i just want to play with myself

So I recently purchased a used copy of MechAssault 2, oddly enough, the sequel to MechAssault.  The first game was quite entertaining…  it basically boiled down to a first-person shooter, but with the added advantage of piloting a 50-ton mechanical walker while blowing up other 50-ton mechanical walkers.  Purists might argue that it horribly oversimplifies things from the old MechWarrior PC games, and I would certainly agree with them – but I would also point out that those old games were, at times, horribly over-complicated, and took a lot of the fun out of simply blowing out very large robot-ish things.  I think MechAssault goes too far in the other direction, but it certainly brings back a lot of the fun.  Unfortunately, it takes almost all of the customization out of the equation (you cannot custom-build your own mechs, but instead select from a given pool of standard chassis), and reduces the number of available offensive and defensive systems, as well as the number of mech chassis, but being able to scamper about in an Elemental power armor unit definitely has its attractions. 

At any rate, the MechAssault games are definitely arcade-style, whether you like it or not, so we can move on from there.  The advantage of the second iteration of the game is that it introduces a new, specialized, custom-built battle armor – kind of like an Elemental on both steroids and crack.  And, like the Elementals in the BattleTech game, this new, improved battle armor can latch itself onto its bigger-brother mechs.  Of course, once there, it does not start randomly ripping out circuitry and panels like Elementals do, but instead starts "neurohacking", and, if successful, ejects the mech’s current pilot.  Once accomplished, you can hop your pilot right out of his power armor, and take control of the now-abandoned mech.  Of course, this process had to be creative for gameplay, and to be successful at neurohacking, you have to follow a DDR-esque sequence of button pushes, or face being thrown from the mech yourself, and probably squished in the process.  Of course, the ability to step out of your mech any time you want can come in handy other times as well, if you happen to come across an abandoned mech that is better than yours, or you just want to get a new, undamaged warfighter.  Anywise, that is the biggest draw – better graphics, and a continuation of the storyline are some other attractions. 

The detriment is that the single-player story is pathetically short.  As in, short enough that I was able to complete it, on normal difficulty, in about five hours, if even that.  And it only took me that long due to my repeated deaths in certain missions of the storyline – suffice it to say, I am not terribly good at following button-pushing patterns, and found neurohacking to be quite frustrating.  Regardless, being able to finish off the entire single-player campaign, cut-scenes and all, in the course of two evenings was… well… disappointing, at best. 

Unfortunately, this seems to be more and more the trend of both computer and console games…  The single-player sections of them are just big enough to get your appetite whetted, while the majority of the gameplay revolves around multiplayer interaction.  For computer-based games, that is not so bad, considering that high-speed internet is pretty much something that everyone has.  However, for X-Boxes, one must first subscribe to the whole X-Box Live thing, and, to be perfectly honest, I am cheap.  Furthermore, I see no reason why I should have to pay for a subscription-based service just to enjoy a game that I already purchased and paid for to its fullest extent – if it were a subscription-based game itself like Evercrack or the rest, that would make sense.  However, this is not the case – this is a full version of a purchased game, and to say that the single-player action was lacking would be putting it mildly. 

Unless you go the route of hardcore RPGs, gone are the days of an enthralling, long-duration single-player campaigns, apparently.  And, honestly, I miss that.  I miss being able to dive into a game, blow a few things up, and then get back to "real life" all over again, without really worrying about the development of my character, or what development points are being allocated where, or any of that nonsense. 

Having single-player stories that are just long enough to sucker people into multiplayer action just so they can feel like they are getting their money’s worth seems somehow… cheating.  What if I want to just blow up mindless bots, and not have to worry about interpersonal relations, damn it?