Quote:
Originally posted by Enzian
I look at the titles for the GC at EB. All I see are cartoons staring back at me. And Resident Evil. A couple Star Wars titles. That is my "impression". Correct or not, that is my impression. Cartoons do not appeal to me. [. . .]
That leaves me with XBox or PS2. Hmm. I don't have a PSX, so the backwards compatibility means nothing to me. And, based on my impression, I think the XBox will walk with my money. Live! only accepts broadband conex - good. Games look interesting. Halo, MechAssault - these games drink for free in my world.
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Are you saying that Metroid Prime and Starfox Adventures look kid-oriented, but a game based on Battletech doesn't? Or Halo, which is basically a B-grade science-fiction serial?
Though I can see the logic behind the argument that the Xbox's marketing lets an adult feel more comfortable with playing games without feeling they're doing something immature (what with the big black box and all), it's only gamers that seem to perceive a difference between the "maturity" of the games on the two systems--if a non-gamer walks into the room when I'm holding a console controller, I'm going to have just as much sheepish explaining to do, whether I'm playing on a Cube or an Xbox. Going back to the article above, however you may feel about what Blackley says about Miyamoto, it is true that videogaming in general has a stereotype about being for kids, no matter what system you're playing on.
Many games on all systems have the appearance of being "for adults": on the other hand, they're not doing much to advance innovation in gameplay, at least not on the order of a game like Pikmin. Civ 3 I already played when it was Civ 2. Sim City 3k I already played when it was Sim City. MOH I already played when it was Wolfenstein 3D. I've never played a game similar to Pikmin. You could argue that Lemmings is in the neighborhood, but it's not nearly the same.
Pikmin's graphic design had to be conceptually simple and "childlike" in order to make it playable--it has a hard enough learning curve as it is without additional distractions. This tends to be the case with Miyamoto games (including Mario and Zelda games as well): an apparently simple design conceals devilishly complicated and original gameplay, but because of the simple design you're led into the intricacies of the games with a minimum of confusion. It could be argued that an attachment to false ideas of "adulthood" is holding back the evolution of videogaming as an art.