Games have gone downhill over the last decade, even famous series’ of games have gone more mainstream and lost their way. This is a sad truth not only among video games, but movies and TV as well. The world is dumbing down and looking for the sparkles and bright shiny things, instead of good storytelling and deep character plots.

MMO’s have become tasteless and dull, as a quest to be the best, but there’s little to no Lore. Star Wars the Old Republic will probably be the only mmo that does this. As for shooters, they’ve been going downhill. Resident Evil games tend to keep their stories up, but we only have had 2 in 5 years. Halo 1 was great, but 2 and 3 went strait down the tubes for what the developers THINK everyone should want, Multiplayer. I don’t care about multiplayer until i beat the single player, which teaches me tricks i can use IN multiplayer. So really, the deal here is that with solid, substantial single player, you get your multiplayer. Call of Duty 4 took maps from the single player to make multiplayer, and that game is the second most popular games out there.

Now I’ll admit, nobody reads the quests in games like World of Warcraft, but I do read the ones for dungeons and such, because those have stories in them, and when you go places and find books on the tables or floors, i read those, because they add to the experience.

The gaming experience has been cheapened by overdoing graphics to beat out someone else’s game, and really, that’s not how it should be. I don’t care if i can blow somebody apart with a shotgun, that’s not realistic, nor is it really that fun. FEAR got so repetitive with stuff like that, and the blood that hung in the air after doing that was irritating. Give me simple death animations, in turn for some better storytelling. Historical FPS games are dull nowadays too, nobody wants the same game 5 times, Call of Duty 1, United Offensive, 2, 3, World at War, Medal of honor (however many of those there are, i know there’s a lot) get dull because you can only focus on a 5 year part of history for so long before you get to the point where it’s just the same things with different graphics, handed to the general public to think that it’s a “whole new game”. All in all, it’s led me to never buying a game without a demo first, to see if there will be good storytelling. MMORPG’s and RPG’s are different, but not so bad. Good storytelling gives good substance. It is nice to have pretty landscapes and such, but you NEED to keep the player busy, because one can only stare at the grass, tree’s and water for so long.

In time, video games will be nothing more than tournament style shooters with nice visuals…or mmorpg’s where all the quest says is “monster north, kill 10, speak to me, get money and xp” with no story, just visual effects, like watching Watchmen all over again.