Don't get me wrong, I love playing games online. It's quite addictive, and gaming would certainly be less interesting these days without it. One thing that really attracted me back to consoles this gen was that their online features function just as well if not better than even the most recent PC games. But sometimes I think it does it a little TOO well. Sometimes I think Facebook/MySpace has taken away some of the anonymity I used to enjoy in the PC community.
There have been several really good single player games released lately. Recent purchases for me have been Fable II, Fallout 3, and Gears of War 2. I consider all three of these titles to be "must play" titles. When I fire up my 360 at night, you can guarantee I'm going to be playing one of those three. And I usually get excited just thinking about it during the day at work. I day dream about getting home and getting back into Albion so I can find that next gargoyle or make some more money playing Fortune's Tower.
And then the moment of truth arrives: I log in, start up my game, cue the opening menu and theme music, and then......................a game invite. A friend wants me to play a round of Tiger Woods 09. I've been playing TW09 since it launched. My friend just got it a few weeks ago. He's still massively excited about it. I've moved on to much bigger and much better things. Now, it's not that I don't want to play Tiger Woods. I love Tiger Woods. I just don't want to play it RIGHT NOW, and I definitely don't want to play it EVERY time I log into live. Now, you're probably saying to yourself, "Well why don't you just tell your friend you don't want to play, you whiny bitch?" Yeah, I could tell him that, and sometimes I do tell him that, but after two straight weeks of telling someone you don't want to play a game with them, eventually you have to give in a little bit. My problem is that for the last two weeks, all I want to play is Fable II.
You might also be asking yourself, "Why don't you just unplug your router or your wireless attachment so that you're not online, you whiny bitch?" Yeah, I could do that. But it makes me feel like a prisoner in my own home, and anyone who knows me knows that I'm not going to spend two straight weeks without gaming. Usually, I don't even go two DAYS. AND, if my GoW2 buddies get on and get a good game of Horde Mode going, I want to be in on that. I will most certainly put Fable II or Fallout 3 down for Horde Mode. I like playing online with people who play a variety of games, and I am more willing to drop what I'm doing and play with them. And sometimes the only time I ever have a good conversation with my brother is on Live. But there's always that one guy (in my case the Tiger-Woods-game-invite-the-second-I-log-on guy) who only seems to play and/or own one game and always seems to insist that you play it with them.
How about you guys? Do any of you have that annoying person on your friends list who only wants to play one game and gives you a guilt trip when you DON'T want to play that game? I find myself logging on to Xbox.com on my computer and checking to see who's on before I play. Do you guys ever do that?
PS: Yes, I do know that you can set it so that nobody can see your status, and I do know that you can set your status to "offline", but I feel like I shouldn't have to do that just to hide, and some multiplayer modes don't work right if you're hiding your status.
