Boss battles

Ever since I have been playing video games which must be...actually I'm not gonna say, but to keep it short a long time and there have always been boss battles.
I have always felt they are mostly placed there purely because the people who make games feel pressured to make sure it's challenging for the gamer, hoping the gamer will feel he/she has had their money worth at least.
Another reason is that maybe they made a level and felt towards the end of finishing making the level, a programmer said to the boss (possibly a water cooler conversation in most cases) "I just think the level is too easy or too short"

I think the latter would be the case with two very recent games I have played which happen to be Deus Ex Human Revolution and Gears of War 3. Now don't get me wrong both games I respect are very different and have strengths and weaknesses very different to each other, but they both share a huge weakness which I felt ruined most of the game for me which were the boss battles.

Some boss battles are brilliant that require the gamer to think outside of the box in games and are certainly not shoved there to make up for an easy or poor level. Like for example using your surroundings or timed attacks in a certain combo or technique to defeat the boss or bosses.
But Gears 3 and Dues Ex require you to fire at the person then run away, then fire at the person... and then run away...for about what feels like 5 hours which is just lazy and a cheap cop out to the game especially that Deus Ex and Gears 3 have other parts that are so good.
Like the fantastic characters and Unreal engine that is so brilliantly used in Gears 3 which brings a great tactical element to a shooter which makes the Call of Duty franchise look like it's million years behind with single and multiplayer. Then there's the new Deus Ex which I personally hated but there was some light in there like the side quests which kept me going and the augmentation upgrades which made every gamers play through unique (never mind the story decisions made in the game) for them.

But yet these clearly very talented developers choose to use cheap tactics to try and make it challenging. Nothing challenging about making someone do the same repetitive task over and over again for 5 odd hours straight, we all do that anyway and it's called a job!

Gaming is suppose to be about escapism like any other medium and it should be enjoyable, not about a task that requires ages and ages to do with no skill or a challenge for a gamer to challenge him or her.
That's what should be talked about on their break standing by the water cooler, is it fun.

Trade in's

Before I couldn't understand why people did trade in's with their old games as the prices were useless and you would have to trade in five or so to get the latest game of the week/month.
But now (well I say now but it's done this for a while) the shops have now truly made it a good option for getting rid of old games.
GAME started off with a loyalty card that when you traded in games, bought or pre ordered from then you would get points/credit for you to build up.

Then as online websites started taking their business they needed to offer something which online retailers just couldn't compete with, was more convenient and made them keep coming back.
Then that's when trade in deals truly came in with this year getting harder for me to resist with his gem being offered by GAME.

Now how can any gamer say no that and how do online retailers compete with that?

No idea and fair play to GAME and Gamestation, I hate them but you have to admit that the people running their sales are very smart. Not only that if I do that deal I then have God knows how many points to get rid on my loyalty card, again forcing me to do business with them.

You just have to take your hat off to these people sometimes, very clever and just wanted to say well done to GAME. As it must be a nightmare to compete with online and they are doing it with such great business idea's to draw people away from online retailers.
I think this now overtakes one of their clever business moves in the war against a big supermarket which involved the supermarket selling the new 3DS at a loss but the goal of this is to get new people (or another type of customer who wouldn't normally go there) to buy other stuff there.
We have all done it "Oh actually I need more toothpaste and to fill up the fridge...May as well as I'm here" and that was the supermarkets goal.
But GAME being GAME told their employees "Buy all the 3DS in that supermarket, we give you the cash to buy them and then list them as pre owened in the stores"

Just brilliant.

Are we truly starting to get to the end of this generation?

As clearly mentioned in my last post I have been playing Deus Ex and wasn't really blown away by it at the end. Felt the controls didn't work and didn't feel smooth and had a very poor start as well as some glitches in the game. But when I completed it I sort of thought to myself for a couple of a seconds is this fall the last batch of games on the current gen, I answered yes in the moment and it still remains yes currently.

Don't get me wrong I'm not calling it the end just because of one game but something deep down in the back of my head sort of briefly asked me "What's coming out in 2012 that's worth keeping your 360 and PS3?"

Mass Effect 3, Far Cry 3...ummm...Max Payne???

Just nothing mind blowing to me but I'm sure the three I have mentioned will be very popular to everyone else. Just never been a massive Far Cry fan, loved May Payne 1 but 2 was average and it lacks the talent of Remedy which made May Payne brilliant. But I didn't mind Mass Effect 2 as it had a good re-playability value  in terms of story and DLC. But hated scanning planets and a fighting system which got boring very quickly. Halo 4 has also been announced but no details have been made available about the game just a teaser trailer.

Just can't see next year beating the likes of Uncharted 3, Forza 4 and Portal 2 which to me I was excited about right from the get go. It also feels right that we now move to the next generation of consoles which I'm sure will happen very soon with some kind of announcement from either Microsoft or Sony at next years E3.

All round it has been one of the weakest generations of gaming from my memory with some poor games coming out on both major consoles in the first 2 or 3 years with YLOD and RROD still a problem to this day. Also the fact both console have been hard to work with as in a recent article about Microsoft's strict and to some, unfair policies to third parties and PS3 being hard to make games for and having a hard developers kit to work with.

I'm hoping both seriously learn from this generation and learn from their mistakes and improve what makes them both great from the possibilities of Kinnect, to cross console gaming like we have seen work in Portal 2 with Steam and PS3 users.

I just see lots of possibilities for both. Not Wii-U though personally but hey, I was wrong about the Wii like everyone else on the planet :P