Steel Komodo's Top 11 Games That I Stopped Playing

Well, Gooper Blooper did his top 100 list of video games he likes. And seeing as how we people like to follow bandwagons, I figured that I should go ahead do something similar to that. Of course, we all know that I'm not the best at doing very long projects like what Goops did - my constant delaying of Monster Mash fights speaks to that. So there's no way I'll be able to do a daily list of my personal favourite games. Instead, I'm going to do a one-off thing - a top eleven list of games I really like, but stopped playing for one reason or another. Why top eleven? Because I like to rip off the Nostalgia Critic :P

Now, keep in mind that this list is going to be limited to games I actually still own, and not just any old game I picked up and never finished. For instance, I never got around to finishing Mega Man: Powered Up, but I sold my copy recently, and I can't talk about a game I don't own anymore because there's no way I'd be able to play it again if I wanted. Also, this isn't a list of "great" games by any measure - this is just unfinished games rated by my own personal standards. And on top of that, all release dates listed are for the game's European release, not the American one, unless stated otherwise.

So, with that said, let's begin!

 

11. Saints Row The Third
Genre: Third-Person Sandbox Shooter
System: XBox 360, PS3
Developer: Volition, Inc.
Publisher: THQ
Released: November 15, 2011

Saints Row The Third is what I like to call a "shameless" game - one of those games you know you wouldn't get away with playing in polite company, yet that's exactly why you play it. In your quest to help the Third Street Saints get revenge on the enigmatic Syndicate, you'll drive at top speed down the wrong side of the road, pimp your ride with Boudiccea wheel spikes, piledrive people's faces into the pvement, dress up like a Care Bear, attack rival gangs with a VTOL and carry a giant floppy dildo as a melee weapon. It's madcap sandbox madness at its finest, and you'll be giggling like a madman with every second.

However, the fact that it's a sandbox is the main factor of why I stopped playing this. See, put me in a sandbox game and the first thing I do... is play the story. Odd, you might think. That's a great reason to keep playing it, why am I listing that as a negative thing? Except I play the story up until the point where I have at least above-average weapons, upgrades, vehicles etc. and then simply break off to faff around in the sandbox world with my jetpacks and laser guns and whatnot. And then I inevitably get tired of the whole "unstoppable god of destruction thing" and can't be arsed to carry on with the story, so I stop playing the game.

I've had fun with sandbox games while I've had them - Prototype and Just Cause 2 get some honourable mentions here - but they've never been able to keep my interest for long. Just Cause suffers from being shackled to a fairly realistic setting, thus denying us of real sandbox potential, whilst Prototype has a whiny sociopath for a protagonist, which hits a bit closer to home. Saints Row The Third makes it onto the list, however, just because of the scale of madcap antics you can pull off, and if there was a game that combined Prototype's soft science with SR3's colourful mayhem then I'd be all over that like wasps on a picnic.

 

10. Endless Ocean
Genre: Simulation
System: Wii
Developer: Akria
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: November 9, 2007

Developed by the people who brought us the underhwelming Street Fighter EX series, Endless Ocean is basically their way of apologizing for it. This is, at heart, a scuba-diving simulator with a great atmosphere and some wonderful music. You swim through the blue waters of an unspecified, marvelling at the wonderous array of sea-life that surrounds you. You can ride on the back of dolphins, turtles, whales and more, and even interact with smaller creatures that lurk in the coral reefs and the depths of the ocean. Even the sharks are placid and won't attack you. It's calm, it's serene and it's an experience like no other.

At least, that's what the hype promised.

So I buy the game, pop it in and start it up. One totally-not-religious title song later, and we get our premise - our player is a diver in the fictional sea of Manaurai, tasked to chart local sea life and is occasionally hired out by rich companies to find sunken treasure. Assisted by his companion Katherine Sunday, and with a charming penguin companion by his side, the hero will encounter the greatest mysteries of both the natural and ancient world, which eventually leads to a shadowy conspiracy as the greed of mankind once again threatens to disrupt the harmony of the natural world-

Har de har. Very funny. Now get out of the way so I can play Endless Ocean.

