As a competitive gamer who took part in LA's SSBB 2011 summer tourney under the alias of Eggey, and a competitive FPS player who participates on minimalistic f2p Korean pay2win game. I always strive my best when I'm playing a game I love (even with restrictions)... my little rant is what I personally have been running into with gaming that makes me want to reconsider going back into competitive gaming.
Also my views on popular console games are from experiences that I have when playing with my friend's due to me not owning a console other than a bricked nintendo Wii and unbircked (as of now) 3DS
REASON 1 : MAINSTREAMED GAMING
Gaming used to be an underground hobby for those who enjoyed games entertainment and escapism, now a days gaming become so streamlined everyone and their grandma has a facebook and a farmville and call themselves a gamer. Companies like EA, Activision, and other big name companies have been cutting corners with their games and jacking up prices for the average game at the same time. All you need to do these days to really sell a game is to get a few good graphic designers and a decent cinematic trailer with the biggest amount of special effects possible on prime time or after school hours for a children's channel to get large amounts of public recognition and "ZOMG GAEM SO KEWL MAWMEE BUY EET FOAR MEH PL0X!!111!!" It disgusts me how much gaming has been casualized and low production value has declined for gaming. To provide examples for these complaints I'd like to cast some light on recent decline in difficulty with recent nintendo titles like Super Mario Land 3D. I know that Super Mario Land 3D is a beautiful game, but the new mario games are lacking that sense of rage inducing difficulty that they were so famous, or in some cases infamous for. Remember when people used to say "Darn man, I can't get past this level, its so hard." Not much anymore right? Game developers over the years have realized that they must cater to the casual audience most commonly referenced to as the "Call of Duty Audience" (No offense to CoD players <3) This rationalization of dumbing down games for the family/kid audience has prevented any kind of challenge in modern gaming unless the developer of the game purposely makes their game hardcore. Racing games like Need For Speed have become more and more easier to pickup and play and the AI has been dumbed down to scaring low levels, Forza 4 which was acclaimed as a super-realistic driving simulator did nothing short of become a glorified arcade styled racing game with some extra car shake thrown in to call it life like handling; to top off the contradictions they offer a mode when the game drives the car FOR YOU and all you have to do is steer with your hands Via Kinect sensors like you're some kind of kid in a carseat with a toy wheel. FPS games have become much more run n gun styled with no sense of tactics or teamwork, even Battlefield 3 which was acclaimed to be the "MOST REALISTIC GAME OF THE YEAR" barely has any gun recoil, to explosion realism (you can blow up a tank with c4 and live, you can ram a jeep into a tank and bail out and still live, you can bail out of jets mid flight and miraculously have an RPG ready and aimed at another jet... oh I could go on) What makes matters worse is because of the large amount of casual gamers, they treat these kind of games as hardcore super tactical wargames or ultra realistic driving simulators. This kind of thinking and simplicity that modern gamers have pollutes the hardcore gaming communities and convinces game developers that everyone needs their hands held and that their online should contain no trace amount of a high skill ceiling besides grinding out unlockables as their incentive for playing their game.
REASON 2: THIS COPY PASTA IS DELICIOUS WOULD YOU LIKE SOME? THIS COPY PASTA IS DELICIOUS WOULD YOU LIKE SOME? THIS COPY PASTA IS DELICIOUS WOULD YOU LIKE SOME? THIS COPY PASTA IS DELICIOUS WOULD YOU LIKE SOME?
Not only has the furry fandom been hit by the CTRL+V epidemic, but gaming has also lost a large deal of its creativity due to what I would like to call the "Call of Duty Disorder" in which a successful game publisher takes their already successful game, remakes it, and expects people to equally like this game as the first... unfortunately due to the simple minded attitude casual gaming consumers have become, this... *raptor quotes* "acceptance" of sub-par sequels has become much more prominent in gaming. Examples include a CoD game every year and by new all they have to do is create a few new maps, slap together some new weapon skins, recycle their previous weapon animations, add in some stereotypical voice acting rename and add in or remove some killstreaks and mess around with some perks then viola! New CoD game "10/10 Would play again -IGN" ME3 Day 1 DLC with horribly made animations, an ad-libs styled story mode, and the holy knife that kills everything button. BF3 with the fact that aside from the beautiful maps, all they did in terms of improvements was add in some modern weapons, increased the game's gamma and add in a health meter then slapped on a Mary Sue story mode and called it a day. SWTOR... eh, I dunno I guess its just the 4chan on me rubbing off, but that game pretty much did a cut and paste of their previous starwars MMO with its glorious PS2 graphics and wannabe WoW clone styled combat and then proceeded to add in voice acting, a roulette styled choice system, and the damage dodging dance glitch. Sonic the hedgehog 4 which was pretty much a flop because they tried to make Sonic the hedgehog 4 into the rebirth of sonic 3D blast minus the birdies.
REASON 3: DLC BOY! DLC EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVERYWHERE
There is not ONE mainstream game that has come out this year that hasn't had some form of DLC, some worse than others. ME3 with their DAY 1 DLC WHICH WAS ACTUALLY ON THE DISK AND YOU WERE PAYING REAL MONEY TO GET SOMETHING THAT WAS ALREADY ON YOUR DISK! *pant pant pant* Or Battlefield 3's back to karkand pre-order bonus. Is it not enough that people are willing to shell out 60+ bucks for a minimalistic game, but ALSO shelling out 10 to 40 bucks depending on content FOR JUST MAPS?!?!?!?!? Another abomination to this DLC plague would be Battlefield 3's jumpstart DLC pack, where not only are you shelling out 20$ to unlock ALL OF YOUR CLASS' UNLOCKS, but it only effects your account, and only 1 class you pay for, in other words you would shell out 80 bucks in unlocking fees on top of 60 for the game on top of whatever they charge for DLC map packs. This kind of corruption makes me wanna take my raccoon claws and tear out the heart of EA, Bioware, Activision, and Ubisoft *growl*
Now I also agree that DLC can increase the longevity of the game, I'm perfectly fine with that when its the developer's intentions to produce a full game then add in DLC to extend the game's lifespan. What I'm in a rage about is when game developers intentionally produce an unfinished game with LARGE plot holes or missing game elements which are then filled in through player bought DLC purchases. This kind of half-assed productions is become more commonplace and we the consumer must do what we can to stop this, who am i kidding... people would usually just tell me to quit complaining and enjoy the darn game. I know that I want to do something to fix these problems, but as long as the grey masses outweigh the minorities, things will take a long time before any form of recovery takes place.
REASON 4: BANE OF MY EXISTANCE! DRM
With the ever so popular DRM or digital rights managment, many legit players are being tossed into the crossfire of bricking consoles, corrupting save files, and computer crashes. Why are legit paying customers suffering? All because of the overly harsh DRM practices that gaming companies are taking arms in, with the constant integrations of online passes into games that require online, the used gaming market took a massive fall. Titles like metal of honor and Mortal Kombat were one of the few criticized titles that used this "Oooh, sorry, you bought that game used? TOO BAD! *slap* Pay us $10 or we won't let you play online!" This was a form of DRM that didn't allow for re-used games to allow player access online. Another DRM that drives my tail into spasms of fury is Steam's DRM that won't let you play games offline anymore, Ubisoft's oversensitive DRM that falsely flagged some user's games as pirated copies and locked them out of their games, and EA's Origin that not only locked players out of their game, but made them re-purchase a serial code just to unlock their game. It is these kinds of dishonorable business practices that makes me loose faith in what gaming is going to become.
I'm slyther whitewing, and this is my little rant blog. T_T
