Top 10 Games I Never Finished

I've been gaming since I was 8, so thats 20 years of dedicated gaming. Along the way I've come across some big games that I just never finished. Wether the game was too difficult or just too time consuming I've just never finished it. Here are my top 10 games that I never finished, but wish I had (or could).

10. Oblivion (360)

I have spent 60+ hours traveling the landscape of Cyrodiil and I have gotten pretty far in the main quest line. However, I made the mistake of starting a second character before finishing the first and the second character sucks, so I don't want to play anymore. I still have Oblivion and visit it from time to time chipping away at that main quest line, but the drive and enjoyment isn't there anymore.

9. Dragon Warrior III (NES)

Oh man, back when I first got this game (1991) it was friggin' huge! Being a fan since the first Dragon Warrior, I poured hours and hours into it and tried with all my might. However, thanks to running from monsters early in the game, I'd get pwnd by all the late game monsters and just couldn't hang. I hung up the sword when Dragon Warrior IV hit the shelves (I destroyed DW IV though!).

8. Syphon Filter (PS)

I got my PS right after the release of Metal Gear: Solid. My friend and I destroyed it over a three day weekend, seeing more of the continue screen then we would like. I remember picking up Syphon Filter shortly after because it was being touted as a high-octane Metal Gear type game. While the begining to mid levels are fun and well paced, the last few levels are a bitch! Warehouse 76 gave me nightmares for weeks. I held on to Syphon Filter for the 3 years I had my PS and played it every now and then but I just couldn't get past the friggin Silo Tunnels...

7. FF VIII (PS)

I have completed every Final Fantasty released in the US with the exception of the MMOs and FF VIII. Oh my god was I ever pissed at this game. Since the original I have been a huge fan of Final Fantasy. I consider FF VIII to be the steaming pile of the series. The game was so bad in my opinion that I barely got past the first 2 hours of gameplay, then the car came in and i said 'eF this!!!'. I had to drag out the SNES and purge myself with a new game of FF II... Oh and the 'Gunblade' can go screw!

6. Commando (NES)

This only makes the list because it is the very first game that I ever owned. I even had it before I got the console (6 months later... Thanks dad!!!!) Commando was just a mean game. Even with all the power ups and unlimited grenades I could only make it past a few levels. I ritualisticaly burned it when my first NES bit the dust.

5. Cobra Command (NES)

Another mean game and it wasn't even that great of a game. I wasted too much of my childhood trying to beat this game. Its friggin' impossible! Homing missles, bullets flying everywhere, flying underground its just too much at once. That and you have to rescue all the POWs. The control response on the chopper is what doomed me the most, a slight mistap on the controller and I would slam into the roof of the cave... And flying into a battleship?!?! FTW?!?!?

4. Secret of Mana (SNES)

Awesome game, I love it. But damn does it get hard when you get towards the end!!! My problem with it when I first got to play it was I could only rent it 3 days at a time. So what usually happened was I would rent it then someone else would get it after me and wipe/screw up my save. When I did get it consecutively I couldn't get past the Pure Land no matter how high my levels were. I played it again last year on emulation (I got the cart in a bargain bin back in the PS days shortly before my SNES bit it, still got the cart though) and again made it all the way to the Pure Land, but this time my HDD crashed and everything was lost... Damn!

3. Blaster Master (NES)

This is the game that never ends. It just goes on and on my friends! Screw that damn Crab!!! I think I only beat that bastard twice and after I did I would die by some stupid vehicle world monster by mistake. Sunsoft games are the pits, but some how I got into some testing program with them (dad?) and they would send me free copies of their games(along with a survey) weeks before their public release. Batman, Fester's Quest, Freedom Force, and of course Blaster Master. I wonder what they thought when they got a letter from a ten year old telling them that all their games suck...

