Shelved games?

[Argent Silver]

I have tons of games shelved, but I've beaten most of them in one form or another. If you're talking about unbeaten games, then this would be my list:

-Metroid Prime
-Sonic CD (PC version, got to last level and got sick of playing, haven't bothered reinstalling onto my new PC with XP on it, because I doubt it will work without a hastle)
-Sonic Mega Collection (I've unlocked everything, but haven't bothered beating all the old games again)
-Viewtiful Joe (I borrowed it from a friend for a bit and stopped playing at some hard level)
-The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (I hate the Manhandla boss)
-Starcraft and the expansion (borrowed it from a friend and this game sucks ass)
-Homeworld (borrowed from friend, sucks ass as well)

[Light Speed]

Oh I forgot Viewtiful Joe. I got to the five bosses in a row level and never could be it. So I gave up and flew through the game on Kids mode. Way too easy on Kids mode. I can't believe there are two harder modes after Adult. That is ridiculous.

[aso]

What games HAVE I beaten last? Wow... that's a bit of a toughie.

Hmmm...

I thin the last game I really beat last was Clock Tower 3's Clear mode. I have a lot of games I go through every now and then but don't really put down for sure.

Starcraft sucks? No. I'm not much for Homeworld, though.

[Green Gibbon!]

I mean, sticking a menu in there is like the exact opposite of intuitive control... you might as well phone your character up and tell him to use the Super Potion for all the sense it makes.

Well, how do you propose it be done? You may as well "call up" Link and tell him to swing his sword. Your magical little vision of "total immersion" is light years beyond any technology that exists or is even conceivable. If that's what you're waiting for, I suggest you stop playing games before it gets any worse for you.

and I still say this genre needs to fucking grow up.

You mean like platformers? Yeah, Mario Sunshine was the most thought-provoking game I've played in years. Fucking fighters? Yeah, that's the pinnacle of sophisticated entertainment, right there, Soul Calibur 2 changed my outlook on everything. Oh, and those wonderful shooters, a genre that hasn't fucking changed AT ALL in fifteen years except that now there's more shit on screen at the same time.

You need to admit that the problem is "I'm too fucking stupid to play the game" and not "the game sucks." There's plenty out there that I'm too fucking stupid to play. Gran Turismo I'd need to be a car expert to understand, and I'd need a degree in rocket science before I could properly tackle Steel Battalion. Even Disgaea is too much for me to swallow. The only reason I'd want to walk around bashing these games like a fifth grader, though, is if I was so self-conscious about my inability to understand or enjoy them that I'd have to slam them to soothe my own ego.

Not that I'm suggesting that's what you're doing. *cough*

[Light Speed]

You know they usually write down what each item does in the manual. However I'm not really a big fan of RPGs just for the turn-based battles.

[Green Gibbon!]

However I'm not really a big fan of RPGs just for the turn-based battles.

I hate sports games because I hate sports. Madden is the top selling game every year and I'm told by people whose opinions I respect that it really is an excellent game. That may well be the case, but I'll never enjoy it. I don't even like those "arcadey" sports games. However, if someone tells me that Madden 2004 is awesome, I'm not going to buy the game, play it for 20 minutes, hate it as I knew I would, then run around whining about how Madden sucks. That's pompous and fucking grade school recess stupid.

[Light Speed]

I didn't say I go out buy turn-based games and bitch about them, but you are probably directing that towards Popcorn aren't you?

[Green Gibbon!]

Toward your mom, actually.

[Segaholic2]

Exactly. I hate sports and racing (simulation) games with a passion. I just can't enjoy myself playing either.

[Light Speed]

I figure like Delphine said I'd just go out and play football. And I still have Madden '98, it is basically the same game aside from the new features added that no one uses.

[Neon Chaos]

I actually had Shenmue 2 for the Xbox. It was just weird. It was pretty cool, but I don't know why I never really bothered to pick it up again. It's one of those games you just have to set down and play for a long time, you know. I just don't have the time to play long RPG games anymore. I bought Ninja Gaden a few weeks ago and I'm only over half way through it.

[Segaholic2]

I have a ton of games I haven't finished. I'm just too darn busy now compared to a couple years ago. As in I actually got a life and stuff. Sorta sad, since now I can't remember the last game I actually finished. I still buy all the big important good games I know I'm going to like, but I never have time to play them much. Quite sad. Maybe next summer.

[Light Speed]

Last year you kept saying you were waiting until summer. How can you be so busy that you can't fit in games? There is always time for games. Obviously you can't go on your 8 hour binges, but you can still catch an hour here and there. Most games only take like 10 to 20 hours to beat. Stop slackin!

[Squirrelknight]

Exactly. I hate sports and racing (simulation) games with a passion. I just can't enjoy myself playing either.

Even Gran Turismo? That's like, one of my favorite games ever... And it's a damn nice game.

