I'm not entirely alone on this (for once), many people seem to be commenting on the fact that next gen just doesn't feel that exciting this time round. Remember when everyone went nuts for that Killzone 2 trailer all those years ago? "Wow, no way games can do that!" we said....and we were right, that trailer was a load of lies, but the EXCITEMENT was real enough. Nothing has had that effect on the general populous this time round because there really isn't that much of a step up, all the games being shown are essentially shinier versions of games we already have with slightly nicer framerates. Which is cool and all, good framerates are nice (they're certainly way more important than resolutions *cough*) but your average person isn't going to get massively pumped over this.
The people who are excited, or have deluded themselves into thinking they're excited, baffle me though. I genuinely worry for the future of the media when I skim over some form of "720p Vs 1080p" article or debate somewhere, it's certainly harder to talk about games as an artform when you've got this kind of nonsense going on in your community. Consoles used to be a place to hide from this sort of stuff if you didn't care about it, let the PC Master Race worry about their graphics cards and so on, but it's finally infected all of us now and console fanboys (who have chosen their favourite based on the zero seconds of play time they've had with either of them) will happily troll up the comments section of any vaguely relevant article or video spouting technical specs at each other. The worst part is PC gamers are still laughing at all of us, anyone with a good gaming PC today views even 1080p as some sort of caveman relic resolution of the past. We've all been infected now, and if you're on team console still then you've still got nothing going for you in the long run. Just talk about the games, at the end of the day that's all that matters.
And talking about the games is just what I'm going to do! Very vaguely and briefly though, because honestly particularly every piece of news I've heard about next gen consoles and the reaction to it has made me sad so I haven't been paying that much attention to a lot of it. Even if I was gushing with excitement from every single sphincter for a ton of years it's going to be a good few years before I'm actually able to play any of them. So whatever, here's a look at a handful of games that actually caught my eye.
D4 (Xbone)
I don't really know what it says about the industry as a whole that a game that's has a significant chance of being awful and is filled with Kinect controlled Quick Time Events is probably the game I'm currently the most excited about. Mostly because it comes to us from SWERY, the possibly mentally unbalanced quirky designer behind Deadly Premonition. A few brief thoughts on Deadly Premonition, it was a hideously poorly made game, had a nutball story and the gameplay was objectively broken in just about every way imaginable. Having said all that, it was really cool.
There's only really one way to explain why Deadly Premonition holds such a strong place in a lot of people's hearts. In a world of painfully average, uninspired, designed by committee shlock (or "EA games") a game coming out that is mostly one guys vision is wonderfully refreshing. A weird Japanese guy spent a week watching a box set of Twin Peaks over and over again, and thought it would be really cool to make a game out of that, so he did, and people liked it (well, some of the people liked it).
Having said that, D4 could just be awful, Deadly Premontion was charming but it hardly cements SWERYs reputation. Still, I won't say another word about it and let you watch the gameplay for yourself, you can probably tell from this scene alone whether this is going to be your type of thing or not.
Important note to add, you don't have to play the game with Kinect controls. Although SWERY insists it, you're not part of his VISION if you don't!
DEAD RISING 3 (Xbone)
*sigh* I like Dead Rising 2 far too much to not give this some sort of mention, y'know, it could turn it around. Yes I saw the E3 trailer, yes it did look like they sucked all the trademark Capcom silliness (whatever that means) out of it and made it all brown and dull (in short, PERFECT for the Xbox One AMIRITE?! Ahem...)
It'll still probably be pretty good if it focuses on exploration and experiments more with Dead Risings' unique time based sandbox scenarios. But if there isn't a single Servbot somewhere in this game, we might all be screwed...
SUPER SMASH BROS 4 (Wii U)
Hey, if the Wii counts as part of the current gen then the Wii U counts as part of the next gen, shut up, besides I don't have one yet so it's still new to me damnit! Having said that, I've played a Wii U about half a dozen times now and I still don't get what the hell it is. It has games on it, which is nice, it seems to actually WANT to be a games console, which is nicer, it lets me play Mario in HD on it, which passes the time. What's the deal with this tablet thing though? Three hours battery life? Putting a secondary screen in the controller to distract the player from looking at their nice big HD TV, that they possibly bought for the sole intention of playing games on it? People still seem to defend this, it doesn't make the Wii U bad but I don't think Nintendo had any real plans for this, I guess they just thought the gimmick of a tablet controller would win over people. Whether the people like it or not will be decided by history, I'll tell you something for free though, developers certainly don't like it. Having to make a game to somehow incorporate this stupid thing to sell a product to the minority of people who actually did buy a Wii U probably isn't very attractive right now.
