This has been a strange year for gaming to say the least and it’s only April. I guess I should have seen this coming when Mass Effect 3 was kind of a mixed bag of awesome and disappointment. Or when Street Fighter x Tekken was an awesome game with a horrible set of marketing projects that went along with it. Soul Calibur V had everything anyone in the fighting game community could want and got a lackluster reception. Then we had four games in a row that could hardly be better if God himself came down and touched them: Journey, Fez, Skullgirls, and Trials Evolution. These games delivered on a promise that in some cases(Fez in particular) were many years in the making. But did these folks use their long development cycles to make the same thing that everyone else was making? No, not even in the least.
Journey is a game about you. Yeah, it sounds like trippy, hippy crap. But Journey is basically whatever you bring to it. If you are a shallow jerk, then maybe you won’t get too much out of it. If you are a feeling, intelligent, sensitive person then I probably don’t want to know what you think because I’ve probably all ready offended you somehow. Seriously. though, never has a game brought out so much emotion and immersion with so little. The game at a short two-three hours does more to evoke emotion in the player than just about every other game out there. There is no well defined story with characters and dialogue. There are no, crazy five minute long cutscenes. No Journey is going to take you to figure it out and if you take the time and patience to do so; you’ll love it. So if you haven’t all ready played Journey, you need to.
FEZ, is not a game about you. It’s a game about problems. Yes, the game has a retro 8-bit style that has grown to be kind of uncool hipster lately. But what it does do, is it presents the player with problems. What these problems are and how you solve them is not all ways simple or straight forward. Sometimes you must go to sources outside of the game for an answer, with a QR Code Reader perhaps. But FEZ creates yet another kind of thing that hasn’t happened much in these times of consoles and internet. Questions no one can answer yet. Yes, the game is around a month old and there are still things in it, no one understands. This also, could be partially due to the fact that the game is currently a wee bit buggy. But I’m sure that will be fixed in no time. What’s crazier is that there are new things about FEZ being discovered all the time. Like there are hidden messages hidden in it’s soundtrack. Really? Now that’s some old school Mortal Kombat non-sense if I ever heard it.
Skullgirls is one of the most unique XBLA/PSN games ever made. Why? It has amazing hand drawn art and it’s a fighting game. The game is so visually absorbing that many people look at it and don’t even know what the game is about at first. It just looks THAT good. The game has no in-game move list and it’s a fighter. But that’s OK. The game has five modes: Story, Versus, Arcade, Training, and Online. Which some people have a problem with, but most people don’t really care. It is $15 and one of the fastest growing fighting games in the Fighting Game Community since last year’s Mortal Kombat release. None of my IRL friends are playing it and most think it too hard to even try it. Which is both good and bad. The game DOES have an incredible tutorial mode but it also has a very unforgiving Arcade mode and most of the people playing it right now on both XBOX 360 and PS3 are pro-fighting game players who have been trying this game at tournament venues for the past two years. When the typical person in the fighting game community was told things like: well there are five modes, eight characters, and no in-game move list. The typical person usually replied with, “That’s OK, I’m sure they will patch stuff in. “ The game is just THAT AWESOME.
Finally we have Trials Evolution. The sequel to the XBOX LIVE ARCADE hit Trials HD. This is a simple game about riding your motorcycle through obstacle courses. The game is incredibly addictive but also incredibly hard to explain why one likes it. It’s one of those, just download the demo and try it scenarios that is so hard to get across in a review. It had the best day one sales on XBOX LIVE in the history of the service. Trials HD had the best sales of any XBOX LIVE ARCADE game ever. So this game is a really good seller. And not one of my IRL friends are playing it either. Not one! It has no marketing campaign and while it is in the NEXT ARCADE promotion; I think most gamers have grown completely unmoved by Microsoft’s promotions as they come out what seems like every three months now and only one or two of them a year are any good. But I’m sure the developers aren’t complaining. After all, their servers crashed on Day One because too many people were playing the game at the same time. What is this World of Warcraft? So, I’m not saying cry for the developers of Trials; what I am saying is that Trials Evolution is a product of it’s own greatness and nothing else.
I brought all these games up, not because I’m not going to review them(I will, I promise), but because combined, if you bought them all; it would cost you $60. Yes, four of the arguably best games of the YEAR so far and ALL of them, would cost you $60 TOGETHER! Why is this important or significant? Games cost too much, they have for years. They cost too much to make, market, and shove in a box. When people start pointing fingers as to why, they have one pointed out and the other 4 pointed at themselves. Which is exactly where the blame usually should lie. No one, in the causal market or causal press wants to hear hardcore people, enthusiast press, or game publishers complain. They just go off and play their $3 iphone games and ignore us. If the game industry wants to reverse their decline they need to stop trying to make the next Call of Duty or Halo and start trying to just make fun games. The money will follow… That IS how it works… If you start imitating everyone just to try and get a piece of an overcrowded market that’s all your going to get(a piece and a small one at that). Developers and publishers need to get together and make unique cool games that they are passionate about. Because that’s how you have a success. Just ask the guys who made Trials HD and Evolution; if you can remember the name of their studio(RedLynx. Ltd.)
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