I'm not a huge computer gamer. I grew up playing games in the 1980's. For me, say 'computer games', and my first thought is things like Wasteland and Sopwith. My brother owned a NES console, but aside from that, I never did the console thing. The only cartridges I ever owned were for my TI-99/4A.
So how am I to look at the state of vidgames today? They certainly are pretty. The graphics rendering technology has come a long way since Mystery House. What GPUs can do today is nothing short of astonishing.
I'm uncertain that games are any better. For sheer playability, imagination, and fun, a lot of games just come off as rehashes of old ideas, or poorly written or executed eye-candy. Or, in the case of MMORPGs, huge time-sucks.
I could talk about technical advancements, but I thought instead I'd just make a couple of personal observations:
1) The adventure game is dead. Rest in peace. Dreamfall doesn't a genre reincarnate.
2) First person shooters are boring and played out, except...
3) Bioshock looks SO DAMN GOOD I could pee my pants. Can't wait till end of June. There is just something compelling ,at a brain-stem level, in my running around trying to survive in an Art Deco themed post WWII retro-futurist underwater dystopia. Being the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 is not a bad thing.
4) There certainly seems to be a lot of MMORPGs in development. I would generally consider MMOs to be a huge time and money waster, but then they go and announce development of projects in the 'Firefly' and 'Fallout' (which itself was the spirtual successor of Wasteland...not to mention Post WWIII retro-futurism) universes. There is also a Stargate (played out as that series is) one in development.
5) I'm not sure if the Wii remote is a stroke of genius or utter craziness. Probably both.
6) The Playstation 3 is an overpriced hunk of overheating metal and plastic. $600 for a console!? Plus $100 for an HDMI cable (not to mention a high def tele that isn't instantly obsolete by whatever HDMI iteration they are on this week). Low-numbers available. Difficult laser diodes. Hideous DRM on the 'did we really need this?' Blu-Ray. How about this. Instead of the $1000 it will cost you for the system, a cable, the needed adapters, and say four games, why not instead buy a PS2 and then, oh say, the 50 best games ever written for it. Thousands of hours of entertainment for the same money. Or better yet, save your money.
7) It sucks that I have neither a decent game nor peeps to play deathmatch with.
8) My enthusaism for Spore has been a bit diminished. It does look great, but I'm not sure how much fun it would be to actually play. Yes, I know I'm just parroting Tycho.
9) While I try not to be a neo-luddite, I must admit that most of my passion for video games is in retrogaming. Old Infocom text adventures and old Sierra games pull me in more than 95% of the stuff out there now. Classic games are sometimes really fun and playable (and replayable).
10) The game that gets the most play is GnuGo and various graphic frontends for Go.
11) Starforce Sucks
12) Getting games from the mid to late 90's to run on modern OS is hard. Even with emualtion, a lot of stuff I own only works on legacy hardware and software. I hope I won't have to keep a computer around for each version of DirectX.
13) PC gaming is dying. This does not bode well for one who is reticent to say the least in making a plunge into the console world. I know XBox Live is great, but I really want no part of it.
14) What I really want in new games:
* a kick-ass scifi with compelling settings, characters, and storylines
* a kick-ass survival horror with real-time lighting and shadow, sound and music, all crafted with the single purpose of frightening me into a myocardial infarc.
* a kick-ass completely novel and replayable game that can run on anything and doesn't need bleeding-edge graphics or a supercomputer to run. Think Tetris, Katamari Damacy, etc, but NEW
* humor
* Jules Verne, rayguns, Forbidden Planet, robots, flying cars
* 1920-1938 or so.
* for game companies to keep hiring Jeremy Soule to do their soundtracks
* Machiavellian political intrigue in games
* obviously not all in the same game
