Now playing ... what?

I finished Paper Mario : The Thousand-Year Door this weekend, after 40 hours of gameplay. Brilliant game, lots of fun, but zero replay value. You can't restart the game with a different character or play in a different way, there is only a linear story from beginning to end, a few side-quests, and that is it. Paper Mario also made me think about accessibility of games: I found it easy enough, but there are some jump-and-run sequences which require you to press the right buttons at exactly the right time, and even in combat you can deal more damage and receive less if you time a button press just right. So my wife (who is still happily playing WoW) just had a look and decided it wasn't the game for her. She simply will not play any twitchy game at all, because they make her too nervous. And I guess there are many people out there who don't play certain games because they just don't have the reflexes and manual skills with a controller for it. Even me, after 25 years of gaming, can't play first-person-shooters or racing games, they are simply too fast for me. I just hope game companies take the growing average age of their customers into account.

Then while looking what to play next after Paper Mario, I stumbled upon another nice example for lack of accessibility: X3 Reunion. This *should* be the game for me, having space trade as a major component. But when I install it and start the game, I look for a tutorial, and find none. You have to read the thick manual which badly explains the many, many buttons and keys which control your ship. If you haven't played X2, getting into X3 is hard. Not really a game accessible for the casual gamer.

So I put the project of playing X3 on ice until I have the time to occupy myself with it with the necessary attention. Amazon wrote me that my copy of Civ4 is in the mail, and that game A) has a tutorial, and B) I played all the prequels and know pretty much what it is about. I hope to find it in my mailbox this evening or tomorrow. I have no idea how long Civ4 will occupy me, given that I already spent so much time playing the different Civilization games (including Call to Power and Alpha Centauri). But it is a great classic that is always worth to get back to for some time, and it being dragged into the age of modern computer graphics could help.

It is not that I'm lacking games, I still have a couple of games which are still in their cellophane wrapping, or which I just tested shortly and didn't find the time for. Plus I downloaded a couple of game demos from Fileplanet, to avoid buying even more games I end up not playing (which then justifies the annual fee for Fileplanet). But deciding between games isn't always easy. Sometimes you just need to be in the right mood for a certain game or genre of games. The game which would be perfect for a relaxed holiday is not necessarily the game which you want to play in the evening after coming home from work.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:38 PM Permanent Link