And.....Done.. yes, I've finally finished....Oh...no more then?

After playing some games lately, and finally finished them after getting totally engrossed, I have this overwhelming feeling of emptiness when the ending for me doesn't close itself, or worst case as in the game "Prince of Persia : Sands of Time" (Spoiler), *In the end all the your hard work, and relationship with the heroine is void (since you go back in time, she can't remember the struggles and time you spent together).*

That game in really destroyed me for a while, still does a little today. It made me think of other games i remember playing, that ending them didn't make me feel complete.. yet they made me feel more empty.

Points towards the game developers, for achieving that attachment towards the characters. I know they aren't feel but i have to admit, sad endings get to me.

 Another game, more recent has to be.. Red Dead Redemption. Fantastic game, I really thought they did a fantastic job with the  characters, really got me hooked...But that scene in the barn. I swear i reloaded it like 4 or 5 times to see if i could get a different ending.. but couldn't I really felt like I lost something. It was horrible but brillant at the same time.

I guess I needed to express myself, as i just finished Mass Effect 3.. now with no spoilers there is apparently like 16 different endings, but the one I chose from with my actions during all 3 games, I Felt complete and Empty.

To the people who said "Mass Effect 3" ending was terrible, I'll have to do mostly disagree with you. Although I would of done some things differently, I totally enjoyed the ride how it was delivered. I knew people put their heart & Soul into this game, and the whole series and it showed. Mass Effect will also go down as the one of my greatest game series of all time, although I can't really compair it to other game Series as I loved them for different reasons.

If you haven't played Mass Effect, then i recommend going to get the whole series and start from the beginning. The whole systems how what you do effect's the next game is brillant and should really be used for next games to come.

Cheers Bioware, Even though you've been taken over by EA, you've still managed to keep your touch from Star Wars KOTOR.

Maggots vs The Backlog Part 4

It's the start of March and my New Years Resolution is going really well, probably for the first time ever! So after I smashed out inFamous 2 awhile back, I enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment so much I devised a plan to try and smash out some of my shorter games. Plus I couldn't help myself and I bought 2 new games, Resident Evil Revelations and Rayman Origins, so I had work to do to get my buy/finish ratio into the positive towards the finish side. As I perused my stupidly large Steam collection of games I settled on Shank, which was a lot of fun, I really got hooked on it and surprisingly I ended up finishing it after about 4 hours of play or so, one down.

Next, by pure fluke I must admit, I thought I'd take a look at my downloaded Wii games and I settled on Lost Winds, which once again an awesome game and only about 4 hours of gameplay long! By chance I just happened to probably pick 2 of the shortest games in my collection! Winner! So by the time I'd knocked those two out, my 2 new games turned up, so I'm back to good old breaking even once again.....

This finishing games feeling is awesome, I love the feeling of accomplishing something! I needed more! So I then moved onto Limbo on the PC, which I'd already started back when I first bought it last year in the Xmas Steam sale, and surprisingly I really didn't have much left to do, so another one down! So I should now be in the positive right? Wrong, I couldn't help myself.....I found this guy on Facebook who sells lots of old retro games (http://www.facebook.com/GamezTrader) and I just couldn't go past Killer Instinct on the SNES, man that game rules! Speaking of fighting games, I think I found another good 'loophole' in my quest. I bought the new Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 the other day, BUT I traded in my old MvsC3, so technically that cancels each other out, right? The other loophole I thought of is that in the beginning I defined 'finishing' a game is when you see credits and you know what games are pretty quick at getting credits? Yep, fighting games. So I may smash out some fighting games I think. So I'm back to being even again, I needed to finish something, so I turned to another quick to finish list, the DLC expanions. Yep, it's technically a game, so I finished the Gears of War 3, Raams Shadow expansion the other night. I'm in the positive finally! Something also occurred to me the other day as well, I finished Street Pass Quest 2 on the 3DS the other week, that's another game! Once again I turn to my trusty Steam pile of games and thought I'd give some of my many little indie puzzle games a crack. So I revisited a cool little puzzle game called Fortix 2, of which I was surprised to see I was already about 2/3rds of the way through anyway, so I finally finished it and damn it felt good....kind of, I did just finish it on easy and there's about 4 more difficulty levels to get through, but hey, it counts!
Ok, so here's my running scorecard for the year:

