Blogs - GrimWaltz

Well, it's a pretty
windy day today...

And when I say it's windy, I mean, hell the roof is almost losing its top.

The wind is singing through the cracks and crevices in the door panel and
window frames and the beams supporting the roof are making an eerie cracking
sound. What a weather… I love it!

Apart from the storm
that suddenly hit my little harbor town yesterday, followed by the enormous rainstorm,
I hadn’t much to look out for outside. And with my exams in full bloom, I didn’t
really have an excuse to go outside either.

So another day of staying inside filled with boredom and drowning in geography until
the break of bedtime.

But, this was suddenly
broken by some good news of new games to check out.

Although the concept wasn’t very new, it still was a fresh breath of air in
this day and age.

I grew up with the N.E.S.
and S.N.E.S., killed my thumbs through the playstation era, fostered the
playstation 2 era and slanted into the playstation 3 era… As the games evolved
so did I, but I more and more seem to wonder if games truly have evolved or
that people just have been taking steps backwards while being blinded by “evolution”
that should have been mandatory, while we praised it and spoiled developers
into laziness.

Spoiled? Yes, spoiled.
If we all take a step back into memory lane, we can clearly remember that
during the Atari era graphics weren’t as well developed as now. But on the
other hand, just look at the materials they had to work with back then. There
is no doubt in my mind that in a dimension where video games would have just
been created this day and age, that the graphics would look as awful as back
then. And you know why? Because it’s natural for us to be given better graphics
and sound. Our hardware can finally support such features. Now, don’t get me
wrong, the past has given us many great things, even if the quality doesn’t
match today’s advances.

But you know what they
did back then? They gave us content. They gave us new and improved gameplay,
they gave us advances that blew our mind away and which we never could have
imagined back then. Of course, they did give us some serious disappointing stuff
too, but that’s normal when things are trying to improve. There must be room
for error, or else you can’t expand. It wasn’t a console war, it was play
whichever you feel like and enjoy the games and what it had to deliver.

Just look at the share
amount of FPS games now a days compared to what we had in the past. Agreed, the
graphics weren’t that high standard, but if we could remember our very first
FPS… Wolfenstein 3D…

There isn’t a game that could ever give the same atmosphere as that. It was a
masterpiece in innovation, not just a regular copy pasta game. It took some
thinking and some effort to doctor out a new gameplay mechanic.

As developers in the past knew that graphics and design choices weren’t as
important as today, many games weren’t as visually stunning as today, but on
the other hand, we didn’t play games for the graphics now did we? We played to
have fun, to beat a boss or to uncover more of the story. And if you think
stunning graphics and bass blasting audio are a modern thing, you are
forgetting an arsenal of games in the past. Now, in the arsenal of instruments
available to anyone composing a game. hardly any theme sticks out like the ones
in the past did. While in the past, hundreds of amazing compositions have been
made with only 8 or 16 bit devices.

Just think of every Megaman game music during the 8 and 16-bit era. You are
bound to recognize at least 5 of them. Not only audio, but as well as video
could literally be stunning. Just look at the jump from Megaman to Megaman X.
It was so amazing to see our favorite cyan robot man come to life in this new
and epic format. And not only that… ZERO! Yes, another freaking cool character all
of a sudden popped up out of nowhere. And everyone rather played with Zero than
with X. But that’s when story also game playing a big part in games.

Yes story… The reasons
WHY we should be interested in the game. Would you read a book because it has
hard words in it? Would you read a book because it’s cover is all shiny? Or would
you rather read a book because it’s interesting and you are having FUN reading
it?

I suppose you are
getting the idea here. The overall idea of fun has or been dumbed down that I
no longer can follow it or has just been retracted out of games in total. I
enjoy FPS’s as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t mean that I generally
like every FPS. And having millions upon millions of FPS titles showered on us
without anything different in gameplay? That doesn’t cut it for me.

And no. Having a crazy
space weapon that shoots a million bullets at one time that’s generally just a chain
gun with a crazy name, doesn’t cut it for me when it goes for “innovation”. That’s
just another copy pasta. Ah-ah –ah! Covering it up as a “SPACE SHOOTER” doesn’t
cut it either. It’s the same stuff just another theme. Still no innovation. I suppose
you could even make a “PIRATE FPS” and call that an innovation, but I don’t
think history would allow you to put a chain gun in there. Any idea’s how we
can fix that? “SPACE PIRATES”… yeah, you get the point. Copying a game and changing the theme is lazy…
even if the graphics are soooo cool and sooo beautiful and the music is soooo
authentic. It’s just another copied game. And I won’t enjoy it.

I like stories, with
good plots and good atmosphere. Games that really get into your head and make
you stop and think for yourself. Not just rush in, jump around and rush out
while quests are holding your hand. It takes subtlety and passion to create a
good game. I give credit where credit is due.

Halo: combat evolved was
a great game with great music and great atmosphere. It really captured and
immersed players into it. But the way it’s just milking itself and losing its
story… Yeah, that’s a no go. I know there are a lot of people that complain
about Call of Duty… But I really do like the story in those games.

I’m not the kind of
player that rapes the multiplayer over and over… and although the décor sometimes
gets repeated more than I’d like. The story is pretty well built. A sort of innovation
which I personally loved in FPS was weather conditions and night time assassinations.
I don’t like dessert and jungle missions. Give me ice fields and night time
urban combat in the streets of a grand metropolis.

Things that unfortunately
aren’t given enough attention…

Anyway, I’ll continue tomorrow
as my duty calls and my exams are going to assassinate me if I don’t keep
working on them.