" Stupid reviewers expect innovation in every single title, and if that is not achieved, they rate the game bad. Smart reviewers expect innovation, but put much more emphasis on the experience and overall polish that a game has. So if a game comes out and it's God of War, but nowhere near as polished, then that game just isn't that good. For example Dante's Inferno; It is basically a less polished God of War. So in that situation you're not doing anything new, and you're doing it better then a game that has already done it. "
So if a game does many of the same things as a previous game, but perhaps not as well, it has no merit? I don't think that's quite the case. The second game might still be good, it just might not be AS good as the game that came before it.
What's so wrong about comparing one game to another game? One game is released after the other and the two share certain elements, so let's compare them. It sounds innocent enough. The problem arises when the one doing the comparing can do nothing but compare one game to another. Red Dead Redemption is just GTA with horses. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow = God of Colossus's Inferno. It gets old. X game enjoys some similarities with Y game in that it does ABC where Y game also does ABC. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Games, like other media take inspiration from one another, they're iterative, they progress from one to the next, it's the nature of many art forms, not just games.
The REAL problem is when a game is so unoriginal that there truly is nothing to say about it other than that it lifts "this" and "that" from certain games. I hope that game designers continue to be inspired by one another's products, keeping the things that work and discarding the things that don't while refraining from borderline plagiarism and simple copying of their competitors.
I get what you're saying about the various beasts that you mount and ride around, only to later choke them out. Definitely a testament to how well the game is done.
@coreytn81: I don't know why you immediately thought of Dante's Inferno. Its no secret that LoS' combat was inspired by God of War. However it isn't as much as a copy as DI, the protagonist isn't an anti-hero who has done horrendous things in his past, and the game isn't full of gratuitous nudity and violence. "
I can see some of the comparisons, both protagonists are trying to chase down or somehow bring back their dead wives, there are certainly some similar combat elements and both games borrow from God of War so there are bound to be other similarities.
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