What I would like to see in 2011

The video game industry is a strange beast. It’s not unlike the movie or comic book industry in that creative heads are constantly looking for new and fresh ways to present their product in an artistic and entertaining way, but unlike the latter two, video game developers take a longer time to realize their projects. Where it only takes months for a new film or issue to come out from inception, it can take years for a game project to come to fruition. Engines can take up to four years to fully materialize and the subsequent work-hours in programming/producing/designin g/testing leave very little room for surprises, so writing a video game industry wish list boils down to when you hope to first hear about a game in development, not the year you will actually get something to sink your teeth in.

Regardless, here is what I’d like to see (or read about) in 2011.

NO MORE CALL OF DUTIES

For the love of God, Activision, just call it something else. Most COD games have little-to-no resemblance to one another. They are just shooters with extravagant set pieces and an over-exaggerated appetite for glorifying war. It first started as a pretender to the WW2 throne trying to capitalize on the success of Medal of Honor, then “it” jumped on the modern warfare bandwagon popularized by Battlefield. Now we have Black Ops. What’s next in this call for profit? COD: SWAT? COD: Submariner? COD: Aircraft Carrier Controller? Just stop. Call it whatever you want, but get the COD out.

NO MORE FREE-TO-PLAY MMOS, PLEASE

Free-to-play MMOs remind me of the Hokey Pokey. No, sorry, the Crocodile Rock. Wrong again: the Elephant. Actually, they’re more like the Mashed Potato, The Monster Mash, The Monkey, The Dog, The Frug… You get the picture. Like 60s dance crazes, one company struck it big with a winning concept and now the internet is littered with free-to-play MMOs. But unlike the aforementioned fads, you won’t be seeing me skipping around humming to any catchy tunes.

Truth be told, the culprits are but a handful of companies. Publisher likes Aeria Games have over a dozen such games under their belt, all being nothing more than clones of one another. Sure, they appear to have a few distinct genres (The Cutesy Jailbaits with Big Eyes, The Serious Dudes with Big Swords, The Voluptuous Babes with even Bigger Cleavage), but ultimately they all follow the same formula of enticing would-be MMOers with over-sexed female concept art, gratuitous grinding and GMs (Game Masters) plugging crap to their community through various in-game and website activities. Such companies are nothing more than suppliers, really, since they have absolutely no input in the design process of the games they “publish.” The true developers and publishers are faceless enterprises, comfortably holed up in distant lands from where they spit out the same game with new titles and skins jobs. Having said that, the press needs a new category to accompany “Developer” and “Publisher” in their game descriptors (one guess -- it also starts with a “P”) because “Publishers” they are certainly not. We have way too much of their cargo on our superhighways; let’s clean up our streets.

MIRROR’S EDGE 2

Ok, time for what I want to see more of. In November of 2008, EA made a courageous attempt at giving players a cool parkour game: Mirror’s Edge. The title had some flaws, mainly in flow (something the main character, Faith, ironically talks about when describing her lifestyle) because gameplay and story had a hard time keeping up with our nimble heroine. But the game also had a heart as big as Faith’s. Fans were given a slick game with daring first-person mechanics and clean urban settings. The result painted an eerie canvas of how our world might look one day. It wasn’t just a nice game to look at, it had a message. More importantly, despite its gameplay shortcomings it grew on you if you had the guts to come back for seconds, thirds and fourths after the end-credits. My review ( http://www.gameobserver.com... ) was a bit harsh, and I stick by it, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to see more of Mirror’s Edge.

Mirror’s Edge was unnecessarily hard at times, probably because players had a difficult time adapting to the levels. We had to know what to do to fully enjoy the game; unfortunately DICE was unable to program runner instincts as well as they hoped. All we had for guidance was a despondent objectives menu, an almost mocking destination pointer (which omitted every objective in between) and some red paint to guide us through the hail of bullets. It was also short and didn’t give us a good idea of how Faith’s world, including some of her gameplay mechanics like disarming unsuspecting opponents, really behaved. Nevertheless, the game deserves a sequel, not only to have a second chance at fixing flow issues, but also to expand on a winning formula. The sum of its parts gave us a memorable experience with a lot of potential.

