I’ve been taking some time to deal with the games in my Pile of Shame recently.
So far, I’ve finished off Diablo III, Duke Nukem Forever, and Homefront, all of which I had stopped when I had gotten to certain points which I just couldn’t get past. In such cases, I normally find that if I step away for a while (even if it’s months and/or years), I’ll find myself getting past the area that had previously stumped me with much less difficulty. That was what happened here, as I ended up getting through all three games once I picked up where I left off.
The next two games on the Pile of Shame are ones based on the same pen-and-paper RPG: Vampire: The Masquerade. As I’ve said in a previous post, Vampire: The Masquerade was the first tabletop RPG I actually got into, so it has a bit of a special place in my heart. These two games, Redemption and Bloodlines were both day one purchases for me, but I only ever completed Redemption. Every time I tried to complete Bloodlines, something would happen to my PC and I would end up forgetting to backup my save game before doing a wipe/reload. As a result, I’d be stuck back at the beginning.
Now, while I finished Redemption, there’s a reason I’ve added it to the Pile of Shame (after Bloodlines): up until recently, I’d use god mode when playing these games.
It’s a matter of self-confidence, really. I didn’t think I could do anywhere close to a decent job when playing these games and I really would want to get to the end, so I would always enable god mode whenever possible, and/or use cheats to get all weapons or stats needed. I was doing this as far back as when playing DOOM II on my very first PC.
What made me change was starting to play first and third person shooters on my Xbox 360. Up until then (with the exception of Metroid Prime), I had played them exclusively on my PC. With both Gears of War and Halo 3, there was no god mode available, so I had to get through the games on my own merit. What sealed the deal was when I played DOOM 3 BFG Edition on 360; while I had played through it before on PC, this time I did it without god mode and found it was nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be.
Silly me.
So, now, I’m going to play Bloodlines and Redemption the way I should have played them the first time. Given how extensive Bloodlines is, it should be a while before I’m done with it. In fact, I may end up having to take a break from it early on as Wolfenstein: The New Order is coming out next week. Once those are done, I’ll hit Redemption. Hopefully I’ll have as easy a time with those now as I did back in the day when I was doing it the wrong way. :-)