Resuming from last post’s cliffhanger, the pigs have stolen the eggs, blown up the village, and sailed away from Bird Island. Well then, let’s see how things unravel from there.
Dude. Everyone is embarrassed. It's not the time for that.
STOP. Just... STOP.
As the birds gather on the beach, they admit that Red had been right all along about these pigs. Especially Judge Peckinpah, who had been pretty antagonistic towards Red up to this point, admits that mistakes were made. The birds wonder what they should do… and Chuck immediately suggests to replace the eggs the natural way. Urgh! The last thing I need in my children’s film is an orgy joke. Can I say I’m actually pretty annoyed by Chuck being portrayed basically as some sort of depraved bisexual? I mean, if he showed interest in both genders it’d be fine, but then he always takes it that extra, icky step further. Parental bonus is fine and all, but some of the jokes involving him go pretty damn far. Also, it’s incredibly insensitive from Chuck, geez.
Not bad for a first sailing.
Nah, Red has a much more sensible, simple and acceptable plan: Get back the eggs and give these pigs an ass-whoopin’. It may seem like they are out of resources, what with the village in smithereens, but there’s still plenty of stuff that they can use to build a boat. Red gives a speech to the townsbirds and manages to rally them to this plan. To top it off, the piggies left behind their trampolines and slingshot, so the birds carry that stuff along with them once their maritime vehicle is complete. As the birds go to sea for the first time, the pigs gather at King Mudbeard’s castle to celebrate this victory and the feast they're already planning.
There’s certainly a much darker spin to the situation once you realize that the pigs want to eat babies. This film makes a good case for veganism.
Pig city is big city.
"Remember: Do plenty of damage on the way!"
The birds reach Piggy Island and, to their shock, the piggy society is much more advanced than theirs. They have a proper city with a gigantic castle! While Terence plants the slingshot firmly into the ground, Red exposits his plan to the bird villagers: Get flung, aim for the castle, do plenty of damage on the way, go in and save the eggs. Simple enough. Matilda elects to go first, the anger management teacher finally allowed to let out all of her repressed anger at once.
"Don't mess with Bubbles!" has never sounded so threatening.
The birds’ abilities are integrated nicely into this scene, as a nice bonus if you have played the games. Matilda shoots explosive mid-flight. The second bird on the elastic is Hal, the boomerang beak guy. Third is Bubbles, the kid that can inflate to an immense size after landing. A few more birds get flung, causing enough damage to the pig city for King Mudbeard to notice. Change of plans: the feast will be done much earlier, gotta eat the eggs before these feathered fiends bust in to save them!
"Never Gonna Give You Up" INTENSIFIES
The situation is also being observed from afar by Mighty Eagle, who decides it’s time to come out and help. He hasn’t flown in a while, so he puts some encouraging music to get ready and… Guess which song Mighty Eagle uses. Guess. It’s the Internet’s favorite. One of the most famous memes of all time, even. Yep, this movie rickrolled us. I swear this song keeps appearing in the weirdest places. Before you know it, we’ll be hearing it in a Disney movie.
Ah, NOW that's the Angry Birds I know.
Their attacks destroy buildings, but the birds can’t seem to get to the castle. Next in line to be launched, Red asks for the gigantic Terence to pull the slingshot’s elastic as far as possible. This sends Red much, much further, and he actually makes it into the castle. The large bird sends Chuck and Bomb in the same manner. Unfortunately, when Terence tries to launch himself, he steps too far back while on the elastic and the slingshot breaks from his weight.
All that's missing is Chuck going "meep meep".
King Mudbeard sends his guards to capture the intruders, and orders piggy pilots to patrol the sky and attack birds on sight. Good thing these hams are dumb as rocks, or I’d be afraid for the birds right now. And hey, the avian attackers have superpowers to help them as well, as demonstrated when Chuck gets rid of multiple guards in a matter of seconds thanks to his super-speed.
"Our meal is winging it!"
Red gets to the eggs just as they’re being lifted towards the royal dining room. The ensuing scuffle between Red and some pigs is halted by Mighty Eagle’s arrival. The mythical bird is told to carry the eggs to safety, and that’s what he ends up doing. However, when the three protagonists latch onto the net containing the eggs, the pigs catch Red. This tug-of-war causes an egg to pop out of the net, and Red lets go in order to retrieve it. No chick is getting left behind!
The final battle - an explosive confrontation!
Who had the bright idea of stacking so much
dynamite under the entire city anyway?
