Poll: "The quality and innovation of Japanese video games has fallen behind their Western counterparts."
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Of course Final Fantasy has WAY more games than Halo, it's a much older franchise so not only do you see more sequels but take a look at the amount of spin-offs it has inspired also.shatnershaman said:
On another note: innovation is a most welcome trait that any video game can offer, but we should never expect that all games released, good ones and bad ones, will somehow innovate a certain genre or gaming as a whole. I can safely say that nowadays we are enjoying an era where the widest variety of game genres are at our disposal, and you can find GREAT games on any genre you choose to immerse yourself into (the industry has grown a lot). Look at the greatest games that came out last year; now I'm sure that there where many titles last year that where somehow innovative (and probably good at it too) but the most popular ones (and when I say popular I mean popular in the "real" gaming circle) weren't really innovative if you think of it, as good as they where, they didn't change anything. I think that we should expect innovation every now and then, but evolution, refinement, polish and a lot of other things are also as important.
At least the muscle-bound psychoes seem likely to kill someone other than themselves. Besdies, aside from Nintendo, I never see Japanese companies produce anything oter than JRPGs. Wetsern companies do RPGs, RTS, FPS, racing, and whatever Boom Blox counts as.j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
"Besdies, aside from Nintendo, I never see Japanese companies produce anything oter than JRPGs."
so uh you missed
Guilty Gear.
Devil May Cry.
God Of War
Okami
Phoenix Wright
Advance Wars (Technically not Nintendo since they split off!)
Soul Caliber
Metal Gear Solid
in the recent time periods. Last time I checked, Capcom, Intelligent Systems, Sega and Koijima Productions are in Japan.
Who knows, obviously with higher quality games they have to have moved to America right
so uh you missed
Guilty Gear.
Devil May Cry.
God Of War
Okami
Phoenix Wright
Advance Wars (Technically not Nintendo since they split off!)
Soul Caliber
Metal Gear Solid
in the recent time periods. Last time I checked, Capcom, Intelligent Systems, Sega and Koijima Productions are in Japan.
Who knows, obviously with higher quality games they have to have moved to America right
I never really got Metal Gear Solid - I played that one where they were on an offshore bio-dome something or other in a pretty bland backstory. As for the gameplay... well, there was so little of it - the game played like one long cut scene.
Sons of Liberty, I think it was called. Could be I just played a poor sequel, so correct me if I'm wrong. Although that said, Blue Dragon was the same, as was the old 2d-Final-Fanatasy I played (Endless Nova, I think it was).
Anywho, what I'm saying is that they might have strong stories, BUT I want a game, not a visual novel. Now, alot of Western games (well, most) are linear and/or have fixed story lines. BUT they don't grab control away from you every 2 seconds to show you a mid-length movie. Even so, not all Japanese games are bad, far from it - Mario, for example, I enjoyed greatly growning up, and Luigi's manison was great fun. Its just, as has been said before, different cultures.
Sons of Liberty, I think it was called. Could be I just played a poor sequel, so correct me if I'm wrong. Although that said, Blue Dragon was the same, as was the old 2d-Final-Fanatasy I played (Endless Nova, I think it was).
Anywho, what I'm saying is that they might have strong stories, BUT I want a game, not a visual novel. Now, alot of Western games (well, most) are linear and/or have fixed story lines. BUT they don't grab control away from you every 2 seconds to show you a mid-length movie. Even so, not all Japanese games are bad, far from it - Mario, for example, I enjoyed greatly growning up, and Luigi's manison was great fun. Its just, as has been said before, different cultures.
"Anywho, what I'm saying is that they might have strong stories, BUT I want a game, not a visual novel."
Why would you want that? Why couldn't a story be just as engrossing as gameplay unless you already have preset conceptions that stories are automatically not worthwhile simply because they are stories? You never out and out said it, but it is pretty clear to me that most people
" FPS games(Metroid Prime)"
Metroid Prime is designed by Retro Studios, based in Texas.
Why would you want that? Why couldn't a story be just as engrossing as gameplay unless you already have preset conceptions that stories are automatically not worthwhile simply because they are stories? You never out and out said it, but it is pretty clear to me that most people
" FPS games(Metroid Prime)"
Metroid Prime is designed by Retro Studios, based in Texas.
Portal's more innovative than any RPG video-game made in the past ten years, period.bluemarsman said:
Portal is not, however, hands-down more brilliant than every single Japanese game in the last ten years. Okami at the very least gives it a run for its money. Likewise, while less in-your-face with its novelty, Shadow of the Colossus definitely does as much to push genre conventions as Portal.
(Half-Life, meanwhile, is already ten years old, while Half-Life 2 is pretty and well-crafted but not particularly innovative.)
-- Alex
Well, some of them are not exactly that new, but they're good nonetheless.meisnewbie said:
Largely non FPS Japanese good games. Add them to the quick list I forwarded, plus other games I didn't cite, I don't think the Japanese industry is doing badly at all.
Slight mistake on GoW though: it's published by Sony and made in their Santa Monica studio, it's not Japanese dev wise.
