On finishing a game, and sandboxes.

I have a hard time letting go of games. Ones I like really. The games I dislike tend to be used till I get bored, then just get tossed by the wayside, unfinished and unloved, kind of like your mom. When I was a kid, I was a completionist in games, a bad one. Come hell or high water (that didn't knock out the power) I was going to explore every nook and cranny of the video games I played. I was going to get every item, murder-fuck every monster in my path and claim not only the Princess but also the secret magic item that makes her wanna do more than shake Mario's fucking hand, giving him a feeling of accomplishment and the biggest case of blue balls since that stupid bitch got turned into a blueberry in Willy Wonka. I guess I should put a cut somewhere...why not here. Read on for more.



This sort of penchant for exploration lasted me well into the PS1 generation, right before intelligence was no longer an issue for gaming, and the idiot dam broke, releasing into the world a fresh generation hungry for Halo, circle-strafing, grenade tossing, and fag jokes. However, with the next generation came a new type of game that not only was big enough to explore, but made this sort of exploration one of the main draws of the game. The sandbox genre, popularized by GTA3, really blew the doors open on the idea behind searching everywhere. After a while I was meandering through all sorts of environments searching for drugs, orbs, cubes (to gleam), tetrahedrons, packages, guns, spider tokens, biscuits, kitchen sinks, planks, and hardest to find of all, my dignity and self-respect.

Really, these games are odd creatures, in that there are two readily available games at work here. Sandbox games are usually short in the main story aspect. If you're someone who enjoys missing the point of things, and you buy a sandbox game to quickly breeze through the missions and get to the ending, I would say that sort of experience is 10 hours, easy, probably less. I think the actual story in Just Cause 2 was something like 5 or 6 missions, but that is especially short. GTA3 and Vice City is hard to pin down on its own, but I would say something like maybe 8 hours of gameplay, Spider-man: Web of Shadows probably around the same. Point is, I have never met anyone who just does the bare-bones story missions in a sandbox game. The game was specifically designed with a certain amount of fucking around in mind, this being the second game packaged in with the 8 hours of missions. Fucking around and collecting shit, my god do you collect shit. Here is where the problem comes in, the big problem. As stated earlier, I was something of a completionist with my gaming, and then I started playing these virtual scavenger hunts from hell.

I have an especially hard time beating games when I do not have everything done. This is where the problem of letting go settles in. Even an early sandbox game like GTA3 has a lot of secrets to it. Secrets I will not get, simply because I have other things to do. Getting 100% completion in a sandbox game, from day one of the genre has been a time-consuming feat. Only in one game can I remember getting all of the silly tokens a game scatters around a city, and that is Spider-man: Web of Shadows. There was something like 2100 spider tokens, and dammit I got them all. I felt accomplished at doing this, but then I also came to a general realization about how much time I actually spent collecting these things. In that time I probably could have beaten a few standard games, or maybe about 2 JRPG's, collecting everything along the way. And what was I doing with all of this time? I was collecting spider tokens, which increased Spider Man's health, which ultimately needless, as the boss fights were all stupidly easy anyway. So really I was just collecting the tokens because I liked swinging around the city, and it gave me something to do while zipping around. This was not the only game I did this in also. Crackdown I jumped from roof to roof for hours just looking for those agility orbs. Why would I do this? So I could jump higher...and run faster. This was despite the fact I already ran quite fast, and jumped really friggin high. Oh and achievement points. Everyone does this shit for achievement points, e-peen and all.  8===9027====D (Yes that is a penis with very small testicles...or supposed to be, shut up)

But yeah, what this was all leading to is the fact that I have finally beaten Just Cause 2. It took me about 29 hours to get through, and I have a measly 33% of the game done upon story completion. The game has now decided to drop me into what it calls "Mercenary Mode", in which I do not have to deal with a story, (There was a story?) and I just get to run around, get the other goodies, and blow up more towns than a terrorist could possibly dream of. The question now is this: Will I sit down and go nuts with Just Cause 2, getting everything I possibly can? No. The game is simply too big, and while Just Cause 2 has a better system in place than simply finding useless trinkets on rooftops (it has that, but you do that while destroying an entire country's infrastructure), it is still just too much for no discernible, and meaningful reward. Why would I want to upgrade every weapon? I already beat the game, and the pistol/sub-machine gun combo already ventilates a human body nicely, so why do I need a fully upgraded sawed-off shotgun too? The answer is I do not need a fully upgraded sawed-off shotgun, and going through more of the game would be at this point, simply more of a diversion while I give my all to different games now.

This position on games is a new one for me. It has been creeping up on me since Crackdown, and has finally bloomed into a policy that I see no reason to not follow. I will enjoy the extras in a sandbox game in so far as I completely like what I am doing. I will not force myself to get another 100 or so McGuffins for no reason and no reward. I will not stay up nights trying to totally complete near uncompletable games anymore. Instead, I will from now on simply get what I want out of the game and move on. So far this system I think is going to do me well, especially when it comes to sandbox games I like, but do not love enough to devote my gaming life to, as if they were some sort of solitary version of World of Warcraft. So now that I finished Just Cause 2, I will move onto another game, probably going to finish Lost Odyssey finally, then after that...who knows.

-Kesith