Not Every Game is a Sequel

Earth Wind and Metal writes "In response to a recent article from the Guardian about the lack of original games, Siliconera selected ten brand new titles set for release in 2006 to keep your eyes on. Five of the games are new to the USA and the other five are making their world debut. The list includes the robot house sim Chibi Robo, sandbox mecha RPG Steambot Chronicles, Taito's DS cooking game Cooking Mama and of course Okami." I am *really* looking forward to Okami.

Comments

Other games

[scragz]

There are also spinoffs and prequels.

Where are the PC games?

[Chowderbags]

Seriously, what about Spore? Ok, maybe there's a tenuous connection to Sim Life, but seriously, Spore is gonna be a whole new thing.

The article doesn't mention a single PC game. Why talk about sequels vs original games without at least mentioning computer games?

Re:*sigh*

[HunterZ]

It's important to note that there's a spectrum between linear and open-ended, and the term "non-linear" covers a wide area in between the two. While I personally enjoy the open-ended RPGs that the parent poster described, I also tend to never beat them (after spending days looking under every rock and carting every piece of trash back to a shop, I eventually get distracted by some other game). On the other hand, Linear RPGs - which covers the vast majority of Japanese console RPGs - are something that I invariably get tired of because they start to feel like watching a (bad, really long) movie except that I have to hit the A button to keep going.

There's a balance, and I really *really* enjoy the exploration aspect of good RPGs, especially when it's mixed in with the right amount of story to keep me from feeling lost on my way to the end. In contrast, I *detest* being hand-held through a sigh-seeing show while being bombarded with boring dialogue and cliche story.

I also find the "getting lost" argument a little weak when I compare open-ended RPGs to platformers and such, although I suppose you could claim the latter to be harder to get lost in due to the subdivision of content created by having levels.