Sequelitis?

Last week there was a blow out of gaming news due to the pre-E3 ramp up.  Usually around this time we’re hearing about the blockbusters or new titles our favorite developers are working on – basically games that we (hopefully) will be seeing around this time next year at the earliest.  It’s one of the best times of the year to be a gamer, and I know I for one am eager to hear what’s new.  The only problem is that, this year anyways, there doesn’t seem to be much in the "new" category.

Whenever a business or industry begins to be successful there’s always much less pressure to innovate.  The heads of software publishing firms at EA or Microsoft Game Studios (just two examples, I realize there are many others) generally look at market trends, see that they can rake in tons of cash by putting out a sequel to an established franchise that is proven to sell, and are more likely to disregard new games in the space as a result.  For example, why make a game that seems sort of interesting but is relatively unproven when you can instead focus your efforts on Gears of War 2 – a game that will sell even if it’s not that great based on its reputation alone.  Gears 2 was previewed last week and I’m not saying that it doesn’t look good, it does, I’m just pointing out the fact that I think the gaming industry has reached a point of stagnation.  Of course there are always caveats, for example Nintendo’s Wii which is basically a console designed to promote innovation (and yet it seems like you’re wagging your wiimote to and fro in every game for some reason…).  Still from the major developers, for the most part, it would seem that this year’s E3 will be more of the same.  Gears 2, Halo Wars, Madden ‘09, Guitar Hero 4,  World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, stop me if any of this starts sounding familiar…

Where as usually I would come out of E3 week (in the past it was held in the beginning of May, so last week’s media blitz kind of makes sense) with a slew of new titles to look forward to, this time around it seems like there isn’t much besides the standbys.  No surprise announcements really so far, no old series being brought back or updated (at least none that gamers actually want, Golden Axe anyone?).  Still to kill some of the negativity in this post I do want to point on what’s on the horizon that I’m looking forward to.  This list will, for brevity’s sake consist of three games (I could probably round it out to 4 or 5 if I wanted to make a longer post) – all three are from traditionally PC-exclusive developers who have made transitions to the console market for various reasons.

I’ll start with the two I’m most familiar with first.  Valve Software has been working on a game called Left 4 Dead for a while now, and last week after some game reviewers got their hands on it my interest was completely renewed.  I’m a bit of a Valve fanboy anyways (the Half-Life franchise remains my favorite in gaming) so I guess they could say they’re working on a Barbie game and I’d be at least moderately interested.  The game’s premise is one that’s familiar to a lot of people out there – zombie breakout.  Okay, so maybe not familiar in the literal sense but chances are you’ve seen at least one zombie movie in your lifetime, be it a classic Romero movie or the more recent 28 Days/Weeks Later.  Left 4 Dead is a 4-player multiplayer game (cooperative, of course) in which a rag-tag group of people try to make it through the zombie apocalypse intact.  They’re outfitted with a significant arsenal of weaponry and they’re trying to make their way from spot to spot in a city in the hope of escaping.  Cooperative play is definitely stressed – if one person wanders off chances are they’re a goner which leaves the rest of the squad weak and overall kills your chances of survival.  A cool feature is that once one member of the squad goes down they can come back as a zombie and terrorize their still-living mates.  Not only that but the threat level is random – depending on how you play a level (how well, I should say) the game will dynamically change up the quantity of enemies.  I’m totally hyped for this, please check out some trailers of it to get a much better understanding then I can provide.

Next up is a game that’s actually a prequel to one of my favorite games of last year, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadows of Chernobyl.  In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky you play as a stalker prior to and during the Chernobyl accident, so as you can expect there’s a whole lot of potential for cool things to happen there.  From the gameplay videos I’ve watched it seems like this time around they’re stressing the squad-based combat a lot more which should be fun.  One of the best parts of Shadows of Chernobyl was the interactions between the different factions in-game (go Freedom!) so hopefully they integrate that into the story and show how each faction came to be.  It looks beautiful too and the environments have really been spread out.  If they bring it with more of the same for the most part (plus an addition to the story, of course) I’ll be right as rain.

The last game is one that I’m pretty unfamiliar with, aside from the developer’s promises and a proof-of-concept tech demo video that was released not too long ago.  The game is called Mirror’s Edge, and it is being put together by DICE software.  I just mentioned DICE not too long ago when I was talking about Battlefield: Heroes, so let me just go over their track record quickly by saying they are behind all of the Battlefield games that are so near and dear to my heart.  I heard about Mirror’s Edge several months back before everyone was buzzing about it, and at that time the promise was that DICE was working on a new game that would revolutionize character movement and physics in a game.  My first reaction was "Okay, you’d think by now you guys would have movement down pretty well…" but now that I’ve seen the video I see what they mean.  In the preview video we see an in-game character from the first person perspective making their way across rooftops like something straight out of The Matrix.  They’re performing all different kinds of Parkour (free running) moves as they maneuver their way through the beautiful environment and you can see that there’s actually some weight to the character.  You can’t just be standing still and jump across a gap, you have to get a significant amount of momentum while running to be able to make it across.  Honestly you just have to see the video for yourself to understand, but I’m interested.  At the same time I realize that this is just a tech preview so by the time the game comes out it could be totally different – still the main concept is solid and did I mention DICE was developing it? =P

So those are the three games I’m excited about.  There were some other announcements that kind of got me buzzing, especially the confirmation of a Doom 4, but I realize that for the most part those are a long ways off.  We’ll see more from them at next year’s E3, no reason to get too excited now.  Maybe I’m becoming a grumpy gamer?