes time and effort though.
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