Lately I have been thinking a lot about Halo 2. In high school I played this game non-stop.
Wake up
Go to school
Go home
Play Halo 2 online
sleep
repeat
There was something about the clear system that the game created that I found comforting. Memorizing map layouts, amount of shots it takes to kill someone, et cetera. In retrospect, did I show signs of asbergers? Sure, but I miss it. It has been far too long since a game like this has come around. Halo 3, in my eyes, was largely a disappointment because of the way they simplified it. In Halo 2 there were varied levels of skill. In Halo 3 there were just shit players and awesome players. Many people left that game for Call of Duty 4.
After COD 4 was released I think the shooting genre really just changed entirely. Players became obsessed with the concept of customization and load-outs in multiplayer.
Will we ever see a return to the formulaic, chess-like gameplay of Halo 2? I surely hope so. I've had enough of the customization.
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I'm living at home this summer, working and saving up. So, I have a lot of time to spend with my little brother. The other day I saw the game Spiral Knights on Steam (it is a free to play game). It plays a lot like Torchlight, except it's free! My brother downloaded it and played it for about 2 minutes before getting tired of it.
It then occurred to me that my brother doesn't like ANY RPG game. He will sit and play iPad and iPod games for hours and hours, but never once have I seen him play a game with a story line. Even more so, I couldn't think of any kid below the age of 17 that gives a shit about being engrossed in games. I think "mobile" games these days are training kids to be addicted to a simple action (Angry Birds, etc.). You could argue that the arcade era did the same thing for kids, but it still makes me sad to think about.
Maybe this is just a phase in gaming though. If this is the age of the arcade returned, then maybe that means that story will eventually be introduced once again and blow these kids' minds.
I am feeling rather ass-pained about my game collection at the moment. Not about the games that I own, but rather how they look on the shelf. As many of you PS3 owners may have noticed, Sony changed the PS3 logo on the edge of the box about three times now. Why they do this, I have no idea. Because of this change in branding I have 3 games with the awesome current logo on the edge, and one game, Katamari Forever, with the fugly Spiderman logo on the edge. Who got drunk and decided on that Spiderman text in the first place? I really like Katamari, but at this point I would give it away if it meant I didn't have to look at it again.
Actually, maybe I could print off the current logo and somehow just put it on the Katamari box...
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