Hey, guys!
All contemporary [insert OP qualifier here] video games are shit. Fuck me. Stop playing [insert OP qualifier here] video games! They're shitty, and OP demands that you justify their existence!
OP's opening our eyes, as we were once blind, but now bask into the true glory of unrivaled cynicism.
Man, OP, you were right, [insert OP qualifier here] video games are shit. Dont you remember [nostalgic blindness] were great? Boy do I!
Well let's see, Arkham City, it's like Arkham Asylum, but with spiderman 2 crossed in.
Let's see, Skyrim, it's like Oblivion but smaller and buggier, and less creatively interesting or memorable.
Let's see, Battlefield 3, it's exactly like battlefield 1 and 2.
Saint's Row 3, it's exactly like Saints Row 2 but smaller and more pretty.
Well let's see, Fallout, it's not exactly like Wasteland or the games that came before it.
Well let's see, Baldurs Gate, it's not EXACTLY FUCKING THE SAME AS TO BE INDISTINGUISHABLE from the RPGs that came before it.
Planescape Torment you can tell it's different from Baldurs Gate.
Let's look at System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, they aren't the same as each other, you could tell the difference right off just from watching casual play. Compare that to the current twins of the FPS genre, Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3. Yes one is broader with larger levels, but just from the screenshots and aimless videos I've watched, bar vehicle mechanics, they are basically the same Iron Sights and get shot you die shooters with roughly the same environments.
Gaming as a medium is stagnant, the only true innovation is not coming from larger development houses anymore, but from the indies, games like Bastion or Bulletstorm, and even then those are simply old skool charm being made in a new way.
By the way, I'm 19, my first major console was a PS2, I wasn't able to play games on the PC until 05, I can't really be nostalgic for games I never really played in my youth. Coming back and playing games people recommend to me now, on forums, things like Planescape Torment, Fallout 1/2, Stonekeep, Ultima Underworld, Ultima 4-7, THEY ARE LEGITIMATELY BETTER than anything released in the last 6 fucking god awful years.
Addressing a few more claims before I end up frothing myself into a fervor that only comes once a year.
Those movies are still new to their medium, and not simply sequels.
Let's add in last year and the year before for good measure in terms of new IP.
In 2010 we had for mainstream games,
Singularity, RDR, and Heavy Rain. 3
In 09 we had, Dragon Age Origins(a bioware game so the new IP was in the world building, not the story), Arkham Asylum(batman), Borderlands(Genuinely Good), Brutal Legend(Genuinely good), Infamous(never played) and Prototype(fun as a time sink but nothing special). 5
For funsies, in 08 we had, Dead Space(a terribad horror game that failed at being scary so much is crossed into humor for me), Too Human(Supposedly Horrible, didn't play), Spore, No More Heroes, and the force unleashed(Star Wars), and Mirrors Edge(Good Premise shoddy execution) 6 as far as I can recall, mass effect may have been this year or the year before.
Let's compare this to 2002, Neverwinter Nights, Animal Crossing, SOCOM, Battlefield 1942, Splinter Cell, Rachet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Eternal Darkness, Dark Chronicle, .hack, La Pucelle: Tactics, Age of Mythology, Hearts of Iron, Ragnarok Online, so in ONE YEAR there was more than the last 3 combined, do you get what I'm saying by crippling lack of new IP. Note that these are all games I CAN RECALL MAGAZINES TALKING ABOUT AND FEATURING GRANDLY. That number of new IP remains about the same as you go down the line after 2002.
Honestly I've probably missed a few new IPs in those years. Please enlighten me if I have.
Also, as far as Arkham Asylum goes, it's a fairly standard Metriodvania, just in 3d and with batman, and that somehow makes it innovative how? To address complaints, it's a decent game sure, but it's got a 2 button combat system, forced stealth sections that boil down to hop around gargoyles slowly picking the stupid mooks off until one remains who you beat upside the arms and shoulders and leave to die of a concussion, boss fights that boil down to dodge, hit with batarang and dodge, then beat upside the head and shoulders and leave to die of a concussion, and a large amount of exploration is based on backtracking after you get power ups.
Lets compare that to a truly great game, Planescape Torment, it realized that Infinity Engine combat sucks if you don't balance the encounters perfectly, so it chose to basically make almost all of the combat avoidable, and to focus primarily on world building, character building, and story building, and in that it's a fantastic game. The story is original, fun, and engaging, and if you realize that's what it was focusing on, then it's a completely great game, if you take it's gameplay as being everything else, it's a pretty, but kind of terrible game. Whats more again focusing on what it focused on, it remains great even in successive playthroughs. Arkham Asylum's successive playthroughs end up nagging me with the issues I noticed the first time I played, and that stops me playing about a quarter of the way in.
Also Mr.Wiggles,
Darkspore is based on the spore gameseries.
El Shaddai, is awesome and I completely forgot about it.
Catherine is also awesome, really wish I owned a PS2
Dark Souls is the sequel to Demons Souls.
EDF is also a sequel to the EDF series.
But other than those, which of them have actually been focused on majorly in the media?
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Topic: So why are we an artform again? (Read 7352 times)