We’ve all become quite busy on Mass Effect 2 in the last few weeks: stride has been set and we’re all working our damnedest to make the best game we can possibly make.
For me, right now, this means pulling on average one day a week late. Not because we’re IN crunch – though the writers are right now – but because I don’t like to be on time. Experience tells me that something will come up and screw with a perfectly in sync schedule, so I better be ahead.
But because I’m spending so much time and, mostly, energy on making Mass Effect 2 as great as I can and, as a fan first, want to see in this title, I find I have very little energy to do anything else beyond that: work on The Top Secret Neat Idea has been stagnant; work on this site minimal; tweeting has become a recent fad for me, what with Facebook out of the picture and Twitter’s easy to write 140 char maximum. Evenings have predominantly become Mad Men, a movie, perhaps Cowboy Bebop and, if it tickles my fancy, a game.
But even gaming has become, right now, not entirely satisfactory. Take now for instance: I haven’t completed my second playthrough Mass Effect (those in the know know I got to play it the first time on a devkit at home) and I still have a store of games I haven’t finished and in some cases started.
I love Dead Space, for example. But there’s something about the game that’s stopping me from playing. I love True Horror (like The Thing and Alien), and while Dead Space has some fantastic visual and audio elements and some decent gameplay (dismembering!) I find myself almost bored at every turn. Every room feels like a trap or sting, and the exploration is almost minimal: the levels are very linear with almost no choice or false-choice evident. I play for about an hour and put the controller down wishing that I had moments of ‘normalcy’ to explore a regular working ship…to contrast greatly with the horrors that the designer wants to inundate me with. To me, this would make Dead Space stronger, almost flawless….but I am biased: I think that any game turned into an RPG would be much better.
I’m waiting on Gears2 so that I can play co-op with a friend—I enjoyed Gears much more the second time around in co-op that I don’t want to play the sequel at all in single player. Need For Speed…well honestly I’ve just written that series off. I’d rather be playing Burnout Paradise for my racing fix. And I’m waiting for the new DLC for Fable 2 for my second play through.
So with Lost and Damned done (worth the download) I’m left with the only things that seem to occupy my evenings: Peggle and Lode Runner, two arcadey games that keep the thought and expectation meter low; two games I can turn off after 5 minutes.
And after I’ve said all of this I think that the true problem is that the Game Development industry has fucked up. A slew of games came out in the Holiday Season and absolutely none, nothing of interest and most definitely nothing that is geared towards me, has come out since January.
And then I realized that I kinda fucked up too: I have a hobby that requires me to wait for other people to make me something.
Perhaps its time to find another hobby that doesn’t require that.
