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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Please Get Off the Life Support














I've been seeing Resident Evil 6 advertisements lately, and knowing very little about it besides what's been mentioned in marketing, I can't help but feel like the series is desperately crying out for attention. After the lackluster fan response to Resident Evil 5, it seems like they're carefully backpedaling into Resident Evil 4 territory, as if to catch people's attention with "Look! It's Leon! The guy from the one you guys really liked! Please buy this game!" Other forced elements, like the inclusion of Albert Wesker as the main villain again (wasn't he killed off at the end of RE5?) make me even more skeptical.

It seems to me like a lot of these established, long-running series are going onto life support, with the developers making surgically precise tweaks (sometimes read as "manipulations") to try to draw audiences back with promises of returning to the series' prior glory. More often than not, these attempts prove to be uninspired, derivative rehashes that neither capture the original magic of the series, nor provide anything new or exciting. This bothers me. I'd really prefer for these companies to push their series into bold new directions, or perhaps even try their hand at some new IPs. More commentary after the jump.

This same trend is also notable in the Zelda series. Twilight Princess was an apology for Wind Waker and an attempt to appease screaming fanboys who were begging for a new and improved OOT. Twilight Princess brought nothing new to table and felt entirely derivative, even soulless. Nintendo realized they needed a new spark for Skyward Sword, but were still reeling from the response of Wind Waker. Even though Skyward Sword stepped back out onto the experimental limb, it was still only the smallest, carefullest of steps, fearful of another "Wind Waker" fiasco.


Meanwhile, if you look at the Mario series, you see Super Mario Galaxy in 2007, followed by Super Mario Galaxy 2 in 2010, a direct sequel that seems to embody the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." After all, if Galaxy was successful, why bother coming up with a new premise for the next game? Then you've go the Silent Hill series, which has been struggling for over a decade across six different games to recapture the fanfare of Silent Hill 2 (unsuccessfully). And then there's the Sonic games. Poor, poor Sonic.

Don't even get me started on Assassin's Creed. For a relatively young franchise, they've already beaten this one into life support, with four games in the span of five years. They're all basically the same thing (three of them even reuse the same main character, Ezio) just with increasingly tacked-on feature creep. It started out as a promising upstart IP, but in a very short amount of time it's become an uninspired exercise of safe bets. "Well, they liked Ezio, so let's just keep pumping out Ezio games as long as he's still making money for us."

The unfortunate thing is that it's kind of a lose-lose scenario for series like Resident Evil and Zelda. You've gotta figure if they change the series too much, people will complain that it's not what they expect from that series, but if they keep it too much the same, people will complain that the series is getting stale and repetitive. Realistically, it's nothing but win for the parent companies, since everyone will buy the games just for brand recognition. Which I think just goes to show that companies are motivated by sales and that money is the root of all our problems.

Basically, I find myself increasingly disinterested with these prominent series the longer they go on, because they fall into a near-impossible rut of trying to remain true to their past while evolving with the changing times. Often the product just comes out feeling conflicted or uninspired. So I kind of wish companies would seriously consider putting some of their staple IPs to rest for a little bit and focusing on some new, interesting ideas. Perhaps they could even use some of the same basic concepts and elements from their flagships in a whole new setting, and we might find that extremely invigorating. 

2 comments:

  1. It seems like globally technology and innovation have pretty much died the last 10 years. The real reason is a lot harder to grasp which you need a firmer background on who is pulling the strings.


    The US government (and other world governments) are decoys for various shadow groups working for a one world order but can't agree on what they want so there is an internal battle going on.

    Many people will blame *this group* or *that group* for it and make themselves look like *Tin Foil hatters* which they are because they only see a small portion of the big picture so they scream and rave at how group A is evil and we should go for group B instead when in reality both are in cohorts.

    Same thing in the entertainment industry due to monopolies which gives them the false illusion of success and fan boys shout out those who dare critic these companies so companies think they are being liked.

    People are brainwashed to think they need the latest tech or gadget so rush out to get it then wind up later being unhappy with it so these companies release another product and it's the same old cycle all over again.

    It seems to be working though as the younger generation is completely fooled.

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  2. There has been plans since the 90s for the US dollar to crash in a slow pattern by spending our way out of debt by each change of Congress to create a world revolution.
    Good people have blocked the worst of it but now the gloves are coming off.

    Most countries including the BRICS *Brazil* *Russia* *India* *China* have quietly pulled out of the US dollar and the stock market is resting on good faith alone. They did it slowly enough in order to not cause it to do a 1929 crash so riots won't form.

    Last year there has been several banker suicides briefly mentioned in the news but the articles quickly pulled so you have to search for it exactly on Bing. Google just gives MSM results.



    Most likely we will have a huge deflation once the shit hits the fan rather then inflation which is happening now. Prices will suddenly drop to very low levels but nobody can afford supplies due to no jobs.

    Warehouses will sit with too much stock with nobody to buy it so prices will be artificially low to make it look like the economy is perking up.

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