Agreed. I am very curious as to who he will be working with from now on, though, since it sounds like some other company is already chosen. Not very many truly innovative companies working in the Japanese gaming industry nowadays, especially compared to Sega (minus Sonic Team).
You know shephard didn't hit their sheep with the rod, right? You know it's a shephard's rod being mentioned, right? That line from the bible is pretty strictly against corporal punishment!
Would have a lot of problems finding truly pacifist religions, since they have an amazing ability to get completely wiped out fairly quickly nowadays.:( But religions that preach gratuituous sex are very common, historically, and many of them aren't actually all that violent compared to stuff like Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
Isn't it the case that humankind, unlike most other species, appears to exhibit a strong preference for enganging in procreating activities in 'private', whereas we, like most other species, have nothing at all against exhibiting our strength and prowess in war-like activities in public (particularly if male)?!
I actually think the vast majority of your assumptions here are simply wrong, and often simply cultural propoganda. Like the huge importance modern people put on hunting in traditional gatherer-hunter societies, even usually naming it wrong.:)
Much of humankind has no problem with public procreation - AFAWK, for most of humanity's pre-/history we made freaking religions out of, well, freaking. Many of these still exist to this day, or they have been modified enough to be more symbolic - but look and you can find them. Certain modern (and agressive) cultures do have problems with public sex, but since something like five religions dominate the planet right now, many of them descended from the same sources and designed for the same aims (non-subsistance farming is what god wants you to do), this isn't surprising at all. And many of them used to be far more sexual - see Easter, for an obvious example. Or look at just how huge a business of pornography is the in the USA - obviously someone likes to look at other people having sex, even if it isn't considered completely public.
Many of our closest animal relatives have no problems with public sex, so it isn't unexpected that we would be the same way. Whereas many other animals actually do prefer to be private (probably especially animals that are really vulnerable to predators, which is simply not true for most human-esque mammals - we can screw without any real worry of being, errr, eaten).
War-like activities is kind of tricky to discuss - do you mean war-like as in near-genocidal modern warfare, a very new invention (last 10,000 years or so, and initially only in areas like the Fertile Crescent), or more traditional tribal warfare, which is more like just brawling? The latter I would argue is very common among all sorts of species, especially mammals. The previous is uncommon even in humans, though you could argue some animals like ants practice it. If nothing else, I don't feel humanity has shown itself to be all that agressive in day-to-day life, compared to more conventional predators like cats. We have certainly constructed societies and peer groups that can accomplish great amounts of violence, but I am not convinced this demonstrates any innate violent attitude.
So yeah, I would say it is backwards.:) You could certainly make the argument that it isn't for our culture, but our tiny culture (compared to the millions of years humans have existed) != what humanity is.
*There's the problem that creative individuals aren't being drawn to the medium. Or, dare I say, the problem that individuals who lack vision and ambition aren't being drawn to the medium. Folks who are satisfied to re-create the simplistic games that fascinated them as children, rather than explore the full potential of the medium. (Boy that one's going to get me in trouble.) I think we all fight this one within ourselves, and it's a worthwhile fight.
There's the problem that people mistake complexity (as in anti-simplicity) as a requirement for good art.:)
I may be reading into your words a bit (we probably need an actual game example), but doesn't a game design that has the ability to captivate a child suggest it has some kind of basic power that is worth paying attention to? Plenty of 'adult games' in meatworld also have analogues in children's games - sports, theater, music (sing-alongs, etc.), and card games, for example. Theater may be a much more intricate (and expensive) form of the child's 'dress up and pretend' game design, but it still follows the basic principles and the goal to explore an element of the world.
I think innovation (as commonly discussed) is massively overrated in gaming, especially when it comes to discussing its ability to be art. A painting isn't art most of the time because it is innovative alone - it is enough that it is just a 'good painting'. Likewise, you don't invent a new language every time you write a poem or a book, but I think that is what a lot of people are suggesting when they talk about innovations in gaming. Early game types like shmups or side-scrolling platformers have seen only a fraction of their potential as an artform, but are already being (figuratively) thrown in the fireplace by publishers and gamers alike because they are "just not innovative enough".
