• 13May 09

  The faces change, but never the premise.

  Over the past 20 years, I've been playing games on a dozen different systems, in multiple states and a half of dozen countries. Games such as Zelda, Mario, Metroid into faster and brilliantly done games such as Sonic and Phantasy Star and further onward into Tekken, Metal Gear Solid and most recently Soul Calibur IV and Gears of War 2. What I've noticed though, is if you've played through enough games, you still have the basic premise of good guy takes on the bad guy or anti-hero ends up being the hero. It hasn't changed at all.
  
  There were times throughout the years that I ran across games that had their little twists, where the hero turns evil or the bad guy actually wins. Times where the good guy came out on top, only to have the bad guy come back from the grave to start their mischievous deeds once more. But it only made for a sequel and then a series and it still had not changed.
  
  If you play games enough, you start to see the pattern of the story in the first 30 seconds that the game is activated. You see the overall formula that is used five minutes in and then the repetition of both in subsequent games of either the series, or those of it's type. Platform games have you jump, attack and find power-ups. Fighting games pit your character in their fight for whatever destiny awaits against computer controlled enemies. Role Playing in which you level, gain skills and items, to defeat the forces against you. Adventure game that take you from stage to stage, place to place to knock off the enemy or die trying.
  
  It's all the same.
  
  From the first days of video gaming, the formula rarely, if ever, changes. There are certainly upgrades and new moves, items and places that you haven't yet been, perhaps even a feature that you haven't experienced before, but you will again. And again. And again. This isn't to say that the games aren't fun, nor is it to say that the games do not advance with the way they look, sound, and even are controlled by you, the gamer, but is there anything that truly deviates from the norm?
  
  You might cry "But 'insert game here' breaks the mold in how it looks!". I agree with you. The days of the legacy systems are long over and it takes quite a bit of effort sometimes to remember just why you played it in the first place, but look at the formula that it follows and you'll see that Soul Calibur is no different than Mortal Kombat and that Mortal Kombat is no different than Street Fighter and even still, Street Fighter is no different than Karate Champ. Yes, Karate Champ.
  
  Add some flash and flare to Karate Champ and what you have is Street Fighter. Add fatalities to Street Fighter and you have Mortal Kombat. Add combination moves and a "free-form" environment and what you have is Soul Calibur and so on and so on. Another example of this is Gears of War. While the game itself is beautifully presented, it has a predecessor in Kill/Switch. Kill/Switch allowed you to take your hero and hide behind the environment while firing on your enemies and killing them off, just as Gears of War does. The only difference in the formula? None. Difference in story, yes, but not in the formula.
  
  My point is that games are eternally wrapped up in a loop that eventually you will see if you've played enough of them. The only difference between the titles and the years is that the packaging that the formula comes in is eventually repeated and will continue to be so until the day that games are no longer produced. On a rare occasion, you will find games that break this mold, but only once, before the gaming world is filled with games of the same type, looking to make a spot on the map of the 'ground-breaking' genre.
  
  100's of games later and still, I'm both pleased with the familiarity and depressed by the repetition.
  • Posted May 13, 2009 3:20 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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