Welcome, welcome to the 5th installment of Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza headed by bs angel! Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic:

Discuss one game you quit before completion because of a particular perceived flaw it had. What was that flaw and how could it have been fixed where you would have finished the game?

Wow, what a question: what one game did I quit because of a flaw? The better question is what games did I not quit because of what I felt was a perceived flaw.

To a large extent, the idea that any packaged entertainment event could hold a person’s attention span for more than 8 hours is rather incredible. We live in a time when we are rarely asked to devote our attention to anything for more than a few minutes.

That said, rather than focus on the games I did not finish, it might be more interesting to try to recall the ones I did finish. Keeping to just this generation:

Oblivion: I really didn’t like Oblivion all that much, but I found it to be addicting. I finished all the main quest and most of the side quests. I had over 30 hours in that game. Considering that I found it sac religious to some extent, it’s pretty impressive that they could get me sucked into that game.

Halo 3: This is the first Halo game I ever played the single player campaign. To be honest, I found the story, dialog, and acting to all be B-movie level at best. The music was good. The cutscenes were not impressive. The story is complete garbage. I would have never played it without online co-op or midnight launch event excitement.

Bioshock: I meant to finish Bioshock. I really thought it was awesome. After about 8 hours, however, I got tired of the scary bits and quit. Sorry, Ken Levine. I did like it, but the intensity was a little too much.

Gears of War: See Halo 3 description J Bad story, bad acting, depressing – generally not very likable. But man, is the co-op fun!

Fight Night Round 3: You weren’t expecting to see this title on the list, were you? Nope. But it’s here. Because that game was awesome and the single player career was a total blast. I loved every minute of it. It’s probably only a 6-8 hour game, but it’s a fun 6-8 hours.

Crackdown: I didn’t get all the achievements, but I played the story mode on this game and loved it. Another co-op friendly title. See a trend here? I spent tons of hours looking for orbs, jumping cars, and raising hell. The most underrated game on the 360.

Viva Pinata: I am still not sure how Rare pulled this one off. It’s the only good game they’ve made in the past 10+ years, and it’s great. Like an oasis in a desert of terrible titles. But VP is great. The single player is addictive and fun. And it never got old. I could play through it again. How often can you say that?

Gun: I think this game has had its reputation tarnished because the graphics weren’t quite up to snuff at launch and it quickly went to the bargain bins. But what a bargain bin game this is! Gun is great. It’s the only western-themed FPS to really pull it off. It’s got a good story, fun characters, and fun gameplay. I would love to see a sequel…maybe with co-op play

So there you go: a list of games that I actually enjoyed – quite the break from the norm. I love picking out games’ flaws and ripping them to shreds. But today, let’s celebrate some games that actually made me happy to play them. They are too few and far between in the endless ocean of internet game hype.

Check out these other Blog Banter articles! Silvercublogger, Unfettered Blather, Triage Effect, Gamer Unit, Delayed Responsibility, Man Bytes Blog, CrazyKinux’s Musing, Zath!, Draining Souls.net, Game Couch, Hawty McBloggy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.