Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.

by Jamison DeLorenzo

Something struck me this past weekend that I feel that I should share with you. No, I didn’t get run over by a tour bus (although that almost did happen). I have been spending an extravagant amount of time looking over launch lists for each of the consoles wondering about which console looks like it is going to be the most promising this year. I decided that it was possible for a console to become my primary gaming platform in lieu of my PC. The Sony online Home announcement aside the launch lists are going to be the most telling. It will tell me which console will be naughty and which will be nice.

Wait- did I just make a Christmas reference in March?! With a list and everything else?!!!?! Sigh…

It struck me that every game I was most likely to want to play, with the big exception being Spore, is a sequel in a franchise. Granted, it is hard to see which new games are going to be good and it’s hard to plan for those. Assassin’s Creed, as interesting as it sounds, is on my list of games that may be rented at some point. I believe I have mentioned this problem here before so I am not going to elaborate on it. The reason I bring it up is that I started to walk down the path of what games would sound the most appealing to me if they were to be released.

Hearken back to Knights of the Old Republic II if you will. It is a quality game that was not finished in time of its release and there is plenty of content the developers at Obsidian completed that we never saw. However, because we have hints and bread crumbs in the game as to what this missing content is, people are working on the restoring this content. It is this type of news that has been the most intriguing in a while. Find a game that has some extra content in it that I have not seen before you and I am probably on the line ready to bite at purchasing it.

This is a strange notion for me to consider. I am not the person who jumps at the extra content that is on a DVD or looks for Director’s or Extended cuts of a movie. Music, on the other hand, does grab me that way. Finding several concerts and unreleased Dave Matthews Band tracks pretty much made my week despite a stomach virus, more Mets drama, insane work hours, a leak in my ceiling at home, almost being run over, and no gaming of any kind. Somehow this idea of viewing previously enjoyed media with some added bonuses has struck a chord with me.

Now, do I really want to see all of my past favorite games with some added content? Hardly. Several of my favorite games have been re-released within the past couple of years that I simply have no intention of getting (especially any of the Square games with added Anime). Most of these re-released games are simply fluff on top of the same game. Fables: The Lost Chapters, on the other hand, is in the ilk of the type of game I am very much interested in playing. That offering was a little too shallow for me to consider picking up because they finally made the game a decent length for an RPG and it was still not a whole lot more than the original offering.

In general I love seeing new takes or extensions on old ideas. This is still tricky to pull off with games because adding enough content to a game that makes it worth buying again is always tough. Fans of the Rainbow Six series should understand what I’m talking about here. Every once in a while a new release in the franchise does make the campaigns and the multiplayer vastly different experiences. Meanwhile Madden is still bogged down with the same gameplay that existed in 2001 (aaah, another cheap shot at EA). When you whore out a cool game, such as what happened with Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, you go in the opposite direction of what I’m looking for.

As that is one of my least popular phrases, which is true with any phrase that is beyond tired, I feel I should elaborate on what I mean by that. After all that comment is highly subjective. The only real difference between “good new content” and a “whored out franchise” is a highly subjective opinion on the new release. They sound completely different. The latter even sounds like I’m saying something extremely poignant instead of just being guilty of something every radio shock DJ does on a daily basis.

Take Sands of Time- the game was designed from the ground up by the creator. Everything about the game was brand new for the franchise. The next step, The Warrior Within, had a gutted story and a deeper battle system. Overall the game did not really offer anything new. After this came The Two Thrones which, although it offered an interesting story device, did not offer anything new to the game worth getting excited about. I am not saying that the games are not worth looking at if Sands of Time provided a good amount of enjoyment for you (it is in my all-time Top 10 for games), but after a ton of incremental changes you are effectively beating a dead horse.

Hmm, that’s still pretty subjective. Maybe I have no idea what I am looking for. Not knowing what I want could be my real problem. Maybe there is no winning formula for expanding on an old game. Maybe I only want expansion packs for games I love and complete rewrites for everything else. Maybe I just need to take a closer look at the titles available now and give them a try instead of being a chicken. Either way, I am starting to get a sense for why not too many games are appealing to me right now and that online games have a tendency to nuke one’s ability to find other good games to play.

Or I just may need to be 10 years old again and get a slew of video games for Christmas one last time.

Post your comments in the Forum!