PopCap made Peggle and Bejewled, among other games. They’re casual game making extraordinaires. Their next game, due to release tomorrow for $10 (here), has me more excited than it should considering it’s nothing but a casual game (i.e. dumbed down) take on the tower defense genre. I knew the game was coming, but I didn’t bother really looking into it until I saw the following music video. It’s genius.

If that song doesn’t get stuck in your head, well, you aren’t human.

I also was able to make my own zombie using their Zombatar. The marketing for this game is simply hilarious. They sold me.

As far as the game is concerned, I played the timed demo and when the demo kicked me out I was itching for more. Oh PopCap, how you suck us in so easily. Damn you PopCap. Damn you.

In order to play some of the games I would like to without having to fork over money I don’t really have to spend I’ve opened an account on GameFly. Renting games just makes too much sense when you’re broke. Anyway, the catalyst for my decision to fork over $15 a month to play games was because the PC release of Grand Theft Auto IV was so poorly received.

I have always been primarily a PC gamer and since my self built PC is a fading beast I usually wait for multiplatform games to release to the PC so I can yet again justify the build. I say that with mild sarcasm, but it’s true to a certain extent and there are always benefits to having something on the pc (mods, better graphics, cheaper). So, since GTAIV’s launch was more or less a disaster on the PC I decided to pass on it and rented it instead.

I lasted an hour in the game before I packed it up and shipped it back to GameFly. Surprised? The game has garnered numerous game of the year awards and has sold in the bazillions. Hell, back in April there was even (unfounded) talk about the launch of GTAIV cutting into Iron Man’s ticket sales. So why would I decide to send back such a huge selling, critically lauded and fan favorite game? I was bored.

For months now I had heard about the story in GTAIV and how engaging it was (for the first two thirds) and that the main character Niko Bellic was likable and generally something of a nice guy. Nico isn’t a deranged psychopath as previous iterations of GTA had you playing, no, he was just trying to make his way in America and fell in with the wrong people. Are. You. Freaking. Kidding. Me. From the moment the game starts, Niko is already looking and talking tough and acting like a KGB thug from overdone Cold War spy films. He’s a thug who happens to be in a situation not entirely of his making, but certainly furthered by his violent (re)actions.

Suffice it to say that I was severely disappointed by this and I’m fully aware this is due to my hyped up perceptions of what Niko was going to be and was going to mean to me. Was it enough for me to stop playing? Not really, but I quickly ran into the wall that I have with GTA games. They’re huge, open ended worlds that are lovingly created with a ton of interesting minutiae from rocket packs to bowling to driving off cliffs in slow motion. But that’s just it, there is so much to do and so much to see . . . and I’ve more or less seen it all before in other GTA’s. I just wasn’t interested in exploring the city because I would much rather explore the real world than a fake city in which I have an annoying cousin and terribly voice acted girlfriend who are calling me all the time to remind me that yes, I exist and matter in the game world. You know what? I exist and matter in the real world and constant calling and bothering me annoys me here too.

I’m getting way off track here. I haven’t spent as much time thinking about this game as I would like before writing something about it, but then again, I only spent an hour or so with the game. Some of my other hangups are leftover from previous games. The graphics look bad with aliasing all over the place. People are ugly. I can get past those things, but the controls are still muddy when fighting or shooting and I just don’t have the patience for that anymore. The driving, something many people complained about, felt fine to me outside of the rather minor learning curve (seriously, GRiD has a steeper curve . . . and that’s an arcade racing game).

So, what all this comes down to is that I wasn’t interested or inspired enough to continue playing. Sure, if I had purchased the game I would definitely have given it a longer play and probably would have ended up liking the game, but I spent 8 hours or so in the world of Far Cry 2 and was never able to fully immerse myself in that game. I think, in the end, I’m just not interested in first or third person shooters anymore. They’re all fairly derivative and because I’ve been playing them since the days of Doom, I’ve more or less seen it all before. I just wish Niko had turned out to be the interesting character I had heard about because I really wanted to play that caring, hard luck individual who occassionally gets to beat hookers and take their money. Yeah, that makes sense.

Happy new year and all that jazz. I hope everyone had a good holiday.

In a recent blog post on one of the numerous gaming blogs I frequent was about a game called Achievement Unlocked. If you follow the link you’ll find it is a free, flash based game that won’t take but a few minutes to complete. I recommend checking it out as it’s an interesting experience, an experiment of sorts.