...Oh, this is Endless Ocean.

How awkward.

There's developer secrets, Arika, and then there's blatant lying about your product. Not once in any of the trailers I saw or the reviews I read were any mentions of a boring, tacked-on story mode that locks us away from the open-world swimming and scenery we were promised. Granted, it's hard to get away with making your game about nothing in today's bloated, uncreative industry, but you could have at least been honest about what your game was in the first place rather than trying to cover it up with your advertising. "No, really, it's just a diving simulator, there's no story or anything, honest". Mind you, not telling us about the campaign mode - which you have to beat to unlock free mode, by the way - was probably a smart move, because it's about as preachy, stupid and predictable as any Ferngully film you care to name.

Okay, I'm being overly mean - the environments are breathtaking, the music is gorgeous and that deep sea level is fucking terrifying. All of that was promised, and we got it. But if I have to slog through repetetive missions and cringe-inducing dialogue to get to the part of the game I was promised, then something is clearly wrong. So yes, I admire Endless Ocean for what it set out to do, but I'm not prepared to be lied to, or treated like I'm a dog that has to be lead through a plastic tunnel before I get a treat. I had fun with the game at the time, but I can't really reccomend it to anyone unless penguins are your thing.

9. Yoshi Touch & Go
Genre: Side-Scrolling Adventure
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: May 6, 2005

Yohsi's first proper solo outing since Super Mario Advance 3, this game is a retelling of the classic Yoshi's Island story designed to showcase the features of the DS. You start by bringing Baby Mario down to safety by drawing cloud paths, then use that same technique to guide a constantly-running Yoshi across dangerous pits and through hordes of enemies. The Touch Screen also lets you fire your trademark eggs at enemies, which becomes neccesary when you drop Baby Mario and he lets out that ever-cursed wailing that still haunts veteran players of Yoshi's Island to this day. Thanks for bringing back the night terrors, Nintendo.

Yoshi Touch & Go makes the list for the same reason I put Endless Ocean in here - I feel like I was conned. Not by the company, god no - at least they had the decency to tell us what was in their game in the first place. No, I was in fact decieved by the reviewers Official Nintendo Magazine, back in the days when the first two letters were swtiched around and the reviewers were all loveable yobbos. The review claimed that the game was "fast-paced and frantic" and that I would have to be on my toes in order to survive the marathon of pits, enemies and obstacles and deliver Baby Mario to safety.

Bullshit.

The game is not fast-paced in any way. It doesn't matter what colour of Yoshi you have - they all move like their wading through molasses, so there's no sense of urgency. You don't need to worry about building cloud bridges or anything until you're almost near the pit, he moves that slow. And on top of that, enemies come in predictable patterns, so it's almost trivial to take them out one by one with eggs and tongue - even the ones that appear on the top screen just to fuck you over. The only time it gets difficult is near the end of the last stage, where the Stork is waiting, and that's only because the screens are so full of baddies you can't tell one from the other, like a lion trying to pick out one zebra amongst a hundred.

Don't get me wrong - it's still a Yoshi game, and with the exception of Yoshi Tilt N' Tumble those are guaranteed to give you a good time. But I feel let down when a game isn't what I expect it to be, even from reading the reviews I so cherish and rely on for information. Even when playing, I always felt Touch & Go was made less as a game and more as a marketing tool for the DS, and it shows. So in the end I simply packed the game away and never picked it up again. I might give it another shot, for old time's sake, but I hardly see myself being enthralled with it.

8. Sonic Generations
Genre: Platformer
System: XBox 360, Wii, PS3, Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
Released: November 1, 2011 (Worldwide)

It would be remiss of me to not talk about classic video game heroes without mentioning Sonic the Hedgehog, a character so classic he should be perserved as a culturally-significant landmark. And in order to celebrate his many, many years of hyper-speed heroics, Sega decided to pair him up with... his past self, mixing a blend of classic and modern Sonic gameplay in one big adventure whilst taking the time to remix the fuck out of the best songs on their soundtrack. Seriously, go listen to the Classic remix of Escape from the City. It fucking rules.

