As a supporter of all three hardware manufacturers, I come in peace.
I’ve played too many countless games (Over 150++) in the past 8 years on a multitude of consoles; Though I’ve never made a definitive list (though I should someday), I’d probably rank at least one Rare game in my Top 5 favorite games of all time list! (With Zelda: OoT being excluded from that list altogether for being a pioneering achievement) That definitely says a lot about my opinion on Rare! They used to be a heavyweight no doubt!
I’ve played all of Rare’s recent games. And I think that there is more then enough evidence to indicate that their quality and more particularly their output has been dwindling. They don’t “suck” but there is certainly an evidence of underachievement. Only a very tiny minority would flat out deny it.
Although I hate spitting on people’s fond memories of their games, I also hate being spitted on by the very companies I love and support.
For example: I hate when people are split into two camps about an ‘X’ game - love it or hate it. The ideal situation would be that the ‘X’ game is so truly amazing that everyone enjoys playing the game before going online and chatting about it. Thus the perfect game. But in reality such unanimity rarely happens.
Let’s take Star Fox Adventures as our prime example.
Was I excited about it before release? If you count as hunting down for every last picture and info on it as excited then, yeah, I was excited. Did I like the game? No. Did I have a bias against it? If I did, then why was I sooo excited about it before release? Was I faking the hype for myself? When jerking-off privately, do I prematurely tell my self “That orgasm was the best” even though I still haven’t climaxed? Do I fake my enjoyment to myself? Does anyone?
Do I like the fact that I bloody hate SFA? Do I like to tell someone who bought it and enjoyed it, that I hate the game? No and No. I’m firmly against jeopardizing happy memories of people. In fact, I hate the fact that some people can enjoy SFA where as I’m stuck in the “Hate camp” unintentionally. Rare caused the split in fans. I blame them for the fact that the game was wrongly hyped “You can go anywhere you see” (NGC Magazine) and wrongly advertised to many fans who were avidly waiting for years for the games release.
Going one step further, let’s look at the timescale for the game. It was in the making for approximately 4 and a half years, give or take 6 months. With the notion that time is money; should people look and base their opinions on the game solely on its own merits or should opinion be of a more relative nature? Now this is the topic it all boils down too.
To this day even top reviewers are mostly undecided whether to rate games on a more relative scale or “base your opinion of the game On its Own Merits (OiOM)” type of scale. Almost all reviews have elements of both types of marking system. But the type which is used most prominently is the “On its own merits” (Henceforth refereed to as OiOM) scale. I believe that a likely explanation for this is that OiOM the more lenient of the two. And since fans can be easily aggravated over bad scores of their games, most publications simply remain faithful to their own optimistic, let’s call it… ideals.
If however, the games industry had its own living breathing God and all he did was love and foster his own industry for its ultimate growth. What system would he employ? Many different people would answer this question relatively compared with where they are in their gaming life.
An entry level gamer would probably (not definitely) want games to be rated based on OiOM. Since this newbie gamer hasn’t played other games to compare, a criticism like “been there done that” wouldn’t necessarily apply to him/her. Thus it’s not a stretch to say that OiOM goes well with less experienced gamers. Conversely, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine a Relative system doing well with more experienced gamers.
Think about it this way, if game developers mutually agreed to stop making advancements in game design, then everyone would have ended up playing all types of games at some point or another in their lives. Everyone would have “been there done that”.
The conclusion that I want to get to is the following:
Did I enjoy SFA? Sadly I did not. Did I enjoy DK64? No, I honestly didn’t. I've been there and done that with both.
Did Rare return to form with Kameo and PDZ? According to me, ABSOLUTELY NOT. But will Rare ever make a game to justify their heritage? They most certainly will. Although I’ve been harsh on Rare for the last, I don’t know… 6 years; nothing is stopping me from loving their games again in the future except for Rare themselves.
Let’s not kid ourselves though; many people have lost confidence in Rare no matter who their owner is… whether it is Nintendo or Microsoft.
Topic: Rare working on 2 DS games (Read 27923 times)
