Money well spent?

I think everyone knows my opinion on DLC by now. I certainly like the idea behind it, as anything that can expand your favourite games is to be applauded, however, more often than not the DLC is underwhelming and not really value for money.

This weekend I played through the Noble map pack on Halo Reach, in a bid to snag the last 250 points I needed to finish off the game (again). Having put at least 80 hours into Reach already, most of which was online multiplayer or firefight, it was a bit of a shame that the new maps were not all that. Sure you can snag the points easy enough, it took about two hours to get them all, but the maps themselves are not a patch on the original stuff. Playing Invasion on Spire or Boneyard was always a blast, with the large maps offering muliple angles of approach, however the new Breakpoint map seems cramped and ill thought out in comparison. As a result it is easy to create killing bottlenecks that can only be broken by sheer luck it seems.

I think Reach was good fun while it lasted and I have no illusions about the fact that there will be more DLC in the future, but I doubt it will live up to the fun I've had with the core game. So if DLC is not really enhancing the experience then what is the point?

I finally managed to polish off Planet 51 as well, in the end I probably spent close to thirty hours on the game all told - which is far too long for a kids game really - as how many children are going to have that kind of attention span and dedication. Achievements on kids games are reknowned for being easy, but that is because they SHOULD be. These games should cater to their target audience, rather than throwing in a bunch of tasks that are a lengthy chore. The achievement crowd is still in the minority in terms of the 360 population and developers need to make their achievements fun for anyone that wants to go for them, while staying true to the game itself.

After getting that done I was kind of at a loss about what to play next. I have a bunch of games that have yet to be touched, plus even more that are semi-completed. In the end I went back to Final Fantasy XIII as it is a game a can work my way through at my own pace. At the moment I'm close to 40 hours in so there is still a lot to do. It does still bug me that I will complete the game soon (two chapters to go) and yet I will then have to spend all of the post game grinding for CP and items to get the full 1k. A badly thought out design methinks.

I've also gone back to the only incomplete Halo on my list, that being ODST, in a bid to finish it off. I'll focus on getting all of the single player stuff done first and then try and coral some people into doing the Firefight missions with me. It would be nice to put that one tobed seeing as it is not likely to garner anymore DLC in the near future.