Are we reviving meaty single player games?

Josh
Saturday
6:04 pm

I have often referred to myself as a former gamer. Through the 80s and 90s, I was largely glued to computer and console screens, playing anything and everything my childhood, teen and young-adult wallets could afford.

But, when the 21st century kicked in, I found myself largely moving away from games.

I hate you so hard.

Publishers were seeing the cost of games skyrocket, and were increasingly wary of taking a risk. Surefire wins like titles from EA Sports and the perennial Maddens were automatic sells. No game came out without a multiplayer component — some, like the Quake series, even dropped once-fun single-player campaigns entirely.

I didn’t leave gaming — it left me.

I grew increasingly bored with ever-growing polygon counts, vertex shading and light bloom. Gameplay had hit a standstill. Doom 3 was a big nail in my gamer’s coffin — I’d anticipated a follow-up for years, and the screen shots looked chilling. But, once the game was installed, I booted it up to find gameplay that hadn’t changed in a decade.

"Headshot. Consider yourself pwned, n00b."

The scene online was worse; I had no desire to hear a 14-year-old question my sexual prowess and/or preferences because he could shoot my avatar more frequently, or because my once-stellar reflexes were being bypassed by teenage shooter wunderkinds. And forget online MMOs — who has that kind of time?

So, I pretty much retired from hardcore gaming, and hung my jersey in the rafters. I bought a Wii (the videogame equivalent of a minivan), and retired my aging gaming PC for an iMac.

And then Mass Effect happened, and everything changed.

Don’t worry — I’m not going to write another post about the game (but you should be playing it — really). But I think it may have marked the turn of a trend.

You see, with the huge commercial and critical success of Mass Effect, publishers paid attention. A single-player only game, if done right, could make a lot of cash and be a hit, with out cooperative play or an online experience.

Whether it was the direct success of Mass Effect, or the general turning tide of Gen X gamers like myself who’d shared similar experiences, a spate of single player games were greenlit, front-burnered and readied as A-list titles.

It's called the 1950s, kids. It was a decade. Look it up.

And, all of a sudden, after purchasing roughly 5 PC games since 2001, half a dozen titles are vying for my fifty bucks and precious free time: games like Alan Wake, Fallout: New Vegas, Mafia 2, Deus Ex III and Final Fantasy 13 are all looking to have a lot of depth.

Some are new titles, but many are lovingly crafted returns to 20th century games — proof that the gaming industry has seen Gen Xers aren’t willing to put up with the same rehashes of first-person shooters, but we’ll fork over cash for a great plot.