Video Games I'm Sick Of

I'm sick to death of the FPS genre. Please, for the love of God, this a plea to all video game makers in the world, please please please stop making FPS games.

We all played Doom and Doom II ten years ago, and more recently we played Half-Life and Half-Life 2. We thought that bullet time was pretty neat in Max Payne, Max Payne 2, and F.E.A.R. Commanding other guys was good in the ten Rainbow Six games that have come out, plus in SWAT and the other one that Konami just did. But even while we were slogging through terrorists and vampires with telekinesis, we were all thinking that the shit was pretty tired. It's still just Doom II with a few new features and better graphics.

Please, I beg of you video game developers, let it die.

I fear for the future of my children. I grew up in an age where the FPS, MMORPG, RTS were born and blossomed, and finally a few years ago the Sandbox genre exploded with Grand Theft Auto and its many successful franchises, but once you've played GTA then Vice City, San Andreas, Ultimate Spider Man, True Crime New York (or whatever it's called) and the 800 other Sandbox games... well, you're just playing GTA all over again with a new skin.

I know that the market for video games has expanded, as have the budgets, and so it's becoming riskier and riskier to produce games. And I feel for you, I really do. Nobody likes to lose money.

So I beg of you, for my children's sake primarily, but yes, also for the sake of your precious profits and the continued profitability of the video game market in general... experiment. Be willing to make a few duds for the sake of the next GTA, Dune, Doom, and the rest of it. With ever-expanding technology there should be ever-expanding possibilities for video games. But the industry has suffered a lapse reminscent of the Hollywood bug that has been plaguing the studios worse than if you could distribute 35mm prints over the internet. They've stopped trying, they've stopped having fun, and they're just doing terrible bullshit copycat "products" that they feel safe producing and releasing because their new game is just exactly like the twenty other games that came out before and were successful.

I was browsing a local retailer recently and stumbled upon a new game from Konami for the PC. Konami! I thought to myself. They typically produce material for the console! I wonder what strange new offering they have for my powerful processor back home! I flipped the box over and saw something that made my blood run cold: screenshots of a view over the barrel of a gun which was pointed at some nasty looking guys standing around on a rooftop, in an office environment, and in a sewer who were also all holding guns. And I thought to myself I wouldn't download this shit for free off the internet. Who would pay for this?

Please. Stop it, video game industry. I beg of you.

And by the way, if anyone was wondering, Call of Duty 2 is great if you haven't already played Call of Duty 1. If you have and you play CoD2, then you'll be wondering if you clicked the wrong icon. I got it two months ago because I was so impressed with the first, and it's so similar to the first that I never even bothered to clear the first campaign. It just felt like replay.

On the other hand, I have been playing Battlefield 2 from time to time, and still get a lot of enjoyment out of that. But I fall out of my chair when I get killed by someone bunnyhopping. When will developers ever fix that?

My next post will be relevant to life, I swear.