Video Games and Comic Books

To me, there is no greater sin in video game development than having a crappy ending to a game. You may be able to craft a positively wonderful game that is absolutely a blast to play, but if you don’t have a good ending to it, all of that playing will seem like it is in vain. I should probably say that this only applies to story driven games as sports, racing, and party games don’t really have, or need, endings.

I have recently had a run-in with one of the aforementioned games—Robotech: Battlecry for the Xbox. I bought it about a month ago and have been playing through the 50 or so missions working towards the climactic ending. It was fun to play through most of the game simply because I was playing out some of the fantasies I had when I was a child watching Robotech on TV, but towards the end it was getting somewhat tedious as a lot of the missions seemed to be retreads of previous missions. I would keep playing, though, because I wanted to see how the story turned out. I finally beat the last mission and was prepared for a great ending.

How I was so disappointed. After beating the end boss, you nemesis for most of the game, I was treated to a 2 minute cut scene that says your nemesis’s army has been defeated, but you don’t know how the rest of the war went and you will now soon die because you’re running out of air in the middle of space. Good-bye. The end. Huh? I wanted to throw my controller through the TV I was so mad. All of that build-up for a 2 minute cut scene. Bah! Anyhow, I’m now moving on to playing Enclave, so let’s hope that this one fleshes out and ends a little better than Robotech.

On another indulgent, nerdy topic, I have recently rekindled my love of comic books. It has been a while since I’ve actually read any (probably last summer), but recently I have had a strong urge to get back into it. I think a lot of it might have to do with the fact that the new X-Men movie comes out this Friday. Since the movie is almost out, many of my conversations with Kristin lately have been comic related. It’s a good thing she tolerates my dorkiness (and sometimes even embraces it…I’m so lucky…). To whet my appetite, I have recently gotten some comic book lots off of ebay to read. It’s like being a little kid again having comic books show up in my mailbox.