Once upon a time…

There lived a young girl, whose dream was nothing more than to be allowed to touch the world she had seen her older brother enter many times. It was the first game she took an interest in, watching him play for hours. It was odd and the mother worried, her little child had always been one to play outside and frolic with the butterflies – but there she sat, staring at that screen in entrancement. What the mother didn’t understand was while that child was playing in the yard, she was imagining wondrous fantasy adventures and here before her…was a way to actually have it! Or so it seemed. It took her father, years later, on one of his few visits to the broken family to grant her that wish and bring her into the world…of gaming.

That magical marvel she had witnessed and now received was a little miracle known as Final Fantasy VII.

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Do you ever feel like life just doesn’t want you to be good gamer? Life seems to be that way with me.

I have a disorder, nothing fancy or anything that can majorly affect my life, but something that does affect my game play. It made me realize that many people all over the world suffer from similar problems, if not worse. And that they are being scrutinized and judged on their skill level because of things that aren’t within their control. It isn’t fair. If someone is doing poor for a match, I just assume…”hey, maybe it’s their first game, or an off one.” Why must everyone be so quick to insult and hurt people’s feelings? Is it just feel high on themselves? Do they care it’s at the dispense of others? Do they even know that’s what they are doing at all? The douche-bag gamer is one I can’t understand and probably never will. Just because it is internet, doesn’t mean these people no longer have feelings.

My particular disability that screws with my skill in games, mostly shooters, is my memory processing disability. Basically it takes me several seconds longer to process information and register it through my short term memory than the average individual. A couple seconds is the difference between who starts firing a BR first, or in a Sniping matching, whose head is in the scope first. Reaction time is essential in many games. Yet here I am, still fighting to improve and hardly doing so.

In addition to this

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Meh.

Two years ago I loved gaming. I used to enjoy playing awful games to boost my Gamerscore. I used to waste countless hours talking about video games on gaming forums. I was also delighted in meeting random individuals on the service known as Xbox Live. Now, however, things are changing. I have been caring less about Gamerscore, I do not waste hours on forums anymore, and I am not too fond of talking on Xbox Live outside of private chat parties.  It has finally reached the point that I have realized that I simply do not like gaming as much as I used to. In fact, my dislike for gaming is unfortunately slowly transforming into hate.

Like everything else, gaming is rapidly advancing every year.  This current generation of gaming alone has seen more changes than any generation before it. Graphics are becoming more realistic than life itself. Controllers are changing the way we play our games. The interaction between the player and the game is innovating. Interestingly video game consoles are not even used exclusively for games anymore. Now  gamers can listen to music, watch movies through services like Netflix, and do more things than I could possibly list. Even someone who is not a gamer can easily perceive that gaming is far from what it used to be. Despite all of these advancements, I must admit that I am growing sick of gaming. The reason why my dislike for video games is escalating is not because of the fancy changes that video game consoles are receiving. On the contrary, I find these innovations quite nifty. However, not even Netflix can save me from an issue that every gamer should be wary of: replay value.

Replay value has become virtually extinct in the average video game. Years ago most players would be able to replay their video games without getting tired of them for quite some time. In fact, many of those old games can still be replayed endlessly today. Have you ever met a gamer who got tired of playing The Legend of Zelda: Orcarina of Time? How about Super Mario 64? Most single-player components in games today only warrant one play-through. BioShock 2 is a perfect example of this. Outside of Achievements, I honestly can not see myself playing through that game ever again. The game was good, but after completing the story, I felt as if I had done everything that the game had offered me. Sadly, the game did not offer much to justify its steep $60 price tag in my opinion. This same concept applies to most of the other games on the market today. And while multiplayer can extend the life of a game, there are only a few multiplayer games that I actually enjoy. I just do not understand how playing dozens of matches of the same exact game could even be fun.

