Play This! Not That!

When you are hungering for a game and your trigger finger is shaking you usually go to your video game closet and see what is available.  There's a game for every hunger and every mood, but the question is, who has time to organize it?  Well, instead of just swearing at your Playstation for not having every game imaginable I have set up a list of games that will satisfy and don't fall into mainstream repetition.

Itchy Trigger Finger

What you usually play:  Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefield, Gears of War, Bioshock Infinite

Have you considered:

Singularity

Premise: A Russian island, long abandoned, has secret time travel energy brimming all over it.  You play a special agent tasked with investigating the disturbance.  You will battle commandos, mutant time freaks and large monsters with a wide array of time based special attacks.

Team Work Mood

What you usually play:  Left 4 Dead, Battlefield, Call of Duty Black Ops, Gears of War and Splinter Cell

Have you considered:

Resistance 2 Coop (PS3)

Premise:  You can fight as 1 of 3 classes: medic, specialist or commando.  Each has a special ability to fight against the oncoming alien Chimera.  Commandos have shields, Specialists can drop ammo and Medics can heal.  You can have up to 18 players at once and the battlefield changes based on how many players are playing.  It is a fast paced and satisfying coop fest.

Arcade/Fast Paced Racing

What you usually play:  Forza, Burnout, Mario Kart, Sonic Racing

Have You Considered:

Split/Second

Premise:  Race a plethora of exotic cars around dangerous tracks filled with accidents.  You can trigger these accidents to stop other racers from winning.  Perform drifts and boosts to activate traps in the racing arena.  All this is done on beautifully rendered graphics.

Adventure Time

What you usually play:  Legend of Zelda, Two Brothers, Ico

But have you considered:

Alice Madness Returns

Premise: An rated R Legend of Zelda.  You play the schizophrenic and psychotic Alice who must venture to Wonderland to stop the evil darkness from taking over.  This is a dark story with plenty of creepy moments, but you will also find tons of dungeons, puzzles and knife wielding fun.

How Call of Duty Has Infected Every FPS To Date

Remember the good ol' days when an FPS game was either World War II, Cacodemons or James Bond.  Those were the days when heroes were simple, marines were not afraid to venture into Hell and multiplayer meant you actually had four friends.  Those days were over the day a few employees of Medal of Honor started to veer off the pack and make their own World War II game.

(Let's Fast Forward)

Inifinity Ward decided to take their World War II recipe, add some modern combat, and create one of the most tried and true shooting formulas.  Winner of multiple game of the year awards, MW forever changed how we classify shooters.  Now every Tom, Dick and Harry has followed this formula to the T, making Call of Duty the grandfather of modern shooting.

And because they have created game after game, every shooter has to (is compelled to) follow these rules.  Here are the unbreakable rules of every mainstream shooter.

Iron Sights:

Iron Sights makes a lot of sense, but it didn't make sense until Call of Duty made it a huge part of their gameplay system.  Before that, Serious Sam, Max Payne, Master Chief and Duke Nukem would not be caught dead looking down their sights.
Every serious shooter now will not let you have accurate weapon firing unless you aim down your sight with the left trigger.  It has to be the left trigger or gamers will change it or not play it.  Even 3rd person shooters require aiming down the site (with the left trigger) in order to fire properly.  Aiming down the sight, being the official way to shoot enemies, has affected multiplayer strategies immensely.

Regenerative Health


Technically, Halo 2 was the first user of the regenerative health concept.  It should be noted that Bungie was making regen health in order for gameplay to be smoother and more arcade like.  This kind of health system makes a whole lot of sense on a science fiction shooter where the player is wearing an armor suit.

And then Call of Duty decided to adopt it.  Your flesh bound warrior could take multiple bullets in the chest and legs without feeling any of the effects.  All he had to do was hide behind a box for a few seconds and he was good as new.  This removed the scavenging and health restoration that were popular in every FPS game before it.  No longer were your characters taking breaks to find supplies and get health, but now they were kicking down every door and going in guns blazing.

So many games have adopted that unrealistic health management system that it actually makes more sense to tell you the games that do not have it (I can only think of Resistance 3 and Singularity at the moment).  This one gameplay quirk belongs next to the reasoning behind female armor logic and perks.  Speaking of perks.

Rewards For Winning

Call of Duty made it official with Modern Warfare, if you win X number of times you get something that helps you win even more.  They decreed that every multiplayer game from here on out must have recon planes, atomic bombs and drones as part of their quirks.  Multiplayer arenas have been drastically "improved" so now every online game gives you some kind of reward for killing lots of people.  Not only that, but this reward system is only for those who survive and don't die (though Modern Warfare 3 changed that).

This has had such a freeze on multiplayer shooters that rival followers of the Call of Duty method would dare not change the recipe.  Doing so would kick them out of the proper shooter club and deem the game different."

Linear Gameplay

I remember when Medal of Honor Airborne was released and EA Games boasted that the gameplay was multi-directional and could be completed at the will of the gamer.  It would replace that boring one direction gameplay and replace it with variety and decisions.  Then Modern Warfare was released and it had all the great cinematic clinchers of a Steven Segal movie.  Slow motion gun fights, nuclear explosions, bullets flying and people yelling pumped the adrenaline.  Guess what?  EA has yet to go back to a non-linear gameplay and is happy making their own brand of linear modern combat shooters. In fact, everyone is content with the linear gameplay.  I am not saying Call of Duty invented linear gameplay, but there was a time when next gen games boasted in the open area and freedom of a shooter.  Only the boring and uninspired games would be classified as linear.  You could strategize in Rainbow Six or find secrets in Doom.  That is no longer the cool thing.  Now tight and confined spaces are hip in the shooter realm.  Following the straight line of slow motion and explosions with a hearty chunk of scripted events is the cool way to go.  Want to do some exploration?  Nope, all doors are locked and your AI team mates get angry for you not following the mission.  There are still open world shooters that force the gamer to use strategy, but they are not part of the Call of Cool Club.

