Now that I’m a mom, I don’t play video games as often as I used to. Not because I don’t have time (come on, what else am I going to do during nap time? Watch Oprah?*). No, I just hate going to GameSpot because the aisles are too small for the stroller. That’s why I was sooooooo psyched when the new WiiWare arrived to my WiiShop channel. Sure, I love downloading the oldie but goody (and…you know…the oldie and kind of crappy) from the virtual console, but BRAND NEW games? Just for me? Available at a wave of a Wiimote? Hoo-freaking-ray, mother fluffers! (Yes, I am trying not to swear, thanks for noticing.)

Despite my initial disappointment that the competitive eating sim was not released on May 12 as promised, I gleefully started downloading. I love RPGs and weird sims, so of course I had to get My Life as a King. For 1, it’s a weird kingdom building sim and for 2, the kingdom you build is located smack dab in the middle of Final Fantasy land. I’ll admit, I held off for a day or two because of the 15 buck price tag, but then I thought…meh, 15 bucks is nothing for a video game. I spent more than that on USED games! 

 No sooner had I finished my rationalizing and forged ahead, when the download screen warned me that I was about to download a game that was going to charge me for additional content. I paused. Eh. It’ll be fine. If I like the game, I’ll pay and if I don’t, I won’t.

 But it’s not that simple. I liked playing My Life as a King, but I’m not sure if I like the game. Sure, the game looks good, and building houses and shops and taverns and crap can get real addictive. As can building up your little army of adventures and sending them out on vague quests to kill generic monsters and whatnot (yeah, I’m going to need a warrior, a thief and and a black mage to go kill the Scorpion King…the rest of you, stay here and look for Enola’s striped bandanna…apparently she lost it.) But at a certain point you realize that all you do is run around, trying to increase the morale of your incestuous subjects (seriously, there are like 5 faces for the whole freaking kingdom), while your adventurers run around buying swords and spells and potions and cool crap before running off to explore new territories and kill stuff. Jebus Cripes! The NPCs are having more fun than me! WTF!

 Yeah, I know. It’s not an adventure game…it’s a weird kingdom building sim. But the problem is that while it is fun and addictive in the beginning, towards the middle it just gets addictive. See, once you get all the happy incestuous subject points you can get, the highest reward is that you can get more happy points, but why in the f’n heck would I need more happy points when I’ve already gotten the highest reward? And while I can make my subject happy, there’s really nothing I can do to piss them off (yet anyways, but  I don’t think that I’m going to clear a level 40 dungeon and be rewarded with a chime and a screen that says “Citizens now have the ability to feel rage.”) so why do I run around trying to make them happy and hire people to look for their missing doo-rags? There’s no reward for doing it and no punishment for not doing it. And since I’ve built all the houses I can build and hired all the adventurers I can hire, there’s not much left to do.

 Phooey. I’ll admit, I did buy some of the add-on content (but I refused to shell out a buck so the king could change clothes…he doesn’t need new clothes…especially not the kind you can buy for a buck), but I have the feeling that I’ll end this game soon and the way I end all my crazy addictions: with  a weird mix of pride for digging my way out and shame for falling so low. Or, I might buy every bit of add-on content (about 50 bucks) including the clothes (hey, it’s only a buck!) and play every second of this evil game, hating it and myself every second. I’ll keep you posted.

*I do that, too, but sometimes it’s a re-run…or a Tom Cruise interview. 

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 11:40 am and is filed under Lemon Drops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.