Archive for the ‘crummysocks’ Category

I like what I like

Sunday, January 4th, 2015

Over the weekend, I had some more free time than usual, so I decided I’d try to take my own advice and actually try to pare down my backlog a bit. The problem I run into is that lots of the games I have are so long, and my time to play them has shrunk as I’ve gotten a career that doesn’t involve me playing video games all day. That means that I look at games just sitting there waiting for me to play them that take 30+ hours to play through once, and then I think about the time commitment, the opportunity cost of doing something else (like reading something or watching something on television), and the lazier option usually wins.

But I decided that I wanted to make an effort and actually get through some of these things that have been sitting in my library (in some cases, for years). Or, if not get through them, at least try them to see if they’re any good. So, to that end, I decided to play a couple of indie darlings that weren’t too long: Fez and Journey. Both looked interesting, and I more or less knew what I was in for (and I knew that I could do a playthrough of them over the course of a long evening or two). What I found surprised me: I didn’t really like them.

Fez, I didn’t like because the primary mechanic made the game clunky and tedious. Journey, I liked a little bit better, but it seemed like it was trying too hard. I’m clearly in the minority on both accounts.

It’s been suggested to me on occasion that my tastes in games is weird and I don’t like popular games just because they’re popular and if you tell me I have to like it, I won’t like it out of spite. That’s only partially true.

It’s true that I do like weird, off-the-wall games. Always have. I also liked some popular games like the Half-Life series, or the Final Fantasy series (through 8, I haven’t played anything past that except for the MMORPGs). But there are also hugely popular games that I didn’t like for one reason or another, such as the original Halo or Dragon Age: Origins.

I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of popular games that I did or didn’t like, but the point I’m trying to make is: I’m not wrong. If you like the games that I didn’t, you’re not wrong either. I know that this is going to sound corny and completely obvious, but different people like different things for lots of reasons. That’s a wonderful thing.

Your opinion is uniquely your own. And, no matter what critics or naysayers say, you owe it to yourself to form your own, and to not take the word of reviewers or experts as gospel. Consider their opinion, certainly, but never feel like you always have to agree with the herd. Just remember: if you’re honest, going up against popular opinion doesn’t necessarily make you a hipster or a troll. It just means that your opinion is not perfectly in line with everyone else’s.

That doesn’t make you weird. That makes you normal.

Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.

Posted in advice, blog, blogs, confessions, conjecture, crummysocks, culture, editorials, Final Fantasy, follow-up, Internet, MMORPGs, opinion, ps3, ratings, reactions, video games | Comments Closed

Video Board Gaming

Sunday, September 21st, 2014

Making video games from board games always seemed weird to me. You can either buy and play the board game, or you can spend the equivalent of two or three times the cost of the board game (not including the cost of the console to play it on) to play the exact same game on a television instead of on a table.

For instance, the cost of the analog version of Monopoly is about $16, and the price of the video-game adaptation is about $30.

So, I’ve decided to run down a few of the differences to see why buying one over the other might be the better deal.

Video game versions are (usually) smaller – There are always exceptions, of course, but in general the video game version of some board game these days is going to be in a container that’s roughly the size of a DVD case. The board-game version, though, is going to be the size of several DVD cases. I’m discounting things like card games because a deck of cards or something like Uno or Rook might technically take up less room, a collectible card game might very well take up a great deal more room, so I say it’s a wash. +1 point video game versions

Video game versions have AI or Internet opponents – If you have a hankering to play a board game, but don’t have anyone handy to play with, you can always go up against computer-controlled players. Sure, it’s not the same, it’s hard to trash talk the computer or beg for favors or team up on whoever the winner is, but it will generally do in a pinch. And if a game is playable over the Internet, there’s a good chance that someone out in the world is ready to play right now. +1 point video game versions.

Analog versions let you bend the rules – Most people who have played Monopoly have a house rule about Free Parking: money collected from fines goes there and is collected when someone lands on it, is the one that I’ve heard the most. But, the thing is, that’s not a part of the official rules. House rules can make things more fun, can make things more interesting, and can make things balanced in the case of a skilled player going up against novices. They can also make the game longer, more boring, and less fun if used improperly, but so can a bad choice of radio station to listen to while the game is going on. +1 point analog games.

