Updates On Handheld Gaming

So earlier in the lifetime of this blog I wrote a post about handheld gaming and how I believed that the mobile platform would not be taking over things.

You can find it here.

I am glad to see that some gaming website are starting to agree with me as time has gone on.

The mobile phone platform for gaming is a model that wouldn't work for serious games.  Companies have tried, and will keep trying.  However the phone seems to be a place for the Candy Crush and Angry Bird games still.  Games that you can just do repetition over and over again (there is some strategy involved but there is nothing extremely story driven) to pass the time seem to do best on mobile phones.

Its a world of micro-transactions and linking up with your social network so you can get more lives or get through levels quicker.

I admit there are RPG games, action games, platformers and the like no the app stores.  Heck SE has remade many Final Fantasy games for the mobile platform.  Yet selling games for $15 can be a deterrent.  I don't want to spend that on something that I confines me only to a small screen that will smudge up constantly and get interrupted because of phone calls or texts coming on the screen (I have it set like that because I use my phone a lot for work).  When most other mobile games are 5.99 at the most, something in the $15 range is crazy.

Yet we were predicting almost 2 years ago that handhelds would be swept away by mobile phones and their game playing capability.  Watching the ads and all the reviews it seems smartphones are more concerned about their display and the pictures they take then gaming.  Yes, they sometimes show in their ads gaming, but that isn't pushed very hard.  It is still mostly cameras and speed.

With the 3DS the most popular handheld right now, and selling like hotcakes, I believe that handheld gaming is here to stay.  What Sony is doing with the Playstation Vita and the Playstation 4 in terms of remote play of any PS4 game on the Vita virtually anywhere is the future.  If the internet infrastructure of America upholds (not too hampered by crazy corporate America, but you never know), and is improved on I see this becoming the new type of handheld gaming.  The ability to start a game anywhere and play it anywhere almost seamlessly.

I think I will check back in on this in about 6 months and see how we are doing.

My Thoughts On Genre

So to start things off, I have been playing lots of Pokemon Y and Ni No Kuni.  Tossed some Diablo in there (wow, thats been a while since I got that going) and things have been good.  I think that Pokemon has seen the largest gains out of the three.  The game has gotten a little better, but there is still that same ole same ole rut that Pokemon games seems to have.  Got my 7th badge and now going into villainous organization's lair.

The only thing that is challenging is just trying to get the right load out for my party.  Got my grass starter, got my Pidgeot, got Charizard, Lapras, and a nice steel/dragon.  Pikachu was helping me out but he is almost worthless now.  I need a new damn electric pokemon.  Maybe also will change out for a psychic or fairy.  Or maybe psychic/fairy (if there is one).

 With all of these different games I have been playing, my best bud We$$ sent me a message earlier asking if The Sims could be considered a RPG.  This got me thinking about the current state of video games with genres and the ever increasing blurring of the lines.

I remember when I was growing up (hopefully this doesn't sound like an old man on the porch kind of thing) genres for games were pretty split.  Action and Adventure kind of went hand and hand, but something was a Fighting, something was FPS, this was RPG (didn't really have this fancy JRPG and WRPG war really going on (I am pro JRPG)).  Some games you might scratch your head on but not often (what is Zelda?).

Nowadays we have games that combine elements to attract more consumers to the goods.  Am I upset about this?

Not really.  Business is business. Making money is essential not just for the stimulation of video games, and really for any type of product out there (capitalism can be a good thing).  It is also important to support the creators of the product.  People do need to eat.  And buy things.  And pay taxes.  

Screw taxes.

I am excited and happy with some combinations.  Ideas like a FPS mixed with a RPG sounds interesting (haven't really found one that seems actually good).  There are more than just this example but I don't have any other ideas right now.

What does piss me off is the mislabeling of games into a genre because of one single element in them.

The Sims might seem like a RPG because you do have a "role" of a sort that you can play your character literally however you wish.  However there is a problem when you compare it with Dungeon's & Dragons which is what I consider the pinnacle RPG.  Its the foundation of what you base a genre that I have such high regard for.

The D&D test that I use is like this (by all means this is not official and is just my opinion):
1. The game must have a character(s) in which you take control of
2. Character(s) from 1 must be able to be customizable almost 100% without there being a problem to playing and completing the game.  I use Cloud from FFVII as an example.  You can play him as a PLD type, a WHM type, an attacker, whatever.  None of this will affect the game nor will it punish you for doing so.
3. With 1 and 2 in play, the character(s) must follow an overall storyline that is present in the game.  Regular life is not an acceptable storyline.

There are many different games that fit these 3, and there are a lot more than fit some but not all.

In the end all genres are unique to themselves and one is not better than the other.  A First Person Shooter is not better than a Strategy game.  Some people just like the former and others like the latter.  Hell, some might like them both.

Play what you want.  Accept crossover.  Don't accept crap that fails to respect the artform.