I recently picked up the Wonderful 101 and have been having a blast with it. The bright colors, lively music, likable characters, and over-the-top action make it a must play. This is despite some areas that could have used a bit more polish such as a few trial-and-error gameplay sections and some difficulties with the game registering some unite morphs. However, in playing this and watching the new God of War reveal trailer, I'm concerned that big-budget action games are going to undergo the same fate that survival horror did a few years ago.
Now, when I say action games, I don't mean third-person shooters such as Gears of War, Uncharted or Dark Souls. Those games are released on a regular basis and they're pretty much the driving force of the industry. The types of games I'm referring to are the kind of character action games such as Viewtiful Joe, God Hand, Devil May Cry, and Ninja Gaiden. These types of games were known for their brutal difficulty, emphasis on over-the-top action, and grading systems which judged the player's actions based on how skillful the player could go through a level. However, besides the fact that two of these have had subpar games be released in recent years such as Yaiba Ninja Gaiden Z, Ninja Gaiden 3, and the highly controversial DmC: Devil May Cry, it's as if no developer outside of Platinum Games has any interest in releasing fun, over-the-top hack n' slash games. This is most evident as the recent God of War seems to be aiming for a type of "high art" gameplay, taking cues from the Last of Us in terms of narrative structure and Dark Souls for the slow paced aggressive gameplay. The thing is, God of War already had it's fast-paced, frenetic style of gameplay. The God of War games have a history of being both fast-paced and steadily improving on the gameplay over time. God of War 1 and Chains of Olympus were a pretty by-the-numbers affair with a focus more on just beating the crap out of everything that moved with some puzzle solving thrown in. By God of War 3, however, the combat had been improved significantly and relied more on player skill especially to clear the higher difficulties. This is why it's so surprising to see the new God of War going in this supposed "new direction". Combat looks to be more "intense" but it appears to have a greater emphasis on button mashing as opposed to player skill and a story.
This is actually something I've been wanting to cover for sometime, but it appears that games have been recently trying to get more focus towards having grand stories and dropping most of their focus in gameplay. The thing game developers need to understand is that most games over the past 30 years have had compelling stories without having to yank control away from the player or dumbing down the gameplay. Games like Devil May Cry 3, Metal Gear Solid, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and Xenoblade Chronicles all managed to tell fantastic stories without ever yanking control away from the player for too long. My biggest concern is the industry will want to turn all of their games into titles into stuff like Heavy Rain and Dragon's Quest to be credited as a 10 out of 10 gameplay extravaganza while neglecting the core gameplay.
I know most action games don't have deep compelling stories but this is why gaming continues to appeal to me to this day. There are thousands of games in a variety of genres that focus on entertaining gamers with a wide-variety of interests. But until we get out of this comfort zone where everyone feels like their newest title can't appeal to the masses unless it's high art, then I'm worried that we could end up losing several genres. I know there are still plenty of indie developers that will always cater to the niche crowd's tastes and Platinum Games has done a fine job putting out quality action titles. But unless there is that big budget title that can come out and attract the masses, it could be a long time before we see something along the caliber of Devil May Cry or God Hand.
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