I was chilling watching my twitter feed when Mothman commented that every year he gets excited about E3, only to be disappointed that all the games are about people shooting each other. I responded that that is why I mostly play ramshackle unpolished indie PC games. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love shooting people too, but I gave up waiting for consoles to dazzle me. I’m just not the target audience. I mean, I love games like Skyrim, and Left 4 Dead, and Red Dead Redemption, and many other AAA games. But I’ve just kind of burned out on shooters. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them, I just have played them up to here, and am waiting for them to do something new. Now, I haven’t played Titanfall, and I heard that brings a lot of new things to the table (except for the aesthetic, which is bland as a Saltine cracker). But as I watched the show open up today with Microsoft’s conference and they showed the new COD, all I could think of was, is this Halo? Modern Warfare was an amazing game, and some of the other iterations of COD have been okay (though not warranting their success), but why are shooters become more and more this one, homogenized Halo-esque sci-fi thing, bereft of ideas? I am excited for the Halo collection they announced, I would love to play Halo 2 again (the last place I enjoyed the franchise) but I guess I need an Xbone first. Maybe I’ll get one though. Who knows. But what I’m really complaining about is the fact that all of these shooters seems to be melting into one generic experience – it used to be COD was about WW2 or Modern Quake-like gunplay, and then you had Halo for sci-fi, and then you had Battlefield for more war like experiences. Now they all seem to be congealing into one lame sci-fi vision with the same dropships, same guns (didn’t that gun in COD today look like it was Halo’s assault rifle?), and same little cut scenes. Sigh. Anyway, that’s where I’m at.
I’m hoping we’ll see some non-shooters at Sony’s even coming up at the top of the hour. Maybe we’ll see Beast Souls or whatever, and maybe we’ll see some new IP’s, I don’t know. I imagine it will be like Microsoft’s conference: a lot of games, that look generally good, but few surprises.
I was excited to see the new Mirror’s Edge, and I am pragmatically eager for the new Dragon Age, and would kill to know more about Mass Effect and Starwars Battlefront. But most of these game have far future release dates. I’m less and less impressed with that Xbox exclusive that’s like Jet Set Radio. I’m kind of more interested in that Fortnite game. What happened to that?
Ori and the Blind Forest looked good, but also looked like other indie 2D platformers I’ve already played. IT seems like it has a touching story though, so we’ll see. Maybe I’m just jaded, and I hate that possibility, because after all the shit I’ve been through in life, I fight against being jaded and cynicism, because I feel like it’s a crime – the small things in life are what’s important, and we have to appreciate things for what they are – life is precious. But at the same time, I’m just not impressed yet. Like I said, I prefer my ramshackle PC games, which surprise me every week with new releases.
Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. Looking forward to Nintendo tomorrow, hope I can watch it (busy day).
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