Xbox 360 and the casual-hardcore gamer

As gamers get older they seem to have less time to play. I recently heard the term "casual-hardcore" in relation to gamers that were once hardcore, but due to lack of time, they have become more like casual gamers playing in shorter stints and completing fewer games.

I believe I fit directly into this mold. Where once I would look forward to a 40+ hour gaming experience, I now cannot find the time to finish them. In fact if a game rates less than 85% on Metacritic, I won't even try it... (note: percentages listed after the game titles are the MetaScores.) For me to finish a game these days it pretty much needs to rate 90%+. Publishers take notice, I am part of a rapidly growing market segment.

Personally I am not a fan of First Person Shooters. Partly because I burned out on FPS in the early 90s, but mostly because I die a lot and I hate waiting minutes between rounds. I find games like Half-Life 2 96%, Bioshock 96% and the Halo 94% trilogy to be HEAVILY overrated and would rate them all in the mid-80s. Puzzling? These games are NOT and never were the "best game ever." I don't care what anyone says about this. The cake is a lie. However I adore Call of Duty 4 (COD4 94%) due to the excellent story and graphics, the frenetic pace, near instant respawning, and short waits between rounds. I even beat this game on Veteran difficulty (very hardcore).

I "rushed" through Mass Effect 91% in under 30 hours because I wanted to experience the main story without the time commitment required to enjoy the game fully. I spent a lot of time on Oblivion 94%, but once I finished the main quest I pretty much stopped playing it. I played through Bioshock 96% once, but was not at all inclined to replay it.

One of my favorite games of last year was Portal (Orange Box 96%). Mainly because the main game was engaging, challenging, easily digested in small chunks, and can be completed in under 10 hours. This game is absolutely perfect for the casual-hardcore.

The single game I probably spent the most time playing on my Xbox 360 last year was Catan 81% on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), based on the award winning role playing game Settlers of Catan. The best description is that it has similarities to the old computer game M.U.L.E. and the board game Risk, two of my all-time favorite resource-strategy games. I absolutely love this game and find that when I only have an hour or two to kill I can play 2 or 3 games against challenging human opponents. Oh, and I am pretty good at it too.

Rock Band 93% is taking the casual-hardcore world by storm, it combines the best elements of easy to play and hard to master. I highly recommend it if you enjoy music at all, even if you don't enjoy gaming it's worth a try. There's bound to be a song or twelve in here that you like, if not it's likely you can buy/download one.

Lately I have been playing Burnout Paradise 88%, as I am a big fan of the series. This update to the franchise has been garnering alot of criticism due to the fact that it moved from a linear to an entirely open-world environment. The changes that go along with that kind of move are evident, and sometimes not approved of by fans. Personally I LOVE it. The only things I can really criticize the game for is the lack of an option to restart a lost race which would require loading, and the sterile feeling of the world. By sterile I mean no humans, no animals, no weather, and extremely limited environmental destruction. The world just feels lifeless, fast, but lifeless.

There are so many good casual games on Xbox 360 and XBLA I don't see why MS doesn't promote this better, and instead chooses to use the term "family games". They already locked in the hardcore gamer, there's no reason casual gamers can't find something to play on the 360 too.