Day 334, Game 334 - Adventure Time: Explore The Dungeon Because I DON'T KNOW!

If there was one thing that I could probably be accused of after a year long gaming session for the sake of this blog, it's simple to identify. One could easily say that if anything, I tend to like games too much. Not that I'm obsessed with games or sacrifice normal human activities or interactions in favor of playing games. No, I mean it in the sense that I find too many positives in games, talk too highly of sub-par games and generally just enjoy playing all types of games. I'm quick to defend a game that most reviewers hate, and usually end up critiquing harsh critiques of games.

Why am I like this? Mainly because I think all games deserve a chance, and if you lower expectations and hype from all games and just sit down and play them, you can usually find something to enjoy, even in the worst games. Sure, I totally understand feeling ripped off when you pay full price for a game and it turns out to be horrible, but when you buy a game, you are already interested in the first place, so why not just try to enjoy it? 

The problem with our culture in this day and age is a mixture of game reviewers, retail stores over hyping new releases and more specifically, the Internet in general. If we weren't so locked in to Internet news sites and blogs and various other outlets, and didn't consumer so much information about games years before they are even released, the hype for games wouldn't be so great, thus making it harder for games to live up to expectations. We expect the best from every single game we play, and when something isn't perfect or what we expect, we generally overreact and spend more time picking out the flaws in games than we spend enjoying the good things. 

Remember as kids when we would get one or two games a year? Maybe not all of us, but for me, that was the case for sure. A new game was treat and something to be cherished, especially in the NES days. And when we got a new game, we loved that game, no matter how bad it was. We would play the worst games over and over again, because that's all we had to play. Sure, we might be mad at our parents or grandparents for buying the worst of the worst, but we would still play those games. Now, we buy multiple games at a time, which means we have more to play. Add in the likes of RedBox, Gamefly and digital marketplaces, and we have never had more options for how we play games. The more options we have, the less enjoyment we find in the games we play, overall. Just a hypothesis, but I don't see how it can be any other way. 

With that being said, my little girl and I rented a game to try out and play from the nearest RedBox, only because there wasn't any good movies to rent from it. She loves watching Adventure Time, and quite honestly, it is one of my guilty pleasures as well. With that, we decided to check out Adventure Time: Explore The Dungeon Because I DON'T KNOW!, a fairly new release that I just haven't had time for. I've had my eye on the game since it was announced earlier in the year, but with everything else going on in this amazing year of gaming, it fell off the radar. Until now, of course. 

The game itself is okay, at best. It's a dungeon crawler, much like Diablo, but in the Adventure Time universe. It's fun seeing all the characters and familiar styles used in the game, as even the normal cartoon voice actors were brought on to make the experience an extension of the universe. Sure, it gets repetitive and while the story is quirky in typical Adventure Time fashion, it's not the best looking or well designed game. 

You know what I liked best about the game, however? I loved the fact that my five year old daughter loved it, despite not really being good at it. She didn't care. She was familiar with the characters and she loved every bit of it.

Like I said, there's a silver lining on every black rain cloud. Would I buy this game for full retail price? Not a chance after playing a little bit of it. But for one night, for a couple of bucks, my daughter and I had a great time. That's all the counts, right? 

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