Look at the top games today. They're all bland, uninspired crap that we've seen a hundred times before. It's a field that's been sliced open and stuffed full of pure trash. It's really hard for me to go into a store and settle on a game these days, and even harder to go home and get some enjoyment out of whatever I do decide to buy. Out of the dozen or so games I've probably purchased this year, I can say I've maybe enjoyed oh..maybe two or three of them?
Today, I'm going to talk about what kinds of games you can find out there, and what pisses me off about them. ENJOY.
Here are the offenders, categorized by genre:
1.) First Person Shooters.
Biggest Offenders: Call of Duty, Halo, Singularity, Medal of Honor
Oh first person shooters. You are the ultimate in uninspired bullshit design. No matter what gimmick you toss into the game, it will always boil down to you looking down the gun barrel at a Nazi, foreigner, Russian, zombie or alien. That's it. Find a first person shooter that doesn't use any of these antagonists. Please, I DARE you. I do understand that these games are typically designed for multiplayer, but that doesn't make them any less derivative. If I'm going to spend 60 dollars on a game, it damned well better have a single player campaign that lasts more than 4 hours.
Point gun, shoot bad guy. Points for getting the head. Rinse and repeat until the next edition of Halo comes out. There's a new Halo or Call of Duty every year it seems, and none of them seem to do anything more than add a handful of guns and maps. I'm not paying 60 bucks for a new in game map.
I am aware that there are also third person shooters out there, which are essentially the same as all of the first person shooters out there, except you can see your grunting loaf of a man's ass as you play.
2.) Brawlers
Biggest Offenders: God of War, Castlevania: Lords of Shadows, Bayonetta, Dante's Inferno, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Oh. My. God. Here's another horrible group. The common brawler. And we have God of War to thank/blame for just about all of it. Rampage through hordes of the same bad guys, flail on your controller buttons until they beg for mercy, repeat until the game is over. Toss in a few quick time events, and you've got the makings of game of the year!
The biggest problem today is that all brawlers ARE God of War. Kill baddies, push the button the game tells you to, and watch gruesome death scenes. Oh, the gruesome death scenes. They're typically ridiculously over the top and unnecessary. All of these games are typically headed by a bulky, angry protagonist whose only weak spots are their dead families. At least four of the games I mentioned above have this kind of protagonist.
And the puzzles. Oh god, the puzzles. I understand that they exist to provide a kind of breather from the mutilation of mythological figures, but they happen so frequently that you just want to skip them and get on with the murdering. If you're going to integrate a puzzle into a game, it should make some logical sense. Kratos stacking blocks Tetris style DOES NOT make logical sense.
3.) Sandbox Games
Biggest Offenders: Grand Theft Auto, Saint's Row, Mafia, Red Dead Redemption. Any open-world Spiderman game.
I don't have a lot of particularly negative things to say about this genre. The problem with open world sandbox gaming is that its so damned open world. I like having stuff to do, but cripes, sometimes there's just too much to do. And why the hell does there always need to be a race in these games? The driving controls are usually awful and don't lend themselves at all to difficult racing sequences.
You'd believe everyone in LA, New York, and the old west wants you to kill and race. All the time. Hell, even Ultimate Spider-Man had a race sequence every couple of minutes.
(Edit: Here we are ten years later and well...some of these are really rad now. Sony's Spiderman is amazing, and Saint's Row got really awesome as it took a hard left right into parody and humor. But there's still TOO MUCH TO DO!)
4.) Sports Games
Biggest Offenders: Madden, NBA, NHL, FIFA, most racing games.
Same junk every year, with only marginal additions or features added. If you like spending 60 bucks yearly on the same game, be my guest.
5.) Music Games
Biggest Offenders: Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero
Note that I didn't mention Rock Band. There's a reason for that. let's take a look at the release list for Guitar Hero and Rock Band, shall we?
Guitar Hero:
Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero II
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Guitar Hero World Tour
Guitar Hero 5
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's
Guitar Hero Smash Hits
Guitar Hero On Tour
Guitar Hero On Tour Decades
Guitar Hero On Tour Modern Hits
Band Hero
Rock Band
Rock Band
Rock Band 2
Rock Band 3
Beatles Rock Band
Green Day Rock Band
Lego Rock Band
Rock Band Unplugged
Rock Band has half the games out that Guitar Hero does. Even if you got rid of the band-centric and portable releases, you're looking at three core Rock Band games to six Guitar Heroes. Guitar Hero releases multiple titles every year, while Rock Band takes its time. This is, of course, because people eat it up, and because Activision has questionable business ethics.
But however you break it down, you can't walk into a store without being assaulted by millions of plastic guitars and band kits. And it's a lottery to see if the one you buy even WORKS out of the box.
I'm not mentioning karaoke games, because they're way too niche in comparison.
6.) The next evolution of RPGs.
Biggest Offenders: Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Final Fantasy XII and XIII.
One day, someone decided that making a turn-based game that had an adventuring party would be lots of fun. And it was. Japan REALLY loved them some turn-based RPGs.
But then, people got tired of them. So they looked to MMOs for a new way to play, which led to the Final Fantasy XII devolving into an uncontrollable mess of a game, where party control was thrown aside in favor of AI controlled party members. This trend continued into the incredibly linear Final Fantasy XIII. Which I'm told was made to appeal to more "western" gamers.
Western gamers. Huh. America tried its hand at new RPGs too, given us the same testosterone laden gunfests we get from our shooters. Fallout 3 is an RPG? noo...it's a first person shooter. Not a bad game, but not an RPG. Mass Effect is more of a third person shooter with stats as well. America likes its shooters. But they're still NOT RPGs.
7.) Anything on a Nintendo System.
Biggest Offenders: Wii, DS.
The Wii is a cesspool of horrid shovelware games. The best games are rather obscure and sell poorly, in favor of trash like Dancing with the Stars, The Biggest Loser, and any of the twenty five million Mario sports titles. Games based on TV shows are the norm, and they're all terrible. I own a DS, and there are a good couple of games on it, but the rest are all awful games that should have never have seen the light of day. I'm looking at you Petz.
I could mention casual games, and Facebook games, but I don't so much consider these games as anything more than social dalliances. That would be like badmouthing Clue or Monopoly I think. These are games that are meant to be played with other people, love them or hate them. But Facebook games are nothing more than ways to leech people's money on supposedly "free" games.
But. There is a saving grace. Digital Downloads. Almost all of the good games I've played this year have been downloadable titles. Scott Pilgrim, Trine, Costume Quest, DeathSpank, these are quirky and interesting titles that may have their shortcomings, but they're charming and original enough to overlook them.
Not that all downloadable games are good. I'm looking at you Blade Kitten.
That's all I can think of right now. I'm not saying that these games are all terrible, just that it doesn't seem like there's any variety anymore. Unique games don't make money, so companies don't like to make them. It's a business, where the things I think are stale are considered "standard" by gamers of today. So if you have as difficult a time as I do finding good games, take a hard look at the guy in the store spending three hundred dollars on a copy of Call of Duty that comes with night vision goggles. Then beat him to death, because no man who buys those goggles is planning to do something wholesome.
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