“C’mon, let’s enjoy life!” - Legendary hardman and notorious killer Solid Snake.

In 1998/99 I was living in Nottingham, England. My girlfriend at the time had moved up there to go to Uni, and I’d gone along for the ride. I spent a lot of my time playing PlayStation, and in particular Metal Gear Solid. I also spent a lot of time going to this dodgy club called The Lenton, and buying bags of dodgy skunk off some dodgy Rastafarians.

Actually, that’s not fair. The Rastas were cool guys, and their weed was really good. So good in fact that it must have blinded me to the fact that the end of Metal Gear Solid is a ridiculously sloppy love fest that bears no resemblance to the hardcore action game that precedes it. After defeating the last of the baddies, Snake and his love interest Meryl are directed to a snowmobile and prepare to drive off into the sunset past a couple of moose.

As they walk to the vehicle there’s an uplifting voiceover about choosing life, living life, and, once again, choosing life. Meryl then finds a sweaty old bandana on the snowmobile. “Let’s keep it as a souvenir!” Snake cries chirpily, as if this stinky old headband will somehow remind them of this experience. Remind them in a good way, of course. Nothing says terrorist nuclear threat, death, murder, betrayal, loss, and fratricide better than taking home some random’s second-hand headwear.

Snake then utters the line that's the title of this post, and off they drive, past the moose (or as Snake points out, the Caribou) and the game ends. Fuck me, I must have been really stoned to have witnessed that and not remembered!

At the end of the credits you’re given a rundown of your performance and a rating in the form of an animal. Here, for your amusement, is my dismal performance rating:

                           

Look at that. Shameful. It tells the story of an impatient playthrough. I looked up the animal rankings, and there are twelve for each difficulty level. 'Hyena' is ranked tenth out of the twelve for ‘Normal’ difficulty. Oh dear, how embarrassing.

I’ll try not to rush when I play MGS 2: Sons of Liberty. Hopefully as I play through each of the Metal Gear games I’ll get better. I actually realised last night that 10% of my Pile of Shame are Metal Gear Games! Not sure if that means anything, I just noticed it and thought it was interesting.

I actually didn’t mean to finish Metal Gear last night. I’d intended to complete Battlefield 3, but I played for about twenty minutes and then this happened:

Make of that what you will. It was an interesting glitch. They wouldn’t advance, there were no enemies to fight, and if I ventured too far I was told to get back to the battle. I tried shooting these guys, stabbing them, and chucking grenades at them, but nothing got them to move. I reloaded the game from the previous checkpoint in the hope that the issue would resolve itself, and there was improvement. This time only three of them decided to occupy the same point in space and time:

Look at these idiots.

I guess I’ll load it up from the beginning of that mission next time to see if that helps, but it was so infuriating that I didn’t want to continue with it, so that’s why I loaded up Metal Gear instead.

So now that’s finished I need to decide what to play next! I’m a bit over shooting stuff. I think I need a new setting. One of the things that makes my pile grow is that I start a game, and then the next one is released before I even get a chance to finish it. By then it feels like I’m really far behind the curve, so it’s hard to get the motivation to finish what I already know is an ‘out-dated’ game. So for that reason, seeing as the next iteration of this franchise is coming out in November, I think I may choose…

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Am I ready for another adventure with Ezio? Fuck, I don’t know.  I thought the first Assassin’s Creed was great but flawed. The second was fantastic; it was the only game I got 1000 achievement points on. I played all the way through the third one, Brotherhood, but felt that by then it was getting pretty stale.

Then we went on a trip to Italy and every place that we visited I kept looking at the architecture and thinking “Assassin’s Creed!!” It really got my juices going for another bout of rooftop clambering and sneaky shanking shenanigans.

Then I fired this one up when I got back from my trip and it was the same old shit. I completed the prologue bit and got to Constantinople, the main setting of the game, looked around a bit and thought “You know what; I can’t be bothered with renovating more banks, tailor shops, and stables.” It seems that with each instalment there’s less sneaking and assassinating. Instead there’s just a ton of loud weapons and multiple minions to do your bidding while you Sim City the place for the ungrateful locals.

I think I’ll just get this one done in a no nonsense fashion by doing as few side missions as possible.

