True that. Even aiming is a bit of a challenge.
While I'm willing to postpone judgement on the new X-Com a bit (though I AM worried), I really do wonder whatever happened to these genres. Would it really be commercial suicide to build a game with the same mechanics/in the same genre but with an update to graphics, balance, skills, design etc? I mean what makes X-Com a classic is not the graphics, it's the gameplay.
But instead everything seems to be evolving towards a same-ish FPS shooter movie genre kind of game which is usually ok to play but not very intricate. There is still a lively indie scene, of course, so that counterbalances some of the more generic bid budget titles. In a way you could say it's like the movie industry: the masses like blockbusters - they often know they're not the most brilliant movies ever but they're entertaining and they know what to expect. For people who expect more of their films, there's a huge indie scene.
In gaming it seems that as it is opening more to the masses (instead of just 'gamers') you get the same shift towards blockbuster games being relatively dumbed down and stripped off most complexity. The big difference is that in gaming, these games are often still met with positive or outrageously positive reviews. If Generic Shooter 5 isn't the best game ever, that's ok because it still has nice graphics (for example) and gets an 85% for trying. In the movie critic scene, a similar movie gets a 30% rating at best.
So, in gaming you create an atmosphere where every blockbuster title is doted with a good to amazing review score AND panders to the masses at the same time. That success might explain how we ever move towards a more generic Joe Sixpack Console Player standard of games, one that neither of us here really fits in.
/rant over
It may not be a TBS classic anymore, but it sure seems to try hard to be more than a shooter. ENough to give it the benefit of the doubt for me.
