04.30.07

A Catanic Ritual

Posted in Gaming, Rants at 3:26 pm

(Note, of course, that the second word of the title begins its pronunciation with a ‘hard c’ sound, making it more of a ‘k’ than an ’s’. Pun + board game = double nerd score. I was also going to reference a cult sub-B-movie and make it the coveted triple, but I wasn’t quite comfortable with the delivery. ANYWAY.)

It figures, of course, that after I go and finish one of the few XBox Live Arcade games I care about (SOTN, and even then it was sort of cheating– I sought out the Cressaegrim sword), the long-awaited release of Settlers of Catan would happen to be this week. You’d think that would be a good sign, given that I usually keep a few bucks’ worth of points handy in the event of a release. Well, Uno was my last ‘big’ purchase, and at $5, that leaves me just a scant $5 short of the required amount for Catan (800 MS Points, or $10). Naturally, of course, the points are only sold in blocks of 800.

That’s probably my primary complaint with XBLA, and the Virtual Console, and the Playstation Store (to a lesser extent). Granted, it’s not terribly taxing– I’m certainly not obligated to buy anything from them, and if I so chose I could fund my purchases entirely with gift cards from retail sources, thus preventing the need for the online store to have my precious bodily fluids account information. It’s largely a non-issue anyway, because I’m flat broke and if someone were to get their hands on my identity, they’d report themselves for the theft out of sheer embarrassment. No, the scrip system, while inconvenient, is only a minor annoyance compared to my real complaint.

There’s no freaking release schedule. We all know that certain games will be out at certain point during the near future, but we have no idea when. Boom Boom Rocket was purchased because, at the time, I had no knowledge of the release date for Settlers. If I had known, even for a second, that it would be this Wednesday, I would have skipped BBR (and comforted myself with the demo) and stuck with Uno and SOTN. As it stands, I’m not out too much on the Settlers boat– the demo will have to suffice until I can scrape together the cash– but it is irritating, especially that I likely won’t be able to do Live play.

The Virtual Console is, to a point, even worse because of the very nature of the games involved. Take today’s offering of Castlevania; while I didn’t play it as a kid, I know many people who did and are jumping at the chance to pick it up again. The big thing is, though, most folks’ budget for new games is very limited. Spending the $5 or $8 on Simon Belmont now seems like a good idea, but what if next week’s offerings are Mario RPG and Zelda II? What about Mischief Makers?

There’s a release list for boxed games, and that’s fine. There’s no reason to not have a date list for the distributed titles. In fact, not having it is counterproductive to the concept of using scrip for payment; if players know ahead of time that two good games are coming, they’ll purchase all of the points for those games in advance and either ‘pre-order’ them or let them sit. The companies win by a) having the money sitting in their accounts already, earning interest, and b) not having to pay as many credit-card transaction fees.

Yeah, the majority of this is just whining that I’m broke. Still, there’s a few valid points in there, not the least of which that Settlers is a good game. It would be oddly appropriate if I could barter a sheep for the remaining 400 points, but real life sadly does not work like that, huh?

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