lost in games

XBLA

Geometry Wars
Assault Heroes
Zuma
Bomberman Live
UNO
Catan
Sensible World of Soccer
Space Giraffe

PSN

Stardust HD
Calling all cars

Above is the list of games i have purchased from the XBLA and PSN. 10 games in total. But for how many of these can i truthfully say that i have spent time playing? Only Geometry Wars. That is just 10% of these games.

Why is that though?

I mean these aren’t bad games. Stardust HD is probably the best game on the PSN and while i loved playing UNO and Catan i then just stopped playing them after a few days. Bomberman is an absolute multplayer blast. But again, zero game time invested since those first few days.

Since i can see that they are great games then what’s wrong with them? What is it about these games that makes them fail to grab my attention for long? Is it the nature of these games or just me?

It’s both actually. It’s their repetitiveness and my preference to a story and variety of gameplay.

These are in general arcade games which have one core gameplay element which repeats itself over and over again while the difficulty factor increases as one progresses through the levels. The only repetive games i manage to play through are the ones which also have an actual story to tell. But most of these games don’t have one or at most the story is just there to give you a reason why everything is happening the way it is. For example the bad guy kidnapped my girlfriend or save the universe from a bad life form.

The fact that skill wise i am just average when it comes to these games (which usually require fast reflexes and good finger coordination) does not help either.

I fully support the advent of downloadable arcade games on consoles and the chance for smaller developers to get access to gamers and their wallets. This is an age of extremes with games of huge production costs such as Metal Gear Solid on one side and a one man’s Everyday Shooter game on the other.

But as i come to understand the nature of games in general i am also understanding my gamerself. There will always be the exception of a Geometry Wars every now and then but it seems that XBLA, PSN and WiiWare and what they are offering might just be irrelevant to me.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 08:12 and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.