Analog games are cheaper and more portable – Of course, there are exceptions to everything (collector’s editions, themed editions, etc), but, in general, $20 or so will get you the full experience of the board game. On the other hand, to play the electronic version, you need the game, a console, some extra controllers, a television, and electricity. You may argue that you already had all of that stuff to make the game work, but if you take your electronic copy somewhere else, those things might not be available. But the traditional version will work in the middle of the Mojave desert, although, you need to ensure that the jackrabbits don’t abscond with your pieces. +2 points analog video games

It’s harder to lose the pieces to a video game – Getting deep into a game of Mousetrap and realizing that the rubber band has gone missing, so you can’t actually complete its setup and the game is unwinnable is disappointing. Trying to play anything with a deck of 51 cards is a non-starter. +1 point to video game versions.

That brings our grand total to:

  • Analog board games – 3
  • Video board games – 3

This isn’t as cut and dried as I expected it to be. I’d say that having a mix is probably the best way to go. Video games are great (no, really!), but it’s nice to unplug once in a while, too. Besides, nothing beats an evening with good people, good food, good music, and friendly competition in the same room at the same time.

Posted in analog, board games, conjecture, crummysocks, duh, site news, updates | 1 Comment »

Backlog, Schmacklog

Sunday, September 14th, 2014

As recently as a month ago, I was making grand proclamations about how I was going to knuckle down and get my backlog under control. I was going to pare down that list bit by bit and eliminate it once and for all. That was a good idea, in theory, and I am still making progress toward that goal, but I very quickly came to a realization: No matter what I do, my backlog is probably never going to be zero.

And I’m okay with that.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m giving up and am going to let myself drown under an ever-growing pile of unfinished games. That would be crazy. But I did go through my backlog and I identified three kinds of games in there and my likeliness to get them finished as a good first step.

Type 1 – Games I got as a part of a bundle that I didn’t really want in the first place. There are way, way too many game bundles floating around on the Internet. Lots of these game bundles are ‘pay what you want’ with special plums if you pay over a certain dollar amount. The big problem is that you get a game that you want, that is maybe pretty good, and you also get four or five (or more) other games that you’ve never heard of, didn’t really want, and may never play. I have lots of these artificially inflating the number of games in my backlog, so it looks worse than it actually is. It’s tempting to get rid of a lot of these games, but since most of them are digital-only, I’m stuck with them.

Type 2 – Games that looked interesting or were recommended, but it turns out that I didn’t like. Games like 3D-Dot Game Heroes get moderately favorable reviews, and look interesting enough for a try (or were in the bargain bin), but on putting them in, it turns out that they’re just not very good. I’m sure that to someone somewhere these games are good, but I’m not going to waste my time slogging through them if I’m not having any fun doing it.

Type 3 – Games that are just too long. Probably until I either retire or hit the lottery, my time for playing games is limited, and even when I do get a chance to play, I may not be able to play in long stretches. Some weeks I can manage six or eight hours, and other weeks it’s a bit less (like zero). That time may not be in big chunks, either. Some days I might only have a few ten or twenty minute chunks of time that I can devote to a game, other days it might be two or three hours. If I can’t pick up a game and put it down after a few minutes, I may end up putting it down and coming back to it just after never. If a game takes 40 or more hours to complete, and I can work in 10 hours a week playing it, it’s still going to take me a month or so to get to the end.

What are the odds that I’m going to finish these up? Type 1 is very unlikely. I might play it once to see what it’s all about, or I might never look at it. I didn’t really want it in the first place, so these don’t count toward my backlog. I can write them off.

Type 2 games can also be written off. I’m not going to force myself to play something I didn’t like. If I gave it a try and didn’t like it enough to finish it, or at all, then I’m knocking it out of the backlog.

Type 3 games are an interesting category. Games that I liked, probably, but took so long to play that I just got tired of playing them every free evening for a month or more. These games I’d like to get back to, but the odds of me doing that are directly related to how long it’s been since I played it last. A game that I last played a month ago? There’s a decent chance I’ll give it another go in a couple of weeks after I’ve played something short to ‘cleanse my palate’, so to speak. Something I stopped playing in 2007 two consoles ago? Assuming I remember that I have a saved game, and the console is still hooked up to my television, I might play again. But, realistically, we can take these off the list, too, if they haven’t been played in the last year.

And, just like that, my backlog goes from insane and completely unmanageable to slightly off-kilter and kind of manageable.

It’s a start. I’ll take it.

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Posted in achievements, articles, blog, classic gaming, collecting, confessions, crummysocks, culture, difficulty, duh, editorials, General, guides, howto, lists, Misc, pro tip, time wasters, updates, video games | Comments Closed

So, what’s new

Wednesday, June 18th, 2014

Well, yeah, it’s been a while, sorry about that.