Despite the pilot pigs chasing him, Mighty Eagle gets the eggs back to the birds. Red’s fight with Mudbeard topples the cauldron of hot water that would have been used earlier to boil the eggs, and later they fall through the many floors of the castle, ending up in the basement – which contains a gigantic reserve of explosives of all kinds. Mudbeard tries to cook the egg with a candle, but Red thwarts this attempt. A fight ensues and the candle is dropped, lighting nearby dynamite. Red is able to protect himself and the egg thanks to the cauldron, which toppled and fell upside-down through the hole in the floors, right onto the heroic bird. The king pig gets to see his entire TNT collection go up in smoke, followed by his castle and the entire piggy city.
The birds were distributing the eggs to their rightful owners when the city-shattering kaboom occurred. Red is revealed to have survived by staying inside the flipped cauldron, and he walks back to the group. In his feathery hands, an egg shell, and three little blue chicks with big eyes. The Blues, coming home to their parents. And this time, Red didn’t imprint on them!
Oh great, now the movie is trying to kill us with cuteness.
It IS trying to kill us with cuteness!
Ack! Urk... Feeling myself get weak...
The birds return to their island. Now that they’ve enacted their revenge, it’s time to rebuild the village. And everybody helps. They even rebuild a statue of the Mighty Eagle! …though it’s much more accurate to his current fat bod. More importantly, as an homage to the true hero of this adventure, the villagers rebuilt Red’s house within the village. He’s no longer an outcast for them. And because this wasn’t enough, the baby birds hatched from the eggs rescued from Piggy Island arrive all together and sing a song to thank him for what he’s done. Even Terence joins in! “La la la”s are the only words Sean Penn pronounced as that character, for the record. After this ceremony is over, Red invites his friends Bomb and Chuck to come in. (But not before messing with them a bit. Snarker one day, snarker always.)
Dance party ending, everyone!
The first part of the credits is set to Mighty Eagle busting out the old record player again, and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” resonating across Bird Island, and even all the way to Piggy Island. Everybody dances, even the pigs. Meanwhile, the Blues escape from the watchful eye of their parents and find a new slingshot on the beach. Launching themselves from it, they discover their own special power! Roll final credits.
Alright, so I had heard all kinds of things about this movie. I’ll say this much; the first time I watched it, I didn’t think much of it. Not a very good video game movie, certainly not a great one. Perhaps average at best, horrible at worst – if your first impression of the film is based on the uncomfortable scene of Mighty Eagle urinating for 36 seconds, then yes, you would probably consider it terrible.
That said, after I gave the film a second and a third watch to write this review, I have to say – it’s better than I first thought. That’s still not saying it’s a great movie, but it’s better than average. It's grown on me.
Starting with the first point of praise I had for it: The animation is fantastic. The fluid movements and the sheer attention to detail – more than one could have expected from a feature about the Angry Birds. It’s also nice to notice the large cast of birds, many of whom appear in crowd scenes. Aside from Red, Chuck, Bomb, Matilda and Terence, there are lots and lots of villagers. The mime, Judge Peckinpah, Stella, the hugger, the family of greens whose youngest kid Red imprints on, the other Angry Birds with special abilities… There’s always someone to recognize from the cast, and there’s always a background gag you might not see on the first couple viewings.
This takes me to the second point: The humor. Taking full advantage of the cast, the movie always has something comical going on, especially by featuring one or another of these birds; the gross-out comedy here and there (hi again, Mighty Eagle. It’s also quite on-point in showing Red as a sarcastic protagonist. Mind you, if most of the gags land, some are still hit-or-miss. I had a lot of genuine laughter, but I also sighed at the annoying moments that exist to explain why Red prefers to live away from the other birds); and the barrage of jokes highlighting Chuck’s ambiguous sexuality, because we need that in a movie for kids, right? Not to mention the Piggies; their appearance takes the quality of the comedy down a notch. That was probably the point. Even their King says that they’re a bunch of morons…
Last but not least, the story. A lot of it revolves around Red, but also the community that surrounds him and reacts to his constant grumpy mood. The bird village, in all its cheery, carefree glory, is thematically important to the Aesop. It helps to show that Red’s attitude is overtly negative towards everyone. His anger still seems disproportionate when the pigs arrive (though they do break his house, I’d be angry too). It’s a sort of “boy who cried wolf” type of tale in which when Red had, for once, a genuine reason to be angry, everyone ignored his warnings. The Aesop, I suppose, isn’t about immigration or imperialism, but rather that it’s normal to be angry at some things, but that being angry all the time isn’t okay.