So what's not to like about this game? It's got the faced-paced action Sonic games should have - a mix of classic side-scrolling and modern 3D akin to Sonic Colours. It's got all the characters you know and love/tolerate/despise from past Sonic games. It's got recreations of classic levels and modern takes on them to accomodate Modern Sonic's high-octane speed. In short, it's everything a Sonic game ought to be, if Colours already didn't do that first and top it off with better writing. So why is this even on the list?

To tell the truth, I was never a Sonic fan. I was more of a Banjo/Mario kind of guy, where the expansive, imaginative worlds allowed for the kind of exploration and glitch abuse that the linear, high-speed running of Sonic games could never give me. To me, going fast at top speed in one direction can't hold a candle to climbing trees, traversing narrow walkways and uncovering hidden secrets in a 3D environment. On top of that, I'm not a particular fan of the character of Sonic himself. To go back to my previous example - Banjo may have been practically invincible depending on the player's skill, but he was also kind of dopey and often unsure of himself. He had flaws and insecurities that made him seem more relatable. Sonic knows he's a badass, and he takes every opportunity to flaunt it with his "cool" dialogue and cocky smirk until I want to blind the little git with his own quills. I wanted to connect with him, but his attutide (not to mention many of his previous games) made it very hard for me.

So Generations is mechanically sound, but suffers from the fact that it's a Sonic game, and considering the reputation of the franchise as of late I can see why that fact alone would make people pause before buying it. It's fun and adrenaline-inducing, as all Sonic games should be, but the fact that it's about Sonic, a character as likeable as a drawing pin to the bum, is kind of a put-off. Go ahead if you want to give it a try, but I'd reccomend Sonic Advance over it - not only is it tighter and more focused than Generations, but at least Sonic keeps his gob shut.

7. Spectrobes
Genre: Action-RPG
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Jupiter
Publisher: Disney Interactive Studios
Released: March 16, 2007

The year was 2007. The DS was riding high, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were looming on the horizon, and Poke-Mania was coursing through us all like a virus. Everyone was clamouring to get their hands on the first ever titles of the series to be released on the DS, from the smallest child to the nerdiest gamer. But with the release date set to July, a long march awaited those faitful many, and thus it was inevitable that someone would try to take advantage of the hype by releasing their own take on the monster-gathering RPG genre. No-one, however, exected Disney to be that someone, or that the end result, Spectrobes, would become so popular.

The reason Spectrobes took off the way it did was because it was so drastically different from the Pokemon forumla. You didn't just catch the creatures - you excavated their fossils and awakened them with your voice. You didn't evolve them through training - you had to raise them in an incubator and feed them minerals. And you didn't simply battle other Spectrobes - you guided Rallen, the game's protagonist, on a quest to save the universe from the Krawl, planet-eating monstrosities of all shapes and sizes. The changes made to the formula, including a cast of colourful characters and real-time battles, made Spectrobes a unique and fresh offering compared to Diamond and Pearl, which introduced only a hundred more of the little buggers.

Sadly, Spectrobes had two major flaws that kept it from being as popular as it's contemporay.

Firstly, the graphics. The game was made by the same team that made Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories on the GBA, and perhaps the jump to 3D polygons from sprites was a bit disorienting for the poor guys. The models are blocky as hell and the textures, whilst colourful and detailed, are in dire need of some anti-aliasing. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except the camera just loves to zoom in on the models so you can see their blocky ugliness taking up the majority of the screen. On top of that, the sprites used for the overworld seem dull and washed-out - which is odd, considering how sharp and bright the sprites for CoM were.

