Anecdote time:  Assassin’s Creed was one of my favorite games from 2007.  It is almost universally hated by forumers for “not living up to the hype.”  The game flew straight under my radar until I heard the game mentioned as a sandbox-style game, which is one of my favorite genres.  I picked it up with a gift card and was extremely surprised that it was a good game.  Not directly experiencing any “hype,” I had no expectations that the game could fail to meet, and I ended up enjoying stabbing some mans in the past.

Looking back on this experience, I’ve found it a good thing to distance myself from reading every piece of news, watching every little trailer and following every developer on Twitter.  I don’t usually get games right away.  Hell, I don’t even trust a lot of game reviews since the Gerstmangate fiasco (though since it was directly responsible for the creation of Giant Bomb, I’m selfishly glad it happened).  I rely on word-of-mouth or reviews from sites like Some Other Castle or Geeks of Unusual Size.

Most geeks I know respond negatively to advertising, anyway.  Before Adblock arrived on the scene, I had a crazy solution that involved a 3MB Hosts file to redirect banner ads to a null IP address.  I don’t even have cable TV because I really don’t enjoy commercials.  The hype isn’t for we who self-identify as gamers, but now that gaming is mainstream, the hype will never go away.

But please, marketing people, please stop promoting your games fifteen months before they release.  Stop with the web countdowns, stop with the EXCLUSIVE TEASER TRAILERS.  Honestly, make good games and we’re probably buying your games anyway already.  We don’t need to be insulted by your shameless pandering for our mindshare.

Well, except for this first game, as I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys this steaming turd (except for Leah, but she’s a crazy person).  Taken by itself, and if it were released first, Puzzle Quest Galactrix (hereafter referred to as “Galactrix,” or “dung-vomit”) would surely have been hailed as a phenomenal game; but it can’t be, and it wasn’t.

Two-Thousand and Seven was an awesome year, full of amazing games that I am still catching up on.  One of my very favorites was Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (hereafter referred to as “Warlords” or “the good one”).  I bought this game for XBLA, then shortly thereafter I grabbed a copy for PSP , and PS3.  Oh, and at some point I snagged a download version for PSP as well.  That’s right.  I boughtfour copies of this game.  I loved almost every aspect of it.  Needless to say, I was quite anxiously waiting for Galactrix to be released.

For those not in the know, the fine chaps (hereafter referred to as “fine chaps”) at Infinite Interactive managed to take the story of their oldWarlords franchise and force it into some bizarre mating experiment with Bejewled and they came up with gaming genius.  It’s an RPG in which all of the battles are played out by matching three (or more) colored gems together to attack or cast spells at your foe.  It had catchy music, bright artwork, a decent (if somewhat clichéd) story, and some genuinely funny dialog.

Galactrix has none of this.  It really is as if the runaway success of Warlords went entirely unnoticed by the team, as they took everything that was great about the first one and pooped on it.  It is dark, has little music, poor pacing, almost no attempt at fleshing out the world and characters, and is full of absolutely broken and unrewarding gameplay.   Warlords made a point of rewarding the player for each and every encounter, even if it was only a few gold pieces or some experience points.  Prepare for having 70% of the encounters in Galactrix to go unrewarded, and perhaps, repeated.

Imagine, for a moment, that the next Final Fantasy game required a timed battle after every single room in every single dungeon.  The player would have access to none of the awesome abilities and spells that have been collected over the last 25-40 hours, and would be randomly and arbitrarily forced, five percent of the time, to repeat these battles.  Oh, and you gain no money, experience or items from these battles. Would anyone enjoy that?  There’s nothing a gamer enjoys more than having to replay sections of the game, right?  I was tired of these leapgate hacking sequences after the fourth one.  I estimate that I’m less than halfway through the story and I’ve done over seventy of them.

In fact, I’m adding Leapgate hacking to my list of things that have made me stop playing a game.  So far, it includes unpausable cutscenes (Metal Gear Solid 3–I was on call and my pager went off), Quick Time Events (Too many poopy games to count), trapping me in a dungeon with no way to refill health or escape, (Dragon Quest VIII—after sixty hours, the bastards) and not being able to pause (Phantasy Star Online and Universe).

Why don’t I stop?  Well, if I stopped, I’d be out twenty bones and material for this little thing here.  I’d be finished with the game a lot sooner, but I’m finding myself having to grind for money to buy better ships to even survive the random encounters.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go play dung-vomit some more because I hate myself.