I’m Tom Stachowitz and this is my site.

E *yawn* 3

I suppose I’ll speak briefly about E3.  It’s the yearly video game expo and it promotes all the exciting new things being done within the video game industry.

Oh how I wish that were so.  Sure, there are some cool new little gameplay things - vertical cover and movement in one game, “go everywhere” niftiness in the new Prince of Persia, really fancy looking fanciness, etc - but there isn’t a lot of storyline or artistic innovation to be seen this year.  Again we have sequels upon sequels but even the new games aren’t stepping very far away from the now-standard grungy near-future, aliens guns and robots stuff or dark bloody fantasy.  It’s the “I boil with generic rage” issue - all of the protagonists are looking to be cookie-cutter caricatures.  If gaming is supposed to be becoming a real artistic medium then the characters need to change and evolve.

As an added bonus, I ran across a Craigslist posting offering a “vintage” 1996 laptop for sale.  That’s some ballsy marketing.

Sphere It

4 Comments

  1. Clearly you didn’t see trailer then.

    On a more serious note, I pretty much agree. Which is why I can’t stand most games trying to have a “story” this day, and why I love slightly messy games like Insecticide. Though I like Gears of War’s story and especially its dialogs for what they are.

    On yet another note, I really want an old laptop with a 486 processor and like 8 megs of RAM. CD drive optional.

    Comment by George K — July 17, 2008 @ 2:46 pm

  2. Wow, I managed to totally mess up that comment. Go me!

    The trailer I meant can be found here: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36746.html

    Comment by George K — July 17, 2008 @ 2:47 pm

  3. That made me happy because it’s funny :)

    I want to see a new Deus Ex 3 trailer.

    Comment by Tom — July 18, 2008 @ 1:37 am

  4. I found it was an excellent satire of all those CGI trailers that make people cry “BEST THING EVER” when they don’t show one second of gameplay. God of War 3 comes to mind.

    I’d like a Deus Ex 3 trailer too, mind. I was one of the deviants who liked #2.

    Comment by George K — July 18, 2008 @ 5:26 am

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