Who's the boss?

How many boss fights has the average gamer partaken in? I’ve been playing video games for over thirty years, so I’d say that I’ve taken part in a fair few. Boss fights, end-of-level-bosses, the big baddie, call them what you will; they’re there to offer a challenge and help advance the story.

Ask any gamer and they’ll easily regale you with tales of the hardest, the zaniest, or the most inventive and enjoyable boss fights of their gamer career. They may come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they all have common elements. There are patterns to be learnt and exploited, weak spots to be targeted. There’s trial and error, repetition, frustration, and elation. This week I encountered the shortest and easiest boss fights I’ve ever come across. It was truly bizarre.

When Deus Ex: Human Revolution was released people found the boss fights to be at odds with the general stealthy tone of the game. They were flat out action segments that didn’t gel with the rest of the sneaky experience. As it turned out it was because these sections of the game were farmed out to a different developer, which helped explain the disconnect felt. What it doesn’t explain is why the second boss took me all of ten seconds to defeat. And eight of those seconds were the animation of my character unleashing a special move.

Deus Ex’s protagonist Adam Jensen is an augmented human/cyborg capable of incredible technological upgrades that make him something akin to Solid Snake meets Robocop. One of these upgrades is the typhoon weapon system, which at the press of a button sees Jensen whirl around and unleash a volley of deadly projectiles in a 360 degree arc. Upon performing this assault you witness a four second animation of the carnage being unleashed.

As is typical before any end-of-level boss fight there is a cut-scene that sets up the fight. I watched the cut-scene, and then the fight began. The boss, a female cyborg, started to rush at me. Instinctively I pressed the button that activated the typhoon attack. I watched the animation deal her untold damage. Control was returned to me, she stumbled, wounded. I shrugged, pressed the button again, and watched the same animation unfold. The boss was hit with the projectiles and fell down, dead. Cue another cut-scene that told me where I’d be going to next. Achievement unlocked, and I was ushered on to the next level. It took you longer to read that than the entire ‘fight’ did in real time.

Normally I would be annoyed at the lazy, crappy design of this boss fight, but in reality I was glad it was over quickly. It wasn’t that much of a problem. I was enjoying the game for what it was. I wasn’t interested in a lengthy shootout with some random boss. I was quite happy to continue sneaking my merry way through air vents.

After some more enjoyable sneaky shenanigans, and another boss fight that wasn’t particularly taxing or interesting, and not even worth remarking on, I got to the final boss at the end of the game. This one I dispatched by merely shooting with a laser beam for five seconds or so. But I had to vault over a few barriers first in order to avoid some sentry turrets, so that ended up making this stunning battle last longer than the previous record setting encounter, and thereby made it far less impressive. Although defeating the very end boss in twelve seconds could be seen as even more ridiculous, as the end boss is supposed to be the hardest of the lot. But at least this easy final boss let me get to the credits a lot quicker, and these were unique.

The credits featured photos of the Eidos Montreal development team throughout the various stages of development. Sometimes they were in the office working. Sometime they were having meetings filled with smiles. Mostly they were partaking in fun team building activities like table-hockey, or football in the park. And drinking. Lots of drinking. Seriously, someone had a drink in their hand in about 75% of these pictures. So much drinking. No wonder they had to farm out those boss fights.

28 down, 22 to go.

Down, but not out.

It’s been over six months since I started my yearlong mission to clear my 50-game-tall Pile of Shame. 28 weeks and 25 games later, and I’m feeling a bit down in the dumps.

Generally I’ve been getting my head down and hammering away. The weird thing is that when I take a moment to lift my head and take a glance at what’s going on in the gaming world I find that it’s not exactly how I imagined it would look when I started this journey.

Imposing a twelve month ban on purchasing any games is bound to be hard on a gamer who clearly loves to amass new titles. I had visions of new games coming out during this time, and me sitting there desperate to play them, champing at the bit to be enjoying them at the same time as everyone else. But it seems that every game I had kept an eye on hasn’t really made me that desperate to play it at all.

There are a couple that seem to have been received quite well, but they didn’t exactly set the world alight. Hitman: Absolution, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Crysis 3, and Dead Space 3 all came and went without much fanfare in regards to either greatness or calamity.