Oh yea Smash Bros, yea I'll play it, it's got Mega Man in it, it'll probably be pretty fun. Note that I said I'll play it, not play for hours, days, weeks, months, enter tournaments, and convince myself that it's totally a legit fighting game and I'm super grown up for playing Nintendo's gooey fan service day in and day out. I say this as deliberate flamebait, what's the deal with people wanting Smash to be taken so seriously? The more competitively you play it and the more seriously you take it the more its flaws shine out, for example you basically have to ignore 90% of the content entirely to play it "pr0". What's the point? It's not what the developers intended, and there's games that actually do care about this sort of thing and are actually deliberately balanced for it.
QUANTUM BREAK (Xbone)
YO MAN I LOVED THE SEGA CD! It's all bout dat nostalgia, WE IN THERE.
In all seriousness, no-one seems to really know what this is, and what little we know about it makes me not care. Live action scenes? Plans to also turn it into a TV show? This is video game town bro, we're not here to suck on the teat of non-interactive mediums sunshine. This is clearly some insincere attempt to try and reel in some non-gamer types, or show off the Xbones graphical settings or something, and it can piss off.
WATCH DOGS (Lots of stuff)
This recently got delayed for reasons, there's two ways of interpreting that story. Either Ubisoft really care about how this game turns out and want to hold off to tweak it, like they really should have done with the first Assassin's Creed, or something really ballsed up here and they were forced to delay it to fix stuff. Either way, I fear this game may succumb to the same gripes that grab most Ubisoft games, where they establish a good setting with decent writing, introduce some fun gameplay mechanics, and then squander it by making you do the same three missions over and over again and turn the entire thing into a grind.
Either way, even if Watch Dogs does suck or is forgettable, it'll probably sell tons and then by the time they get to Watch Dogs 3 it'll be AMAZING.
BAYONETTA 2 (Wii U)
I played it in London and it was really nice, it certainly runs way better than the PS3 version of the first game (but then most games probably do). But the real question is, will this be the first game where Platinum get something other than combat and graphics right for a change? Probably not!
In all seriousness (again) it should be pretty good.
ODDWORLD: ABE'S ODDYSEE NEW 'N' TASTY (PS4, Wii U)
I really like the game this is a remake of.
...
...
Moving on.
THE EVIL WITHIN (PS4, XBONE)
Hey this one is coming out on a console I own as well! I can get properly excited for this one!
Hey it's a survival horror game in an industry where survival horror has basically died! And it's directed by Shinji Mikami who made Resident Evil! I hate Resident Evil! But this is nearly 20 years later and a post-God Hand post-Resident Evil 4 Mikami, and is an infinitely cooler guy for it. Details are few and far between on this so far, but Mikami has become one of those names that I'd follow into a burning building by this point so I look forward to it. (Although unfortunately, I do consider the early Resident Evils to be worse than a burning building)
KILLZONE SHADOWFALL (PS4)
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, alright I am just joking with this one. If I'm going to drop off topic to bash an Xbone exclusive it's only fair to snipe down one of the PS4 games as well.
How is Killzone still a thing? Killzone 1, although impressive for the PS2 and all...was rubbish. Killzone 2, although impressive for the PS3 and all...was also rubbish. I didn't play 3 but other than incorporating gimmicks with 3D and Move and the like it sounds even rubbisher. There was also that PSP game that had a Killzone logo stuck to it but was nothing like Killzone...I don't know if that one was rubbish or not (probably was). Based on the series track record of just being a not particularly fun extremely dark tech demo for Sony hardware....this will probably be that.
Yea I'm being unfair BUT I DON'T CARE, even by the increasingly low standards of first-person shooters these games have nothing going for them other than graphics, and I don't even think they look that good, it's all really gritty and unappealing. Please...no-one buy it so I don't have to hear about Killzone again.
----------------------------------------------------------------
So that is pretty much all I care about when it comes to next gen so far!
I'm sure there's some amazing looking game that's not getting a fair amount of coverage and I just haven't noticed, but I have to say the launch line up isn't that amazing. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily, blowing your load at launch and then having nothing to follow it up with is a pretty terrible business strategy. I just don't understand what drives people to rush out and have the console on Day 1, when historically the first models are prone to be buggy and vastly inferior to whatever they release in a couple of years. People just like new things I guess.
But the people who REALLY baffle me are those who are trading in their current console(s) to make the jump to these bad boys at launch. The lack of backwards compatibility has been a big deal in the discussion of both consoles, and it does suck, but it just makes behaviour like this more inane. Let's recap here, you're getting rid of your console that has hundreds, if not thousands of games available for it, to pay the maximum amount of money, for the worst version of a console that has barely anything on it?!
THAT.
IS.
CRAY CRAY.
No comments:
Post a Comment