I am very disappointed with how the game industry has turned out. Don't get me wrong, I love video games; I plan to create them myself, even. But what I'm saying is that the gaming industry has taken so many turns that it's turned into a cacophony of improved graphics, realistic environments, mimicking driving or war or whathaveyou. I love good graphics, but it seems that these days that's all the game is about. Whatever happened to story lines, story progression, what happened to the adventure? It seems that graphics are getting higher and better at the cost of good gameplay.
Good gameplay is what makes a good game. It's in the fricken title. If you look at the old Super Mario games, the graphics aren't too good, but my god were those games addictive. I know people who still play Space Invaders and Tetris and lose hours of their day playing it. The graphics aren't realistic; its barely more than a couple of polygons, shapes and lines. So why do people keep playing them, and still love playing them? It's because of the gameplay. Sure, when you look at Doom I and compare it to Halo Reach, Reach wins hands down on everything. Doom has clumsy controls, jerky movements, and it's sometimes hard to distinguish between enemies, the wall and the bullets you're firing. Graphics are important. But when the game companies start focusing on graphics and trashing the gameplay, that's where things go wrong.
Growing up on the Nintendo (literally, I had one since like 7 and still play N64), I have had a good view on the progression of games. I still find that the 64 is the epitome of gaming, it has brilliant games that last long, hook you in, and provide scintillating stories to follow and get immersed in, and since then gaming has gone downhill. I don't mean that I don't like anything since then, god no, there are many games on the Game Cube, Xbox, PlayStation, and PC since then that I has seen me spending many a joyful hour hunched in front of a screen, but nothing quite compares to the originality of the 64. A perfect example in BanjoKazooie, a game I recently completed (which I will post a blog review about in the near future). It has a simple story, decent enough graphics, but the gameplay is so original, so fun, and I still struggle to find a game that matches the quality of BanjoKazooie.
Nowadays games seem to be taking a different path. We see more first-person-shooters than anything else, a ton of racing games, massive amounts of MMOs, RPGs about anything... whatever happened to good old adventure, or platform? Arcade is a bit outdone, but there are still ideas out there, it can't hurt to have a little variety. I don't mean they're all bad, Halo has a had a great run, and even though they slipped up with halo 2 and have been desperately trying to recover since, they've made their way back to the top. Valve continue to push out brilliant games (albeit very slowly) and every so often a magnificent game surfaces like Minecraft or Team Fortress 2.
The Wii was a failure, I'll admit that (still a Nintendo fanboy all the way), but only because game companies are so stuck in their ways that they don't venture from their repetitive game ideas at Microsoft or Sony and use the Wii to its full potential. Occasionally there is a great game put forward, Super Smash Bros Brawl (not as good as Melee but I'll take what I can get), Metroid Prime, and Skyward Sword. Brawl did not use the motion sensor very much, in fact, I'd recommend connecting a GameCube controller and playing with that, but it was still a brilliant game. Metroid was a whole new version of shooter, using the motion sensor to aim, and Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, although not yet released, boasts the best use of the motion sensor so far, reading every presice movement of the Wii remote and translating that to the movement of Link's sword. But these are all classic Nintendo titles, made and produced by Nintendo, so people rarely notice it. If the mainstream names out there turned their attention to the Wii and really started thinking, I'm sure that will really revolutionise gaming.
What I'm complaining about is companies these days are sacrificing good gameplay and good story for higher graphics and closer-to-real-life gaming. Soon enough we'll be enjoying test flight simulators on our PlayStations, and we'll find those funny little driving simulations you do at your driving tests on your Xbox, and shitty war games (I'm looking at you Call Of Duty series) will get so realistic you'll be playing the general in his tent moving those figurines across a map of the world to organise troops. And because game companies are off aiming to make gaming more and more boring for the Xbox and PlayStation, Nintendo is getting left with those stupid little niche games like Wii Play and Beach Sports or some shit.
God, don't get me started on niche gaming.
PC is the only side of gaming I can, in good conscience, commemorate. With clients like Steam and companies like PopCap and Valve, gaming is kept at a wonderful and steady level.
Now excuse me while I build my world on Terraria and then abuse some monkeys on Donkey Kong 64.
