(I think that heading needs some more colons, but let's press on regardless)
I guess the fault exists with me but even though I've finished the storyline part of the game (to my knowledge), I find myself still trudging through the remaining missions - wipe out opposition gangs and acquire property - in Scarface: TWIY, working towards 100% completion of the game.
Larger games these days (particularly in the sandpit-game genre) have honking big stats sections which tell you everything from how long you have been playing the game (never something you really should know) to how far you have travelled using different forms of transport, from how many people you have shot in the left kidney (I kidney you not) to how many conversations you have had with in-game characters and the all important one - how much of the game you have finished.
I'm currently sitting on around 85% at the moment - which considering that I've taken over the four quarters of Miami and killed all the gang bosses that tried to bring me down (not to mention won over half a dozen scantily clad babes at my mansion) - doesn't quite seem enough. As I say though, there are still 20 or 30 gang cells to get rid of and a bunch of things to buy - including an authentic astronaut suit, an Easter Island head and an investment company.
Getting to this point is sheer slog though - and yes, I'm aware of the irony of considering any activity where you spend hours watching telly in a recliner rocker "slog" - I've currently got little money and the meters that tell me how much "heat" I have from the cops and the gangs are way up. This means that any time I try to do a major drug deal or kill a gang, the gangs and the cops (respectively) are all over me, the major drug dealers won't do me good deals and the bank screws me in interest rates for money laundering.
I tell you, sometimes you wonder how drug barons get out of bed in the morning.
So why bother? Who cares? If it's more like hard work now than fun, why don't you just put down the controller and - oh I don't know - get a life?
And here's the thing - my theory is that most of the pleasure that we get from games is the sense of achievement and power we get living in our virtual world. In the game world, you do the things you can't and wouldn't in the real world. (Which all those anti-game people still don't seem to get). Progress is marked increment by increment, giving you constant reinforcement that even if you don't have a lot of influence over the events in reality, everything you do in the game "matters".
When you a playing socially, this is further enhanced. Interestingly, not everyone even needs to be playing for gaming to be social - watching someone else playing through missions can be just as entertaining as sitting watching a movie and oftentimes moreso. Finding the balance between letting someone make their own mistakes and work things out and "helping them" is a fine art.
So why is 100% important? I think it's to do with the relationship you have established with the game over the course of the 40-50 hours it takes to play a standard game. To have gotten to the end of the storyline, the game has to have engaged you enough that you don't just put down the controller disappointedly saying "Well that's really a very average game". It's taught you how to use it, it's given you better and better treats as it has gotten harder and harder, it's drawn you in to the world you are playing in.
It's frustrated you, baffled you, driven you nuts when stupid civilian cars inexplicably turn suddenly in front of you, it's made you laugh when out of the blue, swimming in the ocean after your boat has blown up you are eaten by a shark and it has made you keep coming back for more.
So you get to the end of the story, you've vanquished the villains, the world is yours, you've beaten the game BUT sitting there in one line on the statistics page is a small taunt. "Yeah sure, maybe you think you won but *ahem* - look at the scoreboard. I say you haven't"
And damn it, you know that you aren't going to be beaten by a piece of software.
So on we trudge.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm still very much enjoying hooning along Miami streets in my range of sports and muscle cars, powersliding around corners and whatnot, I just think I'm ready to settle down into druglord retirement)
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