Quality Gaming

I don't know about all of you, but I'm starting to expect more from my games. I love open worlds and being given choices to influence the story, every game should have those elements. Everyone always flips shit over Call of Duty, particularly Modern Warfare because every frat boy and bro-gamer can't stop making love to it. I hate linear games, I don't care how many explosions and scripted events it has, it's still linear, even if you call if "cinematic" -- it will happen that way every single time you play the game. Call of Duty is the pinnacle of linear gaming. Want the game to hold your hand and breast-feed you while you mow down unintelligent AI? Go for Call of Duty, can't go wrong there. I will say, however, that the multiplayer can be fun, although with Modern Warfare 2 they have made a mistake by forcing you into game chat. X-Box Live is the scumbucket of society, no one wants to talk to those people. If you want to hate your life as well as humanity, go play X-Box Live for a while.

Unlike Call of Duty, a game should really be worth the money. Sixty dollars is a lot of dough, and having to burn that every time you want a new game is rough. I want my money's worth, and games like Call of Duty do not deliver that. Games like Grand Theft Auto IV do, you can literally have hundreds of hours of gameplay from just screwing around. Not to mention all the other elements that make it worthwhile. Games need to feel like their own world, and allow you to do what you want in that world. Every game would benefit from having that level of immersion.

Oh, what's that? You don't like open-world games because you can't figure out what to do? Well grow a brain stem and then try again.

While I'm somewhat on the topic of quality games, I'd like to touch on MMOs. MMOs are an entirely different ballpark as far as what you should expect. Every day I see more people complaining about how this game isn't polished enough, or this game is buggy. WELCOME TO MMO GAMING. MMOs have bugs, get over it. MMOs don't start off with the five years of polish that World of Warcraft has, get over it. I miss the days when taking part in an MMO was a journey, and it was enjoyed even if it was rough. I miss the days when people expected there to be bugs. Everyone in the MMO world has this idea that all games need to be perfect by launch, well unfortunately things don't work like that.

My theory on what happens is that World of Warcraft is the gateway game. WoW didn't start off popular, it slowly grew to what it is today. WoW is currently the "hip" MMO, so everyone plays that game first. Then, once they play it a while and find out it's boring as hell, they move on to other MMOs. Disaster then occurs of course, because these idiots expect every game to have the polish and following that World of Warcraft does; and by extension they get on forums and cry about the game. World of Warcraft has done good and bad things to the MMO business. It's brought it more attention, but it has also ruined the experience of other MMOs (only if you're a dolt though.) WoW is too successful, it's so successful that it harms other games' chances. Other, BETTER games, I might add.

I could go on and on about why I hate World of Warcraft, but I've honestly said it so many times I bore myself when I talk about it.