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I'VE STARTED SO I'LL FINISH... MAYBE - By Super Bad Advice

30/3/2016

8 Comments

 
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Guest post by 'Super Bad Advice'
​
T’other day, Bungie did a big stream thing of the new content coming in April to Destiny.

Wait!

Before you all slink away in disgust that this is one of those ‘reviews’ of what amounted to about 10 minutes of very stage-managed gameplay interspersed with awkward conversations with devs to fill the time, fear not – this isn’t an article about Destiny. Well OK: it sort of is in one capacity, but let me explain.


So this new Destiny content is out in April. That’s a whopping 17 months after the original release date, and it’s by no means the last content coming. And the way Destiny plays, it’s basically engineered to create months of replay by design.

Yet as soon as the news was out, many forums were full of people complaining that it wasn't enough, that it was too little too late and people had moved on, that they’d mislaid their PS4 in the meantime and now had to use a biscuit tin painted black as a console and why wasn’t this Bicco-2000X compatible and so on.


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ON POINT
And the complainees have a point…to a point.

​Sure, Destiny has been dry as a sandpaper toastie for months now and if they want people to keep playing there should have been more of a planned drip feed of stuff and more info guffed out from the studio about what/where/when.

​But part of me is wondering – do they REALLY want more, or do they just
think they do? And I’m wondering that in particular because until recently I’d probably have been one of them.


Don’t get me wrong – I like value for money as much as the next tightwad, and I played the arse off Destiny. But now I’ve stopped playing (mainly thanks to The Division), I’ve realised that a lot of what up until recently I used to think I enjoyed was actually more habit than genuine fun.

I suspect I’d have realised this a lot sooner had I been grabbed by Fallout 4, a game I’d been looking forward to for ages having been a huge fan of Fallout 3. However, that failed to grasp my gaming teats because it was too much like it’s predecessor for me and it felt like going over old ground.

And a lot of that was because F3 was massive and I’d played that for ages – finally stopping mid-way through the third vast expansion because I’d just been doing it so long I wanted a change.

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ON FLEEK
The failure of Fallout to re-grab me, and my recent snapping out of my Destiny coma, has made me realise I’m not sure I do want huge, near-endless games anymore.

​And yes, I’m aware of the irony of it being another ongoing game that’s brought me to this point...  

At least The Division seems a bit more aware of this, and looks like it’s designed to be more play a bit, go off and play something else, come back for new stuff rather than leaving a constant small trail of crumbs meaning you need to play constantly to feel fulfilled).


Humans are real big idiots, and we tend to fall into ruts we don’t see we’re in until something comes along and bumps us out again. I admit I was in one games-wise, but now I’m out I’m perhaps more wary of falling back into another.

It wasn’t that long ago that you’d play a game and in a few days you’d be done and dusted – the only genre that was really the exception was the RPG. Before that, back in the 8-bit days if you saw ‘longevity’ in a review it was often just a more polite way of saying you’d be facing frankly insane levels of difficulty and no save points.

The only way many games could be made to last more than 10 minutes was to make them frustratingly hard to complete – I remember having to effectively learn all 5 worlds of speccy platformer Head over Heels by heart, and finally getting to the ending felt like a staggering achievement. But at the same time I knew that end was there and that the goalpoasts wouldn’t shift again.

​Games nowadays of course are much larger so doing them in 1 sitting is practically impossible, but of late this increase in girth and offering of expansion after expansion seems to be happening to an almost absurd scale, and to more and more titles.

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SUPERMASSIVE SWEEP
I’m not saying we should get back to the days where a game was 8 screens and then you were done and dusted.

But I’m convinced I’m starting to see a diminishing of returns where great ideas are stretched out so thin they’re just not that great anymore. Supermassive games like Witcher 3, Just Cause and Fallout 4 may have lots to do, but whittle away the setting and really a lot of the missions are essentially chores to keep you busy.


The antithesis to this is stuff like the frankly awesome Superhot – a short but ultra-sweet burst of concentrated gaming goodness. But lo and behold, have a look on forums and gaming sites and even here on Digi 2000 and you’ll see many people saying it just seems too short and isn’t value for money. Obviously, what something is worth is a subjective thing, but not every restaurant needs to be an all you can eat buffet.

They say all good things come to an end, after all – so if something doesn’t ever get to an ‘end’, or just sputters out like a firework the dog has done a wee on, perhaps it’s not actually that good?


Where am I going with this? I dunno, really, other than to say I think the pendulum may have swung a bit too far, and hopefully we might soon see a bit of a retraction in game size in favour of more exciting and less dilute experiences.