Secondly, the battle system was, for want of a better word, wiggity-whack. You control Rallen and two Spectrobes with the D-Pad at once, and three guys  are hard to manouvre, especially when the floors seem like it's made of margerine. You command Rallen to attack with the face buttons and the Spectrobes to attack with the shoulder buttons - the problem being that all attacks draw from the same pool of energy that needs to be charged to full before you can attack again, leaving you vulnerable half the time. Even worse, the Spectrobes were the only things that could damage the Krawl properly, Rallen's attacks having as much effect as hitting a cliff with a wet towel, but some Spectrobes are downright useless because their attacks have such a long wind-up time. In short, the combat was basically deadly ballet without being anywhere near as fun as those two words together should imply.

Nevertheless, Spectrobes proved to be a sleeper hit of 2007, popular enough to spawn two sequels - Beyond the Portals on DS and Origins for the Wii. But since then, there's been no word on any new games in the series, which is a shame, because I would actually like to see more fossil-hunting, Krawl-bashing goodness. The combat and graphics were big enough issues that meant I had to put the first game down after a while, but I sincerely enjoyed what I'd played of it. I hear Beyond the Portals fixes those issues, but having played a brief snatch of the ROM I will say this - it's better to have played the first game beforehand, so you know what the hell is going on.

6. Darksiders
Genre: Hack-&-Slash/Action-Adventure
System: Xbox 360, PS3
Developer: Vigil Games
Publisher: THQ
Released: 201001January 8, 2010

You may remember way back in the pre-industrial dark age of April 2012 when I did a double-bill review of Kid Icarus: Uprising and Darksiders for the sole gimmicky reason of highlighting the extremes the average fantasy setting tends to keep visiting. In that review, I praised Vigil's magnum opus for it's flowing combat, epic setting and inclusion of Mark Hamil, even if it was somewhat bogged down by the inevitable comparisons to Zelda and the Middle-School Drama Club story. We are now in the futuristic space age of 2013, and I've instead been banging on about the sequel and all the things it does right.

So what happened? Why did I switch out War for Death?

The answer is simple - I fucked myself over. See, I'm actually at the second-to-last dungeon, and the whole thing is themed around redirecting beams of light in order to free Azrael, Angel of Death, from his prison in the Spire. Sadly, after completing two of the puzzles required, I decided to take a break and stopped playing for a bit. "A bit" turned into two months, during which I forgot all about the puzzle and what I was doing. So when I turned the game back on, I was stuck. I had no idea where to go or what to do, the sole guide I could find on the game was incomprehensible and Azreal didn't offer to help in the slightest. "The beams, redirect the beams," he'd drone like a broken record. Shut up, you old fogey, I'm getting lost here.

And now that I've played the sequel, I find it hard to go back and try and finish off. Having gotten used to Death's acrobatics and array of weapons, I'll probably find myself wondering why War's as slow as a narcoleptic tortoise with heavy shopping and where all my awesome gear and weapons went. Trust me when I say I'd love to go back and finish it off so I can fill in the story gaps - I just need to unstick myself from my unfortunate predicament in this bloody dungeon before War hypothetically goes mad or starves to death. Not pleasant thoughts for a gamer to have, let me tell you.

5. Kirby Mass Attack
Genre: Puzzle-Platformer
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: HAL Labratory
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: October 28, 2011

This is one of those games that Harpy loved to bits. She used to be on about it quite a lot in the Skype chats we used to have, talking about how it was played and all the secrets one could unlock just by exploring and collecting those coins. Not only that, she kept pestering me to ROM it and see it's brilliance for myself. Skeptical, I decided to do exactly that. I downloaded a copy, booted it up onto my R4 and gave it a shot to see what the fuss was about. And... well, it was okay. Not great, but not bad, either. But it kind of didn't live up to the hype that was being thrown at me, and in the end I decided to quietly retire it.

See, in the same way I'm not a Sonic fan, I don't consider myself a Kirby fan. The only games of his I've played are Kirby 64, Power Paintbrush and this, whilst Harpy has pretty much got the entire collection because she loves the series so much. I suppose it's because I don't feel the series is aimed at me - I'm a man's man, who loves adventuring and explosions and bashing bad guys over the head with a blunt instrument. And thus I find myself getting turned off by the Kirby series' colourful aesthetic, which I feel is more aimed at kids and girls than jaded 20-somethings like me. Then again, my mother doesn't like Kirby either, so what do I know?