Then there were the failures. From the extremely mixed reviews of Assassin’s Creed 3, to the disastrous catastrophe of Aliens: Colonial Marines, right through to the laughably unplayable Sim City, I find myself sitting there not really feeling like I’m missing out on anything. Even GTAV got pushed back, how good is that!

So why am I feeling in a funk? I’m not really missing out on anything. I can play my way through my pile. I can have fun, and I can achieve my goal. I should be happy. So why am I so glum?

Oh yeah, that’s right. Because I’ve been playing Dirt3.

I know I’ve previously gone on about how annoying this game is, but honestly, this game makes me so mad. The loading screens, the endless fucking loading screens, oh my god, enough already. I must have put twenty hours into this game, and I swear I’ve only actually been driving for about eight of them. I know that sounds like a total exaggeration, but I played for an hour and twenty minutes this morning and I tallied up the total amount of time I spent on the track.

It was a mighty 37 minutes.

That’s how long I was actually playing the game for. Even though I sat there for 80 minutes, for 43 of those minutes I was resigned to watching dozens of loading screens, and listening to those bastard douchebags carrying on. And the worst thing is that this is a good game, the driving is really enjoyable. It’s so infuriating that it’s buried under so much ugly trash.

It’s like going out on a date with someone you know is attractive, good looking, and fun to be with. You wait for them to turn up at the arranged location (they’re late, of course), but when they arrive they’re wearing really shit clothes, and they’ve done something weird with their hair. It’s just so off-putting. You know that underneath there’s something you really want to get your teeth into, but you just can’t get past their abysmal presentation.

Then they keep disappearing off to the toilet every five minutes, and each time they come back they’re talking in a different obnoxious, stereotyped accent, spouting bullshit catchphrases and trying to give you high fives, before fucking off to the toilet again for another ten minutes. Utterly infuriating.

So the date with Dirt3 ended, and I settled the bill. I left it at its doorstep with a polite peck on the cheek. There won’t be any future dates unless it gets an extreme makeover.

One game that I did successfully take out to dinner this week, and enjoyed copping a feel of its afterburners, was Tom Clancy’s Hawx. This fighter jet action game stood out as being utterly unique within my pile, so I decided that this would be a nice companion to Dirge3, and the combination of two vehicle games was actually a great start to the second half of my journey. Hawx was a standard military affair, blow up this, attack this, defend that, but it was fast paced and I enjoyed its company. I’m struggling to find much to say about this one. Complaining about Dirt3 has thoroughly worn me out.

27 down, 23 to go.

Over the hump

I must have been the only person in the world that was happy to hear that GTAV had been delayed until September. I wasn't sure I would have been able to stand knowing that a brand new Grand Theft Auto game was out there in the wild, being enjoyed by millions as I plugged away at my monstrous pile of shame.

Having a self-imposed embargo on purchasing new games until all of my existing ones have been completed has been pretty hard. There have been several releases that have tested me sorely. I’d love to get my hands on Hitman: Absolution, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and X-COM. 

I know that as a massive Aliens fan, had Aliens: Colonial Marines been any good I may have faltered. But it turned out to be a gigantic turd, and while that may be good for me in my current situation, it breaks my heart to know that once again the Alien franchise has been mistreated by another bunch of useless bastards.

But, enough wallowing.

After hog-riding and shotgun-blasting my way through GTAIV’s biker themed The Lost and Damned last week, I carried on by shimmying, shaking, and skydiving my way through the fabulous club scene that is the setting for the second GTAIV episode, The Ballad of Gay Tony.

As with The Lost and Damned the tighter focus on the story, and a lot fewer fetch quests, made this a great installment  The missions were big, varied affairs that kept throwing up surprising and entertaining scenarios. Riding on top of trains as you shoot helicopters out of the sky, stealing an armoured car and destroying an entire police precinct, tons of fun was to be had here.

There was one thing it sorely needed though; either an instant replay feature, or the ability to post video of your antics would go down a treat. So many times something hilarious would happen and I’d think to myself, ‘I would love to see that again.’ Perhaps GTAV was delayed so that it could appear on the newly announced PlayStation 4, where it can take advantage of the new ‘Share’ feature that allows you to record and upload any portion of the last few minutes of gameplay? That would be nice.

