This segment is a little different than its predecessor. Right now, I'd like to discuss a problem I have with modern video games. A little background: My friend recently got my NES working. It had sat in our basement for years before we even discovered it, and even then we couldn't get the stupid thing to run. Finally, this guy just fooled with it for a few minutes and it runs fine. As a result, I'm now currently searching for a decent gaming rehab facility to battle my addiction to Dr. Mario.

Anyway, my point is this: I see a big difference between most modern games and most old games. I can't help but think that a lot of the games that are the most popular currently are nothing more than a quick flash in the pan to make a quick buck, and I realize that I'm not the first person to say this.

Okay, for example, if you asked me what the most popular game series on the Xbox was, it would probably be something along the lines of Halo or Call of Duty. Now, I don't own an Xbox, but another friend of mine does, so recently he let me try playing Halo 2 (it might have been 3). This is what I had to say about it:

"Meh...whatever."

It was just an FPS. I will probably be shot down for saying this, but it wasn't even an original game. It was just another first person shooter. It's almost like the fighting game boom. Back when Street Fighter 2 came out, everybody jumped on that bandwagon. Everybody. Some of them were good, sure, but a lot of them were awful. This is the situation I see with the FPS today.

Originality, people (by people I mean the industry, in general). Is it necessary that so many games look the same? Sure you've got plenty of good ones, but I'm actually wary to spend the money to buy an Xbox 360, because it seems like every other game is something about people with big crazy guns. Not that I have a problem with big crazy guns, heck I don't have a problem with FPS's in general, heck, I don't have a problem with any genre of game. But when you get a bunch of games together that frankly, look the same, I don't know what to say. How do you tell the good ones from the bad?

Then you have the Wii which is full of original games that frankly, suck. Hard. Originality is nothing without the ability to play the stupid thing. Not only that, originality isn't always a good thing. Just because nobody has ever made the game before doesn't mean that it's a good idea.

So then how do you get the best of both worlds?

At the moment, you don't. Ten years ago, sure. But at the moment the number of truly original and playable games is slim. There are exceptions sure, but they're a small percentage of the market.

The only solution rests on the shoulders of both the industry and it's customers. The industry, first of all needs to get off its rear and put some actual effort into the games. There are some companies who genuinely seem to put effort into their games, but they're spread fairly thin.

The consumers are just as responsible. This has been said a dozen times before, but if crap keeps selling, then crap keeps being produced. People need to stop buying every single piece of crap that comes out just because it's there. Somebody MUST be buying the bad games because they still exist. People seem to buy games blindly, with no research whatsoever, and everyone eventually suffers.

Well...that about wraps it up. Questions, comments, complaints, and concerns are greatly appreciated.

Canis, out.

\n/:angry:\n/