Considering how much I've been around the digital water cooler these days I'm kind of the equivalent of the guy who shows up and says,
"What's Lost?"
Well maybe not, that bad. You get the idea, though. Who knew that working on a whole new blog and trying to keep up on games would be so much work.
Taking my red eyes and looking over some of the recent occurrences in up coming games and some that have been announced aren't looking too good. Something that could be all most as bad as the glut of movie adaptations we get every year.
The retro revival trend. I'm not talking about Pac-Man Championship edition here(don't say anything bad about that game, YOU!). No, instead what I'm referring to are the growing number of modernized ancient licensed IPs that no one in their right mind could still care about and most modern gamers have never even heard of.
I'm somewhat into this sort of thing on XBOX LIVE ARCADE. Although I would really prefer to see original IPs on the platform rather than some big company's rehash of an old game. But at least that is an appropriate enviornment for such games. Rather than the AAA game arena that so many of these games are aspiring to in the recent announcements by some companies. Games like:
Alone in the Dark
Splatterhouse
Street Fighter IV
Bionic Commando
Sonic Unleashed
Street Fighter IV probably isn't a fair addition to this list considering it never really left the public conscience. Much like Pac-Man... Sonic however, has had SO MANY rehashes that this series is SO DEAD that someone should be digging it a very deep grave as we speak.
The other games are really not the spiritual successors of their former counterparts as much as concepts perhaps originally created in those games but when recreated they bare little no resemblance to their name sakes. Why not make up new games with new IPs using similar mechanics.
Some of this is the inability for the gaming industry as the film industry to take risks. It is better from a business stand point to use something familiar to people than it is to make something totally new. It's also easier to rehash comic book characters in a movie than it is to create a whole new world with new characters. So while this is just another illustration of the point. It seems like the industry has sequelidous even after the vast success of Bioshock.
Perhaps it takes a visionary like Ken Levine (Bioshock) or Denis Dyack(Too Human) to create a totally new IP. While there are certainly more examples of new and different in the game industry than in the movie industry. As the budgets grow closer together the worse this situation becomes. So remember when you buy the next episode of Grand Theft Auto or that copy of 50 cent bulletproof. that you aren't just helping those companies to continue doing business but also contributing to the total lack of creativity of the industry. Now, how about we all play some Okami or Bioshock and think about all this some more?
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