And so it was with some sadness that I ended my short visit to Liberty City. I hadn't been there for a while, but it turned out that upon returning I was warmly welcomed by friends old and new. They had some interesting jobs for me to do, and far less calls pestering me to go bowling, which was a welcome change from the last time I saw them.

So that makes it 25 games completed. I’m officially halfway through my pile of shame! And pretty much halfway through the 12 months I set myself. It’s nice to be on target and making good progress, but I can’t allow myself to slack off. I must keep the pedal to the metal, blinkers on, head down, ignoring any distractions in the form of nice shiny new games that come out.

25 down, 25 to go.

Little Crysis Auto

I’ve been a busy boy over the last week or so, and I’ve made some real headway into a couple of games, whilst also finishing off three others.

The first thing I finished was Little Big Planet 2, a cutesy platform game sequel that seemed much easier than the equally cutesy first game had been. The levels were shorter and didn’t contain as many tricky bits that forced you to watch your poor little Sackboy burst into flames again and again, and as a result I powered through this in a couple of days.

While it was essentially more of the same there were plenty of entertaining sections, in particular one level near the end that features you as the General of an army of Sackboy robots, leading the fight through a Little Big Planet interpretation of The Future War from The Terminator. While that may sound dark and moody, it was all done with the usual Little Big Planet charm and whimsy that makes it such a unique franchise. It was a nice change to play something a bit more light-hearted for once, especially considering that one of the other games I finished last week was Crysis 2.

My God, how many shooters are there in my pile of shame? So far I’ve already completed seven first person shooters, and seven more third person shooters or games that have shooting elements. That’s two thirds of the games I’ve completed so far being about putting a bullet or a laser beam into someone or something. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy them, I obviously do, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought them in the first place, I just didn’t realise how much my game library could benefit from a bit of diversification.

I’d enjoyed the freedom that the first Crysis had offered the player. As a super-soldier in a super-suit you take on a bunch of invading aliens, as well as some human counterparts, on a lush tropical island, utilising stealth and firepower in whatever ratio you deem fit. The ability to complete objectives in the manner of your choosing was a welcome variation to the bog-standard “Follow” above some nameless NPC’s head that each Call of Duty and Battlefield game suffer from. This freedom of choice was once again well implemented in Crysis 2, even if the move from the island setting of the first game to this iteration’s New York reduced the scale of the playing area somewhat. The ability to turn invisible and act like a human version of The Predator, targeting and hunting your prey, and then silently dispatching them, provided hours of fun. In one level the music was almost identical to the Predator soundtrack, and applying your cloak produces a sound uncannily similar to the Predator’s famous clicking purr. I enjoyed these little homages, especially considering I was no great fan of the last game to feature Predators.

After completing Crysis 2 and rescuing the city of New York from the alien menace (although the city was left in a pretty bad state), I ventured into another video game version of New York, this time in the form of Grand Theft Auto IV’s Liberty City in “Episodes from Liberty City: The Lost and Damned”.

Going back and spending time in Liberty City was strange. I’d thoroughly enjoyed my time there a few years back, and what I experienced when jumping into The Lost and Damned showed me just how much Rockstar’s games have evolved since then. The movement and combat felt unbelievably sluggish, like my character was running through treacle in a feverish nightmare. The smooth, fluid movement and gunplay of Rockstar’s recent best efforts, Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3, are leaps and bounds ahead of the mechanics on display here. I really felt like I was taking a step back a generation. But after this initial struggle I soldiered on, got comfortable with the controls once more, and got myself back into the groove. The city came to life, and I started to enjoy myself in this crazy town once more.

The benefit of this type of additional content is that the developers can focus on telling a concentrated story without the distractions inherent within the usual Grand Theft Auto framework. There are a couple of mini games and side missions, but the main goal is to tell this story in as economical a manner as possible.

And while the storyline is more streamlined, without the plethora of side missions and the constant phone calls from your reprobate family and friends that blighted Niko’s experiences in Liberty City, I couldn’t help wonder how a character whose moral compass is so diametrically opposed to that of the other members of The Lost Motorcycle Club, ever ended being a member there in the first place. This guy starts off seeming to be more interested in appreciating a nice cup of tea and a good sit down. He’s not all about chasing hookers, scoring blow, and shooting people in the balls like the rest of the guys he hangs out with. 

