Up front I should say something, I used to be terrible at actually completing games. In fact, I used to be terrible at completing much of anything. No matter what it was I tried I would have a grand vision of something awesome I would create and I would falter somewhere before the end. I would sometimes feel a little ashamed of this fact and so about a year ago I wanted to see how many games I had actually completed so I wrote all the games I knew I had complete down on a piece of A4 paper.

In all my 21 years living I cant even fill a page with the amount of games I can be sure I completed which is crazy when games are my primary hobby and are always on my mind. So I made a set of two goals:

1: Fill the page with completed games by the end of summer.

2: Complete one game a week since I have a grand collection of half finished games.

At the time this seemed like an acheivable goal, a week is a long time especially for an unemployed person. In the first day I finished Frontlines: Fuel of War (I was on the last level) and Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty (A 5 hour adventure I was 3 1/3 hours into). On the second day I finished Haze (I promised a friend, I hated every minute of it) and on the third I completed Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 (On easy, the wii shooter controls are infuriating). Its plain to see that this is not the correct way to approach my goal, I had noble intentions of becoming better at finishing games and yet I was mostly punishing myself to acheive a goal.

I complete some games over the year, such as Bastion a day after release since it was such a wonderful game, and I managed to squeak into my second goal of finishing the page by the summer. On the 12th of August I completed the 11th game since Febuary, in 6 months I acheived very little towards my goal and hadent changed my habits.

I felt angry at myself, I intended to "better" myself but I hadent tried in 6 months to do anything. I am not quite sure what changed in me but I hate being angry, and I dont like being dissapointed in myself, so I actually changed my ways. In the 6 months since August I have completed 40 games. They vary in length from "And Yet it Moves" (an Indie platformer that took around 2 hours) to the 40-odd hours I put into Super Mario 3D Land to get every flag, every star coin and complete the hidden last, last stupid hard stage.

Someone on this forum recently asked about how to get better at completing games. I cant offer an answer, its very much a personal mindset thing, but I am glad to say that I have acheived this. In the 25 days of January I have complete 18 seperate full games. Some of them include such greats as Uncharted 2, Batman Arkham City/Asylum and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The primary thing I would say that changed how I play games is that I began to write them down. As a reward for finishing the game I got to write down the name of the game, and the date, on a piece of paper hanging above my TV. Theres is an odd part of me that looks forward to completing games to write them down, more than to see the end.

I am glad that I did this. A year ago I was lucky to play an hour of a game that I had looked forward to for years. More importantly I was lucky to play 2 hours of a game even with friends, regardless of my enjoyment. To some people it dosent sound like a lot but to me this is a very important thing, thing "issue" extend not just to games but everything else in my lift. I had a problem staying still for too long and I am glad to say that I overcame that myself.

I now just have to figure out what the 52'nd game I complete will be. I dont want it to be a "silly" game, im looking for an "important" game like, wishfully, Skyrim.

To anyone that read this, thanks. This is something thats been on my mind for a long time and its important to me.

From the information I have encountered when I was not a World of Warcraft player the amount of time spent on the low levels continues to get shorter. I have been told, in jest, that levels 1 through 20 are only slightly more than an hour long cutscene. I don't believe that the levelling process is quite as short as that but once I had the hang of the general working of the game I managed to take a Tauren Druid from starting to 19 within 5 days at a leisurely pace though it took more like a week and a half for my original character since there was still an element of blind stumbling (though that has its joys).

As I tend to do with all of the RPG's I play I created a character on the Alliance (which in my mind translated as "good" though it dosent seem quite so simple now that I am in the world) side as a Human Warrior. The initial luster of playing a new game lasted about an hour and I was quickly bored by the entire concept of what I was doing. Initially, the only thing I had to do was click an enemy then hit '2' (Heroic Strike which is a Power Attack) when it was available. I was told to kill various things but I have no memory of what particularly, when I had finished killing whatever I had finished killing I was told to kill some more things which I lazily dispatched. This point in the game was the lowest point that I have experience so far because it was just so empty, souless and I felt so disconnected. Had it not been for the fact I was playing with a friend, though unpartied since we were on trial accounts at this period, I would have most likely given up at this point or shortly after. Soon I was directed towards a warrior trainer who allowed me to purchase, thanks for that trainer, 'Battle Shout' which was a damage buff which though very useful at the stage I am now (and I would assume later) it did little to change the monotony of the combat and general experience I was having.

