While I've been burying my head into various books and files I am sure you faithful "Shinty Club" followers ( all 3 of you) have been awaiting my return, and that I have.
I have returned on the back end of what has been an exciting seven days. The Microsoft Gamers Day in San Francisco showed MS essentially diversifying their portfolio, and with a really nice looking Banjo game announced and more Gears of War 2 screenshots released, 2008 is shaping up to be a really nice year for me and my 360.
When the Gears of War trailer was released last Friday, I must admit I was a tad dissapointed. I don't know what I was expecting; some massive overhaul in gameplay. No. Some great change in art style. No. Yet I did feel as though it lacked the surge of adrenaline that I got the first time I played Gears on my 360.
However on deeper thought I was happy, as long as they make little changes I would not mind if Gears of War 2 was simply refined. I felt that Gears of War needed more immersive gameplay, with maybe more large scale battles, and an improvement in the storyline; all of which seems to be being delivered. On the multiplayer front as long as it has a coherent party system I'm more than content.
The announcement of this game brought something up for me that crops up in all mediums, the fact that people expect and want constant innvoation .The thing that annoys me is innovation for innovation sake. I know for example that when I watch Iron Man it will not do something I won't have seen before and that is not a bad thing, when people complain that "its the same game" or "Game X 1.5" it really hits a nerve.
Why should something change? Yes innovation in areas where its needed but refinement is a greater art, how to refine a game without making it repetitive takes more skill than to simply introduce a new aspect that, rather than being fresh or introducing a new aspect to a genre, is there simply to be another bullet point on the feature list.
The developers of LOTR : Conquest. IGN reccently interviewed the developers and they had no problem with saying
"The high-level pitch is this is basically fantasy Battlefront."
This is the first line of the interview with IGN, and I'm not complaining LOTR:"Battlefront" seems an excellent idea for a game and I believe this sort of fan service is exactly what the industry needs sometimes.
People reaction's to innovation vary. The industry has seen mass market success wtih the Wii, which had a creative inital concept ( ie. executing motion controlling) yet as really failed to innovate since, with only a hand full of games doing something useful with the remote rather than using it as a gimmick.
I feel that even sports games such as Pro Evolution Soccer have lost there sheen as the developers simply add something new to sell a new copy, rather than actually catering to what the fans what. The feel of the game was perfected in Pro Evolution Soccer 5, yet three years on we still don't have fully licensed teams.
This all stems from the fact that people demand innovation, and developers automatically go for it, sometimes a game doesn't have to be a piece of art or wholly different, sometimes it's better off just taking a mechanic and putting different (see: Middle Earth) textures.