I started to wish that he’d show a little bit of a darker side so that his association with his crew was a tad more believable. Luckily enough by the end of the game he’d stormed a prison with his motorcycle club brothers and murdered at least 87 innocent, hard-working prison officers, just so that he could murder some bastard who’d crossed him. I guess the idea of having another inmate shank this double-crosser never entered his mind.

But nevermind all that, this is GTA, it’s all about riding motorcycles over pedestrians whilst on your way to pick up drug mules from the airport, going on hectic road rage rampages whilst listening to Wet Wet Wet’s ‘Wishing I Was Lucky’, and accepting missions from naked politicians who want you to blow up a helicopter with a bazooka.

I loved every minute of it.

24 down, 26 to go.

Rats live on no evil star.

All gamers have gaps in their gaming histories, those classic games or consoles that they never got around to playing for one reason or another. Most of us could probably name three or four games we’ve never played that are considered to be absolute stone cold classics by the gaming community at large.

There are a few in my pile of shame that I’m happy to admit fall into that category. Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time are both considered super, legendary classics. There was also God of War that I recently crossed of my list, having missed it for some reason when it first came out. But over the last week or so I have been tackling a game that I considered to be a big, round, gaping hole in my gaming history: Halo.

I never properly played Halo because I didn’t ever own an Xbox. I had a few goes of it way back when, but there weren’t too many people that I knew that owned them, so that limited my exposure. But now that they’ve released Halo: Anniversary I’ve had the chance to travel back in time and finally experience this legendary game.

In fact, the ability to time travel is one of Halo: Anniversary’s most intriguing features. The game has had a graphical overhaul to bring it into line with today’s standards, but with the simple press of the ‘Back’ button (appropriately), the game reverts to the original graphics that it featured when released in 2001. This makes for a fascinating glimpse into the past, and whenever I came across a visually interesting section I would switch back to the original graphics and play that way for a few minutes to experience it as originally intended. Of course, I always came back to the future to play using the current graphics as they were much more easy on the eye, but I appreciated the inclusion of this feature, and I think you’d get even more out of it if you’d played this back when it was first released.

Being a fan of shooters and sci-fi in general I’d been looking forward to this, and overall it was good fun in a tactics-free, blast-a-thon sort of way. Shoot, retreat, pop out again blasting, that was all you needed to know really. The graphics were colourful and fun, and I never tired of blowing up those annoying little Jawa type dudes. I did find that the sound levels were a bit off, the guns were massively loud, but the voices in the cutscenes were so low that I’d miss what was said for the first ten or fifteen seconds as I hunted around for the remote to turn it up. But it didn’t seem like there was really much that I missed, I got the gist of what was going on. Kill those things, follow the arrow on the screen. Repeat.

When a game’s been out for years you can’t go without hearing a lot about it, the talk of classic characters, favourite moments, and of course, the gripes. I’d heard a lot over the years about the dreaded level, ‘The Library’, with ‘annoying’ and ‘repetitive’ being the main complaints I’d heard. So when I finally came to play The Library I was surprised that I found it a tight, intense, and exciting level. I enjoyed the fight against the relentless enemies, even if their ranks contained one of gaming’s most annoying and overused enemy types, the big fat one that bursts into lots of annoying little ones. I couldn’t understand what everyone had been moaning about with this level. Did they not play the level just before this one, ‘Assault on the Control Room’? Fuck me, now there was a repetitive, annoying, and seemingly endless level. I hated that level so much that as I was playing it I was thinking to myself, “So this is that Library level they all bitch about, boy, they were right, this sucks!” But then it turned out it wasn’t even The Library. “How have I not heard about this particular piece of horrible level design?” I wondered as I played through Assault on the Control Room, “How bad is The Library going to be after this nightmare?”

So when I got to The Library for real I was pleasantly surprised. I played through it, got to the end of the level, watched another mumbly cut scene, and then started the next level. I ran down a hallway, through some doors, into some corridors, corridors that started to look a bit similar to, hold on, what’s through this door, isn’t this... the Control Room?