Essentially the vast majority of my experience below level 10 felt completely dull, pointless and completely off-putting. To put it in simpler terms, it was not much fun.

Once I had reached around level 10 things began to change for the better and the fun began to arrive.  

My second attempt came a little over 2 years later in the run up to the release of Wrath of the Litch King, I wonder if you noticed the pattern that is beginning to form, and again I got a trial account and played for the trial period but this time I purchased the Battle Chest in order to play with a friend who wanted to try it out. That friend never showed up to the game and I went ahead myself since I had already bought the game. I ended up getting up to level 17 as a Human Warrior but I dont think I ever once got into a party the entire time which was a major sticking point for me. I also felt the combat to feel disconnected, I felt like I was watching animations happen while a spreadsheet was running underneath, although I was affecting the spreadsheet I didnt feel like I was the one in combat. I ended up giving up on the game before my 30 day's had even ran out and forgot about the game for another two years.

In the intervening years I tried out a number of free MMO's since I had a niggling feeling that I should be enjoying this genre but I never managed to get very far into any of them. That was until around six months ago when I joined a few friends who were playing Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online (Megaten) and I had a similar reaction as I had to other MMO's I had played, I kept going since I had promised and I enjoying playing with friends and without warning I was enjoying playing the game. I am unsure of what cause this change but I kept playing, I was suddenly the one asking for people to come on and run a dungeon (partially because thats most of what Megaten has).

The above screenshot is not very current but its what I had to hand.

I am pleased that I ended up enjoying my third try of WoW, partially from a monetary stand point, but I find it annoying that I cant tell why I am enjoying it when I didnt before. Although WoW has changed its only in small ways, from my perspective, so I cant attribute my new found passion to WoW itself instead the only answer I can find with any credibility is that I have changed or at least how I view this game has changed. 

I may try and write up some impressions so far of WoW, currently I am a level 27 Human Warrior specialising in tanking with mining and engineering. Although I cant commit to anything, I had started a piece of my experiences with Final Fantasy VII but I have only played an hour greater than what I wrote about so I have never had the urge to continue that blog. 

Gallery

I came across an indie game this week called "Air Pressure" by "BentoSmile" that ive been extremely impressed by. Its a visual novel with 3 endings with a playtime of about 3/4 minutes per playthough. If you have some time to spare its definitely worth a shot, theres even a flash version on his website, since at least for me personally it gave me some small things to think about. Out of boredom I uploaded a video of a playthrough to my previously unused youtube account, if you like what you see in the video then stop watching it and give the game a try yourself available at his website: http://bentosmile.com/2010/03/01/new-game-air-pressure/

Ive been meaning to do this kind of thing for ages but seeing TurboMan's Haiku Review of God of War 3 spurred me to give it a go. I havent done a Haiku and instead just did a more free "poem" as ive been meaning to do for a long while. 

I played Final Fantasy VII many years ago, I beleive I was about 8 or 9 years old and as such I couldn'tnderstand much of what was going on. I didnt understand how to use the Magic system or how do understand where to go. While I had some enjoyment with it it gave me the opinion it had bland characters and a pointless story. Since then I never wanted to play it because the fanboy/girl population really made it seem overrated so I never wanted to give it a second try even though Ive started getting into jRPG's (and in fact RPG's in general) in the past few years (though I havent completed any jRPG's besides the story of Pokemon Blue and Gold).

There are many fictional universes that I have a lot of love for and sometimes during the most tenst of situations I will perch at the edge of my seat in order to see how they will suceed. Notice that I didnt say whether they would surive or not since in most universe's that is never an option and its just about going as close before hitting the reset switch and being ok again. This is one of the reasons that I feel it hard to care during most battles, no matter what I do they will suceed and no one will get hurt. 

Until recently it was the same with games, during the big climatic end I would either succeed or restart the level and there was absolutely no middle ground. I also find it hard to care about all but a select few characters in a select few franchise's because im just watching them do stuff so its hard for a show to actually hook into my mind.

