Of course they are! One thing I was to know is why games like Assassins Creed with its beautiful graphics and enjoyable game play (
and even with its slightly repetitive combat mode) fall for 7.0 or 8.0 ratings when games which were far
more linear hit higher scores back in the day?
Is it because the people reviewing them don't
feel the same emotions as their '
retro' games gave to them?
Who knows! Nowadays games like
Bioshock get pulled down a peg or two because no online co-op or multiplayer. What happened to
SINGLE PLAYER GAMES!?
I swear nearly every title I played (apart from fighting games) were single player back in the day and I really enjoyed them! Resident Evil 4 got some fantastic reviews and no-one complained about it not having net-play compatibility, so why attack Bioshock?
Every time I read a review about a game that doesn't have co-op people complain. Or downloadable content they complain. If it has downloadable content straight away people nag we are getting ripped off and that the content should be there from the start! Then they moan more about the pricing of the content they wanted to download extra when it does come out!
People want anything online just because the hardware supports it. Some games just don't need to be online. Bioshock doesn't need online play. Assassins Creed doesn't need online play. I mean, what would you do with it? Complete the game faster than other people and compare times?
I have no idea what sparked this sudden post. I just feel that gamers are expecting so much out of a medium that simply entertained them as a child without realistic graphics and online play/content. Game Reviewers need to really think about this and the type of game because even mentioning it. If the game is single player, it's single player for a
reason.
/End Rant
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Also, don't get me started on people hating linearity. That is NOT dirty word.
I think a lot of it has to do with time. Back in the day, there wasn't as much stuff out. It was much easier to be new and innovative because all sorts of stuff hadn't been done before. Nowadays, not only has a bunch of stuff been done already, but companies are afraid to stray from industry standards and really push the envelope.
For example, and I'm not saying Bioshock is bad by any means, it's a fantastic game, but it's really just a decent FPS with a good story and a great setting. Again, it's a great game and deserves the praise it gets, but for me, it's just not as awe-inspiring as some of the stuff that was made back in the SNES days, when there was still a ton of stuff that hadn't been done before or explored yet.
I haven't played Assassin's Creed yet so I can't comment on it, but I know that I'm getting really burned out by the absolute tidal wave of FPS games coming out. I like FPS games, but at their core they're really all the same (which I suppose can be said of most genres, I guess I just feel it more since like 60-75% of the games that are released nowadays seem like they're shooters), and it's much harder for me to get excited about them. If I hadn't played a good shooter in like 3-4 years, I'd probably be screaming from the rooftops how Bioshock is the best game ever created. As it is, I've played so many FPSs that Bioshock was more of a "Oh, it's nice how this is a game with atmosphere and story, kind of like Half Life".
No really, I'm feeling some change too. I don't have the patience that I had in the past for genres like RTS and RPG.
agreed.
And what frustrates me most is that because its single player it means it's not worth buying! A rent! I mean wtf? I only rent games if I am not sure about them. I know we are not all rolling around in cash but game companies don't make the money if everyone is bloody renting and as much as I like 'FPS' we are going to end up in a pool of them if we don't start supporting games that don't have these qualities. Not everyone is online!
Tastes are changing, the way people look at games is very different from 10 years ago, even less I might think.
I do believe that if a great 2D game would appear on the PS3, it would get ripped off because it "didn't use the full capabilities of the system".
oh, and what's ruining originality and creativity? not only cashing in on the quick development time of online "arcade" games, but also the quick dev time of Wii and DS titles (not all of them, but most).
And on the flipside, plenty of shitty games have been made that have multiplayer or downloadable content. Tacking things on doesn't make them better.
Mario's getting near perfect scores. 98 on Metacritic.
Sometimes you just gotta' unplug the tubes and enjoy a good game.
Putting in multiplayer just because it's been mistaken as some sort of "standard" in a realm that shouldn't never be so uniform in the first place is a waste of time, money and resources. I respect 2K for having been smart enough to work that out.
Otherwise, I totally agree with you and Lauren. It's like buying a movie on DVD: if it's good enough, you know you'll watch it again, even if it's the same thing.
So even if the MP on CoD4 or Halo 3 is great, I do always wonder if one should take into consideration, or at leas give more importance, to the fact that sooner or later the MP part will be mostly gone.
Of course this just applies to games that don't support bots.
Elebits needs multiplayer.
"Multiplayer is nice, but shouldn't have to be expected in every game. I recall someone criticizing Zack & Wiki because it didn't have true co-op play. Umm, huh?"
Yep, that was me and I still stand by my original claims.
In this era, games are criticized for failing to provide a full experience. This means that COD4 will be knocked for not having co-op, Oblivion will be pushed to the side by people looking for multiplayer, and Rock Band will be criticized for not having Co-Op in World Tour Mode. This means that future games will need to integrate all standard features into the experience, or else they can expect to be shortchanged by many reviewers.
@ A New Challenger:
"I've seen reviews for Mario Galaxy that dock points for the co-op being "tacked on." It really makes you wonder what the review would have been like had that little feature just not been implemented at all."
I am not claiming that Galaxy's co-op play is "tacked on," because I have yet to try it out for myself, but isn't it better to provide nothing instead of a mode lacking in quality? If it wasn't implemented people would likely say little about it, because no one expects co-op in Nintendo games.
@ Jim Sterling:
"[i]Okay, we can say it's standard, but come on. Multiplayer so far only works if you're Halo, Gears or Call of Duty. What was the point of putting multiplayer into Overlord or any number of the XBLA games out there? Nobody plays them.
Putting in multiplayer just because it's been mistaken as some sort of "standard" in a realm that shouldn't never be so uniform in the first place is a waste of time, money and resources. I respect 2K for having been smart enough to work that out.[/i]"
And I respect Nintendo for putting multiplayer in Pikmin 2. Obviously, 2K shouldn't have tried to implement the multiplayer experience that actually found its way to retail. Strategy games on consoles don't need multiplyer!
Will saying that make it true...? Let's find out...
Did Metroid Prime 2 need a straight-up DeathMatch mode? No it didn't, and that is why it got axed in Corruption. Metroid does not need multiplayer, but that's not to say Prime 3 could not have benefited from it. Why couldn't Retro think up something more evolutionary than DeathMatch? Why couldn't they implement WiiConnect24 to integrate the multiplayer even further into the game?
As James Mielke said:
"If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who can't stand to see any change or innovation in their game of choice. "It must always stay this way!" That's the Dragon Quest syndrome right there, and is one of the reasons why game sales are declining in Japan. The number of things Nintendo could do to add connectivity features in Metroid are endless, and yet you guys think 'online' automatically equates with 'deathmatch.' If MP3 had, say -- to make things simple for the easily-prone-to-weep-at-change -- a cooperative mode a la Gears of War (pretend for a minute that Samus meets another person in the universe that doesn't want to shoot her) that was completely optional, are you going to bitch because the feature is in there, even though you don't ever have to touch it if you don't want to? I'm sure many of you would. Fucks up the 'purity' of the experience, right? That's just sad."
Why are you so long, no one is going to read that!
You make a valid point though, why is it that unless a game is released with every box ticked (co-op on and offline, multiplayer via split screen as well as online, DLC etc etc) reviewers like to knock the game down a notch.
It makes you think, if a major classic such as Ocarina of Time was released today would it receive the same reception as it did back in '98?
I honestly don't believe it would.
Trust me, the existence of online options does not mean that those options need to be played. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes rears its ugly head! If developers would actually think outside the box - and stop depending on team deathmatch - they could integrate multiplayer into universes such as Metroid and Bioshock effectively, however as of now they continue to revel in ignorance.