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.....

Maggots vs The Backlogg: Part 1

So I love my games, sometimes I wonder if I actually like buying games more than playing them as I buy way too many and nowhere near finish enough of them. But I do have a massive collection of freebies I've gotten from my work and the rest I usually buy pretty cheap, like those damn Steam sales! (My general rule of thumb is nothing over $5, unless it's something I really want) So other year has gone and I begin to ponder all the awesome games that were released last year, and I look towards what this year has in store for me....Holy crap, nearly all the good titles released this year are sequels for games I haven't finished yet! For example:


- Bioshock Infinite (I own 1 and 2, got halfway through 1 and got distracted by something else, now have no idea what the hell I was doing...restart!)
- Max Payne 3 (I actually finished 1 and loved it, bought 2 on the Xbox when it was at the end of it's life-cycle and all the games were going cheap, haven't touched it since, but I want to)
- GTA5 (Honestly I wasn't much of a fan of the single player, loved the multiplayer though, not sure if I'll bother with this one)
- The Darkness 2 (Loved the comic when it first came out, got the game played for awhile then got distracted and never went back, but I intend to)
- Ninja Gaiden 3 (Played 2, got way too hard for me, so I wussed out and traded it in, so no go on that one)
- Mass Effect 3 (I own 1 and 2, yet never got around to playing them! I know I really should, to be honest I got both for free so I was never in much of a hurry)
- Metal Gear Solid 3D (I still own the Gamecube Metal Gear Solid remake and I never played it! I should do that one day)
- Assassin's Creed 3 (Look I loved 1 and 2 to death and I actually 100% completed 2, I just never got around to buying Brotherhood and Revelations, but I want to)
- Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm (Got 2, need to finish it)
- Borderlands 2 (I do really want to finish 1, I do, one day! I'd love to co-op it more but I'm pretty sure all my mates are over it now)
- Tomb Raider (I've still got Anniversary and Underworld to play yet, man I'm slack)


So you can see a bit of a running theme here, which is I tend to get a game and either not play it or I start it and get distracted by anther shiny new game.....but no more!! Which brings me to the whole point of this, after a very long intro.... This year I'm making a new years resolution to not buy as many games and finish more games I already own! (I can hear my fiancée cheering already) So I plan to document my year long journey of me vs my backlog here. I need some sort of plan first I think, so I'm going to make a rough list of what I want to finish, to help with this I've set up a Backloggery Account here: http://backloggery.com/mr_brinks and I'll detail my progress here as I go as well. I kind of got the idea for this blog from this page here: http://bitmob.com/articles/5-tips-for-tackling-your-pile-of-shame how it said to make a list of the games you've finished, and I thought 'screw it, I'll just blog it instead!'.


Now I just need to formulate a plan of attack, I think for my next post I'll list the games I want to try and finish and I'll also start making a catalogue of all my games to help with this. Phew, that could be a big job! So let me know what you think of this whole idea, any suggestions would be awesome, anyone else care to join me in my quest?


Brinks