I have a Google+, and I gotta say, it has been rather useless. Of course, the success of a social network is entirely dependent on the number of users and how connected they are, and G+ has been pretty cruddy on that front. But one thing has come of my membership to Google's more or less failed foray into the social networking world: I found a man named Paul Tassi. He writes for Forbes, and you wouldn't peg me outright as a Forbes reader, but he writes about a topic near and dear to my heart: video games, and the business surrounding them. His writings have led me to want to discuss the realm of video games, and my decidedly "meh" attitude towards it as of late.
I've always loved video games. I started playing with an NES back in my elementary school years (Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt being my favorite cartridge) and eventually graduating to a Playstation. I became a Sony die-hard, loving games like "Spyro the Dragon" and "Crash Bandicoot", then when the PS2 came out, games like "Jak and Daxter" and "Ratchet and Clank" (those of you familiar with video game developers, you've noticed a trend by now). I had a demo disk with one of the old Spiderman games, a short bit of MediEvil, an MLB baseball game, and the first level of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. I would go downstairs on Saturday mornings, load up the disk for the millionth time, and play the same level of Spiderman, once again defeating The Scorpion before he could off J. Jonah Jameson. I would always rent NFL Blitz (all the fun of old school Madden with the joys of getting in a late hit once in a while) and Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis (Zoo Tycoon with a whole lot more teeth). I loved these games, and they were a source of countless hours of entertainment.
Then things started changing. Of course, I grew up. My tastes changed. I still loved Ratchet and Clank, but I started trying other things. My parents kept me an arms length away from shooters for a long time, but they couldn't stop me from playing Halo at my friend's house. The PS3 made its way onto the scene, and so too did all sorts of new titles: Resistance: Fall of Man, Heavenly Sword, Warhawk...they all lacked something. They were pretty, yes, and they had all sorts of new gameplay features...but where was the fun? It was a shiny, and kept your interest for a moment, but soon the magic faded, like a short but passionate romance that dies away all too soon. I needed something long term.
I found my way into the realm of shooters with Modern Warfare 2, and with the help of internet multiplayer (a relatively new thing for me) I soon realized that what Cat Stevens said was true: "Ooh, baby, baby, its a wide world/Its hard to get by just upon a smile." I was new to these games, and most everyone else was not. They had been playing them since they were in middle school. They knew the guns, knew the maps, knew the specs, knew the controls, knew the game. I hardly knew aim-down-sight button from pull-the-trigger button. It was brutal, cold, no-holds-barred combat, and I soon learned it wasn't for me. But there was more to try.
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The game that changed the RPG genre. With me being such a massive RPG/Adventure buff, you'd think I'd eat it up. I tried. I really did. But the game fell flat. Too many glitches, no depth to the storyline, no real reason to be attached to anything that was going on. Just pretty scenery and a whole lot of quests. And I can say about the same for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Heresy, I know.
Assassin's Creed. It certainly appealed to the platformer-lover in me. But thank goodness I knew better titles were to come in the AC series, because when I tried the original Assassin's Creed for the first time, I couldn't be done sooner. To say the missions were repetitive would be a gross understatement, and you had no reason to cheer for the main character until much too late into the game. I didn't want to see Altair succeed. I wanted to see him trip and break his neck while chasing down the 5th random big bad guy in a massive city identical to the other two I'd just visited, right down to the lead-up quests, annoying street criers, and downright obnoxious beggar-women. Thankfully, I can say Ubisoft has fixed that series and crafted a rather good set of games.
Sports games had become all too complex. You had to know what each formation was just to get a play off, and quite honestly, I like watching sports, and I love the feeling of leading my teams to the championships, but I didn't have the time to learn about all sorts of stats and audibles and formations. I just wanted to play. And games that offered that sort of experience were almost infantile (think the Backyard Sports series. Fun, but aimed at about 5th graders). I did enjoy the "Street" verisons of titles (NBA Street, NFL Street) as they brought a little more of the simple joy of a video game into the experience, but those eventually died out or became far too overblown to be fun. The same sort of explanation for sports games goes for fighting games, such as Soul Calibur. If I didn't memorize lengthy button combinations, I didn't stand a chance.
This brings us to today: the modern age of gaming. We now have Modern Warfare 3, Heavy Rain, LA Noire, Batman; Arkham City, Gears of War 3, Need for Speed: God Knows What, Halo: They Made ANOTHER One?, Final Fantasy: Eleventy-Billion and a Half...the list goes on. But one thing stays the same. Mediocrity. At least, it does in my book.
There are few games I truly enjoyed, the top of that list probably being Portal and Portal 2. It was innovative, it was fresh, it was funny, and it was immersive. You cared about the storyline. It made you laugh, it made you think. No, not every single game can do this, especially not as well as Valve has with this series, but that's one gem in a sea of blah. Yes, Assassin's Creed has gotten better. BioShock was pretty darn good, and Batman: Arkham City was quite polished and fixed many of the flaws that were present in its predecessor ("If I have to go through ONE MORE AIR DUCT!") But then you have the Gears of War's, the Call of Duty's, the Soul Calibur V's, the Halo 4's, the Final Fantasy....I honestly don't know what they're on now. XII-2.6b? Whatever. My point is, nothing is original anymore. This is the rallying cry of the creative, from Hollywood to video games to television and beyond, but that's not because it isn't true. The issue is, no developer wants to risk a new feature. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." is the mantra of today's big developers. Why change how things work in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2? The fans ate up the first Black Ops, and that was the same old crap from World at War, am I right? Just make a new villain with a new, more Russian name, bomb some monuments, and make the explosions bigger. Copy and paste the multiplayer, and you've got yourself the next bestselling video game of 2012.
I, for one, am sick of it.
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