Sorry for immediately breaking my new year's resolution to post at least three times per week; I've spent this whole week tearing apart and reorganizing my living space. It's still a mess—boxes everywhere; dust and rubbish kicked up that need vacuuming; books, knick-knacks, and disc cases of various sorts that need shelving (more, really, than I have shelving to fit). I'm sure you all know how it is during a serious reorganization of a nerd's cluttered room. Today, though, something relevant to my gaming life occurred.
The following games arrived for me in the mail.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia
Mana Khemia: Alchemist of Al-Revis
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Of them, I've played in the past only Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. I used to own them both; I lost them to separate thefts. Since then, I replaced them with Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (which I ultimately disliked, as I found the new voice acting inferior to the original) and Metal Gear Solid 2's Xbox port (which I ultimately disliked because it had sub-optimal controls due to the number of shoulder buttons on the Xbox controller, and because its framerate halved during rainy scenes). So for those two, it's just nice to have versions I like kicking around. And hey, they were cheap—they came in the Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection box.
The other games in that list go on the pile already occupied by Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, Odin Sphere, Eternal Poison, and Armored Core: for Answer. The pile's theme is largely niche Japanese games I've gotten into, or wanted to get into, and dropped due to distraction. I'll return to them some day, I'm sure... though the presence of the two Kingdom Hearts games on that list suggest otherwise. This didn't stop me from buying the Disgaea 3 DCL characters the other day, though. On the plus side, I finished one playthrough of Chrono Trigger DS, and I've gotten pretty far into Persona 4; the latter's not optional, though—I'll be reviewing it soon. I'll probably have to put a "I haven't actually finished this game yet" disclaimer into that review. Note to self.
Long before I've fully delved into even a fraction of the above (I don't expect to have even half of all those games finished by 2010), I plan to have picked up Mana Khemia: Student Alliance and Disgaea 2: Insert Funny New Subtitle Here for the PSP. Never mind that each is a PSP port of a PS2 game I already have. They'll have extra content!
I'm a bit of a consumer whore. (Of course that link goes where you think it does.)
I may also be a bit of a poseur.
Do I like these games, or do I just like the idea of liking them? I think it's the former, but if it were the latter, would I know? It's hard to see the back of your own eyeballs. And it's not that I'm super-concerned with peoples' motives for self-identifying as part of a given fandom—I wouldn't use the word poseur to describe someone else. But it bothers me that my buying habits might be hoarding instinct rather than a genuine desire to play these things; I thought I'd gotten over that when I stopped buying every tabletop RPG supplement that momentarily caught my eye.
About a decade ago, I was a much bigger geek and Japanophile than I am now. This was before I had the Internet (thus, I'd never met the sort of people who'd today fling—accurately, at that—the word weeabo at then-me); we were poor. I bought gaming magazines despite owning no gaming consoles of the then-current generation; the magazines were cheaper and let me experience games vicariously I would otherwise have been unable to see at all. My favorite was GameFan, and the two games that intrigued me the most—neither of which I ever got to play, until two weeks ago—were Persona 2 and Suikoden. (Two weeks ago, Suikoden went up on the Playstation Network Store. I grabbed it. Maybe I should add it to the list above.) By that time I'd already been hooked on and Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, which back then I knew as Final Fantasy 3. I wanted more games like that.
For ten years I wanted to play a Persona game, based on nothing but a quarter-page review.
As my access to game consoles and the Internet gradually expanded, I learned, in bits and pieces, more about Atlus and the Shin Megami Tensei series. I learned that Persona 2: Eternal Punishment was the second half of a duology, and that the first half, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, had never made it out of Japan (a gay romance in a video game would have been too big a deal back then). I learned that the Persona series was a spin-off of the core Shin Megami Tensei series. I learned about companies peripherally associated with Atlus in different contexts. I developed an appreciation for Disgaea's humor from descriptions on the Internet long before I'd actually played a Disgaea game.
Then last summer, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES's release date came around just as I was aware of it. I picked it up, played obsessively for a bit, realized I'd been playing suboptimally, deleted my save file in annoyance and started again. Then I did that another time, and on the third time through the game's first ten hours I got distracted by something else. I forget what.
I like these games in theory but I'm poorly adapted to the play style they encourage; I'm simultaneously too obsessive and too impatient. I can't stand playing suboptimally, but if playing optimally requires too much time and patience I get frustrated and look for something else to do. Something like Final Fantasy X-2, with its normal bad ending and its hidden good ending that requires hundreds of trivial tasks performed to perfection, would drive me nuts.
If someone would just make a game with a quick pace and simple, twitch-based gameplay at about the depth of Halo 3, married to characters and a story as complex and engaging as Persona 4, I'd be in heaven.
Am I more a fan of the idea of video games than the games themselves? It seems likely. I dislike most games I play, after all.
...
I apologize for my rambling. I'll endeavor to make the next post more pointy. I'll probably just post my thoughts on whatever game I'm currently playing for the next little while; it should help me stay focused.
About Me
- Stephenls
- I'm a freelance writer and occasional RPG developer, video game reviewer, actor, and webforum moderator; in other words, I'm an Internet Personality.
7 comments:
Oh, yes, I painfully know this one. The amount of video games (or books!) I've touched only once or twice sometimes makes me wonder if I do everything right. I still keep buying the new ones though, cuz it's fun, cuz I have the feeling I SHOULD own them. And it's true reading about them can be so good it's even better than playing. How? Maybe, you know, you read, imagine all the gameplay and solutions, you think of it getting excited how good it sounds, and the game starts to live in your mind - and it's often better than the real one, so when you finally play it, you're disappointed or bored, cuz it reveals it's only another video game.
But it's not that bad, is it? You may be a consumer whore or any other whore you like, but you're still a video game expert. That's pretty cool.
I really like your rambling, you shouldn't drop it. You're good at it ;]
Part of the problem here, in my own case at least, is that I never have nearly enough leisure time to play all those awesome-seeming games. Plunking down fifty bones to buy a game is quicker and easier than dedicating the 30 hours it takes to finish a game— never mind the 80+ it takes to collect all the cool stuff, unlock the super duper mega ending, level the Ice Sceptre to 999, and score with every female character. (And that male character. You know which one I mean.)
It's like sitting down in front of a huge feast, full of unbelievably delicious foods, most of which you've never even tasted before— but having only three minutes to eat.
Also, I have the same problem with books.
Yeah, free time is a problem too, at least for average people. But hey, look at Stephen. Look at that pretty blog avatar, can't you see the reflection of the spirit of video games in his glasses? He's a... *drums* gaming man! A video hero! I'm sure he can find time if he wants. :)
One of these days, I'm going to make that long post about how I don't actually like video games very much.
No time like the present.
You may not like them, but so what? You're into them more than most of people, aren't you? It's like... I hate oranges, and I have just eaten more than I can count (but thats not a good example, I don't really feel well).
I'm sure it's been said a million times, but voice acting is everything.
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