Is Modern Warfare 3 good for video games?

"Hey Sam, the game from this commercial will make more money than any of our movies ever will. Yep, even Avatar, sorry man"

775 million dollars in five days.  3.3 million different people played it on one day just over Xbox Live.  People I know buying cases of Mountain Dew just for the double experience points in the multiplayer…..THEY DON’T EVEN DRINK MOUNTAIN DEW.  Apparently it’s even causing the Louisville college football team to lose games (yes, seriously).  It’s Modern Warfare 3.  I’m having trouble deciding how I feel about it.  As a gamer, I love innovation.  I love seeing things done that I haven’t seen before.  I say that, but then I think about the games I’ve most recently played.  Consider this list:  Dark Souls, Batman: Arkham City, Modern Warfare 3, Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3, and I just picked up Assassins Creed: Revelations.  Fine games, all of them.  And all of them a sequel of some kind.  Is that what the gaming public wants?  Is it what I want?

Dark Souls

Sixty hours.  Spending that much time with a game is hardly a rarity, especially an RPG.  According to the timer within Dark Souls, I have played for about sixty hours.  What strikes me about Dark Souls, beyond that I still have a decent chunk of the game left to play, is HOW I spent that time.  The hours I’ve spent in the world of Dark Souls is truly just that…spending time in a WORLD.  Most games funnel you toward objectives and side missions in someway.  A character’s path is almost always determined in advance in some manner.  That isn’t true here.  Dark Souls does have a main quest and does have side missions, but the game dispenses with such labeling.  This hands off approach that basically says “Here’s the land, it’s up to you to find out what’s going on!”  is something that is rare among games, especially modern ones.  It’s been called the most difficult game ever by some, and while I’m not quite sure I agree with that, it certainly makes a compelling case for it.  It’s not so much the foes you will face (there are many and all can easily kill you) or the maze like dungeons.  It’s the experience of taking on both without assistance of any kind.  Dark Souls does not hold the player’s hand.  It demands thought and focus to make progress.  It’s that unique quality that sets it apart from most anything else on the market.

Stories, challenges, and chainsaws; Why do we play video games?

Hello childhood.

Chuck E Cheese.  Remember that place?  I do.  I don’t remember it for the pizza, which I’m a bit hazy on but I think could mostly be described as “bad”.  I don’t remember it for the giant mechanical animals that played canned songs about how awesome Chuck E Cheese was.  I dug those guys, but they were a distraction from the REAL reason to go to Chuck E Cheese.  That reason was Metal Hawk.  The premise was simple:  you are a helicopter with guns and bombs and there is some sort of evil military force trying to kill you.  So blow them up.  I poured quarters (or tokens I think, what’s up with Chuck E Cheese proprietary currency, whatever) into that thing every time I was there.  I never finished it, but that didn’t stop me.  It was one of the first games I remember that truly left an impression on me.  As a seven-year old, that impression was pretty basic;  I liked the fact I had a flight stick and there was lots of things that blew up.  As I’m now an adult, is that enough anymore?  I’m a huge gamer….what’s the draw?  Why do we play?