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The problem I have is when this desperate search for celebrities leads to utterly average games being given much more praise than they deserve. Case in point, you have Bioshock, a game which is getting nearly universal praise left and right, including GOTY honors, while having gameplay that's as braindead easy as Prey, only without the interesting weapons and gravity. When you look at Bioshock and Prey, they're generally the same games: Linear path, you never ever ever die ever, anti-climatic boss fight, crap ending. Bioshock's story is admittedly better than Prey, but while story is important, average to bad gameplay simply cannot be disregarded when deciding the best game of the year.
However, a lot of this unjustified hype that Bioshock's been getting seems to stem from the fact that they've got themselves a wonderful, charismatic legend at the helm of 2K Boston by the name of Ken Levine, who also worked on the under-hyped System Shock games and has become a media darling. It seems that the only reason everyone's falling all over themselves to give Bioshock all this praise is because of Levine. I wish no offense to the man, honestly - as I stated in a previous post, I think he's a wonderful individual with a creative mind and lots of fine ideas - but when we get to the point where we're giving utterly average games heaps of undue praise in order to prop up media darling developers/designers, one has to wonder if perhaps gaming has gone too Hollywood for its own good. I have a theory that if Bioshock had been the game by Human Head Studios and Prey been by Ken Levine's 2K Boston, I'd be sitting here writing a blog post about just how much needless and mind numbingly stupid praise Prey's recieving while Bioshock would be a $9.99 bargain game at your local Wal-Mart that no one would give a crap about.
Of course, Levine isn't the only one who gets this stupidly preferential treatment. Anyone here remember that Xbox game a few years back, Tim Schafer's Psychonauts by Tim Schafer? While possessing an interesting story and characters, the game was, in the end, a completely by the numbers Mario-style platformer with grotesque art style that I couldn't honestly find the will to give a shit about playing for more than three hours. However, the game became the media darling, and everyone from all the major outlets was crooning about how creative and innovative and one of a kind the game was and how dare anyone ever not buy the game, standard gameplay notwithstanding? Then of course we have Miyamoto, who has been making a living the last decade or so rehashing the exact same fucking Mario and Zelda games only to get unconditional praise at how wonderful and genre-defining they are.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I think this is a frightening trend. It's bad enough that there are game reviewers, and indeed entire gaming sites, taking bribes to mark up the scores. However, if game reviewers are going to just say that any game with a person attached to it that they're in love with gets an automatic 8 minimum, is game media in general even worth paying attention to (aside from news)?
Personally, I want to go back to the old days when the games themselves were the celebrities. I don't want to see gaming turned into another cesspool of coked up harlots and insane Scientologists. Then again, that's just me.
And while I hate to go back to old topics, that's exactly where I'm going. Where the hell is the comic with Ken Levine sucking geeks off to get them to buy his game? I don't see Assassin's Creed getting automatic high scores and preferential consideration for awards because of Jade Raymond.
- Mood:
annoyed - Music:Garry Schyman - 08 Cohens Masterpiece
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Comments
...maybe later
Anyway I also made the connection to Prey, and I think that if the game industry had two awards, best story/best atmosphere and best game, Bioshock would win the former and Halo3/COD4 would win the latter (haven't played COD4 yet so right now its H3)
The game however, is easy, but this is a product of today's games, as gaming is becoming more mainstream we need hand holding more and more often, this isn't the days of Civilization with a 200 page manual, nor is it the days of Baldur's Gate and its open ended 'your adoptive father just died, here is the world, good f'ing luck kid', we've gone beyond the arcade coin-hungry machines. Developers want to make their games as accessible as possible because you've just put down $45-60 bucks for this game, and the rate of sequels and the start of spin-offs (WoW, Halo Wars) that are coming to be expected from developers instead of creating another new IP, they want you to finish their game, enjoy it, find it easy enough to make you buy the next one; thus keeping them in business.
Look at Assassin's Creed and its mission failures, if that was 10 years ago you'd have started from a save check spot that you were last at, which was 1 hour ago ingame, you also only would have 2 lives left and no more continues. Instead we skip back not more than 3 minutes if you died, and if it was a mission failure; just lose the soldiers and go back and retry the mission. Bioshock had the same with their respawn chambers; which I never used because I found the game incredibly easy.
Despite Assassin's Creed's 6-8 out of 10 scores, it has sold 2.5 Million Copies, which means we are basically guaranteed the full trilogy, and the movie license, and perhaps even the novels getting put back on the table after being canceled earlier this year. That is why games are becoming easier; it makes sense because making money makes sense.
I follow the pedigree of developers like some others, and it is the Schafers, the Levines, Miyamotos, Britishs, Muzykas, Zeschuks, Morhaimes, that game enthusiast journalists recognise because these people gave us the games of the first generation, Ultima, Thief, Donkey Kong, Baldur's Gate, WarCraft, these journalists are just gamers who know how to write, they love the industry and it was these gaming franchises that brought them into gaming so yeah, when Ken Levine brings out Bioshock they'll go crazy, or when Schafer does Psychonauts they'll eat it up. Thing is I will too, because I remember these developers when they brought out their first games when gaming was still in diapers.
I am excited for the new generation of game developers/producers, because honestly we won't be seeing too many games from these first generation developers, when you consider a game takes a 2-3 year cycle to develop I wouldn't be surprised if for some of these guys their next game or the one after will be their last, look at John Carmack of iD Software for example, he's announced that Rage will be his last engine design and also his last game (except for his Mobile development which is a hobby more than anything).