I started this year crabby, so if you’re not getting used to it, tough luck…
I have been playing (and finishing) a couple of games since we bought our XBox. While I’m impressed with some of the graphics shown in some of the games, from a programmer’s perspective, I’m not that cheery about the quality of most of them. Take for example the game ‘Crimson Skies’. While the concept and graphics are really outstanding, the gameplay is almost predictable: you shoot down a wing of enemies (a wing consists of 3 or 4 other planes), expect another bunch to come up. And after that another. Sounds like the game Wing Commander, right? And that was a game conceived in the early Nineties.
Another example: Sudeki. Great graphics, perfect execution between combat and cutscenes. But the fight between your characters and the traditional Boss Monsters always ends up to be a painstaking repetive task. It takes an average of 30 minutes (or more) to kill them. You can literally make a coup of tea, drink it with your left hand and use the controller in your right hand at the same time! No joke (I’m in a good mood: to beat the behemoth, you must strike the ‘blue eyes’ at both ends. Stay behind a barricade and wait until he has fired two volleys of rays. Strike the closest ‘eye’. Run all the way to the barricade on the far end. Wait for another two volleys, strike blue eye. Run towards the behemoth, give him time to turn his back on you. Strike. Repeat, ad nauseaum)
The moral of the story is that great technologies have not really improved the quality of gameplay. Do away with egocentric game designers: We need better story writers and programmers.