what am i looking for?

well, dungeon siege 2 is over. what happened?

i got bored.

so why am i so demanding? what do i want?

i don't know. something with MEAT. see, even though i'm a vegetarian, when it comes to games, i want some meat.

i'm tired of simplicity. this game's badguys were giving me the nostalgic creeps. it was like playing mario brothers all over again. the only thing missing was the atari soundtrack. the bip bip bip that turned into bipbipbip as the bad guy suddenly clobbered faster and let loose a standard all-screen devouring spray of stuff you have to jump to avoid, but usually can't so die and have to do it again.

i nearly cried.

every single stupid time.

not that i mind smashing stuff. i love smashing stuff. grimloch loved his axe.

but...

i don't know. it's all so overly simple, and the only way designers are trying to make it more difficult is to make you control more units at once which, frankly, bores me to tears and makes me want to play something else. i don't like managing a team. i like wading in and giving it a damn good seeing to. i mean, i'm the hero, not a team of heroes.

i don't need them. i should be strong enough to do it alone. zatoichi style.

i don't want puzzles, either. puzzles shit me. pull this, drag that, oh and look - remember this stupid sequence. i hate sequence puzzles. they annoy me. follow the maze is fine, but puzzles are annoying because they're not, strictly speaking, puzzles.

and fetch the thing! argh! i'm so sick of fetch the thing. all wow was was fetch the thing! don't make me fetch the thing! oh, please, no more fetch the things.

where do they find the writers for these? can't they think of anything else?

and why get experience points for killing? take away that bullshit. give us experience points for time, or something. i mean, i want to play a sneaky rogue. i want to sneaky around, kill the badguy and slip out. but i can't! because i have to kill everthing or i can't advance in levels! that's stupid! i'm sneaky, not a warrior! why make me warrior stuff? it's STUPID!

and i'm a warrior, not a wall! i kill stuff! not stand there like a wall! i don't want a mage every time i want to kill something! i want to kill it! i want the fun of slashing its throat out with my axe! i want the joyous battlecry of a job well done while the stupid mage scurries about getting in the way beneath my feet.

and magery! i want to wade in and just wipe out entire rooms with my awesome evil spells! not flick fireball after fireball! what's wrong with one-hit kills? i LIKE one-hit kills. all this hit them 20 times til they die crap! such annoying repetitive nonsense! i'm uber! i'm not a sniffly little apprentice. sure, multi-hit kills in the beginning is fine. you expect that. but by level 20, you expect to be pretty damn lethal! but in every game you always feel you're an apprentice and can never quite master anything, even though your stats say you've maxed something out.

hell, if i've maxed it out, i MUST be able to kill ANYTHING with it, right?

all these games are doing my head in. they're just atari games. jump, swish, jump, strafe, slash, repeat until monster speeds its attack then dies. yawn.

i don't want to be hitting more buttons. i want to be immersed. i want to feel effortless. i want to see beautiful graphics and some awesome fight scenes. i want to feel every encounter is an adventure. not a matter of harvesting. i'm tired of harvesting. it's too repetitive. what's wrong with giving more variety?

ddo looked promising, but the graphics were laughable, and as such it just made it difficult to play. creature jumping on top of barrels? when they don't even have a jump animation? just looks silly and detracts from the immersive thing.

i don't know. maybe i'm getting old.

the other thing that annoys me right now is customising. i love customising. i want to look different! but i hate this trend toward constant upgrading. why? armour is armour. i want to be able to say, "right, i want green armour." and get it.

why not?

that's what i'm looking for! and i don't want to have to upgrade it every two minutes. i LIKE how i look, why should i have to wear the stupid purple armour? i don't want to look purple! i want to look green! and why can't i keep this axe? i like how it looks! this stupid axe which is the next level up looks dumb.

do away with upgrades. do away with all of that. make the character's skills more important. please.

customise. let me customise and keep how i want to look. ninja style or bunny rabbit. however.

and stories? what's wrong with stories? why can't we be involved in stories. they're not difficult. why make them so stupidly simple? why not make them a bit more complex? i don't mind spending a few days whipping around doing stuff, if only i were doing something interesting. that level from vampire just amazed me. it was so well designed. that's how games should be. and it's not hard to do that kind of thing as an instance in an mmporpg or something. it's really not.

i'm sad.

i want a game which excites me. not makes the muscles on my shooty finger get big and strong.