Well, this is going to be a rant. And for the love of all that is holy, dont post anything like "summary please", or "wall o' text" because I'm confident it is spam and it is a little irritating to see such laziness, I mean, its a real exercise moving your eyes and taking information in.
The Fuse is Lit
Okay, well, what do I hate most about the current video-game business? It seems that "Next Gen" is just a pipe dream. The phrase became more familiar to me in 2005 as I entered system wars (probably not the best thing I ever did), and at the same time, missed E3, but, my user-name was Leejjohno, and I was a pretty bad Sony fan-boy because of Sony's track record for games.
Developers released tech demos that sent this place in an uproar, I'm talking Motorstorm CGI trailer (looking somewhat like dirt does currently, perhaps dirt is basically what i was looking for in motorstorm, but with more aggression and flames). Okay, then Killzone Trailer comes along, and again I'm like, "well it isn't that hard to believe, this is supposed to be the future of video games after all" (killzone being the only trailer that hasn't outright lied about what the game will be like, but only because it hasn't even been seen yet, and despite being a fake trailer, it still looked achievable). Okay so by now I am getting pretty damn excited about what the PS3 is going to be like, all the while shooting the 360 down as an option, and the "revolution" never was in my eyes.
Disappointment
Then games start to be released on the 360 (premature out of the gate IMO) and the amount of people saying "yeah its good but, not amazing" and "well I'm getting one, but I cant see what the big deal was about the graphics", so me at the time being a fan-boy just laughed. At the same time as not playing any of its games, and not experiencing oblivion.
The fact is, as a new generation arrives, costs go up, console power increases, and people assume that the difference will be absolutely astonishing, I mean of course I did, who didn't? But over time, it becomes obvious to people that as details become finer and more.... well..... detailed, they become harder to notice. Consoles get more powerful by about 10 times for arguments sake, but the graphics improve by 10% (where it might have been 30 or 40% before), and other things such as the size of levels and the kind of things that just become more feasible to achieve, like draw distance and lots of AI operations at once).
Thats something that came to disappoint me, foolishly I'll admit. Plus the 2D to 3D transition set me up quite bad for disappointment this gen.
Okay thats all fine, I can except the fact that less improvements will be noticable this time round and less so next time around. But, e3 3006, a little too much disappointment for some people regarding sony there, but I hold on thinking its going to be better than the 360. But then this **** happens:
- £425 (though I didn't mind all that much, at least they changed the controller)
- Not enough games shown
- Assassins Creed incident
- More games like assassins creed follow soon after because of development costs mostly.
They were the main reasons, and soon after, I picked up a 360 with dead rising, PGR (bundle), extra controller (bundle), Condemned, and GRAW.
Good choice IMO but I should have waited longer (dead rising only just came out at the time and was the number one reason for my conversion). I play condemned and enjoy it to some degree, play PGR and it lasts me a good while at least, but its cash happy game-play is boring, and there is no sense of progression, plus on my HDTV, and lets not lie here, it looks quite bad and has a lot of jaggies (not the centre point of the thread, so don't go posting pictures of the bridge and the inside of Ferrari's etc because i don't give a ****, thats what I think of PGR and know im not lying to myself). GRAW, was absolutely amazing, it was truly brilliant, but became less so, and less so, and less so as each animation glitch destroys my enjoyment and makes me realise just why it isn't realistic. Dead rising keeps me distracted for the most time. Though I still had enough fun to be happy with my decisions.
Potential
(warning: the following contains traces of opinion, that somebody somewhere is bound not to agree with some way or another)
Okay that in mind, the single most disappointing thing I can think of. In this gen, developers are trying to max the graphics out of every game, while neglecting all else. Example: GeOW is the goty 06, and i cant understand why, developers are targeting casual and "hardcore" gamers alike (at the time i didn't have live and didn't care for gears as much as some other "hardcore" gamers, but i bought the limited edition for single player and co-op only. As you start to play, you notice that absolutely nothing matched its graphics, and everyone knew it, it wouldn't have been as fun without the graphics, I'll admit now, because the game-play is too simplistic to have gotten 9. anything if it was released on ps2 (FOR ARGUMENTS SAKE) most of the time, and the only other appealing thing to people was the chainsaw bayonet (a concept so casual, mainstream but most of all impractical it made me laugh, but I still enjoyed using it).
Okay, I know I might sound like I am being harsh but here is the killer for me. Gears has the game-play nailed down from the word go, but it never changes (in a positive way at least). The game is fun granted, but there is a lot of opportunity left out to waste; remember how graw had you liquifying insurgents with a chain-gun on the side of a chopper (though done with animation glitches), and remember how the choppers in gears had chain-guns on the side as well? Why didn't they ditch the cut-scene in the chopper and let you help gung ho Carmine shoot some of those grubs, lengthening the short-arse game by precious few minutes, and it would have worked well as there was a number of turrets in the game that were good (just this one wouldn't be locust origins.
Now the tacked on vehicle play. I will mention that you get to drive a "Junker" armed with a torch, which is so **** that your vehicle must die while you use it. But, there is an APC at the end of the game, that looks awesome. But its only in the cut-scenes it gets made use of. Why? Its almost like they added the Junker at the last minute for the sake of boosting play time, but give up your only chance of having fun in a vehicle, then deciding not to let you use the APC after the mansion bit. Forgetting that, why didn't we get to play against the big locust thing with guns all over it, that would have been a challenging boss and a half if done better than the corpser, but I fear they will add that to the second instalment, which is where they should have introduced it if it was that important to the story.
If Cliffy B liked bats so much he could have kept the torch and junker and added the APC bit in there anyway. But Meh.
Ahh yes, the bats (kryll for the optimistic people). They were shown attacking Marcus in a cgi (albeit Representative of game-play one so you wouldn't notice anyway) trailer where he was shooting them down in order to survive a few god given seconds, but you cant do that in the game, as they aren't physically there, you just see 2D planes (the shape kind) rushing round, and when they attack you, you cant shoot them, you have to get in the light. So let me just summarise that thought there a minute: you get 4 of the toughest steroid taking, iron pumping stake heads you have ever seen getting shot hundreds of times a day, just to do it again the next, and shouting all kinds of macho cliches at the enemy, who are all scared of bats? Okay the Kryll are a good game element, but its not for gears, it just gets in the way of the shooting and cutting and humiliating locust, it ends up making the only vehicle play in the game, lame at best, though the road blocks were somewhat fun to trash through. Stick to berserker's, boomer's and maybe wretches (not "lambent" ones though, they just annoyed me when they showed up).
Aside from the game-play I had beef with there which was purely opinion, I am sick of seeing potential being wasted (in what was already a short game in this case as well).
Oblivion nailed the game-play, but the whole of the game looks the same. There is aleid ruins, standard caves, and then mines. but that was all, I didn't get why a fort couldn't be entered but didn't just lead into a basement. Where was the different location types aside from the marsh area, and the grassland area (pretty much indistinguishable to new players). Where was the autumn leaf forest where miniature whirlwinds kick brown leaves up in circles (perhaps too much processing power needed, but just an idea), and why wasn't there as many outdoor adventures?. Generally this game couldn't be improved game-play wise, but damn, I'm sick of "loading area" pauses. You generally cant go twenty feet without it saying loading area, also to say the land is enchanted and full of secrets, it does a pretty good job of making life in other dimensions/universes (whatever) look as repetitive as it is in this one however different. Very little quest variation as well, which is very bad. Its like every quest some guy is asking you to end up in some dark basement with enemies that help each other kill you (even if they bare no relation, like bears and minotaurs).
I guess thats what I dislike most about the current video game industry.
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