All I Care About
By sloppyjoe 4 Comments
There are a lot of games that I really don't care about. Big releases and art house hits (you probably already know which recent ones I'm talking about). They come in all shapes and sizes. And being a self-named gamer, I'm on this site and I see just about everything that comes out in one form or another. Maybe I just watch the video review, or see it passingly on the E3 coverage. But it's not a bad thing that one wouldn't like these games. It just means that gaming is much larger than one's own interests. It's the job of sites like Giant Bomb to cover them all, and it's natural for fans of every game to be very excited for them all.
If you know me, you probably already know I don't care about a very large selection of popular games. All FPS's on consoles, for example. Or action-adventure. And although I don't like them... I still appreciate what they bring to gaming, and enjoy
And what about the games I do care about? I don't expect anyone else but myself and people with similar interests to like them. This sounds like a dumb statement, but the point is: once a niche, always a niche. I don't think there are many people who are decidedly non-strategy gamers will ever come around to Civilization games. It's just not going to happen. Those who play Civ are Civ-groupies, and those who don't will not have a change in preferences. I've been playing RPG my whole life, from the original Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Shining Force, etc., and now still playing their sequels, 15 years later. I loved River City Ransom and Streets of Rage... and button mashing and mouse clicking carry with me from Diablo to Hellgate: London. Unreal Tournament to UT3. Doom to Doom 3. I think there's a reason that there are so many sequels in games, and that is not that people love "Diablo stuff" or "Warcraft stuff" so much. But they like a style of gameplay and always will.
It kind of reminds me of movies. A movie or music genre is the closest thing to a gaming genre. Obviously, they are both entertainment, but also each of them allow sequels and new games/movies to give a similar type of entertainment through very different presentation. Seven Samurai may very well have the best action sequences of any movie, but it doesn't directly compare to the type of "awesome" feeling that The Matrix gave. Yet I got the same emotional excitement from watching each. (I'm not saying that one can be guaranteed to enjoy the older one though... I mean, is Warcraft 2 still fun?) . Just like movies where one will probably never get sick of Action movies in general, I don't think an FPS gamer will get sick of FPS' very soon.
Ok, so I may be generalizing too much. Tastes can change over time on the micro- level (person to person), and even on the macro-level (entire audiences). Take the point-and-click PC adventure game. It surely died down to a fraction of it's former self. Then again, was it really the fault of the genre? It's been said that a lack of innovative games killed the genre, and this would support the idea that it wasn't the audiences' fault. Gaming, like movies and music, must change regularly enough to keep the audience captivated. People have attention spans and in general, pretty good memories. An intelligent mind gets bored easily.
So what the conclusion of all this? For a game to be enjoyable it needs to be two things. (1) It must be a style of game that you enjoy. I can not count the number of times that I read a game is good, went out and bought it, and not played more than an hour. Just because everyone else likes it, it doesn't mean I will. (2) It has to be successful in being different in some noticeable way. Even though Final Fantasy games can seem monotonous... they all have some type of tweak or improved style that keeps it different enough to feel fresh. Derrivative games don't last any longer than ones that don't fit the first criterion. And this is how gamers decide with reviews what to play. If it passes (1), then the review ought to tell you if it passes (2). And you don't need to care about a game genre to understand if a game is a good change for its genre.
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Update on games:
75 hours into Persona 3: FES. Nearing the end of November in game.
Played some mor Soul Calibur IV online. Still a lot of fun. Except when 95%+ player kicked the snot out of me with a purple panda wielding a giant squid. Seriously? WTF.
TF2 - always fun. Almost up to 20 hours in some of the classes. Average about 13 or so on each.
I injured my foot playing Rock Band drums. (I think that's where I got it from). It was sore for about 3 days and just now getting back to normal. Note to self: don't play System of a Down on expert for extended periods of time. I think something was/is strained.