When i recently picked up Gran Turismo 5 again, it was so that i could get in some quality time on a couple of the best tracks........ in the world. But after a couple of days, and the completion of the beginner and amateur levels, i realised that i had hit something of a brick wall.
And at 200mph that's not very much fun at all.
The thing about Gran Turismo, and it's something i've always liked, is that Polyphony always have their invisible hand on your shoulder, cajoling you along a certain career path. The gifting of a Mini Cooper for winning the Sunday Cup series, and then the knowing look of approval as you decide to tackle the FF challenge next (since you have just fortuitously acquired the very car to do the job) has always worked nicely. Yes you could eventually spend 100,000 credits on a sexy little super car and jump straight into the deep end if you wanted to, but that was the point, you didn't have to do that.
I only mention this because since the inception of B-Spec, the balance of the game has been a little off, and this is where the 322kph crash into a masonry barrier occurred for yours truly.
When i buy a racing game it's for one rather simple reason, i want to race. B-Spec is a nice addition if you've always wanted to be Ross Braun, but seriously you'd rather be Lewis Hamilton right? Playing B-Spec (and i use the term "playing" loosely here) is like buying some sexy sleepware for the mrs, and then inviting the next door neighbour over so you can enjoy watching the action rather than getting stuck in yourself. You may marvel at some of the tricks he can pull off, but you'd rather it was you fumbling around in the dark.
So, as i said, B-Spec is a nice diversion if you like the management side of racing, but it's not what i bought the game for. I very much doubt that many others did either, which is why it's so annoying that your progress in A-Spec seems to rely on winning cars in the management mode that are un-available if you race yourself.
So with all that said i have to ask, why did Polyphony decide that in order to progress in a natural and balanced way through the Driving career, you have to use B-Spec as well ?
The obvious answer would, i suppose, be that they want you to get the most out of the game by guiding you towards using both sides of the sim, management and driving. Much in the same way that their invisible hand once nudged us in the direction of the FF series in GT's past, they are now showing us that we need to use both functions in the game to get the best from it.
I guess i'm okay with that too, after all i play as much PES as i do Football Manager, and they are essentially the football equivalent of what GT5 has done here. Maybe this hands off gaming isn't so bad, but why must it be harder to progress if you only play one side of the coin rather than both?
Originality is a difficult thing to achieve. In a sense as we move forward it becomes harder to achieve since everything that can be done will be done at some point. Hollywood has all but given up on such a thing even existing it seems, with sequels and franchise movies dominating much of the past decade. But every so often something, like Inception, turns up which re-affirms your belief that originality is still possible and can be just as successful as yet another Transformers movie or tired re-hash of the "Girl loves Vampire, Werewolf loves Girl, I throw up thinking about it all" genre
IGN has helpfully published a list of big games due to be released in 2011, and luckily for my dinner there isn't an Emo polygonal version of Edward in sight. What this list does reveal however, is that 2011 will most certainly be the year of the sequel, with a few glimmers (no Twilight pun intended) of hope for those of you that want something original to play.
Fight Night Champion, Dragon Age 2, MLB 11 and the like are all what Activision once famously termed "Annualisable" which is no fault of theirs and certainly no indication as to the quality of the games. Fight Night has always been a very good Boxing sim, bringing something new to the table every time a new iteration is released. I have no doubt that Dragon Age 2 is an excellent game, and the MLB franchise is obviously based on a solid game or else there would be no market for a yearly release with updated rosters.
Encouragingly there are plenty of original IP's in here too. LA Noire, Bulletstorm and Homefront are all brand new games with no real history attached to them, and while they do all fit snuggly into pre-existing genre definitions they all promise to be excellent gaming experiences for lovers of Sandboxes and FPS games. LA Noire in particular impresses with it's cutting edge Mo-Cap technology and gorgeous visual fidelity.