What all developers need to do is make the single-player portions of their games fun to replay. While most games currently lack this element, this issue can easily be fixed. Many role-playing games today get old only after the player has spent dozens of hours in them. Games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Mass Effect are still fun to replay today. Not only are the stories to those games deep, but there are plenty of different ways to experience each of those games. Obviously those are the two main reasons why the campaigns to shooters and action/adventure games usually fail to keep the player's interest for multiple play-throughs. Some of you may believe that it is impossible for games in the shooter and action/adventure genres to be replayable, but in actuality, it's very possible. Games like BioShock, Assassin's Creed II, and Half-Life 2 are excellent examples of this. Those three games have amazing story-lines and are captivating enough to keep players coming back for more. If all developers followed in that example, the gaming industry would be a much better place.

While replay value is a very important aspect that needs to be implemented into the games of this generation, another trend that is making me hate gaming is the depreciation of the quality in today's games. We are on the third month of the so-called "Best Year for Gaming Ever", and only two games have actually tried to justify that title: Mass Effect 2 and Bayonetta. Both games were hyped beyond belief, yet they still shook the foundation of the gaming world. The critics agree too, as both titles have average review scores of over 90 on Metacritic. Right below the cream of the crop is the middle ground of quality, where titles like Darksiders and BioShock 2 belong. The sad part about this group is that while both of those games were most definitely great, many will agree that they could have been so much better. Lastly we have the wrongly hyped-up games like Dante's Inferno and Aliens vs. Predator. Those two games have received a large amount of attention, yet look at how they turned out. They are not the most horrible games on the market, but in the end, they are below what was expected of them. Do you notice a trend? If you don't, allow me to sum it up for you: hype is a bad thing in this industry.

Hype is only a problem when the games being hyped-up fail to live up to expectations. The problem lies with the fact that few titles today ever live up to the amount of hype they receive. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, there were several hyped-up titles this year that have failed to fully live up to the promises made by their developers. Again, I am not trying to say that a game like BioShock 2 was terrible; it was a really fun game, but in my opinion it left me wanting a lot more. And that is an issue that I fear is going to plague 2010. How are we to know that the games which we spend our hard-earned cash on will actually live up to our expectations? What is keeping a game like Splinter Cell: Conviction from ultimately failing to deliver on its promises? What will keep it from being just another hyped-up game that everyone stops playing after a month? That is the problem with this industry and the gamers themselves. We drool over screen shots to games that we ultimately grow tired of after only several weeks of playing. So in the end, the problem doesn't lie with the quality of the games. It ultimately lies with ourselves, the media, and the notorious hype machine.    

In the end, I probably don't really hate gaming, but I do despise the hype surrounding it. I really do hope that some of you will read this and soak all of this in. Hype and the lack of replay value are two things that can kill a person's love for a game. Anyone who has ever said that every game he was anxious for lived up to his expectations is a poor liar. Every one of you has experienced disappointment in a game that you were waiting for. Hype has poisoned my liking for gaming, but there is a way to fix that. The last game that I'm getting for a very long time will be Red Dead Redemption. Despite the hype, I do believe that it will be amazing, because it is being developed by a team that hardly ever disappoints. After that I will subscribe to Gamefly and play every game that I'm interested in for a very small price. After all, I can still enjoy every game that I'm interested in without needing to pay a high price and without getting severely disappointed. Paying $60 for a game that I will hate later because of its lack of replay value and because of the damnable hype machine is too great of a risk for me.

Lower your expectations and subscribe to GameFly if you want to avoid suffering the heartache of wasted money later. Otherwise, don't bitch about feeling buyer's remorse later.
Have a good day.


Philip Vasto

I have long since had a plan to take over the world, as everyone should. In my mind, it was full proof. As we all know too well, a gamer is loyal to their console – their obsession is like one between a parent and it’s offspring. If taken from their media, people are cut off from the strands that had seemed to become a third arm to their daily routines.

My genius plan of deviousness was to hack into all gaming systems via the internet and put a virus out to cause mass madness! Of course, if the players desired their precious gaming abilities back they would have to conform to my whim and build my own personal army. With this legion of enraged nerds and geeks, I would capture countries all across the globe! Sadly, I recently learned the horrid truth of this brilliant idea.

