midgame
video games that are meh
I played the Guardians of the Galaxy video game last year and I thought the story was pretty good, the characters were interesting, the fighting was fun…but I found that the experience of walking in the game was so annoying, including how they had automated running (rather than the regular manual running in most other games), which really made the whole game so much worse. It was hard to fully immerse in the storyline and experience when I kept being reminded how annoying it was to move around.
One of the reasons I still want to write about it, even though it wasn’t great, is because I know I am a big consumer, whether it’s through books or film or video games or food or whatever else. I previously wrote about how I saw consumption as Yin energy, and I was making more of a concerted effort to balance that out with Yang energy through creating more aka writing. So I still want to write about these games, just not dedicate an entire piece to each of these games.
Here is a shortlist of mid games I played in recent years:
Biomutant: This game seemed more like a game for kids, but I thought if younger gamers were the target audience, it wasn’t too bad to experience what an open-world hack-and-slash game was like. There was no real story though, so I found it quite boring.
Monark: It had good reviews and seemed quite interesting with the story and the Persona-type vibes, but I felt there was a huge learning curve for me to actually enjoy playing it, so I didn’t end up finishing it. I play games at night after I don't have much brainpower to work anymore and my son has gone to bed, so it's more to let loose, and I don’t have the energy anymore to learn new games that require a ton of strategic thinking.
Gotham Knights: it was a beautifully-made game but it was pretty boring and repetitive with no real storyline. The premise wasn’t bad but it was a bit corny (Batman wasn’t around and his team had to live up to his legacy to save Gotham). The fighting was realistically violent though.
Launching a game seems pretty hard. Once it’s out there and the experience is poor, it seems it can be hard to make the experience or reputation better. I know that some gaming studios will let gamers have early access to collect feedback before the big launch, and it really made me curious if Guardians of the Galaxy did that because I can’t believe they launched it with automated running. You could tell from the very beginning how annoying it was.
These mid experiences made me reassess how to pick games to play, especially given that I can’t play very often anymore. Initially I just chose more loosely, because I have this irrational fear of finishing a great game and not being able to find a better one afterwards. I should just YOLO it tbh.
Gotham Knights!!!!