Well, I still get a kick out of playing fan translation of snes rpgs that never made it to the states. It seems a lot of them try to do different things and implement a larger variety of RPG elements and systems that seem to appear in ONE game and then got lost once Final Fantasy started to rule the roost with FF7. I think that was the golden age of the JRPG, and it happened only in Japan.
I apologize if this has been brought up already, as I briefly skimmed the end of page one and beginning of page two, but has anyone considered that not all Japanese games touch the soil of other countries? Just because the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, or some other game-crazy area of the world doesn't get that many good games from Japan doesn't mean that Japan has been making only bad (or not very intuitive) games. If anything, the recent downer in Japanese games coming out in other countries may have to do with the people who purchased, translated, and released said games - not the game makers, themselves. Japan may have released the most beautiful of games (ones like Okami, for example; or Jrpgs that have tear-jerking, fantastic, original stories that aren't about lulz teenagers with large swords) that simply haven't been liscensed, translated, and brought to us.
For another example, look at anime (you don't have to for very long, just long enough to prove my point). Many people at one age or another said that all anime was alike and that nothing new or very entertaining was coming out. This partially had to do with bad dubbing and ads during the time, but the point is that the people complaining about the genre of cartoons have only seen a very very small percentage of what's actually being made; and that, instead of blaming Japan for the bad publicity, they should be complaining to the companies that choose which anime to buy from them.
That's all I really have to add to the conversation. Taking a whole country of games (for example, America) and comparing it to the small fraction of games you get from Japan, is null in point. It's like saying that Americans only make bland first person shooters because said complainer has only played the latest version of Turok and Beachhead 2000.
(edit - blast, part of my point was brought up last post.)
For another example, look at anime (you don't have to for very long, just long enough to prove my point). Many people at one age or another said that all anime was alike and that nothing new or very entertaining was coming out. This partially had to do with bad dubbing and ads during the time, but the point is that the people complaining about the genre of cartoons have only seen a very very small percentage of what's actually being made; and that, instead of blaming Japan for the bad publicity, they should be complaining to the companies that choose which anime to buy from them.
That's all I really have to add to the conversation. Taking a whole country of games (for example, America) and comparing it to the small fraction of games you get from Japan, is null in point. It's like saying that Americans only make bland first person shooters because said complainer has only played the latest version of Turok and Beachhead 2000.
(edit - blast, part of my point was brought up last post.)
Call of Cthulhu, D&D 3.5, D&D4e, Vampire the Masquerade, Serenity (Cortex), GURPS, Minimus.Alex_P said:
None of those are the same, all of them function differently. Some of them may share elements, like, oh, dice, maybe? But none of them can be called 'the same' other than the tools and methods of play are the same, and you could label video games the same way as you must, for all 'PS3 games' use the PS3 controller, and must sit near it and a TV. (Well, you don't need to, but it's kinda hard to play the games otherwise
)And I've seen D&D3.5, Call of Cthulhu and Vampire all represented as Video Games, yes. The reverse is also true, I've seen the world of warcraft pen and paper RPG, I've seen BOTH sides of Shadowrun, I've even seen someone pull of the HL1 story as an RPG setting.
So hidebound? Go find a proper 'gaming' store near you and look through their collections, and their upcoming releases. Talk to the regulars. Then come back and tell me pen and paper RPGs are hidebound.
As for PC/console RPGs, I frankly don't know. As a genre, it doesn't appeal to me, oddly. If I want to play an RPG, I'd rather do it in the company of friends, with someone I know creating the story.
As for the topic:
I'm not entirely certain I'd agree with that. Both western and Japanese games are released by publishers who's concern primarily is the 'safety' of the title, and thus how well it will sell. If it won't sell well, they aren't likely to publish it without a damn good cause, and thus, the majority of game releases are "Game like previous game released, slightly different, but recognizably similar. As was said in Zero Punctuation, "it's one of those games that's usually described by starting with 'Like Grand Theft Auto but...'"
lol I actually brought it all up on page one, but it's a point that deserves restatement. Only Japanese games that companies believe they can make a profit on are brought over, that's just the way it is. Companies don't want to risk lots of money translating, redubbing and marketing a game they don't feel will sell very well. It's just prudent to be cautious about the titles they bring over. In the past they've gone to the effort of relocalizing a title only to have it flop (ie Forbidden Siren), so they become more and more cautious and are increasingly likely only to bring over titles that have a maximum chance of selling (ie Final Fantasy -insert roman numeral here-). That usually means games that have the strength of a franchise behind them, games that cash in on a popular fad or pop-culture phenominon, or games that manage to generate some sort of hype based upon their innovativeness are the ones most likely to be released in North America and Europe.Quaidis said:
American companies can push the envelope over here a little more based upon the fact they can produce a game and release it without having to invest extra money for translating and redubbing. They can go wild with creativity and produce as many games as they can within budget and hope that people will buy. Japanese companies have to consider which games warrant the extra money for producing English language versions. This naturally means a lot of games are never going to wind up on our side of the world, that's just how it'll always work.
Just wanted to throw out there that sometimes, innovation can be a bit forced, too. Two major examples for me are Mischief Makers and Odin Sphere, both of which were made to be more complicated than they should have been, for no reason other than to try and be new. I appreciate the effort, but a lot of the fun was taken away for me because they weren't comfortable in being simple side scrollers.