Too Many Games?

In the last year a lot of games came out: good ones, bad ones and ones based on good ones but which had no intention of being good. But the question lately is, are there just too many games out there? I know personally I haven’t paid full price for a game in months; the little cash I have to spree on games goes to World of Warcraft or to used or out of season games (like Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 which I paid a whooping $20 for a brand new collectors edition!). The few games I want to get I’m waiting for the price drop or I’m just simply not impressed enough to go out and get ‘em.

The marketing of games has become all too much a Hollywood type campaign, too. As gamers we expect a game with, at very least, over 30 hours of gameplay and a great story. In that aspect we have become greedy. However, I do remember a time when I would pick up a magazine and read about a game for months before it even hit the shelves. Not some under 100 word description of the story and a few pictures, but a real life interview with some no-name guy telling me he was proud of his work. These interviews would build my impressions of said game and my eagerness would build to the point that when the game did come out, I was there the very first day to buy it. But lately, maybe because of the lack of integrity of developers and game designers, no one speaks much about the game they are making. Vowing to a code of silence instead of dropping nuggets of information about a game in different articles and blogs so that you would anticipate a game release more for its features and how fun it looks than its story and name attached to it.

Every gaming website I open now has a game being advertised in the sides and the background of the site. I’m sick of seeing rendered still frames from a game which gives me no clue as to what it offers! Dante’s Inferno is a great example. Months and months of “go to hell” ads but not an article to be found! Finally, a glimmer of light; a demo was released and then it happened. An uproar from PS3 owners clamming “Ninja Bullshit!” and on-the-defense Bro-Box fans screaming “We should get a God of War too!”. And then the game dropped and guess what? It didn’t do very well. IGN (which advertised the game to the “very bitter end”) gave it a 7.5/10 on overall gameplay. And other gaming sites said “it’s a copycat” and fans agreed (months before hand, but they did). So two good things came out of it: marketing a crappy game to death still makes it a crappy game, and even you give your favorite ad venture all the money in the world, they will still roll over you like a bus driver texting when your product is lackluster.

So what am I getting at in this whole little rant… I just want to know if it’s a good game before I get it. No marketing campaigns, no protesters from Ventura County, no pretty paintings or music videos with gameplay scenes. I want a guy with no improv couching to sit down and talk about why the game he is working on is awesome. I’m sick of seeing some guy with gel in his hair, a bright white smile and blue eyes telling me stuff I could have guessed already - “best graphics around, 1080i” “no lag” - just stop! Give me the guy who’s pale white and sporting a Happy Tree Friends t-shirt and let him give me the truth. Even the much skewed truth, but at least it’s from someone I know has worked on the damn game!