I miss tactical, turn-based gaming.

Call me old-school, call me a clumsy, all-around terrible gamer if you want, I just miss turn-based fighting in old-school video games. Looking back to 1986, when one of my favourite gaming series was released, you find games with covers like this:

Note: not as many dragons as you'd think.

But with graphics like this:

Half the size of the castle? That's me.

But here's the thing. I didn't care about the graphics. The graphics were, and still are when I break these games out, the last thing on my mind. First and foremost, I care about the story and their playability. Now, I'm not saying the original Dragon Warrior was an amazing fantastical masterpiece, but it did spawn my second favourite game of all time, Dragon Warrior IV.

Blow in me. Do it.

This game had it all, great characters, compelling story, long enough play time. The only thing it didn't have was fantastic graphics.

Although that's up for debate.
I almost believe those are real mountains.

But at the time this game was released, these graphics were state-of-the-art. And that was great. The limited technology available to game designers also affected how fighting could happen in games.

Hot damn I almost believe I'm there fighting.

But here's what I love about that style of fighting. It isn't that it's easy, although it's nice to just sit back and press a button to fight sometimes. I just enjoy the way it plays without detracting from the story. It also lets all the hard work done by artists who create monsters to not go to waste; it's a lot more difficult to see a monster when you're all over the place trying to kill it, rather than calmly fighting based on turns, which gives you a really good look at whatever it is you're fighting.

I've also come to see that a lot of these first-person games that have been coming out recently all look the same, play the same, and have similar stories (or lack of, in the case of all those shooting games). Now, there are, of course some exceptions to this, games that have done really well, or should be doing really well, such as Skyrim and Dishonored. These are games with fantastic stories and immersive worlds. The first-person view adds to the immersion without taking away from gameplay. But games like Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest, or any other games that began as turn-based should remain that way. It's a formula that's worked well for them over these years.

Black Ops.

Modern Warfare. A different game, apparently.

I don't know, maybe I'm old. Maybe I just can't see the allure of the live-action, first-person games like the rest of the world can. If that's the case, I hope someone can explain it to me so I can understand it too.

Or maybe it's that game designers, particularly those tasked with story are simply getting lazy, or reusing the same old formula again and again because it worked. All I know is, we're seeing a degradation of fantastic story, or great games are being overshadowed by the same game being released over and over again (what are we at now, Call of Duty 54?). I understand that games like Call of Duty can appeal to more people than say, an epic about slaying dragons using magic. But does that really mean one has to be taken more seriously than the other? Yes, I understand that money is on the line and the Call of Duty franchise generates A LOT. And I'm not saying that enjoying war games like it makes you any less of a gamer than someone who's logged 40+ hours into a, RPG. That certainly isn't true, both people enjoy playing games and most likely do so frequently. They are just different types of gamers. But why, are we ignoring a whole slew of types of gamers to favour just one? Why can't I just sit back after a long day and press A, or X, or Circle, or whatever to fight? And if I'm up for a more challenging or immersive game, I'll grab something different like Dishonored or Dark Souls, or whatever's on hand.

The world of gaming has indeed changed. There are times when I'm very happy about it. Like when Dragon Warrior IV was remade for the DS with slightly better graphics.

Thank you, Nintendo, for bringing my childhood back to me.

But then I question, when a game that is strikingly similar to to its predecessor(s) is released, why we even bothered to make the leap into the future in the first place. Have we really come to value graphics over the game itself?

Now, I'm not claiming to be an expert, or even a hardcore gamer. I honestly haven't touched many games since I did my research paper on them and wound up ripping most of my favourite titles apart. All I'm saying is I long for the good old days, where we had no graphics to rely on to make sales, so we had to rely on a good story with solid characters instead of using the same game over and over again and just dressing it differently.

Well, that's my angry rant for the day.

Cheers.