Are videogames deteriorating as a medium?

A good friend of mine posted on his livejournal concerning this issue.

There are several factors that amount to why gaming might feel different now than it did before back in the “good ol’ days.”

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Seriously?  Seriously???  AGAIN????

Okay America, we get it.  You like wars.  World War 2 was the greatest war ever.  Yes.  It’s time to let it go.  Drop it.

No, just because you finally decided to FINALLY bring the other half of the world war does not mean you can sneak in yet ANOTHER Russian campaign, with yet ANOTHER Enemy at the Gates reference (I wish I was kidding with that one).

I really tried my best to judge this as something more than just a re-skin of COD4, but it’s really difficult when they actually managed to not only rip off the movie, but also at the same time rip off the fantastic COD4 sniper mission to a certain extent.

It didn’t even go the route of realism, either, as you find out right off the bat that you can re-load the M1 garand on the fly (previously known as a weapon that you can only reload AFTER using up a clip).

The obligatory russian tank sequence was not only boring, but there was never a sense of being part of a whole;  rather, it felt more like picking up the ENTIRE RUSSIAN ARMY’S SLACK.  I had a tank in front of me and 3 tanks behind me, and each one promptly blew up before giving me an ounce of help.  I could not believe I had to take out an entire Nazi field base with my one (inexplicably regenerating) tank.  To top it off, I used the edges of the map and ended the sequence by accident.  To this day I’m still not sure whether I should have rejoiced at the fact that I beat it, or grimace at the fact that it felt like a rushed mission.

They even added an “airplane gunner” sequence, except it was with a pacific WW2 skin, therefore no neat heat-vision sequence either.  Also, your supposed “partner gunner” is absolutely worthless as you push and shove him away casually while you frantically move between 4 different gunner positions.  What the hell was he on that plane for?  To warm the seat up for you with his ass?  It also didn’t really seem to matter how many planes you shot down, either.

I could only count 2 missions that I found myself enjoying, and those mainly involved a tight, linear indoor sequence with a standard cover/fire procedures. 

So, to put things into perspective, they didn’t really improve anything from the COD4 formula except maybe a flamethrower aspect (which was annoying since you really couldn’t tell how far the flame reaches from your perspective) and the fact that your enemies yell BANZAI instead of ALLAH.

They even added a “bonus” zombie mode, but playing it by myself was neither thrilling nor exciting.  Definitely felt tacked on.  It’s funny…it’s almost as if they knew this game was going to be so generic that they had to try to lure gamers like me by the promise of zombies.  With something as great as Left 4 Dead being released, this “nazi zombie mode” is an EPIC FAIL.

I come to you from the murky dark depths of the infentisimal mountain of videogame releases.  Also known as: November.

It always creeps up on you, as you wander the damp, cold tunnel of darkness, as you reminisce about the games that you left behind, games that you think “maybe I should go back and beat that game…”  And then, it happens.  It snatches you further into the shadows…and before you know it, you become blinded by the sheer amount of gold that you find in a dark and unexpected corner.  Early rejoicing turns to agony as you realize there’s just..too..much…awesomeness.  Just too much…for one gamer to bear.

Now, on with the blog.

I present to you: The Oblivion edition.

(A little backstory about my experiences with Oblivion: This is a game that I thought was going to be awesome due to the “huge expansive world” and “non-linear gameplay.”  Reviewers couldn’t stop gushing over how lush the environment was, how realistic your horse’s anus looked and just how “fun” the entire game was.  I have given Oblivion at least 3 tries, and each time I was unable to bear playing it more than half an hour before I was utterly bored to tears.  The combat is awkward and stale, the character level up system is wonky and pointless since the monsters all level up with you anyway, and the fast-traveling mechanic ruins the game completely since you spend time and energy to get a horse when you really don’t need one.  Oh and there were only 2 voice actors, one for male characters and one for female characters.  Either someone needs to explain to me why this game is so good, or this game was just totally overrated.

