Okay. I personally adore video games. Playing them currently, I have enjoyed gaming since I was about 2-3 years old. My kids will probably be born with controllers in their hands for goodness sakes! Anyway, I have to get this off my chest (Ha ha!) or it will burrow forever.
Lately we have seen an increase in female ‘sidekicks’ and main characters. First of all, this is fine by me. BUT when you do this to try and influence women gamers to play games, focusing on the forced female sidekick instead of the original story then it bothers me.
Example, Resident Evil 5. Start playing/watching it and notice the girl, Sheva is always there. I mean in your line of fire there. Annoying. Then she goes around taking all the ammo and the gold in the containers rather than helping you fight the bad dudes. Even more annoying for awhile. But what bothered me most is that they focused on her character design and her outfits more than they did on making an actual Resident Evil game. This should have been called something else. Like, “The Adventures/Frolics of Redfield in Africa”. I don’t know but still. Come on. They focus more on her tribalwear than the gameplay. I used to be scared playing and watching Resident Evil games.
What the hell?
Another example is Prince of Persia. I just watched Josh play for less than an hour and holy shit it was really annoying. The princess girl that is following you around is actually on your back half the time and slowing you down! I swear that is what it looked like to me! I heard so many good things about the other Prince of Persia. Watched part of it too. It was beautiful. Dark, adventurous, and full of action with the suprise of time reversal added. This addition to the Persia series again, looks like a sidequest. A sidequest of someone who looks a little bit like the original Prince of Persia main character. He has an emo haircut, sarcasm and looks like a Street Fighter wannabe. I could go on and on but I will quit for now.
If you want to appeal to female gamers thats fine, take a poll or something. Don’t ruin old school classics by forcing a female into the mix. Please.
Posted on Wednesday, 22 April 2009
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