Yearly games

With all my negative rantings, you may wonder if I have anything nice to say. Well, I do. Just not today.

Today's rant of mine focuses on the concept of yearly games. That being, game series that have a new edition every year. This is most commonly used in sports games, where they can slap on an updated roster, add leftover ideas from the previous game, and sell it at full price.

I'm not saying the developers are lazy. Obviously, one year to make a game isn't that long of a time. But, they do often start work on next year's game before the this year's game comes out. It takes a shorter amount of time, because they basically use the same game engine and assets from the previous version, with some enhancements, no matter how minor.

Many times, these types of games are criticized for not changing enough year by year. Some EA Sports franchises have been the focus of these criticisms. But they aren't the only ones.

The Tony Hawk series, for example, has reached it's ninth game. Fans of the series say they got the mechanics right in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4. So what did they do after that? They added a story mode and other gimmicks to try and "enhance" the experience. They had the gameplay perfected, and the competition had called it quits. Being the only skateboard game in town for years, and with the story modes considered lackluster, the series sort of rode its success as much as it could. This year, we have Skate, which is the first alternative to Tony Hawk we've had in years, and several reviews say it's better than Tony Hawk. So we'll have to see what will happen for the tenth Tony Hawk game, likely due out next year.

Another series is the WWE Smackdown series. This series has had a lot of fan criticism. Some move animations remain unchanged since the first game, over seven years ago. The game engine has more or less remained the same throughout the series, with various enhancements made when changing between platforms. Some major gameplay tweaks have been made over the years, but there still remain parts that are identical to the earlier versions. I, for one, absolutely hate the animation of falling through the trap door in the Hell In A Cell match. Absolutely ridiculous, and I hate that it's still there in this year's version. Much like Tony Hawk, the Smackdown series has been without competition for years. The only competition it's had are the craptastic Legends of Wrestling games, the wacky Ultimate Muscle games, the not-really-wrestling Def Jam series (mainly the first game), and other WWE games (which shouldn't even be considered competition). In the next year, however, we'll see Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, marking the first time a console version of the Fire Pro series has made it to the United States. As well as the TNA Impact game, the first game for the upstart wrestling promotion. Finally giving wrestling fans an alternative wrestling experience.

I think it would be best if all yearly games would occasionally take a year off, so the developers can spend that time truly enhancing the gaming experience, instead of only giving a handful of new features, while leaving the gameplay almost exactly the same.