Does anyone else start games, go through huge amounts of time when you cannot play said games, and then, when you finally have time to play games, you want to play something else? I am pretty sure I am not alone here, and combined with my need to complete 100% in any game that I play (not that it happens all that often), this extensive list is something that nags at my mind quite often.
Here's a bit from My Collection of Unfinished Games:
Pikmin 2
Approximate % Complete: Probably 95%
Willingness to Return to It: Low
Trials and Tribulations: The game is a solid one, a definite upgrade over the original in terms of the amount of content. I still think the first one is the more solid game - the structure and pacing is amazing, as well as the replay factor - but this one offers a deeper experience (pun intended).
The deeper, of course, refers to the caves. The caves, man. Those things take so damn long to complete, particularly later in the game, and if you miss something near the bottom, you need to do the whole thing over again. Lucky for me, I am obsessive and over-prepared, so I always go in ready for the worst. I am a very conservative Pikmin player, doing everything in my power to avoid losing any of those little guys. Seriously, the noises they make are so sad and pathetic - I feel a twinge of sadness every time I lose one. As a result, the caves aren't usually difficult so much as they are just kind of annoying.
Thankfully, the main story is one part of the game I did complete. I got everything in it, rescuing Louie from the crazy cave monster and finding every single possible treasure out there, as well as filling up my entire creature log. "Huzzah!" I thought, when I gathered everything. "Whaaaa?" I thought, when I explored the menus and found the challenges.
Do you remember me referencing that one guy at Nintendo who has cruel and unusual ideas? That guy that simply must exist, given the existence of the final level of Super Mario 3D World and the Grandmaster Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy 2? Yeah, some of these challenges are certainly this person's creation. Most of the challenges are innocent enough, simply giving you a bunch of Pikmin and asking you to collect everything. When you get deep into these challenges, though, you run into levels full of water in which you have no blue Pikmin, or fiery levels with no red Pikmin. Moreover, you only get the best rank if you don't let a single Pikmin die. Yes, you read that correctly - they all must live if you want 100%. It should be clear, therefore, why I do not yet have 100% in this game. It is, quite simply, stupid.
Will I ever revisit it? I find it unlikely. The game, while solid, simply gets to the point where I find myself more frustrated than appropriately challenged. If I ever find myself with endless amounts of time (oh man, that's a funny idea), I might consider it, if only because I really don't have many missions left (something like 7 or so).
Fun fact: some guy on Twitch once tried to tell me he beat the whole game, and then I asked about the challenges, and he brushed them off, saying he didn't do them and then moving on to another topic quickly. That guy has not beaten Pikmin 2. Not by a long shot.
Super Mario Sunshine
Approximate % Complete: Maybe 70%?
Willingness to Return to It: High
Trials and Tribulations: I think I've probably restarted this game about 4 times, each time with the intention of finally getting all 120 Shine Sprites. Well, that has not happened. Not yet, at least.
I like the game enough - it's a solid Mario adventure (even if my brother thinks it is a good game, but not a good Mario game) and has its fair number of challenges. It is more difficult than the previous entry in the Mario series (Super Mario 64) but not so tough that I want to throw my controller at the TV. There's variety to the challenges presented, a remarkable amount of depth, and just when you think you've discovered almost everything, it throws a bit more at you (like making you go through those FLUDD-less stages with FLUDD and collect red coins).
It's that final piece that has, perhaps, made me stop playing for large amounts of time. There is so much to discover in this game, including 30 blue coins in every level. I refuse to look up how to do things, or where things are located - I want to find it all myself. So, that makes the blue coin adventure kind of tedious. I desperately want to find them all, and on a good day, I might have the patience to find them. After I haven't had the time to revisit the game for long periods of time, though, I often find myself saying, "Hey, it's time to play something else for a while."
I'll probably get back to this game at some point in the future, when I finish something else (that's funny - me finishing something), but until then, I'll simply keep telling myself that I'l get back to it someday and finally get all of those damn blue coins. It's really a great game, so it would be worth it to get through it all just for some sort of ending screen that is different from the original ending screen.
Okay, so yes, sometimes I look things up.
Fun fact: I watch this game on Twitch fairly regularly, only to be grumpy throughout it because speed runners skip all of the fun things. I just can't be happy.
Mario Kart Wii
Approximate % Complete: Maybe 80%? Maybe 90%? Tough to call
Willingness to Return to It: Very Low
Trials and Tribulations: It seems silly to put a Mario Kart game on this list given how relatively easy it is to achieve everything in most of them. Back in the day of Mario Kart 64, it was simply enough to get gold trophies in each cup on each cc (and unlock those ghosts from the time trials, I suppose) to get 100%. Mario Kart Wii, however, has some additional criteria.
Instead of simply saying, "Hey, you won, here's a gold trophy, it doesn't really matter how you got here," Mario Kart Wii decides to give you a rank as well. Yes, I know - this is not the first Mario Kart game to do that, but it's the first Mario Kart game where I actually thought, "Hey, let's try to do this." I tried in vain for quite some time before throwing in the towel, and oddly enough, it took quite some time before I gave up on this one, even though successfully getting a rank of three stars on each grand prix is closer to impossible than completing either of the other games on this list. You see, in order to get three stars, you need to use virtually no items, avoid nearly every wall, and come in first on every race. This might work if the other racers didn't use items, but to win without using any items, particularly when you work through the higher cc's, is a nearly impossible feat. Screw Nintendo for making it essentially impossible for me to get 100% in this game.
Thankfully, in Mario Kart 8, the star system, while still annoyingly present, works out much more fairly. If you get first on all four races, you get three stars, so maybe I can get 100% on that game. Unfortunately, in games with an online portion, I don't really know what I ought to consider as 100% complete. That's for a later blog post.
Fun fact: I still do battle mode on Mario Kart Wii as opposed to Mario Kart 8 because Nintendo dropped the ball big-time and didn't create battle maps for this game. For those that haven't had the pleasure, you battle on regular racing courses in Mario Kart 8, making it impossible for me to truly put Mario Kart Wii away, despite my annoyance with it.
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That's it for today's piece of My Collection of Unfinished Video Games. In the future, we'll move into some older consoles, like the Game Boy!
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