It’s Controversial Being Me
May 6th, 2008
Upon the release of GTA IV, gamers everywhere seemingly dropped whatever they were in the middle of to pave way for mowing down pedestrians and showing their hos a good time in Liberty City. As appealing as that may have sounded to me, I had another city to explore. Well, an entire 4 discs of cities, dungeons, and villages to be exact. When GTA IV was launched, I was amid the second disc of J-RPG Lost Odyssey, and no matter the hype GTA IV generated, I couldn’t tear myself away from the world I had become immersed in elsewhere. Not because Lost Odyssey is so great. I mean, it is great, but just because it’s actually impossible for me to call it quits at any point during the story to start a new adventure.
But apparently, what with it being GTA IV, I was expected to make some allowances. From the course of GTA IV’s release up until now, I’d received several Twitter messages from followers telling me to pull myself away from the trouble Uhra was facing to create havoc in Liberty City. Gaming doesn’t quite work that way for me. I can’t actually get tucked into a game unless I’m going to finish it, from start to finish. And no, I don’t necessarily mean unlocking every Achievement, or collecting every hidden valuable in the game; I simply have to complete the story.
Even games that I have found to be flawed, such as Medal of Honor: Airborne. While I found it impossible to progress through the game without getting severely agitated with the game play, I still persevered and made it to the rather unspectacular finish.
I have friends, however, who jump between 4 games each session on their Xbox. OK, so it’s no biggy switching discs between a game such as Viva Pinata with, say, PGR4, but I can’t comprehend doing that with, for example, Lost Odyssey and Eternal Sonata. If a game has a story, I’m going to be playing it from start to finish. Even if the game in question, like Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, is pretty clumsy as far as the story line is concerned.
That’s not always been the case though. In my PlayStation days, when I was about 11 years of age, I wasn’t too focused on finishing games. I’m pretty ashamed when I think about the chance I had to lose myself in Final Fantasy VII, yet the fact I never progressed past the first bloody disc because I was too busy swapping between that and, er, Spyro (go easy on me, I was a kid!). But now that I’m older and actually have a concentration span, it’s impossible for me to chop and change between games. So while the messages of gentle persuasion I received about GTA IV trickled through, and as the near perfect review scores were leaked on the internet, I had no intention of disembarking from my party of 6 on Lost Odyssey. Not because I didn’t want to experience the delights of GTA in both 3D and High Definition (last GTA game I played was seriously old school), but because I had a story to finish elsewhere.
So here I am, booting up my Xbox and seeing that out of 17 friends online, I’m the only person not playing GTA IV. Oh, and this isn’t the first time for this to happen either. While everyone was playing Bioshock, I was on Blue Dragon. Halo 3, I was on Skate. The Orange Box, I was on Tomb Raider: Anniversary. It seems I’m forever at the receiving end of confounded messages as to why I’m not playing the latest hyped game. So, I guess that makes me a controversial gamer, right? Having said that, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who places importance on finishing a story before starting another?