I'd have rated this lower than Darksiders, maybe even Spectrobes, were it not for my traitorous inner Nintendo fanboy whining in protest. And in all honesty, it can at least boast the fact that it's a familiar IP in comparison to the other two, which at least gets it some extra marks. I still have the ROM hanging around on my R4, so I might just force myself to give it another go, but that hardly seems likely considering my free time is now spent up with playing fighting games all the time. Curse you, Street Fighter X Tekken Version 2013 patch!

4. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Genre: Action-Adventure/Platformer/Vehicle Construction
System: Xbox 360
Developer: Rare
Publisher: Microsoft
Released: November 14, 2008

Eight years have passed since Banjo and Kazooie bested their nemesis Gruntilda way back in Banjo-Tooie. What's happened since then? Well, the bear and the breegull have put on a lot of weight, and Grunty's decapitated skull is seeking revenge. But to this classic confrontation comes a third party - L.O.G., the Lord of Games, creator of all things pixelled. L.O.G. suggests a competition to determine the rightful owner of Spiral Mountain, in which the dynamic duo must make use of a magical wrench to construct a variety of madcap vehicles to complete a marathon of challenges. Of course, Grunty's not going to make it easy for them...

Yeah, I know this is an easy target, but I'll be honest - I kind of enjoyed Nuts & Bolts far more than I think most fans did. I can definitely call myself a Banjo-Kazooie fan, yet I was open-minded enough to accept the change of direction that Rare pulled with the whole vehicle thing. It did sound like a lot of fun - building custom vehicles to try and take on a variety of challenges, with the sort of vehicle you build determining how tough how the challenges end up being. If your vehicle worked, great - keep it for similar challenges! If it didn't, tweak it and see what can be improved, added or removed! It seemed like a great recipie for fun!

I don't think I was wrong on that assumption - vehicle creation is indeed fun, and it's interesting to see what the community comes up with. But when you give people a customization mechanic that lets them build practically anything from scratch, then it isn't long before the creativity runs dry. Eventually you'll have created vehicles for every concievable obstacle, and then the game poses no challenge anymore and you turn to the vehicle creator. And then once you've made your all-terrain battle fortress that spits fire and oranges for teh lulz, then there isn't a whole lot to do except recreate Pokemon characters or Super Sentai mecha endlessly. Give me everything and I can't think of anything. It's kind of depressing.

Also, it's not a platformer like the previous games. There, complaint addressed. You can stop reading now :P

I still have a ways to go in the game, and I suppose I could start playing again for the sake of getting those Jiggies and unlocking all those parts. And everything about the series I love is still in there - the anarchic humour, the colourful characters, the imaginative worlds and setpieces. It's just that it's such a major departure from the previous games that I can't help but feel disappointed with Rare for not giving out Bajo-Threeie like the fans asked for. Then again, what other game lets you build an all-terrain battle fortress that spits fire and oranges for teh lulz? Maybe a few, but Nuts & Bolts is a Banjo-Kazooie game, and therefore better.

3. Pokemon: Fire Red Version
Genre: RPG
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo, The Pokemon Company
Released: October 1, 2004

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "A remake of the first and arguably best Pokemon games in third-gen graphics, with new writing, extras and re-orchestrated music? On this list? What the hell is wrong with you, SK?" And yes, I know, you're right. But it scores so high because it stikes that chord in me, that good feeling you get when you look back on your childhood through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. And it's all there - Gary is still a douche, Team Rocket are still incompetent, Snorlax is still a bitch to catch and the gyms are as familiar as ever. Also Professor Oak got to say "Oh, for Pete's sake...", which made me laugh like an idiot.