At this point the game announced that I needed to destroy three exhaust vents, or something. I dunno, I was too busy staring in disbelief at the TV as I was told that I was supposed to do this by retracing my steps back through the entirety of the aforementioned and hated level ‘Assault on the Control Room.’ Oh, goodo.

It was like some cruel trick. The level I was supposed to hate hadn’t been that bad, and now I was being forced to revisit the one that had irked me the most. Had I gotten it wrong? Had I been mishearing it all these years, like the person whose eBay listing I saw for “a Chester drawers”? Like that stupid, short, fat woman at work who did a PowerPoint presentation of upcoming events under the heading “What’s in stall?” Was I like those retards?

Possibly.

The rest of the game was then a retread of the early levels, done in reverse. How unbelievably lazy is that? It was the game design equivalent of a palindrome. They made half a game and then just flipped it for the second half. I was rather unimpressed.

Then to top it off there was the final level where you had to navigate the practically undriveable jeep thing down an obstacle course in a certain amount of time to make it to the escape pod. I appreciate a challenge, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with overcoming that challenge, but I really don’t appreciate it when game designers make something so frustratingly difficult that it’s not even fun. I’m pretty sure my neighbours didn’t appreciate the amount of loud swearing that this final level induced, either.

21 down, 29 to go.

The spectrum of conflict

This week I reached a landmark in my journey. I completed the 20^th game from my pile of shame, and it was thanks to my friend and neighbour, Simon. Simon is a father of two kids under 3 years old. Like most parents he spends a lot of time looking after his children, and not a lot of time indulging the child within himself. 

About a year ago, on a rare night off, he came over to enjoy some beer and games. I asked him what sort of game he wanted to play, and he said that he’d heard a lot about Call of Duty, so he fancied having a go at one of those. I put out a selection of COD games, and he selected World at War. We got through a few levels, he really enjoyed it, and so we decided to see the whole thing through together.

Every now and then we’d get together for a couple of hours and wage war against the Nazis and the Japanese. Each time we’d complete a little bit more of the game, taking small amounts of territory in a fashion similar to that of the real campaigns. “We’ll have to win that war soon,” we’d tell each other every couple of months, trying our best to arrange some gaming time, with varying degrees of success.

Then, last week I saw Simon and he announced, “I’m proposing an end to tyranny and oppression!” “My God, you’re getting a divorce?” I asked, having spent a great deal of time lately watching old British sitcoms on The Comedy Channel. As it turned out he wanted to lock in a time for us to make the final push and finally complete World at War.

And now I am happy to report that a great day has come to pass. We have succeeded! We have conquered evil on two fronts. It was a magnificent victory and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

It was made all the better because the whole experience harkened back to those days of yore, a glorious and bygone era. No, not World War II, the Eighties and Nineties. Playing through this game with Simon reminded me of all those times growing up when you’d play a game with your friends and share the whole experience with them. Having someone sitting on the sofa next to you, passing the controller back and forth, cursing and laughing at their failures, cheering their successes. It’s like watching a really long interactive movie where you enjoy it together, and then recall all your favourite parts when it’s finished.

I remember when I was about 10 years old I would go round to my best friend Thomas’s house. We would have a terrible time trying to get his ZX Spectrum to load. We’d play the tape, it would make those horrible, horrible noises for what seemed like twenty minutes, and only at the very end of the whole process would we find out if it had even loaded correctly. It seemed that more often than not it wouldn’t have, and we’d have to repeat the process, desperate for at least one game of 'International Karate Plus' before I had to go home. It was our own little war with the ZX Spectrum.

One time we got so pissed off that we started the tape, and then went foraging for conkers on the common for half an hour or so. When we came back we found that, much to our delight and surprise, it had loaded! We had won this particular battle through absence.

From that point on we were convinced that it would only load if we were out of its line of sight, so we’d set it up and hide so that the Spectrum didn’t know we were there. It was a surefire guarantee of success! There we would be, hiding behind the sofa, mucking about and stifling our laughter in case the Spectrum heard us and chose not to load. It seemed like we had almost as much fun waiting for the game to load as we did playing it. But the joy we felt when it did work and we could finally play those classic games was unparalleled.

