Lots of developers tend to play it safe when it comes to the direction of their games. Most want to go with something familiar and popular, like right now the market is flooded with FPS (First-Person Shooters), before that it was filled with rhythm game after rhythm game. Not much was discussed about something new and fresh. For players such as myself I like original ideas, hit or miss they hold a special place in my heart as holding my attention for a long period of time. Rather than one Guitar Hero they made a crapload of them and have been forced to declare the franchise as done for now, about stinkin' time! In case nobody noticed, each song was the exact same, sure you clicked the button and the bar at different times...sometimes. Others its almost a copy/paste, it felt the exact same, but your mind leads you to think that you are playing the song. Take away the guitar controller and play a few songs from different versions with a plain controller and tell me how interesting and immersed you are, and that the songs are different. Then there are the shooters, the last shooter that truly made me keep playing until the end was Call of Duty: World at War, yet another WWII game that actually was different and realistic feeling. I'd rather re-play CoD:WaW over finishing Modern Warfare 2 it seems just like the last one before it, just like CoD4:Modern Warfare, felt like Call of Duty 3 with different skins for the outfits. What I'm getting at is why is there no real innovation anymore? Where is the "Art" triple a game studios are saying it is? Now I want to say that sometimes originality and art can be found in unlikly places. For example, Mirror's Edge by Electronic Arts, the same EA that produces great innovative games such as Mass Effect, The Sims and Dragon Age, I know medieval has been explored more times than you can count on fingers and toes, but its fresh with the Origins section and Mass Effect took the cool things of major franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek to make a game that feels like you are the actor. Then smaller companies with Naughty Bear from Artificial Mind and Movement and published by 505 Games; and DeadlyPremonition from developers Access Games and published by Ignition Entertainment.
Now, I'm not saying that dead franchises can't be reborn. The biggest example coming to mind is Bethesda Softworks' purchase of Interplay franchise, Fallout. This series was dead, Bethesda saw the air to push through the derelict abandoned lungs to make it breath again; namely taking the same engine from Oblivion, "Gamebryo" and rebirthing the franchise into a massive market that appealed to FPS fans as well as RPG (Role-Playing Game) fans. Also for honorable mention, the rebirth of the WWE Smackdown vs Raw series with the great new control and physics gameplay elements added with 2011.
In the same breath as the one saying franchises can be reborn to fame with new innovation, some can die or be hurt. Let's use Metal Gear Solid 4: The Guns of the Patriots for this one. Not taking a shot at the story, enough people do that, but the gameplay, why can Snake, being an old man now, carry an arsenal of weaponry and ammo with him? Its arguable that the Metal Gear Mk II can transport the weapons, but what about the 10000 rounds and clips? Then what I can't understand is it takes shots for combat only, not the Tactical espionage action the series was founded on and still uses as the tagline. Not only is there something seriously wrong with Snake, who's killed so many nameless soldiers in the past, vomits now if you kill to many. In his old senile self, he's finally gotten a conscious, sad that it happened AFTER they came out with a great fighting engine.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it. Been a week since my last so wanted a nice long one to make up for it. Hoping to do one about Mass Effect 1 and 2 soon, but make no promises, but maybe talking about RPGs again, but differently, who knows. =^_^=
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