Recently I've been bummed out about some trends I've noticed in games. Well now that I think of it, it isn't as widespread as I first thought. Most of the impetus for this comes from Jeff's Splinter Cell Conviction Review and his article about the new X-Com by 2K. I found this particularly interesting because I'm a huge fan of X-Com (especially Terror from the deep) and a huge detractor of Splinter Cell. First up, I'd just like to say that I haven't played that much SC, just a fair chunk of the first game and all of double agent. I obviously haven't played the new X-Com, so I'm just reacting to the news there. 

In fact the only reason I was interested in SC was because of the bet between Vinny and Ryan. I still remember being annoyed at the analog sneaking in the first game, where if you wanted to sneak up on a dude you could only tilt the stick the slightest amount and slowly plod towards an enemy. Now it seems the sneaking is exactly like Batman Arkham Asylum. Ditto on the sonar goggles. Also gunplay in the first game was just a punishment for messing up the stealth. In conviction the pistol is a one hit kill to the head every time (something I think was present when I played Double Agent). Now as much as I didn't like the gameplay in the first splinter cells, and as much as I wanted them to be refined experiences, I did not want the games to stop being very realistic tactical stealth games. I really kinda kicked myself for not liking them. Opening up areas and making them less like levels, and more like Assassin's Creed 1 assassination locations with multiple entryways would be one way to build upon their formula. Instead Ubisoft threw that out the window and decided to make an action game. A game that seems to be Batman-esque without all the cool abilities, exploring and, most importantly, the length of that experience. So as action games go, I would rather replay Batman, and as 3rd person shooters go, I'd rather replay RE5 with it's awesome amount of weapons. In the end, it seems that SC:C has attempted to go towards action on the stealth-action continuum, but now it fails to excel at either. Since I don't care about the story, there's nothing really there for me. 

On the bombcast, they talked about the death of stealth games, and I'm reminded of Kojima's GDC (I think) keynote about how he created the genre because the MSX couldn't render enough sprites in one place. He turned that limitation into a goal for the player. And although all his games start with how "this is a sneaking mission," starting with Solid 2, you could almost always brute force your way through with tranqs or assault rifles. However, this was a choice, and it was also possible to attempt to sneak through those same areas. Failing to sneak rarely ever lead to the loss of the game, in fact it often caused you to figure out new ways to avoid and harry your foes, if not just kill them all. Not only were you given a selection of weapons to kill, you were also given a section of tools to incapacitate, distract, and avoid your enemies. These choices became more and more varied as the series moved along. In splinter cell, it seemed like the set of tools you were given were limited and situational, (although the gadgets were pretty cool) your paths were constricted to force you to deal with enemies, and firefights always ended with alarms that could end missions. Now in this latest version, the combat tools have opened up, but the stealth maneuvers are even less interesting and varied. I feel like these changes mark the game tending towards an actiony middle ground.

The X-Com news definitely follows that trend. X-Com was a great series of turn based strategy (A genre that might not even exist at this point) games. In Terror from The Deep, you built a team of aquanauts, researchers and technicians, researched new human and alien technologies, and then used those technologies and strategic movement to stop aliens from attacking boats and homes, and even taking the fight to the aliens themselves. All in all it was pretty revolutionary as far as game design went. They certainly didn't invent the idea of researching tech, but they made it as deep and necessary as in a Civilization game. Now, 2K games wants to take the idea of X-Com and turn it into a first person shooter. I'm reminded of the asteroids movie. You don't need a license to make a game about aliens attacking. In fact I'm not sure how you imply X-Com without that distinct style of gameplay and base work. This just smacks of an executive decision to make an FPS because those are big, and to make it an X-Com game because it has fans. I believe the end result will be similar to that of Conviction: fans of the series will be pissed off. Now I'm not saying X-Com has to be a turn based game, but I do believe it requires that global in between mission gameplay and tactical team based action. Whether that action is turn-based, real-time, or even some sort of rainbow 6 style team shooter would be fine. Even a SWAT 4 style X-Com game, would have enough context and team action to feel like X-Com.  However, that last game is more in Irrational Games' wheelhouse.

With all these games tending towards the big sellers right now, first and third person shooters (and character action games, although there isn't quite as many of those), it seems like we may be up for some kinda samey games in the upcoming years. I'm kinda sad about it, because some of my favorite games were strategy and adventure games. Telltale has caused a resurgence of the latter, but I haven't really felt a lot of the new strategy games to come out recently. Some of it is platform based. I don't think a strategy game has ever really worked well on a console, but with the inception of all this motion control, maybe we could start seeing more traditional strategy flourish on the big platforms. And maybe with all these people trying for a slice of the big pie that is FPS sales, the market saturation will take over and developers will start trying to make new experiences in other genres as big as the Halos and Modern Warfares of our time.