Today, among other things, I beat Battleship for the Xbox 360. If you're unfamiliar, this was a 2012 release developed by Double Helix and published by Activision. And it was based on a movie, because the early 2010s featured a whole string of movies being made for things that didn't really need movies. Like, you know, long-time beloved pen-and-paper grid-reference guessing game Battleship.
As you might expect, Battleship was summarily panned on its original release for being what seemed like a monumentally stupid idea. However, given that it was super-cheap in my local CEX recently — as most seventh-generation games are right now — I decided to pick it up and give it a go.
I had a genuinely good time with it. It's not an amazing game by any means, but it's also certainly not "33 on Metacritic" bad. The first-person shooter segments are decent enough — though they lack somewhat in enemy variety — and the tactical ship combat is simplistic, but a nice addition to the overall gameplay. Given that the whole thing has just six levels and is over in about 4 hours (unless you replay on higher difficulty levels or attempt to track down the four hidden "pegs" in each level, because early 2010s games also needed pointless collectibles) I can understand why some people might have baulked at paying £40 for it.
Pay 50p for it, however? I'm there. And this raises something interesting about the game collecting phenomenon: as time goes on, the "value" of games changes significantly, both in terms of how much you can expect to pay for something, and how you might perceive its overall quality.
One of my biggest bugbears about modern online gaming discourse is how much mumbling there is about how x game "isn't worth $20" or y game is "more like a $5 game". These sorts of discussions say nothing interesting whatsoever about what the game is actually like to play, whether there's any value to the narrative, whether it does anything particularly interesting or, indeed, if it's actually worth picking up.
Take the money thing out of the equation altogether, which the ridiculous cheapness of second-hand seventh-generation games does right now, and you can enjoy pretty much any game on its own merits, without thinking about something silly like an "hours to dollars" ratio.
Battleship is a fun game. It brought to mind some pleasant memories of mid- to late-'90s PC games. And I don't regret spending a few hours on experiencing it.
I'll likely write something about it on MoeGamer tomorrow. It's way off my usual remit, I know, but as you've probably noticed over the course of the last six years or so said remit has expanded quite a bit from the early days. Because gaming is a fascinating and broad medium, and it's always interesting to explore things a little outside your usual wheelhouse now and again — you might just find yourself liking them!
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