In the time I’ve been writing this blog, there have been a number of examples of games that I’ve started playing, then quickly ditched. The reasons for abandoning games are varied, but nearly always quite petty. In Ghostbusters, for example, I was annoyed by the interior of the hotel in the first section. (Mind you, the actual ‘busting’ of ghosts was pretty clunky and unrewarding as well. And the script was irritating. And I felt like Activision was effectively abusing my childhood memories whilst stealing my pocket money and braying in my face like a mental.)

Actually, there was a lot I didn’t like about Ghostbusters.

There was Assassin’s Creed 2 as well. I did actually try to persevere  with this one, spending about 15 hours on it altogether. But after 15 hours, I didn’t really feel as though I was getting anywhere and was getting fed up with the grind of missions: go there, get that thing, kill that geezer, kill some more geezers, come back here. Ok, so it was basically the same as every GTA game (and I loved the last one), but the setting that seemed to have so many reviewers spaffing off in their collective journalistic pants just left me cold.

And what about Left 4 Dead 2? I couldn’t bear it. No doubt I wasn’t getting the best out of the game, since everyone everywhere bangs on and on and fucking on about the joys of multiplayer. But I’m not a multiplayer kind of guy. I like to experience my games in the same way I experience my entire life: naked and alone in a darkened room with only the occasional screams of my victims punctuating the silence.

I wrote a review for L4D2. It’s still sitting in the draft folder. At literally no extra cost, I will reproduce it for you here:

Zombie’s don’t run. Ever. 0/10

Running zombies are the invention of cynical movie bastards that think everything has to be BIGGER and FASTER and LOUDER and MORE AWESOME. (And no, I am not including 28 Days Later in this rant, since they weren’t actually meant to be zombies.) So even if it hadn’t had ordinary graphics, incredibly linear play and an entirely useless single player mode, I still would’ve been irritated by it.

Recently I have found myself not wanting to play two more games. Once again, they’re two games that received generally good reviews. They are games that most people that have played them like.

Resident Evil 5 is, well, it’s another Resident Evil game. The first three in the series were pretty seminal moments for me in my gaming life. The first one in particular, since I’d never seen that type of game before and it was genuinely ABSOLUTELY FUCKING TERRIFYING in parts. I lost touch with it after Nemesis, so this was the first time I’d picked up a Resident Evil game in about ten years (!). And it all started off well enough. The opening sequences are genuinely creepy, with an authentically uneasy atmosphere.

And then it all goes completely batshit mental. Look, if you haven’t played it then I won’t spoil it for you. Actually, I will. You go from having a sense of creeping dread to being chased by a million fucking zombies and some huge thing with an axe as big as you are in about ten seconds.

And yes, the zombies are running.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

And don’t say, “they’re not zombies actually, they’re Majini.” Fuck off. It’s Resident Evil. They’re fucking zombies.

Anyway, there then follows a sequence where you basically have to avoid getting killed for a few minutes before you’re picked up by a chopper. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t Resident fucking Evil. The AI of your partner is pathetic (as usual), and the whole sorry episode just smacks of the developers trying to appease the kids by chucking you into some KICK ASS ACTION right at the start of the game. It’s more like a computerised realisation of Black Hawk Down, and I was going to put that in the post that before I saw that it was on RE5′s Wikipedia page. Honest.

I turned it off before I’d even been killed. It just isn’t what I wanted or expected, and I find it a bit depressing that a series that meant so much to me has cheapened itself by taking the easy option.

Yes, I am massively overreacting.

I will revisit RE5 because I suspect (or rather, hope) that the majority of the game won’t follow the same pattern of being attacked by a seemingly infinite number of running zombies.

Last night, I booted up Borderlands. And I’ll be honest, I liked it immediately. The opening titles, whilst obviously derivative if you’ve seen a film in the last decade, were stylish and well done. I liked the feel of it, I liked the cell shading and the characters seemed fun (Mordecai, since you asked). I got through the predictably tedious tutorial and into the game, and…

I don’t know.

Maybe my attention span just isn’t what it was. You’re instantly into a series of missions which consist of, yes, go there, kill some things, pick up some stuff and then come back here. I played it for a couple of hours and could feel my shoulders slumping a little more with each errand I was required to run. I dunno, it just didn’t seem like much fun. Again, I’m not so stupid as to be unable to see that it doubtless requires more than 2 hours of play to really get into it. And I will keep going.

But all this has left me yearning for a game that grabs me from the beginning and never lets up. Uncharted 2 certainly fell into this category, as did GOW2 and Fallout 3. But it feels like that kind of experience is the exception now as opposed to the norm. And I don’t necessarily mean ‘grab’ in terms of action. Fallout 3 certainly wouldn’t fall into that category. Uncharted 2 only does a little bit. GOW2 obviously does, but it does it well and delivers what you’re looking for incredibly well. Borderlands just feels like Half Life in the desert. And I can’t, simply cannot be fucking bothered with the lame RGP element of buying and selling stuff. For fuck’s sake, if you’re making a FPS then it should be law that you just pick up health packs. I bet they haven’t put that in the fucking Digital Economy Bill, the cunts.

There’s no doubt that my attitude going into a new title is affected by the fact that I rent most of my games. My mindset is that I’m less patient, that if I’m not hooked immediately then it goes back in the envelope and I wait for the next one. But in most instances, I think I’ve given the games I’ve sent back early a fairly decent crack of the whip. How long should one expect to have to play a game in order to find the experience rewarding? An hour? Two? Fair enough. Twenty? You can go and fuck yourself.

Or is it an age thing? I don’t think so, but then I would say that. Nobody likes to categorise themselves as a preternaturally old bastard, even if that’s sometimes how I feel. And anyway, surely it’s meant to work the other way around, that your attention span is lower when you’re younger?

I don’t know anymore. Perhaps I need to take a good long look at myself. Perhaps I’m wrong and everyone else is right. Although obviously that is a ridiculous notion.

Final point: despite my vociferous slating of Heavy Rain in my previous post, I played it to the end. Ok, I’d planned to do so in order to write about it. But if it had been as dispiritingly familiar as Borderlands or as inconsistent in build up as RE5, I’d have ditched it quickly and just made a load of shit up about it.

In conclusion then: I am a twat.