Has anyone else found themselves wondering where all the good games have gone? Other than a few diamonds in the rough (Oblivion, Civ4, Galactic Civilizations 2) there seems to have been a distinct lack of excellent games of late. For the past few years I\u2019ve been working on ways to enjoy games as I used to, below are a list of 6 simple steps to follow.<\/p>\n
Some people are blaming the lack of good games at the moment on the big publishers and their obsession with sequels. I agree that they are partly to blame, however just as much blame falls on the average gamer who goes out and buys these drab excuses for games. By buying Indie games not only will you find some more interesting, fun, cheaper and original games, you\u2019ll also be helping to support those who want to make games like that (such as yours truly). I don\u2019t want to start listing lots of games to go out and buy, follow #3 on this list and try some demos for some excellent indie games, there are hundreds out there and you can almost be guaranteed there\u2019ll be one you like. Not surprisingly one of my favourite indie games is ShortHike – Space Station Game<\/a>.<\/p>\n This one is so obvious a lot of people miss it. Have you ever found yourself playing a game where each level you unlock a new special ability or weapon with the excitement building each time. Often the developers will put a lot of time and effort into making this an important part of the fun in a game. The best way to ruin this is by hopping online and getting given every possible weapon in the game, ruining the suspense and giving you an overload of information. There\u2019s a reason single player games only give you a few rewards at a time, it\u2019s a simple tactic to keep the player engaged and always wanting that little bit more. Take the time to finish the single player game all the way through (or as far as you usually like to go) before stepping out into the big bad world of the internet.<\/p>\n I used to buy every PC Powerplay<\/a> magazine (and before that Hyper) when I was growing up. I\u2019d read all the previews of games coming out and I\u2019d go to websites to get every piece of information and screenshot I could find. I\u2019d pre-order the game and when it was released run down to EB to buy the game. I\u2019d get home, play it for a few hours and realise that 90% of the promises made weren\u2019t kept, and that generally most of the games turned out to be rubbish. I no longer have subscriptions to these magazines, and I only visit the news sites for general information about games coming out. The best way to tell if a game is any good is to play its demo. You\u2019ll pick up more from 5 mins in a demo than hours of previews and interviews with developers. If your game doesn\u2019t have a demo then there\u2019s a good chance they\u2019ve got something to hide and I\u2019d steer clear of it. Most games have demos these days and Indie games especially use these as their main tool for winning customers. We\u2019re lucky in the games industry to be able to \u2018try before you buy\u2019 so make use of this and don\u2019t get caught out buying the next \u2018Tiberian Sun\u2019.<\/p>\n This is particularly useful if you live in Australia where ordering games from the US will often get them here on or just after their Australian release date and often for a fraction of the price. As I\u2019m a stingy bastard, I now order nearly all of my games online. If it\u2019s a really big, hyped, release this makes it even better, as I found with Civilization 4. It\u2019s like waiting for Christmas morning every time you wait for a game. I actually found this suspense more alluring than I had first thought it would be, as in our current society if you have enough money you can pretty much get anything you want instantly. Being forced to wait a few extra days for a game makes the suspense just that little bit more unbearable.<\/p>\n While this may seem to counter #1 and #4 it actually fits in well with both of them. The important part to this rule is to make sure you don\u2019t buy too many games. I\u2019ll never forget when my good friend Nick and I went to EB and he brought Half-Life and Delta Force on the same day. We went home, played Delta Force for a few hours thinking it was the coolest game ever, we then tried out Half-Life and realised that it was THE game of the century. The delta force CD then gathered dust over the following weeks as we were completely engulfed in the epic that was Half-Life. If you buy less games, you can spend more time on the games you own, and experience their full potential rather than just playing a few hours, discarding them and moving on to another few hours of the Next Big Thing.<\/p>\n Not only is pirating bad for developers and their pay cheques, but it also hurts those who are pirating the games. It seems there\u2019s a lack of respect for the game as it\u2019s not paid for which leads people to become bored of the games more quickly than if they\u2019d gone out and paid for them. Not only do you have no suspense, even as small as walking into EB seeing if the game\u2019s released yet, you\u2019re just not getting the full experience of opening the packet, reading the first few pages of the manual (or the whole thing if you\u2019re like me) and really soaking up what games are all about. I\u2019ll admit the publishers have a lot to answer for with their paper sleeves and ridiculously small manual if they even supply one, however once again, take the higher ground and just don\u2019t buy their games, there are plenty of other games for you to spend your hard earned money on.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s it, while some of these steps may seem a little weird I implore you to try them at least once to see just how much more you can enjoy your games if you try them.<\/p>\n On an unrelated note, two of my good friends (and co-workers) have just released new indie products that you should check out. Cliff has just released Xion<\/a>, the most kick-ass media player around, and Walter\u2019s just released Cavemen<\/a> for pocket PC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Has anyone else found themselves wondering where all the good games have gone? Other than a few diamonds in the rough (Oblivion, Civ4, Galactic Civilizations 2) there seems to have been a distinct lack of excellent games of late. For the past few years I\u2019ve been working on ways to enjoy games as I used Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgEc5-T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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