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Casual and Hardcore suggest not just a divide in games, but also a divide in those that play them. You are either a casual fan or a hardcore one. With pop and classical you can still be really into games, but it's not an oxymoron anymore.
Old system: I'm hardcore into casual games.
New system: I'm hardcore into pop games.
I think this makes more sense personally."
Thanks for the front-paging Shoe!"
As much as I'd truly love to claim this is a problem within the video game sphere and no other, I feel that really our deep-rooted cultural sexism is just hidden far less in the games press than in other places. Female television presenters are still pretty before they're intelligent, and everyone was 'surprised' when Susan Boyle could sing (talented ugly people? Never!). I'm not really sure we can sort out our own problems before wider society sorts them out for itself.
At any rate I'm so glad to see comments like the above, people actually taking the issue seriously. I get the feeling on any other gaming site this discussion would have deteriorated into an ungodly mess by now.
Great article!"
@Jay: Nah, I'm sorry to say my letter wasn't personalised. If you're unsuccessful they'll usually tell you why, but generally it doesn't work the other way around."
The market for Guitar Hero games is over-saturated certainly, but I don't see this as a problem more than the fact that they're all basically the same game. Then again, you could make the argument that they're all so similar BECAUSE of the quick turn-around time on their development.
Is Call of Duty going the same way? Almost certainly. However, the Call of Duty series, unlike the Guitar Hero series, has multiple studios on it to ensure longer development cycles. Hopefully thanks to this the games will manage to differentiate themselves slightely from one another, which is more than GH managed to do over its final few iterations."
I think Mass Effect 2 is different in so far as Bioware went into it wanting to make a more refined, but very similar game to the original Mass Effect. With that in mind customer feedback aided them pretty nicely in deciding how to design many of the aspects of their game.
With DMC however, Ninja Theory is making a new game. They're not looking to refine Devil May Cry 4, they're looking to produce something completely new. With that in mind they would, in my opinion, be unwise to listen to a group of people who haven't played their game.
Also I'd like to thank everyone for commenting, as well as Aaron for front paging this. "
First off, I would kindly ask you not to make assumptions about what I do and do not know.
You bring up a point about ownership of the IP. Yes, of course you're right, Ninja Theory don't own the Devil May Cry name. However, they are the ones in charge of this DMC game, and they should have full creative control.
If Capcom wanted the next DMC game to be exactly the same then they would have made it themselves. The IP holders have decided they want change and the new arbiters are happy to oblige.
You talk about paying homage as if they've taken the Devil May Cry franchise and made an RTS or something. It's STILL a third person action game. It's STILL got a gothic setting. For all intents and purposes this is still a Devil May Cry game. Other franchises have deviated a whole lot more with each entry in the series and have still retained what it is that earns them their franchise name.
Think about Final Fantasy. Each game features a different setting, a different cast, and even different play mechanics, but because they retain the tone of the series it all fits together.
If DMC is a bad game it'll be because it's a bad game on its own merits. It has shit-all to do with how different it is from the past games. If everyone thought drastic change was a bad thing then we'd still be playing Mario in 2D. "
@Nicholas So your options change depending on what you think about? I literally had no idea that was possible. Weird..."
At their worst (ie in MGS4), Kojima's ridiculously frequent cutscene breaks ruin the entire flow of the game. You're just getting to grips with the game's setup, and then suddenly Kojima's forcing you to sit and listen to some dialogue which is for all intents and purposes awful.
This would be a problem if the frequent cutscenes were good, or even necessary, but for the most part they're far too long, saying in five minutes what could easily be said in just one line of in-game dialogue. "