I know that pre-judging things is your...thing...however I can't help but feel you're just lashing out reflexively because of your strange fascination with idolising nostalgia. There's a strange flip side to all of this and that's Human Revolution. I know you loved the remake and I wonder if that would have been the case had you actually played the original. I suspect not. It would have been all piss and vinegar and fist waving and refusing to touch it.
What further hinders Syndicate is that you don't like EA a hell of a lot (how is BF3 going by the way?) If Human Revolution had been published by EA as a 'remake' of a game you cherished from the past - well - I doubt you'd have played it. I finished the original Deus Ex three times but I stopped playing Human Revolution half-way through. That would have made a good review but now it's a few months too late. Suffice to say that the remake did not achieve the awesome of the original.
So I don't really care about this whole nostalgia thing. Instead, Syndicate doesn't interest me for a whole other reason. Simply put it looks and sounds kinda generic - just check out that cookie-cutter video. Men running down an alley, guns fire, a woman with 'crazy' hair appears. People die. Cut to the credits. Blargh. I think the real tragedy here is the ingesting of a venerable old license and the (potential) shitting out of something truly dull. I reckon we all see it coming and know there's nothing we can do to stop it, but that won't make things any better when it finally splats on our desks. If it's awesome, I don't care how close to the original it is, I'll still play and love it. But it won't be awesome. It just won't.
It's precisely because it's generic that I think Jeremy is pissed off by it; I certainly know that's what annoys me. If this game was a shining example of innovative FPS - or alternatively a nothing new but really well polished cyberpunk-themed one - I'd be all over it. But look at that still: it's aping Arkham City & Brink and just generally looking like the usual knock-off masturbatory bullshit that just gets churned out by seemingly every asshole with a pirated copy of Photoshop.
What really surprises me, though, is the idea that with a sequel the title can be attached to either the theme or the mechanics of the original - or even just a minimal subset of such - with the other wholly discarded. Take the favourite whipping boy of Boris the angry bear, XCOM: at least it has elements of both game-play & theme. I totally got into Fallout 3, although it had a lot of us angry internet mens doing the rabble-rabble at release, for me they nailed the whole feel of the original games. The first-person perspective really aided immersion and V.A.S.T. was a nice compromise with its occasional turn-basedness.
So I have no real objection to re-imaginations, just if one is that fucking lazy it carries next to no resemblence to any of its predecessors, it's the equivalent of episode three onwards of pick-any-straight-to-dvd-franchise-you-like. With such things, the problem is nostalgia, but not like Jim thinks. Every time some obvious abortion like Syndicate slops its way towards us, it has far too many supporters who think fondly of either the originals or whatever look/feel/game-play du jour its ripped off, all of whom noisily demand that it's us who are blinded by our past and insisting we give what is clearly garbage a chance.
I know that pre-judging things is your...thing...however I can't help but feel you're just lashing out reflexively because of your strange fascination with idolising nostalgia. There's a strange flip side to all of this and that's Human Revolution. I know you loved the remake and I wonder if that would have been the case had you actually played the original. I suspect not. It would have been all piss and vinegar and fist waving and refusing to touch it.
ReplyDeleteWhat further hinders Syndicate is that you don't like EA a hell of a lot (how is BF3 going by the way?) If Human Revolution had been published by EA as a 'remake' of a game you cherished from the past - well - I doubt you'd have played it. I finished the original Deus Ex three times but I stopped playing Human Revolution half-way through. That would have made a good review but now it's a few months too late. Suffice to say that the remake did not achieve the awesome of the original.
So I don't really care about this whole nostalgia thing. Instead, Syndicate doesn't interest me for a whole other reason. Simply put it looks and sounds kinda generic - just check out that cookie-cutter video. Men running down an alley, guns fire, a woman with 'crazy' hair appears. People die. Cut to the credits. Blargh. I think the real tragedy here is the ingesting of a venerable old license and the (potential) shitting out of something truly dull. I reckon we all see it coming and know there's nothing we can do to stop it, but that won't make things any better when it finally splats on our desks. If it's awesome, I don't care how close to the original it is, I'll still play and love it. But it won't be awesome. It just won't.
It's precisely because it's generic that I think Jeremy is pissed off by it; I certainly know that's what annoys me. If this game was a shining example of innovative FPS - or alternatively a nothing new but really well polished cyberpunk-themed one - I'd be all over it. But look at that still: it's aping Arkham City & Brink and just generally looking like the usual knock-off masturbatory bullshit that just gets churned out by seemingly every asshole with a pirated copy of Photoshop.
ReplyDeleteWhat really surprises me, though, is the idea that with a sequel the title can be attached to either the theme or the mechanics of the original - or even just a minimal subset of such - with the other wholly discarded. Take the favourite whipping boy of Boris the angry bear, XCOM: at least it has elements of both game-play & theme. I totally got into Fallout 3, although it had a lot of us angry internet mens doing the rabble-rabble at release, for me they nailed the whole feel of the original games. The first-person perspective really aided immersion and V.A.S.T. was a nice compromise with its occasional turn-basedness.
So I have no real objection to re-imaginations, just if one is that fucking lazy it carries next to no resemblence to any of its predecessors, it's the equivalent of episode three onwards of pick-any-straight-to-dvd-franchise-you-like. With such things, the problem is nostalgia, but not like Jim thinks. Every time some obvious abortion like Syndicate slops its way towards us, it has far too many supporters who think fondly of either the originals or whatever look/feel/game-play du jour its ripped off, all of whom noisily demand that it's us who are blinded by our past and insisting we give what is clearly garbage a chance.
Fuck that.