The antiques roadshow is a television program which involves people selling priceless heirlooms which they’ve inherited from their dead relatives. Usually an expert will evaluate these trinkets, describing the item’s history in exquisite detail.
Storage wars and shows like it, involve American pawn shop owners bidding on storage containers which storage companies inherit from their dead customers. Contestants get a few minutes to glance over the container, trying to estimate its value. The amusing twist is that people don’t know what they’ll get and often find that they’ve just spent $600 on a collection of soiled leather pants and 12 boxes of decomposing onions.
Auction Wars is the videogame version of the latter! Actually I suppose Bargain Hunt would be a more fitting comparison but I don’t think there’s anything close to an American version of David Dickinson.
Y’all know the star spangled banner right?
The joy of shows like Bargain Hunt and Storage wars is barking at the contestants for idiotically pissing away significant sums of money for insignificant things. Auction Wars focuses on this feeling of superiority and challenges you to appraise some abandoned shit in a box and then outbid a series of AI competitors for pretend profit.
There are two modes but I ignored multiplayer because I’m allergic to all forms of human contact. The singleplayer mode forces players to compete against three AI opponents. You’re given five seconds to poke at the tat in a storage unit to see a few dollar value estimations. You then engage in a frenetic bidding war for ownership of the contents. I found it relatively easy at first, ignoring units which were obviously filled with human entrails and bidding like crazy for containers filled with golden chests.
Cameron only has himself to blame. Cameron spent $400 on a broken radiator.
After I unlocked the second series of lockers, the difficulty ramped up considerably. I started to ignore four out of five boxes just to avoid spending half of my money on units full of compost and hair. The AI also got significantly more devious. If a unit had something of obvious value the AI would go into a bidding frenzy, denying anybody a profit. They’re proper petty little bastards!
After about 20 minutes it becomes the most boring thing on earth but you continue to play, entranced. You ignore how boring the game actually is. You’re not a spectator anymore, you’re a competitor and you’ll be fucked before you let that fuckface Darrell fuck another unit away from you with his fat little head staring gormlessly into the distance as though he’s in a dream where four thousand cheeseburgers float through a wall toward him, begging to be devoured.
I had to stop playing, it’s kind of addictive but you get burned by the shithead AI too much. It also simulates the TV series with such accuracy that it also brings with it the associated “what am I doing with my life?” depression. I’d much prefer a game version of the Antiques Roadshow, you’d have to select an item of intrigue given to you by a deceased aunt, an expert would give you a nice soothing explanation of its history and worth. You could even select something at random from your own house like maybe… a television. Lovely.
Games Whinge 