2. Castlevania (NES)

Damn this list has a ton of NES games on it... Drac was a worthy adversary and I believe that Castlevania got me started on the whole controller tossing habit. After beating Drac in his first form, only to be greeted with his second form, I tossed the controller clear across the room (you should see my old Xbox controller from all the Halo 2 matches). Getting to Drac is hard enough, but that second form is just too much to overcome. I gave up because it was too hard and frustrating getting that far just to get my ass kicked...

1. Einhander (PS)

My white whale.... What an awesome game. This game is easily in my top three favorites of all times. I never minded the challenge of the game and I would play it to death at times. I just wasn't skillful enough to get past the later levels, but man I wish I could have gone to the end, just to say that I did. I mean isn't that why most of us beat games? Just to say that we did it? This game would be phenominal on XBLA.

Well there is my list. I'm sure you have some of your own that have been haunting you over the years. Care to share?

Posted by Lithium @ 2:16 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

First Grill of the Season...

Fuck yeah! I officially killed winter this Saturday as I busted out my $30 Wal-Mart charcoal burning grill to sear some thick T-bones.

Not exactly sure of the science behind it, but man does meat taste a thousand times better when its cooked outdoors over an ashen pile of coals. This is where my faith lies. I give homage to the grill gods as they may bless me with a juicy and tender feast. The oven broiler is my hell, Kingsford is my heaven.

The ritual begins early with a can of Guinness poured into a gallon size plastic bag. Then fresh ground pepper (the chunkier the better), fresh chopped garlic (again the chunkier the better), and crushed sea salt are added to the bag. Shot of Jameson Irish Wiskey is optional, but highly recommended. Throw the beef in the bag, seal tight with as little air as possible and then massage the concoction into the meat. Let sit in the fridge for at least 6 hours.

Two bags of Kingsford are required for the official slaying of winter. My wife thinks I'm nuts for "wasting" all that black gold, but its essential to appease the grill gods as winter is a difficult beast to slay. Carefully assemble the briquettes into a tall pyramid, let some boy scout juice (lighter fluid) soak in... Wooosh!!! The taller the flame the happier the gods shall be!!!

The gods smiled on me and blessed me with a juicy, tender bounty! This is my man-religion!

Posted by Lithium @ 10:22 am EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

FTW Is Wrong With People These Days?!?!

Well, as I was looking for confrimation as to what that weird red orbital icon that appeared right next to the health bar during a Co-Op game of Crackdown was for, I stumbled on a couple other posts of interest. One was titled: "HL3 Wont DL?!" (I'll give you a link at the end).

I thought to myself, "This will be amusing..." Idiot posters draw me in like a train wreck. I just can't stay away. So, I opened it to see how many times people made the "There is no Half-Life 3 n00b" joke or the "How could you miss the BIG, Silver card that came in the case" comment. Suprisingly most people were helpful and only a couple made the joke and comment I just listed, but in some vain attempt to save his e-reputation he retaliated with this comment:

"the intructions dont mention a date, and it does happen to be spring on the west coast, so stfu." ( Link to post )

My goodness, some one wasn't paying attention in Kindergarten. My little girl is learning the seasons in Kindergarten now, thats how I know that this is Kindergarten material.

I wanted to reply sooooo badly, but I have better sense than to start a flame war with a rock....

Posted by Lithium @ 12:57 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

The Headaches of On-Line Rentals

Ever sign up for something and get more than you bargained for? Well personally, I have on more than a dozen occasions. My most recent folly involved the on-line game rental services.

Like most people I thought, "What a great idea! This is going to be easy and well worth the monthly fee..." What I never took into consideration is the possiblility of errors. My grandpa always told me: "The more working parts something has, the more prone it is to break" Without getting into specifics, lets take into consideration how many parts there are to an on-line game rental service: the website, distrubution, the Postal Service, and to a small part Customer Service.  That's a whole lot thats out of your control.

