Modern Gaming and the Modern Gamer

When you stop at your local electronic media outlet, what do you see? Generally, there will be many action titles, a couple of games composed of minigames (here's looking at you, Nintendo), movie tie-ins and the occasional auteur/niche genre/whatever the hell LA Noire is. For the most part, the action is where the variety is because that's a broad classification. Do you play in the Infamous sandbox, have fun with science in Portal or repurpose a head into a makeshift lawn maintenance system in... like every FPS ever? Now while the first two are exceptions to the trend, I find that games are devolving into some kind of formulaic concept with a master copy located somewhere in the bowels of EA.

This isn't supposed to be a nostalgia trip down Memory Lane when the 90's were king and it seemed like the world had achieved the closest thing to a utopia. No, this kind of repetition and uncreativity was present since inception (good movie, btw.) It's only noticeable now because of mass marketing, hilarious Cracked.com images and the fact that we have retrospect. How many cover based shooters with regenerative health do you know of? Truly, they are as numerous as the stars. While you could argue that these mechanics are part of a paradigm that has evolved over time, I can argue that it's simply a trend that got popularized by Gears of War. Cover was around in 1998 for the original MGS and regen health was present at its purest level since Shadow of the Colossus (a lot of games restored partial health prior to that, but SotC is the only thing I can think of that just let you shrug off grievous wounds as after 15 seconds). So why did the mechanics get popular? Because Gears was a fun game that rivaled Halo on Xbox Live. At that point, it was a follow the leader that even the Duke himself was cowed into.

Why is this bad? Because as games get more and more expensive to produce, the dichotomy between mainstream action games and indie off brands increases. Observing these trends allows us to watch from the ivory tower and predict where the big block of salt is going to be moved, broken into little pieces and sown into the ground. For those of you not versed in the complex world of agriculture, salt is not good fertilizer. This becomes a problem when the direction cover based shooting forces some games to take also become popular, i.e., Uncharted 2. Explain to me what made that game a good game. Cinematics don't make a good game. Ripping off Indiana Jones certainly doesn't make a good game. Ok, I take that back. Original Lara Croft and Flight of the Amazon Queen were pretty decent. Dumbed down Indie featuring a loveable rogue with a penchant for jumping onto old stuff and using gun to solve his problems. The whole thing was pretty meh and somehow made Spike's game of the year. Goddamn Arkham Asylum, Infamous and even Bayonetta were out that year. Why the hell did Naughty Dog's gussied up pile of mediocrity win? Because it was film-like. Gaming is still insecure as to its status as an art and a viable medium of entertainment. Thus, we enter retrogression. We try to hold onto an established medium's coattails and lose sight of our own values and strengths. You might imagine that there are some benefits to mimicking the long and storied history of cinema. Problem is we're going down the Michael Bay route of explosions and dental hygienist quality narrative.

Know your gaming history. It'll save you some money buying Generic Shooter 3404.