It’s not a bad movie. I was going in with a fear that it would be terrible so perhaps it’s my lowered expectations that make me say that it’s not that bad. But no, I do think it’s okay. I don’t think I’m going to rewatch it soon (I watched it way too much to write this review), but I can think of more positives about it than negatives. I mean, I still cringe for the 36 painful seconds of that one scene with Mighty Eagle… or the odd bad joke here or there... but yeah,I do think it's good.
(For the record, my favorite characters are Red - what a shock - and Bomb.)
He is a dork and he's adorable and I want a plushie of him.
I won’t go see the sequel in theaters, either. At least, I’ve seen the few trailers that have come out already – the animation is still peppy and active, there’s still plenty of jokes, and oh yeah, King Leonard gets punched a couple times. That’s a plus in my book. This movie sees both birds and pigs in danger against a new ice-themed enemy coming from a third island…
It’s almost weird to think about in this Candy Crush-dominated era, but there was a time where the Angry Birds were the undisputed kings of the mobile gaming market. Hell, the one article I wrote about them long ago (a rather mediocre article in hindsight) is the most viewed page of all time on this blog! If that’s not a testament to the spherical birds’ popularity at the time, I don’t know what is!
Thus, as with any massively popular franchise, a movie was eventually in the works. Rovio Entertainment has delved into animation before, with a series of TV shorts known as Angry Birds Toons. And of course, there’s the odd music video. That song is never going to leave your head.
However, this is a full feature-length film, with top-notch animation. Rovio's implication in the development phases means we can imagine they agreed to everything that happens in this film - having the creators' thumbs up is always a better sign in the end (that's why I will trust the Mario movie currently in development by Illumination Studios if the folks of Nintendo look over some of the more important decisions.)
Of course, you may get the impression that the protagonists of the franchise are a little… um… different than usual. They are… ANTHROPOMORPHIC! Oh, the horror! …Nah, we get used to it pretty quickly. Let's see what awaits us in this film.
Welcome to Part 2 of the list! Be sure to check Part 1 if you've missed it. Here are 6 more reasons why one might stop playing a video game.
I wonder if I should make some kind of clickbaity statement à la "Number 1 will surprise you!" But nah. I don't need that.
6. You can’t win (And it’s your own damn fault)
Good job, champion, you're stuck.
The thought of starting a game from scratch after sinking at least a dozen hours into it, that’s the kind of thing I refuse to think about. Especially when I have to do this because of small mistakes I’ve made, that halted my progress. It’s a lot more enjoyable to start a game over after you’ve beaten it once. However, what if you seek trouble on purpose, and manipulate the game in such a way that you get yourself trapped?
Why, oh, why did you release all of your other Pokémon,
lose all of your money, and got yourself in an area
where anything can kill a Level 5 Mon in one shot?
Then you’ve only got yourself to blame. Admittedly, if you do that, you have probably accepted the consequences of your actions, since getting stuck was your end goal. Most games do come with the option to open a new save file. Some that don’t still have a way out, such as a suicide code (pressing a specific series of buttons together), in order to run away. The most common manner to trap yourself in a video game is to save exactly before an encounter you cannot win against – either you don’t have the necessary items, or you’re out of ammunition, or your character is too weak to win. It’s especially bad if there’s no way to go back in order to gather these items or do some good old level grinding.
That said, unlike other examples on this list, if you sought that outcome, you’re probably not going to be mad at the game to such a point where you’ll give up on it. You were kind of asking for that situation to happen. Thankfully, many situations that look hopeless can actually be resolved in some way. I can think of one YouTuber out there that willingly traps himself in an older Pokémon game, with no apparent way out, and yet a long (and incredibly tedious) series of actions can be taken to eventually get out of that situation.
But yeah… if that happened to me, I would feel like such a damned idiot that I’d probably put the game down forever out of shame.
5. Annoying gameplay mechanics
Ah, yes. It had to come down to this eventually. We’re still squarely on the subjective side here, but we’re also reaching the question of one’s own ability with a game.
Hope you like Powersliding.
You'll be doing it a lot.
As I said, a humongous amount of work goes into every single facet of a video game. You’d think that applies to controls… and you’d be right! It’s not all about setting them early on and calling that a done deal. At times, it’s necessary to judge on the impact of these controls on the game as a whole. I am reminded of the #1 reason why I dropped Mario Kart DS: On later difficulties, the player has to achieve a complex maneuver that involves quite a bit of button-mashing in order to get a speed boost and reach the top place. Meanwhile, the CPUs could utilize that maneuver effortlessly.
Which brings me to the other aspect of “gameplay mechanics”: As an example, the opponent(s)’ artificial intelligence, which can make the game either too easy or too hard – both cases have been seen. The AI can have a huge impact on the game as a whole.