Mirror’s Edge 2 is being “considered” by EA, so I am here to say that as an editor, and more importantly a gamer, I want to see a sequel. Most of us harsh critics simply wanted Mirror’s Edge to be perfect because it’s one of the few titles that can even hope to aim for that goal. I have come back to the old game on a few occasions, and I have to admit it plays better each time. Faith, it seems, has stamina in those legs.

VAGRANT STORY 2

I don’t care if they make a remake or a sequel, Square Enix’s epic and often misunderstood work of genius deserves a second chance. The game originally came out on the PS1 in 2000 and was heralded by some critics as a masterpiece. Unfortunately Vagrant Story was overshadowed by Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross, which also came out that same year. Detractors complained about the game’s difficulty. I for one never had problems with it, and the much-hated weapon creation process was one of my favorite features.

Gameplay offered players a little bit of everything: action, RPG, adventure, strategy and puzzle-solving. Combat revolved around a spherical grid that appeared around the player’s character. It determined target range and hit locations. To some extent it resembled Fallout 3’s V.A.T.S. targeting system. Complimenting the grid was a timing feature that let players juggle attacks almost indefinitely. A player could technically defeat a dragon with a rusty dagger with the right timing and skill (actual gameplay skill, not your character’s skill stats). To top it off, the game wove an amazing tale with ample background -- better than most Hollywood blockbusters. The story’s conclusion saw our protagonist starting his journey as a vagrant, so Vagrant Story was but a mere prequel to what Square had in store for us. Let’s hope they finish the job one day.

MORE SPACE EXPLORATION GAMES

I’ve had a hard time finding a decent space exploration game in the last few years. I tried what feels like all of them: Freelancer 2 (too linear, a shooter), Darkstar One (pretty good but no planet exploration), Galactic Civilization (strategy game, focuses on warfare not exploration), Sins of a Solar Empire (strategy game, no space exploration), Spore (close, but the final frontier would have greatly benefitted from more lead time and prettier gibberish-talking space muppets).

At this point in my trek to find new space games, online Samaritans usually point me towards MMOs. Eve Online is often suggested to me first. You see, my fellow readers, space exploration isn’t about finding attractive asteroid mining ventures. It’s, like Captain Kirk so eloquently put it, about boldly going where no one has gone before. It’s hard to get that feeling when all you can think about is reaching the next floating pile of crap on the horizon. ISK be damned, I want to find planets! I want to explore strange new worlds. I want to feel how precious it is to find an M class planet. I want to feel the space around me. I want to bask at the sight of finding a region with a high concentration of Rodnium (ok, ISK isn’t all bad -- baby needs a new pair of thrusters). What I’m getting at is space needs two equally important things: a feeling of distance and planets to explore. You can’t explore planets when you don’t have a ground game (looking at you space shooters) and you can’t get a feel for distance when traveling is determined by pointing and clicking on a map (looking at you space strategy games).

It seems the advent of 3D graphics has brought on a new set of limitations. Because we can see our surroundings in more detail, developers are scared to give us a galaxy full of barren planets that are noticeably generated by predictable algorithms. The result is what we’ve seen in Mass Effect’s exploration parts. We get a ground game but the limited amount of worlds we can visit deprives the galaxy of its vastness. And the planets we can actually explore are either too constrained with over-scenic environments, or give us ample freedom but in settings void of anything interesting. With today’s graphical expectations it has become too damn hard to place all those static meshes, align all those textures and position all those particle effects. Each planet needs the caring touch of a RedBull-swigging level designer. If there is one thing classic games did well it was focusing on what really matters, and in space that’s vastness and having too many options.

A perfect example of a good “space exploration” game is Starflight for PC and Sega Genesis. Here’s a little game that embodied everything Star Trek represents in a concise, little package. We had hundreds, if not thousands, of planets to explore; the pitfalls of distance were omnipresent; we could land on just about every world; we had a few alien species to keep us entertained; we had a simple but effective economy based around mining, capturing and selling the indigenous fauna and discovering M class planets; we had numerous planets with interesting environments; you could upgrade your ship with noticeable improvements in-game; your crew’s stats determined how well your ship’s features performed; and best of all, it had a bad story... What? You heard me. You know you have a successful game concept on your hands when you don’t need a story to carry you along. Having said all that, on to the next topic.