What does it take to be truly innovative? These days, especially with the advent of the Nintendo Wii, emphasis is placed so much on going forward and making waves in the gaming industry that perfectly fun games are criticized for not being innovative enough.

On the other hand, games that are touted as such sort of, well, disappoint. There is no doubt that the Wii is innovative, in that it promotes its remote for titles that use gun play, swords, or even sports mechanics. Truly, Wii Sports is great fun for people of all ages, and recently we added Mario Kart Wii to its library which integrated an actual steering wheel into gameplay, but are they really great games? Games of the year, games of the decade–games we look back and remember in our old age?

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Our top stories in the video game industry today are as follows: “GTA IV to bring about the world’s first age of peace,” “GTA IV donates $10,000,000 to various charities,” and “GTA IV has cured cancer.” Tee-hee. You’re right. Those are gross exaggerations.

However, with the alarming amount of coverage by basically every video game website, magazine, or fan ever, you tend to start believing that GTA IV is, well, the most phenomenal commodity since sliced bread. Now, I haven’t gotten a chance to play it yet, and I probably won’t pick it up until it’s a bargain or until I get around to using my boyfriend’s copy. I’m sure it’s got all kinds of things to offer. I’m not criticizing the actual gameplay whatsoever. Honestly, though, the amount of attention it’s received is actually quite ridiculous in my eyes.

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What I’m about to say is crossing the line. It’s sacrilegious. I will be stuck down by lightning from the gaming heavens. Fanboys and fangirls will have my head on a replica Masamune sword tomorrow. And still, I have to say it. I have to confess. I have to come clean.

You see, I don’t like Final Fantasy VII.

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I haven’t done an opinion piece on gaming in a long while, so brace yourself. I love gaming. I love everything about gaming. I love practically all genres of games. I was exceedingly happy when gaming started to become more widespread and slowly evolved into a culture. But there are a couple of things that tick me off.

I’ve noticed that most of my gamer friends are exactly like me in some respects. We were the ones outside playing imagination games at recess, pretending we were power rangers and darkstalkers and just generally blindly running around and having fun. We weren’t really playing basketball or four square, or sitting on the slide playing with each other’s hair. I had toys that I played with when I was alone, sure. I had a tribal society of Littlest Pet Shops. I built them a village where they held council. I loved my toys. But more often than not if a friend was over, we were playing an imagination based game.

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A couple years ago I could be quoted as saying RPG’s were the best video games around with detailed characters, in-depth storylines, and beautiful cinemas. However, it seems most video game companies today pride themselves on having beautifully rendered cinemas in their games. There are video game companies that don’t use cut scenes like Valve but other popular companies like Square-Enix use them constantly. It’s entertaining to look at a video game from a Playstation game and compare the graphics to a new generation console’s output to judge the quality’s improvement. There appears to be a growing trend with video games, RPG’s in particular, with large amounts of cut scenes and limited game play.

The question I pose to you is, “Is too much money and time going to graphical presentation that could be going into other more tangible aspects?”

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Video games have always been my own personal hell, as I have a tendency to be perfect in everything I do. I had to be the person with the top kills in a shooter, I always have to have top performer in Rock Band, and when it comes to a Korean grind MMO I’ll always aim for the max level. When it came to playing World of Warcraft though, that attitude had to change–a little. Instead of the entire group being rewarded with an accomplishment, only a few choice individuals were rewarded. Despite the annoyance of the system, I grew fond of it. You worked hard to get your new piece of shiny loot, then you would sit in a capital city for a few days just so that everyone who inspected you would congratulate you or ask where you got it. Despite how annoying it always was, you’d answer, just to see the reaction of how great you were.

Lately I have noticed how lackluster accomplishments have become and how little of a challenge games are. There have always been cheat codes for console games that would make everything easy, so I grew attached to MMORPG’s. World of Warcraft is the one I’ve played for three years now and well, what is there left to that game that can be considered a challenge?

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