Post by solidbatman on Jun 18, 2011 14:08:52 GMT -5
Hello, and welcome to The SB Rants. This is an editorial series that yours truly will be writing. These editorials may jump all over the place and seem unorganized. For that reason, I will be putting those rants into this series, so as not to tarnish the perfect writing the is conducted in the rest of the editorial section .
A friend recently told me that he thought games were getting dumber. He seems to feel that stories are being thrown aside for multiplayer (and obvious attack on MW2/Black Ops) or that game play is just way too easy or simple. I agreed with him at first, until I thought about what he actually said. The more I thought about it, the more I actually disagreed with him.
As hardware advances on gaming consoles, the amount that a game developer can do also increases. Instead of being limited to a small cartridge to program a game onto, game developers now have massive Blu- ray discs available, or specially formatted DVDs. The consoles o today are also capable of a lot more than the consoles of even the early 2000's. Naturally, the games should advance also. But is that the case? Are games truly becoming "smarter".
Before we can answer that, we need to define a "smart" game. A smart game isn't necessarily a game that is the most interactive cinematic thing in the world or something to make you think for the next 5 years. A "smart" game is a game that is enjoyable and delivers a gaming experience that you want to repeat again. This being said, a game that is smart to one person, may not be so smart to another person. For example, I personally would never play online multiplayer games too long because I become bored playing them. Others, though, love playing online, and play non stop. So, I think its safe to say, a a general rule, a smart game is game that is creative and fresh.
Now that we have that out of the way, we can get to work answering the title's question. Games are getting smarter today, and they always are. Developers have to come up with new themes and game play ideas to avoid the label of being uncreative and cliched. Since gaming has been around for so long now, developers are really having to reach to come up with new ideas, giving us, the gamer, some really incredible games. Recently, L.A. Noire and Portal 2 have both given us some great innovative game play. However, Activision's flagship, the Call of Duty franchise, has been criticized recently for being the same game over and over again. The Madden series has also received the same criticism.
Square Enix has done a good job keeping the story fresh in it's Final Fantasy series, and each game features a different gameplay system. On the other end of the spectrum, Persona 3 and 4 both feature nearly the same battle system and social link system, but it works in both game. Therefore, under the rule we established, these games are smart. But wait, what about Persona? I mean, it's nearly the same game for the past two entries.
This is where having a smart, engaging story. How many of us care when generic squadmate #1 died in MW2? Not many I assume. Now, how many of us teared up a little at the end of MGS4. I did. The Persona 4 builds upon Persona 3. As I said before, the battle system and social link system are almost the same, a few tweaks here and there improve upon it I think. The difference is that Persona 4 makes you work to gain new allies and powers. You don't just unlock your Personas/monsters. You have to fight to gain them. Your allies are the same. While you can't advance the story until you rescue the characters (read the review here for this to make some more sense) you feel like you really accomplished something. Gaining a new member also unlocks a new social link that can be used to level up your Personas. This is smart planning. Atlus decided that rather than just have you encounter new team member (Persona 3 in a sense), they would give you a sense of purpose. Fight through 20 floors of monsters, fight a few bosses, and your payoff is new Personas and a valuable new team member.
That is a smart game. The developers look at the game, and find ways to make it feel like it has purpose. So, now to answer the question. Are games getting dumber? I think that gaming has reached its pinnacle in terms of creativity. This doesn't mean that we are getting dumb games. I doubt we will ever see such titles like FFX, Tales of the Abyss (while I hated the game, I admit that it is a very good game, just not for me), Digital Devil Saga, Killer7, and other PS2 blockbusters. The reason for this is that so much money is now involved in making a game. Experimental titles like NieR and El Shaddai get destroyed by reviewers which sadly influences people not to try the games. The publishers lose money and refuse to try innovative games or at least are much less enthusiastic about doing so. Luckily, indie games have picked up the slack in this department.
More to come