The Downfall of Video "Games"

The more modern games I play the more I realize that there becoming less games and more of things to do between cutscnes or storyline.  Yesterday I was going through my collection of Genesis games and stumbled across a rare gem known as Atomic Runner.  Rather simple side scroller.  You contstantly run to the right and have to dodge and shoot enemies while collecting powerups.  It's you classic play each level a million times till you know it by heart game, but thats why it's still good and addictive 15 years later, it's still a GAME at it's core.  I try playing modern games such as Half Life 2 and Assasins Creed, they just lack the simple replayabililty and addictiveness that old games create.  No longer am I interested in simply increasing the skills needed to progress through the game, but I'm concerned with just getting through the current level as quickly as possible to see the next cutscene and progress the story.  If I die I don't have to worry because I'll just start over at the last checkpoint, no matter how many times I die, I'll never have to restart the entire game due to lack of playing ability.  

It feels that most new games don't reward the player for actually being better at it.  If your bad at the game you can still easily grind your way through it based solely on the fact that dying does hardly anything to hinder your progress.  Now back to games like Atomic Runner, if you get hit once by any enemy fire you die.  Sure you have 3 lives and 5 continues of 3 lives a piece, but thats it.  If you don't manage to complete the game within those 15 tries it's all over and you're forced to restart.  It just leads to a much greater sense of accomplishment when you progress through a game like Atomic Runner knowing that too many mistakes will bring you back to the start.  I would have enjoyed a game like Assasins Creed or God of War much more if there was more of a punishment for a players lack of skill at the game.  Maybe at the very least limiting the number of savepoints there is throughout a level to just 1.  If that even.  Forcing the player to get through an entire stage in one shot would make the gameplay more exciting, you would feel that minor mistakes can't be made nearly as much and in turn the player must think about how they are playing the game much more carefully.

It feels like game designers now a days have fully realized that theres incredible commercial succes to me made in the games industry but like every other industry based on creative medium they fail to realize that the more you try to create things with one of the sole purposes being to generate profit you dramatically lose creativity in the medium.

Sure modern gaming technology can allow for much more detailed and fully realized worlds, but I've always felt that one can portray the same idea, meaning and feeling with a game using technology from 20 years ago as they can now a days.  Only now developers are under the impression that since modern gaming technology that allow them to much more easily create the idea that they want that it will in turn make for a better game.  They draw people in with new gameplay mechanics such as physics and over the top pretty graphics but fail to remember that there making a game, not an eyecandy demo.  Even the old tried and true companies that are full solidified in the idustry for the solid franchises they've created are becoming more and more stagnent.  

Now a days I become less and less excited about new games because I've become tired of the fact that I'll still end up playing through it once, without too much difficulty and then never want to touch it again.  The fact that developers are giving you more of the story through cutscenes and character dialogue theres less room for the player to learn about the games world through actually playing it.  Take God of War as a good example, sure the gameplay was amazing.  But when I died it didn't really phase me because I knew that I would restart no more than 5 minutes back from where I died in the game.  Based on that I played the game more just to get through it and to see the rest of the storyline than I did to get better at the game.