New features and 'wrinkles' are certainly welcome (how about a shmup where one player assembles the level on the fly using some kind of interface similar to a card game?), and I think they are the real innovation we want in gaming. Not brand new genres or game styles (that don't even work/play as well their ancestors) every year, which is what so many gamers mistakenly complain they do want. Most of the time they certainly don't buy from the developers that do just this.
The tools (game types) we have already developed are amazing - there is no harm in using them a lot more!
Your other points notwithstanding, Apple does a significant amount of marketing, and has for a long time. The coolness of corporations is manufactured, always. Apple has just succeeded in making some people think they feel that way 'just because'.
Actually, because of their rather unique "1 account = 1 player character" rule, they are potentially making even more money. People who want to be a Jedi really have to get more than one account, and they are probably a much higher percentage of the population than the 'normal' gamers who would get multiple accounts.
I think a big part of this downturn in Japanese dominance is perhaps because Western gamers are getting sick of bad scripts, dialogue, dubs, and the like. I actually hope this is the case, though some of the article's reasons are probably on the money too (especially Western devs being more innovative lately).
Much of the localization work being done on Western releases of Japanese games is horrendous. Sure, actual script translation are finally getting better, more or less. They still aren't good enough, usually, because it is really hard work to translate the themes of such a foreign art piece, so stories come off as far more hackneyed, cliche, or just plain silly than they should (the fact that a lot of games are all of these on purpose, because they are designed more for non-game merchandice than anything, is another problem that Western games are fairly free of).
But since more games now include voice-work of some kind or another, we have a whole new area for Japanese companies to slack off on. Sure, a little Engrish can be funny from time to time, as can a silly English dub. But I know if I get a domestic release that contains either, it just screams "cheapness", maybe even "we don't care about you stupid gaijin and you have no taste". It is especially bad when companies release a DVD game with no options for the original Japanese dub (Say, SHENMUE II!!!!). Anime companies finally got it, and so should game companies.
A lot of the problems with poor dubbing are simply cultural - the US simply doesn't have the foundation for cheap, excellent voice acting that is possible in Japan. But if you look at lot of the big sellers in the West in the past few years, I think you will find that many of them have ridiculously good English voice acting, like the GTA games. My theory is that gamers find this more important nowadays, and are buying accordingly. (This drive for good voice work is also especially hurting companies like Nintendo, IMO, since I simply think they don't care about quality voice work of any kind in their Japanese developed games - you aren't working with cartridges anymore, guys!)
This may be naive of me - maybe quality of story presentation means nothing to most Western gamers, like it seems to be the case with reviewers ("MGS2 has an amazing, original, unique storyline! I loved it!" Bleh!). But it wouldn't hurt for Westerners to get a little more attention and money devoted to localizing for us.
I won't even start a rant on the amount of censorship some US games get. Okay, I will at least bitch about Boktai - white blood?? In a vampire game? WTF?
(And yes, some games do get excellent translations and dubs, or at least companies do smart stuff like invent a language, a la Panzer Dragoon or ICO. But they are too much a minority.)
Your 'most original first party games' list is exclusively games that have had at least 3 prequels? Come on. No one seriously buys a Gamecube for original games, because it really doesn't have anything significant that wasn't already on the N64, SNES, etc. or a clone of a popular game (Pikmin = Lemmings). There are plenty of logical reasons to own a GC (you have small hands, really like your GBA, only buy a few games a year, you belong to a Nintendo-mascot worshipping cult, etc.), you don't need to make one up.:P
And if you haven't noticed, the gaming world no longer has must-haves for every gamer (ie Super Mario Brothers 3). Plenty of people bought Xbox for DOA3, or Project Gotham, or Panzer Dragoon Saga, or JSRF, etc. The important thing with consoles is to have a big enough variety of quality games that nearly any gamer can find something they would like.
What do you mean by no ability? Like no experience or no inate talent?
