Looking back at my game collection of the past 24 months I’ve noticed a growing trend, more and more games are being shelved before their time. I’ve put this down to three possible reasons. The first is that we are spoilt for choice, especially around the busy Christmas period, there’s simply too much to play and not enough time to play them. The second is games have lost the “Wow Factor” as discussed by Heller. There are not as many games that have you genuinely hooked, and thus you are happy to move on faster. I believe this can be put down to the third reason, attack of the sequels.
Perhaps my thoughts would be different if I wrote this during a game drought, but too many anticipated titles all at the same time is a bad thing. Each year when November rolls around we are bombarded with an array of must have titles. If I had more patients maybe these titles could be spread out over the duration of the coming year. But instead I found myself trying to grab as many of these as possible, which lead to an inevitable rushing in for a fast completion. I quickly finished Gears of War 2 so that I could move on to Call of Duty: World at War which was also prematurely cast aside for my latest acquisition of Fallout 3. Within the same period I was also attempting to play through Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City, Kirby Super Star Ultra, World of Goo and Dragon Ball: Origins. On top of those there are the games that are yet to find their way into my collection, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Resistance 2, Guitar Hero World Tour and Far Cry 2 to name a few. So much to play with so little time, after all work has to fit in somewhere as gaming isn’t cheap!
Truth be told a year or two ago I would have played through Gears again on a harder difficulty, and given it some decent online time, the same can be said for COD. But now I feel that had they been any longer than 6-7hrs I may have not finished them at all. Why? Because while they were great I really felt like I had been their and done that before. Don’t even get me started on Animal Crossing, I’ve never played a sequel that changed so little, to the point where you actually question if it was lifted directly from the previous title. I loved Animal Crossing and played it religiously on the GameCube, after already playing it so much anyone who has played the Wii & Cube or DS versions will understand why I was so disappointed. Looking at my above listed games there’s hardly an original title in the pack, it’s a pile of sequels. This appears to the core reason as to why more and more of my games are hitting the shelves earlier than they should have, I felt like I’ve done this all before.
Jump back in time to the days of the GameCube/PS2 or even to the N64/PS1 and I rarely, if ever, bought a new game if I had another that was not yet complete. Perhaps it was because in my unemployed state I could not afford to, but I believe it was more to do with originality and the ‘wow factor’. Super Mario 64, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time & Resident Evil 4, that is the triple wow factor, and they are also all sequels. However unlike many follow up titles we’ve seen in 2008 they all did something new, something to shake things up and make it a totally new experience. Not only did I want to play through these from beginning to end I wanted to do it again, and again. When one of these was in the console I had no desire to buy a new game, in fact I preferred to clock these again. Jump forward to the 360/PS3/Wii and there’s nothing which I’ve just had to finish. GTAIV was great, but it was no San Andreas, which I played for hours after I’d completed the missions, running a muck and trying to land the 747 in ridiculous places. I never finished the single player component of SSBB, in fact I think there’s a few characters that I’m yet to unlock (*runs from fanboys*), but there was nothing motivating me to so after I’d played so much SSBM.
Am I the only one here? Does anyone else find themselves shelving games early than they should have? Ultimately I think it does have a little to do with how many games have been released in such a short time. But more so it’s because of the overload of the sequel, while I enjoy playing games from my favourite franchises this gets old if little is actually being changed and there’s hardly any innovation. If there’s nothing new then there’s no chance of the wow factor ever hitting me from a sequel title.
Tags:
Game
ICC
Sequel
Submitted by ICC_06
1 days ago
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