How the Hell is that comment supposed to help me?
Tell me something useful, Grandpa!
Then we have gameplay mechanics that don’t exactly involve AI or the regular controls. Side-quests or altered states that switch things around, as an example. Unreliable items or maps, or inaccurate information given by objects or NPCs (some games of the early Nintendo era suffered from this; the first Legend of Zelda game was made so much more difficult in the English version with the enigmatic and, at times, incomprehensible advice Link was given).
That’s not to say that “bad” gameplay mechanics can’t be utilised for fun; I’ve played more than one game on Steam that impedes your abilities in order to provide a challenge (think of Octodad or Surgeon Sim). But when it’s unintentionally bad, and you feel your interest in a game wane because you can’t stand the gameplay mechanics… There goes one game you might never touch again.
4. The chore of repetition
Sure, the map's got a lot of stuff to do...
But how many of those are copy-pasted missions?
Some games pride themselves on a thrilling story, or new and innovative mechanics. Others market themselves on their size, others on their length.
…I now realize that this could be seen as an innuendo, so let me clarify: Many studios nowadays brag about the size of the map you can explore in their game, while others market themselves on the estimated number of hours of content they offer.
We all play games to have fun, right? That’s the core idea of such a thing known as a video game. So when any game stops being fun, that’s pretty much the best reason to quit. That’s why I’ve skipped on every Uno table I was invited to in the past 5 years.
"I've heard of a settlement in danger..."
"AGAIN? It's the 8th time this week!"
This point actually covers two reasons as to why a video game may stop feeling fun, but there may be overlap. The first is when it starts to feel like a chore to play. The second is when the gameplay requires constant repetition, especially if it’s of tasks that just aren’t all that interesting to the player. Many games add variety precisely to prevent repetition from getting too bad, and to the developers’ credit, it usually works. A lack of variety in tasks to be done becomes particularly noticeable after a while. You can easily tell, then, when a game is suffering from a lack of diversity in tasks and side-quests. How many settlements are you willing to help until you get sick of doing that? Shut up, Preston Garvey.
You know what’s worse about this particular point? If there’s such an insistent repetition of tedious tasks for the player to do, it’s usually for the sole purpose of padding out the length. If a game has to resort to padding in order to give an experience that feels long enough, something’s wrong.
You liked the first few hours?
Good! Re-do them 4 more times.
I'm never buying that one.
But hey, it could be worse. You could have the same game repeating itself multiple times, like a bad version of Groundhog Day, as a core element of the story. Bravely Default, anyone?
3. Failure by comparison
Yah, no. I'm going back
to the other ones.
They're way better.
This one tends to apply mostly to franchises, but I guess it can also apply to larger genres. Let’s say you’ve bought a new game in a franchise you enjoy – Super Mario? Call of Duty? Just Dance? Should be good, right? But wait… your interest is waning in this new installment. As it turns out, this new game of the series just doesn’t quite cut it. You realize you enjoyed the previous games more, and so you happily return to those. Maybe you’ll be going back to that new game at some point. Maybe. But you’ve clearly got your preference.
I don't have Fortnite. But if I did, I
would not bother with any other game
trying to be "like Fortnite".
I would have the OG. I wouldn't need
another.
Perhaps the latest release changed some gameplay elements, perhaps it made changes to the formula that you disagree with (Mario Party 9, anyone?). This one doesn’t have the charm of the earlier games, is all. By your opinion, the older titles are better. I remember being pretty bummed about the newer Just Dance games focusing so much on multiplayer and online modes at the cost of single-player achievements.
So far, I talked only about cases involving a single franchise, but what if this applies to an entire genre? As a fan of Jim Sterling, however controversial he may be, I say he has once raised a solid point: The gaming industry has a tendency to copy the latest popular thing (shooters for a while, then loot boxes, and the latest trend at the time of writing is Battle Royale modes). Thing is, they take inspiration from the leading title of each genre (Call of Duty, Overwatch, Fortnite), but the players who enjoy the leading games… already have the leading games to play with. They’re not going to bother with industry followers who copycat formulas, usually for a quick buck, and usually without any attempt at replicating what made the industry leader a popular game in the first place. Pure failure by comparison.
2. The game is too short/too long
Going back to the topic of a game’s perceived length. I’ve touched upon the possibility of a game studio padding the length by adding very few different quests for the player to complete, only repeated all over the map. That’s not accounting for the length of the main quest, the “story mode” if you will. And this, depending on the genre, can vary. Depending on the dev’s willingness to give the player their money’s worth or not… this is part of the point here.
