When I don't finish a game, I tend to view it as a failure on the game's part, and not on mine. I mean, I just spent 50 USD on a game, I'd like to get 'my money's worth' by playing through all of it. You know? One example of this is COD4. I finished COD4 in 3 sittings. Yeah, I played from start to the last bit of Chernobyl, finished it, then Chernobyl to the end. Now, there are places in that game where I got stuck, I won't lie, but the difficulty ramp was fairly steady and if I failed to do a mission, trying again wasn't so tricky.

Other games, however, well, I'll do the talking.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Too friggin' long

The Sega Genesis was my first system, and the only reason my family had one was because my 4th grade teacher donated it to our family, along with a few games including Sonic II. This was around the time of the N64, back when you couldn't get your mitts on one because they were in high demand (Like the Wii, eh?)

So anyway, Sonic 2, no where to save. So in order to get to the later levels, I had to play thorough the earlier levels hundreds of times over before the layout was etched into my memory permanently and I could play through without losing lives. Getting to later levels required at least an hour of solid playtime. The last one before the final boss was this Sky Fortress thing, and by then it would be a whole new level to me because I've hardly ever played it.

I think there was a boss at the end of that level, but by then the time spent completing it becomes less important than the time i've wasted on it.

Mega Man Legends

Scratched disk

Mega man legends was awesome, it was almost like Dead Rising but for the PS1, and with mega man. The level of customization was pretty deep, the story was alright, and the graphics were good for it's time. This was a game made before the advent of dual analogs, so in order to turn from side to side one had to use the shoulder buttons (R1 and L1), great thinking, right? I had been progressing through the game pretty steadily for a few weeks, but when I entered a new area I guess my PS2 couldn't read the disk and it locked up. I suppose I could have gotten another used disk at GameStop for 7 bucks, but I the only thing that would have made me do that was the story (maybe) and it wasen't worth it.

fun fact The ship that you crash landed in at the start of the game is blocked from entry for most of the game by your gal pal 'Roll'. Well, later in the game she gets a van to drive around in, so once I just had her park in another area and I walked all the way to the wrecked ship for the sole purpose of exploring. I get inside and start poking around, and I find Roll's room, and I guess I stumbled upon an 'easter egg' scene where you walk in on Roll undressing. You don't see anything, but damn if I didn't feel cheeky about it.

Dead Rising

Friggin' hard

The save settings make for situations where you only have one shot to do things, and learning from one's mistakes becomes impossible unless there is a lot of time invested. Weapons have limited life spans, so if you want to use something good, like a 2x4, then you gotta grab five of them. Also, whenever another enemy has any sort of minor advantage over you, the difficulty gets stupid hard.

But the game's fun, you know? You're in a mall and you can take shit, like guitars, and use them as weapons. If you poke around enough, you even find cars to drive, and that's really fun. And even though every side mission is an escort mission (which are the hardest and stupidest missions of them all) you still feel like you gotta save all the people, and ignore everything else to finish it. You figure out strategies, and find things, and it's a great load of fun.

I got stuck, and am currently still stuck, at the beginning of level 2-1, where you have to take down Carlito and his fucking sniper rifle. He also has grenades, and you're partner is useless. The only way to beat him is to get really lucky and rack up a bunch of hits against him, which probably won't happen in a bazillion years. But I'm gonna try again sometime, so maybe we'll see. But when I put the game down 2 years ago this was the spot I got stuck at, I even restarted the game to level up enough to beat it, wish me luck, yo.

Halo 3

BOOORING

Yeah, I never finished Halo 3...even after all the hype and the waiting and the wringing of the hands, I never finished. The problem is a save issue. You see, 2 days after I got it I went to a LAN where everyone was playing it, and I brought my 360. Halfway though the night we decide to do Co-op campaign mode. Well we quit right when the Flood Overlord dude snatches you away and gets all up in your grill, and that point it was like 3 in the morning and we were like "screw this, later."

A semester later, when I finally had a TV to play it on and the time to play it, I sat down thinking it would take me to the current save point that we left at when playing Co-op. Oh nooo, my singleplayer save was on the first level and Co-op would only let me play completed levels, which meant that I would have to play 2 and a half levels over again before getting to a new area. I even sat down to try, but it was just kinda heartbreaking, and even now the disk is just sitting in the box. Granted, the 4+ hours I spent in co-op were friggin amazing, but it just kind of repeats a lot of stuff like the big ass Crab Tanks. Not only that, but the game throws a lot of the same enemies at you, by the time you get onto "The Ark" you've pretty much faced everything. At least I think so.

I hear there's a pretty sweet ass driving level at the ending of it, and I've already read the story ending on wikipedia, but I haven't seen it, so I feel like I've missed something. Then again, if I don't have the drive to finish it then what am I missing, you know?