After reading this, I think I really need to check out Metro 2033. Where's a Steam sale when you need one?!

I've seen this outcry before. It's old hat and part of the ridiculous bipolar nature of gamers and game critics. We spend our time writing, on podcasts or in forums crying about the lack of innovation in games and ripping perfectly good games for doing what it has done before well as and not pushing things forward. Yet at the onset of almost any change and those very same gamers start giving tearful, emotional lectures about why you should never change anything in his or her favorite game.

I find it a little amusing and highly annoying.

You cite Fable 3 and announced changes there. That inspired a similar nerd-rage that preceded Fable 2 when Molyneux described his one-button combat system for the game. People lost their minds, made assumptions and when the game came out...it wasn't so bad. Some may have gone as far as to call it an improvement. And by some, I mean most.

For all the people that were mad at Bioware for switching things up in Mass Effect 2, they actually made a datebase for pretty much every positive and negative cricitism of the game they could find. Many of the changes of the game were born of that. And while some ME fans -  myself included - missed some of the elements from the original, I would never be able to tell anyone ME2 was the lessor game.

Then there was Fallout 3 which had more than it's fair share of skeptics for putting aside the formula of it's past to be what it became. Nerd-rage ensued from those that held up the original series up as sacred cows. I've known of Fallout before 3 and never cared. F3 is the first Fallout I've played for a reason and quite frankly is the only reason I care enough to go back and give those older games a chance later in the summer.

I grew up playing Final Fantasy. So maybe the fact my favorite video game series changes from game to game makes me not care as much when people try something new. If I want to play FFVII, or VI, or X, I go back and play them.  To steal and alter a line of Jay-Z's "On to the Next One," if people want the old s*** , buy the old games.

Meantime, I think it wouldn't kill people to break out of it "if it isn't tailored to my every want and desire it sucks" mentality many of us have. It does very little for the industry or anyone besides that person. And while some conventions are great, if not almost timeless, most aren't. And what's good for a game when it releases and for some time after, time eventually passes them.

But of course that's just how I see things. It's be a little foolish and arrogant of me to expect an entire community to bow to my will.

Metro 2033 is the best shooter I have played in years. It is a core game for core gamers. It doesn't need to dull itself down for anybody. I never had any problems with masks breaking and not being able to find one though. I never let any enemies get that close to do any real harm. Developers everywhere should learn a lesson from Metro 2033. You can please one group of gamers or you can please the other. DON'T try and please both,

Mass Effect 1 is one of the greatest games of all time. Mass Effect 2 is a 40 hour third person shooter which I did not like. It was watered down to its very core and it felt like I was playing a casual game.

Splinter Cell Conviction is also another watered down franchise. All of the great things I, and many others loved about the franchise was removed. To think that they didn't even give us everyones favorite multiplayer mode baffles me. Everyone I know who played spies vs. mercs loved it. It is always talked about as one of the best multiplayer experiences around. Yet Spies vs. Mercs was left out of the game. Despite a whole legion of fans anticipating it. That should tell you where these developers loyalties are. Not with their loyal fans, but with the loyal dollar.

Gerren, regarding Fallout 3: I'd argue that Bethesda did everything to retain the gameplay mechanics that made the first two entries so enjoyable. I don't think moving into first-person or going real-time for combat altered the core of the game at all, or "streamlined" the series in any way.

@Gerren:

While I appreciate your point and think it definitely has some merit, I don't think it's right to conflate what Chris is calling "streamlining" with what you're calling "innovation" to the degree that you did. I think VATS in Fallout 3 was a good example of innovation. It kept what an aspect of what was good about Fallout -- the turn-based, tactical element of combat -- and updated it by merging it with better graphics, a first-person perspective, and the ability to NOT use it if you felt like playing the game like a normal FPS. Innovating can -- and often should -- involve keeping some elements of the past that worked.

Obviously, it really comes down to opinion -- but doesn't everything, really? Chris is decrying masking "innovation" with what is really often just branding to the lowest common denominator to sell games. I think that's unfortunate.

@ Gerren. Your argument is an old one, and without any merit (activate lawyer mode!). You see, people complain when their favorite franchises are changed. Then defenders of that change come out and say "You all always scream for change and now that you got it you don't want it". You, and all of the defenders of this change, are forgetting one very, very, very important thing. The change needs to not suck.

Take a PB&J sandwich. I am always complaining that PB&J sandwiches are getting old and it needs to change. Someone says to me "I got an idea!". They then proceed to pour dirt on my sandwich. Obviously they did just what I said needed to be done. They changed it. However, this was not a good change. It was a horrible change. Sure, some people like eating dirt. Like the mentally ill. I am against dirt eating though, and want nothing to do with it.

Do you see my point? Yes we want change. Yes we want our franchises to move forward and evolve. No, watering down a game is not change. And to hide behind that argument is a little absurd. Just like the entire industry is "casualifying"  all our favorite franchises and disguising it as innovation. When we said we wanted change, we didn't mean we wanted less of a game with watered down mechanics and a casual focus.

Take Metroid Prime. They took what everyone loved about the original Metroids and completely changed it, without sacrificing what made the originals so great. Fallout 3, to a lesser extent, did the same thing. Sure they removed some things, but the experience was still there. The same can not be said for Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, and Final Fantasy 13.

