The Sadly Forgotten

While sifting through the copious amount of games that I've played and have not yet written on, I found several games that I put a considerable amount of time into, yet somehow didn't make it onto the writing queue. One, you could argue that the oversight occurred simply because it was a forgettable game, the other, well, I've quit trying to make up excuses to you (now you get to feel like Tiger Wife!)

Halo 3: ODST

• Platform: Xbox 360
• Release Date: 9/22/09 - First Played: 6/12/10 (9 months behind!)
• Playthroughs: 3+
• Achievements: 860/1000
• I compare it to: A Firefly cast reunion with the Halo 3 engine
• Play it again?: I'll wait for the real Big Damn Game.

I used to be big into Halo. I mean BIG. I bought my Xbox specifically for Halo 2, and I thought it was worth it. I spent a whole weekend at a friend's place playing through Halo 3 because I couldn't afford a 360 at the time (and once I could, I borrowed a copy for like, 4 months). I beat all 3 of the first Halos on each difficulty, all the way to Legendary, simply because they were so fun. (Not to mention that Halo was the core of some of my best times with local multiplayer)

Then, I got sick of Halo. I don't know whether it was the deluge of spin offs in the years following, the fact that my son liked it more than Star Wars, or if Tiger Wife broke that part of my gaming spirit (dragon from FF12, baby), but sometime in 2009, I just stopped caring. I heard that Bungie was working on a new, budget priced campaign to tide us over until Reach, and thought, ok, whatever. Then it turned out that it was going to be a full priced retail campaign, and I pretty much lost interest.

Long story short, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention when it came out.

When I got around to it, my feelings about it were, complicated. During the opening cinematic, I was utterly thrilled to hear the dulcet tones of not only Tricia Helfer (6 from Battlestar Galactica), Adam Baldwin, and Alan Tudyk, but the Lord of the Geeks himself, Nathan Fillion! (Jayne, Wash, and Mal from Firefly, respectively) However, I was less enthused when I stepped into the shoes of the Rookie, another very compelling mute, faceless protagonist. (For the record, there's a BIG difference between men of few words, and men of no words.)

ODST continued to send me on the emotional rollercoaster throughout my experience with it. The cool night vision mode was offset by getting lost between missions. Being able to play as characters voiced by some of my favorite actors was offset by the excruciatingly boring and lame audiologs and the pain of having to collect them in a certain order. (Many, many games have audiologs nowadays; ODST has the distinction of being the first game where I dreaded picking them up) The lack of dual-wielding was made up for with the lack of Flood. The list goes on.

Overall, ODST was alright, but I wouldn't consider it a must-play for anyone but hardcore Halo geeks, or Firefly geeks. The characters are great, as are the performances, but the story is not. ODST has some nice add-ons though. It comes with a Halo 3 Multiplayer disc that contains all of the DLC maps, and also has the first iteration of Firefight (which officially became awesome in Reach). You could do worse, but you could do better too.

Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers  

• Platform: Xbox 360
• Release Date: 6/17/09 First Played: 7/1/10 (1 year behind!)
• Playthoughs: 4+
• Achievements: 215/300
• I compare it to:  One of the geekier things I did as a teen resurrected as the geekiest thing I do as an adult.
• Play It Again? It always comes back to haunt me, one way or another.

Yeah, you read that right. I played Magic: The Gathering as a teenager. And now I'm playing it again as an adult. My wife plays it, even my kid plays it now. He does so as a direct result of this infernally addictive video game adaptation of the card game that I spent a good chunk of my youth (and youthly money) on.

Magic utilizes the 15 year old system by way of pre-built decks with additional cards unlockable as you play the game. This formula actually works very, very well; it slowly adds new elements as you master the stratagems available in the base decks. Animations and sound effects are added for window dressing, but they add a surprising amount to the experience.

I'm not an expert on this particular subject, but the more games I play with a critical eye, the more I notice the AI. I kind of look at it the way moviegoers tend to look at sound design, meaning that if you don't notice it, the job has been done right. I did notice the Magic AI, however, but only because it's so damn smart! While somewhat forgiving on the early levels of the campaign, after a few rungs of the ladder, it doesn't miss a single opportunity to wrench your sweet, sweet tears from your eyes with it's ability to see what you're trying to do, and bring it to a screeching halt if at all possible. This, of course, makes every game unique, and gives Magic an almost infinite replay value.

This persistent freshness in the game also extends to online multiplayer, where, even I will admit, I had an absolute blast. One of my main gripes with the card game was that I could usually only find others to play with once or twice a month, and 3/4 of the time we'd spend on the game was getting the decks together. There is however, an epidemic of rage-quitting online. Every time I lost, I accepted my defeat with the same grace as a victory, which is simply staying for the whole game. Roughly one out of every two matches I played I won by forfeit, as the other took off once it became apparent they were going to lose. This is supremely frustrating while Achievement-whoring, because a win by forfeit doesn't count toward the number of wins required. (Fun fact: Magic is the only game I've found myself rating players. I avoided rage-quitters and preferred players who actually stayed to the bitter end)

My one big gripe with Magic is also the one thing that keeps it a balanced game. I really wish I could customize decks. I do understand why this can't happen however, having been beaten on several occasions by mediocre players that simply had more rare and powerful cards. The only way to truly ensure a "fair" game of Magic is with sealed, pre-built decks, which is how they do it in the tournaments. It would be nice to at least have more options with the decks in game, at least being able to adjust the number of land cards in a deck (to try to avoid the all-too-common problems my friends and I lovingly refer to as mana-rape and mana-drench).

This aside, I'd go as far as to say that anyone who ever even liked the card game should download this immediately. It's not as great as pulling out all the old cards and having a game on the table, but it's damn close.

Next Time! Will I ever catch up? Not bloody likely!