Video Games: Why waste good technology on science and medicine?
In my previous post Finally, I’m Back In Business I mentioned that I planned on doing video game reviews, and to not expect new releases. I thought I’d take the time to explain why that is, as many people may not think like I do.
Cost
Assuming you buy a game fairly new (within the first few months) and don’t opt for the collectors edition you’re looking at about $60. That’s a lot of money to drop on just one game, especially when you haven’t played it.
You might buy a game like Dragon Age: Origins and end up with potentially a hundred hours of gameplay. Or you mgiht end up with Halo 3 ODST which is only 5 hours long. One would have a good cost per hour, the other would be dreadfully low. Even if you attempt to avoid short games, or poor games, how can you be sure? Most gaming sites and magazines almost feel rigged. If a publisher advertises in a magazine, then they seem less harsh on them, because the last thing they’d want to do is lose a big name publisher like EA or Activision.
If you wait awhile, you might be able to score a platinum hits edition of a game, which would bring down the price to $20. Or even better, buy a good copy of it used and save even more. That means for every ONE new release you buy, you could potentially buy THREE or more releases. It’s really a no-brainer.
Bugs
When the wife and I pre-ordered Fable 2, we were excited. We had played Fable Pub games for hours, raking in money and items to use for the game. However only a few shot hours into the game, I ran into what is called “The Abbot Glitch” which made it so I had to start a new character and follow precise instructions to avoid this glitch again. Meaning all my time I spent in the pub games was a complete waste as it was now unrecoverable.
To make things worse, I ran into more glitches that were rather annoying and prevented me from playing the game the way I wanted to, which is pretty bad considering that’s the whole experience they were trying to sell in the Fable franchise (choice!).
If I had waited a few months, I would have played this game with all it’s patches and thus avoided all the pain I endured. And considering how many game developers are pushing games out before they are fully done or tested it’s not like Fable 2 was an exception by any means.
Annoying Multiplayer Experiences
I think everyone who has ever played on Xbox Live has run into hordes of screaming pre-teens who do nothing but use profanity, suck at the game, or simply team kill and become a nuisance. They tend to get their parents to buy them new releases, especially in long-franchises such as Halo, Call of Duty, etc. If you give them a few months to move on to the next big release, you will usually come across some good players who genuinely like the game, and still play, or new people such as yourself who picked up the game on sale.
Of course, this isn’t really possible if you have friends that HAVE TO play new releases, and if you don’t get it at the same time, you miss out. If this is the case, I’d say to find some new friends, or simply stop caring and have fun on your own terms, not theirs.
That just about sums up my thoughts on new releases. I personally don’t really notice a difference, the games don’t get any worse, only better. You also tend to avoid the bad releases that tend to get good reviews due to fanboyism. I’d like to hear what others think though, can you think of a reason why I would want to play titles hot off the press?
