Finishing Games

How many games do you play through to the credit roll? In this little MyIGN bit I’ll be taking a look and some titles from this Generation that I played for many hours but just didn’t make it to the endgame. I’ll be explaining and trying to justify why these games, for whatever reason, didn’t pull me through to the credits.

For the purposes of this article, a game is finished when the main story is completed and the credits roll. Getting 1000 achievements or a Platinum trophy for every title worth playing is something reserved for supermen and Colin Moriarty. I know multiplayer and other modes are a common component of games today, but here I’m just talking about the main campaign.

Also note that I’m only covering good games. I’m sure most people didn’t complete Bomberman Act Zero or Too Human after playing for more than a few minutes.

Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection

Having more recently got into Final Fantasy and RPG’s as a whole, I was very confident that this renowned classic would grab me. I can really appreciate just how well the game is crafted, but the need to grind so heavily with no real reward made me put this aside before reaching the end credits.

Bioshock

I picked up Bioshock after hearing the hype about how amazing it is. The world is stunning and the story unfolded well. It just slowed to a halt when I needed to keep doing fetch quests to progress. The story wasn’t enough to make me back track through the damp tunnels of rapture looking for a handful of key items.

WarioLand: The Shake Dimension

After absolutely adoring Wario’s previous Game Boy outings, his first console outing was a day one purchase for me.  The hand drawn art style was really gorgeous, but as I progressed the game started to feel very small. In a few hours I was at the final boss and after being stuck for a while I just didn’t have the motivation to try again for the nth time.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts looks amazing. The patch quilt environments just looked so vibrant and unlike anything else before. In a controversial choice by the developers, Nuts & Bolts went away from the franchises platforming heritage and opted for a Lego-like vehicle building mechanic. It did work well, but the overall structure of the game made progressing a pain to try and do. More hours were spent trying out new creations in the test course rather than trying to complete any missions.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

One of the earlier games from this generation and part of the reason why I purchased an Xbox 360. I’m fairly sure it’s the final boss fight that I quit at. Having to circle strafe and dodge projectiles in a slow moving mech (or ‘Vital Suit’) just isn’t fun, especially after several attempts.

Skyrim

To clear the air: I do complete open world games. Skyrim just didn’t appeal to me, which is surprising after putting 50 plus hours into Oblivion. I just didn’t find the snow blanketed world enjoyable to be in, especially with the added doom and gloom in the characters and narrative.

Crackdown

I picked Crackdown up long after its release from the bargain bin, and really enjoyed it. The extreme physics and art style made it a fun sandbox to play in. After progressing in story missions a little bit, I just lost interest in them. Mucking around became more fun than anything else the game had to offer. The story missions became very repetitive and rather difficult.

Fallout 3

I found the opening and first few hours of Fallout 3 very intriguing. I enjoyed shaping my character litreally from birth and the little community you started off in (and then betrayed) gave a good sense of belonging. It just fell apart when the world really opened up. The underlying story about finding your father was interesting, but actually progressing through it seemed like a monumental task. Having the game lock up on me a few times also didn’t help.

Prototype

The few things Prototype did well, it really did well. Running around, scaling buildings and flying about felt great. It’s just unfortunate the environments didn’t feel as good. Going by the same office building and fighting the same red zombie enemies got old fast.

Red Faction Guerrilla

The destructive environments were really impressive. Constantly running out of ammo for all of the best weapons made using difficult, making you resort to taking down a building with something that feels like a pop gun rather than a rocket launcher or sticky bombs. Because of this I tended to hang close to the ammunition depots destroying things randomly rather that going on the long trek to story missions.

Looking at all these titles, there are three things that can cause a games progression to stumble:

Mucking around becomes more fun than progressing. Often something that occurs in open world games. A lot of focus is given to crafting the world with missions coming as an afterthought. Many hours are still had causing random destruction and leaping buildings in a single bound.

Tough bottlenecks. Often near the end of a game, there is a section that spikes in difficulty. And at that point in the game, you are unmotivated to struggle past it.

Repetition. Having to do similar missions over and over again doesn’t make you want to come back for more.

But is it a bad thing? While I didn’t get to see the ending of the games narrative story, I did thoroughly enjoy the majority of the games featured here. It just feels like an incomplete experience when you don’t get to see the credits roll.

Do you compulsively finish games? What are some titles that you’ve thoroughly enjoyed, but never seen the end game to? Be sure to spark a discussion and share your thoughts in the comments!