@$$hole!: Phone Call 2

The conversation here is based on one I had with my girlfriend in jest. She wanted to go do something else, and in the whiniest kid voice I could muster I started talking about the epic nature of the game. And how I wanted to finish the story.

While gameplay is fun, if a game’s story draws me in I’ll play it despite any gameplay issues. Take Assassin’s Creed, for example. The first game was rife with glitches and some very limiting gameplay options. However, the story of Desmond really drew me in and I wanted to know more.

Plus, killing dudes in stealth is fun. But I digress.

The two takeaways from this page are thus:

1) Friends want to play games online, which typically lack any kind of story and basically find you running around gunning things down. This is fun for a while, but eventually the lack of emotional substance and connection to your character numbs you and interest is lost. For me, there needs to be a compelling narrative to go along with my running and gunning, and a connection to the character so I care about the actions they perform – as well as their fate when they are in danger.

2) Games are coming out much quicker than they have been for a lot of franchises, forcing players to go through a game as quickly as possible so they can trade the game in and clear shelf space for the next title they want. Possibly even within the same franchise. This isn’t how I operate at all. I like to keep my shelves adorned with the games I’ve beaten – almost like a personal trophy collection – and possibly even sometimes return to my favorite games and play them through again.

But in this instance, Scott wants to play Borderlands…especially since Borderlands 2 is coming out in a few months.

I hope you guys have a great weekend. As for me, I won’t be playing games this weekend. Instead, I’ll be hanging out with Beth as this is our one-year anniversary.

Cheers.