It’s the simple things…
Is there any such thing as a perfect videogame? Admittedly, it’s a question that is always going to be subjective, but I think it’s an easier question to answer than it might be for other art forms such as, say, music or movies or, I dunno, wood carving.
As games have become ever more complex, more expensive and more technologically advanced, I’d argue that they invite more room for imperfections to creep in. I mean, how often do we hear about the bugged releases of massive, triple-a games? Frankly, every single time one is released, because we gamers do like to complain.
Modern games tend not to be ‘one thing’.
Look at a recent Grand Theft Auto game, for example – it’s not just a shoot-‘em-up… it’s a driving game, it’s a tennis game, it’s a flight simulator, it’s an RPG, it’s a strategy game, it’s a billion different things in one. It’s a relatively new phenomenon that open-world map-moppers are essentially an anthology of different genres stitched together by a setting and a story.
Early arcade games – or, at least, the wave of arcade games most of us consider to be the first generation of blockbusters – were gaming stripped down to its essence. There were no bells or whistles, visuals were iconic in their simplicity, and those early games typically built upon one deceptively simple gameplay mechanic. Even something as seemingly high tech as Dragon’s Lair was as basic and straightforward as gameplay gets.
Not all of them got it right, of course. For every Q*bert there was an ET The Extra-terrestrial, but there’s a reason why those embryonic classics have endured. If you see a news piece about gaming, Space Invaders will often still be used as an illustrative icon. Modern kids might be into their Minecraft and Roblox, but
they can still recognise Pac-man. Mario, even in something as new as Super Mario Odyssey, still paid homage to his 2D roots.
It’s telling that sequels to Space Invaders, Pac-man, Tetris et al have never had the same sort of impact as their originators. Who remembers Hatris, or Tetris 4D, or Tetris Worlds, or Space Invaders Evolution, or Space Invaders Infinity Gene? Or, rather, who remembers them fondly?
Pac-man 2: The New Adventures attempted to circumnavigate this issue, despite billing itself as the legitimate sequel to the original, by adopting a completely new genre – a weird sort of point-and-click adventure thing, that is rightly considered to be one of the most abrupt left-turns in gaming history. You didn’t even control the eponymous hero, but a disembodied cursor. Still, at least they didn’t just replace Pac-man with, y’know… a hat.
It’s an issue that will always plague beleaguered developers tasked with following up a classic. How do you build upon perfection? When you add new ingredients to the recipe, you risk over-egging the pudding, ruining what came before. Market forces dictate that success demands that it be built upon, but sometimes things should just be left alone. There’s a reason Valve has never made a proper Half-life 3.