Fun in Games, and my Awful RPG Skills

Fun in video games is something that is rarely championed anymore. If you look at any video game magazine's coverage of upcoming or even already released games, what they mainly champion are the graphics, sound, and sometimes the gameplay. While this isn't expressly wrong, it is also not expressly right.

What people, and I'm including consumers, developers, and reviewers, need to concentrate on is something that has been around since the beginning of gaming: fun. Today, I was playing through the original Splinter Cell. I had only gotten through the first two levels before, and today I started really getting into it and am now on the CIA headquarters level. I'm making good progress in the game, but what I'm really doing is having fun!

Now sure, I get frustrated from time to time in the game, mostly just because I keep getting caught, but I'm having fun nonetheless. The same is true about when I recently played through Ninja Gaiden. Now I'm not saying that developers don't concentrate on fun when they are making the game, because I am sure that they do, but really what I'm getting at is that they don't champion the fact that their game is fun. You don't see previews of major games that concentrate on what a gas the game is to play, you see them talking technical specifications for the visuals, new gameplay gimmicks, and new characters. What I really want in a game preview, is all of that stuff, plus a report on how fun the game actually is!

Now, recently I read an interview (I can't remember where, might have been on Game Informer's website) where some game designer, I think it was Denis Dyack, said that previews shouldn't be opinionated. I think that they should be! I think that previewers should give the gamers their honest opinion of a game, from the visuals to the gameplay and everything inbetween, including how fun the game is! Sure, it may hurt the developer in the long run, but what it does is it just makes them do a better job at making an awesome game, and it gives gamers an honest opinion on what a game is like. That way, they don't feel gipped when they buy a game that a reviewer said was great and then they hate it. Instead, they can decide from the beginning about whether or not they want the game.

But hey, that's just my opinion.

Onto other matters...

Now I love RPG's. I love the stories, the visuals and the gameplay. The one thing that I do not like, is the fact that I will rapidly progress through a game, and then come upon a boss that requires me to go back and level up for a ridiculous amount of time before I can defeat him and continue to progress in the game.

That being said, it is easy to see that I am not that great at RPG's. I love the, but unfortunately I have never beaten any real RPG (I've beaten Fable, but that debate is for another time). What I want, is an RPG that is as great and as immersive as Final Fantasy X or Final Fantasy XII, but with gameplay that literally progresses just as I do, so that enemies only get stronger when I level up, and that bosses are tuned to the level that I am on, so that you don't have one big hulking boss that you can' t get past until you've gone back and fought enemy after enemy over and over again to get to the next level!

Sure, this may sound simplistic and 'stupid' to big RPG nerds, but for those of us who love game stories and RPG's, and yet aren't good at them, this would be one of the most awesome games ever! Maybe Blue Dragon, which I just picked up, is like this somewhat. I sure hope so, because I really want to beat this one.