Video Games

yea some good points about the sameyness of games qckpckt.

having played games now since 70s (yes i am ancient) when we got pong at home and then we got space invaders at the chippy, there has always been one good original idea then loads of not disimilar riffs of that idea (unbelievable how many variations of pong there were).

for example every FPS is the same kind of gameplay with slight tweaks (metroid bought loneliness and scanning stuff, halo brought clever AI, Gears of war brought stick to cover, Half life had a solid narrative told in game rather than cut scenes, modern warfare had viceral cinematic action etc) but ultimately your still shooting stuff which is fun.

trouble is whenever a completely new gaming concept arrives people are so used to similarity so don't buy something too differnt so they are not commercial successes so gems like Ico, rez, katamari, eternal darkness etc didn't do too well initially.

At least there are developers still prepared to experiment so we have braid and portal recently. I do think that games being developed for XBLA and PSN as well as for iphone are cheaper to develop so we may yet get get devcos taking more risks with gameplay and enter an era of some really unique IP. lets hope so...

Any way back to torch and shoot more of those things in the woods with alan wake.

+1

I still love playing daggerfall. It's an ancient game that is almost impossible to complete with a game area bigger than the UK. I haven't managed to get beyond the first town - i only just managed to get out of the first dungeon!

It is a fiendishly, massively impossible game that crashes all the time, and I still love it (if only for the insane horse noises that get louder when you enter your inventory and never EVER STOP). Such a game would never get made now.