My name is Sitnam and I am addicted to games.
I have computer, console and board games that I rarely play but deep in my heart I know they’re classics and I’m proud just to own them. Then I have games that make me shudder with the disgust and shame of a rape victim every time I see them on my shelf. I have games that make me feel like a sucker, an idiot. Yes I heard that soft voice of wisdom and self control at the checkout counter “read some reviews of it first” the frontal lobe calmly suggested but then, as often happens, the reptilian neanderthal living in the basement of my brain took the controls “no, we buy now, box shinny, it feel good” so like a Romero zombie I shamble to the counter and plop down my Grant and change for what will essentially be a kick in the sack.
But I’m trying to get better.
As part of my therapy I’m going to list the biggest wastes of my hard earned gaming dollars in each category, both to warn and to encourage other gameaholics, I ask you to do the same.
PC: Dominions 3: The Awakening
Board game: War! Age of Imperialism
Console: Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (PS2)
Ratchet and Clank.
I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated that game.
Pokemon: Mystery Dungeon
It’s like a pokemon game, except twice as hard, and the controls make no sense!
The Sega 32X. I have three games for it and they’re all subpar. The last time I hooked it up, it didn’t work and I wasn’t that bothered.
Diplomacy…on the PC.
It was like playing against a bunch of retarded slugs…but I’m sure a retarded slug would do better.
Seriously…they could have all the pieces move randomly and it would have played better.
As it stands right now, my Wii. The Wii is fantastic when you’ve got a group of people together to play. The other 99% of the time it just sits forlorn in my entertainment center.
I suppose the fact that I got hooked on “World of Warcraft” in the meantime has something to do with that as well.
Tom Clancey’s Endwar. Played it for 20 mins and sold it to the game store. Although it was a gift and not my money, I still want that 20 mins of my life back.
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
Wretched. Tedious in the extreme. Unplayable. Plus:
Thats not a a bug; thats a bonus. Just make sure to give it to people you don’t like.
PC: Europa Universalis. It sounds like one of those games I’d adore, but I never quite got it, which is upsetting, because I do think I’d dig it. I think I’d almost literally need to have my hand held while playing it a couple times first, though.
360: The Orange Box. Half Life 2 is pretty dated and has some pretty bad pacing, but I’d finish it if I felt like it. Portal has been good, but I haven’t got around to finishing that. Team Fortress 2 is okay, but it appears that there’s only room for one first-person shooter in my life at a time.
Also, I got Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor and liked it. I didn’t see whatever evil bug was in there, so that’s good. It had some huge shoes to fill from the old regular Nintendo’s version of Pool of Radiance.
In terms of platform it has to be the Nintendo 64. I only ever owned two games for it and I got the system very early into its life. Even my Dreamcast and Saturn got more play than it.
On just the game level I guess I’ll go with Guitaroo Man for the worst recent waste of money. I like strange games and I’ve been enjoying rhythm games so I figured that one would be a home run for me. I couldn’t get into it at all. And I paid $45 for it; I could have bought four cheap and more interesting games at that same price.
Oh, and a special shout out to all those free subscriptions to Game Informer; a magazine that works hard to lower the standard of game magazines. Given that game magazines already had standards like Pravda under Stalin that truly is an accomplishment.
I was one of the unfortunate few that bought Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage (N64). What a truly ugly, slow, unintuitive game. I played for about 2 hours (RPGs need a longer break-in period) and still had no idea how to do anything, and I love complicated RPGs.
Masters of Orion 3. I always wait a few weeks after a debut of a game now so I can see what people think of it.
From this day forward, you are dead to me.
Where to start? I have lots of games that I’ve started but not finished, but I don’t necessarily see that as an indicator of a bad game or a bad purchase, sometimes I just get distracted by other games and never go back to the unfinished ones.
Here are some that stand out though.
Guitar Hero III for Xbox 360. I actually really like this game but whenever I played it it just made me want to pick up a real guitar and play that instead, so I would.
Halo 3. I played and loved the first, played and didn’t finish the second, and for some reason bought the third, I haven’t got very far into it.
SBK08. This is a motorbike racing sim, I love motorbike racing games, but this one was broken. There was a dead spot in the Xbox throttle controller that made playing this game very frustrating. The dead spot was only apparent on this game. To make matters more frustrating, other owners of the game don’t seem to have the same problem!
Battle for Middle Earth, an RTS game for the Xbox 360 that I didn’t even finish the tutorial for. It finally made me realise that I like the idea of RTS games, but I don’t like the reality of RTS games.
What DocCathode said to me. I don’t think I’ve loved any system as much as I loved the N64. It would have been like the third-best system ever if Goldeneye was the only game that ever came out for it…
NCAA 2k5 for Xbox. The game that made me vow never to purchase an EA sports game ever again. All of those games have some annoying bugs in them that they don’t fix till the next version, but this game was the worst for one reason: you could NOT complete more than about 48% of your passes. Absolutely couldn’t do it. You could maybe pull it off in a random game here and there, but over a season you had no chance. Wide open passes would be randomly dropped several times a game for no reason at all.