The Bloj

The year of gaming? I disagree.

Posted on April 16th, 2008 by Tim.
Categories: General/Misc..

News.com had an article yesterday: 2008 is the year of gaming. More appropriate would be “2008, the year that innovation died”. Yahtzee would agree.

From the article:

Although I’m not even going to try to mention every major title to hit store shelves this year, I can say with total certainty that 2008 is a major year for gaming. This year alone, we have either welcomed or are about to welcome the following titles:

• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Ninja Gaiden 2
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game
• Devil May Cry 4
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
• Killzone 2
• Far Cry 2
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• Mario Kart Wii
• Fallout 3
• Lost Odyssey
• Fable 2
• Starcraft 2
• Gran Turismo 5
• LittleBigPlanet
• Spore

Anyone see a disturbing pattern? See a lot of numbers? All but 4 of these titles are sequels. In the list of non-sequels, we have: Ghostbusters, Lost Odyssey, Little Big Planet, and Spore. Ghostbusters is a movie-licensed game (has there ever been a good game that contains “The Video Game”?) and Lost Odyssey is a standard-fare JRPG that could’ve come from the PS1 era (not necessarily a bad thing, but doesn’t say much for innovation).

That leaves us with two titles: LittleBigPlanet, and Spore. LittleBigPlanet comes from Media Molecule (born from Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios), while Spore comes from Will Wright of Maxis (I still refuse to admit he works for EA). It’s pretty bad when the only innovative games in the entire industry are coming from the same people we’ve been looking to since 1989.

On the other hand, Portal 2 would be nice…

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