I haven’t touched an MMO in a few weeks. I have however, been playing quite a few Single Player games. I was replaying Plants vs. Zombies for a bit and then I was playing Warcraft III on my 10 year old laptop while I was out of town for work for a week in each of the last two months. Lately I have been playing Tropico 3 (it was $6 on D2D!!!) which was a heap of fun and Mafia II. Mafia II was super hyped and then received a lot of flack once it released because it was lacking for a sandbox type game. I agree that it wasn’t “sandboxy” enough, but I enjoyed it thoroughly anyway.
The other day I plopped $10 down to get the DLC Jimmy’s Vendetta for the game. According to the game I am only 17% of the way through the DLC, but I have played enough of it to come to the conclusion that there is no reason that many of the elements of this DLC couldn’t have been included in the retail release. The retail campaign followed the exploits of Vito Scaletta in his journey up and down the Mafia ladder. The story is king in this part of the game and there is little to do but follow the rails from one point to the next. The DLC on the other hand gives you a choice between a couple of missions or so at each point and often these missions give you a fare chunk of in game currency so that you can go off and trick out your car and buy new clothes and restock ammo.
I know it is not a new gripe, but why do we have to continue to buy content that should have been in the game from the beginning? I am glad to pay for content that extends my enjoyment of a game, but I get a little frustrated when I have to plop down money to buy components of a game that should have been included from the start. Why do these companies continue to nickel and dime us? I know the answer is because we continue to pay for it, but it’s hard not to! The game is a lot of fun, and I want to have even more fun, so I paid for the extra content. I just wish I could do it without the overwhelming feeling like I have just been taken by a sleazy used car salesman.
-Pid
The Meat Shield - An MMORPG and General Video Game Blog 