Monday Update: Slowly but surely

There was a kid in my secondary school who the teachers labelled as “eccentric”. He kept to himself and talked to no-one. He could often be seen muttering in a corner, seemingly having an in-depth discussion or philosophical argument with himself. If you approached him, or happened to come around a corner and startle him, he would run away shrieking madly. Looking back it’s obvious that he had some level of autism and should never have been in an environment that didn’t specifically cater to his needs, or protect him from the callous attitudes of ‘normal’ teenage boys. He was totally unequipped to handle that level of social interaction.

He was also insanely intelligent. He possessed a photographic memory and the ability to decipher complex problems with ease. On one occasion he held our class’s rapt attention as we quizzed him on the periodic table and he answered flawlessly from memory. People would shout random numbers and he would correctly name the element associated with that number. He did this while absentmindedly looking out of the window, eyes occasionally flickering upwards under his eyelids as he processed information, and answering in a high, flutelike voice reminiscent of the Maharajah in ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’. His computer-like brain had taken this massive jumble of words, pictures, and figures, and processed them into a manageable, understandable form.

It was as I stared at the convoluted menu screen of FIFA 12 that I wished I had this kid sitting on the sofa next to me. If anyone could translate this clutter it was him. The menu screen is an abominable mess of options, selections, numbers and acronyms. There’s no instruction booklet (for environmental reasons, apparently), there’s a weak tutorial that only really highlights this year’s new features, and an online manual which is just the aforementioned tutorial put into words. After stumbling around for what felt like ages (it was probably only about 4 or 5 minutes) I finally worked out how to start up a Premier League season, but it was clear that accessibility was not a priority for the makers of this game.

Want to know how to take a free kick, corner, or penalty? Tough. Want to know which buttons are pass, shoot and tackle? That’s up to you to go trawling through options, menus, and setup screens to find out. Eventually I found “Button Help” in the pause menu, but by then I’d already figured it out the basics by booting the ball into the crowd a lot and performing several hilarious fouls. I don’t expect to have my hand held every step of the way, but don’t punish me because I don’t buy this game every year. I just want to have fun.

And eventually, thankfully, I did! My virtual Fulham FC were soon under my admittedly poor control, and I was actually enjoying it a lot. I played the first five games of my season to get up to the same point as the real life season, and the results weren’t too bad at all. Here’re the stats so far:

My Virtual Fulham FC:

POS    P    W    D    L    GD    PTS

6         5      2     3    0      5         9

The real life Fulham FC:

POS    P    W    D    L    GD    PTS

6         5      3     0    2      5         9

So interestingly we’re both in the same position, with the same amount of points and the same goal difference. Let’s see how that changes over the course of the season. Maybe I’ll get better after doing some research on the controls. Or maybe muttering in the corner for a while will do the trick.

Battlefield 3

I played another couple of levels of this. I can’t say I’m feeling this one.  I really enjoyed Battlefield: Bad Company 2, it had that cheesy action movie vibe and didn’t take itself too seriously. The environmental destruction capabilities of the Frostbite engine were great and made the game fun and frantic. This game is trying far too hard to be serious, but just ends up being unmemorable. It’s not particularly thrilling or fun. The in-game destruction in the Frostbite 2 engine just doesn’t seem as good, there doesn’t seem to be as much of the environment that’s destructible. It’s a real step backwards, in my opinion. Oh well, I’ll plough through and get it finished then move onto something more fun, hopefully.

Borderlands

Always one to buck the trend I decided to use the weekend that everyone would be embarking upon their Borderlands 2 adventure to start playing the first one! I roped in my mate Pete for this one as it’s predominantly a co-op game and everyone says that it’s just not as good in single player. We completed a few of the helpful and informative tutorial missions (take note FIFA!) to get a feel for it, and enjoyed it a lot. I can see that getting all the way through will take a fair while, it looks massive. As this is a co-op game it’ll also be dependent upon friends’ availability, so I don’t expect to finish this one in a couple of weeks, more like months.

Metal Gear Solid

Remember when you die in this game there’s the famous music cue that plays as the Game Over screen comes up, Mei Ling cries out over the radio “Snake? Snaaaaaaaaaake!!!!” which is then followed by the sound of a gunshot as you hit ‘Try Again’? I heard that so many times on Saturday night.

I’m trying to rush through this one so I can get to MGS2, and that’s just stupid, you can’t rush stealth games. Well, not unless you’re an absolute master. Or have a big bag of weed. I used to be able to play these games so much better when stoned. The patience and caution were there, the anal retentive qualities needed to succeed were heightened and honed. Well, those were the good old days. I’ll just have to try harder not to be so impatient.