But like the Darksiders example above, I had to stop playing this game because of my own idiocy. See, back when I was playing this game, I was in the bad habit of keeping my starter in the first slot and letting him do all the fighting, switching out to only a few others from time to time. Plus, I went on a bit of a catching spree in Mt. Moon on the way to Cerluean, snagging a Paras and a Nidoran♂ among others. These two factors combined into one hideously painful result - stuck at Cerulean City with a bunch of low-level Pokemon, unable to train them because the wild Pokemon were too high-level and unable to go back to find weaker ones because of that stupid design desicion to block off Mt. Moon with those idiotic ledges. So in the end, I gave up in despair.

Lord knows I want to create a new save file and start this again - my future experiences in Pearl and Black have taught me better team management, and thus my teams are more equally leveled. Unfortunately, GBA games are a dying breed, succeeded by DS games and their backwards compatability with the 3DS, which refuses to associate with the obsolete riff-raff. So either I'll need to keep hold of my old, limping DS no matter what or ROM the game later. Either way works fine, I suppose, but until then I'm keeping my focus on my ROM of Black. Now come here, Audino - gimme five-hundred squat thrusts! One-two-one-two-one-two...!

2. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Genre: Action-Adventure
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Nintendo EAD Group No. 3
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: October 19, 2007

Everyone talks about Phantom Hourglass, the first Zelda game on the DS, and how that one shitty dungeon made them stop playing it. Well, I'm not here to talk about that - I'm here to talk about the sequel, Spirit Tracks. This game is the sort of sequel that pretty much fixes everything that was wrong with the original - the controls for the forward roll have changed, the travel system is a bit more exciting now, the central dungeon is vastly improved and Zelda is no longer your damsel-in-distress - in fact, she's the assitant character who helps out by possessing objects to aid you out! How's that for improving gender relations in Hyrule, eh?

To be brutally honest, I have no idea why I stopped playing this. Unlike the others, which I can put down to disappointment or boredom or my own incompetence, I can't remember an exact pinpoint reason for suddenly losing interest in Spirit Tracks. And that's odd, because there was nothing particularly offensive about it - the trains are a bit stodgy to control, sure, and there's still an annoying stealth element to the central dungeon, but otherwise this is a major improvement over Phantom Hourglass? So what did make me stop playing? Did I just get burned out and forget all about the game? Whatever, I dunno.

I still have the came card for it, so I could pop it into my 3DS sometime and get going if I wanted. And I do want to play this again - it's everything a DS Zelda game should be and more, with the right amount of polish and flair one expects from the series. And the best thing about it is that, unlike the Spectrobes or Darksiders sequels, you don't need to have played the previous game to understand what's happening. It works just as well as a standalone game as it does as a sequel, and that's got to be worth something.

Honourable Mention: Asura's Wrath
Genre: Action/Beat-'em-Up
System: Xbox 360, PS3
Developer: CyberConnect2
Publisher: Capcom
Released: February 24, 2012

Those who frequent Chatzy will no doubt be aware of my experience of playing this, as well as the "Jaxx Tantra: The Game" jokes that came from how over-the-top and ridiculous it is. I hesitate to call it a "game", per se - it does have moments where you beat up enemies Devil May Cry style, but there's also sections that take on the form of rail shooters, and even a segment where you're in the hot springs taking shots and oogling the female servants. Interactive movie is a better description - quick-time events form the bulk of gameplay, with points awarded for how well you managed to hit them. It's over-the-top, it's full of action and it's worth checking out if you're into whacked-out media like this.

Now, the reason that I stopped playing this game would have earned it the top spot, where it not for what my actual final choice was. See, I beat Chapter Eleven and it ends with Asura running towards a giant cobra-turtle monster with no arms and a sword in his mouth. The little girl who was palling around with him watches with horror as he disappears to confront the beast, and a giagantic explosion fills the screen. "Woah," I think. "What the hell happened? Did Asura win? Did he die? I gotta know, damn it!"