The premise of the game is simple enough. There is no actual end to the game, meaning you don’t “beat” the game, but you unlock one of a hundred achievements as you play the game. The premise is in response to the fairly recent implementation in games for achievements, which are nothing more than meta trackers for what you’ve completed in certain games. Get x of this, don’t get hit while playing level y, beat boss Z in less than a minute. And so on. Achievements (generally) don’t influence a game outside of the person’s implicit interest in getting more achievements. So, the arguments for and against achievements basically come down to whether or not they artificially enhance the game or whether they distract from it. Personally, I think the argument is moot as you can choose to ignore them or not.

Achievement Unlocked strips away the arguments about achievements and boils it down to this: play this game, see how you react. For me, Achievement Unlocked is an interesting experience because the game is obviously poking fun at achievements one receives for doing nothing. Hence the achievements for merely moving left or right or doing nothing at all. This, for the uninitiated in gaming achievements, mocks the reward given to a player for doing nothing more than simply playing a game (or as I like to think of it the “ooh, shiny” award, yeah, superfluous).

But if you continue to play Achievement Unlocked some more you may fall into the same trap as I did. Once there were 15 or so achievements left in the game I continued to play. I played for no other reason than to fulfill the requirements for all 100 achievements and I enjoyed it. It’s a strange sensation to feel like I finished a game with no end because I fulfilled requirements for arbitrary achievements. It’s an interesting psychological test and I find it interesting that I became so engaged with gaining all the achievements because I usually don’t pay them any mind in a game.

All this leads me, coincidentally, to my reintroduction into the world of MMO’s, specifically, the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). Now, I tried my hand at MMO’s in the past year or so and never enjoyed them. Too much grinding (boring, repetitive) and not enough engagement while playing (1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 2, 4). All this for $15 a month? Are you kidding me? But MMO’s are addictive. Why? Well, games are always more fun when played with friends, but I believe the real addictive quality comes from the desire to gain experience levels and collect loot (armor, weapons, jewelry, etc.).

I’m a huge fan of Diablo and Diablo-clones (when done well) and all those hack and slash games are experiments in loot collection. They’re simple from a gameplay perspective (click on a bazillion baddies), but highly addictive in the perpetual strive for more loot. MMO’s are essentially the same in the way they reward you. Grind out killing a bunch of the same monster and eventually you will find something interesting. But my foray into MMO’s hadn’t even been positive. I’d much rather go play Diablo II again than play World of Warcraft (WOW). The time investment in an MMO didn’t seem worth it.

So, last winter I game LOTRO a shot and stopped playing after a few days. I just didn’t like it. Then I gave EVE a shot and I really didn’t like it as it felt much too much like a real job. But I never actually played WOW, the big boy, the daddy of them all. With the release of the latest expansion pack for WOW, the buzz around the internet rose quite high and I found myself thinking I should at least try out a free trial for the game, you know, so I could say I gave it a shot. (Yes, I am aware that trying out WOW is like playing with fire.) So, this past Friday I downloaded it and played it for two hours or so and I thought it was fun, but I wasn’t very interested in the game world, which is important if you are going to spend hundreds of hours in it. The entire time I was playing I was thinking back to my experience with LOTRO and why I was actually enjoying myself more than the year prior. What it came down to was expectations. I understood better how MMO’s worked and I enjoyed what they are offering. So, I decided to give LOTRO a shot again.

After as lengthy download period (12 hours), I finally managed to get back in to LOTRO yesterday. I ended up putting a few hours into the game while also watching the football playoff games and I enjoyed it much more than my original experience last year. Mainly, I had given in to the idea that I don’t need to play the game day in and day to get something from it, the game will always be there for me to come back to (as long as the servers exist). Meaning, the pressure I put on the game was gone and I was enjoying it for what it is.

The point of this is that in LOTRO there is a deed system. Without going in too much detail suffice it to say that deeds are a meta game on top of the basic quests (the experience and loot gaining portions of the game) that are little more than achievements. You gain a deed by doing x so many times and instead of simply being given an achievement (i.e. a pat on the back) you are rewarded with deeds that can be applied to your character and make them stronger, more resilient and so on. It’s an extra level to playing the game that I didn’t quite grasp last year, but at the same time, after playing Achievement Unlocked I see the deed system in LOTRO and the basic premises of MMO’s for what it is. The curtains have been drawn back and I see the wizard for who he really is . . . and yet, when I get done with this post I am looking forward to putting some time in to LOTRO before the morning playoff begins. This could be bad.