But what about those of us that want something completely original? It's been a long time since we saw the likes of Vib Ribbon, Parappa the Rapper and Kurushi lead the way with their differing philosophys on original game play. Vib Ribbon especially gave us a whole new type of experience, where our own musical tastes informed the design of the level that we played and graphics took a firm back seat. It also helped that the Vib the Rabbit was amazingly cute for a wire frame character. Unfortunately it only released in Japan and the EU but still managed to sell well. Parappa the Rapper was an early forerunner to the now defunct Rock Band and Buitar Hero franchises where your timing was key to the continued playing of the song, it took cues from DDR no doubt, but it was a new and fun take on rhythm games as a whole. Kurushi was a truely original puzzler which had your character actually standing on the board itself. Despite it's simple game play it could keep you hooked for hours if you weren't careful.
All of these games had modest success, and spawned sequels that in some cases improved on the original, and in others killed off interest in it altogether.
History lesson over, you can relax now.
So looking at the current generation of consoles, is there evidence that the same spirit of originality is still around? Well actually yes there is. Electroplankton on the Nintendo DS is a music game, but in truth it looks nothing like one. Using the stylus you can engage in a range of mini games that allow you to create varied styles of music. Everything from the Mario theme, complete with coin and jumping sound effects, to sweeping strings, Electroplankton has it all.
Flower, available on the PSN is a beautiful game which lets you take on the role of the wind, blowing petals and pollen around fields for no apparent reason other than to pollinate the other plants around you. For a game that has seemingly no objective or goals it certainly is very addictive. Also available on the PSN, The Last Guy is a top down perspective game where you have to search the streets of Tokyo for survivors of an Other Worldly invasion. No guns, just you running around the streets in a city wide version of British Bulldog, with Aliens. It doesn't fit into any category that i can think of, but it's gloriously mad at times and keeps you on your toes much like Vib Ribbon used to.
Many current generation games manage to bring original elements to the table, even if the genre they find themselves in is overcrowded. Bioshock for example might be an FPS, but it brought us the ability to mix gun play and plasmid abilities while Deadspace did away with the traditional HUD in favour of subtle clues displayed on your armour as to how healthy you are.
Last but by no means least we have the Gods made flesh at Team ICO. This spring they will release the Team ICO collection, for the first time giving us both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus in HD. Both of these games are true masterpieces in their field, and can rival other art forms in their beauty.
SotC in particular is a true achievement in originality. There is no combat in the game save for the Colossi themselves, the rest of the story focusses on you and your horse travelling from point to point, wondering at the scenery and thinking about what you have achieved so far and what must still be done. It's a tale that raises as many questions as it answers, and in some points raises a real moral quandary. Should i really be slaying these mammoth beasts just so that i can get back the girl i apparently love? Guilt is not an emotion that you often experience in video games, but here it is an all too uncomfortable bed fellow.
In the Fall the latest game from Team ICO will hit the shelves, The Last Guardian promises to be just as good as the two that came before. Whether it strikes that balance of originality against familiarity is a question best asked when it finally arrives, but let's hope it does.
So what did happen to originality in gaming? It's still there, you just have to look a little harder for it.
I don't like 3D, there i said it.
The problem isn't necessarily the technology, or even it's application at cinemas, although it must be said that far too many films are now being released in three dimensions just because they can. There in is the reason why I don't like it, and why I worry about it's increased use in the games industry. Forcing 3D into a game that doesn't benefit from it's inclusion just adds extra cost to the developers wage bill, and weakens the format for when it truly is deserving to be used.
I played Gran Turismo 5 in all it's glorious three dimensions while I was in Tokyo recently. It sucked.
So what is the future of gaming if not 3D? Well like three dimensional gaming this innovation has it's roots firmly planted in the past, so come with me now on a journey through time and space (not to the world of the mighty boosh) to a wonderful era when the ROM cartridge was king and load times didn't exist.
The Fairchild Channel F, NES, Atari 2600, Master system, Mega Drive, SNES, N64, the list goes on. All these consoles had two things in common. They used Cartridges, and they had very little load time at all. However, due to limited capacity, Cart based systems died out when the CD format Sony Playstation began to dominate the industry with games such as Final Fantasy VII.
So why, you might ask, is cartridge gaming the future of the industry? In a way it already is. Flash card technology works on a similar premise to that of the old ROM Carts of yesteryear. No moving parts, fast download times, and depending on the format of the card quite robust to boot. The Nintendo DS, the best selling console of all time, hand held or otherwise, has been using a solid state mask ROM since it's inception in the mid 2000. This format is not too dissimilar from the cart systems used by the older Gameboy, and the format used by the NES and SNES also.