Really both, IMHO. Yes, they certainly did train, but I never got the feeling they did actual real martial arts training - it seemed more orientated around learning the specific choreography, which is understandable. But the real point is that learning martial arts takes a long time. In my own experience, it was a good three or so years of training (though admittedly less intense than what the Matrix actors did, and I was young) before I felt even basically competent in a comparativly simple martial art like shotokan karate - and still, you certainly wouldn't want to pay to see me do it in a film. I can't imagine how much training people like Jackie Chan or Jet Li had before they started doing it in films, but I would guess at least ten years. Even then, plenty of people do martial arts for that long, and they aren't in films - talent does count for a lot, just like in acting.
Obviously most viewers do seem satisfied with the martial arts in the Matrix films. But I felt that, especially in the more complicated scenes in Reloaded, it just didn't hold up. Very slow, not really smooth - it really seems like they memorized a couple of sets of two or three moves at once and just linked them together, if you can follow me. It doesn't flow right, it feels choppy. Watch in a 'real' martial arts film how the actors will do extended fight sequences against numerous people - they flow well, it really seems like they know martial arts (because they do). The Matrix sequences feel more like the staccato feel of a fighting game - a series of short move combos, roughly linked together.
NForce does rule, though I wish they would be a little more open with the driver specs (don't want to be tied to one OS if I get one).
It is funny, to some extent, that it isn't even so much the fact that ATI has improved (though they still have), but more that NVidia has dropped the ball themselves that makes them so less popular. Ah well, they could still certainly perform a turnaround.
The point is that the Matrix fight sequences are DULL. It is obvious that most of the actors have no real martial arts ability, which leads to all of the boring 'choppy' fight sequences. They just don't compare to a decent Jet Li, Jackie Chan, etc. film, even if they are a little fancier in the camera and set design areas.
How many gunfights did Revolutions have? I wouldn't call any of the brief sequences in which they fired guns to be a 'gunfight'. In particular, I think this is why the action sequences were so dull - it is very easy for an actor to pretend to use a gun. Pretending to be a martial artist is much harder to pull off, as Reloaded proved...
The podrace alone was more exciting than anything Reloaded managed to do...
Actually, it was mainly because ATI's fastest product at the time was way beyond what NVidia was capable of providing. NVidia had a lot of delays getting their latest cards out. Apparently the newest NVidia cards do run Doom3 a little faster, but that is using a special renderpath that is lower precision, among other things. Using the 'standard path' ATI is using, they get about half-speed.
That said, ATI's cards are definitely faster nowadays.
I agree that what you are saying works great in theory, but I just can't think of any games that pull it off 100% of the time. Hell, not even 95% of the time, which might be enough. If you have some examples of games that have, I would love to hear them.
Also, I think you would need to add to your process a means to make the AI respond to the camera as well - so enemies don't attack if they aren't visible, for example. And I don't think the problem is so much that it is processing-intensive (though I could be very wrong), but that it can be very intensive on the player's 'processing'. Sudden or unexpected camera movements can really confuse or frustrate the player. I am not sure you could get this to work outside of a handful of specific game designs - like you said, fairly slow and predictable stuff. It is not clear to me that those types of games are really what we want to strive for...
What it comes down to is this: I, and many many other gamers (especially the coveted 'casual' market), don't play games because it is fun to control a camera. Certainly in some genres (like FPS, which I forgot to mention), the whole gameplay is essentially camera control, and that is okay, because they make it fun. Racers and rail shooters are other genres in which the camera isn't a problem. But having to worry about camera control in a fast-paced action platforming game sucks. I don't want to have to think about moving the camera, it just adds complexity without adding any real fun. It is shoddy game design, and unlike many others, I don't think it is fixable for most game genres.
The Biohazard camera is like that because the backgrounds are all prerendered, with the exception of Code Veronica. Maybe the film camera angle thing makes a good excuse, but let's be honest - it is like that because of technical limitations. And seriously: shooting enemies that you can't see because they are offscreen sucks. Again, it is just shoddy game design. Maybe you put up with it, but my point is that we shouldn't have to.
You know, I didn't mind the camera issue too much initially, like back in the Mario64 days. But that was years ago, and in most cases the cameras have even gotten worse, not better. It saps the fun out of games, and the game industry needs to start really addressing that.
