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Rock Band, Kinect
Edgehopper has us over a ways back to play the new Rock Band (now with keyboards!) and try out a couple of Kinect games. All fun, but in the end I think they all go into the same bucket as most of the stuff for the Wii: Fun as party games for a few hours, but I wouldn't put the time into them to actually justify a purchase.
Rock Band, especially with the new "pro" controllers that much more closely mimic playing the actual instrument, and Dance Central are both a bit less about playing a game than learning a physical skill. Which is fine--arguably, "platformer reflexes" are just as much a skill that games "train" you on--but it's not what I'm looking for in a gaming experience. If I wanted to learn to play guitar, the Rock Band pro guitar mode would be the awesomest thing ever and I'd play it all the time until I could pick up and play real songs on a real guitar instead. Likewise for pro drums or pro keyboard.
Similarly, I think Dance Central could actually make you a pretty good dancer. Or at least get you into decent shape: Jethrien was quite good at Dance Central because she's done a lot of exercise videos, and the screen-mimicking skills are basically the same. If I bought a 360 for other reasons, I'd be tempted to buy the game to feed her exercise video habit. But it's not worth buying a system for.
Which got me thinking about what I do want from my gaming experience: I want it to feel like entertainment, not work; and I want to feel some sense of accomplishment rather than a sense of wasted time. That's probably why I gravitate towards rpgs, because they have a beginning, middle and end, and are designed to be long and played once rather than attempted repeatedly because you keep failing. Likewise, I tend to avoid harder action/platformers (practicing them feels like frustrating work) and casual games (which tend to feel like lost time). Party games like these both feel like work (read: I'm a lazy gamer who hates exercise) and don't have much of a progression or goal to accomplish. 5-starring everything on Expert just doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid.
It's nice to have friends who buy all the cool toys and let me play with them, so I don't have to spend the money myself just to decide it wasn't worth it to me.
Rock Band, especially with the new "pro" controllers that much more closely mimic playing the actual instrument, and Dance Central are both a bit less about playing a game than learning a physical skill. Which is fine--arguably, "platformer reflexes" are just as much a skill that games "train" you on--but it's not what I'm looking for in a gaming experience. If I wanted to learn to play guitar, the Rock Band pro guitar mode would be the awesomest thing ever and I'd play it all the time until I could pick up and play real songs on a real guitar instead. Likewise for pro drums or pro keyboard.
Similarly, I think Dance Central could actually make you a pretty good dancer. Or at least get you into decent shape: Jethrien was quite good at Dance Central because she's done a lot of exercise videos, and the screen-mimicking skills are basically the same. If I bought a 360 for other reasons, I'd be tempted to buy the game to feed her exercise video habit. But it's not worth buying a system for.
Which got me thinking about what I do want from my gaming experience: I want it to feel like entertainment, not work; and I want to feel some sense of accomplishment rather than a sense of wasted time. That's probably why I gravitate towards rpgs, because they have a beginning, middle and end, and are designed to be long and played once rather than attempted repeatedly because you keep failing. Likewise, I tend to avoid harder action/platformers (practicing them feels like frustrating work) and casual games (which tend to feel like lost time). Party games like these both feel like work (read: I'm a lazy gamer who hates exercise) and don't have much of a progression or goal to accomplish. 5-starring everything on Expert just doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid.
It's nice to have friends who buy all the cool toys and let me play with them, so I don't have to spend the money myself just to decide it wasn't worth it to me.
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Rock Band 3: Awesome, continuing to work on improving on pro guitar and pro keys. Hoping for more DLC to get more variety in the process.
Dance Central: Very good, needs more variety (also, not my type of music and requires living room rearranging to play).
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: Compelling story (and alternate history!), reasonably difficult. My current obsession.
Kirby's Epic Yarn: No story, no difficulty, but some of the things Kirby can do are cool. I'm not enjoying it.
Kinect Adventures: Reasonable difficulty, no story, not much skill training. It's OK.
Civ V: Create your own moderately interesting story, needs more interesting AI to make for better skill training and better simulation. Not as interesting to me.
Donkey Kong Country Returns and Epic Mickey are the two new big Wii games; I'm less interested in DK Country because it's the same 2D platformer I played a decade ago with updated levels, while Epic Mickey is supposed to have an interesting story.
My taste in board games and tabletop wargames also runs to the complex and simulationist, preferably with interesting in-game strategy (which is why games more reliant on army or deck building, like 40K and CCGs, don't appeal to me as much).
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My feelings on deckbuilding/prep work depend on my mood, but typically it means that I need to really get involved in the game--I can't pick it up casually. When I was into Magic, I spent a lot of time and thought on deckbuilding. I haven't picked Magic up again because I don't want to put in that kind of time and effort. (I had kinda the same thing with D&D 3.5E, which is why I still haven't made any particular headway into writing a 4E module.)
I'd like to hear about Epic Mickey if/when you play it.
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Oh dear, I have a habit that needs to be fed.
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