The tipping point may well be the imminent arrival of No Man’s Sky – a game so mind-warpingly vast that it’s impossible for any human to see everything it has to offer in 100 lifetimes, let alone the paltry 80-odd years most of us manage to shamble along for. It’s probably the ultimate in value for money and might well be a fantastic game.

​But after my recent experiences, I’m not sure now that I don’t also see it as being potentially the biggest rut of all.

Mr Biffo is away.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
GAMES OF MY YEARS: VIRTUAL REALITY - BY MR BIFFO
NICE GRAPHICS: A SMALL CELEBRATION - BY MR BIFFO
FABLE LEGENDS IS NO MORE... SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN? - BY MR BIFFO
8 Comments
Euphemia
31/3/2016 12:19:19 am

Had a similar snap recently, plugging away at Metal Gear V simply because it was habit. Did I need to spend five million whatevers on another bloody uzi? No! So off I went. And now I'm banging my head against the brick wall that is Salt and Sanctuary.

Nvvvvrrrr fffrrgggnnn lllrrrrrrrnnnn.

Reply
Col. Asdasd
31/3/2016 10:45:11 am

I'm in a similar spot having started Borderlands 2 recently. There's just SO much stuff that I've made a conscious decision to only play the story missions, because otherwise I can tell I'll be only playing this one game for months.

The problem is, the story is - well, it's kind of interesting, ish, a bit rote, there's some good jokes here and there (although you can feel the writers are way to pleased with themselves and it's kind of leaking through the script).

But I'm very much getting the feeling that you need to be playing the optional missions to get a lot of the context - suss out the nuances of the characters, their backgrounds and their motivations and so on.

And because the sheer edifice of game is simply too daunting to take on, the experience I end up with feels very thin. I'm supposedly the big hero of the resistance, and yes, I've offed a few grimbads, but I haven't done anything of real importance because I didn't actually have to and there are other places (and games) I'd rather be.

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PeskyFletch
31/3/2016 08:17:13 pm

IMO the only reason to do the sidequests in BL2(other than grinding) is if you like the writing. It is not like the character suddenly acquire a load of depth if you play 'em.

Reply
Picston Shottle
31/3/2016 05:40:00 pm

You're spot on with Destiny. It's kind of like the crack of gaming - I know it's doing me no good but I can't stop playing it.

I need to pick up the Division and break my habit.

Reply
PeskyFletch
31/3/2016 08:22:03 pm

A bit off topic but i had one of my greatest gaming experiences playing vanilla destiny.I was doing one of those strike/raid thingys(the one with the giant metal ball boss) and the matchmaking paired me up with two mic'ed up americans. I wasn't wearing my head set so imagine my joy when they started to converse in genuine,i presume, redneck. One was called bobby and , i shit you not, the other was called skeeter. The real fun though, was that they were reacting to the stuff happening on screen as though it was real. My favourite line was " Goddam it bobby, There's some sorta aluen purple glowball firing at me!"
On Topic- Good article thanks.

Reply
Spiney O'Sullivan
1/4/2016 08:25:18 am

I was going to say that I don't really understand he appeal of these giant repetitive games (especially MMOs), but then I remembered that despite its flaws, I love the Assassin's Creed series. That said, it's mainly because I'm pretty invested in the story, which Just Cause 3 really doesn't offer (well, if it's anything like JC2, anyway).

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Clive Peppard
4/4/2016 01:51:07 pm

on the VFM front i used to work out the pence per hour (pph) of games such as Skyrim, using the stock price of £45 and the number of hours played.

Skyrim came in at something like 11.25pph (working off teh save game being at 400 hours.

While something like The Last Of Us took maybe 15 hours to complete giving a value of 300pph.

So on paper Skyrim is 27 times more value for money than TLOU.

But that doesnt include things like pulse rate, adrenaline levels and other Thrills Per Game (TPG).

Skyrim is a lot slower and maybe you get one TPG per 5 hours, compared to TLOU TPG of one every 10 minutes (6 per hour)

Skyrim would have a TPG of 80

TLOU would have a TPG of 90

So maybe VFM = PPH x TPG = 11.25x80=900

and TLOU VFM = 300 x 90 = 27,000

and there you have it TLOU is much better, 30 times better.

SCIENCE

so:

Skyrim VFM =

Reply
Matt N
9/4/2016 10:27:25 am

I feel you, sir. Destiny just looked boring as hell but Div works nicely for me precisely because I can drop in and out as I feel like it. I can plink away at NPCs for a bit, or shoot some guys in the face, or get murdered by flying hackers, but I can invest as much or as little time as I choose in a sitting then I can go and play BF3 or something.

Reply



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