Best of You

Finally got this finished after working on it for a few weeks. I blame Wimbledon and swiss cheese.


Games that I'm currently playing are a mix of brand new games and sequels. Animal Crossing still holds me as I try and catch all the fish and insects I can this month and just stock up money for the redecorating of my house. I've also been playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time again.

So that's one original game and then a sequel. This made me turn my attentions on Nintendo and the perception of it amongst gamers. Not the regular schmoes who think it's a kid company but those that hold it as a bastion of originality and innovation.

Here we are deriding companies like EA for producing the same shit year-in, year-out yet Nintendo seem exempt from this. Looking back at Nintendo, in amongst some great new games like Donkey Konga we get a sequel in Donkey Konga 2. We get Wario Ware Inc and that's followed by another 3-4 games spread on a variety of Nintendo systems. Animal Crossing is scheduled for a sequel on the DS at the end of the year, we have another Mario Kart, a new Mario game, a new Zelda and well it's just a bunch of sequels that line the release list.

What is it that makes us go ahead and embrace some things and villify others? Also are sequels necessarily bad?

If you distil Zelda you are left with the same sorts of bosses, the same block pushing puzzles, the same enemies, the same weapons, the same of everything really. If you take Mario Kart and distil that, you have a driving game with the same drivers with similar power-ups and weapons. You do the same with Mario and you are left with a fat Italian plumber who should stop eating that many pizzas.

Now take FIFA and each year (or twice a year if the World Cup is about) you have the same football game. Take any one of EA's main franchises and it's a similar story.

Now this idea of trying to distil games to their bare minimum will make any game seem the same. However we need to look at the composition of the game in relation to this.

For FIFA the main new flourishes we get is a list of new licenced songs to play over a new polished interface, with a new roster of players to match the current squads. The gameplay is left more or less in tact with some additional graphical touches and possibly a few more moves which doesn't alter the game in a great way. I think this would be open to criticism as it's not really changing anything and nor is it really building upon the last game(s).

For Zelda, each new iteration usually comes with a certain dynamic to differentiate the game. The key difference. With A Link to the Past, we had Light and Dark worlds; Ocarina of Time had the ability to time travel between a Hyrule of the past and future, split by seven years; Majora's Mask had you controlling time over a 72 hour span and The Wind Waker had you controlling the winds to sail across the sea. This is key to the whole game, with puzzles oft making use of these abilities.

So that is our main change, you then factor in new moves/items that are added to change up puzzles which may seem similar or vary the way in which you go about combat. Story is also key and can pull you into the game, making you skirt over similarities to see more of it unfold. Part of the similarities is what helps to bring you into the game also; the joy of seeing characters you've met in adventures past.

Maybe a better example to compare this against is the games like Street Fighter, although again you could argue that at times key changes are made to certain dynamics. Additions of specials, groove modes, tech hits. Yet still these games are cherished with each edition due to nuances that exist between each.

I'm not so sure sequels are all that bad. I'm not so sure we should bemoan them as in sequels we can get very original ideas implemented. What we should bemoan is the sequels that are not trying or doing anything different, or are trying to cash-in on the current vogue ideas (Prince of Persia 2 going all angsty and dark).

Maybe the thing we need to look at is the current love of making clones of popular games, without any real thought put in to enhance of change the game, minus more blood/swearwords/nudity in a bid to seem adult.