I heard that point of criticism about Dark Souls 2:
Too much stuff, some of which could have been left
out to create a better experience altogether.
Have you ever played a game for so long that you never really reached the end, and gave up partway through? It can happen. As I said, any game can get tedious, especially if it doesn’t offer enough diversity to keep the player invested. If it keeps dangling the carrot at the end of the stick, but takes too long before it allows the player to reach for it, then the player may just give up. This may also go with the "repetitive tasks" described earlier, or a plot that appears to take too many twists and turns before getting anywhere. Or if the game is built in such a way that grinding is mandatory to move on, making the game longer... but the reward doesn't seem to be worth the effort.
100 minutes, and it's 100%'d. Kinda short, no?
(Admittedly, it IS a good game though.)
We then have the opposite situation: When a game is too short. As far as indie games are involved, it’s normal to see shorter games. Most titles of the puzzle-platform variety don’t overstay their welcome. Others seem to have just the right length, or contain just the right amount of side-quests, difficulty levels and bonus content to keep the player occupied for a few hours, should they bother with all these extras. On the other hand, if the experience was too short, and there’s no way to remedy that situation, it may discourage one from playing again. Unlikely, but possible.
That is, unless you’ve purchased a full-price game, 60$ a pop, and you barely get two to six hours of content. If the game cannot justify its retail price by offering enough content for the player, something’s not right. That’s enough to get angry. I know I’d be pissed if I bought a game with my hard-earned money, and it took me less time to finish than it took me in work hours to gather the money to buy it. And those games are usually the ones that end up gathering dust in the deep corner of a drawer, or shoved aside in the virtual library, never to be touched again. Those are also frequently the kind that offer no additional challenges to lengthen the experience.
Is it fallacious to expect a certain length to a game based on its price? One could say that there's no link. I would argue that there is, but it's all down to your own expectations. If, to you, paying full price for only a couple hours feels wrong, you have a good reason to be disappointed. If you don't mind... well, more power to you.
Getting very angry at a 60$ game for being only four hours long
is a perfectly justified sentiment. Thanks, Angry Joe.
1. The Player Punch
Let’s end this long, long list on a special note. We don’t always turn to video games when talking about media that makes us feel. And yet, it’s just as valid as any other media of fiction – may they be books, movies, theater. Video games are just as capable of bringing us through the entire spectrum of emotions. That includes shock, sadness and regret.
No! Don't kill my Metroid baby!
No! Mother Brain, you monster!
Have you ever watched a movie that you couldn’t finish, not because you thought it wasn’t good, but because it punched you so hard, right in the feels? I don’t think it ever happened to me personally, but it’s a possibility out there. Especially if you take the story seriously.
The Player Punch is a tried-and-true technique that involves setting up story elements leading to tragedy, to shock or sadden the player and make them feel even more attached to the characters. We tend to forget the sheer power of emotions. A similar situation is to force the player into a moral quandary where they can’t be certain that they’re doing the right thing. That element of doubt alone can do the trick. In other cases, the game will remind the player frequently that they’re not doing the right thing – but then again, said game is then made in such a way that the player cannot back down, cannot escape the consequences.
Admittedly, while the Player Punch is a thing (it’s even got a trope to its own), any such situations that make one stop playing are actually pretty rare. Has anybody stopped playing after the death of Aerith in Final Fantasy VII?
Thankfully, some of these situations can be escaped by starting over. I think of the No Mercy route of Undertale, which is a collection of moments calling out the player for their extreme violence. As I mentioned in my review of it, many people stop a No Mercy route as soon as they reach a character they refuse to harm. Usually, it’s Papyrus.
Noooooooooooooo
Somehow I feel guilt over this thing that
I am not even sure I ever actually did...
Some other games don’t offer that luxury… I’ve been hearing a lot of things about a shooting game titled Spec Ops: The Line, and how it bombards (heh) the player with inhumane situations that the protagonist carries through with nonetheless, to the point where you can be considered the game’s true villain for actually moving forward instead of stopping the game right there and then. Two words: White phosphorus. The game even calls you out during loading screens. Has it been strong enough to stop a player from continuing their playthrough? It wouldn’t surprise me if some folks were incapable of continuing past this point. Such a thing demands a true mastery of the art of storytelling on the part of the game's writers.
Alright, that’s all for this list. See you soon for more new content.
