[Our man-in-Japan, 50ft. Samurai, is at it again. This time, he takes an interesting look at how Western games fare in the Japanese marketplace. Enjoy!]
Scenario: you are a gamer and you live in Japan, the Oregon at the end of many a trail when it comes to videogames. You grew up playing the superb games that Konami, Capcom, Nintendo, Square, and other Japanese publishers and developers had to offer.
In fact, you still love to play these games even as a great deal of them became more insular and focused on a smaller and smaller Japanese audience. You watched as the "West" caught up and moved away from producing brilliant, strictly-PC games and started to turn out amazing console games, which is great for you because no one here plays PC games. You hear about how the Japanese market is unsure of itself. You think, "Wow, that Call of Duty 4 looks really good," and that is all it takes. You have just taken your first step into yougei. (???)
Talal writes: "I'm talking about having that rush of excitement - that feeling you get when you know you've just made a memory for a lifetime."
There are different games. Some have gamplay at it highest priority, some have the story, some have the replay value and choices... There are a lot of different game experiences.
It is laughable that just now graphics does not have anything to do with that experiene. We have had many games of that type over time. This is just the one that have come closest to feel like playing an actual movie. Just look the the Digital foundry walkthrough it is a masterpiece in that perspective and hence wrth trying. But yes do not do it for the gameplay - but that was never the goal of this experience.
They don't make games like this anymore.
Too dated in my book. The AI is way too unpredictable to be acceptable today. It's definitely a game of its time.
I had a good time with the game. It is a product of its time. But when it came out it was a must have game for a lot of people. I wish Ubisoft would make another game in the series or at least a reboot.
Due to the lack of modern stealth games, and me constantly playing the MGS series, I've been looking for alternative stealth games to play, and went back and re-played the SC series recently. I wouldn't call SC1 or SC:PT masterpieces, there are AI issues, they're very much trial-and-error games, and that can lead to a lot of frustration. I also found the stories in this series to be boring, uninteresting, and just sloppily told. Cinematics are also of poor quality for both in-game scenes and CG cut-scenes, the soundtrack didn't leave any impression on me either.
Chaos Theory is better, but there was still a lot of room for improvement, and Double Agent (old gen ver.) was a sloppy mess that ended up a regression from CT. But still, at least they tried back then, these days Ubi-junk doesn't even try to make good games!
Skewed and Reviewed have written an Opinion Piece covering issues in the gaming industry, how current issues were issues years ago, and what can be done to help restore consumer trust.
Nothing. It's up to the gamers to stop consuming content from companies that they don't agree with.