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Best and Worst of 2005
Next Generation is running a piece looking into the five biggest mistakes made in the gaming industry this year. On the other side of the coin, via GameSetWatch, an MTV News look at the finest moments in gaming in 2005. From the NextGen article: "And what did it turn out to be, this so-called Revolution? A GameCube in overdrive with a controller than can tell where you are and what you're doing with your hands. That was worth it, wasn't it? Not only that, but Nintendo has stated up front that they will not be competing with the likes of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Rather, they'll focus on gameplay. Graphics won't matter if you just focus on gameplay. If you believe in Nintendo, clap your hands! C'mon everybody! Clap louder!" I link to em'. I don't say I agree with them.
I'm as interested in and supportive of Nintendo, generally, as anyone here, but I have to say that, based on what we know so far, I agree with Matthews on his Revolution synopsis.
Specifically, I agree on two points:
First, the word about Revolution's processor power. It is understood that, these days, graphics hardware tends to be a truer example of what a console's graphics look like than raw CPU speed -- look at the DS, it's got souped-up GBA chips in it, an ARM7 and an ARM9, but its graphics are arguably better than the N64. (Mario Kart DS uses actual models for the drivers instead of the N64 version's scaled sprites.) It's also understood that, since the Revolution isn't targeting HD sets, it needs much less power to produce the same quality of visuals.
On the other hand, it's certainly possible for developers to make use of extra processing power. To a sufficently ingenious team and designer, that's golden. To someone thinking about creating the next SimCity-like simulation-game, every spare cycle is useful, and in the future that style of game will become more and more important as advances in graphic quality progresses further into diminishing returns compared to the time, energy and money put into improving them.
Second, his gameplay comments. I know I'm not the only one who thinks that Gamecube was a *little* disappointing. It is true that we had a number of really cool games that didn't appear on other systems: Pikmin, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, Animal Crossing, etc. But on the other hand, Luigi's Mansion was quite disappointing, Mario Sunshine, while great for what it was, was too similar to Mario 64, and Zelda Wind Waker, while it certainly possesses obvious strengths, is the seventh traditional Zelda game since the modern take on the formula was created in Link to the Past (1 SNES, 1 GB, 2 GBC, 1 GBA, 1 N64). Majora's Mask is the most interesting recent Zelda, in my mind, because it played around so much with the formula, and Four Swords Adventures, while not as interesting as the basic Zelda formula, at least did something clever and unexpected with it. Miyamoto himself said that Twilight Princess may be the last "traditional" Zelda game, and their developers have been heard in the past grumbling about how the Zelda dungeon system is showing its age.
Mind you, Nintendo still has the best designers in the industry. Sony may have Shadow of the Colossus and Katamari Damacy, but both their designers have acknowledged their debt to Miyamoto. Design well and truly *is* king in gaming, but like everyone's an armchair movie critic these days, everyone has an opinion on video games, even those they've given a rightful chance. It's so easy for a game to get torn down by the, frankly, incredibly stupid gaming culture because its different (one word guys: Celda).
Lots of great games (and there are some on PS2 as well) never get the respect they deserve. Nintendo's in a bit of a privilaged position, in that if they make something truly different and special, that many people will actually give it a chance because of Nintendo's history and reputation. Don't forget that even the godly Katamari Damacy is not a huge seller for Namco and has sold better in the United States than in Japan, and that much of its success can be traced, directly, to those early reviews and web articles, Insert Credit's among them, that praised it so highly and caused Namco to take the chance on releasing it in the U.S. It is possible that more people would have played it if it had been on Gamecube, despite its substantially smaller user base, because Gamecube owners are more likely to expect that kind of game!
That's Revolution's biggest promise, that the people who really know and care about gaming will get a system to call their own. That, mixed with the interesting new play styles made possible by the controller, has a chance of sparking a new resurgance of gaming with players, first drawn in by the controller and the hype potential of actually being able to play pretend swordfight in a video game, then kept around by Nintendo's historically strong design ability.