2009 has been a great year for me in terms of gaming. Oblivion, Persona 3 & 4, Okami, lots of good times have been had. But there can be no win without fail and early this year I played Puzzle Quest for PS2.
Please! Make it stop!
It's the first game I can think of that I abandoned with no intent to ever finish. Gather round and I shall tell you the tale. You see I've had a lot of good experiences with puzzle games on the PSP. Lumines is superb, Every Extend Extra is a blast (pun unintended), and Gunpey is frantic fun. I had heard tales around the internet of an epic merging of puzzle game and RPG, a grand title that went by the name of Puzzle Quest. Intrigued and spoiled by my experiences with the PS2 port of Lumines I picked it up for $15 from my local EB. Placing it into my PS3 I was greeted with what looked to be an enjoyable experience, it was fresh, different, and appeared to be deep. At first it was fun, I enjoyed the puzzle gameplay, the variations of said gameplay, and all the things you could do. But after a while I got tired of the random battles forcing me into more of what I had been doing over and over for hours. Twenty hours in I found myself making excuses to not play the game, anything to keep me from another round of bejeweled. I realized that there was no depth, just an illusion tricking you into doing the same thing over and over and over and over. Thirty hours in I felt like I was going crazy. Bear in mind that I played and enjoyed Final Fantasy I with it's constant random battles. By thirty five hours and at the urging of my wife who couldn't stand to see me suffer any further I put Puzzle Quest away, never to be played again. After which I started having fun again with a game that didn't suck.
Back then I had started a review documenting my thougts on the game that had me doing the same thing over and over. I never got around to finishing it. Due to a trip to Germany and a computer reformat it lay neglected and unfinished like the title it was based on. A week ago I was tidying up my secondary hard drive when I came across it hiding in the corner, crazed and frothing at the mouth. The file looked at me and whimpered like it knew that it was unfinished and unwanted. Taking the review in my arms I did my best to finish it before throwing it onto Gamespot, far away from my PC. There is sits, in a dark corner of the site, where few shall ever read it. But after all those long months buried in the depths of my PC perhaps it's best it doesn't get much attention. I'm left with the opinion that bright lights or sudden movements might make it let out one of those soul chilling moans that I was making while playing the game. I certainly wouldn't want any of you to experience that kind of thing.