Monday, 29 March 2010

State of Gaming: The Flow of Rehashes

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I'm currently playing Heavy Rain, which I've completed twice, and Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3. Occasionally, I'll step into Left 4 Dead 2 on PC. So does this mean I've finally signed up for the SDF? No. What is does mean though is that it's clear to me now that Sony are the only ones attempting to push gaming to the next level. Heavy Rain is simply incredible, and in many ways ground breaking. Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3 is technically impeccable. Due to the Blu-Ray format, it can be played in full HD goodness and with full Master DTS sound. The 360 version, all three discs of it, falls very short in comparison. As a game, FFXIII is just a bit of escapist fantasy. I love it because I don't take it seriously. I let the HD goodness fill my room and blast me into an alternative world (whilst muting the dialogue).
Personally, I'm starting to cotton on to Sony's master plan: push hard for the true HD gaming revolution and mammoth sized Blu-Ray content. This is the only way to move forward. It gives developers scope and vast space to play with. Now I'm no PS3 fanboy. I just follow the trends and roll with where it's at. The 360 still has the edge online, for sure, but what does that really mean when all you're doing is playing Modern Warfare 2 with 15 people? The battlefield is shifting.
In stark comparison to Sony's attempt to push HD, Blu-Ray, and 256 player warzones (MAG), we have what I like to call the Western Gaming Establishment. Now these guys just don't seem to want to budge and right now we're seeing rehash central. 
I was going to review Dice's latest offering for PC, PS3, and 360. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to be precise. The problem is, I can't say a lot about it. The truth is that I'm starting to lose the will to review rehash titles and this is one. They come and go again, they offer no great advancement, and in some ways they even seem to be a step backwards.
You see, I'm a PC gamer at heart. If you read my blog posts, dating back to 2003 when I was a nipper, this fact isn't that hard to suss. This latest generation of consoles though has clearly blurred the line between PC and console gaming. The problem I find is that I'm now looking back to the days before this happened. When the PC was leap years ahead of console technology developers seemed to work harder at harnessing the PC hardware. Nowadays, they port it across nine times out of ten. These ports are subject to console limitations, such as ram limits, and it really shows.
Bad Company 2 is a quality game. It's a step forward from the extremely flawed original. I loved it for a few weeks. However, within those three or four weeks I was basically bored of it. It has a console sense about it. For instance, the maps are tiny compared to the PC exclusive of Battlefield 2 from 2005. The controls are clearly designed around a controller first, mouse and keyboard second. The PC centric stuff, such as the server browser, and player limit, are also clearly afterthoughts. 
Sure, Destruction 2.0 is incredible. This is a system that sees every building brought down into rubble and every annoying fence knifed wide open. This is unfortunately where the innovation ends though. 
In terms of the core combat, nothing has advanced that much since BF2. In 2005, this was the cream on the cake. In 2010, it feels five years old to me. Energy bars essentially. You snipe a guy in the chest and he never quite dies. It's all about headshots. This is fine though. All I'm saying is it's based on aged code. 
What really is a joke is the gun selection. In an efforts to rival Modern Warfare 2, which wasn't that bad, Dice have attempted to implement a gun unlock progression system. Sadly, it makes no sense. Why are all the initial guns basically miles better than the stuff you unlock? It's important for starting guns to be good but surely not the best in almost every class! I'll accept that scopes etc do give you a sense of expansion though. The problem is just that there is little to no incentive to bother unlocking guns and when you do you're just downright disappointed. 
Bad Company 2 is basically a good FPS. PC gamers have embraced it due to the horrible lack of high-end online FPS games currently out there. You know something's wrong when your steam friends list consists of people playing Counter Strike: Source and, in some instances, CS 1.6. This game has at least brought a new title to the table. For how long though is anyone's guess. 
I'm becoming less and less interested in games that don't seem to shift the envelope. So here we are playing BC2 in 2010. We have destructible buildings but far smaller maps than BF2, no jets or warships, and half the amount of players? Something doesn't add up. 
People joke about stuff like PSN Home on the PS3 but at least it's new and ambitious. I'm all about advancement. Rehashes are the enemy of gaming folks.  They set a nasty trend and are designed to be rolled out, hyped, and sold to the masses.  

Besides Sony, who encourage developers to do big things, I believe that Valve are about the only pioneers left out there. Steam is generally embraced nowadays and stuff like Left 4 Dead 2 has a calibre to it that  cannot be denied. I'm hoping Half Life 3 is coming along because I can imagine it will be a real trend setter. Time will tell and in the meantime I'm left hoping for greater things to come for gaming than what we're currently seeing. Battlefield 3 maybe... hmm.