@Andrew Maybe my "innovate" wasn't the proper term (at least in terms of connotation) for what I'm getting at, but I also think the "matter of opinion" may come into play there. For a lot of people innovation only  falls within a definition of something they like. By definition, innovation is simply the introduction of something new. But I I probably wouldn't consider the roster update in each indivdual Madden release an innovation, so my bad on that.

Ultimately, I probably was better served to use the word change, which I read Chris's argument ultimately as an examination of whether a particular form of change (streamlining) is good or bad. And I personally happen to think that  people often jump to cynical bashing of developers, for changing the things they like that might not be fun or feel dated to many others.  That all too often we go to emotionally blaming things gamers we don't consider as "hardcore as us" when a developer makes a change to "our" game.

Which, brings me to Ed's comment, which I think as lazily as he accuses mine of being misses that I never said all changes were good. Of course, not all changes are technically good. As I said before, some things don't need to be touched at all for being great. I'm criticizing the lazy and overdone whining well before a game's release - as in the examples of Fable 2 and Mass Effect 2 - or simple all-out rage for changes that go against one's personal taste. While I wouldn't tell a person to like what they dislike -and it's totally someone's right to not like something, the villification  and hate of developer; publisher and other gamer that often accompanies it is a coping mechanism I tire of seeing.

The one stingingly annoying thing about personal taste is that it has the limitation of being personal. And while the trends and tastes of the majority aren't always the "best" - however one may want to qualify that - they aren't automatically the worst just because a group of us may disagree with them.

Every once in a while, we find our seats in the minority for a reason. Maybe, if only sparingly, we are the old guy begrudgingly at a football game under the retractable roof watching a $30 million wide receiver celebrating after catching a pass out of the spread that still goes on at the barber shop about how much better the game used to be in the 70s. He isn't neccesarily right nor is he wrong. The league isn't an evil emipre, the teams aren't all souless entities that are so much more interested in the profit-line than winning a championship, and the fans that have come along since aren't all a bunch of stupid idiots that don't really care about or know anything about football. It's not longer the 70s and the game he loves has simply grown as a business and has evolved in such a way that he personally never wanted.

Sometimes we are right and something's being done that isn't right and I ultimately am of te belief in those instances will not pan out and drive a company back to what is good and does still work. More often than not if we're so right in our criticisms I think the results in the consequences show. Sometimes, we're just some vocal guy from an time before that's never accepted that the game he loves has past him and his nostalgia by. And the quickest and easiist safeguard to doing such is to blame the changes - that may or not be fundamentally bad but just not what he wanted - on all of the new fans since the growth of the game.

As I said before, it's the "if it isn't tailored to my every want and desire it sucks" mentality that many people have that bugs me. And I really should point out and credit Chris, as I forgot to before, for being a lot more thoughtful than that. I just so happen to believe much of what underlies much of what I've seen around each of those examples is that very mentality.

Gerren:, you're right, you can't please everyone all the time. On the positive end, as I alluded to, Mass Effect 2 wouldn't have received my attention at all were it not for its substantial facelift. I was aware on playing, however, that some fans of what I had perceived as unnecessary fluff may well be pretty peed off at the experience, and that line of thought is what made Conviction leave me flat. My main drive is that I'm glad for Metro 2033 existing as unpenetrable as it may seem as an alternative to previously different franchises being morphed into grimy third person action game.  

PS- are you wont to leap to splinter cell's defense in a roundabout way because you're Sam Fisher's brother or something?

@Chris Don't me wrong. I'm not calling any of those changed cited games flawless (planet scanning in Mass Effect 2, I hated). I'm not even saying I like the games (Forza). I just would love for people not to jump to worst possible insult all the time when the things you cite happen. I know it sucks if someone likes a gameplay style and people start moving away from it. And as such, I'm with you on respecting the decision to keep Metro 2033 in the same way I totally respect Operation Flashpoint for being what it is for going against the grain of the market and keeping the variety. While I'm not one of those people that automatically think it's the world's greatest evil for a business to try and make money (these aren't non-profits), I think I can almost instantly respect the developer that services an audience that they know isn't going to be the most profitable. That's love of a game and play-style.

Actually, Sam's my  2nd cousin. And to know me is to know outside of my immediate family, I don't spend a load of time defending my bloodline.

@Gerren: I agree with you. Sometime it does get annoying when people whip themselves into a frenzy about some of these things. It is often a matter of opinion, but it would be better if everyone could still discuss their opinions without getting all pissy -- sometimes these changes aren't bad. (As a hardcore RPGer, I really enjoyed ME2.) Which Chris certainly didn't do, and I'm glad you mentioned that.

I don't think that's what's going on here -- Chris writes (mostly) about sequels which radically alter the gameplay in some meaningful way.

When I enjoy a particular game a lot, like X-Com, it's because of the game mechanics. Shifting away from a turn-based, tactical strategy game into a first-person shooter is as radical a change as you can get. I think players have valid reasons to complain when a developer makes those changes.

In other words, what makes a game? Is it just setting and characters? Or are gameplay and system interactions key components? I'd argue that they are.