You know what it’s like: You have that brand new game. You pop it into the machine and turn it on, or you click Play on the screen after it’s installed. Play for a while. A short while; a long while; however much you feel the need to play, in order to be satisfied. And then… you stop playing. There may be various reasons for this, and that’s what I’ll be covering today. The topic may seem a little grim, but it feels odd, strange even, to have this piece of work that entertains someone for multiple hours, and then it’s dropped and, sometimes, never played again. A game can have hours upon hours of content, so you might want to see a game’s ending so those hours don’t feel wasted; on the other hand, if for any reason the game doesn’t keep your interest, it’s also easy to put aside.
Today, I’m going over 12 reasons to stop playing a game… and why you might never pick it up again. It’s actually an odd topic to think about for me. I made it no secret that I started this blog, Planned All Along, as a project that would force me to replay through my entire collection of games – including the bad ones. It made me play through games I thought I would never experience again. In part because of the following reasons. Although, it goes to show that even if you stop playing a game, you may (sometimes) find an incentive to pick it up again later.
The list is not in a particular order, though similar reasons are grouped together. I might also reference games that I haven’t played, but learned about thanks to word-of-mouth, or by watching YouTubers discussing these topics, or by reading about them online.
12. 100% completion
Proudly displaying that gamer cred.
The happiest outcome, and the best reason to stop playing: You’ve seen everything the game has to offer. You have surmounted every challenge it could put in front of you. I like to believe that developers wants gamers to experience each single aspect of the game they’re putting out. In reality, a lot of games will never be finished, even more games will be put aside before the famed 100% appears on the screen.
The famed 101% from Donkey Kong Country.
Not every game has a percentage completion system – most games don’t need it. Beating the last level or the final boss is usually enough. At best, this kind of “progression” is tied only to the achievements, when there’s any. However, I’ve also seen such systems be applied to various games, in various ways: I still distinctly remember Donkey Kong Country, on the Super NES console, actually reaching 101%, if you found every secret area in every level. The sequels pushed the concept even further, reaching 103%! On the opposite end of the scale, we have modern games of the past decade, some of which are open worlds bursting with activities. I obviously think back to titles such as Grand Theft Auto V, reviewed last year on this blog. You don’t reach 100% completion by doing every single thing; only by doing most of them. Which is a fair trade, considering it’s almost impossible to do absolutely everything.
From The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth.
That's getting a bit ridiculous.
And, of course, 100% completion isn’t always possible. At other times, it’s better to not look for it…
11. You’ve done all you could do
Achievements-wise, if you're willing to play more of a game, but you
can't get to 100%, would 60% (passing grade) be okay?
World-Star: To prove you're a superstar.
So, let’s say you’ve beaten the main part of the game, so to speak. You’ve met the final boss, you whooped its ass. However, you’re not sated. It’s not enough. You’ve decided to play some more.
And hey, it’s great, this particular title does have quite a bit of postgame content for you to enjoy. Maybe it has a few extra missions. Maybe it has a bonus boss or two; Hell, maybe they're accessible before the end of the game. Maybe a new World just opened. Or, hey – maybe there isn’t much else left to do, but the game comes with achievements and encourages you to revisit the game and self-impose a few challenges on the way.
Don't even hope to beat Culex unless you can beat the
final boss. This bonus boss is THAT tough.
But that boss? Uh, a little too tough. And you’re not feeling too keen on level-grinding. That new World? Maybe just go through it, and forget any additional bonus content. Those achievements? Sure, you can try to get most of them, but there’s a few that make that famed 100% completion a dream only the best may hope to achieve.
For a few games out there, once I had beaten the “main story”, I found myself with many new things to try out – many new goals. But not all of them were attainable for someone with my level of talent at the game. Therefore, I tried to earn as many as I could, before I could finally consider myself satisfied.
Once again, games with too much content can also fall prey to this. There’s always that one side-quest nobody wants to bother with. I personally remember doing this with Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Play until you’re satisfied; sometimes, it’s the best thing to do so a game won’t overstay its welcome.
10. Beating it is enough
Sure, I "could" try the other difficulties...
...nah, not anytime soon.
(Ironically, this screenshot IS from a game I will
gladly replay.)
It may have taken a few hours of your time, but you’ve come to the ending credits. You can proudly say that you’ve been to the end of the game. But that’s where you stop. You don’t feel an incentive to go any further. And as the names scroll on the screen, you figure you’ve had enough of that particular one.
I guess this category goes for any game that doesn’t have any sort of post-game content. Any game that doesn’t contain an additional quest for you to complete. No collectibles, no bonus areas – in that case, beating it is, indeed, the most you can do. (Unless you decide to learn the game inside and out for speedrunning purposes, but that’s not the topic I’m covering today.) Nowadays, games without any kind of bonus content are much rarer, but it does happen.
