When the hell did I start hating every game made??
Conceptually, I love video games. Have since my first exposure, shortly after being able to walk semi-reliably. But over the last couple of years I’ve noticed that I feel punished by the games I’m playing. Honestly it’s impossible for me to tell if it’s me or them.
Let’s start with FPS games. These used to be games I didn’t like, but then grew on me, and now I honestly can’t give a damn about. Doom, Quake, and all of their sequels were nothing but nonsense. Later I discovered Unreal Tournament, which had a certain organic flow to its twitch gameplay, and I was hooked. Followed up by Rebel’s excellent AvP, and the cool but somehow lesser AvP2 from… damned if I can recall. Somewhere in there Deus Ex came out, which aside from the multiplayer was one of the finest FPSs ever made. Now? I dunno. It all feels drab. Bioshock really sealed it for me. The game, from the Irrational guys, had a lot of hype, meaning you have to deduct at least 30% from your expectations, but even after that it was a pile of crap. Sure, it was just a demo, but this is supposed to be the next big game? All this talk about dynamic interactions, and organic play elements, and all you get is a stream of tightly scripted events. Ok.. well.. maybe this environment interaction stuff is hot. No, no I’d say it was pretty standard. Bumping junk over is, well, not that impressive. At one point I used the fire ability, torching some stuff, and noticed that a bottle of booze had some flames on it. I could still drink it, and they just went out pretty shortly. Woot. You have this lightning power, which stuns the weaker enemies. Not kills, despite being lightning, but stuns. Unless they’re in a puddle of water, then they die. Multiples of them will die. Beats the hell out of me why that would be. Then there’s these powers themselves. It’s just magic. The whole thing is just a magic system based on being a crazed junkie. Actually, that would be more interesting, but I digress. Made me want to go and find a copy of Parasite Eve. Sure, it was an RPG, but at least I could fiddle with my gun and all my powers were appropriate to the genre.
So, next are the RPGs. This is a lot like complaining about Santa Claus, because there just aren’t any. The few that do make it to release are either total crap, an MMO (see total crap), or a “hybrid game” (see total crap). Like Oblivion. I wanted to like it. I did. But what the hell man? “Part first person shooter, part RPG, part retard coddler, this one has everything!!”. The game ran like crap, on any system I saw it on, then proceeded to be an endless parade of the same crap. Add that to a “dynamic challenge” system that rewarded you for not leveling and you get a steamy pile of stink. I get depressed thinking about the next Fallout game. MMOs are… sad. I currently play EvE online, but I think I’m cancelling it. Games that rely on socializing, and most of them make that the primary object now, are just weird and sad. Click… type at retards I don’t know…. click… more typing…. hey you were interesting, bet you never login under this account anymore… click… what the hell is the goal here…. click… I think I’m gonna go see a movie….. cancel account.
Then there’s the RTS games. Amongst my earliest favorite games was Dune 2000. Then there were all those awful Command & Conquer games, and the mind numbing Starcraft. Then I caught a break and Emperor:Battle for Dune came out. Neither game was perfect, what is, but both captured a lot of cool elements and flow of play that few others ever have. Sure, people that memorize build orders, click out a thousand orders a minute, and exploit odd mechanics to optimize unit survival can win that way, but unlike other RTS games of the time, that wasn’t the only way to play. You could strategize some, rather than pick a strong unit and churn out a billion. Also, units didn’t have weird powers that had to be individually managed in order to be effective. Then came along Dawn of War, and later Supreme Commander. Excellent games, but frustrating for me. Dawn of War was hard to play with random unit spam. You had fairly small numbers of units, and a great overall balance. Then each revision and expansion eroded that to death. The Tau/Necron expansion pretty much sealed it. I knew it was over when my hyperactive friend started being able to churn out a billion units before I had five. Patched by the committee of people that hate non-repetitive tasks. Supreme Commander started off good, but a handful of super powerful, but standard, units with little to counter them with have upset the cart for me. There just isn’t any reason for me to play it anymore. I don’t want to right click 50 times a second to make my units survive an attack. I don’t want to face a flight of 50 gunships and have them be absolutely impossible to stop. Yet, these are, and will, be the ideas that get enhanced, because that’s how all these people “play”. Not with thought, but with trial, error, and memorization. Not being an ant, this doesn’t appeal to me. The flipside of this sort of gameplay is something like Metal Fatigue, but it had a severe fatal flaw- a game could last forever. I’m all for epic, but forever is a bit much when you can’t save a multiplayer session. It also doesn’t work right with SP2 under XP, so it’s right out the damned window.
Is it me? I dunno. It doesn’t matter much either way I suppose.