You know why I hate you? You are killing one of my favorite genres, the JRPG. All because you can't get enough of the same two games, over and over again. Fucking Halo and Modern Warfare. Sure, Halo was a great game, and yes, Modern Warfare was also a great game. But the market is over saturated. It seems like every month we get a new clone of one or the other. Sometimes they don't even bother changing the story! Modern Warfare 2 was about a Russian invasion of the United States. On March 15 of this year, we got Homefront. You know what that game was about? North Korea invading the United States! And yet you keep paying upwards of $60 for the same game. That's why I can't really blame developers for this one. Cloning Halo or Modern Warfare is like a license to print money in this industry. Why shouldn't they do it? They have mouths to feed, after all. No, the blame is squarely on you, John Q. Public.
It really is too bad that the JRPG is a dying breed. Consider all of the classic JRPGs that helped shape many gamers' experiences; Final Fantasy II (or IV, if you're being picky), Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, etc. And then consider the heyday of JRPGs which held titles like FFVII, Legend of Dragoon, Skies of Arcadia, or Chrono Cross. It used to be that a JRPG was a safe bet for an investment of your saved up allowance money, as it would provide hours upon hours of entertainment and flashy visuals (for the ADD among us). But now Final Fantasy is pretty much dead, Dragon Quest has been shunted to portables, and the last decent console JRPG came out four years ago (Blue Dragon). Game developers who have tried making JRPGs for Wii have completely missed the target as to what would make it awesome, i.e., easy menu navigation, opting instead to throw in random waving gameplay mechanics that were old by the third week the system was on shelves thanks to Wii Sports. This needs to be fixed, but I don't know who can do it, ever since Squaresoft bought out Enix. The lack of serious competition in the market has driven the whole genre down. If I had the resources, I'd honestly put them to use in fighting this trend, but I don't, and so, as one who loves the genre, I despair for its future. Of course, there's always the portable JRPG, where Dragon Quest has moved to, where Pokemon resides, and where one of my favorite trilogies of all time, Golden Sun was born. But a portable can never match the epicness of a console game. It's a limitation of the system. Sure, summoning Judgement on Golden Sun is awesome, but compared to, say, Knights of the Round from FFVII, it's pretty pathetic just by virtue of the smaller screen. Imagine what could be done just by putting Golden Sun on a console. But it won't happen, because you, John Q. Public, have told the game industry that you don't want it to happen. You seem to think that JRPGs belong on portables, and need to stay there, as if it's some kind of game ghetto. And it's sad. It's really, really sad.
Of course, that won't stop anyone from developing yet another FPS, which will either be a Halo clone or a MW clone. Have you seen the trailer for Battlefield 3? Apparently you should buy it, because, y'know, graphics!
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