Other than the games I listed earlier, I've pretty much beaten all the games I have in my collection. I just bought PS2 Castlevania and Beyond Good and Evil, and I'm almost done with CV and am up to the wrench-looking base in BG&E, so I think I'll be done with those soon enough... I tend to beat most games pretty quickly, not just because of my l33t skills, but also because I have no life (Not by choice mind you, strict asian parents means no social life)

[Segaholic2]

Last year you kept saying you were waiting until summer. How can you be so busy that you can't fit in games? There is always time for games. Obviously you can't go on your 8 hour binges, but you can still catch an hour here and there. Most games only take like 10 to 20 hours to beat. Stop slackin!

I always say I'm going to wait until summer. I seriously don't have any time to play games. I can catch the odd hour once in a while, but that's really about it. It's terribly depressing. I'm quite busy with Katherine, school, work, church, other web projects, friends that harass me to hang out more often, and other such stuff. :\ I have about 50 or so games that I need to sit down and really play, and absolutely no time anywhere in the near future to actually get to. Wah.

Even Gran Turismo? That's like, one of my favorite games ever... And it's a damn nice game.

Even Gran Turismo. Screw racing games. The only ones I'll touch are the arcade-y and kart-style racers that are meant more as party games and not actual driving games.

[Grant]

Am I the only one here that actually enjoys sports games?

[Popcorn]

Well, how do you propose it be done? You may as well "call up" Link and tell him to swing his sword. Your magical little vision of "total immersion" is light years beyond any technology that exists or is even conceivable. If that's what you're waiting for, I suggest you stop playing games before it gets any worse for you.

Games have the capacity to all but eliminate the bridge between the player and his on-screen avatar. I'm afraid it's just inventing a clever control scheme. Of course I could phone Link up on his damn elfin cellphone and tell him to swing the sword, but my point is that this would make the player so detached from what's actually happening it wouldn't be any fucking fun, a bit like menus. The only time menus ever work is when they're stripped down to the bare essentials, and Suikoden's just covered in crap.

You need to admit that the problem is "I'm too fucking stupid to play the game" and not "the game sucks."

What's the difference? Any 'terrible' game is only made terrible by the player's inability to approach it with the compatible mindset; when I say something sucks I'm only saying "this doesn't please me for various subjective and nebulous reasons exclusive to my own individual persona" in shorthand. (Of course, relativism is still self-refuting but I don't want it to be so I carry on believing in it in the hope that one day someone will figure out why it isn't.)

The only reason I'd want to walk around bashing these games like a fifth grader, though, is if I was so self-conscious about my inability to understand or enjoy them that I'd have to slam them to soothe my own ego.

I still say you need to fucking grow up.

[Cuckooguy]

I usually finish a game, whether I want to or not. I'm a very big penny pincher, so I'll even force myself to play games that I purchased and realized how much I loathe the game, like Sonic Shuffle. I'm like "Okay, I frickin' paid for this game, so you're gonna frickin' get your money's worth", even if it wasn't my money's worth.

Anyway, I never finished Super Mario World. I stopped in this area that was in a forest-like area. You see, what I distinctly remember happening was that when I entered this forest, I had one of two destinations - the normal level to the right or the haunted house to the left. So I took the haunted house route and beat it. And then, to my surprise, I found a secret path to a peninsula (or something) area to the west! But then I decided to not explore that way yet for a while. I backtracked to the woods and took the non-Haunted House route, and I noticed that the path eventually forms a loop around the forest (so it goes back to the Haunted House). When I finally finished this loop (enough to get to the haunted house again), it closed the secret path to the west peninsula. I tried a bunch of things to open the path again, but nothing worked, and then I became depressed over the incident, and I never picked up Super Mario World again.

Oh yeah, in Super Mario World 2, there was this one level that was almost all bottomless pits, and I became so frustrated with that level (and those things that drug Yoshi) that I didn't play it for about 6 months before I picked it up again and finally beat it.

Terranigma was also such an incident. I once made it to the last boss, but his attack that halves your HP with every hit always screwed me over, and I was too proud to use the block command at the time (which reduces the attack's damage to 1 if you block). Either that or I never used block in any other part in the game, so the block command wasn't a habit nailed into my head. Anyway, after I shelved the game, I didn't play it for about 4 or 5 years, and when I discovered the game again, I decided to beat the final boss once and for all (which took a while, after getting rusty and all), and by the time I finally beat the game I had no idea what was going on and what the ending was talking about.

Oh yeah, I never finished Illusion of Gaia, although I got pretty far into that, but I didn't find it interesting enough to, uh, hold my interest.

I never beat Flicky, although I remember playing that game at least 10 years ago on my Sega Genesis.

[Ecco]

There was Ecco the Dolphin: The Tides of Time fot the Sega CD, and I did this on two separate occasions. I think once was when I couldn't get past the level called Skylands. That stage took me and my brother a long time to get. The next was in the Asterite's cave. I kept friggin drowning in the Asterite's chamber. I also remeber when it took me week to figure out how to pass the stage Tubes of Medusa. It was while before I figured out that you're not supposed to fight the giant Medusa but instead try to swim past it to the top of the stage. I giving this game another chance right now, though, and am pretty far. Just beat the final boss, only to discover that there are still more levels to play. Oh yeah, and I almost gave up on the Globe Holder boss, because it was like @#!$%%&* impossible to avoid having it smash you into dolphin goo. But then I got lucky and beat it and continued on.

