You know how you realise one day that you’re not part of the ‘young generation’ anymore? If you don’t know this, you’re either still in your 20s, or you’re kidding yourself; akin to 45 year olds thinking they can still legitimately be part of the clubbing scene. Well, it manifests itself in a number of ways, some positive – you’re in theory more financially & emotionally stable, and you generally give a lot less of a toss what people think anymore – and some negative – suddenly you can no longer treat your body like dirt and expect it to gleefully rebound. I think it also influences your taste in games.
I increasingly feel out of whack with the popular opinion of the gaming press and enthusiasts in a way that I never did 10-15 years ago. I hate competitive multiplayer while most players on the web think it’s the most important thing ever. Instead, I like social co-op games that I can play just for fun with others. I generally don’t like long single-player games anymore – anything over 15-20 hours tends to be a bit too much hassle these days unless I can incorporate it into my social / co-op play; Fallout 3 is an exception just because it’s so very good and tugs at my nostalgia strings. I don’t feel a need to complete games anymore – simply to play them until I’ve had enough; sometimes that’s the end, sometimes I bail before that due to boredom (Assassin’s Creed, GTA IV). As an antithesis to the sprawling single-player game, I’ve come to love bite-size gaming. Anything I can play and have fun in 15-30 minutes is ideal for fitting in around other things. XBLA excels at providing sustenance in this area; Geometry Wars 2, Peggle, Rez HD, Trials HD, Pac Man CE, they’re all great hop-in hop-out games.
And so finally to the subject matter (perhaps tendency to ramble is also part of the maturation process) – in terms of what I like in an XBLA game, Shadow Complex annoyed me a bit. It looks nice, and the demo was quite fun to play, except for the fact that they shoved a bunch of cutscenes in there which seemed deliberately designed to waste my time. The acting was hammy, the plot entirely derivative if somewhat confusing (switching from odd special-op double-cross to entirely predictable girlfriend-rescue fodder – complete with ‘I’m sorry, your princess girlfriend is in another castle secret base’), and above all, incredibly bloody annoying to sit through. I should have skipped them, but I watched just in case there was anything useful / interesting in them – there wasn’t, and those are minutes that I’ll never get back. Next time, please put a splash screen up at the start reading “Cutscenes are present only for the purposes of satisfying the designer’s own need for clichéd pulp drama, and any resemblance to something you’ll remotely care about is purely coincidental.”. Thanks.
It seems like Shadow Complex wants to blur the lines between an XBLA game and what some might consider a ‘real’ game, and people seem to be lauding it for that, whilst I just want to shake it until its teeth rattle. Being ‘just’ an arcade game is nothing to be ashamed of – you don’t need extensive plots (especially ones that burn time on the qualitative equivalent of Mills and Boon), you just need a good game. Shadow Complex was fairly good fun – and I have to say not as fun as many other XBLA games I’ve played, just flashier in places – but my opinion was not helped by its annoying attempts to legitimise itself as ‘serious’ game content rather than just embracing what it is – an arcade game.
August 21st, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I completely understand and I am only 26. I don’t get into competitive play too much and enjoy single player games more. I also like the get in and get out type games. I barely have enough time to finish a level in a strategy game nevertheless sit and play the same game for twenty or so hours all the way through. I also have a hard time getting into games. The last complex game that really hooked me was Oblivion. I am bored to tears of the MMORPG crowd as well.
August 22nd, 2009 at 11:09 am
I dunno, maybe it’s just because I can’t play online games ( Woo Satellite ), but I’ve never been overly into the competitive online games scene. I still play on occasion, but only really with friends. As for co-op, it should be a prerequisite for a game going gold.
Honestly I’m amazed that more games don’t incorporate it.
August 24th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Definitely agree on the corny story / cut scenes for Shadow Complex. That said I’m really, really enjoying the gameplay proper. I doubt their design document had more than the following sentence: “Take Super Metroid, subtract space and aliens, and add projectile weapons, modern graphics, and mechs. Ship it.” That said, I have *no* problem with that.
Super Metroid remains one of my favorite games ever and this game is practically identical gameplay-wise. I deduct points for originality, story, and the occasional 3d aiming issue, but the absolute enjoyment I get from playing it trumps everything else for me. It’s nowhere near Portal, but I like it a whole lot and it has temporarily distracted me from Fallout 3.
August 24th, 2009 at 10:45 am
I never played Super Metroid – I didn’t grow up with Nintendo (rather Spectrums, Atari STs & Amigas) and have no attachment to the Metroid brand, although I did have a SNES for a little while and enjoyed Metroid Prime for a while on the Gamecube until it got too anal. I guess it has the most resemblance to Flashback for me.
I didn’t really feel the Shadow Complex demo sold itself very well. It was quite fun, but the cutscenes were irritating and I ultimately it was over a little too fast with not really very much going on beyond running and jumping a bit and shooting a few guards. The ‘boss’ at the end of the demo was pretty underwhelming too (the spider mech thing), on account of the fact that it was too dumb to get itself out of the hole it started in and could therefore be dispatched by just ducking out of the room at the back and throwing a grenade – rinse and repeat 5 times and you’re done. Yawn.
Maybe the full game is more interesting, and maybe if you’re already a fan of Metroid the gushing “it’s just like Metroid!” reviews will have more weight. To me the demo didn’t motivate a 1200 point outlay in the same way that Trials HD did just a few days before.
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:26 am
I’m in the same boat. There was a time that quake and unreal deathmatch were a mind numbing rush for me, but as I got into my 30′s I found that teaming up and experiencing a game “with” someone instead of just “against” someone was much more gratifying. After all, no matter how good I got in an FPS there were always others better, so what was the point? I simply had no time to keep up anyway, so the time I did have left for gaming was becoming much more fun to share with friends. Nowadays I enjoy squad play in BF2 and co-op in xbox games. For me, it’s kind of like going to the movies alone. I enjoy a movie much more when someone goes with me and I can experience it with them for the first time. Share our likes and dislikes of what we just saw.