POSTED BY

Tom Armitage

AT 8:34 AM
Friday June 5, 2009

E3 2009 • Featured • Something For The Weekend

Something For The Weekend: Finish Those Games!

e3-sftw.jpg

E3 is over, and my feedreader, Twitter-stream and pub conversations have, at long last, all calmed down from their temporary frenetic haze of hype and speculation. As usual with the industry's tentpole conferences, there's always far too much to take in, far too big a glut of announcements, and at least as many announcements of returning franchises as new IP.

Yes, I dropped the F-bomb. Franchise is such an unpleasant word; it signals the point where a game becomes a business, where annual or biannual updates are guaranteed until the title is unpopular, and where the return on your investment is likely to decrease between each successive installment.

Or does it? Much as the F-word makes me nauseous, many of my favourite games end in a number. There's nothing wrong with a good sequel, just as long as it is a genuinely good sequel. And lots of the suffixed titles shown off this year looked jolly good.

The footage we've seen of Modern Warfare 2 (above) once again proves that, when it comes to pacing and technical perfection, Infinity Ward really know their stuff. I'm quite excited by what's been shown of Bioware's Mass Effect 2, both in terms of where they're taking the narrative tone and the tweaks and enhancements being applied throughout the game's mechanics.

I'm trusting Valve in their decision to make the already high-up-my-list Left 4 Dead 2 a stand-alone title in its own right. I'm even, dare I say foolishly, somewhat interested in the spectacular (yet potentially dull) Assassin's Creed 2 (above). And I don't think there's anyone that won't relish the chance to return to all those beautiful planetoids in Super Mario Galaxy 2, especially now there's a dinosaur companion to enjoy them with.

Looking down that list serves a purpose other than tiding me over the quiet summer months and starting to write my Christmas list, though. It also reminds me of how many games on my shelves aren't finished.

And so that's my plan for the weekend, and indeed the coming weeks: triaging the stack, and Finishing Some Games. I've returned to Mass Effect, having cleared the horrible difficulty spike that is Matriarch Benezia, and am looking forward to wrapping the adventure up, my savegame ready to be imported into the sequel come next year. I'm slowly pushing on with my plan to get my regular cohorts into Advanced campaigns on Left 4 Dead, and maybe - just maybe - survive one without dropping the difficulty level.

And, having just acquired a Wii, I'm stepping into the majesty of Super Mario Galaxy for the first time. What a game! It charms and thrills in equal measure, and whilst I may be collecting stars for the first time, I'm sure many of you still haven't collected all 120. If not, now's the time to fire it up again and remember what that wonderful world feels like.

And then, when all my games are wrapped up (as if that will ever happen), I'll be ready - dare I say it, even deserving - of the treats to come in the Autumn and beyond. What's on your unfinished stack, Offworlders, and what are you going to be finishing up this weekend?

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7 Comments

dr_awkward

#1 – 9:32 AM June 5, 2009

1). Rolando.

2). Nethack. Might take a while. (Been working on it for >10 years...)

Drew Blood

#2 – 10:20 AM June 5, 2009

Going to finish up the FEAR2 rental that has been sitting here for 3 weeks getting mighty expensive, and maybe I'll wrap up World of Goo.

A New Challenger

#3 – 2:06 PM June 5, 2009

My backlog is huge. I was playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and then I got a cheap copy of GTA San Andreas which I'd already played on PC but has sucked me back in. Not to mention games stretching back even farther, such as Luigi's Mansion and Rocket: Robot On Wheels.

Scypher

#4 – 2:52 PM June 5, 2009

I've been working on last-gen games for the last couple years!

What I'm currently juggling:
- Mother 3
- Fatal Frame II
- Devil Summoner 2: Raidou vs. King Abaddon
- Ar tonelico 2
- Okami
- Indigo Prophecy
- Braid

What I will finish this weekend:
- ...

AirPillo

#5 – 11:10 PM June 6, 2009

Making L4D2 so soon is quite probably a very stupid move, honestly.

The people behind the boycott are right. Moving to producing a sequel, right after releasing the original, is completely antithetical to the kind of post-release content addition that Valve led customers to expect. Calling it deceptive is a bit extreme but not unwarranted.

At the very least, it's going to take L4D's playerbase, and split it. It will be a very, very long time before L4D players trickle over to L4D2, and that's really going to diminish its earning potential, which in turn will likely gimp Valve's interest in releasing free content for the game.

Matthew_H

#6 – 1:59 AM June 9, 2009

Here:

Beyond Good and Evil
Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble
Darwinia
Defense Grid
Eets
Gish
Oddworld 1 and 2
STALKER: SotC
Tomb Raider Anniversary
Zeno Clash

I'm just reading off my Steam list of not installed (and unplayed) games. For brevity I excluded the entire Half-life and Unreal franchises, all of which I have, and none of which I've actually finished, dear God! Lame! Well, except Portal and Lost Coast, I finished those.

Also, does it count as 'not finished' when it's a multiplayer game like Team Fortress 2 or the Unreal Tournaments, and you suck at it and have almost no Achievements and play it rarely even though you love it very very much? 'Cause I do that too.

Can't wait for my damn degree.

KBKarma

#7 – 8:10 AM June 14, 2009

My list is, frankly,... large.

It includes:
Aquaria (but I'm close!)
The ENTIRE Baldur's Gate series
Beyond Good And Evil (I messed up fighting the LAST boss. Now I have to start again. :()
Braid (three worlds to complete! After this one...)
Diablo 2 (never got past the Desert)
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and IV: Oblivion (the former, I keep dropping because it keeps crashing and I have no idea what I'm doing and where I am when the game loads, the latter because I'm playing an Assassin with a crap Blade skill facing off against high-level Daedra)
Freelancer
The ENTIRE Fallout series
GTA: Vice City (which I enjoyed messing around in)
Guild Wars (I like the series, but I keep getting sidetracked)
Half-Life (bloody Xen...)
Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (no, I've never finished it. I kept trying to save EVERYONE)
Neverwinter Nights (I keep messing up, so I've started again)
Oni (never finished it. Odd, that)
The ENTIRE new Prince of Persia series (bloody elevator in SoT...)
Planescape: Torment (and I'm really unhappy about this)
Total Annihilation
W40k: Dawn of War

Ummm... That's about it.

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