From the Penthouse to the Doghouse:Taking on Cynicism

By Vermouth

A year ago at this time, everyone’s biggest complaint really seemed to be there is just too much good stuff hitting the market all at once. I mean we had an insane holiday season last year, Burnout, Rome Total War, Halo 2, Metroid prime 2, World of Warcraft, 20 dollar sports titles, Metal Gear Solid 3, Doom 3, KOTOR 2, The Sims 2.0, the list goes on for several pages longer of games that were very well received last year. And that trend continued into the Spring, with RE4, Jade Empire, Lumines and more great titles. Despite this for reasons not revealed to me; a dark cloud of cynicism and pessimism has descended across the gaming continent. Every time I turn around blogs and forums are lit up with a smörgåsbord of people saying the sky is falling. Well folks, not only is the sky not falling, but games are getting better not worse. Technically games are improving in more areas than mere eye-candy, Innovation isn’t dead, and most importantly gameplay is as good as it’s ever been. This isn’t a situation where the sky is falling, if anything the sky is rising.

People often like to repeat the mantra that gameplay is all that matters and they like to say things like graphics, and audio just make games look prettier and sound better but they don’t make them more fun. This is patently bullshit—frankly I almost hate to include bullshit with this. For instance let’s talk about a couple of games for starters, Vampire The Masquerade:Bloodlines. This RPG in the Source Engine is proof positive that technology does lead to better game experiences. The fusion of good voice acting with Valve’s impressive facial animation technology leads to a far richer more memorable game world. I mean seriously would you really have thought those characters were as alive if their face didn’t look like a real person’s face and express emotion well and have very high quality voice acting? The game definitely benefits from it’s use of cutting edge technology. Then there is the case of Half-Life 2; the most satisfying part in Half-Life 2 starts with the graphics in the game. When you draw a good gun and a good monster and combine that with a good deep gun sound effect and creepy monster effects that adds to the satisfaction of using the gun in that game. Along with the fact that the AI seems very real, this helps to make using guns in Half-Life 2 a real treat. It’s exhilarating to be shot at and the enemy returns fire.

Just as common a complaint is that all the games are just formulaic rehashes, and they don’t offer anything new. This is doubly not true as there are both a lot of new game franchises being started on one hand and established brands are seeing a good deal of innovation. Let’s start with the first half of my assertion—their are new games coming out all the time. Katamari Damacy was the Critical Darling last year but another indie game got released called Alien Hominid that certainly wasn’t rehashed. Then you have games like Lumines and Meteos from Q entertainment, I don’t remember ever having played anything like Lumines before which fused puzzle solving and music in such a way. We had games like Phantom Dust, and Psychonauts from Majesco, and then major new franchises like Brothers in Arms which offers a completely different approach to WW2, Jade Empire which fused fighting into a traditional style Bioware game, God of War which had a pretty amazing combination of the Prince of Persia into a faux Classical world and tons of violence in a way that didn’t seem forced or phony. Or lastly look at Unreal Championship 2; I know it’s a sequel but it really began a new approach from Epic on consoles. The game wasn’t merely just a port of UT 2k4, the game was a fighting game just as much as it was a shooter, played from both the first person and it had skill based melee to it. It was a really different experience than anything I’ve ever played. It fused the shooting of a UT style game with something like Street fighter in a 8 player online arena. It was really satisfying beyond words one day when I was being shot at, slamming the deflect button in timing, and I hear the words “head shot” in my speakers - I deflected his sniper round right back through his skull.

Furthemore big franchise games from companies like EA and MGS aren’t exactly devoid of innovation either. In Madden the last two years they’ve done some major reworking of the game allowing you to rework your entire defense at the line of scrimmage and making so you have to adjust for where the Quarterback is looking in the passing game. These aren’t minor tweaks but major changes in the way the game is played. Burnout 3’s Takedown system with after touch was a great innovation. How many times have you played a racing game where it’s really hard to mess up so much you don’t have a shot in the game? It encourages the ridiculously reckless driving that is Burnout’s trademark even more than it had before. Or perhaps Halo 2’s automated matchmaking system—this was perhaps the biggest change I’ve seen in online FPS games since the introduction of teamplay as an add on to Quake way back in the day. By grouping players into skill levels and only playing players of relatively similar skill levels they really improved the gameplay, at least on the 4v4 teamplay play list (most of the complaints I’ve heard from people has come from people playing the deathmatch game). Every time you log on the games are bound to be competitive. When i was playing every day I played about 125 matches and my win to loss ratio was a nearly perfect 52% winning percentage. I’m not a really great Halo 2 player, I’m not a terribly lousy Halo 2 player but every time I get on Live I feel I’ve got a good shot to help my team win which i can’t say of most other shooters, and it makes me want to play it more as I’m not likely to end up pitted against some ninja who plays Halo 2 for a living. And if I were good I wouldn’t have to settle for playing 1 out of 8/16 players who’s really good too and a bunch of losers as is often the case in many PC shooters. A Few good people and a lot of meat on the plate for them.

Lastly the gameplay, in games today is really exceptional. I mean it’s really polished - like, see your reflection in it polished. The first MMORPG I tried years ago was Asheron’s Call, and the game was a pain in the ass to play. I mean getting good directions for instance could really be trouble. But fire up World of Warcraft and ask an NPC, and he’ll flag it on my map and I’ll walk there. God that was painless. Or I mean let’s be real folks. Games with the sense of speed like Burnout 3 don’t come around all that often, nor do games like Gran Turismo 4 with it’s 80 million cars, new modes etc. The first person shooter market is stuffed to the brim with brilliantly designed titles that do such a great job of capturing the fear of being shot at and the power of shooting back. I mean Dark Forces and Doom were alright but you can’t really tell me they were as much fun as FPS games that are coming out these days. The strategy market is alive and well as small companies are starting to pop up to fill the void left by the collapse of Talonsoft and SSI in turn based games. Places like HPS and Matrix Games are mass producing some very good wargames and shops like Creative Assembly and Nival and such are making great strategy titles. Role-Playing games like Vampire, Shadow Hearts Covenant, the KOTORs and jade Empire keep providing to the rich traditions of role-playing. In short most every genre of game is improving and even niche genres are resurfacing. Adventure games were once left for dead but just recently the first episode of Bone Came out and Indigo Prophecy is due out to supplement the wonderful Syberia series that was released in the last two years.

I wrote this column not to just spew Pollyanna styled optimism, but to try to answer the critics, and inject some perspective into the debate. Yes the industry has some problems, areas where it could improve, I just wrote another column talking about it. But the sky isn’t falling folks; looking back over the history of games I don’t recall a time in which a gamers plate was so full. Maybe I just don’t understand what they’re after but it seems to me that I’ve been enjoying games a whole lot the last two years. I don’t believe I can be the only one having fun playing games in 2005. But reading on the Internet, it sure seems that way.