I quit WOW last week. It is a lot like a breakup with someone that I had an on again, off again relationship with. Every couple of years I go back, and it is so good at the start. We are happy together, all smiles and flushed cheeks and amazing sex.... and then eventually boredom sets in. We fight about the same old things, remember why the relationship has always soured, and eventually have a bitter breakup.
But as years go by I will forget the bad things. I will forget the grind, the scheduling annoyances, the waiting for exciting times to come and putting up with boredom in the interim. WOW is like a clingy lover who requires constant reassurance and always has good things coming but they are never as good when they arrive as they were purported to be.
The sex is super hot though, in this weird WOW/lover analogy.
Anyway we broke up. As always, I had to do it, because WOW never has the decency to break up with me when times are getting rough. At least it won't ever ghost on me, and now I get to go through the euphoric period where I just ended a dysfunctional relationship and I feel free as the wind.
Never fear though, it took me no time at all to find a new and exciting addiction. Or, at least, kind of new. Blood Bowl 2 isn't really that different from the original in many ways, but hopefully it loses some of the frustrating bugs that plagued BB1 in single player mode. It still has all the multiplayer problems that drove me away from the original, in that you have to cope with real people and time crunches so you can't just pause the action when you need to go, and your opponent will often take outrageous glee in running all of their clocks to the last second so you spend most of your time doing nothing.
But complaints about the players of Blood Bowl notwithstanding, Blood Bowl is as amazing as ever. I so love crunching through enemy teams, watching their players get ground into hamburger by my evil monsters. Stacking up those red crosses in the enemy bench, watching my opponents be unable to field a reasonable team of players due to the injuries I have inflicted, these things make me smile.
Blood Bowl combines my love of character progression and planning with an excellent tactical board game in a way that is deeply satisfying.
I have one real complaint though, and that is Campaign Mode. This seems intended to be an introduction to the game for people who have never done it before, and it achieves this by removing most of the mechanics from the game for the first match and then slowly introducing them as you go along. In theory that might sound okay but remember that Blood Bowl games take awhile. I am five games in, I think, and I am still not playing proper Blood Bowl. This wouldn't be such an issue except that removing those rules makes Blood Bowl a *stupid* game. Removing injuries, Star Player Points, and even rolls to do basic things turn Blood Bowl into a snorefest, and make much of the game nonsensical. The game only makes sense when there is risk to your players and when they can progress, otherwise it feels all wrong, and more importantly, not fun.
If you start a new game and you are hours into it and still aren't done the tutorial that is likely to be a problem. It is even more of a problem when the tutorial sucks big time and isn't fun. If I was a new player I would probably ditch this game 3 hours in and tell everyone I knew how crap it was.
Many game companies try to take complicated games and build an introduction that is really easy to try to collect more players. WOW did it with levelling, which went from an interesting test of skill and planning to brainless button mashing. When you can't lose, you can't win either. Blood Bowl did the same thing, making the tutorial trivial, long, and crappy. It won't bring new players into the fold, rather it will drive them away.
Nobody starts a new game and tells their friends excitedly "Oh hey, you have to play New Game #4! You can't lose, and nothing interesting ever happens, and your decisions are irrelevant!"
You know why I loved Skyrim so much? When I first went to a dungeon there were archers there, and they shot arrows at me, and I almost died and ran away. After an hour of prowling around, sneaking behind cover, and madly dashing in with my axe to chop at them, I finally cleared them all out. Then I told everyone how fucking awesome Skyrim was. Write that shit down, game companies.
At least in BB2 you can just ignore Campaign Mode and play the real game. WOW hasn't gone quite that far yet, but perhaps it should, and then change the levelling game so that it is fun again.
No comments:
Post a Comment