Other games that have frustrated me to the point of giving up:

Stellar Fire (Sega CD)
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Sega CD)
Sewer Shark (Sega CD pack-in title)

[The Almighty Bunghole]

Actually, all my games are shelved, even if I'm currently playing them, so shelving a game is just a natural occurance in my house.

But generally, when I get a new game, I play it until I'm bored with it and then look at my gameshelf and find something else to play.

[Segaholic2]

Anyway, I never finished Super Mario World. I stopped in this area that was in a forest-like area. You see, what I distinctly remember happening was that when I entered this forest, I had one of two destinations - the normal level to the right or the haunted house to the left. So I took the haunted house route and beat it. And then, to my surprise, I found a secret path to a peninsula (or something) area to the west! But then I decided to not explore that way yet for a while. I backtracked to the woods and took the non-Haunted House route, and I noticed that the path eventually forms a loop around the forest (so it goes back to the Haunted House). When I finally finished this loop (enough to get to the haunted house again), it closed the secret path to the west peninsula. I tried a bunch of things to open the path again, but nothing worked, and then I became depressed over the incident, and I never picked up Super Mario World again.

Owned by Forest of Illusion.

[Trog13]

Mario World and Mario World 2 are amazingly easy. They're just long as hell. Bangai-oh was hard. That last dude sucked, I spent the whole day beating that guy. Ikuraga was hard because I kept making stupid mistakes. Some other games I have are hard, but mostly because the camera freaks out or my guy just dies for no reason.

[Green Gibbon!]

The only time menus ever work is when they're stripped down to the bare essentials, and Suikoden's just covered in crap.

That isn't true, either. The complexity of the menu screens has to depend on the complexity of the game. Unlike Zelda, in Suikoden, you're not controlling a single character: you're controlling up to 6, and that's out of a 100 playable. If you play it correctly, there's alot of different dynamics to keep track of and it's just convenient to have them written out before you, and to be able to call what you need when you need. How else would it be done but menus? Should you write down all your commands and feed them into a port on the system? Perhaps Sony has a telepathic headset peripheral in the works that automatically pumps your commands from your mind into the system, and then the statistics from the system into your mind. Your argument makes no sense at all.

Of course there's a learning curve associated with any kind of such game, but to get frustrated at your inability or lack of patience to see it through is like throwing your controller down after losing to a tough boss and whining: "This game sucks."

What's the difference?

The difference is that you don't have the right to judge a game you haven't properly played, or especially one you knew you wouldn't be able to enjoy in the first place. If you don't have the gumption to learn the menus (and as far as RPG complexity goes, Suikoden is simpler and easier than most), then don't play the fucking game, but don't pretend like you know what you're talking about either.

I seriously don't have any time to play games.

I'm certainly guilty of using that line too, as most people are, but it's bullshit. To quote Stephen Minot's text book, Three Genres, "the fact is that allocation of time is fundamentally a matter of choice. Consciously or unconsciously we set priorities." If you really wanted to play those games, you'd find time. If we really wanted to finish all these games we have lying on the shelf, the time would be made to do so. The missing dynamic is interest, not time.

[Esrever]

In all honesty, if games are taking a low priority in your life, that's probably pretty healthy. I mean, when you think about it, beating a game is a huge chunk of time that, in the case of most games, is a pretty frivoulous experience. There are very few games that have made me a better person.

Not that there is anything wrong with purely entertaining passtimes, but beating a game takes so much longer than just watching a movie or TV show. It's a major time investment, and as we get older, I think we find that most games don't give a return that would make that investment worthwhile. That's what I'm noticing, anyhow.

[Popcorn]

How else would it be done but menus?

It shouldn't be done, because it requires menus.

but to get frustrated at your inability or lack of patience to see it through is like throwing your controller down after losing to a tough boss and whining: "This game sucks."

If a boss is too tough, then it's frustrating-- and as a general rule, frustration sucks.

The difference is that you don't have the right to judge a game you haven't properly played, or especially one you knew you wouldn't be able to enjoy in the first place.

I'm not entirely sure how I knew I wouldn't be able to enjoy it in the first place. There are a few traditional menu-driven RPGs I've really enjoyed (Panzer Dragoon Saga and Skies of Arcadia in particular); I don't hate RPGs by default, but I think they have a lot of innate flaws as a genre and as a result most of them suffer.

The difference is that you don't have the right to judge a game you haven't properly played

Absolutely correct, which is why I should play Suikoden more. (I say 'Suikoden III sucks' with the same tongue-in-cheek abandon [I'm hoping] you used when you called it 'a plain incorrect statement.') I'm dissing the game merely superficially here-- all this is is why I'm finding it difficult working up the motivation to continue the damn thing.

If you don't have the gumption to learn the menus (and as far as RPG complexity goes, Suikoden is simpler and easier than most), then don't play the fucking game, but don't pretend like you know what you're talking about either.

The fact that it's so difficult to learn what I'm talking about is exactly what I'm complaining about. Despite your evident patience mere mortals can only aspire to, it's not nonsensical or irrational to expect a game to be accessible.