Even now, 25 years later, those memories bring a smile to my face. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed the shared fun that comes from gaming in the same room as another person. Online gaming can put you in contact with people all around the world, but it doesn’t always bring you closer, or provide a memorable and enjoyable experience. The co-op experience Simon and I shared with COD: World at War was a thrilling, laugh-filled affair that brought back a lot of great memories, and I’m keen for more of the same.

So that’s one Call of Duty off my list, one more to go. I’m tempted to suggest to Simon that we play through that one together too, but lately I’ve really been feeling the pile of shame breathing down my neck, and I’m not sure that his commitments would really be able to mesh with timeframe. But you never know, we may just overcome insurmountable odds. After all, what fun is going to war without your brothers beside you?

20 down, 30 to go.

Time to pick up the pace.

When I started this journey I hoped that I’d complete one game a week in order to stay on target. I’m in the 21st week and I’ve now finished 19 games. That’s not too bad, especially considering that Christmas and New Year ate into my gaming time a lot more than I had originally envisaged. I didn’t complete any games, or even really play much of anything for nearly three weeks, a shocking lapse. So now is the time to really start ramping it up in terms of effort and dedication. I did that by finishing off game number 19, Max Payne 3.

This game was pretty much the same the whole way through. Take cover and shoot some guys. Enter slow motion and shoot a bunch of guys. Jump forwards through the air in slow motion and shoot loads of guys. If you really wanted to switch it up you could jump sideways though the air and shoot up some guys... in slow motion!

But you know what? This game was fantastic. It just goes to show what presentation and polish can really do for a game. The grim tone, maudlin narration, excellent cut-scenes, and the driving, pulsing soundtrack made this an entertaining and immersive affair, one whose repetition could be overlooked in favour of the experience as a whole. Besides, the shooting was so tight and so much fun that it didn’t really matter that that’s all there was. Rather than being a Jack-of-all-trades, it was a master of one. I loved it. I wanted to restart on a higher difficulty level as soon as I’d finished it. But that’s strictly against the rules. There's too many other games sitting there unfinished.

So then, what do I do about that pile of shame? It’s going down, but it’s still pretty intimidating. I was looking at the games that I’ve completed so far. Some, like Skyrim, were ones that I knew would take a fair amount of time to get through, so it’s good to have that one out of the way. I look at Dark Souls, sitting there barely touched and I know that that one is going to require a massive investment.

I think the best thing to do is to commit to one longer game, while trying to get through shorter, lighter fare at the same time. I can chip away at something like Dark Souls or The Witcher 2, and then jump into something a bit less challenging and involved, such as Halo or Super Mario 64. Hopefully that will keep the pile of shame decreasing, and the pile of pride steadily increasing.

19 down, 31 to go. Stay on target.

First impressions matter. A lot.

I remember one time about fifteen years ago, when I was a brash twenty year old, I’d just started seeing a new girlfriend. She lived in her parent’s house, the garden of which was undergoing a renovation, and a delightful crazy paving was replacing whatever had been there before. She told me all about how she had to suffer these weirdos that her Dad employed to do all his odd jobs and manual labour. Apparently they were all old, ex junkie, recovering alcoholic types that rented rooms in his nearby B&B business. They were keen to be friendly and polite whenever they saw her, engaging her in small talk and the like, asking after the family and her general health.

The first time that I stayed over she reminded me that I might see some guys who were working on the garden in the morning, that I shouldn’t be startled if there was some scruffy looking freak in the kitchen getting a glass of water or a cup of tea, as her Dad liked these guys to get started early.

After a night of boozing, the morning came. We awoke, and headed into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. I had my head in the fridge, searching for the bacon, as I heard the patio doors slide open. “Oh, Hi,” I heard the girl say, “Tom, this is Glen.” I glanced over my shoulder, and saw a weathered little man standing in the doorway. He wore skimpy, tatty work shorts and a faded old t-shirt. His craggy face creased as he squinted at me over his twitchy nose. He wiped his dirty hands on his equally dirty shorts. “Alright, mate,” I muttered, and returned to my search for the bacon. “Hello. So, er, how’s your sister this morning?” this Glen bloke asked, and a less than interesting conversation played out behind me. I pretended to search for the bacon long after I had found it in an effort to avoid having to make small talk with the strange, ratty little man.

