Ewan's Musings
The day to day ramblings and thoughts of a Scotsman in England.
Games aren't what they used to be. I'm sitting here looking at some of today's top games for the Gameboy Advance and wondering why they seen to be a lot easier than hands from years ago.
If more than 100 people in the world have beaten Jet Set Willy (honestly, with no poking) them I'd be very suprised. But looking at Tomb Raider for the GBA, it's a veritable walk in the park.
Why are games so easy nowadays? It's not just me being misty eyed about Gyron, or the changing depths of Starquake. Thanks to the wonderful world of emulators I can go back and re-visit these games and remind myself that they were perfectly balanced, that they did take time to get through, and that it wasn't embarrasing to die on the second screen.
Now let's take a look at that new Tomb Raider game. On my very first play, I managed to get all the way trhough to level four before dying. Almost 20 minutes of playing time. After that I didn't want to play it any more. What was the point? The designer's had decided that I was goign to finish this game pretty quickly. Another possible £30 down the drain.
And there's the key. Money. The new breed of games machines (Gameboy Advance, Playstation, XBox) are highly dependen on you continuing to buy their high priced games every two or three weeks, because of the subsidy they give the base unit itself (they sell it at a loss and make the profit on the game).
Their solution in getting you to buy new games is to make sure you can finish your current game in a week or two of playing. So by removing the challenge, you'll get to the end and buy something else - with the same boring 'skill' level and guaranteed 21 day shelf life.
Obviously there are exceptions (Metroid Prime on the GBA being one) but even those are tailored o force you onto the correct path in the adventure. Compare Metroid Prime to Super Metroid on the NES. The sense of exploration and not knowing where to go next was even more pronounced, and kep you playing for months. And that's not good for today's gaming.
I don't see a way out of it - people aren't going to be prepared to pay £400-£500 for a console (they're already moaning at a possible £200 for Nokia's N-Gage), and I don't see the price of games droppping or the quality increasing in the near future.
Perhaps it's time to forget about new games and spend time with the 26500 odd archived Spectrum games. Not forgetting the 2000 odd arcade classics available to something like a MAME cabinet. I'm proud of the fact I can last 5 minutes at Defender.