Overhyped Media
So, in the suggestions thread, I asked for there to be an entirely new section for articles and reviews, but Insane disagreed, and said that if they get big he'll do it. So, I did a review on Crysis 3 before (http://halocustoms.com/threads/crysis-3.1975/), so I decided to do an article, and switch between both every once in a while. Today, I'm going to be touching a controversial issue here, and one that if I'm honest is way more apparent in video games, overhyped media.
There's been an explosion of video game popularity recently, because of the explosion of smart phones, it's become more and more socially acceptable to play video games, whether hard core or casual. And no amount of old people saying that games cause violence, will stop this, they will go down in history as those afraid people who tried to stop the next big thing, like how television and comics will destroy us. getting off topic, let's look at an example everyone reading this will be familiar with: Halo 4.
Many people disagreed with my opinions that BLOPS II had a better story than halo 4, and some of them held up quite good arguments, and I respect their opinions. However, I don't think anyone can deny that the amount of overhyping Halo 4 had was just ridiculous. Live action trailers, documentaries, interviews, ads on TV, ads on the web, award ceremonies the list goes on and on, everyone was saying how much of a great game this was, that I was left pretty disappointed with the premise from (what people made out to be) a near perfect game.
It all started with Microsoft's huge attempt to get sales on Halo 3, and I think that Halo 3 had the first ever live action trailer for a game right? Well Halo 3 was a huge success, so now everyone's caught the fever of live action trailers. They're everywhere, CGI trailers are just sort of expected outside of indy games, and I think some indy games are doing it now
Corporate is using this to great advantage. It's safer to make a good game, rather than a great game, which is why we see more first person shooters via CoD. Now corporate is overhyping everything, it's ridiculous. We've all been fooled at least once in our gaming lives that a game will be awesome (*cough* Colonial *cough* Marines). I'm seeing billboards of GTA V, booth babes at E3, and 24 hour coverage of a launch event.Okay, I think I've pretty much insulted most of the gaming developers and publishers by now, so I'll say that we at least have one (two! It's two I called it first!) consolations. A overhyped game doesn't make a bad game, just most of the time we get a disappointing game, and there are those games that live up to the hype, case in point Far Cry 3. However, the gaming industry isn't just in the wrong here obviously, I'm going to use an example here which might bring up bad memories, it gave me nightmares. No, it's not the Jurassic Park sequel possibility, it's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
One of my favourite heroes was Indiana Jones, I loved the original trilogy, it was a great kids series full of action, story, and comedy. It's no surprise then to say that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a humongous disappointment, I'm not going into detail about what was wrong with it or I'll be ranting for pages. Instead I'm comparing it to the Last Crusade, that was my personal favourite of the franchise. Now the Last Crusade tried to sucker in new comers to the series and it did it quite well ... except for Marcus and Salah, but if it didn't have a balance then shit has hit the fan.
It was no where near as overhyped as today's media, despite it being a huge blockbuster. On the other hand I have that. It used another form of overyhyping, piggy backing on the franchise. Come one, 20 years after the Last Crusade everyone was overhyped, hell, it would have done only slightly less better at the box office had it only released the trailers. But nope, we got a shitty film clearly cashing in on the Indiana Jones license.
Overhyping has gotten to the point where we expect it, like Skyfall. Reviewers now have a common phrase 'it didn't live up to the hype.' That is a sign that overhyping has wormed it's way in as a common marketing tool that everyone knows about, but nobody notices. Honestly, I'm fed up with wading through the muck to get to the goodies (just like Fan Fiction), and the worst part is, this fad won't die out like 3D will. No, this is going to stick around for a while, because overhyping is still incognito the the general public, corporate is going to use this as a marketing tool for decades, maybe even centuries, unless global warming smites us all out though.
