OK, so I have a confession – I’m really getting bored of console and PC games. I can’t tell if it’s a phase, outside influences or something else, but, after a happy 25+ years of gaming, I find myself unable to enjoy playing.
It starts simply – I find myself with a nice, long afternoon with absolutely nothing to do. I fire up the PC, and scan my (admittedly hefty) Steam and Origin accounts. There are classic titles, new games, AAA blockbusters and indie gems galore. I pick one. I load it up. I play about ten minutes. I sigh. I switch it off again. I look through the lists again. Next thing, its an hour later, and I’m actually ironing while watching South Park and Top Gear re-runs to escape the boredom of playing five minutes of about eight different games.
Now, I have a new hobby at the mo – paintballing. It’s not devouring my life at all, but its something I enjoy – bearing in mind I’m unfit, overweight, and a pretty blatent target. I get hit more than most, and certainly get more than my share of the vebal retorting that goes with such a boys hobby, but even though I’m never going to grace a semi-professional team, I have a lot of fun. Now take FPS gaming online – I’m pretty competent, but I recently rage quit because I kept getting spammed by a teammate. I still haven’t played BF3 since, or, now I think about it, any online shooter.
I’m currently close to having a gaming hiatus – something I have never done in my entire gaming life. And my apathy could be caused by anything; for example, now would be the usual time in gamings life cycles whereby we would be looking at new tech on the horizon, and we aren’t getting any. As a result, the last couple of years have had some really stale moments in gaming – FPS’ demise as a genre, RPGs forgetting the fantasy to make sure they tell a believable story, driving games improving the definition of dirt spray, and action platforming melting into something so torridly bland as to make me weep.
Seriously, argue against this: Call of Duty has’t changed since the original Modern Warfare, and there hasn’t been a FPS title since that bucked the trend in any way. Skyrim is basically a shiny Oblivion expansion with dragons (and still the same clunky combat). Arkham City is a taller Arkham Asylum. Uncharted 3 is nearly a carbon copy of 2, even down to the plot. The best Halo game in years was a remake of the original, for Petes’ sake. And my super powered PC only seems to currently hold my attention span when I crack open Unreal Tournament 3 – a game nearly five years old. Hey, at least it’s not another brown, derivative shooter – I get to fire lasers while riding a hoverboard and piloting giant robots…
Maybe it is me – maybe I expect too much. But I do have to ask, where is this generations Half-Life, it’s Deus Ex, it’s Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Ocarina of Time, Pokemon Red, Tetris, Street Fighter 2, PacMan, Alex Kidd, Frogger? Closest would be Portal, and although it’s good, its not really truly epic – it’s too short and too niche. And it’s five years old…
I also think that in our quest for realism, and pixel perfect graphics, we have lost the spark of ingenuity that games used to have. Every game is now about hyper-violence, slow motion deaths, motion catured faces, believable emotions – yet for me, the reason I play games is to get away form that. When you see a world in crisis on the TV and newspapers every day, I don’t want to step into a mirror of those conflicts in my home system.
But, maybe there is light, and it’s called – the iPad. Yes, I succumbed, and honestly, I find it fun. For example, Sir Benfros Brilliant Balloon – you tap the screen to bob a mostachioed bloke on a balloon thorugh a fantasy cartoon world. It’s awesome, and the music rocks, and its less than 70p. Same goes for Tiny Bang Story, another charming puzzle based game with cute characters and a wicked little happy world. Or Where’s My Water, where I direct water flows with one finger for a croc who wants a shower.
So, I really think it’s about innovation – that intrigue or creation at the centre of all the best games that our current AAA titles seem to lack. It speaks volumes, for example, when a game developer as big as Bioware is pushed into changing the ending of their own game by angry gamers – they seriously can’t have captured the imagination of their intended market, if said audience feel enraged enough to do that, surely. And I think this feeds further into our issue – the fear of upsetting the trolls of internet fame means more and more developers play it safe, rather than push the boat. Same goes for the world of reviewing and how it is perceived – a game is a failure if it doesnt score at least 90% worldwide, and the only way to do that? Copy all the bits out of the last title to do so.
I leave you with this – how many people actually buy games with some innovation? Who really bought Syndicate, or Rayman:Origins, or Kingdoms of Amalur? Damn few, cos we were all playing games with numbers in the title pretending to change something that doesn’t change anything at all.
So here is your homework, dear reader: go make the world a better place. Play something which isn’t a sequel, or promises better physics or character emotion. Try something quirky on your phone, or get Limbo, or Bastion, or Warp, or Journey – something out of the norm from your normal diet of Gears, COD and Fifa. You’ll really be surprised, I promise – gaming isn’t all guns and mo-cap – it’s really about escapism, and the joy of something unknown and different. Come on, you’ll love it.