The State of The Art

From Twitter: "@jcharles_ "Seems like a new big game is just another FPS that isn't as good as #cod"  -John Nup (@_jnup)

That's my friend John commenting on the lack of originality found in most of the "big games" that were due to come out this early 2011.  His point: games are trying hard to surpass the gold standards of gaming, but coming up way short.  Probably because they're trying to inject too much shit into games and not sticking to what makes gaming fun: simplistic, intuitive gameplay.

The "COD" he mentions is the long standing king of the hill in First Person Shooters (FPSs) the "Call of Duty" series.  Since the early 2000s, COD emerged as the go-to in shooter games.  Military in nature, players take over the roll of a grunt and are placed in harrowing and engaging missions.

Then you have the online multiplayer aspect.  The COD games have always made the online part of their games to be truly enjoyable experiences.  Experiences other game developers try desperately to emulate.

Case in point: Earlier this year, two new shooters were introduced: "Bulletstorm" and "Homefront" both slated to be "COD Killers." "Bulletstorm" is a crass, futuristic shooter that allows players to interact with the game beyond the normal "Aim Shoot Move" series found in most FPSs.  In it, you can lasso an enemy, kick him into a pile of cactus or rebar or hot lava, and then slide away into cover to take on the next wave of enemies.  While this all sounds cool, and it's game controls aren't that hard to master (going from mashing one series of buttons to another) it becomes tedious after a while.  Mix in the terrible voice acting and plot, and soon enough any player older than 21 is going to be reaching for his Black Ops disc (Black Ops being the latest in the COD franchise) for a more rounded out and polished game play experience.

I was most excited for "Homefront" when I first heard about it.  In it, a unified Korea (sometime in the future) invades the US and citizens become insurgents to fight back the oppressive invading army.  I watched a few videos of the online play, the story mode, etc.  I was pretty much hooked on the idea that I would plop down my 65 bucks and pick this guy up.

But then I started hearing from credible reviewers and people I know, saying that the single player campaign is woefully short (about 4 hours...) and that the multiplayer aspect wasn't all that deep.  Sure, they added a few nice touches (leveling up while in a match, opposed to waiting for a match to be over to reap the benefits) it really wasn't worth paying retail.

I mean, four and a half hours for the games primary story line?  For those of you who are not gamers, the average "single player" experience in most games usually runs around ten hours.  In recent years with shooters, this number of hours has been drastically cut, as developers want to spend more time and energy on what they think the gamer will be spending more time and energy on: multiplayer.  So the single player experience suffers.

I mean, seriously, four hours?  I'm supposed to believe that a home-grown insurgency repels a national army in just FOUR HOURS.  There is so much you can do with that story line!  I know you want to leave something for the sequels, but come on, seriously.  I buy the game after lunch and I've got it beaten before dinner.  That sucks.

And if the multiplayer isn't nearly as engaging as what your dev team thinks it is, I'm going to be returning the game for a full refund before the end of the week (thanks GameStop!).  It's shitty to think that gamers of any age or skill, are going to hang on to a game that has no redeemable replay value.

I'm looking at you "Medal of Honor."

Games are becoming more mainstream as time wears on, even being compared to an art form.  There are some really great games out there, as there are shitty ones, same as with movies and television programs.

But video games have the cards stacked against them, because like comic books, there's still a lot of people out there that assume video games are just mindless entertainment for kids.  If gaming wants to be considered a legitimate art form, they've really got to go in and hook a wider audience.

You're not going to do it with cookie-cutter shooters, or sophomoric sandbox games (Looking at you, Duke Nukem Forever).

At the same time, developers, stop trying to stuff as much shit as possible into a game.  Yeah, it's cool that I can do a little more than just riddle my enemy with bullets from a cache of assorted Cold War Era weaponry, but all the effort to go out of the way, all the time, becomes tiresome (looking at you Red Dead Redemption).

Instead of seeing how many freshman can fit into a phone booth, how about finding out if the phone booth works first? Take all that energy and refocus it on amazing game play, super intuitive controls and a story arch that lasts longer than lions fucking.

I was reading an article on the up-coming "Saints Row: The Third" game... a giant sandbox-style game that pits you against virtually a whole city, ala "Grand Theft Auto."  The interview with the lead developer went something like this:

Interviewer: So what can we expect from the new "Saints?"

Lead Dev: You're going to be able to sky dive naked and fall into a car being driven by a fucking tiger, and then you're going to be on a reality tv show where you do nothing but feed hotdogs to pornstars, and then you can go and gamble all of your winnings away at any of the cities nine-fucking-casinos, all while your buddies mod out your stolen car at any of the 173 chop-shops in the city.  Pretty much, if you can think it, you can do it in this game.

Which is all well an good if you're a spastic high school sophomore with ADD and a crippling energy drink dependency.

Hey Saint's Row developer, how about focusing on making a game that (first, isn't a crudely drawn GTA knock-off, second) won't drive me mad with just this laundry list of shit I feel like I have to do in order to experience your game in full?  It's cool and all that to have a game that will allow me to do anything, but what I really want to do is drive from point A to point B, murder some gangsters, go home and have a PB&J, nap, and then hit the gym.  If you can make a game that has all that ridiculous shit you mentioned, you can give me a game that is simplistic, easy on the eyes and above all else, fun.