It can take a long time to complete a video game. The average video game can take you anywhere between 10 to 20 hours to beat and there are plenty that can take even longer! While many video games are undoubtedly fun, doing the same thing for hours upon hours can potentially exhaust you. You might be tempted to take a break and do something different, perhaps play another video game of a different genre or watch a film or a TV series. The game developers, of course, don’t want you to do this and many choose to include minigames…
Category: Video Games
It seems like the logical answer to this question should be a resounding yes. Surely the majority of gamers finish the games they play, right? While pondering the question, I was reminded of a statistic I saw many years ago where I read that only 10% of players finish the game they are playing. Of course, that news story is quite old by this point. I went looking for more recent information and discovered a news article from late 2017 which calculated how many people completed a game based on their achievements. While not as dire as the earlier news story, it does seem to show that a majority of gamers do not complete the games they start. Why is this?
An obvious answer would be that people give up games they are not enjoying. I know for sure that I have given up on games in the past because I was not enjoying them. Life is too short and time too precious to be spending time playing a game that you dislike (unless you are reviewing the game, streaming the game, doing research etc).
I remember going onto the Humble Store in the past year and seeing that Square Enix games were on sale. From past experience I knew that the sale would only include their Western titles such as Tomb Raider, Life is Strange and Deus Ex. A few days later, I saw that Square Enix Japan had decided to join the sale. However, whereas Square Enix’s Western titles were as much as 85% off, their Japanese games were limited to 50% off or less. This made me think about how Japanese publishers price their games during sales compared to Western publishers.
The first thing I want to address is the possible misconception that this article is about self-entitlement. I could easily imagine someone reading the first paragraph and thinking “This guy just wants cheap games!” However, as I’ve mentioned before, I primarily play Japanese games and my only platform for video games these days is the PC. It wasn’t too long ago when very few Japanese games came out for PC and I wish to see them succeed on the PC platform.
I can remember the controversy of Final Fantasy XIII when it was released. People had a variety of problems with the game (I’m more fond of the game than most as evidenced by my Final Fantasy game ranking) but one of the more prominent issues was the linearity of the game. Considering how open world Final Fantasy XV ended up becoming, I thought it might be worth discussing the pros and cons of linear vs open world game design.
To start with, I should explain that I have always leaned towards Japanese games over Western games. In my youth I played as many JRPGs as I could get my hands on (this usually meant just Final Fantasy). These games tended to favor a linear design which meant exploring a world where you progressed from point to point, occasionally exploring a side area but, in general, limiting exploration until you acquired vehicles that allowed you to traverse mountains, sea and air late in the game.
Whether you are into anime, manga, video games, western animation etc, it is near impossible to avoid the intense marketing of merchandise. Whenever I enter a GameStop store these days, I note how much of the store is now dedicated to merchandising. Perusing Twitter (and the internet in general), I am flooded with ads for collectible figurines, plushies, mugs etc. Why is merchandising so crucial to the industries and what are my thoughts on collecting it?
Merchandising has always been important as a source of revenue for anime. When Osamu Tezuka created the 1963 TV series of Astro Boy, he realized that he would not be able to recoup his costs from television networks. Instead, merchandising was viewed as key to making the Astro Boy anime profitable. Even today, merchandising is vital to the anime industry with series such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica bringing in $400 million of merchandise within 2 years. I would be remiss if I did not mention one of the most successful anime franchises of all time, Gundam and the fact that the series has made billions in merchandising.
It has been nearly 4 years since the first commercially available VR (Virtual Reality) headsets such as the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift and the PlayStation VR were released. Despite all of this time, it still feels like VR gaming is niche and has yet to break into the mainstream. 2020 is poised to be an important year for VR and I felt like having a discussion of why I’m excited about VR while, at the same time, pointing to some of the problems that must be sorted out.
Let’s begin by explaining what VR gaming is. Pretty much all VR headsets feature a screen for each eye and the goal is to make you feel immersed in the world of the game. Beyond that, the headsets differ in how they track the movement of your body, whether they use a console, PC or other device and what controllers they use.
2016 felt like we were on the verge of a gaming revolution. The first VR headsets became commercially available and we began to see YouTubers and streamers showing off VR games. Many of these games felt more like tech demos than proper games but, even so, we saw many interesting titles such as Job Simulator, Space Pirate Trainer, Superhot VR and more.
Recently I played a game called “Zero Escape: The Nonary Games” which is a compilation collecting the first two games of the Zero Escape Trilogy. These games are visual novels where you proceed from room to room and solve puzzles in order to escape from them. As I played through them, I remembered how the satisfaction from puzzle games feels different and unique compared to other game genres.
It is true that many games make use of puzzles within various genres. Quite often these are simplistic where you move pillars to determined spots or direct beams of light. These puzzles can make a good break from the normal gameplay but are typically easy to complete as the game doesn’t want to slow you down too much. My question to you is when was the last time you played a game that you had to take notes to solve a puzzle?
On the 16th of January, it was reported that Horizon Zero Dawn was coming to PC. This announcement came from sources rather than an official announcement from Sony so there is some doubt as to whether or not it is happening. Nonetheless, it has provoked the ire of many Sony fans. As a PC player, I am excited and I wish to explain why.
First off, most of my excitement actually does not come from Horizon Zero Dawn itself. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested though. The visual style of the game looks lovely and I have always been a fan of RPGs so getting the chance to play one of the most popular RPGs of late would be great. When I heard the news, I can remember thinking “That’s cool if it’s true.” but not giving it much more thought.
Not only is Final Fantasy IX my favourite Final Fantasy game but it is also my favourite video game ever! Back in 2016 when I was playing through the Steam release of Final Fantasy IX, I was desperately looking for anything that analyzed and broke down the game and, to my good fortune, I found a few episodes of Dev Game Club, a podcast in which two game developers analyzed Final Fantasy IX from episodes 11 to 15. What stood out to me was that one of the developers had not played JRPGs before and found certain aspects of them…
I am a big fan of the Dark Souls games. Huge fan in fact. I consider Dark Souls and Dark Souls III to be some of the best games to have been created in recent memory. As a fan of these games, it is understandable that I have tried to seek out games similar to these, the term Souls-Like being coined to describe games similar to Dark Souls. Let’s start by defining what a Souls-Like is. Being such a new term, there can be disagreements on what defines Souls-Like games but commonalities typically include: Dark Souls has undoubtedly had an…