Every month, the Destructoid Monthly Musing topic gives community members the ability to have their work posted on the Dtoid front page.
Far Cry 2. Assassin's Creed. Mirror's Edge. Depending on your tolerance for self-important cut scenes, Metal Gear Solid 4. These are games which, to many gamers, cannot simply be dismissed as "good" or "bad." Cannot be easily explained with a numerical score and a Metacritic aggregation. Games which show us the potential of their core design concepts, while kinda-sorta failing to deliver on them in the way they they really oughtta.
Games such as these are the subject of this month's Musing theme. Which games do you find yourself loving despite (or because of) their flaws? Which games do you desperately wish to adore, but simply cannot because of some seemingly minor aspect of the game's design? What do these accumulated flaws and strengths say to you? What do these love/hate games need to fix in order to reach their true potential?
Hit the jump for a further explanation of the theme and instructions on how you can get your writing posted on the Dtoid front page.
Go to our cblogs, get an account, and when you write your post make sure to title it "Love/Hate: blah blah blah" and choose the "monthly assignment" post tag.
This month's theme is pretty simple. Write about a game, game mechanic, gaming personality, or series with which you have a love/hate relationship. Once you've got a subject, attack it from any angle you like: for example, is there one specific tiny thing that makes Assassin's Creed 2 markedly better from the much more polarizing first game?
Any questions/comments/whatever?
Contest:
3:00 PM on 12.01.2009
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I wish I could write.
I missed last months briefing and completely missed the whole theme. Even reading the musings didn't help. A fresh start!
But I know I don't have time for that...
That game and I were like a rollercoaster.
Saint's Row 2 was awesome despite a horrible, horrible PC port. Prince of Persia was terrible despite a great looking world and some great voice acting due to its horrible on-rails gameplay.
A main area this feeling comes into play for me is low-budget games or mods. A lot of these are so rough around the edges it drives you insane, yet they have some awesome aspect which makes it worth playing all the way through. Great and recent examples of this for me would be Zeno Clash, Aquaria, Blueberry Garden, Culpa Innata, Darkest of Days, Velvet Assassin, Lucidity and Trine. All those games had some key aspect that kept me coming back, yet also lacked some real key features that made them hard to play.
@Havoc Fang : I just played Bloodlines about a year or so ago, and pretty much loved it. The only real shortcomings (bugs aside) to my mind were the tiny scope and area of the game, and the difficulty involved in getting a non-combat-specced character through some of the final bosses.
I never understood those comments about Mirror's Edge, I personally found it sublime all the way around and not at all frustrating. Not sure if the PC version was different in some way.
Actually I just thought of one. And it's a good one too. :D
As soon as I finish it, I'm all over this.
http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/and0/love-hate-assassin-s-creed-2-156907.phtml
http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/SykoShadow/love-hate-sykoshadow-edition-157178.phtml
GTA: San Andreas. i have never completed most of the missions (like 7 or 8) but my gameplay time rivals that of Morrowind (hundreds of hours doing nothing). I just like to do random acts of videogame mayhem and this game is one of the best at it. I find it to be a great time-waster. Saint's Row 2 is sort of in the same category - but not so much as GTA:SA, which feels much more expansive and open than most games in it's genre.
My last addiction is Fallout 3. I hate the fact that it is so hard to find a certain building. It's frustrating and I've spent many days trying to get to it, but the adventures that pop up during my search prove to keep me going. Suddenly somemutants will start attacking, or those assassins will come after me - or both - and then the game gets a little fresher. I'm not bored yet - but there are distractions - like new games coming out...
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Yet I find not having the option to choose when to fight enemies because of its lengthly combat is something that becomes mildly annoying when I know random battles were originally established for technical limitations, and not because it was "fun" (Especially due to the fact that Mistwalker's Blue Dragon did not have random battles and that game is older than Lost Odyssey).
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