"Proper Actress" Sasha Grey
Anyway, here I present some recent(ish) games that I consider to be indicative of an overall decline in game quality, but which have still managed to be feted by press and idiot gamers alike.
Exhibit A: Bioshock
An odd one this, because on paper it's almost identical to undisputed classic System Shock 2 but slotted into a submarine deco wonderland. So how come it fails to live up to its predecessor's standards, and how come a substantial number of people don't appear to appreciate its shortcomings?
Well the blatant consolisation didn't help. Console-tastic fov (aspect ratio issues notwithstanding), crappy laggy mouse controls, low-res effects and models and textures. Strange AI which I suspect is designed to cater for slow pads rather than superior keyboard/mouse players. Perhaps the odd sense of deja vu experienced by any SS2 fan worked against this game. I didn't really hate it, but I had to force myself to complete it and was left with a distinct sense of ambivalence. I didn't bother with the sequel.
Exhibit B: Assassin's Creed
AKA the most soul-less game ever released. Highly anticipated because of its Prince of Persia credentials, AC managed to take a pretty and impressive open-world design and shit out a tiresome, repetitive game all over it (Mafia 2 pulled the same trick more recently). Worthless sci-fi storyline, only about 3 types of mission from what I can remember, AC was one of few games I haven't been able to bring myself to complete because it was so fucking dull. Which didn't stop them from coming up with a sequel. Nor did it stop a lot of people from believing it was some sort of gaming masterpiece.
Of course we all know why this game was successful. It was because it was pimped by the lovely Jade Raymond. Lovely, lovely Jade.
Exhibit C: Dead Space
Shit. The fact that so many people cheer-lead for this game and the forthcoming sequel continues to baffle me. Why don't they see how terrible the controls are? (yes, I'm aware of the v-sync issue, but that's not the problem). Why don't they see how staggeringly bland and repetitive it is? Or how laughable the so-called scares are? I'm the first to admit being a big, scared baby when it comes to well-designed psychological thrillers. To this day I can't do that bit on the ladder in FEAR without closing my eyes. But Dead Space was utterly predictable and pedestrian. Even by hackneyed sci-fi game standards the story was abysmal. The characters are appropriately vacuous and forgettable. The third-person camera somehow manages to be absolutely awful. And yet the fans will claim all the many, many flaws are in fact intentional, and there to make the game more claustrophobic and immersive. They are wrong.
Exhibit D: Batman: Arkham Asylum
Another so-called "classic", and like Dead Space it has more than its fair share of fans cheering for the forthcoming sequel. I don't have quite so much contempt for B:AA largely because it mostly achieves what it sets out to achieve, unlike DS. Unfortunately, what it sets out to achieve isn't all that impressive, and so neither is the end result. It looks vaguely pretty, except that after about 10 minutes you've seen everything you're going to see. It simply lacks any real ambition, instead replacing it with endless worthless achievements to give a superficial illusion of depth and replayability. The locations all looks the same after a while, which isn't helped by trudging backwards and forwards through the grounds over and over again, fighting different combinations of the same enemies.
Exhibit E: Mafia 2
It is quite telling just how quickly this game fell off the forum radar. The first commercial DLC was generally lambasted for being a sack of shit (and no, I didn't bother with it). Other DLC includes new cars and even outfits for Vito. Why? What's the point of new cars in a game where there's nothing to do once you've completed the main story?
Then there's the quality of the game itself. Technically impressive as the engine undoubtedly is, the story is derivative wank of the sort a 14 year old who had just watched The Godfather might come up with. The dialogue was worse. The characters were even worse than that. The plot is disjointed to the point of incomprehisibility, with awkward cutscenes signposting the huge chunks which were cut from the game for whatever reason.
After the introductory war section my Vito stepped out of the cab and into the middle of whatever the pretend New York was called, tantalisingly right in front of a news stand. So naturally the first thing I did was attempt to buy a paper. And it wouldn't let me. I've since read that newspapers were supposed to be in the game, but were removed. That one experience, one of my very first in the game, ended up being representative of my whole time with it. Missed opportunities and a sad lack of attention to detail in the gameplay.
It seems like this game was butchered by the publishers as a blatant money-grab, but that hasn't stopped a lot of people attempting to defend it with the stupid "it's not trying to be GTA, so don't compare them" argument. The fact is if they'd tried harder to make it more like GTA, it would have been a much better game. I mostly bought it on the basis of the promising demo, but it turned out that there wasn't anything more to the full game than that.
The point isn't that these are bad games. They are, but what's strange is how a large number of people don't agree. They appear to have fallen head-first into the hype and believe that these must be good games because of the millions of dollars their respective publishers pissed away promoting them. They appear to have missed out on the requisite yardsticks of gaming quality that would inform any experienced gamer that these are sub-standard products. How could some who played System Shock 2 ever consider Bioshock its equal? Some people claim it is all the same, but I suspect their experience of SS2 occurred after its prime, when technology had moved on and the initial shine had worn off (SS2 wasn't particularly advanced technically, even when it was released).
There is some hope. The recent addition of Planescape: Torment to the catalogue of Good Old Games has been the cause of much rejoicing amongst RPG fans. Sadly I suspect that new-school gamers will take one look at the dated isometric graphics and recoil in disgust, to the sanctity and comfort of whatever new casual-friendly, glossy sequel has been released this week.
And all this nonsense isn't to say there aren't any good games made any more. There's the sublime Mass Effect series (which manages to shine despite encroaching consolisation), the possibly even more sublime The Witcher (TW2 being my #1 most highly anticipated game at the time of writing), not to mention undoubtedly solid releases from Blizzard, despite them being in bed with Activision (boo, hiss). The danger is more to do with the inevitable big business approach to the new golden egg-laying goose that they believe they've found in the video games industry. You only have to look at how Activision, the new enemy of gamers everywhere, has treated Call of Duty, turning it into the shooter version of Guitar Hero. These days it's all about squeezing every last penny out of a property, irrespective of quality. And why release a complete game when you can strip it for parts and sell them off piecemeal like 2K have done with Mafia 2? It's tempting to point to indie games as the last bastion of dependable gaming quality, but you can't ignore the simple logistics of creating a modern shooter or RPG, which put them mostly out of reach of small garage developers.
It's supply and demand, and unfortunately while younger (or dumber) gamers are incapable of accurately judging a game's quality, they're not going to demand quality games, and so the publishers aren't going to supply them.