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Everyone has a favorite weapon.

I have been playing the Halo series for years, and somehow I feel a little left out in the calling. Someone usually says they will go for Rocks, Shotgun, BR or Snipe …and I am left behind, munching on the leftovers. The strange attachment people have had to specific guns has always been a mystery to me. I decided it was high time to discover the truth and investigate the reason for this frequent behavior. In addition, I wanted to discover if there was a gun for me out there. Something I could call dibs on.

Without my usual group, I trekked alone into matchmaking. There, I took a few games for each gun and called them – doing my best to acquire the item of choice at the beginning of the games.

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There is no silhouette to identify here, the names I am talking about are the ones we give the electronics close to our heart. It is the line between just a little break from the crowd and geek. The thing we sometimes fail to realize is, at first – we’re set up. The electronics planned for us to get attached to them.

You remember when you’re getting ready to use your new desktop or laptop, filling out all the blanks casually. Then you come to one that asks you to name your computer. Foolishness, who names their inanimate objects? It’s to give ourselves solace when we talk to it – whether we realize it at the time or not.

A female has been naming her inanimate objects for years, the smaller the version of the larger object, the more adorable name it receives. Guys tend to start with things to which they are mentally attached, the items they put a lot of effort in – it’s their baby. But where in this timeline of naming things did we cross the line?

Normal pe

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In the beginning a girl gamer is excited. There she is, giddy from the new console she just acquired and ready to get into the world of online gaming.

Within her childhood she's always been a little out placed. While her friends are playing make believe, her hands were around a super Nintendo controller, throwing turtle shells and swallowing little creatures to obtain their power; lost in that world until a parent gets fed up and unplugs it mid-level. She would get angry, tell them they didn't understand.

Even in her older years, she learned to adapt and discovered the wonders of Playstations and New Gameboys. The value of saving ingrained into her habits. With parents still trying to get her off the "unstereotypical" life of tomboyish hobbies, she gets very little selection of games. Unfortunately, all this accomplished was to make her an expert on the few she held dear.

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So, there has been a lot of things going around about a certain XBox Moderator named The Pro. I have heard from both sides of the table; a post by Einrich Peabody Houtenlicht on kotaku.com: "The guy is at work and to behave like that at work is reprehensible, I work in customer service and have had just as bad and worse said to me and I've never responded with threats like making it my mission to punish someone.

Bottom Line: A guy with an attitude like that shouldn't be moderating, whether the actions in question were in the right or in the wrong. That job is quality assurance, not being the video-game police".

Really? So, at your place of employment there are people whom inform you that they fornicated with your grandmother with such force she coughed up blood or even worse? It would be hard to believe (unless you worked for Microsoft, I guess...) that you work in that hostile of an environment and have never made a comment back to a customer (it may not have been to the extent of The Pro's comment but really? Are you going to try and split hairs?). Also, a Moderator is meant to be exactly that; the video game police. If they were meant to be quality assurance or public relations they wouldn't have the power to ban or enforce the rules in any way. They would simply sit back, watch the game, and send you a sort survey on how you enjoyed the last game. After you complain about the guy who was 'carepackage glitching' he would then inform you that if you go through the proper channels then you can make a complaint that will be reviewed by Microsoft and that you input 'really does matter'.

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I've been using Gamefly's amazing service for the past 10 months and have enjoyed their huge library of new and old games. Today, I noticed something a little different. I got a text around 12:55 pm eastern from Gamefly that informed me they've shipped BioShock 2 to me. I was super pumped and couldn't believe they shipped an extra game to me in my 2 games out at a time deal I currently have. I stuck Bayonetta in the mail on Monday and I'm getting confirmation that a game is shipping to me on Tuesday morning?

I get online only to notice this was not a mistake but was in fact a service Gamefly has called FastReturn. The feature has been around for some time and is hit-or-miss says Ryan Kwyzla and Joshua Hyles, which might explain why I've never witnessed said feature throughout my entire membership. For those of you that don't know what FastReturn is here's the full description from the Gamefly website as to what exactly FastReturn entails.

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