Video Gaming Is Dead: Long Live The FPS!

Okay, perhaps the title is a tad drastic and video gaming as a whole isn't dying or close to dead, but if you grew up playing games before or during the '90s then sadly the video gaming era we knew is over. Before I get into why this is the case, let me explain the how I came to believe this terrible situation had finally occurred. It's a Sunday afternoon and I've spent the past few days hunched over a desk in the library, I decided that it's time for a rest and trundle off home, perhaps I'll watch a film or load up the PS2; the possibilities are endless. I settle myself on the sofa and decide to jump straight into the deep end and load up the PS3, Sony inform me that there's a new FIFA game that I can order as well as various other EA products and I resist the urge to throw my PS3 out of the window; there are metal bars in the way and it wouldn't be quite as satisfying. I check through the PSN store to see if there's anything remotely fun and new that I can play and give up after Sony suggests that I may like to try Call of Duty: Black Ops 2; I used to know a guy Sony, you've changed. After fighting the urge once again to hurl the object of my disappointment around I finally decided to run around a bit in AC3, maybe even start a new game. I quite enjoyed playing AC3, but to me it didn't feel like an AC game, I couldn't find the ever present tension between Assassins and Templars that was always there in the previous games. With Ezio and Altair I could believe that I was indeed playing as an assassins from hundreds of years ago, but with Connor I felt more like a whiny teenager who wanted to go home. Don't get me wrong, he was still pretty bad-ass but it was like they'd swapped his personality with one of the Final Fantasy characters. I digress though, I checked the date and realised that it was past the 20th so I decided to purchased the third and final instalment in the King Washington DLC. The story wasn't exactly great, but there a few added features that were fun and I wanted to see what actually happened in the end. I played through the episode which turned out to be rather dull and lacklustre; kill these people, intimidate those people and run around for a bit. Sure, the animal powers were fun at first, but they quickly lost their novelty and it reached the point that I was going to quit the game and spend my free day actually enjoying myself. That was the case until I had to travel by boat. Connor mumbled something about feeling at home at sea, Faulkner asks him if he's been at sea much to which Connor replies that his father Edward Kenway used to sail around a bit (I've perhaps gotten the wording a tad wrong here, but you get the gist of it). I laughed at first, then laughed a tad more before pausing the game and breaking down in a combination of laughter, tears and some severe gasping for breath. I know you're sitting there and thinking "What's so funny about Connor mentioning his grandfather?", but the funny thing is Edward Kenway is going to be the main character of AC4 which supposedly is going to have a completely new team working on it. Now I know you're wondering how this could possibly link to the end of the current video gaming era, but this small scene set off a whole chain of thought in my head. Click "next" to continue reading...