Yesterday I beat Ninjatown on DS. The reason this is a notable accomplishment is that I haven’t beaten any real video game for months. The last game I can remember beating is Lost Planet, and that was during the summer, before my room mate moved in and my social life got going.

I’ve played a lot of different games between then and now, games like Bioshock, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Viewtiful Joe, and more. But I haven’t beaten any of those games, and I think I know why.

What I Think
When I play single-player games, I play for the entertainment value. I enjoy shooters because they are immersive and cinematic, and I love any game with good writing and atmosphere. “Writing and atmosphere” are what Bioshock has in spades. And I haven’t beaten that.

A second reason I play games is for the gameplay. I like depth and strategy. Advance Wars is incredibly deep and strategic, though. And I haven’t beaten that.

A third reason I play games is for innovation. I want to experience something new, or something old done in a new way. Viewtiful Joe is a unique reimagining of the Brawler genre. And I haven’t beaten that.

Here’s Why
This is why I haven’t beaten those games: they are strong in so many areas, but they don’t quite meet my need for good pacing.

Allow me to explain. When I get hooked on a single-player game, I find that my desire to play the game is based on the rewards that I can get for playing it. Those rewards take the form of story advancement (because of the entertainment value) and a sense of achievement. I like to be able to play, and then be rewarded for completing a portion of the game. I like to “achieve” the next cutscene, or the next item, or the next level. I need constant carrots dangled in front of me.

Advance Wars falls short on this count because of the difficulty of the later missions. I really enjoyed playing the game, but by the last couple of levels the battles were so hard, and took so long, that I basically decided that putting four to six hours into a mission to read another five-minute cutscene wasn’t worth it. I would love to beat the game, because I found the story and the characters interesting, but the reward wasn’t great enough for the effort I had to put in to accomplish it. Viewtiful Joe was much the same way.

Bioshock isn’t as significant of an offender. In fact, once I get Gears of War 2 out of the way, I hope to go back to Bioshock and beat the rest of it. I would prefer it if Bioshock’s rewards were a little meatier, though. They are frequent enough, with the diaries and the new abilities and weapons and so on, but they could be a bit more sizeable and significant.

Games That Do It Well
All of this brings me back to Ninjatown. I loved this game, and I’ve been replaying some of the levels trying to get top marks on them. Why? Because the pacing and the rewards are so good. Each level lasts between 8 and 15 minutes, and at the beginning of each new mission you’re treated to some very clever dialogue between Old Master Ninja and his co-ninjas. The writing is a bit cute, but really funny and entertaining. Combined with new abilities, new ninja types, and new items, it’s more than enough reward for spending ten more minutes beating the next level, or twenty minutes if you can’t get it done on the first attempt.

Gears of War 2 is doing really well on this count, too. Frequent check-points means I’m not forced to replay portions of the game over and over again, which is good for the pacing. The cutscenes every fifteen or twenty minutes are a great reward, as well (though I’ve been finding that the quality of the writing has been dropping in the fifth act).

In Conclusion
So what makes a single-player game worth playing, for me? The rewards should be worthwhile and frequent, and the difficulty should be matched against the pacing, so that players aren’t punished with a 45-minute retry when and if they fail. Ninjatown does it well. Gears of War 2 does it well. The Half-Life series does it well. Advance Wars doesn’t. And that’s why I haven’t beaten it. Or Final Fantasy 3.

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