I am not sure what you are saying. Is it that Capcom hasn't made new games other than the first game in a new series? Because that is kind of a duh statement. If it is that they haven't made new series since the Playstation 1 days, that is simply wrong. Powerstone, Auto Modellista, Viewtiful Joe, Tech Romancer (technically a sequel, but plays radically different from its prequel, with only a secret character being from the original), Devil May Cry, Steel Batallion, etc.
And though the series simply isn't very good, IMO, the Dino Crisis games have innovated constantly. The first one was a RE clone, but with lots more combat, as well as a fully 3D environment. The second was essentially an action-RPG game, if my memory recalls, even further from its RE roots. This new one is now a space-action game, playing more like a poor man's Gunvalkyrie than RE.
I do agree Capcom has rested on their laurels too much sometimes (Darkstalkers sprites, for example!), but they are still plenty innovative. Did you miss out on the Dreamcast, maybe? That featured much of Capcom's modern innovation.
And though I didn't like Alpha/Zero, Street Fighter III was seriously cool. Pretty much all new characters, radical new mechanics like parrying, etc.
The biggest problems that lead to camera complaints: 1. Attacking something offscreen. See Biohazard, Dino Crisis, etc. 2. Missing a jump, etc. because of a bad camera angle (or oftentimes unexpected camera movement). See all 3D Platformers.
The Spidey camera was decent, but it was still really bad indoors, for example. A lot of game reviewers, as well as gamers in general, are starting to get very sick of having to deal with camera issues. Devs have been attempting since at least Mario64 to make a perfect camera that the player would never have to mess with, and outside a few genres that lend themselves well to the camera, have failed to this day. The best they can get out of them is that it just screws over the player very rarely. It is becoming clear that this 3D camera thing is never going to be perfect (outside of some massive new control device coming around, like VR goggles), and that is pretty frustrating. Especially because the whole camera issue was already solved basically at the start of gaming, in the age of side- or top-scrolling classics. Hopefully more games will go back to that now that 3D movement is proving not all it is cracked up to be...
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Agreed. I am very curious as to who he will be working with from now on, though, since it sounds like some other company is already chosen. Not very many truly innovative companies working in the Japanese gaming industry nowadays, especially compared to Sega (minus Sonic Team).
You know shephard didn't hit their sheep with the rod, right? You know it's a shephard's rod being mentioned, right? That line from the bible is pretty strictly against corporal punishment!
What do you think Easter was about? :)
:( But religions that preach gratuituous sex are very common, historically, and many of them aren't actually all that violent compared to stuff like Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
Would have a lot of problems finding truly pacifist religions, since they have an amazing ability to get completely wiped out fairly quickly nowadays.
That was the parent post's point - that is freaking backwards and bizarre, man.
Isn't it the case that humankind, unlike most other species, appears to exhibit a strong preference for enganging in procreating activities in 'private', whereas we, like most other species, have nothing at all against exhibiting our strength and prowess in war-like activities in public (particularly if male)?!
:)
:) You could certainly make the argument that it isn't for our culture, but our tiny culture (compared to the millions of years humans have existed) != what humanity is.
I actually think the vast majority of your assumptions here are simply wrong, and often simply cultural propoganda. Like the huge importance modern people put on hunting in traditional gatherer-hunter societies, even usually naming it wrong.
Much of humankind has no problem with public procreation - AFAWK, for most of humanity's pre-/history we made freaking religions out of, well, freaking. Many of these still exist to this day, or they have been modified enough to be more symbolic - but look and you can find them. Certain modern (and agressive) cultures do have problems with public sex, but since something like five religions dominate the planet right now, many of them descended from the same sources and designed for the same aims (non-subsistance farming is what god wants you to do), this isn't surprising at all. And many of them used to be far more sexual - see Easter, for an obvious example. Or look at just how huge a business of pornography is the in the USA - obviously someone likes to look at other people having sex, even if it isn't considered completely public.
Many of our closest animal relatives have no problems with public sex, so it isn't unexpected that we would be the same way. Whereas many other animals actually do prefer to be private (probably especially animals that are really vulnerable to predators, which is simply not true for most human-esque mammals - we can screw without any real worry of being, errr, eaten).