I must admit I had a small panic attack on Saturday night when I looked at my pile of shame and thought “My God, there’s more games in that pile than there are options in a FIFA menu, how will I ever get through them all?!” I don’t know guys, but I’m trying. Once I get past Battlefield 3 I think all will be good. I’m a bit shootered out, so a change of pace will reinvigorate me I reckon. I’m just not sure what I should move onto next. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Another one down

Good news, I've finished another game and made progress on a couple of others! So this may be a bit of a long post. Let's get going.

Rage

So I finished Rage last night. I won a copy of Rage in one of those 25 words or less competitions. I played it for a few hours, got up to the second hub, thought “this isn’t too bad”, and then as usual I got distracted and played something else, leaving Rage to languish unfinished.

Going back to it I remembered kind of liking it, despite its flaws in characterisation and design. I thought the weapons were fun, the enemies weren’t bad, and the fights were a laugh. The graphics on 360 looked really good, and overall I enjoyed it as a fun distraction.

Would I have enjoyed it as much if I’d paid $100 for it? Not at all. I’m sure I would have felt pretty aggrieved that such a short experience would have cost so much, and any fun I’d had playing it would have been replaced by a quietly bubbling anger at having been left feeling short changed.

Oh, and let's talk about the end (minor spoilers ahead, minor because nothing really happens). You complete the final mission against some guys who were supposed to be The Big Bad, but were entirely absent until the last two missions. You infiltrate their stronghold, plug in a few machines and hold off a few baddies that are easy to kill. What makes them so easy to kill is that before the mission you're given a massive fuck off gun that makes you invincible. You destroy these easy guys, turn on a computer and that's it! No big boss fight, no dialogue, no challenge, no conflict to speak of. The camera pans up to show a satellite that you've turned on, and then you’re shown some arks rising up through the rubble, the camera zooms in through the open door of one.... and that's it, roll credits.

Like so much of this game it feels like they had intended to do much more, but got a bit bored and said sod it, let's go to the pub.

FIFA 12

So after adding Rage to the Pile of Pride I loaded up FIFA 12 to try to download the Live Season feature that lets you play the fixtures of your favourite teams and leagues as they happen in real life. Unfortunately there were server errors and I couldn't do it. Plus I've done some more investigating and read that you can't play past fixtures further back than 3 weeks, which is a pain as the season started five weeks ago! So I'll have to look into that a bit more.

Battlefield 3

I've gotten about halfway through this one. I'd heard that the single player campaign wasn't all that, and it's pretty standard stuff so far. I've gotten up to the tank level in this one, which was actually pretty good fun and a bit of a change of pace. I'm not invested in the story at all, its structure is far too similar to Call of Duty: Black Ops, and I'm struggling to care. Plus it's really unnerving to see Aaron Pierce from '24' so completely realised in video game form. It just makes me yearn for a decent Jack Bauer game. Oh well, hopefully I'll get through this one in the next couple of days so that I can concentrate on something else other than shooters!

Metal Gear Solid

It's hard to wind your eyeballs back 14 years and look at this game without wincing a little. After playing for a while your eyes adjust and you don't notice it as much. But when I go straight from playing a modern game to this it makes my eyeballs hurt as much as it does to look at that blonde girl off 'The Newsroom' whose eyes are too close together.

I've completed this game about five times over the years, but it's been a while. I'm up to the famous Psycho Mantis fight, which is never really the same after that first impressive time. I'm enjoying this trip down memory lane, although it's really just preperation. The controls aren't as polished as the later games, and at the moment I'm just trying to get through this one so that I can play the HD versions. That's something I'm really looking forward to!

So that's where I'm up to so far. I'll let you know how I'm going in the next few days, or as soon as a game gets clocked!

It begins

I love to buy video games. Whenever I see a bargain I pick it up, and this has created a problem. My pile of shame is so insurmountable that I need to take drastic action. This is not a backlog that’s going to be cleared in a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months. It’s going to take much longer. The purpose of this blog is to help me complete all of my unfinished games by 28 August 2013. 

For every birthday and Christmas my girlfriend asks me what game I would like her to buy me. A couple of weeks ago it was my birthday, and she didn’t even ask if I wanted one. This was because I’d returned from an overseas trip with about 15 new games. I’d also recently signed up to PlayStation Plus, the yearly subscription that offers a heap of free games over the course of the year. So after rearranging the shelving unit to accommodate my new purchases, and downloading plenty of free stuff on the PlayStation, I sat back and wondered where to begin. It was then that I belatedly came to the same realisation as my girlfriend; I have far too many games. I didn’t know where to begin.