My last post was kind of a downer, and I made it sound like I would never make another entry again because I was so disgusted with video games, the internet, and myself. I didn’t mean for it to sound that way, but then a few days off became a few weeks, and that spiraled into months, and, well, you know how those things go.

I’m still here, doing my thing, but not writing about it a whole lot.

That’s not strictly true, I’ve gotten a bunch of articles started, but only half-completed, and then deleted. This little site turns 10 years old this year, and I started to think that maybe I’ve said all I wanted to say. But I don’t think that’s it. I just haven’t been inspired by much lately.

That’s a weird statement to make, really. Video games and computers/the Internet are bigger than they’ve ever been, which is great, but also, really boring. Maybe now that I’m getting a few years older and my tastes are getting more refined, I’m finding the monotonous grey slurry of so-called ‘entertainment’ less palatable than I used to. We are hot off the heels of one of the biggest gaming events of the year, and for the first time in a long time, I can truthfully say that there was so little announced at the show that I was genuinely interested in, that I’ve already forgotten most of it. The kitschy fun stuff that I still love to play is still out there, I just have to work harder to find it.

And then there’s the Internet.

It used to be reasonably useful, but it’s shifting to the blogs, Top X Lists, clickbaity ‘articles’, infographics, and social media. Clicking around and discovering things used to be exciting and fun, but now if it doesn’t show up in my newsreader or a Google search, it doesn’t exist (and anything I click on, I just read the one article, and never go back). I honestly can’t remember the last time I discovered a site by one method or another and then went back more than once. The Internet is absolutely enormous, and I visit the same dozen or so sites every single day. I’m in a rut, and I don’t like it down here.

I know exciting, interesting, and fun stuff is still out there on the Internet, but just like with video games, I just need to look harder to find it.

And that brings me to Gopher. Gopher is one of the many methods on the Internet to distribute information, and it competed with (and actually lost to) HTTP. You can read about gopher and why it’s still relevant. Installing a Gopher client onto my computer is exciting to me. I can visit sites that maybe don’t have as much eyecandy, or popularity, or a comments page. I can visit repositories of information put up because the people genuinely love the technology and the subject matter, and who aren’t necessarily worrying about driving traffic to their site by resorting to clickbait.

I also have installed a Gopher server at gopher://obsolete.cartridge.technology (also available via http://obsolete.cartridge.technology:70 to do… well, something with. I haven’t really decided what I’m going to put up there, and this site isn’t going away any time soon. But there are so many protocols and networks on the Internet that I just plain forget to use, that I need to actually take the time to check them out. For the first time in a really long time, I’m genuinely excited about exploring the Internet, and I’d say that’s a very good thing.

Posted in about, crummysocks, E3, editorials, General, gopher, Internet, old school, sites, time wasters | 3 Comments »

My Love/Hate Relationship With Video Games Part 3 – Myself

Monday, September 30th, 2013

This is part 3 of my Love/Hate Relationship with Video Games series. If you haven’t already, I suggest you read Part 1 and Part 2 first, so we’re all on the same page. Don’t worry, this article isn’t going anywhere. Probably.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve liked video games for as long as I can remember. Since the first time I was able to operate a joystick to make the character on the screen do what I wanted was magical. From then on, I wanted to experience more. I wanted to explore these virtual worlds and experience as many of these virtual stories as I could. I also wanted to absorb every shred of ancillary information I could find about the games I loved, canon or not. My passion for video games was so intense that even after I cut my left thumb on a jigsaw in shop class (in the Summer of 1992), I spent the next couple of weeks playing through Super Castlevania IV in spite of the agony, which left me with a pretty nice scar as a trophy.

Cutting my thumb open on a jigsaw is not enough to keep me from Super Castlevania IV

Cutting my thumb open on a jigsaw is not enough to keep me from Super Castlevania IV

This helped me out in a few different ways. We moved around a lot when I was younger, and by the time I graduated high school, I had gone to seven different schools. That meant that I was the new guy. A lot. And, as the new guy, I would usually hang out in the back of the class until I could find another kid who liked video games, and then try to make something happen. That mostly worked (not counting that one guy who decided to surreptitiously show me his wiener in the middle of math class (that actually happened)). But being a video game geek through the 1980s and 1990s was tough. I got a lot of grief from people because I might bring a copy of Nintendo Power to read before class started, or I might write a poem about a controller, or someone might start talking to me in shop class out of sheer boredom and make stuff up about games just to see how gullible I was (“Dude, you can totally shoot the dog in Duck Hunt and get a million points!” “If you go over the top of the screen in World 1-4 of Super Mario Bros., like, up by the score, you can totally skip straight to the end.” And so on), or because the other video game geek and I would talk quiz each other about some new game during homeroom, or any number of things. The point is, liking video games was still weird, and if you liked games, you were weird, and if you were weird, chances are, you got bullied.

