What does it mean when everything is great?
What’s happening when it’s no longer the exception for something to be regarded as exceptional?
The glowing reviews “Grand Theft Auto IV” received last week — all those perfect 10s — reminded me of just how many perfect scores and how much high praise I’ve seen and read lately. Last fall, the highly regarded Edge magazine in the U.K. ended years of stinginess and doled out three 10s in three months, to “Halo 3,” “The Orange Box” and “Super Mario Galaxy.”
Gametrailers just named last year as the best year in gaming’s history. Factor in “BioShock” and you’ll see over at Gamerankings.com that 4 of the 12 best reviewed games in that site’s history of aggregating reviews came out in the last 10 months.
Have game critics ever been so thoroughly satisfied?
Maybe we’re in the best era of video games. Maybe the hype is giving everyone sunstroke.
Perhaps, this time, things are different.
While many lamented that today’s era of gaming is one stagnated by sequels, it may in fact be an era that has been polished and buffed, built and re-built to something resembling… perfection?
No. Perfection is too strong a word.
What could be happening — and this is just a theory, of course — is that a new threshold has been reached. Our vocabularies and scoring systems are coming close to failing us. We’ve said “great” and “10″ so much lately, that it is hard to fully distinguish and to intelligibly recommend the work we’re playing. Can we say why this great gameplay is better than that great gameplay? If we can, well, are we? Are we being clear?
It seems to me that we who play and discuss games are often and extremely impressed, moreso than has been the case in the past.
Why?
It could be the increase in technical proficiency. The gap between what developers intend to orchestrate with their games and that which the player experiences is narrower than ever before. Would the essence of the failed Randian utopia in “BioShock” have been as convincing on an older platform? Would “Call of Duty 4 have packed the same punch?
Perhaps it is even the case that these new games will resist the technical obsolescence that has spoiled some old classics for modern fans, that we’re finally reaching an era of games during which it will be the norm for a great game to withstand the test of time like great movies and great books? (I’m recalling 1Up’s PC editor Jeff Green recently describing on the 1UpYours Podcast how archaic the often-hailed 1997 role-playing game “Fallout” now looks and how poorly the acclaimed 2000 PC game “Deus Ex” holds up. At least “Tetris” still holds up.)
Another reason for all the glowing greatness could be public relations. This feeling that we’re awash in good things may just be a product of hype, a sign that 2007 and 2008 are only superior than 1997 and 1998 in terms of how effectively the marketing machines have driven our thoughts.
Or, less cynically, I’ve been considering that a new plateau in game design expertise been achieved by a broad array of developers. It’s possible that the fundamental things that genre fans have been asking for have been achieved. The controls of “GTA” have been iterated on to the point that few people are cursing them anymore. The “Mario” universe has been rendered and re-rendered in all the dimensions in ways that seem to hit the spot perfectly for fans of that sort of thing. The war first-person-shooter has been nailed — repeatedly. Many known frontiers appear to have been conquered, goals have been met.
Surely gaming will get better. Games are an iterative medium. By and large, the new stuff is better-made than the old stuff. And, by and large, each year brings instant classics and instant lemons.
But I do wonder if something different is happening now, if a new status quo is being widely achieved.
What do you make of all these “great” games?
Do we need a new set of standards?