Setting Versus Gameplay

By -

I've been slowly playing through Red Dead Redemption lately and having a great time.  It's essentially Grand Theft Auto in the wild west.  The funny thing is I haven't enjoyed GTA since Vice City was released in 2002.  Each new iteration is basically the same as the last.  They haven't been breaking new ground at all.  Red Dead Redemption doesn't offer all that much more, but it's setting is in the wild west instead of a modern day city and that's making all the difference.

It's strange that the gameplay can be so similar but a change of setting completely shifts my perspective on the game.  I've been on a huge StarCraft 2 kick lately, but in all honesty how different is it from WarCraft 3?  I know there are some differences, but they're both Blizzard RTS games that play in the same fashion.  Apparently setting makes a lot of difference because while I always liked the WarCraft series I absolutely love the StarCraft series.

It really makes me wonder how successful Blizzard would be if they cloned the gameplay from World of WarCraft and put it into the StarCraft universe.  I'm willing to bet that World of StarCraft would be a resounding success, but I still hope that it doesn't see the light of day as a copy/paste of WoW.


I love seeing videogames innovate instead of constantly being derivative of the games that have come before.  Despite how much I think gameplay is more important than graphics I still find that the setting of a game matters.  The industry can only do the same few settings for so long before people grow tired of them.  It's time to break away from the norm and embrace buildings worlds and universes from scratch.  As gamers we want amazing places unlike anything we've seen before, we're just waiting for developers to step up and deliver.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latest Board Gaming

By -
Image
Besides video games I also regularly play board games when I'm hanging out with people face to face.  My brother, my wife, and I end up playing a lot of 3 player board games, but sometimes we get other players involved too. I realized I haven't talked much about what I've been playing in the world of board games, so here goes: Ticket to Ride - We own 3 different base versions of Ticket to Ride, 2 expansion sets, and an extra map set.  We love this game.  This is the game that gets the most overall table time when I'm playing board games with friends.  It's super accessible but still holds fun for people who have been playing the game for a long time.  I recommend this as a great beginner board game for anyone. Masquerade - A hidden role game where roles are constantly switching hands.  You're limited in actions on your turn and can only take one action.  This means that a lot of the time you're not entirely sure what role you currently ...
Read more

S2E22 - E3 2017 - “Who doesn’t want to be a dinosaur?!”

By -
E3 Hype! E3 2017. Not comprehensive. Not VGNN.  Only talking about things we think are interesting enough to talk about.  You have video game news sites for the rest :) We’re talking about Press Conferences, if more news comes out throughout the rest of the week it won’t be here because we’re recording on Tuesday night! http://e3recap.com/ has been my friend Overall trends Esports being forced onto games that aren’t even out yet “Influencers” being put front and center BJ: torn on the current “influencer” boom. Feels like a bubble that’s totally disingenuous Shorter press conferences with less big game announcements Really hard to tell what is actually exclusive Microsoft “Console Launch Exclusive” Most of these press conferences would have been better pre-recorded as just a series of trailers instead of having a stage show, honestly. Updates on games we already knew existed.  This is what we get for so many years of announcing g...
Read more

What is Blaugust? 2023 Edition

By -
Image
I jumped right into the previous post without actually explaining Blaugust.  So... what is it?  Blaugust is an excuse to get people blogging... in August.  Hence, Blaugust! I'm not the best person to pitch it, but Blaugust is put on by a long time friend of mine, Belghast.  Here's what he had to say about Blaugust for the 2023 kickoff: Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focused on blogging and other serialized content. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. For years blogging has been dwindling, and in part, Blaugust was my attempt and reversing that course by compiling a bunch of veteran bloggers in one place and making it super easy to ask questions and get answers. The idea is that this festival of blogging can help reignite dwindling fires for the next year and give folks a sense of kinship as a...
Read more