I'm undergoing something of a crisis as far as decent software goes these days. It seems to me that no game can really hold my attention for very long at all.
This is the case for multiple reasons. One of which being that I'm an obsessive customizer. It seems like if there's a game out there that can be tweaked. I must tweak it before I can enjoy it. This applies to every game from Jagged Alliance 2 to FOT, OFP to Farcry, you name it. If something doesn't appeal to me I must alter it unless it overwhelms my ability to enjoy the game otherwise.
Usually this has discouraged me as of late for two reasons. One being that It's usually a lot of work salvaging a game so it's playable in my opinion. A lot of editing isn't what I'm up for these days. Secondly, sometimes the games I attempt to edit simply cannot handle what I attempt to do with them without becoming an unplayable mess. For example farcry and my endeavor to add realistic damage for the weapons and detection and combat ranges to the AI.
This resulted in my finding out that the LOD for every entity is determined in the level itself... So basically I had snipers shooting at me from beyond my ability to see them, even though the visual range had been maxxed out. This resulted in a lot of easy kills for the ai. The only way to really truly fix the problem was to edit every single level... and that's a bit too much effort for a game. Games are supposed to be enjoyable, that's a whole disproportionate assload of work for a bit of enjoyment. I don't like the traditional FPS game. So running about taking a million bullets and having enemies take a million bullets is in no way an option.
So... I can't even touch Farcry now. The same issue is happening to me in FOT with the amount of work I'm going to have to go through to enjoy the game (essentially abolishing perception stats below 7). I'm getting rather daunted by this task as I want to play a game now. Not in a week or so.
Another reason I can't seem to fix my attention on a game for more than a short period of time is my utter intolerance for games with serious problems. Specifically with performance or control. I attempted to play Morrowind again now that I've recently gotten a new PC. After having enjoyed Daggerfall so much when I was younger I thought I owed it to myself to try again after being thoroughly disgusted with the poor performance of the game on my 1.8ghz machine.
It has the exact same problems. That awful stuttering which causes the sound and the game to suddenly stop as if you were playing some really laggy online game. For a game that's supposed to be so atmospheric it kills any interest I have in it. Apparently this is -not- an issue of failing hardware. It happens in the Xbox version as well as quite a few people complain about it on the TES messageboards. Even if the supposed tweaks make those lag spikes more endurable. That's way too much work to get a game working as it should. I'm totally disgusted with the game now and tossed my cd in the bin.
I attempted to play Gothic 2. As someone had told me it was an interesting rpg and the combat wasn't of the KotoR, NWN, fake turn-based nature that I find so boring and loathe so much. The controls are annoying, however I read some reviews attributing that to the complexity. I disagree as it was more the issue that the controls triggered ridiculously jumpy and sparse animations for every action the control was associated with. Discouraged again. I uninstalled it as soon as I got a few minutes into the game.
I have Doom 3 kicking around somewhere. However I got sick of traditional FPS games long ago. I could install Deus Ex 2. however Deus ex's combat defied logic with so much overemphasis on stats that I couldn't stand it either.
Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical or I'm just outgrowing games altogether. However I'm getting sick of the old games I used to like as I've played them too much and the new games out there just don't appeal to me at all.
I'm beginning to think this new computer is going to be a really expensive word processor.
Where have all the good games gone?
