COMPLETE LIST IS HERE!!
TOP 10 CURRENT TRENDS IN GAMING I WISH WOULD DIE ALREADY:
#10. PASSCODES FOR RETRO RE-RELEASES - its 2009 folks, not 1985. Passcodes were rediculous and frustrating eons ago, and they have no place in retro re-releases today. If you're going to charge any sum for a 15-20 year old game, please take the 5 minutes and 1 block of memory to offer a proper save function.
#9. SUBSTANDARD "COLLECTOR'S EDITION" JUNK - anyone who purchased the Assassin's Creed Collectors Edition knows exactly what I'm talking about. Who wants an Altair figurine that comes broken? Useless posters that I get for $5 anywhere also don't augment the pricing of a "collector's set". A disc of interviews and extra content is nice, but c'mon, lets take more than 5 minutes to throw it together eh? Back in the day, a collector's Edition might have come with leatherbound artbooks, soundtrack CD, interviews, and extras (Lunar & Lunar 2 had ALL of that!). Many come in spiffy tin cases (Halo2, FFXII etc) which is cool, but I need more. It seems people can be bought with cheap posters, plastic figurines, and little else. Look, if you want me to pay upwards of $20 extra for a "collector's edition", a leatherbound art book and disc of extra material is the bare minimum of my expectations.
#8. SHOVELWARE - though the 360 and PS3 certainly have thier share of sub-par titles (anyone played "vampire rain"?) it seems to be the Nintendo Wii that is being most heavily plagued by this issue. Every time I'm ina video game shop, I can't help but marvel at the sheer amount of crap lining the walls. Games that nobody's heard of. Games that nobody's advertising. Games made by companies I've never heard of. Jeebus, go into a GameStop, look at the Wii wall, and actually try to pick out more than 10 games you wouldn't consider a waste of shelf space!! Look, not every game is going to be a masterpiece, but there's a pretty fine line between a failed effort, and an effortless fail.
#7. THE CRAPTASTIC ENDING LEADING TO A SEQUEL - nobody can blame a company for wanting more out of their efforts, and turning a single successfull title into your flagship "franchise" is certainly common practice, but its gotten to the point where you don't even expect a proper ending anymore. At what point did the obligatory sequel-tie-in become a qualified ending to a game!? At this point, none of use are expecting the next Prince of Persia orResident Evil to be the last game in the series by any means, but does that mean we don't deserve a proper or rewarding ending!?
#6. RELEASE DATE FIASCOS - Does anybody actually take release dates seriously anymore!? They're never accurate, they change every five minutes, and when the dust clears, the game is going to arrive eons after the originally stated date, so why bother with all the "release date statements" and "major announcement" hogwash. I know, I know, so the companies can build anticipation right!? But that doesn't even work because at this point we almost assume there'll be delays don't we? This gets even weirder when GameStop starts taking pre-orders, and then your game is delayed fromQ3 2009 until "sometime in Q2 2010. But we don't want to not pre-order and miss out on all that free swag now do we!? Well, maybe we should re-reference item #9...
#5. TOO MANY CONSOLE MODELS - Jeebus, I can hardly keep it all straight. There's the 360 Arcade, the 360 Elite, and the 360 Pro. Wait, this pro comes with a game bundle, but this one comes with nothing. Oh, that was just a special. OMG, there's a Halo bundle....that doesn't come with Halo!? Kinda silly, but I'll bite, what makes it a Halo console then? Ah, its an ugly green color. That'll look nice next to that hideous red RE5 bundle. Maybe I'll just get a PS3. Okay, so the 60bg had everything you'd want, but its now discontinued because people griped. So now my choice is the 20gb thats back-compat but has a tiny HD, the 40gb that isn't back-compat, and 3 different models of 80gb with various differences depending on when they were built......awww skrew it, I'm pluggin in my SNES.
#4. THE QUICK TIME EVENT - when the hell did "press X now" become the standard for gameplay!? Its not interesting. Its not fun. Its not entertaining. And itall but dumbs a situation down to the point where I'd rather just "press reset now". How fun would PAC-MAN have been if every time a ghost came near you could just tap "A" to escape!? Sure, God of War was fun, but since then the quick-time event has become a plague of poor design choice. Is there something wrong with actually just controlling your character!? RE4's lamest moments were quick-time events, a few were randomly thrown into Uncharted for no good reason, and they all but left Prince of Persia's combat as an after-thought. Sorry, but the quick-time event is sooooo 2005, and it needs to go.
#3. THE ONE DAY CAMPAIGN - This bugs me quite alot since personally speaking, I'm a huge fan of single player experiences. Thats not to say I don't play online, I do, but I'm getting sick of paying $59.99 for a game with a 5 hour or lackluster campaign mode. "Chronicles of Riddick" for example was a nice atmospheric single player stealth shooter, but the remake offered a dumbed down campaign and a forgettable multiplayer that few people even bothered with. Same goes for "Medal of Honor: Airborne", which was actually a fantastic game, save the fact it was only 6 missions long. Even my friends who are complete "Halo" junkies were quite frustrated when they walked through Halo3's campaign in what seemed like an afternoon. There are certainly examples of games like CoD4 that managed both well,but there are far too many others where you almost wish they'd have not bothered with an online component at all, especially since the market is already flooded with muliplayers. I'm VERY worried that relevant and satisfying single player campaign modes are becoming a lost artform.
#2. DROPPING THE F-BOMB TO ENSURE THE M-RATING - The "M" rating is there as a means to make gamers aware that content may be unsuitable, but it seems like its almost become a badge of pride or symbol of appeal to some gamers, especially the teens, as if a game without that "M" isn't worth thier time. Sure, there are games like "Silent Hill" that will justifiably bear the "M" due to thier content, but there are even more titles that seem to add pointless content to an otherwise standard game in an effort to "EARN" and "M" rating. Take "HAZE"on the PS3 for example. Its actually a decent enough game from a graphics and gameplay standpoint and could easily have been an accessable T-teen rated action game, had the dialogue not been written by a retarded monkey with tourettes syndrome. Even games like "Killzone2" and "Gearsof War" which would have been rated "M" for violence and gore anyhow, went to great lengths to dumb its language down and throw a swear word into every other line of dialogue. Don't even get me started on all the gangsta-wannabe thuggery games plaguing the shelves, thats a rant for another day.
#1. MILKING A FRANCHISE WITH SUB-PAR SPIN-OFFS AND SEQUELS - I don't understand developers. They're the first ones to complain when sales are down and make excuses when games are delayed, yet they bring it upon themselves. Square-Enix is the worst offender and best example I can give. They've delayed FFXIII until 2010 even though thats thier major project and the game everyone is hyped about, yet they've released a near endless barrageof remakes, re-ports, spin-offs, and mini-games based on the same franchise. At some point, they're going to have to realize that releasing 2 quality A+ titles a year is better than releasing 7 lackluster titles. And I don't mean to pick soley on Square-Enix and Final Fantasy, its just the easiest example. You could make the same arguement with Konami's treatment of CastleVania, Capcom's treatment of MegaMan and Resident Evil, EA's treatment of Medal of Honor, Sega's treatment of Sonic, and so on and so forth. On the contrary, look at how Nintendo handles a series like Legend of Zelda and you've got an example of how to honor your own franchise.
Well, thats it folks, the whole list.
I don't expect you all to agree on every point, as these are merely my own frustrations, but I hope you had an entertaining read. Comments and feedback is muchly appreciated :)