War-like activities is kind of tricky to discuss - do you mean war-like as in near-genocidal modern warfare, a very new invention (last 10,000 years or so, and initially only in areas like the Fertile Crescent), or more traditional tribal warfare, which is more like just brawling? The latter I would argue is very common among all sorts of species, especially mammals. The previous is uncommon even in humans, though you could argue some animals like ants practice it. If nothing else, I don't feel humanity has shown itself to be all that agressive in day-to-day life, compared to more conventional predators like cats. We have certainly constructed societies and peer groups that can accomplish great amounts of violence, but I am not convinced this demonstrates any innate violent attitude.
So yeah, I would say it is backwards.
*There's the problem that creative individuals aren't being drawn to the medium. Or, dare I say, the problem that individuals who lack vision and ambition aren't being drawn to the medium. Folks who are satisfied to re-create the simplistic games that fascinated them as children, rather than explore the full potential of the medium. (Boy that one's going to get me in trouble.) I think we all fight this one within ourselves, and it's a worthwhile fight.
:)
There's the problem that people mistake complexity (as in anti-simplicity) as a requirement for good art.
I may be reading into your words a bit (we probably need an actual game example), but doesn't a game design that has the ability to captivate a child suggest it has some kind of basic power that is worth paying attention to? Plenty of 'adult games' in meatworld also have analogues in children's games - sports, theater, music (sing-alongs, etc.), and card games, for example. Theater may be a much more intricate (and expensive) form of the child's 'dress up and pretend' game design, but it still follows the basic principles and the goal to explore an element of the world.
I think innovation (as commonly discussed) is massively overrated in gaming, especially when it comes to discussing its ability to be art. A painting isn't art most of the time because it is innovative alone - it is enough that it is just a 'good painting'. Likewise, you don't invent a new language every time you write a poem or a book, but I think that is what a lot of people are suggesting when they talk about innovations in gaming. Early game types like shmups or side-scrolling platformers have seen only a fraction of their potential as an artform, but are already being (figuratively) thrown in the fireplace by publishers and gamers alike because they are "just not innovative enough".
New features and 'wrinkles' are certainly welcome (how about a shmup where one player assembles the level on the fly using some kind of interface similar to a card game?), and I think they are the real innovation we want in gaming. Not brand new genres or game styles (that don't even work/play as well their ancestors) every year, which is what so many gamers mistakenly complain they do want. Most of the time they certainly don't buy from the developers that do just this.
The tools (game types) we have already developed are amazing - there is no harm in using them a lot more!
Your other points notwithstanding, Apple does a significant amount of marketing, and has for a long time. The coolness of corporations is manufactured, always. Apple has just succeeded in making some people think they feel that way 'just because'.
Actually, because of their rather unique "1 account = 1 player character" rule, they are potentially making even more money. People who want to be a Jedi really have to get more than one account, and they are probably a much higher percentage of the population than the 'normal' gamers who would get multiple accounts.
Europe. Sold well in Japan, however.
I think a big part of this downturn in Japanese dominance is perhaps because Western gamers are getting sick of bad scripts, dialogue, dubs, and the like. I actually hope this is the case, though some of the article's reasons are probably on the money too (especially Western devs being more innovative lately).
Much of the localization work being done on Western releases of Japanese games is horrendous. Sure, actual script translation are finally getting better, more or less. They still aren't good enough, usually, because it is really hard work to translate the themes of such a foreign art piece, so stories come off as far more hackneyed, cliche, or just plain silly than they should (the fact that a lot of games are all of these on purpose, because they are designed more for non-game merchandice than anything, is another problem that Western games are fairly free of).
But since more games now include voice-work of some kind or another, we have a whole new area for Japanese companies to slack off on. Sure, a little Engrish can be funny from time to time, as can a silly English dub. But I know if I get a domestic release that contains either, it just screams "cheapness", maybe even "we don't care about you stupid gaijin and you have no taste". It is especially bad when companies release a DVD game with no options for the original Japanese dub (Say, SHENMUE II!!!!). Anime companies finally got it, and so should game companies.
