Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

The first review I’ve seen of Burnout Paradise is over at IGN and they liked what they played. There are some quibbles with a few of the things associated with the open world and the changes in the long-established gameplay formula in the Burnout franchise, but everything else is apparently great fun. This seems to support the idea that developers need to stretch or risk dooming popular franchises.

Had Criterion done a by-the-numbers Burnout 5 instead of leaving behind the straightforward yet fun arcade racing of Burnout Revenge, reviewers would have started calling the game for what it was, something Wombat on the CAGcast calls “M.O.T.S.” or More Of The Same. That’s not always a bad thing, but M.O.T.S. games need to be noticeably better, be it with minor innovations or higher levels of polish to avoid getting a been-there-done-that reaction — expensive polish that current-gen developers bemoan.

A few key games headed our way in the months ahead have hopefully learned this lesson as well. Here are the lessons I hope were learned by the developers of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4 as they grapple with the leap to the current generation of high-definition, internet-connected consoles. Before I go after those two giants, I’d like to bow my head for what looks like it might be a MOTS of no doubt excellent craftsmanship — Devil May Cry 4.

What’s Love Got To Do With It?
The exceptional trailers we’ve seen for Devil May Cry 4 and the opening cinematic hint at a love story in the game and it seems to have a generous helping of what we’ve seen in DMC3 and DMC1 before — slow motion melee-peppered and firearms-driven action up against waves of respawning evil demons or creatures. The plot hinted at in the trailers looks pretty outlandish, just as the games before it were, but it promises to be action packed. Some time ago as I was relishing my time with DMC3′s Special Edition I commented to James that the Devil May Cry series has some of the most fun action gameplay but the story is just subpar stuff. Not JRPG-awful, just bad. The dialogue is hokey, the characters and their motivations are thin, and the story as a whole is a weak excuse to string boss fights together. I went on to point out that if the story had been very good, the game could have been one of the true gaming superstars that would bring in lots of new players instead of being a haven for only the action gaming hardcore. Fewer screamingly difficult segments of gameplay could also help widen the audience.

DMC4 is basically complete given its release date in early February, so it’s all over but the shouting, slicing, and shooting. It’ll definitely get a broader audience since it’ll be hitting the 360 alongside the PS3, but will the story be better this time?

Grand And Fourth
The franchise with the most to lose this year has to be Grand Theft Auto IV. The series has essentially been milked of all its novelty by Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, two generally disappointing rehashes using older and weaker game engines than last generation’s pinnacle of GTA excellence, San Andreas. The big hope is that GTA IV will revamp the long-tolerated targeting system, beef up the melee combat, and generally take the wide-open sandbox crime game into the next generation with banners flying and baseball bats swinging. Oh and we want great online play too.

The trailers we’ve seen so far show that Rockstar knows most of the strengths of its franchise with the compelling and dark storyline of the everyman trying to do the right thing. I haven’t seen much of the parody elements that made GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas much more fun to play than the brutality of their main plotlines, but not having it in there could mean a repeat of the type of story that Vice City Stories suffered from by trying to be too serious for its own good. But until we see gameplay and live demonstrations we can’t be sure the developers are going outside the box that could end up being the home of the series through a slow decline into obscurity.

Metal…Gear?
Lastly we come to one of the golden children of this generation, Metal Gear Solid 4. It was recently announced that this game is in bug-fixing mode and will make its second quarter launch window, so the game design, assets, and sound are basically headed for the finish line. What could I possibly find wrong with this fan-favorite game?

To avoid being pelted with rotten food and worse, I’ll point to this GWJ thread by someone who thinks all of the MGS games have been terrible. It elicited quite a response from the community, a pile-on of criticism and defense of the franchise. Some words of warning for Kojima’s crew were mixed in, some of which brought home to me that there’s a real danger of developer laziness with this title as well. My own pet peeve of them using the circle button instead of X button in game menus is an old one, but having controls that make it easy to leave Snake lying down while being shot at repeatedly and an injury system that rewards never being seen in a relatively unforgiving way are a couple of things I’d like to see done differently. If the game doesn’t innovate enough and make itself accessible enough, it will still probably sell well but its audience will shrink rather than expand once they see the games aren’t advancing into new and more interesting gameplay territory.

What I Want
And that’s really what this is about, trying to get a broader audience for a franchise that gamers might have picked up one title in and, without real innovation, might get the idea that there’s nothing new on tap from those developers anymore. As someone who has really enjoyed all of these franchises I’m hoping their developers bring their A-game to sequels because it’s a golden opportunity to sieze on the power and promise of this new console generation and deliver something special and worthy of their respective names.