 Bought:
- 3DS Mario Kart 7
- Wii Batman Brave and the Bold
- Wii Avatar the Last Airbender
- 3DS Resident Evil Revelations
- X360 Rayman Origins
- X360 Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
- SNES Killer Instinct

 Finished/Traded:
- 3DS Super Mario 3D Land (only main quest part)
- 3DS Mario Kart 7 (50cc and 100cc)
- PS3 inFamous 2
- PC Shank
- PC Limbo
- X360 Marvel vs Capcom 3 (traded)
- 3DS Streetpass Quest 2
- PC Fortix 2
- X360 Gears of War 3: Raam's Shadow

 So I think I'm doing quite well so far! My buy/finish ratio is now 7/9! My plan at the moment is to still try and knock over some games that I'm either halfway through or nearly finished, here's a small list:
- Wii Epic Mickey
- de Blob
- X360 Battlefield 3
- PC The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition
- X360 Mortal Kombat (The story mode at least)
- PS2 God of War 2
 So I think once I've done these I might start tackling some big games from the start, namely one's that have sequels out this year like Bioshock 1 and 2, Darksiders, Max Payne 2 and Mass Effect 1 and 2.....wow, what a mission this will be, wish me luck!

Brinks

Maggots vs The Backlog Part 3

I'm quite proud of myself, last Saturday while I was a work we had a bunch of games that had no cases that we were selling cheap. I was about to grab a bunch, when I stopped and thought "but then I'd have to blog about it and my finished/bought ratio will go to shit", and I actually put them back....well most of them! I was going to get Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Batman Arkham Asylum, 2 games I really want. But it made me think, that this is another one of my game buying problems; if it's 'cheap' I simply have to have it and easily justify it. The problem then is, that I never get to play them and quite frankly if I waited I probably get it cheap, or even cheaper another time. So it was a bit of a breakthrough for me! But not entirely, I did buy 2 games, but in my defense, that were very cheap. I got Batman Brave and the Bold on Wii for $5 and the first Avatar Game on the Wii for $1! How could I not! So if anything, just doing this blog alone is helping me achieve my new years resolution! I've actually stopped myself from buying some cheap steam games of late as well, I almost caved on Bejeweled 3 for $5 a few weeks back....it will go cheap again I'm sure.

So my finish/bought ratio has gotten worse right? Not quite, you see as I mentioned in my last post I'm defining 'finishing' a game when you see credits rolling.....and guess what I saw? Yep, I finished all the 50cc courses on Mario Kart 7 and got credits, so technically I've finished it, technically..... I am going to do the 100cc and 150cc ones as well, so never fear. Also the other day, I thought 'screw it' and started playing inFamous 2 again, as it's on my 'must finish' list for this year. Now, I loved the first inFamous game and initially 2 didn't grab me so much and I was a little over half way through it. But last week I picked it up again and got majorly hooked! To the point where I think I now love it more than number 1! Now this brings me to my other problem I have with playing games; I could have quickly and easily breezed through the story missions, but I couldn't help myself and ended up doing all the side quests and collected all the blast shards.....man I'm a sucker. In case you didn't know I work part-time in games retail and I'm a full-time stay at home dad as well as a cartoonist. On Monday's my son goes into daycare and I spend the day drawing cartoons for my other cartoon blog. I decided recently to spend at least one Monday a month or so just relaxing and having a day to myself and last Monday I had one of these days off and I spent the whole day playing and finishing inFamous 2! And as I said before I enjoyed it so much that I couldn't stop playing it even after I finished it and I did all the side missions and got all the blast shards. I tell you what, it was one of my favourite game endings ever, it was really well done and it was very sad. So I've finished it, now all I have to do is play through it again on hard and evil....

So even though I bought 2 games, I 'finished' 2, so I'm still even! The problem is I'm about to buy 2 more games! Damn you Brandon! Yes, Brandon and  I are getting the new Resident Evil Revelations on the 3DS and Rayman Origins on X360.....damn it they were cheap online, and they're both awesome. So my next plan is to try to improve my ratio, so I plan on cracking into some shorter games, probably of the downloaded kind. I'm thinking about trying to finish some of my stupidly large about of Steam games, possibly Shank and Limbo. Then I've got a heap of Xbox Live Arcade games, I'm thinking Ms 'Splosion Man and Outland....so 4 platform games, hopefully they won't take too long.