A lot of the problems with poor dubbing are simply cultural - the US simply doesn't have the foundation for cheap, excellent voice acting that is possible in Japan. But if you look at lot of the big sellers in the West in the past few years, I think you will find that many of them have ridiculously good English voice acting, like the GTA games. My theory is that gamers find this more important nowadays, and are buying accordingly. (This drive for good voice work is also especially hurting companies like Nintendo, IMO, since I simply think they don't care about quality voice work of any kind in their Japanese developed games - you aren't working with cartridges anymore, guys!)
This may be naive of me - maybe quality of story presentation means nothing to most Western gamers, like it seems to be the case with reviewers ("MGS2 has an amazing, original, unique storyline! I loved it!" Bleh!). But it wouldn't hurt for Westerners to get a little more attention and money devoted to localizing for us.
I won't even start a rant on the amount of censorship some US games get. Okay, I will at least bitch about Boktai - white blood?? In a vampire game? WTF?
(And yes, some games do get excellent translations and dubs, or at least companies do smart stuff like invent a language, a la Panzer Dragoon or ICO. But they are too much a minority.)
How many Xbox games have had patches released for single-player bugs?
Your 'most original first party games' list is exclusively games that have had at least 3 prequels? Come on. No one seriously buys a Gamecube for original games, because it really doesn't have anything significant that wasn't already on the N64, SNES, etc. or a clone of a popular game (Pikmin = Lemmings). There are plenty of logical reasons to own a GC (you have small hands, really like your GBA, only buy a few games a year, you belong to a Nintendo-mascot worshipping cult, etc.), you don't need to make one up. :P
And if you haven't noticed, the gaming world no longer has must-haves for every gamer (ie Super Mario Brothers 3). Plenty of people bought Xbox for DOA3, or Project Gotham, or Panzer Dragoon Saga, or JSRF, etc. The important thing with consoles is to have a big enough variety of quality games that nearly any gamer can find something they would like.
Had no idea about that sale. Will be checking it out ASAP - thanks for the heads-up!
Good joke, even if we do disagree. :)
What do you mean by no ability? Like no experience or no inate talent?
Really both, IMHO. Yes, they certainly did train, but I never got the feeling they did actual real martial arts training - it seemed more orientated around learning the specific choreography, which is understandable. But the real point is that learning martial arts takes a long time. In my own experience, it was a good three or so years of training (though admittedly less intense than what the Matrix actors did, and I was young) before I felt even basically competent in a comparativly simple martial art like shotokan karate - and still, you certainly wouldn't want to pay to see me do it in a film. I can't imagine how much training people like Jackie Chan or Jet Li had before they started doing it in films, but I would guess at least ten years. Even then, plenty of people do martial arts for that long, and they aren't in films - talent does count for a lot, just like in acting.
Obviously most viewers do seem satisfied with the martial arts in the Matrix films. But I felt that, especially in the more complicated scenes in Reloaded, it just didn't hold up. Very slow, not really smooth - it really seems like they memorized a couple of sets of two or three moves at once and just linked them together, if you can follow me. It doesn't flow right, it feels choppy. Watch in a 'real' martial arts film how the actors will do extended fight sequences against numerous people - they flow well, it really seems like they know martial arts (because they do). The Matrix sequences feel more like the staccato feel of a fighting game - a series of short move combos, roughly linked together.
NForce does rule, though I wish they would be a little more open with the driver specs (don't want to be tied to one OS if I get one).
It is funny, to some extent, that it isn't even so much the fact that ATI has improved (though they still have), but more that NVidia has dropped the ball themselves that makes them so less popular. Ah well, they could still certainly perform a turnaround.
Since when have we, or any other modern country, had a free economy?
The point is that the Matrix fight sequences are DULL. It is obvious that most of the actors have no real martial arts ability, which leads to all of the boring 'choppy' fight sequences. They just don't compare to a decent Jet Li, Jackie Chan, etc. film, even if they are a little fancier in the camera and set design areas.
How many gunfights did Revolutions have? I wouldn't call any of the brief sequences in which they fired guns to be a 'gunfight'. In particular, I think this is why the action sequences were so dull - it is very easy for an actor to pretend to use a gun. Pretending to be a martial artist is much harder to pull off, as Reloaded proved...
The podrace alone was more exciting than anything Reloaded managed to do...
"It's simple, overspecialize and you breed in weakness."
Always liked that line.