Early this year Sony finally announced the NGP, the long suspected follow up to the PSP. Among the raft of impressive demonstrations of the hardware, including dual analogue sticks and an OLED screen, it was noticed that it would not use the UMD disc format of it's predecessor, but instead move to a card based system which has been announced as having a capacity of either 2GB or 4GB, depending on the size of the game. While the inner workings of the card are yet to be truly ascertained one thing is almost certain. It will use what i believe is the future of the gaming industry on all platforms.
Solid State Memory.
Let's look at this on three fronts, the first being console reliability. One of the major reasons why any console breaks down is due to moving parts, and also the heat they generate. The RROD that so many XBox 360 owners dread is due to the console overheating. All thanks to the disc drive constantly spinning so that the disc can be read and data loaded. The PS3 suffers from drive failures due to extended use of the disc drive as well. Now what if you replace the disc format with a solid state card, for arguments sake lets say the physical size of a floppy disc or mini disc. With no moving parts heat is drastically reduced, and wear and tear on the machine is almost completely removed.
Secondly, by using a solid state card to hold game data you can access media held on there much faster than you ever could on a CD/Blu-ray disc. Although it might well not be instantaneous it would certainly be much quicker than sitting there for what feels like an eternity waiting for the Mojave Wasteland to load up again after searching through some deserted shack.
Last but not least, lets talk about the environment. With no disc drive to constantly power and no cooling fans needed to keep the drive from frazzling the power consumption of a future console is conceivably much lower than those of this generation. This not only helps you to save money on your utility bills, but just as importantly reduces the amount of energy you use, meaning that less fossil fuels need to be consumed to power our enjoyment. It won't save the world, but it'd certainly do some good.
A few years ago this would have been mad to suggest, that you could fit an entire console game on a solid state flash card, but the proof is there in concept at least. NGP is reportedly nearly on par with PS3 in terms of graphical power, and it's card based system can hold 50% of the capacity of a blu-ray disc already. Clearly the developers think they can develop something worth playing on this system using this memory format. Technology improves and capacities may increase over time so that we can fit more and more data onto a card the same size as a DS cart, or SD card. Even if they don't, would you really be that annoyed if you had to swap out one card for another halfway through if it meant you could play Fallout: New Vegas or a 100 hour plus JRPG with no load times and without fear of your console frying?
I know i wouldn't
Until next time I'm Dave Roberts, and I'm Game for a laugh.
You know, when i started this blog it was for two reasons. First, i wanted to work off the ring rust after a good few years of not really writing anything of my own. Second and more importantly though, i wanted to channel my energies into something that i could use to demonstrate my writing ability to prospective employers.
Journalism isn't something i ever considered at school, I had this pipe dream to become a fireman, then join the army and last but not least the next Santiago Calatrava, and now the day before my 28th birthday, ten years after i left school with great grades but no real direction I'm writing this in the vain hopes that one day soon someone will read it and think, maybe he's got something here.
Well maybe not this post, this one stinks.
You may have noticed, or maybe you haven't, that the name of this blog has changed from "if I can be ridiculous for a second", a play on the Lance Storm catchphrase of the early 2000's, to "Game for a laugh". This new title reflects the change in focus of this blog in recent months as i have been concentrating more and more on one topic. Games. It's not that there isn't anything else to write about, after all Egypt, Libya, The Ashes series, Chilean Miners and Earthquakes have all been in the news recently, it's just that for some reason I didn't feel like i wanted to write about them. If I write about something it has to be something I enjoy, something that inspires me to do so. Games have always done that for me.
Now, maybe this blog will never gain more than the three followers it currently has (I love you guys), and maybe it'll never reach the eyes of anyone who could offer me a professional career as a writer, but what if it does? I have to keep hoping, at the very least maybe this will entertain some friends for a few minutes and spark some debate amongst us as to the future of the industry.
Either way, writing about games is something i truly enjoy, so being able to do it at any level is rewarding in its own right.
My name is Dave Roberts and from now on I'm game for a laugh.