Signing out,
~Nattoons
________________
Good gameplay is what makes a good game. It's in the fricken title. If you look at the old Super Mario games, the graphics aren't too good, but my god were those games addictive. I know people who still play Space Invaders and Tetris and lose hours of their day playing it. The graphics aren't realistic; its barely more than a couple of polygons, shapes and lines. So why do people keep playing them, and still love playing them? It's because of the gameplay. Sure, when you look at Doom I and compare it to Halo Reach, Reach wins hands down on everything. Doom has clumsy controls, jerky movements, and it's sometimes hard to distinguish between enemies, the wall and the bullets you're firing. Graphics are important. But when the game companies start focusing on graphics and trashing the gameplay, that's where things go wrong.
Growing up on the Nintendo (literally, I had one since like 7 and still play N64), I have had a good view on the progression of games. I still find that the 64 is the epitome of gaming, it has brilliant games that last long, hook you in, and provide scintillating stories to follow and get immersed in, and since then gaming has gone downhill. I don't mean that I don't like anything since then, god no, there are many games on the Game Cube, Xbox, PlayStation, and PC since then that I has seen me spending many a joyful hour hunched in front of a screen, but nothing quite compares to the originality of the 64. A perfect example in BanjoKazooie, a game I recently completed (which I will post a blog review about in the near future). It has a simple story, decent enough graphics, but the gameplay is so original, so fun, and I still struggle to find a game that matches the quality of BanjoKazooie.
Nowadays games seem to be taking a different path. We see more first-person-shooters than anything else, a ton of racing games, massive amounts of MMOs, RPGs about anything... whatever happened to good old adventure, or platform? Arcade is a bit outdone, but there are still ideas out there, it can't hurt to have a little variety. I don't mean they're all bad, Halo has a had a great run, and even though they slipped up with halo 2 and have been desperately trying to recover since, they've made their way back to the top. Valve continue to push out brilliant games (albeit very slowly) and every so often a magnificent game surfaces like Minecraft or Team Fortress 2.
The Wii was a failure, I'll admit that (still a Nintendo fanboy all the way), but only because game companies are so stuck in their ways that they don't venture from their repetitive game ideas at Microsoft or Sony and use the Wii to its full potential. Occasionally there is a great game put forward, Super Smash Bros Brawl (not as good as Melee but I'll take what I can get), Metroid Prime, and Skyward Sword. Brawl did not use the motion sensor very much, in fact, I'd recommend connecting a GameCube controller and playing with that, but it was still a brilliant game. Metroid was a whole new version of shooter, using the motion sensor to aim, and Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, although not yet released, boasts the best use of the motion sensor so far, reading every presice movement of the Wii remote and translating that to the movement of Link's sword. But these are all classic Nintendo titles, made and produced by Nintendo, so people rarely notice it. If the mainstream names out there turned their attention to the Wii and really started thinking, I'm sure that will really revolutionise gaming.
What I'm complaining about is companies these days are sacrificing good gameplay and good story for higher graphics and closer-to-real-life gaming. Soon enough we'll be enjoying test flight simulators on our PlayStations, and we'll find those funny little driving simulations you do at your driving tests on your Xbox, and shitty war games (I'm looking at you Call Of Duty series) will get so realistic you'll be playing the general in his tent moving those figurines across a map of the world to organise troops. And because game companies are off aiming to make gaming more and more boring for the Xbox and PlayStation, Nintendo is getting left with those stupid little niche games like Wii Play and Beach Sports or some shit.
God, don't get me started on niche gaming.
PC is the only side of gaming I can, in good conscience, commemorate. With clients like Steam and companies like PopCap and Valve, gaming is kept at a wonderful and steady level.
Now excuse me while I build my world on Terraria and then abuse some monkeys on Donkey Kong 64.
Signing out,
~Nattoons
________________
"Fire, exclamation mark, fire, exclamation mark, help me,
exclamation mark.
123 Cavendon Road. Looking forward to hearing from
you.
Yours truly, Maurice Moss."
-Moss, The IT Crowd
What about RTS games like Age of Empires or Dawn of War. Nobody makes them anymore. I find them extremely addictive, cause I spend like most of my free time building little kingdoms and cities then ANNIHILATE MY ENEMIES!!!!! With my massive armies.
ReplyDeleteI miss those types of games :(
Yeah, people can't seem to make them any more. The best one was Total Annihilation, and nothings come close to it since, save for Supreme Commander, but that doesn't count since it was made by the same guys.
ReplyDelete