And then the next chapter opens on Yasha, Asura's rival and the man responsible for killing him at least once (death is kinda trivila in this world). I was stunned. This was the complete opposite of what I was promised - I was looking forward to a bombastic battle against unspeakable odds, not playing as this emo prick I didn't care about. Desperate, I took to my old friend Google and began, trying to find an answer to this perplexing mystery. Was the fight to be adressed in a later chapter? What was going on?

And then it turned out that chapter is paid DLC. And so was the actual, proper ending of the game.

Now, you may be wondering why I have a problem with this. I mean, I didn't raise a ruckus when Street Fighter X Tekken's DLC characters were discovered on the disc. Surely this is no different, I hear you cry. But here's the thing - you didn't need the extra characters to enjoy Street Fighter X Tekken. They didn't affect gameplay or story in any way, and most of them (Looking at you, Sakura) didn't add that much to the game as a whole. You could theoretically enjoy the game without downloading them ever, gaining nothing and losing nothing except for the changes to the tier list (but who care about that, right?).

It's when game companies lock away the last goddamn third of the game away and make us pay actual money to get 100% completion that pisses me off. What is even the point of that? Why would you want to keep players from completing the game that they purchased just for the sake of making more money?! When we buy a game, we expect to buy the whole game, with all of the story. We want the whole experience the designers made for us. Why would you think that making us pay physical money in order to earn full completion on a game that, by all rights, should contain the full story package, is a good idea? Because it isn't. It's stupid and asinine and you should hang yourselves for it.

As you can see, my liberal use of italics in that last paragraph indicates that this is one subject I feel extra-strong about. So unless I can scrounge up the money to buy enough points to get the missing episodes, I shan't be touching Asura's Wrath anymore. That's not to say it's bad - quite the opposite, in fact. As a game it's okay, but as interactive media it's something else entirely. If you can tolerate Capcom's stranglehold on your wallet and watching your protagonist crush an old man to death with his six bare hands, then I can highly recommend this game, because you will experience nothing like this ever.

But with such grand titles on the list, what could possibly make it to the Number 1 spot? Which game did I stop playing was so phenomenally good that I could possibly put it higher than Pokemon or Zelda? Well, the answer may surprise you, so buckle your seatbelts and put on your helmets in case your brain explodes from the revelation and the force of it launches you from the chair and into a wall.

The Number 1 Game I Stopped Playing is...

1. Kid Icarus: Uprising
Genre: Shooter
System: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Project Sora
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: March 23, 2012

Why, why, why did I ever put this down? It has everything that I love in a game - quirky characters, gripping story, deep and varied gameplay, awesome music, neat little extras - the works! It's the first Kid Icarus game in around 25 years, not counting the angel's return in Smash Bros. Brawl It's development was headed by Sakurai, the guy behind Smash Bros. It's the game that inspired me to start writing as Pit in Season 2 of Zoofights RP, which is an achievement in itself. And it's the game I kept playing even after that Anglo-Australian tit Yahtzee decried it as "a shit game for twats". How does one stop playing a game this phenomenally good for so long?

Okay, you're probably going to hate me for the reason I stopped playing this wonderful game. I know I hate myself for it - out of all the reasons to stop playing a game I've listed here, this one has to be the most petty and selfish I've ever mentioned. Hell, at least Asura's Wrath has the valid excuse of Capcom being greedy bastards - this one doesn't even have that problem! But the reason I stopped playing it is a rather big one, and as stupid as it is it's a personal enough issue that I felt I had to put the game down for a while. So here we go.

Also, spoilers and a rant are ahead. Skip past the dotted lines if you don't want to read it all.

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Thanks to my terrible habit of reading ahead for game plots (which I can never seem to grow out of), I've learned that, after the Aurum invasion, Pit gets himself trapped inside a magical ring for two years. When he breaks out, the world has gone to shit - by blowing up Arlon's moonbase, the angel has accidentally unleashed the Chaoskin, who looks like Mothra's inbred cousin she doesn't invite to parties anymore. The Chaoskin, in Pit's absence, has possessed Palutena and wreaked general havoc, with the result that humanity now hates the shit out of her. To make matters worse, Pit's body has been going walkabout on a killing spree, and Magnus has been hired to track it down.

