Why I Read Games Blogs

So here we are with yet another gaming related blog. Assuming anyone is actually reading this, you may be wondering why should you care about reading another one of these? The reason I try to read as many opinions and ideas about various games I can is I find I actually find more reasons I like games that I hadn’t thought of. For example, after I played No More Heroes I thought the game was okay at best. It had a really unique characters and was a fun critique on what games are, but I found the gameplay repetitive and eventually annoying, specifically during the final boss. However, after I read this article on written on a Destructoid community blog I didn’t necessarily like the gameplay better, but I got a stronger more interesting message from the game. This message may not have even been Suda51’s intent, but after reading the article I saw something new in the game that made me enjoy its overall package more.


To go with a more recent and perhaps more robust example, I recently played through the Gears of War 2 campaign. Afterwards, I felt it was lacking something that the original Gears of War campaign had. Despite being bigger, better, and more badass in just about every way I just felt the overall experience just wasn’t as solid. I decided it was something to do with the story. Marcus and Dom running around the deepest more unknown parts of the Locust home world alone, while the entire human race were relying on them seemed far fetched and ridiculous. In the previous game, the characters seemed more desperate and that they knew their mission was all but suicide. This time, breaking into the Queens lair was just another thing they had to do that day.

Shortly after I read an article whose author felt the same way I did. I noticed the comments also agreed with the sentiment. This helped validate my opinions in lieu of all the extremely positive reviews for Gears 2. Later that week though, on the same blog I found a link to another review that just raved about every aspect of the game. He thought it was one of the best games he ever played, and while reading the review I realized he was right in many ways. I realized I had been so caught up on the weakness in the narrative that I didn’t even notice how awesome some of the level design and sequences were. The intense mortar sequences running from cover to cover. Cover you have to create by pulling levers while locust shoot at you and shells exploding all around you. The giant worm, while not universally well received, was hilarious and ridiculous in a way perfect for the Gears universe.


The most important thing I took out of this experience was I learned how important narrative is to me in the games I play. Don’t get me wrong, I love multiplayer games, and games that just try to be fun and not much else. Crackdown was one of my favorite games of 2007. But when the story is there and doesn’t mesh quite well with me, it obviously affects my entire perception of the game, despite everything else being incredibly sound.
I was unaware of how important this was to me until after reading those articles. Hopefully after reading a few of mine, you will have a similar revelation. Or maybe not, that’s a pretty large hope for a startup blogger with no writing experience. We’ll see what happens. :)