In response to children pandering about games for consoles.

The following is a response to a thread with a poll on the The Witcher forums, regarding two other threads where idiots are complaining at each other about how the idea that TW2 is 'designed with consoles in mind' ie 'for future consideration in regards to a port' is the same as 'ohnoes GoW3 ripoff loololooolol cancelled mah perorduh TW2 dumbed down consoleport'.

What do you mean? I'll have you know that I played console games ever since like 1994-2008 and most of those years were on my own personal playstation/sega/whatevers. Console games aren't inherently terrible and this topic just makes my head spin with how narrowminded the options are.

What is consolisation? Consolification? Is it some tangible process of making a game that can be physically held? I mean are we talking about the differences between a wooden spoon and a steel spoon? Same function, different material and tools used.

If you are, infact, referring to the difference between an item of identical size and shape but of different construction and materials then you might be on to something. To suggest that console games are shallower than PC games isn't quite fair. Matters of story complexity comes down to writing. Matters of control scheme simplicity is an inherent limitation to the system but never ever get to thinking that giving a game like halo a number of controls equal to ARMA2 will ever make it a better game.

I think chap, what you are actually referring to, is a symptom more commonly found in a condition of games hit by "the activision factor" aka "CODolitis". It's an insidious disease that affects games by reducing content to a minimum as an effort to maximise post-counter (after sale) profits via microtransactions. These games are built on tired engines, are limited in scope and are comprised of 'high action' sequences in frequency and are habitually filled with 2-dimensional characters, mostly of the short-brown-haired stubble-face white-guy variety. Even when characters like that are contextually irrelevant or counterintuitive to the setting or medium.

If you've been keeping track of FPS games for the last 2 years or so, you would have seen just about every goddamned one become a COD4 ripoff. My older brother was interested in buying crysis 2.. and then I loaded up youtube with 5 different videos. MW2, BLOPS, Crysis 2, MOH and Killzone 3. Suffice to say he said I had "ruined the next 2 years worth of games for him". Derp. Saved him money is what I did.

Now microtransactions themselves are the root of the problem but that's a story for another time.