What can go wrong? I took a poll earlier this week and asked for on-line rental headaches that happend to any 2old2play members. These are the questions I asked:

• Game Lost In Mail When Returning to Service Provider: 27% This acctually was my problem and my motivation behind this article. Not only does this clog your steady flow of new games it also brings up customer service issues. Some service providers will write off the game once you report the loss and a period of time passes (usually two weeks). Others may have you go to the USPS to resolve the issue. Since missing mail must be reported by the sender this is one headache that I'm sure none of us would like to deal with. Hard part is, this happens, and if you plan on using any on-line game rental for an extended length of time this issue is bound to happen.
• Game Never Reached Me: 0% No one complained of this issue. Makes me wonder how come so many get lost on the way back...
• Game Took 2 Weeks Or More to Reach Service Provider: 9% Generally, when this happens the game is 'lost' in the distribution facility. If you think about it, any sizable service provider has a customer base in the thousands. On some days its possible for hundreds of games to arrive. They are bound to drop the ball on some of them and misplace them in the shuffle. Most times, when you report the game missing they will match it in the distribution facility. Choosing a service that also rents movies only compounds this problem.
• Game Took 2 Weeks Or More to Reach Me: 9% Days off for the Postal Service, slow distribution facilities, and distribution facilites that are clear across the country. Make sure that when you do sign up for a service that you look into the locations of their distribution facilities. Many services post it on their site. Find a service that has one close to you.
• Got A Game That Was Not On My List: 0% Thats a good sign.
• I Have A Hard Time Getting Newer Releases That Are On My List 45% This was the biggest problem. With the rising cost of games many people are looking to these services to get some of the games that they want to play, but may not necessarily want to keep. The demand for new games versus old is lopsided making it hard to fill requests for new games but real easy to fill requests for old games. This means that if you have a queue of 10 games with the newer games on top priority and older games on low priority you're more likely to get that older game regardless. Its unfeasible for the service provider to get a copy of a new game for every customer that has it on their queue, so they get a percent of that demand and try to spread it out thin. If you have a large queue expect to get the old over the new.
• I Received A Damaged Game: 0% While the poll showed zero, many people posted a complaint of receiving a faulty disk. Short of a tour, its impossible to say what happens when returned games arrive at the distribution facility. This problem has been around since the dawn of video rental stores. I can remember renting dozens of broken VHS cassetts and scratched DVDs over the years. There is no cheap solution for this problem and the service providers will continue to rely on us to report damaged games.
• Billing/Cancellation Issue: 9% A member of 2old2play posted that it took three months to get his account cancelled. Sad to say, there is no easy button in your customer profile on the site. Most service providers make you phone in cancellations and it usually makes for a very awkward conversation with the customer service representative. Saying "Your service sucks!" usually opens a whole scripted can of worms and makes it a big head ache. Best tell them that your system is kaput and you will not be replacing it. 

What would a bunch of cons be with out pros? No punchline here. Rather than driving to the rental store only to find that they don't have what you want you can instead browse on-line and let some one else pick the game off the rack. You get more games for your buck in the long run. There is no embarasment when you need to rent Barbie: Horse Adventures for your daughter. Larger selection: most of these service providers deal in games only and that means more to choose from.

Here are some quick tips for choosing a service provider:

• Find one that has a distribution facility that is close to you.
• Browse the site before you sign up and look for ease of website use and game choices (make sure they have what you are looking for).
• Keep your queue small. This will make you more likely to get what you really want by reducing the choices the service provider has.
• When you send a game back check your queue often to see if it arrived. If it has been more than seven business days since you sent and they show it out, report it missing.
• If you want just games stick to a service provider that only rents games. However, if you do pick a service that offers games and DVDs prepare to get more movies than games

Remeber: Stuff happens and there are few guarranties in life. Its up to you to look out for numero uno. Happy gaming!

Posted by Lithium @ 4:25 pm EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments

Player of the Month

I made Player of the Month within my Clan (not hard, just a random drawing to showcase a member of the Clan).

LINK

Read for more info on your favorite FFA Host  ;-)

Oh, and if you want the inside scoop on what "making puppies" is about you need to be recruited into the Clan. Sorry!

Posted by Lithium @ 1:58 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments