My Change In Gaming Philosophy

    Hey, everyone. While my Tivo is taping the British Open I thought I'd blog about gaming a bit.   The change in the fledgling app store has caused this gamer to evolve a bit. What I mean is merely that I can see myself gradually changing my gaming philosopy. Until lately, I bought a lot of premium games. The $5 or $6, and $7 or $8 games were commonly bought by yours truly. They were cool games, mostly. I'd research them thoroughly, by reviews and video clips, then squeeze the trigger on a buy. Some of them were good buys. Games like the legendary 9MM had the difficulty level set where it was very challenging for me, but I persevered and finished it, all the way, a rare feat for me. I loved the game and I'm playing through it again right now.
    The problem was, most of the higher end games were cool for a couple of levels. You'd say, "Wow, what great graphics and exciting game-play. This is fun!" You'd tell your friends, or, in my case, do an enthusiastic review on my blog about it. Next thing you know, you're stuck. You wind up, maybe, getting to play about half of your game.
    All this is well documented on previous posts, up until this: Here lately I have almost quit shelling out for these games, at least most of them. I did buy Nova 3, and after tons of difficulty and lots of sticking points, I have almost finished it. I also bought Mass Effect: Infiltrator. After lots of trials and an assist from my gaming pard, Trevor, I am almost finished with it. But I digress.
    Part of my new approach is to buy the big games like Batman, Arkham Asylum, and others, when they are on sale and have come down to earth on the price. After the early adopters have been served. This sale price of 99 cents makes the games disposable when they inevitably show their teeth and I can't play through them.
    When The Amazing Spiderman came out the other day for $6.99, did I buy it? Noooooooo. In the old days I would have jumped on it "like white on rice".
    Another good example is the new release of The Dark Knight Rises. Formerly I would have had it five minutes after it hit the app store. Now that guy sitting in Omaha is saying, "I went to see what Wills had to say about The Dark Knight and he hasn't played it." The cursed program that developers use called "Dynamic Difficulty Increase" is the culprit. This means that the game is programmed to get harder level by level and more so on the boss levels. Why not give us the choice, if you want our money? The reason is, casual gamers are insignificant to you.
     The lady in China, who just bought her shiny new I-Pad, is reading this and saying, "Wow, there is hate and discontent in the app store!" Hey, we'll work through it.
    With all this irritation, the much hated in-app purchases, which I despise as much as most people, can actually be a help. You can get a great game like Asphalt 7: Heat or the gory Dead Trigger, and play it for a while to see if you like it or can actually advance enough to warrant investing in it.
   I did this with the odd shooter called Lock and Load, in which the hero is a horror movie villain with a hockey mask. I paid 99 cents for it. I played it, liked it, made progress, then shelled out some cash for in-apps. This method has its issues to, as the marketers keep trying to suck the bucks out of you as the game rocks along. The in-app for this game was too high, by half.
   So, readers, the battle between consumers and marketers rages on with the marketers intent on messing up the app store. This casual gamer has rebelled against half-played games. I feel like developers have left us out in the cold, like the picture above.
    From the land of 99 cent games, this is 'Casual' Wills.