Now, I don’t tell you all of this for your sympathy (not because I think I’m better than that). But I do think that it’s important to know where I’m coming from so that I can better paint a picture of where I’m going. I could talk about problems I had in my childhood all day, but most of that has nothing to do with video games, and isn’t really on the table today. That’s a part of my life that is behind me that I’ve dealt with and moved on from.

Once I graduated from the public school system and entered college where I didn’t have to deal with bullies and people who just didn’t like me for whatever reason, my whole worldview changed. As long as my work got done, I was free to like whatever geeky thing I wanted to, and nobody cared. I was even able to keep in contact with the few people I knew from public school that also liked video games. We could talk to each other at length (via X-Mail or AIM, or even on the telephone) about the latest and greatest games.

And it was great.

Around this time, I also discovered that LAN Parties were a thing, a place where I could get together with a few dozen people who were just like me (more or less), and we could play games, talk about games, and generally do whatever geeky thing we wanted to for two days or so and nobody cared.

And it was great.

I also started hanging out on my Friday and Saturday nights at one (or more) of the local arcades (back when those were a thing), making friends with all of the other people who hung out at arcades. We played arcade games and Lazer Tag, sometimes all night long, and nobody cared.

And it was great.

All of these things were great because it wasn’t just me experiencing them on my own. We had a community where we could share experiences with the games we were playing together, games we played on our own, and games we were looking forward to.

In short, we socialized. We shared our experiences and enhanced our enjoyment of whatever games we happened to play, and maybe convinced other people who had similar tastes to try out something that they otherwise might not have looked twice at.

But, some things started to happen all about the same time. Home consoles achieved graphical fidelity that matched or exceeded arcade games, and, with the enhanced penetration of broadband, you could find your favorite competitive game and play against an actual person somewhere in the world any time, day or night, from the comfort of your own house. Rendering the big selling points to going to an arcade in the first place moot, and arcades began their slow decline into irrelevance.

Computer games migrated to an increasingly-interconnected model where you either had to be online to play them at all or maybe just for multiplayer. But, again, with current penetration of broadband being what it is, you can find someone somewhere in the world that will play whatever game with you, any time, day or night. You can even buy, download, install, and play through a game without ever interacting with another actual human. It’s great!

Erm, sort of.

Don’t get me wrong. Video games are great. But it’s also great to be able to discuss them with someone. This applies to just about every form of entertainment, too. Saw a great movie? You want to tell someone about it. Read a great book? You want to tell someone about it. Heard a great new song? You want to tell someone about it.

But I’m at a point in my video-game-playing life where my video game tastes have diverged from the tastes of most of my remaining video-game-playing friends. Since the types of games we play don’t overlap much, we don’t usually have much to discuss. Secondly, I do a lot of my gaming alone, mostly due to the fact that I currently live alone, and, since a lot of my friends have gotten married and had kids while I haven’t, means, a lot of the time, we have even less to discuss. So, even on the off-chance that one of my friends is playing a game that we would both be interested in, they usually opt to play it with their significant other or their child, which is perfectly understandable, but that also means that if we want to play through something that I will end up either being the third wheel, or one of us will have already completed a portion of the game and want to speed through the parts that the other hasn’t already played through.

All of that is a long way of saying that: when I’m playing something new, I usually don’t have anyone around that I can share the experience with.

I think that’s why my backlog is so large. I still see and buy games that I want to play as often as I ever did, but without someone or a group of someones to share the experience with, my motivation to actually play through them has all but evaporated. I’ve taken a few steps to work around that with this very website (and a few others) along with the ‘Basscomm and (someone) play (something)‘ series over on Youtube. Which is a great start, but I need to keep moving. I need to keep sharing, keep participating, and keep my sense of wonder and, above all, keep having fun. I don’t need to force myself to play more games and just kind of hope that I’ll get over whatever it is that’s keeping me from making a dent in my backlog (that never works). I don’t need to chase and devour the flavor-of-the-week game as soon as it comes out. I don’t need to comb through mountains of news that isn’t really news and discuss every non-article to death. I don’t need to spend all my time reminiscing about how good things were during bygone days (even though they sometimes weren’t all that good). I need to figure out what it is that’s holding me back, realize that the way I used to do things may not work anymore, and figure out what I need to do to change what doesn’t really work into what does work. Video games have evolved significantly in the last 30 years, and there’s no reason that I can’t make some changes and meet them halfway.