It was like that feeling the morning after you’ve hosted a massive party. You wake up bleary eyed and furry mouthed, you look at the mess that’s been left and you just don’t know where to start or how it’ll ever get done. It seemed like there was a massive chore in front of me. Of course, playing video games should be more fun that cleaning up empty glasses, spilt ashtrays, and broken beer bottles, and so that’s why I decided I need this plan of attack, not only to help me get through my games, but to also have fun while I do so.

By the 28th August 2013, my birthday, I will have hopefully played through and completed all the unfinished games in my collection. I will then be able to receive a brand new game for my birthday, safe in the knowledge that I have nothing else that needs playing, I won’t have that guilt that comes with playing a new game when there’s a ton of unfinished or unopened ones still sitting there on the shelf. I’ll have also played a whole bunch of awesome games too, of course!

I’m hoping that one game a week will be an attainable target. Obviously there are some games I’m further into than others, some games that have more content and will take longer to finish. There will be periods where I’ll get through several games in a couple of weeks, and then there may be weeks where I don’t finish anything as I play through the longer games. Real life will no doubt intervene too, and there may be times where I don’t get a chance to make much progress at all. But that’s further down the track. First we need to know what we’re dealing with here.

So, let’s take a look at the list. It includes games that I’ve started and got distracted from, some I’ve not even started at all, and a couple of stone cold classics that I’ve never got around to playing despite their status and reputation. When I say I want to finish or complete these games I mean that I want to finish the main story and get the end credits. I don’t intend to try to 100% these games. Attaining all the trophies, achievements, and secrets of this many games is a task that’s way too daunting, and frankly insane. So without further ado, and in alphabetical order, here is the list of my incredible pile of shame:

Alan Wake

Aliens vs. Predator

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Battlefield 3

Borderlands

Bulletstorm

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Call of Duty: World at War

Crysis 2

Dark Souls

Dead Island

Deadly Premonition

Dead Space 2

De Blob 2

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Dirt 3

Driver: San Francisco

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

FIFA 12

Gears of War 3

God of War 1

God of War 2

GTA Episodes: The Ballad of Gay Tony

GTA Episodes: The Lost and the Damned

Halo: Anniversary

Hawx

Homefront

Infamous 2

Killzone 3

LA Noire

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Little Big Planet

Little Big Planet 2

Mass Effect 3

Max Payne 3

Medal of Honour

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of Liberty

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Outland

Portal 2

Rage

Saint’s Row 2

Saint’s Row the Third

Skyrim

SOCOM 4

Super Mario 64

The Witcher 2

And to demonstrate just how immense my pile of shame is, here’s a picture.

Now there are a couple of things that need noting. I’ve previously completed both Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear solid 2 when they were initially released, but having picked up the HD collection I want to play through them all in the order that they were released so that I can fully enjoy the convoluted madness on offer in the later instalments without struggling to remember what had happened in games I clocked a decade ago.

FIFA is not a game that can really be completed. I would however like to play one full season to feel that I’ve actually accomplished a certain measure of ‘completeness’. As the premiership season has only just started I think I’ll play one game every time there’s a game in real life, that way I’ll have done a full season by May, and it will be interesting to see how my probably piss poor performance matches up with the real thing.

And yes, I never completed Mario 64, and never even played Ocarina of Time! At the time they came out I was too busy playing PSOne, and Goldeneye was about the only thing we played on 64. But as my nephew Dave recently passed on his N64 to me (he’s 26, I didn’t mug some poor 8 year old for their Nintendo) I’ve been given the opportunity to correct this oversight.

So where do I begin? Well, the good news is I can scratch one game off the list already. Since my birthday a couple of weeks ago I’ve been making a concerted effort to finish off some games as part of this grand plan. Last night as I formulated the idea for this blog I completed Bulletstorm. Progress already! So I think I’ll try to finish off some games that I know I’m near the end of. This would make the first cabs off the rank Rage, COD: World at War, and Battlefield 3. As there are a fair few shooters on this list it’ll be good to knock a couple of these off and it’ll feel like I’m making good progress. So that’s where I’m going to start.

Wish me luck.