The Video-Gaming Rut

For someone who loves games so much, I don't think I've been up to speed with them recently. Firstly, there's been a bit of a stagnation of Videogames for a while now, as they are becoming more and more mainstream and have collected into specific "genres"

For example, you have the shooter, with the gun, the health/ammo/ability-bars, and the enemies in front of you. It's been that way since Doom. There's not much you can do with gameplay apart from bolt extra gimmicks on, or streamline it for a purpose. Bullet time, for an example of a gimmick, is becoming more and more prevelant within the FPS release, while Halo started the trend of reductionism (or streamlining) to focus the player on the combat (the Recharging Shield instead of traditional health-pack foraging, only two weapons availble at a time). Despite these alterations, there is only so much you can do with the medium before you're remaking the same game over and over.

Every genre of game will inevitably imitate it's peers, and it won't be long before we see "Portal" clones popping up, I'd imagine. Apart from gimmicks, the only thing new about these kinds of games is plot.

So, where are all the new ideas? Why can't we have games where you play bats and navigate by sound, or construct viruses and guide them through bodies! There are hundreds of ideas that haven't been plumbed yet, such as strategy games involving Glaciers as they cut through mountains!

S/Cooke