It's the same song over and over again. People often lament over how similar games are, or how a game is overly repetitious. I'm even guilty of singing it myself sometimes. I was talking to my brother about Prey once, and I told him about how much I loved the portal, wall pads, and gravity shifting technologies. Then he commented about how the graphics were taken from Doom 3 and he'd heard that it was really repetitive. You end up fighting the same old aliens over and over again.

That got me thinking... in a time where games are becoming increasingly expensive to produce, isn't it worthwhile to use existing graphic engines for a long as possible? Is the Doom 3 engine really so old that it's unbearable to look at now? Until games like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 2007 are released, is there really a graphics engine that far surpasses it? So far, I've played SiN Episodes: Emergence and Half-Life 2: Episode 1, which both use Source, and I still think they look fantastic. I've even run through the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic demo a few times, and I'm still impressed at how intense the graphics are and how flexible the physics handling is. There is no doubt that graphics are important to a successful game, but I refuse to believe that great graphics are everything. Looks don't make the game. Unreal Tournament 2004 is still great fun to play, even though it's two years old and doesn't match any current shooter in graphics. So, at least until far superior graphical games are released, I don't mind re-used game engines much, especially ones that get updated and used in new and creative ways the way Source does.

Graphics are a big part of the initial "Wow!" factor, and helps quite a bit to immerse players into their game worlds, but none of that necessarily equates into fun. I've played plenty of great looking games that were snoozefests. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the way it looks, it was the gameplay, which leads to the next point. Let's get one thing out of the way: Every game is repetitive. I think gamers would be hard pressed to find a game where they are not doing the same thing over and over again. That's the nature of games, people! Everything is restricted by rules and parameters. In basketball, players need to dribble the ball, make baskets, and then go back into position before doing more of the same. I've never heard anyone complain about how a sports title plays too much like its predecessor, with the same players, rules, etc. In fact, it's been a long-standing joke that all a sports game needs are graphical and statistical upgrades every year, and maybe tighter controls. Yet, even with all the general sameness, sports games remain among the top-selling titles in the industry.

I often read critics write that the repetition gets overwhelming, especially when playing shooters or MMO games. People get tired of fighting the same enemies over and over again. I've even said the same thing myself at times without really thinking about it. At the risk of cursing myself from using the statement ever again, the more I think about it, the less sense it seems to make. If you are playing a WWII shooter like Call of Duty 2, does it seem right to say that it's boring to face Germans over and over again? I mean, what do you expect to happen? The French to suddenly switch sides and launch cows at you? And what is the difference, graphically, between a German soldier and any other soldier besides the uniform? Now switch the logic to sci-fi and horror shooters, where enemies don't have to look the same, or do they. It's strange when you think about it. Why do we always expect an extremely high variety of soldiers when aliens attack? There's a formula, of course. Tough boss monsters will occasionally show up, but you can expect to face the same kind of soldiers as the main battle force whenever you step into a game. I suppose if we were to look at things from an alien's perspective, there aren't a high variety of humans to fight either. In fact, by shooter standards, it's only one guy mowing everybody down. You don't get much less variety than that!

Some of the best games ever made have their foundations based on repetition. Practically every RPG is based on doing the same thing over and over again, gaining experience, so that you can battle bigger monsters. Monsters only differ in looks, damage types, and statistics (hit point, damage, etc.), so what kind of variety does that really equate to? What is the defining factor which separates the best of the Final Fantasy series from an MMO, where people complain about the long grind? Let's face it, when we say grind, we're actually talking about simply playing. If you have to stop and think about whether you're having fun defeating hordes of monsters with your legendary sword of lightning, then something is wrong. If a game is fun, then the grind shouldn't matter. The grind is the game. If I have to stop and think, "Wow, this is the 200th foot soldier alien I've shot already. How about something new?" then something is wrong. The immersive effect is lost.

I think that what we are actually talking about when we complain about repetition is computer intelligence. That's why almost every game is practically expected to have some sort of multiplayer component included with it. That's why multiplayer shooters are always fun to load up. It's also one of the reasons PvP gameplay needs to be included in MMO titles. But that still doesn't address the whole question. Even with a game like FEAR, which had excellent artificial intelligence, one of the biggest complaints was that people ended up fighting too many clones and too few bosses. You could walk into the same room ten different times and never have the scene play out in exactly the same way twice, but people still get upset about the clones. Furthermore, they complain that they've seen murderous, vengeful, little psychic spirit girls before in other places. I admit, I'm getting a little tired of them kicking my butt too, but that's more of a personal issue than a gaming one.

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