With Magnus' help, Pit gets his body back and flies up to save Palutena. The Chaoskin is defeated, but in the resulting confusion (I'm not even sure what happens myself) Pit ends up overextending his flight limit and his wings burn up. Knowing that the planet is at the mercy of Hades and the Underworld without Pit to stop him, Palutena asks Dirk Dark Pit to take him to the Rewind Spring andvheal his brother before he perishes and things go even further to shit. Also Pandora returns in a new form - and yes, before you ask, there is already porn of it. Rule 34, people.

So what's my problem, you ask? How can I take issue with this piece of story that has integral character development and actual drama going on? Didn't I say earlier that the game's story was gripping? What's the issue here?

Allow me to explain. I grew up on 90's classics such as Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time and Buck Bumble, to name a few. In those days, memory on a cart was limited, so there was no way you could get away with a complex story - "A witch kidnapped my sister" was all the motivation I needed. Therefore, there was little room for character development and people were just expected to play the game. This meant that Banjo's proficiency in fighting Gruntilda's minions revolved around how competent the player controlling him was. When Banjo fucked up, it was because the player was being a cack-handed buffoon, and drama didn't come anywhere near it. The character's mistakes were the player's mistakes, and we took the blame for it whenever the hero slipped off the ledge and plummeted into the lava below.

But now we demand more from our games. We demand bigger characters and more complex stories. And with current video game storage mediums being as expansive as they are, companies can experiment with ways of making their characters more complex. And it seems a common way to do this is to wrench control away from the player, show our hero making a giagantic mistake or suffering some misfortune, and then leave us to pick up the pieces. It's supposed to make us feel sorry for the hero, to make us sympathize with him and want to help him fix the thing that got broken or help him recover from the setback. Such situations that come to mind include that non-sequitur bit in Oracle of Ages, where Link gets shipwrecked on a island of talking lizards who steal his stuff, and he has to spend half the level getting it back.

Speaking as a 90's kid and a miseryguts, it doesn't work for me.

When a character fucks up as part of the story, it doesn't make them more relatable or flawed, it makes them look incompetent. We don't think "Oh dear, how unfortunate, guess we better help him out", we think "Wow, is there not some more qualified person we could be playing as right now?" Making a character suffer misfortune isn't a bad way to tell a story, I'll grant you, but there seems to be few games out there that do this right, and Kid Icarus wasn't one of them. Pit's misfortune wasn't my mistake, as I didn't cause it through some natural consequence of gameplay, so I don't empathize. It's like the opening of Monster Hunter Freedom 2, where the player character gets knocked off a cliff by the local dragon and ends up in bed for three days. And he's supposed to be the guy protecting the village from the angry wildlife! With guardians like that, the villagers might as well just slather themselves in barbecue sauce, lie down and let the dragons eat them all.

I told you this gripe was petty as fuck, but having been spoiled by games that didn't rely on your character being an idiot has jaded me to this form of storytelling. And that's why I put down Kid Icarus - because it was throwing in this drama for no apparent benefit to any of the characters or the story as a whole. I can still say the game is excellent and one should get it, but the sudden tonal shift was jarring at best and completely unneccesary at worst. I already plugged through three whole chapters of filler, game! Just let me at Hades and his ugly face already!

But Kid Icarus: Uprising gets the top spot not just because it's a game I want to pick up again. It's a game I want to pick up again and keep playing, regardless of flaws, until I get to the very end and beat it. And hopefully, if I can swallow my story gripes and find the time to do it, I will be able to do just that. Look out, Spy and Goops, because I'm gonna catch up to you someday!

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So there you have it - the top eleven games I stopped playing for some reason, but really out to start playing again. Thanks for reading this, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Stay tuned for more writing goodness in the future! And as a special present for reading this pretentious nonsense, have an image I threw together in Photoshop in like ten minutes!