Funnily enough, I got bored with DMC and Bayonetta really quickly as I thought they weren't epic enough.
Congratulations at using the most played-out and meaningless word on the internet. This should really set the tone for the rest of your post. Also, DMC3 Dante is too much of a ridiculous goofball to be an "emo douche" (I mean, he sneezes right before a building falls down in the beginning, and wields a
guitar that shoots lightning). You're thinking of DMC4's Nero, who is in fact a whiny, uninteresting brat.
I don't think there is anything wrong with a game offering an easy learning curve and being a "shallow" experience. Games like Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, Streets of Rage etc are all button mashers which, upon initial inspection, all offer simplistic controls that allow one to get the job done without needing to learn an entire repertoire of moves and combos.
STREET FIGHTER IS NOT A BUTTON MASHER, and its controls are not simplistic. Not even SFIV. You need to learn all your character's moves and at least a couple combos to have any hope of playing well. I really shouldn't need to explain this one. And if all you do is mash buttons in SoR with no regard to strategic positioning, you'll get killed.
It's only when you scratch the surface do you realise how hard these games are to master as the characters you control have an array of moves which require strategy, timing and precision when executing blows.
You're saying that an unskilled SoR or SF player doesn't realize the games' difficulty until he actually starts to practice and figure things out? That makes no goddamn sense. The skilled player will always have an easier time with the game, regardless of complexity.
Without necessarily undermining your argument, Streets of Rage was a 2D battle action beat-em-up, that required little to no skill to complete on the harder difficulty settings (at least for me). That didn't make it any less memorable for me as an experience, and I certainly didn't think any less of it because I completed it on my first go.
1CCing a SoR game, or even clearing it with the limited credits given, is a
hell of a lot more challenging than finishing a GoW game. If you don't know what you're doing and you mess up too often, you will fail, and be forced to start over from the beginning. GoW offers unlimited retries from frequently placed checkpoints, as well as huge heaps of lifebar, unaggressive enemies, and frequent health powerups. I'm not even sure if we're talking about the same games here.
As for other genres (such as Shmups), I would like to refer you to Axelay - itself one of the most lauded games in existence and a shining example of how a game can be fun without invoking one's desire to become a masochist.
Axelay is my favorite console-exclusive shmup of all time, man. You're misunderstanding me--I don't think a game needs to be as brutal as Silvergun or Batrider to be great. I just expect it to offer a healthy margin for error and some tangible resistance, both of which Axelay does. Limited continues, hazard-filled stages, and taking damage removes your weapons. Unlike in GoW, if you stop moving for thirty seconds, you will die. It took a good amount of practice and effort to 1CC the game, two things which don't apply to GoW on its standard difficulty at all. Comparing games like SoR and Axelay to GoW is irrelevant, meaningless and does not help your argument in any way.
Whilst it may be "immensely satisfying to clear a difficult level or boss fight in one of these games by the skin of one's teeth", you must understand that people appreciate games for different reasons.
Some reasons are better than others.
For me, I play God of War for its narrative, its epic set-pieces, the fluidity of its controls, its music, the bosses and the varied enemies - in short, the overall package. Whilst the combat isn't quite as deep as the games you mentioned, I personally feel that I wouldn't have cared if the combat had been more fleshed out. I want to see what happens next, and would rather progress in the story than have to worry about what sort of tactics I use against enemies. Having said that though, I find that the level of combat is as deep as you want it to be - hence the reason why you can string along moves to form combos...
Then I must conclude that you have shallow, superficial taste in games, not unlike the "casuals" and brogamers frequently mocked around these parts, who play nothing but Calladooty.
The mere presence of combos does not a complex game make. It's possible to pull off some insane-looking combos in the battle systems of the Tales RPG games, but they all come down to easy timing and simple button mashing. There's not any meaningful mechanical barrier to them. GoW's combos work in much the same way--Kratos doesn't have the same thoughtful limitations on his movement and moveset that Dante has, descended from their Capcom fighting game lineage.
Lots of popular fighting games can be "won simply by mashing the standard combo over and over again". I don't find this unacceptable. Games like Tekken and Soul Calibur are glorified button mashers, yet a lot of people have decided that they are prepared to "settle for less" as they still feel bad-ass when controlling the likes of Forest Law etc.
Those people are largely morons with bad taste. So you think that it's okay for games to make people feel like a badass without requiring them to possess the actual skill needed to act like one? Would you still be okay with applying this to, say, the education system? This is also how we ended up with turds like Arkham Asylum, where the game does everything it can to mask the fact that it's playing itself for you.
Also, Forest/Marshall Law look absolutely ridiculous when spamming somersault attacks. And these tactics will be useless against a skilled opponent.
I disagree with your assumption that "good action games are deeply mechanical things, puzzle boxes riddled with levers, switches and knobs". A good action game merely has to sell you the "experience" of making you go WOW! It's for this reason that the Call of Duty series is considered as being at the forefront of what a good action games represents, even though the series isn't renowned for offering "deeply mechanical things, puzzle boxes riddled with levers, switches and knobs".
I played Call of Duty 3 because I wanted an "experience". I wanted to be in a Michael Bay movie, with over-the-top action scenes and set-pieces.
Your shallow opinions are directly responsible for modern AAA game development going in the shithole, on the part of both the developers and the players. How does it feel to be part of the problem? You're the reason we have "RPG Mode" in the new Mass Effect. You're the reason every campaign level in a modern shooter is a straight line interspersed with cutscenes. God forbid a game actually try to be something other than a brainless, spoon-fed blockbuster flick that demands nothing of its audience.
Heavy Rain was an interesting (and somewhat expensive) experiment. On the strength of my "experience" with the title, I bought another Quantic Dream game - Farenheit (which I haven't played too much of, but which feels pretty similar in terms of its play mechanics).
Heavy Rain is only interesting or worthwhile if you've never seen a movie or read a book before--or even played a Sierra/Lucasarts adventure game. The acting is laughable, the characters are wooden, the story and its twist ending are entirely predictable. Having to pantomime all the characters' actions with motion control is incredibly awkward and silly. Jumping between four different characters kills the attachment you're supposed to have to the protagonist. There are practically no puzzles. Fahrenheit isn't much better, and happens to contain the most ludicrous boss battle in gaming history (a Parappa the Rapper stage with a gravity-defying Matrix fight playing in the background). David Cage is a shitty hack who has no place in the gaming or movie industries.
but I pray for anyone who makes it their mission to absorb only one type of genre/content. Not only does this diminish your overall understanding of opposing world views, but it also distorts your overall sense of perspective.
Warning! A huge battleship STRAWMAN ARGUMENT is approaching fast.
Variety is the spice of life. And for every "God of War" type game out there in the marketplace, I'm just glad that there are just as many games that are geared towards asserting the notion that videogames are "art". But like Duchamp's urinal piece, I too think that shit (if done right) should be looked upon as something that has worth and that we can all learn something from.
GAMES ALWAYS HAVE BEEN ART, even before charlatans like Jonathan Blow and Tale of Tales arrived on the scene. To deny this is to deny the tireless, multi-decade efforts of the craft's masters and the masterpieces they made.
Duchamp was a
great artist who was usually too lazy to turn in anything of much value. He made a living bullshitting the art world with meaningless, fraudulent crap that took him no effort to make. It's sad that generations of people continue to be duped by his nonsense, and the actual works of art he made remain largely ignored.
Whenever someone asks me as to what type of games I like to play, I always tell them, "good ones".
I hope they tell you "That's an incredibly pointless and vague response that tells me nothing about your actual taste in games. Who
doesn't like playing good games?"
Check, and mate.
