14 DAY TRIAL // The gaming industry is really, really suffering. And the name of the disease is not piracy on the PC, restrictive DRM from the publisher or the impossibility of adapting RTS mechanics on gaming consoles. These are trivial matters with little or moderate impact on the gaming world. The big issue with the whole industry, publishers, developers, commentators, and the fans is that originality is in very short supply.
While penning the review calendar for this fall and taking a look at the release schedule, I discovered how rare original ideas have become. This fall, I plan on playing mostly sequels or sequels of sequels. Throw in some re-imaginings of old concepts and re-makes of more recent games and there you have it, those are the games that will be making headlines in the next six months. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky is now out. Civ IV: Colonization is going to be released today. Crysis Warhead is already out. We've got the third game in the Red Alert franchise coming soon. Fallout 3 will be attracting a lot of attention late in October and Call of Duty: World at War in November. I am pretty sure that all these games will be solid, some maybe a lot of fun, all very well promoted and most of them successful in both reviews and sales. But they will all have little to no original ideas.
I do know that there are indie games, small budget efforts to create something really, really different and that they sometimes cause quite a lot of impact, like the recently launched Brain, which generated a lot of buzz with its innovative time rewinding based puzzles. But there are previous few AAA titles that aim to create something entirely new. I look forward to Mirror's Edge, which now has an official release date, because with its no-gunplay-a-lot-of-running approach to gameplay, it will be something new, fresh. It could prove to be a bad game, but at least it has the guts to try something new. I am also hoping that Dead Space will be less of a traditional shooter and a new blend of horror and space adventuring so that the “Original” tab in my review document gets another title. In a weird move, the above two games come from Electronic Arts, which was supposed to be the anti-innovator.
Do you people know any other big fall releases that aim to be original? If so, drop a line using the comments form below.