Eventually the painful exchange came to end. “Nice to meet you, Tom was it?”  the Glen-thing said. “Yep,” was all that I could mange to muster, not even bothering to glance in his direction. It was early, I was hungover, and the sooner he left, the sooner we could make our bacon butties. He pulled the patio door shut and went back to his work in the garden. I started to pass her the ingredients from the fridge. As I did so she casually said, “Sorry you had to meet my Dad before we’d even had breakfast.” I froze, lettuce in hand, inwardly cringing, my bowels tightening. I replayed the encounter in my head. Then I replayed it from his perspective. Ouch.

I was with that girl for a good few years, and my relationship with her father was never very good, as you would imagine after that sort of introduction. Sometimes we got on ok, we could manage to joke and laugh about stuff, we even found some common interests, but it was always a strained relationship. There was a tense undercurrent, as if he kind of liked me, but he was always waiting for me to fuck up again. This is exactly the same relationship that I had with Skyrim.

It is a rare occasion that I buy a game as soon as it comes out. I normally wait for a bargain, but Skyrim looked so good that I jumped on the hype train and ran out and bought a copy. I excitedly rushed home and threw the disc in the PlayStation. I clicked 'Start New Game' and readied myself to embark upon a sword and sorcery fantasy experience of epic proportions.

The game started, my character’s eyes opened in first person perspective. I looked around. I was in a cart that was trundling along a mountain track, a prisoner along with several others. One of them started to talk to me. “So you’re awake”, he said, “We wondered...” The character that had been speaking to me was silenced midsentence. Everything on the screen had frozen. The controls were unresponsive. I couldn’t believe it; the game had crashed in the very first minute.

I stared at the screen in disbelief and annoyance. I was disappointed, mildly disgusted, and left with a generally unpleasant taste in my mouth. A memory emerged from the depths and surfaced. This was how that girl’s father had felt as he stood in the garden, staring through the glass of the patio door at the useless lump that he’d just been introduced to.

Annoyed, and shamed by the memory of that embarrassing encounter, I restarted the game. This time it seemed to work well enough for an hour or so, and then halfway through the character creation it shit itself again. This was a recurring theme. It would work for a while and I’d be getting along with it just fine, and then it would have a seizure of some sort. This potential threat was always there in the back of my mind. I knew that it had the ability to be fun and engaging, but I also knew that at any moment we could be right back where we started, with the game unresponsive, and me sitting there thinking ‘I knew this would happen’.

The other day I finished Skyrim. It has been a love/hate relationship. I encountered the odd problem here and there covering varying degrees of frustration. Crashing, temporary freezing, catastrophic collapses, bugs that made quests impossible to complete, dragons that flew backwards, graphical glitches galore, all were present and accounted for. It was good fun, but it was also infuriating. The whole experience was laid out in those first couple of minutes. If it had worked well enough at first and then the problems started to crop up the further I got, then I might have been able to be more forgiving. As it turned out, that first impression was something that I just couldn't shake. Now I know exactly how Glen felt. Sorry, Glen.

Season's Greetings!

Achievements and trophies are like the doors of a Christmas advent calendar. You open them up as you progress towards your ultimate goal, the end of the game, that double door on the 24^th with the big chocolate behind it.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a visual journey through the trophies and achievements for the games that I’ve completed thus far. These are what have been behind the double doors in my own year-long advent calendar:

1: Bulletstorm

2: Rage

3: Battlefield 3

4: Metal Gear Solid

As Metal Gear Solid has no trophy support here's a reminder of my terrible rating.

5: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

6: Little Big Planet

7: Aliens Vs Predator

8: LA Noire

9: Driver: San Francisco

10: Dead Space 2

11: FIFA 12

As I didn't 'finish' the game, just played a season, there was of course no trophy stating that the game had been completed. So here's a picture of the virtual me that I created to use in the game. 

12: Mass Effect 3

13:Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

14: God of War

15: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

16: SOCOM 4

17: Medal of Honor

Unfortunately I've been a bit too busy enjoying Christmas to get on with the task at hand, so nothing's been completed lately. Hopefully I'll get back on track once the silly season is over.

Happy New Year!