Mass Effect... to love, or not to love.

Drive forward, aim, shoot, reverse, wait.  Drive forward, aim, shoot, reverse, wait.

Drive forward, aim, shoot, reverse, wait.  Drive forward, aim, shoot, reverse, wait.

If anyone reading this is familiar with the world of Mass Effect, they will know the agonizingly tedious chore of vehicular combat that has used to bridge the entertaining elements of this (in my opinion) dramatically overrated game.  This is the reason I have started this game 3 times, and put it down every time out of sheer frustration. The driving mechanics are terrible.  But I keep trying… hoping, that all of a sudden something extra special is going to happen to make me realize what others see.  I want to like this game, I really do.  If only as a lead up to Mass Effect 2 and 3, which I am lead to believe has NO driving.  Well, I have decided to push through.  I am going to finish this fucking game tonight, no excuses.

I am on a bit of a roll lately with finishing games.  Like Mr Brinks, I sometimes think that I enjoy the process of buying games more than I like playing them.  We have seen a ridiculous amount of quality games released in the past year, and like a sucker, I have bought pretty much every one that has even slightly appealed to me.  It has to stop.  I have made an agreement with myself to from now on only play one game at a time (not including multiplayer stuff).

As we are now in the new year, I thought I would follow Mike’s lead and list those that I have played and finished in the last few weeks.

So far this year (and the ass end of last) I have finished :

Lord of the Rings War in the North

The Witcher 2

Portal 2

Deus Ex Invisible War

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

LA Noir

Batman Arkham City

Alice Madness Returns

Gears 3 Ram’s Shadow DC

And of course Mass Effect which I will be done with tonight.  Will I go straight to Mass Effect2??  Not sure yet.  I’m really interested in the character importing aspect.  I love the idea of branching stories, and decisions made in previous games that affect the outcomes and story progression of sequels.  Can you tell I was a “choose your own adventure” child of the 80’s lol.

Maggots vs The Backlog - Part 2

So I've had a good and a bad start to my new years backlog resolution by finishing a game and buying one, so technically I'm even and back to the start! I finished Super Mario 3D Land the other day, just finished, there's still a heap more stuff until I'm completed it properly and I bought Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS ($25 preowned, how could I not!)


Which brings me to how a game can be 'finished' and 'completed' and what's the difference. I consider 'finishing' a game when you see end credits and 'completing' a game when you've done it 100%. This definition discussion came up on our Facebook page a few weeks ago and we all seem to agree on this as it. So technically I've finished Mario Land, but nowhere near completed it...yet. But I'm thinking that if I ever want to make any sort of progress on this task I may need to just stick to finishing games this year and try and do it fast and then come back to some at a later date and complete them proper.


I have a sort of list of games I really want to 'finish' this year, I'll try and finish at least 1 game per platform, even some old-school retro stuff, surely there's a SNES game I need to finish;


Wii:

• Epic Mickey (I'm sure I'm near the end, so I may as well just do it)
• De Blob (Probably my all-time favourite Wii game, I'm quite close to finishing it actually)

#I want to add Twilight Princess to this list but I don't like my chances#


PS3:

• inFamous 2 (Still have a fair way to go as I piss fart around collecting shit way too much in this game, I think I should just blow through it and just stick to the story missions)
• Motorstorm Apocolapse (I'm sure this won't take long, I'm about half way through and I quite enjoy it actually)

X360:

• Bioshock (I'm halfway through, but I can't remember jack shit, so I plan to start again and crack on so I can play 2 next)
• Battlefield 3 (The Single player is so bad, but I just want to get it over and done with)

3DS:

• Zelda Ocarina of Time (Unfortuatley I missed the whole 64 era and never played this, I'm up to being an adult but I fucked up and I don't have a horse, so I've been contemplated restarting)

PS2:

• God of War 2 (I've been meaning to finish this damn game for so many years now, it's been haunting me! Plus I wanna play #3)

NDS:

• Pokemon White

#There's a few more DS and GBA games, but I need to go through my collection and figure out what to do.#


Xbox:

• Max Payne 2 (So I have an excuse to get #3 of course)

N64:

• Super Mario 64 (I've got the Wii VC version that I've always wanted to play)

That should do it for now I think, I'm sure there's more. Hopefully I can do it, what do you think? And this is just the retail games, what about all the downloaded games! Oh man.....