originally on boards.ie…

Both Microsoft and Sony made big noises prior to the move to this generation of consoles of how gaming was going to move from the bedroom to the living room. Gaming is undoubtedly becoming more and more mainstream, and the new consoles would reflect that, by being the centre of your entertainment world.

Both consoles, to differing degrees, got one part right. They both boast HDMI outputs to connect up to your living room telly, and (in theory, at least) you can stream all your music, movies and photos to your living room. How contemporary, how social, how very grown up.

Of course, the main appeal of these consoles is still their software line-up, and it’s that that’s going to make or break their transition to the living room.

And, to be perfectly blunt, I would be embarressed to play games like Gears of War, Oblivion and Halo. If these videogames have cinemetical parallels, they would be Rambo or Red Sonja. They are creatively bankrupt, showing no innovation in terms of art direction, astethic, characterision, plot - these are the same games we’ve been playing since Doom and Venture, just given a fresh lick of paint, a few tacked on USPs for the back of the box, and presented as the pinnacle of the artform.

And sadly, due to their popularity, it is games like these that luddites like Jack Thompson, lawmakers, politicians, film critics and so on think of when they think of videogames, and so any merit the medium has is completely dismissed.

It’s a daming indictment of the creativity of the industry, and the tastes of the consumer, that seemingly the only games that seem to get onto shop shelves are Space-Marine-Versus-Aliens, Knights-On-A-Magical-Quest or Missile-Launching-Flame-Throwing-Cars. Or Saints Row.

Who’s doing anything about it? Looking at Microsoft’s upcoming line-up, after the potentially progressive Alan Wake, I’m left with immature, derivative titles like Ninja Gaiden 2, Too Human and Halo Wars. I understand that many are counting the days to their release, but in all honesty, we’ve all played them before, under the guise of a thousand other identical games. For me, the brightest light on Microsoft’s line-up is a rerelease of Rez - because though I’ve played it before, playing it again will be more of a breath of fresh air than the afformentioned titles.

But then there’s Sony. Their line-up has all the usual suspects too. Killzone ticks the Space-Marine-Versus-Aliens, there’s more Knights-On-A-Magical-Quest cookie-cutter games than I care to count, and plenty of Shiny-Cars-Racing games to boot. And you know, meh.

But Sony’s line-up looks like it’s gonna take the path less trodden. They’re pushing games like Singstar and Buzz, which I won’t be mortified to play in front of (or, heaven forbid, with) my girlfriend, friends, or guests to my house. It’s social games like these that will truly win the living room for videogames.

And not only does their line-up pitch itself at the mainstream, but they seem keen to create new, artistically and creatively relevant games for the rest of us. We’re seeing it on the Playstation Store with stuff like PixelJunk Racers and Loco Roco, and we’ll hopefully be seeing it next year with stuff like LittleBigPlanet, Afrika, Aqua, Echochrome and more.

Sure, those gamers that see Halo3 and Gears of War as the pinnacle of the medium may easily dismiss them as unknown quantities. Me? I’ll embrace them, precisely because they are unknown quantities.