This is an area where games can make there story's more effective than the stories in books, video or audio productions. While I have seen people be heavily affected by some TV, especially some anime fans I know who get extremely annoyed when a character dosent fall in love which the person they beleive is right for them, it tends to be almost never for me and even when I do I only care slightly. In the Mass Effect series I get many choices and one of those choices relates to who I get to seek a romance with, or in fact dont seek a romance at all, and in Mass Effect 1 I choose Ashley because I actually "felt" something rather than simply seeing her as a model with audio files I could almost feel a "person" (as I did for most of the main characters in Mass Effect) which was the most that a game has ever made me feel beyond anger and frustration. When I played Mass Effect 2 I again had that choice of romance except I couldent continue with the same Romance so I decided before playing that I should be a nice guy and just ignore the romance option and wait for Mass Effect 3 then came the problem where I started playing and slowly over the course of the game the characters stopped being models and audio but instead more like "people" and they stayed in my mind outside the game. The character I felt most attached to was Tali but I had previously decided I was to stay true but slowly I decided to seek a romance with Tali. This I beleive is where games can stand above other media because I actually felt something, while I wasent playing the game I actually thought it over and part of my mind was saying that I shouldent "hurt" Ashley by moving on without telling her and part of me was saying that I/My Shepard felt more for Tali than I ever did for Ashley.

 Now obviously I know these are just fictional characters in a fictional universe which is why its such a testament to the skill of Bioware, and the power of video games, that it actually made me feel bad about "breaking up" with Ashley and actually made me think about it even when I wasent playing the game. 

Because games give me, the player, the choice as to what to do in many regards including (potentially) who I could romance and how far to take it also has the possibilty to make me feel bad over my decisisons and through that choice bring me closer to the characters and the universe. This is something that no film can ever offer, although books have "Choose your own adventures" I don't believe even they could bring me this close to characters, to their universe and there is no way they could ever make me feel bad about a decision, make me feel I have to perform better in this situation because they arent asking me to make decisions or to perform at all.

I apolagise if this seems rambling, because it is, or contradictory, it could potentially be I had many thoughts in my head, but if you have taken the time to read this then please tell me what you think about it? Do you think games could ever offer a story in a way films/books cant? Do you feel more attached to characters when you make decisions affecting them?

EDIT: I mainly focused on the romance possibilties but it could also be other things like if you dont act as well then characters might die and never appeard in your game (or games) again like in Mass Effect.

Currently Blu-Ray is quickly becoming the standard format for films, and to a certain extend games, waiting with baited breath for the time of DVD's to end so that it may take its place as the ubiquitous film format. Currently every major release appears on both Blu-Ray and DVD to sell to those who are already on the new format and to those who have till yet to upgrade.

I purchased a PS3 earlier this year which introduced me into the world of High Definition movies with "The Dark Knight" which is rated as one of technically best video and audio transfers on Blu-Ray. In anticipation of my newfound access to High Definition content I bought seven films on Blu-Ray. But now it is almost six months later and I have to ask myself why I currently still own seven films on Blu-Ray. In my mind most of the reasons I dont own more Blu-Rays since my introduction are the same as the reasons why most people dont own Blu-Rays and why currently DVD's are still the main format for films afa ter years of Blu-Rays.

Ubiquity is another reason why I dont own more Blu-Rays, to be exact the ubiquitous of the DVD format. I have a fairly modest DVD collection, in fact I dont know where most of it is or it would be a fairly large collection, but I often lend my DVD's to friends and family for their enjoyment and as such I factor this in to the value of a purchase. Blu-Rays currently prevent me from doing this because of my friends I am the only one who can play Blu-Ray films since I am the only one to own a device capable of playing Blu-Ray player. To me this severly reduces the value of a product.

In addition to all this the the fact that currently Blu-Rays tend to retail around 200% of the price of the DVD release severly decreased my chances of purchasing over the DVD version. So much that everytime I have almost purchased a Blu-Ray in the past six months I have looked at the DVD price and chosen that over the Blu-Ray so that I have the option of lending it even knowing I will have worse video and audio quality.

Blu-Ray players have become remarkably cheap in a fast time, I have seen a Blu-Ray player selling for £100 in chain stores, but currently most people tend to be thinking about saving money. The idea of buying another peice of hardware and then buying media for double the price when you could already enjoy the film is out of most peoples minds. The PS3 is the ubiquitous Blu-Ray for most people, due to I beleive the marketing push at the PS3's launch featuring heavily the Blu-Ray drive, and it currently retails at £250 which means that many people think that to play Blu-Ray you must start by paying £250. In order to overcome this then the price of Blu-Ray players must be substantially lower than it currently which seems unlikely to happen due to hardware manufactor's and shops requiring a markup to stay in business and the relative newness of the technology. Though overtime the amount of Blu-Ray players is almost certainly going to increase to the point where it becomes the ubiquitous platform for films and DVD begins to get phased out.