FAR CRY 2: OBLIVION IN AFRICA

I made the mistake of choosing a white character in this game, but I heard that there isn’t much difference between the characters besides visual differences such as the forearms you see.  I’m not sure if every character is like this but one thing is for damn sure: everyone, and their grandmother, hates your guts.  I mean it.  It doesn’t matter if you saved a kitten from a tree or rescued wildlife from a random wildfire.  No. No I don’t care.  Everyone hates you just because you exist.  PEOPLE THAT SO MUCH AS SEE YOU ON THE ROADS WILL TURN THEIR CARS AROUND AND HUNT YOU DOWN.  JUST FOR BREATHING THEIR AIR.  OR SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW WHAT.

The reason I call this Oblivion in Africa is because it gave me the exact same stale and boring feeling I got when playing Oblivion, and yet, it got rave reviews(just like Oblivion).  People were bedazzled by the graphics, and while I’ll admit that the game doesn’t look bad, it looks basically on par with everything else on the market right now.  It doesn’t hold a candle to the realism found in the Crysis series, however.  Reviewers also loved the immersiveness of the game.  It would be nice to agree with the reviewers except for the glaring problem of everyone hating you like you’re the white devil.

Imagine you’re driving along a beautiful savanna, wild animals running along side your jeep wrangler(tm) and your eyes squint as you see a beautiful golden sunset upon the horizon… and what’s this?  You see a friendly African neighbor driving past you.  You watch in confusion as your African brother runs over all the gazelles and zebras as he RAMS YOUR CAR IN A FIT OF INEXPLICABLE RAGE.  You stop and ask, “What is your problem, sir?” and you are only met with bullets from his AK 47.  Enemies respawn everywhere, across the map, within a few minutes.  This means your car will break down every few minutes and it’ll take you twice the amount of time to get anywhere than you normally would have to if you didn’t have this stupid AI characters beating you down every step of the way.  What the hell happened to immersiveness??

While we’re talking about NPC’s, you have a bunch of other foreigners (who seem to be in the exact same predicament as you are) who you can help out.  They’re supposed to be your “buddies” but all I see are “quest givers”.  They also talk monotonously at unnatural speeds.  You can literally FEEL the voice actors reading the lines in English.  Sometimes for certain missions, you get fed the EXACT SAME LINE.  Once again, where’s my immersive environment?

A trip to Africa wouldn’t be anything without an unhealthy dose of Malaria.  Instead of actually becoming progressively worse or being a productive plot device, it’s more of a nuisance.  Every once in a blue moon you suddenly see yellow spots on the screen, and you need to take your magic pills that make it go away.  You only need to obtain these magic pills once, apparently, because you seem to have an INFINITE SUPPLY of them.  So now Malaria has just turned into “press H every once in a while to fix your vision!”  I have no sense of urgency or “oh shit oh shit I’m gonna die I need medical attention NOW” since I can just keep popping pills for the rest of my life.  Once again: where’s the immersiveness?

Now that we’ve got all the bad out of the way, let’s put in some good words, because after all, this is a beautiful looking game.  There’s a wonderful article on how fire was implemented as a mechanic, and it’s definitely believable.  With a flamethrower you can set fire to almost anything you want, whether it’s people, animals, grass, trees, even houses.

The gameplay, i.e. shooting and running are all pretty solid as well, minus the fact that you can shoot off branches in one shot but you can’t kill a man with a single headshot.  It’s just such a shame that they promised so much immersivity and took away most, if not all of it by the incredibly dense and overly aggressive AI.

But IG, what about the quests themselves?  Well, they’re pretty repetitive and usually involve lots of driving from point A to point B and killing something/blowing something up.  Literally more than half the game is travelling, unfortunately.  Which also means running into the hostile natives. 

Hello again.

At the risk of sounding as awkward as old lovers trying to re-connect their long-dead relationship, I have returned from my long hiatus from life’s journey to continue the old internet tradition of clogging up webspace with things nobody reads or cares about.

Recently I became an employee as an Editor, deluding myself that I was some sort of Holy Knight that came to vanquish the fowl evils of “Engrish” and revive the lost punctuational societies. Needless to say, things have settled down a bit and I have returned to reclaim this forgotten island in the vast sea of the interwebs.

There’s going to be changes around here; gone will be the dry, serious tone of yesteryear and in with the wet(buh??) and more personal embracement that this is, indeed, a blog, just like any other. The rivers will flow with geek-terminologies and the trees will be ripe with ramblings. Rejoice!!!