Ramblings 1
By King_Bonzo 11 Comments
So my 360 has been dying a slow death. This is my second one to pack in, or at least approach packing in. It's the laser you see, it's refusing to read the odd game and throwing a fit when it has to load or stream. Luckily, or perhaps worryingly, the console is less than a year old, so Amazon are picking it up today and I'm popping to Game for a 250gb slim with a copy of fable III after work tonight.
Is it me or has this generation of consoles been severely fucked up from the begining? The less said about Microsoft's prodigy probably the better at this point I can only hope the slim has resolved the issues. But it seems even the PS3 is, if not busted, about as user friendly as a heel to the temple. Call me old fashioned but you shouldn't have to install a game to a console to have it running at optimum performance. Not that Sony's opitmum performance is much of a performance, I was appaled at the length of loading when playing Uncharted Drakes Fortune at a friends recently. I didn't time it but I managed to eat two slices of pizza.
Why is it that as Sony's consoles have got more powerful they've also got slower? Why is it that Microsoft basically released a busted console to the general market and weren't strung up for it?
I remember my Snes worked for roughly ten years. TEN mother pumping YEARS! Ten years of perfect performance with zero slow down, no frame rate issues, no online updates, no installing, no loading times. I mean ok games were horribly basic. I booted up a Snes Emulator yesterday after packing up my Xbox and many of them were awful by today's standard.
Ever played Dragon The Bruce Lee Story? Don't.
That said Megaman, Donkey Kong, Mario. There's a reason developers have gone back to those styles and, frankly, I found Megaman (the original) to be, gameplay wise, just as compelling as Black Ops and a hell of a lot more challenging.
What I think I'm writing my way towards is that the way we (I) viewed gaming progression may now be defunct. The old adage of "new equals best" used to apply to games specifically because they we seen more as toys or tools in the same way you might view a new tele or surround sound system. With technological improvements comes better products because games were dependent on technology as it was intrinsically tied to their quality. Right?
Well larger memory leads to more complex game mechanics, better visuals etc etc yadder yadder but it doesn't lead to the key element that draws us in; gameplay. Take a Moody blue's record on scratched vinyl with pops etc and compare it too, I dunno, an artist of comparable popularity in their time might be reflected in a Radiohead digital download. Which is better? Radiohead's would be clearer, better produced, maybe more complex. But would it be better written, sung or played? Perhaps? Perhaps not. But the quality of the product is not tied to the tools used to produce it. To that point many Black Metal bands insist of recording analog and onto vinyl because people prefer it. The advances of technology did not improve music (some might say the reverse happened).
This applies to film also although it's less clear cut eg. Spartacus vs Gladiator. Can Gladiator be called a better film because it "looks better"? Maybe because it's better directed or acted, thats subjective. In Horror many prefer animatronics to CGI even though CGI is the more technilogically advanced.
I feel video games are now art. And in this role they join Music and Film and the quality of the game is no longing superglued to the quality of the tech used the make it. You know what games still fucking rules? Doom, Perfect Dark, Halo: Combat Evolved, Half Life. You know what else? I'd play them over Rogue Warrior anyday! So would all of you! Why? Because Gameplay has become unto Games what Musicianship is music and Direction is to film. I'd sooner listen to Robert Johnson than Lady Gaga. Watch the original Pyscho over American Psycho (and I love American Psycho) and I'd rather play Wolfenstein 3D over the new Wolfenstein on 360.
Why? Because technology matters less and less in this young artform. It's all about Gameplay.
Now if we can get consoles that work again....