Actually, it was mainly because ATI's fastest product at the time was way beyond what NVidia was capable of providing. NVidia had a lot of delays getting their latest cards out. Apparently the newest NVidia cards do run Doom3 a little faster, but that is using a special renderpath that is lower precision, among other things. Using the 'standard path' ATI is using, they get about half-speed.
That said, ATI's cards are definitely faster nowadays.
I agree that what you are saying works great in theory, but I just can't think of any games that pull it off 100% of the time. Hell, not even 95% of the time, which might be enough. If you have some examples of games that have, I would love to hear them.
Also, I think you would need to add to your process a means to make the AI respond to the camera as well - so enemies don't attack if they aren't visible, for example. And I don't think the problem is so much that it is processing-intensive (though I could be very wrong), but that it can be very intensive on the player's 'processing'. Sudden or unexpected camera movements can really confuse or frustrate the player. I am not sure you could get this to work outside of a handful of specific game designs - like you said, fairly slow and predictable stuff. It is not clear to me that those types of games are really what we want to strive for...
What it comes down to is this: I, and many many other gamers (especially the coveted 'casual' market), don't play games because it is fun to control a camera. Certainly in some genres (like FPS, which I forgot to mention), the whole gameplay is essentially camera control, and that is okay, because they make it fun. Racers and rail shooters are other genres in which the camera isn't a problem. But having to worry about camera control in a fast-paced action platforming game sucks. I don't want to have to think about moving the camera, it just adds complexity without adding any real fun. It is shoddy game design, and unlike many others, I don't think it is fixable for most game genres.
The Biohazard camera is like that because the backgrounds are all prerendered, with the exception of Code Veronica. Maybe the film camera angle thing makes a good excuse, but let's be honest - it is like that because of technical limitations. And seriously: shooting enemies that you can't see because they are offscreen sucks. Again, it is just shoddy game design. Maybe you put up with it, but my point is that we shouldn't have to.
You know, I didn't mind the camera issue too much initially, like back in the Mario64 days. But that was years ago, and in most cases the cameras have even gotten worse, not better. It saps the fun out of games, and the game industry needs to start really addressing that.
I am not sure what you are saying. Is it that Capcom hasn't made new games other than the first game in a new series? Because that is kind of a duh statement. If it is that they haven't made new series since the Playstation 1 days, that is simply wrong. Powerstone, Auto Modellista, Viewtiful Joe, Tech Romancer (technically a sequel, but plays radically different from its prequel, with only a secret character being from the original), Devil May Cry, Steel Batallion, etc.
And though the series simply isn't very good, IMO, the Dino Crisis games have innovated constantly. The first one was a RE clone, but with lots more combat, as well as a fully 3D environment. The second was essentially an action-RPG game, if my memory recalls, even further from its RE roots. This new one is now a space-action game, playing more like a poor man's Gunvalkyrie than RE.
I do agree Capcom has rested on their laurels too much sometimes (Darkstalkers sprites, for example!), but they are still plenty innovative. Did you miss out on the Dreamcast, maybe? That featured much of Capcom's modern innovation.
And though I didn't like Alpha/Zero, Street Fighter III was seriously cool. Pretty much all new characters, radical new mechanics like parrying, etc.
The biggest problems that lead to camera complaints:
1. Attacking something offscreen. See Biohazard, Dino Crisis, etc.
2. Missing a jump, etc. because of a bad camera angle (or oftentimes unexpected camera movement). See all 3D Platformers.
The Spidey camera was decent, but it was still really bad indoors, for example. A lot of game reviewers, as well as gamers in general, are starting to get very sick of having to deal with camera issues. Devs have been attempting since at least Mario64 to make a perfect camera that the player would never have to mess with, and outside a few genres that lend themselves well to the camera, have failed to this day. The best they can get out of them is that it just screws over the player very rarely. It is becoming clear that this 3D camera thing is never going to be perfect (outside of some massive new control device coming around, like VR goggles), and that is pretty frustrating. Especially because the whole camera issue was already solved basically at the start of gaming, in the age of side- or top-scrolling classics. Hopefully more games will go back to that now that 3D movement is proving not all it is cracked up to be...