Magic and the Sequels

Wait, we're already in the month of July?! When did that pesky month sneak up in here anyhow? It is nothing short of staggering to me to know that these months have not slowed down in their passing. I could have sworn it was January the other day. It is scary to think that life is just blazing by and before long old age will have set in and I will be an old man, sharing tales of how life was so different 'back in the old days.'

Speaking of the old days, I had a little trip down memory lane recently. You see, Magic The Gathering has a new game out on Xbox Live (Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers) and I just could not help myself. I had to play it!

And it plays exactly as the card game would play, nothing changed and nothing special about it. To be honest, maybe that was what drew me into the game in the first place and what kept me liking it over the years. It was not like other games, in that this game was fairly easy to pick up and it was always a bitch to try and master. Hell, I don't think anyone has yet. Surely there are good players and then there are the great ones too. But there is just way too much going on for any one player to have picked it all up. Or maybe...?

Oops, I've gone and went off the deep end again huh? Sorry.

Still, it is fun and it brought back a lot of memories of my days in middle and high school. My friends and I played damn near every chance we got, back in those days. The heated matches were always the best, especially when we'd hit up games of four players. Yes, insanity ensued. Those were the days alright... that game held it's own with us all for years, until we discovered Counter-Strike and all of that good stuff, but that's another story for another day.

A couple of other quick thoughts; it would seem that a great many games this year are going to be sequels. Two games of note (for me) would be Assassin's Creed II and Overlord II. Both look interesting and Overlord II was very much so, with what little I played in its demo.

Assassin's Creed II stands out because it looks like the developers have taken the stuff that people complained about and have taken it to heart. What I'm hoping the future holds is a demo for this game, because I'd love to see how all these new game mechanics fit into the grander scheme. Maybe it'll be more interesting then the original, which I never have finished even to this day.

But maybe that is the plight of these open world games? It is just too open and too vast to hold enough interesting stuff to hold the attention of a player. Hell I know I have issues in keeping my interest in a game like these. More recently, I've been playing through InFamous, but now I find myself feeling burnt out and uninterested. Sadly this feeling (or lack thereof) has even extended to Prototype, which I had only recently bought.

Its my hope that future games will fare better then those in the past, especially with so many sequels hitting stores this year. I enjoy these types of games and a lot of others too, but the enjoyment never lasts for me. It is so truly rare to come across any game that can hold my interest and my attention long enough to see it's ending.

So again, here's hoping games like Assassin's Creed II and Overlord II have learned from the past.