Six weeks ago I got Guitar Hero 2 on the 360. It was my first exposure to the Guitar Hero games and my initial reaction was "meh, a rhythm game." My opinion has changed somewhat. Rocking out on a little plastic guitar is stupidly more fun than it should be. Probably there is little nerdier in the world than throwing up the horns after five starring Killing In The Name Of on medium (I'm actually not very good at Guitar Hero, but I still enjoy it) while your console reassures you that you do, in fact, rock. I don't honestly know how long I've spent playing it, but it's been quite a long time and my enjoyment doesn't seem to be showing any signs of letting up.
If there is one thing that all developers and gamers seem to agree on when they sit down and start waxing lyrical about their job/hobby, it's that one of the problems with the game industry is the lack of mature content and compelling and believable storylines. Quick side note, by mature I don't mean more guts and more nudity, I mean something that would make serious looking short, fat men with immaculately manicured beards do things like steeple their fingers or nod condescendingly at an interviewer and say "that's a good question. I believe the real cultural value of..." or some such crap. If only we had these games, maybe the world would take us seriously and there could be a Nobel prize for games that nobody would play but felt really good that they existed. Oh look, here comes an example:
I got God of War 2 a couple of weeks back and played through it in about two days. It was really, really good. I didn't think it was quite as good as the first one, it lacked the strength of vision of the original, but it was fun, brutal and had one of those story things. Now I'm done with it. I might load it up again when I finally get a PS3 (I don't plan on getting a PS3, but I'm weak, so weak) to see how it looks and make up for the fact that there's nothing better to play. So, one of the AAA titles, almost certainly going to win a slew of PS2 Game of the Year awards, and I'm done with it within a weekend of buying it. Now, depending on your poison you might get more longevity out of single player games. If you play Square games for example, you can grind through a hundred hours or more of uninspiring group combat to see all the overblown cutscenes (okay, okay, that's my last Final Fantasy vent, promise) before you put it away to gather dust.
So, is Guitar Hero 2 a better game than God of War 2? My first answer is of course not. No matter how fun GH2 is, it's still just a rhythm game, and it really doesn't have that much content when all's said and done. God of War 2 had script writers and story boards and an orchestra in London and a choir in Prague recording the soundtrack. Prague, people, Prague. That is a city with some credibility. European music must make God of War 2 a superior game. Well, no, not necessarily. It makes it bigger, and more impressive to the critics. And that's it, really. What makes a game good? Is it something we can point at and say "look, that embodies what game developers as artists strive to achieve" or is it something you play until your hand cramps up and find yourself playing in your head whenever a decent guitar riff starts playing on the radio?
Why, when everybody is talking about making games more compelling narrative experiences and creating games that make you cry, do multiplayer-heavy games, rhythm games and the annual sports franchises sell so well? Because gaming is like any other medium, we say we want caviar, but in the end we want popcorn.
Ok, note to self: next time I write a post about a game, try not to end up surveying the world from my high horse.
Comments
That is oversimplifying things. I want caviar, just in the way that I want to watch good films and not mindless trash. But it would seem that the majority of gamers ("casual" gamers, that is) don't have time to get bogged down in an epic adventure such as God of War 2. The difference is not the quality of the game- what your caviar vs popcorn comparison suggests- but the amount of investment in order to reap the most entertainment from it. It could be argued that GH2 and GoW 2 are equally entertaining. However, anyone could pick up GH2 and enjoy it within a couple of minutes, whereas with an action game like GoW 2 there is a larger investment of both time and effort to be made.
Games are not equally entertaining, that's the thing. Guitar Hero and God of War don't entertain the same way and this justify the existence of both of them. We want caviar, but we don't want it all the time, the same goes for pop corn. It's not very healthy to always eat the same food and you can apply this, to some degree, to most human activities, including gaming.
It would be sad that games such as Silent Hill, Torment or Civilization stop being produced just because other games are more accessible.
The problem with wanting caviar all the time is that caviar is rare and that's what makes it so good. I think we enjoy the mindless games with little or no narrative but are really fun only because there isn't a hundred different "caviar" titles on the shelf.
Think about the greatest game that you ever played whatever it is. How much cheaper would that experience be if you had it every single timed you switched on your console?
Now I'm not saying that its ok for publishers to not try hard because God only knows there are piles of gaming crap out there. But in order for us to have a constant supply of games to play they can't all be spending tens of millions of dollars developing one game a year.
Look at movies, all the really "good" movies come out at the end of the year so they're fresh in Oscar voter's minds. During the summer is when they release all the fun movies that are great entertainment but don't provide any mental stimulus.
Does that make summer movies worse than the Oscar films? No... they just serve a different purpose. Video games are the same way.
Different games cater to different people. If the "casual" group of people continue to outgrow the "hardcore" group of people, then game companies may start looking at games that just offer quick and easy and hopefully fun gameplay. If this happens, then the Silent Hills, the Icos, the Shadow of Colossuses, the Indigo Prophesies, and others will become obsolete, so to speak.
What the industry needs is a game that becomes HUGE to the point that everyone knows about it. This game has to focus entirely on plot and characters. I believe that that is the only way games with any thought-out narrative can survive.
But at the same time I feel that just because you're lost in a good story...is that what makes a game? The things a lot of people seem to think define a good game are what makes literature and movies good. I definitely think Guitar Hero could be a better game than Lord of War, even without a narrative. Simply because it's more fun to play.
I say the definition of caviar in games is wholly different from other media. The C&C games may have an epic story and fun FMVs, but I'd still rather just roll a ball around in a city to pick stuff up for no apparent reason (Katamari Damacy for those that didn't get the reference =P ).
The whole point of that is to say that most developers try to strike a balance between fun and story. Some do an excellent job and others don't.
Wootex