Screenshot from The First Tree. Review coming to a
blog near you sometime soon, hopefully.
This is most common when the game is good, at least good enough that the average player will be tempted to see everything up to the end… but nah, nothing more. Admittedly, people with large collections of games may be content with stopping there instead of playing some more. After all, there are many more titles that await to be played!
I will never berate someone for not playing past the credits – after all, it’s up to each person to decide when they’ve had enough. And if that means skipping out on any sort of additional content, that’s fine. It all depends on each person’s level of satisfaction with the experience they’ve just had. From this moment onwards, the following points don’t even get to the end…
9. It’s a glitchy mess
From my personal experience, one of the best ways to make me stop playing a game is to encounter multiple examples of poor programming. Bonus points if it comes with loads of glitches.
Champion in all matters of glitches, Sonic '06.
A game can be bad for many reasons: It’s bland, it has a terrible story, it has poor controls, some decisions made in its creation are baffling… but then, we can also stumble upon glitches. Whether it’s laziness or a poor case of quality control, the final product is shipped with glitches. Not all glitches are bad; some are exploited quite efficiently by gamers attempting speedruns. It’s fair game. Others may have no real impact on the game itself (think of MissingNo., the tamest glitch “creature” of the Pokémon Red/Blue era). However, it would be a mistake to call all glitches beneficial. Many of them can make games either a lot harder than expected, or a lot more awful than they could have been. And sometimes, they stem from the simplest of programming errors.
As far as glitches are involved, the game crashing will
usually be the least of your worries.
I have heard of the infamous Aliens: Colonial Marines (some people won’t shut up about how bad it is), and how one fan literally repaired the artificial intelligence of the enemies by correcting one single spelling mistake, a single character in the code.
I'm not saying that every glitch necessarily ruins the game; a lot of great titles have a couple glitches here or there, though they may vary from slight annoyances to massive problems. Crashing the game repeatedly, for instance. Glitches may often affect your opinion of a game, if you do run into them, if the overall game is good, you might pay them no mind. Plus, like I said, they frequently serve as speedrun tactics.
Example of a game-ruining glotch: Intrusive menus
that never go away when they're supposed to, and won't
let you see the damn screen. Again, The Astonishing.
That is also not to say that there isn’t enjoyment to be had with glitchy games; as material for jokes, they can be quite effective. Think of all the rage and snark to be had while playing through, say, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (which spawned one of the most famous Let’s Plays of all time). However, unlike some gamers out there, glitches tend to turn me off. It doesn’t help that the glitches I encounter are the type that prevent me from playing the game in any decent capacity. I still remember the game based on the album The Astonishing by Dream Theater, and how its menus would not leave the screen, blocking my view of the chessboard. That’s a good reason to never play a game again!
8. It’s terrible
Admittedly, you shouldn't treat reviews as the gospel...
But it's Anubis II. Screw that pile of crap.
We’re falling squarely into subjective territory here. Was there ever a game that you no longer wanted to play, solely because it wasn’t all that good? Or, worse even, it was plain bad?
I mentioned earlier that it’s actually rare to have games beaten all the way to 100%. If you look at any Steam title that tracks in-game progress with achievements, and also tracks the percentage of players who got each achievement available, you might notice that a somewhat small percentage of players actually go through the effort of beating the game from start to credits. You’d expect that number in percent to be higher. Points 1 to 7, on this very list, are other justifications for that decision to stop before a game is beaten, but putting down a game because it’s bad is a lot more common than you’d imagine.
Part of this point may be the clash between expectations and reality. All of the promotional material put out by a game development studio to promote a game is meant to hype us for upcoming releases, usually by showing the strong points of that to-be-released product. Chances are that, once you purchase a game – may it be brand new or used for physical copies, or on a virtual store – you can assume the game’s quality based on brand recognition or past experiences with other games of that franchise or genre. Then you actually play it. And, oh! Can assumptions can be far from the truth!
I’ll be perfectly honest, even with my hobby as a reviewer, I don’t aim to radically change someone’s point of view on any video game. Sure, I have my opinions, I share them, but in the end that’s only my perspective. If you liked New Super Mario Bros. 2 more than I did, more power to you. There are games that I think are terrible, others that are merely okay to me, and others that I adore. It’s all up to you to make up your mind on each game you play. If a game is bad, you’re probably going to stop playing it quickly. (Since I try to beat each game before I review it, I don’t get that luxury…) And it’s perfectly fine! Heck, if you stop playing a game because it’s merely alright when compared to other, better examples of that genre or from the same franchise, that’s alright too. Difference being, an okay game is still somewhat tolerable and you might come back to it someday, while an actual bad game will rot in the deep corner of a drawer or be sent back to the nearest used game store. Or refunded, if you’re willing to go through a virtual gaming platform’s maze of a system in order to get your money back.