I think I can manage that.

Posted in about, articles, blog, confessions, conjecture, crummysocks, follow-up, General, old school, opinion, site news | 1 Comment »

LAN Parties

Wednesday, August 7th, 2013

Just over 10 years ago (yeesh!) I did a little writeup of Million Man LAN 2. I enjoyed it, but not quite as much as the first Million Man LAN, and I haven’t been since, which is something I’m going to fix this weekend.

Million Man LAN 2 wasn’t my first event, either (or even my first MML). I first heard about this ‘LAN party’ thing way back in April 2000 and convinced a buddy to pack up our computers, drive to Louisville, Kentucky (a mere 120 mile drive), and pay some people some money for the privilege of using their network to play games nonstop for an entire weekend. It was something called ‘LanWar 7‘.

We arrived to Louisville a bit ahead of schedule, and it was the first time either of us had driven that far out on our own, so we took some time to drive down the main drag and check out some of the sights. And, once we stopped at a local Hardee’s to use their restrooms, we realized that we had crossed into another time zone and we were actually late.

Whoops!

But, we finally arrived to the University of Louisville campus, paid our registration fee and hauled our computers inside. What I saw was mind-blowing: rows and rows of people and computers playing games (Quake 3 Arena, Half-Life DM, and Unreal Tournament? Yes, please). There were also file servers full of interesting files to download (all legal, of course), an IRC server, a projector showing geeky videos on a big screen, etc. etc.

It was an incredible experience. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even blink all weekend as I tried to take it all in, and when the weekend was over I hopped on ICQ and tried to get everyone I knew to go to the next one. We gradually got more and more people interested and even formed a loose-knit group of friends who attended LAN parties regularly. And, for the next several years, we went to various parties around the area. Bi-weekly LAN party in the attic of a PC parts store? In. Local LAN party needs staff members to help pull off the event? I’m totally there. No LAN party this week, but want to play LAN games anyway? Just have a mini-event at my house. No problem.

If this all seems weird to you, you have to remember that broadband was still in its infancy around this time. My home internet service at the time had just been upgraded to a blistering 0.5 Mbps, which was phenomenally fast (10 times faster than my crappy old dial-up modem, anyway). Trying to play multiplayer games on a dial-up modem? Forget about it. It worked, sort of, and you had to tie up your phone line while you played. Forgot to disable call-waiting/someone else needs to make a call and picks up the phone/cat knocks the receiver off the hook? Too bad, game over. So, broadband helped with the reliability problem (connected all the time, and I can still use the phone? Sold!) but trying to find people to play games with was still a bit of a chore.

Downloading the latest Linux distribution (or your other favorite large file) would still take hours (or days), and practically necessitated a download manager to get them all while you slept. So, to find a place where there were not only people playing games on reliable private network, but that there were also the files you wanted, but didn’t want to tie up your Internet connection to get available was an amazing experience. To experience that with hundreds of other people who also loved computers, technology, and video games was just eye-opening.

Social networking sites didn’t even really exist yet, and in my hometown, finding tech-minded people was (and still is, sadly) very difficult. Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t even launch for several more years, so to even find people in the larger enthusiast/gaming community (heck, finding that the community existed at all) that you could actually talk to and interact with? It was an experience like no other, and an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

But, like the local arcades, I’m afraid that LAN parties are not long for this world. Reliable, fast broadband is reaching more homes and more people than ever before, Free-to-play and MMORPG games haven’t quite displaced LAN gaming yet, but they’re getting close. Lots of multiplayer games these days rely on some servers out on the Internet somewhere. Social networking and video streaming sites mean that I can find and virtually interact with anyone with any interest (just about) anywhere on the planet without having to leave the (relative) comfort of my own chair. And the Old Guard is, well, getting older. I’m past the point where tearing down my computer and hauling it a state away has become tedious. I have a full time job now with real responsibilities (geez, when did that happen?), and killing a weekend or so playing games is a tough sell. Finally (I have yet to see this firsthand, since I haven’t been to an event in several years), I suspect that the younger crowd aren’t replacing the folks who aren’t coming any more. Likely, they don’t see the point.

