Hype Culture

If you went through 2017 without playing at least one game you thought was awesome, you've got to be incredibly hard to please. We were practically stepping in one good game after the next. However, this doesn't mean all of the standout games we experienced are flawless or even the best in the genre or respective series. In the sea of hype that surrounded last year's releases, the sea was so massive that it can be hard to look beyond that hype.

When Final Fantasy VII was originally released, it was universally praised both by fans and critics alike. It was not only hailed as "the greatest RPG of all time" but some game publications even went as far as calling it "the greatest game ever made." The game is responsible for bringing RPGs out of the niche status they previously had and into the mainstream. At the time, there was no RPG that was on the same scale as Square's superstar.

We've since had 20 years to reflect on Final Fantasy VII and opinion on the game isn't quite what it used to be. Some of this is due to the overwhelming popularity that FFVII has and hating on a big game is what all the cool kids do these days, but the other thing is that FFVII does have legitimate criticisms labeled against it. Sepiroth goes from a dude with mommy issues, disturbed with how he was made (he doesn't know that his daddy is Hojo and he was implanted with JENOVA cells) to wanting to be a god with no explanation for the shift in villainous motivations. It is also heavily implied that the Sepiroth that comes back is really JENOVA pulling his strings, thus making his actions post main FFVII story not his own.

Hype and a game's initial wow factor can cause people to make bold, even outlandish claims about a game. Granted, there are a lot of games that are certainly worthy of much of the praise and hype that they get. This doesn't mean it isn't possible for our judgement to be impaired. It can cause you to overlook and or even flat out ignore a game's faults. I myself have fallen victim to this. YouTubers and gaming journalists aren't immune to it either.

If I may spoil one of my upcoming articles, at one point I thought my Game of the Year would be Super Mario Odyssey. It is the long awaited return of sandbox Super Mario. The kingdoms are an absolute joy to explore and the game often rewards you with collectibles for searching every nook and cranny. There are numerous videos on YouTube claiming Super Mario Odyssey is the best Super Mario game ever made or that it is a game changer. Odyssey has a ton of Power Moons for you to grab, way, way more than the previous 120 star count of any of the previous 3D Super Mario games, to the point of being a bit detrimental to it's overall enjoyment. If you're going for 100% completion, you may not want to play the game on a daily basis because it can feel like a grind. As great as many of these kingdoms are, I'm not sure repopulating them with even more moons was the best way to add post-game content. The ones where you go off on a liner level that is often home to tricky platforming is awesome sauce but a lot of the other ones come off as filler. Yet the game hasn't even been out for long and some are already saying it is the best game Mario has ever been in.

Sonic Mania is an outstanding game, a blast to play. The best Sonic game in 23 years and the best Sonic game ever made? Ehhh, I'm not so sure about that. The whole "best Sonic game in 23 years" nonsense stems from Sonic's rocky track record. The last two console Sonic games to release before Mania, Sonic Lost World and Sonic Boom did not go over all that well with fans and critics. Lost World once again experimented and it wasn't as fast as the blue blur's previous outings but it was far from an awful game. On the other hand, Boom was a glitch rife mess, teetering dangerously close to Sonic '06. We haven't seen a Sonic game like Mania since the Genesis days so it comes as no surprise that the game was so well received. One of Mania's biggest striking points is that it reuses old levels, and that is a valid complaint. Sure, some one act of each eight returning zones is re-imagined, but that doesn't change the fact that once gain, we are treading on old territory, something that has been a problem with Sonic games for the past few years now.

Mania also nostalgia panders to a fault. I get that the designers of Mania are huge Sonic fans and love the old games but Mania constantly throws the call backs and references in the player's face to the point to where it reaches overkill. As fantastic as Sonic Mania is, so much of that is due to relying on what has come before, which is the game's biggest problem. Final Fantasy IX was done in the style of the older, mid evil games in the series with so many references to the past that it may as well have been a game about the Final Fantasy series. Sonic Mania is in the same boat. Hopefully the Mania team embraces more originality if they are given a chance at another Sonic project.

Loving a game and having it live up to or surpass expectations does not absolve it from criticism. Would you believe that the Empire Strikes Back, a movie widely considered to be one of the best sequels of all-time and the best Star Wars movie did not originally enjoy the high status it does today? The prequels have been heavily bashed, cited as an insult to the original trilogy but as the years have gone by, fans and critics have taken notice that the original trilogy probably shouldn't be placed on this untouchable pedestal that so many have placed it on. No game, no matter how well made is perfect and we should never be so caught up in a game's hype that we overlook or dismiss what it does wrong.