 Machine Gun Worship

This one element of shooting has forever tattooed that rhythm and feel of all popular combat shooters.  This is the rule that all shooters must worship and strive for the automatic rifle.  This automatic rifle must have a scope or an acog visual.  A level without a machine gun or automatic rifle is considered foreign and outside the norms of gameplay.  A shooter cannot survive on pistols, rocket launchers and shotguns, in fact very few games care very little about them compared to the machine gun optimization.  automatic weapons are like the muscle cars of racing games or the star players in sports games, you would be really disappointed if they did not come in.  Now a shooter must have at least ten different machine guns of various sizes, clips and feels or else it isn't a real shooter.

You may be thinking, "isn't that realistic how actual warfare works?  Wouldn't it make sense to portray lots of machine guns."  Yes and no.  Yes there are tons of automatic weapons on this Earth, but the average American soldier has one rifle and one side arm.  They usually only carry about 2 clips (about 30 bullets) and have to ration them off wisely.  The idea behind picking up random rifles off dead bodies in warfare and each gun having 200 bullets is ridiculous.  But it works and that is the unbreakable rule of shooters.

Xbox One Vs. PS4 (What are gamers really looking for?)

Can Gaming Consoles Keep Up with What gamers Really Want?

The numbers and peripherals may not be enough.

Back in the Early 2000's PS2 and Xbox had some pretty clear differences.  Xbox was an American focused company that utilized a lot of PC software and showed off crisper graphics, while the PS2 was the import king, giving tons of RPGs and Japanese games.

Now the PS4 and Xbox One have unveiled their next generation models and it seems like both companies are fighting for the same market.  What does the gamer care about?  Here is a list of what the gamer's care about

1. Will it Be Pretty and Smooth?

PS4 uses a Jaguar processor with an AMD chip, while the XB1 uses an 8-Core CPU.  Loads of internet sources will tell you that the PS4 has the better hardware or that XB1 has the better layout, but you have to remember one thing; everything is speculation thus far.  We will be lucky if everything speculated comes out accurately within a year.  I remember when the original Xbox came out and my friend was bragging about how this system could "be upgraded so you never have to buy a new console" or that the graphics are "3x the power of the PS2."  We like to hear those numbers pre-purchase because it gives us security in our buying decision. Those numbers all sound impressive, but in the end the average gamer is looking for two things...

Will the game look pretty?

Will it run smoothly?

But then you have the peripherals like the Kinect, the controller, the Eyetoy, and the Illumiroom.  Both companies are fighting to put motion control and voice activation in their games so that will be really close (unless Sony scraps their motion gaming again).  The Illumiroom is going to be expensive and requires that you have a pretty sizable living room.  It will be as exciting as 3D television. If you are like me. you are going to buy a third-party controller to save money (Thank you Walmart).  The only reason I would make a purchase for one over the other is if one company decides to scrap motion gaming (ahem...Sony).

2.  Will It Scratch My Shooter and Sports Itch?

If you are studying on which system to buy then you probably don't care at all that Nintendo Wii U has a huge head start.  You are probably looking for that mind blowing shooter to wow your bros (or sis') in the dorm room.  You have a choice between Killzone Shadow Fall and the inevitable Halo 5.  Also, don't forget the closet full of military shooters that will topple the market.  If you are not into that then you will probably be looking for the experience grinding, fully customizable dragon slaying RPG.  Both systems would not be caught dead without one.  You might be into the sports franchises in which case Sony's market has the slight advantage, but in most cases you are pleased with 2K and EA.  The point is that both systems will scratch that itch.  The question is...what story will you be more loyal to?  Do you want to get deeper into The Helghast or venture further into the Brute war?  It would have made a difference in the Xbox/PS2 war when Xbox was the leading supplier of sci-fi games, while Sony cared more about Japanese offerings.  Now both systems promise to be overly saturated.

Since we are up to our necks in sequels, I really think the system that will win over the new people is the one that produces an original game away from the shooter/sports agenda.

3. Will it Last?

Sony and Microsoft are betting their entire fortunes that you will throw away all your games and previous systems to get their new system.  They are confident that you will treat last year's model as crap and throw it all away for the new stuff.  In the 7 years it takes to make a new system, they will be asking us to do that again.  This seems to be the norm for systems that lack backwards compatibility.  Did we get won over by new games or prettier sequels?  I bet these new systems will make you crap yourself in excitement, but I can't help wonder if the gamer has been reduced to a formula.  A few sequels here and there, a few digital contents here, a Netflix over there and a Facebook to have the complete package.  Let's not forget that game technology is becoming more like food buffets.  Video games are no longer a single purchase investment that you get to take home.  Now they are a digital subscription on a cloud.

As a Bible scholar who cares deeply for the soul, I don't think more digital cramming is good.  The routine of buying mind blowing software every 7 years, racking up tons of digital content and throwing it all away is absurd.  We were never made to be so reckless in our purchases.  I don't care how many frames per second and pixels you have.  Jesus said it best..."The treasures of Earth fade away, rust and get eaten by moths".  Our treasure, to put it in modern terms, lose their value and purpose in 7 years.

In the end, both systems are doing phenomenally well at ensuring fun and mind blowing entertainment.  It really comes down to what franchises you want to see grow.  The question you need to ask yourself is...is it worth drooling over?