So, tomorrow morning, just over 13 years after my first event, I’m going to tear down a computer, load it in a car, pick up the same buddy I picked up then, and drive back to where it all began for me, to the scene of what will likely be the last actual LAN party that I go to.

It’s been a good run.

Posted in articles, blog, classic gaming, crummysocks, culture, editorials, linux, MMORPGs, old school, opinion, PC, relics, tech, video games | 1 Comment »

Never trust a gamer who doesn’t own any bad games

Sunday, August 5th, 2012

It’s no secret to anyone that’s visited the Crummysocks family of sites that I do sometimes play the odd, or sometimes very odd, terrible game, and then talk about it at length. Sometimes that’s because the game I played was so bad it crossed over into awesome, but that’s not always the case. A lot of times, the game is just bad. And, yet, I keep most of them.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially for the truly bad ones. Why would I keep something around that I didn’t like, and have very few (if any) good memories about. I’ve touched on this before, but I think it can be summed up as: bad games make me appreciate the good games more.

Take a site like IGN for example. They love to gush on about how great Latest Blockbuster 4 HD is, and you will find the occasional review where they find something terrible and treat it appropriately. They even address this in their site’s Ratings FAQ

And yes, sometimes people are eager to play games that turn out to be really bad. No one wants to review just the AAA titles. It gets boring after a while to write high praise for everything.

And, even though IGN is currently hovering at about a 68% aggregate rating, which tells me that they might give some of the good games a little too much praise, and might knock a few too many points off for the faults in the less-than-stellar ones, they at least acknowledge that if all you have is wonderful things, those wonderful things become pedestrian, and your perspective is skewed.

So, with that said, I figured I’d share a few of the games from my actual collection, and how they make me appreciate something better.

Exhibit A:

Kung Pow

The uploader of this video has disabled embedding, so you’ll have to click the image above to view the video, and you really should. 15 years later, I’m still wondering how this game got released.

Game: Clayfighter 63⅓
Genre: Fighting
System: Nintendo 64
Released: October 21, 1997
Offenses: Aside from the massive delays, cut features, and the most unfunny jokes imaginable, this game also includes: poor controls, uneven difficulty, blatant racism (it was a different time, 1997), unbalanced characters.
What it makes me appreciate: The very games that this is attempting to parody: Killer Instinct, Street Fighter, Marvel v. Capcom, etc.

Exhibit B:

Game: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan
Genre: Side-scrolling beat ’em up
System: Nintendo Game Boy
Released: August 1990
Offenses: Prerendered cutscenes, challenge-free gameplay, somehow combines cartoon ninja turtles and video games to create something that boring and tedious.
What it makes me appreciate: That we live in an era that allows for video previews, enemies smart enough to not get stuck on terrain, player characters who aren’t just re-skins of each other.

“Oh sure,” you’re probably saying, “pick on games that are 15 years old or more.” Alright, how about something from the last five years?

Exhibit C:

Game: Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Burning Earth
Genre: Beat ‘Em Up
System: Xbox 360
Released: November 12, 2007
Offenses: Just the one. If you’re (somehow) unfamiliar with how the Xbox Achievement system works, it goes something like this: the game developers put in a series of tasks that a player can perform during the course of the game. These can range from hitting certain plot points to collecting some arbitrary number of widgets, to finding all of the secrets hidden in the whole game, to just about anything. Each of these tasks is worth a certain amount of points, which go on your profile along with a little picture and date you performed the task. Most games top out at 1,000 points for completing all of the tasks. Avatar, however, dispenses with most of the challenge of completing the tasks, and instead of giving you numerous varied tasks to perform, it asks you to do one thing. And, even if you weren’t trying to complete all the achievements in two minutes, you’d do it in pretty short order anyway.
What it makes me appreciate: I get it, coming up with achievements that are interesting, challenging, and achievable in a reasonable length of time, is really hard. So, it’s really great to see a list of achievements are actually fun to do, and not tedious grinding.

Now, I’m sure someone will point out that a lot of people sell their used games back to Gamestop or wherever. That they take the bad ones back and exchange them for store credit on something that they’d actually enjoy. And that’s fine. But if I can’t find something at least a little bit bad on their shelf, I start to wonder about where they’re coming from.

Posted in articles, classic gaming, collecting, confessions, crummysocks, culture, editorials, gameboy, opinion, site news, video games, wii, xbox | Comments Closed

About me

Monday, June 25th, 2007

I finally got around to creating a page saying what this site is all about. For all your burning questions, please check it out.

Link!

Posted in crummysocks | Comments Closed