The one advantage is that you can usually tell pretty early on when a game’s quality isn’t up to par with what you were expecting, so you can let go of it more quickly.
7. You can’t win (And it’s the devs’ mistake)
Save and quit at the wrong time?
That cannon will not work right. Oversight!
(From The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.)
I don’t think that every single gamer out there realizes the sheer amount of work that goes into programming and playtesting. At any moment in a game, anything can go wrong, and sometimes it’s caused by variables that don’t even seem to have anything to do with each other. The game being programmed juggles characters, events, items and countless other elements that developers need to think about. To top it all off, gameplay mechanics can also interfere in the relationships between these many elements. The best example I can think of is the concept of key items in role-playing games. If such a game comes with the ability to discard or sell back any item (as is the case with the Pokémon games, as an example), and you need to keep one precise item in your inventory, it’s entirely possible that a player will sell it and get stuck forever, especially is there isn’t a way to get that item back. Hence why these are made into Key Items, which cannot be discarded or sold. (It IS possible to forget them behind, if there aren’t inescapable cutscenes where you’re given the items.) Then, of course, good old glitches can also be the cause of an accidental trap from which a player can’t escape. Sometimes, a poorly-placed save point can also spell trouble. Generally, it implies that the player ran into an inescapable scenario accidentally.
You should always be able to buy some water for the guards around
Saffron City. However, the devs didn't plan for the possibility of a
player wasting all their money...
(I'll get back on this type of error in Part 2 of this list.)
Oh, but there are many other ways one can get stuck in a game without any option but to start over. However, it feels all the more enraging when it’s accidental – a little design oversight from the developers, a glitch that was unaccounted for, a combination of factors that they couldn’t think of before the game’s release. (Good thing this sort of thing can get patched nowadays.) That’s why I will always, always praise video games that take care of even the smallest details in order to make sure that everything works right – and, in some cases, even prepare for things that not even 1% of gamers will attempt to do. That’s foresight.
If I were to be stuck far into a game, multiple hours into it, only to find that I could no longer progress due to an oversight… I’d give up on it. In fact, that game would probably go out the fucking window.
On this note, see you soon for Part 2 of the list!
Alright, so I had heard all kinds of things about this movie. I’ll say this much; the first time I watched it, I didn’t think much of it. Not a very good video game movie, certainly not a great one. Perhaps average at best, horrible at worst – if your first impression of the film is based on the uncomfortable scene of Mighty Eagle urinating for 36 seconds, then yes, you would probably consider it terrible.
Starting with the first point of praise I had for it: The animation is fantastic. The fluid movements and the sheer attention to detail – more than one could have expected from a feature about the Angry Birds. It’s also nice to notice the large cast of birds, many of whom appear in crowd scenes. Aside from Red, Chuck, Bomb, Matilda and Terence, there are lots and lots of villagers. The mime, Judge Peckinpah, Stella, the hugger, the family of greens whose youngest kid Red imprints on, the other Angry Birds with special abilities… There’s always someone to recognize from the cast, and there’s always a background gag you might not see on the first couple viewings.
This takes me to the second point: The humor. Taking full advantage of the cast, the movie always has something comical going on, especially by featuring one or another of these birds; the gross-out comedy here and there (hi again, Mighty Eagle. It’s also quite on-point in showing Red as a sarcastic protagonist. Mind you, if most of the gags land, some are still hit-or-miss. I had a lot of genuine laughter, but I also sighed at the annoying moments that exist to explain why Red prefers to live away from the other birds); and the barrage of jokes highlighting Chuck’s ambiguous sexuality, because we need that in a movie for kids, right? Not to mention the Piggies; their appearance takes the quality of the comedy down a notch. That was probably the point. Even their King says that they’re a bunch of morons…
Last but not least, the story. A lot of it revolves around Red, but also the community that surrounds him and reacts to his constant grumpy mood. The bird village, in all its cheery, carefree glory, is thematically important to the Aesop. It helps to show that Red’s attitude is overtly negative towards everyone. His anger still seems disproportionate when the pigs arrive (though they do break his house, I’d be angry too). It’s a sort of “boy who cried wolf” type of tale in which when Red had, for once, a genuine reason to be angry, everyone ignored his warnings. The Aesop, I suppose, isn’t about immigration or imperialism, but rather that it’s normal to be angry at some things, but that being angry all the time isn’t okay.