Almost all of the concerns people have over Blu-Ray are the same concerns people thought about with the introduction of DVD's such as the ubiquity, in terms of who else can watch it, and the price, which was substantially higher, so I have to beleive that over time these issues will go away as they have with DVD's and allow people to freely purchase Blu-Rays but in this time of transition its very hard to commit to both a Blu-Ray player or Blu-Ray's themselves.

Until such time as Blu-Ray players become a lot more common then my purchase's of Blu-Rays is likely to remain low. My television's screen size is also a factor in this and if history is to be beleived then in the years to come I will have much larger Televisions which wills how the diffrence between a Blu-Ray and a DVD.

I just got a PS3 a few days, ive been planning to get one for a while, and I thought id post my thoughts. Perhaps most of them will be the same or similer to others but thats to be expected.

1) Installation

This is a double-edge sword I suppose, in the first instance while it installs its annoying (I loaded up Metal Gear Solid 4 as my first game and sat for 20 minutes looking at Snake smoking) but compared to Xbox 360 games they seem to load faster. Im not sure if I totally hate it, and I understand why it happens, but for a first time player its very anti-climactic to spend half an hour walking home in the rain with a big shiny "steal me now" box and then to sit cold and wet waiting.

2) Online Experience

So far my online experience has been very annoying and lonely. I chose Metal Gear Online as my first online game since I had MGS4 in the drive but I had to update which is fair enough but I sat for an hour and a half and got to twenty percent. This is particularely annoying since it didnt tell me how fast im downloading, how much ive downloaded, how much there is to download or allow me to download in the background. Ive tried to update this game a few times but after giving it a total of 4 hours I got to 79% where it gave me another error and restarted at 0%.

3) Playstation Store

The store works well for the most part except without going on my PC (or PSN Internet Browser) I cant tell the size of a download unless its free. For me since I have a slow download speed (and technically a download limit) I would like to know this sort of thing before I make a purchase.

4) Cables

This for me is a welcome change from other consoles because quite often ive lost the battery pack or charging cable for my Wireless Xbox 360 Gamepad but since the Dualshock 3 has the battery pack built in and the connection is a MicroUSB to USB cable (which is also used for most other things it seems) I have many of them lying around from my PSP and other peoples phones etc.

5) Communication Features

For the most part adding people as a PSN friend is easy and quick the only "problem" is that there is no support for Voice messages which would be a lot faster and easier for me until I get a USB Keyboard and leaving it permanently hooked up in front of my TV. This is mostly a non-issue but its worth noting.

6) Blu-Ray

Having the ability to watch Blu-Rays is awesome. I dont plan to get a Blu-Ray over a DVD (except maybe Planet Earth) but watching The Dark Knight in 1080p on a ~42" TV was a great experience and fantastic film and I love that I now have that option.

Game: Seiklus

Website: http://autofish.net/clysm/art/video_games/seiklus/index.html

Platform: PC

Size/Media: 2.6mb Direct Download

Free/Cost: Free

Time Frame: Unknown

Link?:  http://autofish.net/clysm/art/video_games/seiklus/seiklus17.zip

Chosen by the players in this thread: http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion/30/the-next-project-bone-game-poll/256565/

Original Project Bone Post: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/pazy/project-bone-a-community-based-indepth-look-at-a-single-game/30-30269/

Seiklus is an exploration/platform indie game for the PC. As of yet I personally dont know much about it and will be experiencing it for the first time, I expect, along with most of the people who want to get involved with Project Bone. For those that dont know Project Bone is where we all play a game, generally focussing on Free/indie games to allow as many people to play as possible, then discuss it with everyone else that played. To try and illustrate this game ive simply taken the promotional pictures from the games website as it seems to illustrate this game very well.

So have fun guys and when your done then come back here and post your thoughts on the game, its gameplay, its art style and anything else you want to talk about the game (in fact not just the game but if you want how about how does this game relate to a possibly progression of the genre or something else :)). And when you have posted up your thoughts remember and come back and see other peoples thoughts and discuss them.

Have fun :)