As a long-time controller-thrower, I think cruising the savanna and taking pictures of gazelle will be a breath of fresh air (tinged slightly by the scent of rhino dung). But what I think is most exciting about them is that they're different, part of the baby-steps toward revolution that have gotten me so excited about this generation of games. Though the Wii promised a new era of gaming (and was even called the Revolution in its development stages), nothing I've seen from it so far has impressed me– more games for younger kids (almost always based on movies), Wii Sports, which sticks to one of the oldest genres of gaming, except now you swing your arm instead of pressing A, and Wii Music, which might not have ever been created if it weren't for the massive success of Rock Band. 
Meanwhile, there's no U.S. release date in sight for stuff like Capucine, which looks actually innovative and unique. I'm not writing this with the clannishness of some Playstation or XBox devotees, but with sincere disappointment. I objected to the high price of the PS3 for a long time and rooted for the Wii to become the overcoming underdog– which it did, from everything I've heard about sale numbers, and it's probably thanks to the Wii's popularity that I got my PS3 for $400).But, while I'm glad that Wii lured in the non-gamers, I haven't seen much from it for people like me, who are familiar with the gaming tradition and are tired of seeing so many games recycling themes, gameplay, and genres. Flower, Aquanaut's Holiday, and Africa, though, represent the fundamental change in gaming philosophy I've been hoping for. Of course, all of them came from Japan, where creators are just more ambitious, where people are thankfully much more likely to say, "What the hell, let's make roads that sing! Or a video game where you're wind collecting pollen!" Considering all the great titles I've seen left overseas (I was totally depressed when I discovered Homeland, then discovered that I'd never be able to play it unless I learned Japanese and rigged my Gamecube), I'm pretty excited that the Halo-dominated American market actually let these games sneak in.
I get tired of references to casual gamers that seem to imply that "hardcore" gamers are people with high World of Warcraft levels and "casual gamers" are people who like anything that isn't World of Warcraft. I've been playing games for about 15 years, have spent a huge sum of my hard-earned money on games, and put in hundreds of hours. But I feel some would still brand me a "casual" gamer because I would rather play Animal Crossing than Grand Theft Auto. It's not that I find the status of "hardcore" gamer to be particularly enviable, but the "casual gamer" label often seems to come with this sense that casual gamers are irksome freshmen interrupting the peaceful (read: violent & bloody) world of shoot/slice-'em-up gaming. To me, the differences between "casual" and "hardcore" seem to be not based on experience, but on violence. Call of Duty is a "hardcore" game, Brain Age is a "casual" game, regardless of the difficulty of each (though, admittedly, it does sometimes seem like game difficulty increases with gore).
My hope is that it will become harder to say "I don't like video games." It already irks me a little to hear people say it– how can you dismiss an entire medium when games like Manhunt, LittleBigPlanet, Tomb Raider, Lumines, and Silent Hill are all a part of it? Games like Flower and Africa excite me because in them I can see a future in which video games have just as many genres as films & music and there are no more "average gamers" (i.e. the teenage boy population that gaming has catered to for far too long).
No comments:
Post a Comment