GW My Top Ten: Unfinished Favourites

It’s the first time we’ve ever had a guest do one of our regular articles, so Gnipper has a reasonably high honour. In this particular GW, Gnipper lists his top ten games that he never finished, which span from ‘retro’ games all the way up to the recently released. Enjoy.

I have strange thoughts sometimes. This one occurred to me whilst I was on the loo.  There are quite a few games I invested hours of my precious life into and never actually finished.  When I think of the hours I have spent in these worlds to not receive the gratification of a glorified end sequence it saddens me.  Maybe that is testament to my extremely poor span of attention, or maybe it’s down to my inability to resist buying the latest game but when writing this list it bought back a LOT of fond memories of games I loved and never actually climaxed with (so to speak!) – ah, how art imitates life.   So, without further ado here are my top 10 games I never finished:

10. The Last Ninja – C64 – Well, I spent hours playing this as a kid. Maybe I was bedazzled at the time by its isometric fantastic graphicalness, or maybe it was because I was about 7 or 8 and it was just cool to be a ninja. Never finished it. WAY too frustrating and required pinpoint (pixel perfect) accuracy on some of the sections (the bit with the sleeping gas and the dragon in the cave springs to mind).  Having said that I DID finish the Last Ninja 2 (or was it 3) only to be greeted with a screen saying “Congratulations, you have finished the Last Ninja”. Talk about anti-climax. I almost wish I hadn’t finished it now!

9. Psychonauts – PC – what a crackingly weird and oddball game this is. If you haven’t played it I URGE you to beg, borrow or steal it. It’s a great game full of different gameplay styles and levels.  You can tell that an AWFUL lot of thought has gone into its world design. I got to the circus level where you are bouncing about on slabs on meat (I said it was a bit weird, right?) but never finished it, frustration took hold and other games came along.

8. Fahrenheit – PC – oh my goodness. I love this game. RIGHT up until the point where it all goes a bit weird and ghosty. I loved the real world grittiness it had, the realism of a police investigation and someone seemingly going insane. Then the main character died (if I recall) and it just got plain weird.  It went from gritty realism to stupid ghosty mythology in the space of a few minutes.  Shame. It still sits on my game shelf at home however – I might have to replay this before Heavy Rain lands.

7. Baldurs Gate – PC – Amazingly rich, detailed world with TONS to do. Sank tens of hours into it, felt like I was getting towards the end and then stopped.  As a result I never really played Baldurs Gate 2 (which I regret to this day) as I felt the story would carry on and it would be great to play them together. Still own the entire Baldurs Gate collection however so I can see this one coming out again soon.

6. GTA 4 – Xbox360 – love the feel of the game, but for some reason “Niko” and his story didn’t gel with me. I absolutely LOVED playing Tommy Vercetti in Vice City – that guy had a real bold, outrageous feel about him. Didn’t enjoy playing CJ much in San Andreas but there was so much to do that was new and outrageously daft the world hooked me, but 4 just doesn’t do anything for me, the story is too bland, the world FAR too life like to be as fun as SA. Oh, and if that mobile rings once more whilst I’m about to start a mission and its that annoying tit Roman wanting to play pool I swear to god I’m going to smash the disk to pieced.

5. Dead Space – PS3 – yes, yes, I know. It’s a GREAT game, great atmosphere, great design, great weapons, great enemies, great story but for some reason, I just got to a point where I couldn’t be bothered to carry on with it anymore.  There’s only so much limb severing, seeing dismembered corpses and blinkety blinky lights that one man can take. OK!?

4. Oblivion – PS3/PC – bit of a cheat entry really as I doubt there is anyone who can say they have actually finished this game, but I never finished the main storyline. I remember getting close but then got distracted by a ton of side quest stuff. I thought at the time that I just wanted to live a life in Cyrodiil, you know, get a house, a horse, go raiding, looting, slaying demons and stuff like you do in every day life.  To be fair, this is the one game on the list that I sank (probably in total) nearly 100 hours into over the various formats but don’t regret one hour of it. For me the main story wasn’t the pull here, it was the world and the exploration stuff.

3. Half Life Episode 2 – PS3 – actually this is a bit of a cheat entry. I never even played it. But I think it deserves an entry here as I bought the Orange Box really just to play this game. I thought Id play through the whole HL2 saga again to bring myself up to speed as I was the worlds most MASSIVE HL1 & 2 fan on the PC – I totally fell for all the hype. Problem was it didn’t translate well to a controller & console.  So I was about ¾ of the way through Half Life 2 when my PS3 YLODed and I expect I’ll never go back to it. Shame. Oh, and in the midst of all this I discovered there was a game called “portal” in the package. Meh. I’ll give it a go I thought. Wow. Now that game is something special. I finished that one so cant talk about it here!

2. Modern Warfare 2 – PS3 – controversially I just don’t like this. I played the first 2 or 3 single player missions on my launch 60gb PS3 before it YLOD’ed on me and I haven’t been back to it since. I’ve NEVER pressed the Spec ops button on the main menu nor the multiplayer button.  Am I weird? Is there something wrong with me? I think I’m the only person in the entire world that owns a copy of MW2 that’s neither single player complete or multiplayer touched? I’m going to write to the News of the World – see if they want to do an article on me. I just don’t GET the hype – sure it’s a pretty looking game, but the “point” of it sailed past me like a javelin missile heading for its target. I put this partially down to being TOTALLY FPSed out. Totally.

1. Final Fantasy 7. Yes, I know. Ridiculous isn’t it. In a weird way I’ve probably bought this game more times than any other. PS1 version for my PS1. PS1 disc version for my PS3 and then the PSN store version so I could play it on my PSP, but I never ever finished it. I’m sure I got to the last boss on the PS1, but continually got my butt kicked and there is only so much butt kicking one chap can take before he turns the console off in disgust.  This game amply demonstrated that level about 571 times. I’m disappointed in myself that I haven’t finished it, which is perhaps why I bought it so many times?  The thing is, the entire game is now familiar to me on such a level that I could probably quote the entire script and chain of events verbatim to you now!  Hmm, if the rumours of a remake are true, I’ll perhaps just buy that 5 times and finish that. Yeah. That’s what I’ll do!