Finished!

I just finished one of the stories in Knytt Stories! This one was called 'The machine', and although it wasn't hard, I felt like I had to mention this simply because even though I have had Knytt Stories and its predecessor, Knytt, I haven't been able to keep at any of them until I completed them. It was simply enough for me to soak in the music and atmosphere. I felt like I didn't need to finish.

Well, that was until today really. I saw the end coming, and I went to pull the lever. The pay-off was very nice too. Moving through the world I had just saved was a really great experience and a perfect ending in keeping with the mood of the game.

This got me thinking about completing games and the huge pile that I still have to finish on my PC. Console games are easy enough for me to complete. I got my ps3 not long ago and I have already finished Armored Core 4, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Metal Gear Solid 4, Dynasty Warriors 6 and Call of Duty 4. That's a lot of games to finish in less than a month.

Unfortunately, on the PC it is a different story. I have loads of games sitting and waiting for me to complete them. There's Half Life 2: Episodes 1 & 2, loads of indie games (the aforementioned Knytt can finally be removed from that list!), Planescape torment and Diablo 2(both of which I was playing through again although I have never finished the latter), Grim Fandango (first time through, haven't finished yet), Far Cry (stopped once they began to introduce xxxxxxx), and Sins of a Solar Empire (which I got from a friend).

I think what it is is that I no longer have my PC in my house. I game during breaks (and sometimes when I really should be working)at work and it really cramps my style. A lot of these games require quite a commitment of time and more importantly me entering a mindspace that is quite frankly incompatible with the work environment. It's quite interesting to me that I can watch anime or even a movie in bits, pausing whenever I have to get back to work, but I can't do the same with a videogame. Once I pause a game a couple of times to work, I lose interest in going back in. It begins to feel like work I don't have to do. Figuring out the puzzles and going through the motions of actually playing and entering the game's space just fill me with a sense of dread that I have to overcome if I want to progress.

It requires a really compelling reason for me to continue that will make me forget or in fact not even have those thoughts at all. A recent game like this was Shadow of the Colossus. The boss fights were just the right length for me and since there were no levels, moving around to the next colossus was not only stress free, it was actually a very moving experience in a way.