2. Cinematics
Press X to play movie. No, Im not talking about a DVD Player; Im basically summing up my experience playing
Resident Evil 6. Oh, and
Metal Gear Solid 4. To a lesser extent, even games like
Uncharted are guilty of this: interactive cut-scenes are taking over gaming. Theyre a lot easier to program, as you no longer have to take into account a whole range of options, only succeed or fail. The player presses X to jump out of the way of the falling Tyrannosaurus, or they fail to (and get crushed). Some games do this better than others, of course. The successful
Devil May Cry, God of War, Assassins Creed and
Batman: Arkham Asylum games all let the player perform complex attack animations with very simple button presses, which does feel empowering to an extent (but also takes away the sense of satisfaction at completing a skilful attack in
Street Fighter, for example). In this way it can be good for casual gamers, who want to feel powerful and agile without spending hours learning to play the game perfectly. At its worst, though, this tendency sees games reduced to nothing more than a DVD menu. Lazy programming (and a move towards making gaming more mainstream) will result in many games becoming something like an extended film, as opposed to actual gaming experience. Again, gamers need to make their voices heard on this issue, and fast.
The flipside of this is the general movement towards deeper story-telling in games. Take a look at the gameplay footage for The Last of Us if you dont believe me. Or the trailer for Mass Effect Trilogy. While it can be frustrating to remove player choice from a game because the developer wants to tell a specific story, when a game allows the player to make his voice heard and also create a gameworld and characters to care about, it should be applauded. The improvement in quality of game plots has resulted in an increase in the status of the industry, which has long since been viewed as inferior to the film or book business, for example. Hopefully we can see more good plots and characters in 2013, but not at the expense of player choice and gameplay. When Im fighting a giant shark, I would like it to be more difficult than pressing a combination of buttons in something akin to a brutal version of Pa-Rappa the Rapper/Guitar Hero.