Completion Ratings
Posted by: curt
I just finished Metroid: Fusion. According to the machine, it took me five hours and three minutes. I didn't think that was too bad for my first time through. According to several guides the ending is different (read: better) if you do it in under two hours.
What surprised me, though, was my completion rating. I knew I must have missed some of the energy tanks and missle packs but apparently I missed half of them. My completion rating was 50%. The way I see it, that means I only had half as much energy as I should have for the boss battles, so shouldn't I be rewarded? If I had twice as much energy, those fights wouldn't have been nearly as tough.
I'm considering using a guide and attempting a 100% rating in under two hours. Two hours isn't that much time, and since there's a thunderstorm outside, it's not like I have any pressing plans.
PC Gaming
Posted by: kmikeym
Games give me a bad case of PC Envy. There is the normal PC-Only gaming culture of things like Far Cry and Republic, which I have mostly dealt with through expensive therapy sessions. But the smaller below-the-radar games are the ones that most make me want a Steven J. McCrappy Winbox.
More in the realm of "edutainment", The Political Machine is a strategy game putting you in the seat of the campaign manager. I can't offer a review of a game I haven't played, but this gets my saliva pumping. There is a multiplayer option. Oh my god... THERE IS A MULTIPLAYER OPTION!!! (Steve Schroeder and I once made plans to run a mock campaign against each other) There are political operatives, there is advertising, there are speeches... this is a great idea. (Erik: remember Presidential Palm? Yeah... you should work on that!) And the "edu" part of edutainment seems to show itself in that the game is modeled on the actual process of getting elected. You need 270 of the electoral votes to win.
The other recent game that makes me want to toss my pennies in Bill Gates' well is John Deere American Farmer. There was a NYTimes article about this game and the gaming culture of fly-over country (made in the Twin Cities, by Bold Games. A business simulation of a farm? This is great! One of the Amazon reviewers says, "For better or worse John Deere is purely a work simulation. It goes so far as to skip the winter months, since there is no work to be done." Of course I'm sure this game would be better with an online vs. mode.
Resource management games are my favorite, and unfortunately they seem to belong almost exclusively to the PC and unfortunately, I am a Mac guy.
