Most Addictive Game « Riddlethos

Most Addictive Game 2010 – Riddles

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Holy crap, I’ve played a lot of this game. And I have the feeling I’ll be playing this game for many months to come. As a gamer, I’ve never been one to become addicted to games of competitive nature. Or of any nature, really – even Final Fantasy XI failed to suck me into its online fantasy world. But Call of Duty, for whatever reason, has an effect on me that no other game or franchise does. That is to say, it has the ability to make me spend many, many hours shooting at people with naught but an experience gauge to indicate any progress at all.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is the ultimate entertainment package. The campaign is an intense, intriguing eight-hour ride through heavily fictionalized Vietnam war sets. The online multiplayer suite is more impressive than its ever been, complete with the awesome new Wager modes. The Zombie mode is back from World at War, and it’s been amped up to whole new levels – making it, impossibly, even more addicting than it was before. I can’t even begin to count how many hours me and my roomates have sunk into that one.

Call of Duty is a very accessible franchise – even the most casual can pick it up and have fun – but in spite of this, it maintains a level of depth and complexity that hardcore gamers (such as myself) can appreciate for hours on end. Black Ops is the ultimate refinement of the Call of Duty formula, and it bears more content, perhaps, than all three of the previous games combined. In terms of pure entertainment value, it’s a monumental achievement, and I can’t wait to see how Treyarch – or even Infinity Ward – plans to top this one. Call it mainstream, call it whatever, blahblah. There’s a reason Call of Duty is so damn popular. Black Ops is one of the most addicting games I’ve ever played. Easy choice.

Runner up: Red Dead Redemption

It was between this and Mass Effect 2, and I decided to go with the underdog. Red Dead Redemption is a well-crafted sandbox game ripe with activity and exploration. In spite of this, I found myself losing interest in the game around the 15-hour mark, and then I sorta just dropped it. But, for its time, Red Dead Redemption is a very addicting game – whether you’re taking down bandits, shooting birds out of the sky, skinning critters, or staking out in the local saloon and murdering everyone who dares cross the threshold of the door. (I did that a few times, it was fun.)

Tags: Call of Duty: Black Ops, Most Addictive Game, Red Dead Redemption, Riddles' Picks 2010
Posted in Best Games of 2010 Week

Most Addictive Game 2010 – Ethos

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Plants vs. Zombies Game of the Year Edition

So this is a bit of a cheat. Plants vs. Zombies came out in 2009, and the Game of the Year Edition that came out this year is barely different. But I didn’t discover this gem until 2010, and Riddles chose God of War for an award last year, so suck it!

Anyway, since I discovered this cutesy tower defense brilliance early this year, I have likely booted up the game 60% of the days that followed up until today. The campaign is varied and challenging, the mini-games, challenges and survival modes are wacky, fun, and time-consuming. But even more time-consuming is the almost completely pointless Zen Garden that is just a place to harvest cash to buy upgrades.

All these facets are wrapped up in well-thought-out balancing, a charming graphical style, great music, and – obviously – an entirely addictive nature.

I’ve beat the campaign at least 10 times total and spent countless hours with the title, and only show minor signs of slowing down. This was an easy win.

Runner up: DeathSpank

This was a tossup between the Sly Collection, Mass Effect 2, and DeathSpank, but the ridiculous thong-donned hero won out. While Sly’s mission based structure kept me playing, I do eventually tire out and while I was completely sucked into Mass Effect’s universe, the pacing was perfect and I was happy to be done when it was over. DeathSpank, however, has so many sidequests on the go, and so many hilarious conversations to explore that even after a sequel released just weeks after the original, I was (and am) desperate for more.

Tags: Deathspank, Ethos' Picks 2010, Most Addictive Game, Plants vs. Zombies
Posted in Best Games of 2010 Week

Most Addictive Game 2009 – Ethos

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

912761-excitebotbox_super Excitebots: Trick Racing

This one was a surprise. I thought that Excite Trucks was not only the Wii’s best original launch game (I count Twilight Princess as a Gamecube port), but one of the only titles that showed any promise for the system’s motion controls. When Excitebots was announced, it looked way too silly and a little stupid. Upon trying it, however, it proved to be an incredible amount of fun and, obviously, very addictive.

One of the clinchers for this win is the game’s steady difficulty ramp. The racer has a pleasantly challenging difficulty curve for a Nintendo game and once you’re into the insane style, you’re hooked. A few people panned the game for its small selection of maps, and while that is an ultimate detriment, it made it easier to get intensely familiar with the course layout to repeatedly try for that S ranking. And man, some of those S rankings are tough to get. But that’s what made the game fun and addictive.

Ironically, the game’s insane mechanics that initially made me hesitant about the title became the other clincher. Since the racer is unique in that the rankings are actually based on a points system and not necessarily the placement in the race – although that helps – the race becomes a tactical frenzy to find the best way to get a lot of points which are, in this case, stars.

The point is that I played this game nonstop for a very long time this year, and that’s more than I can say for most games in a year packed full of some great ones. That’s it! ‘Till tomorrow!

Runner up: Peggle (XBox Live)

Tags: Ethos' Picks 2009, Excitebots: Trick Racing, Most Addictive Game
Posted in Best Games of 2009 Week