Before Final Fantasy VII, the role playing game genre just wasn’t that popular. Playing a turd like this, I can see why, as this must have been what games like Dragon Warrior and Zelda must have looked like to most gamers. Believe it or not, this was actually a very popular RPG for Japanese computer systems. It was regarded as one of the first console RPGs. However, it wasn’t bought to America until a few years later, and it’s ‘innovations’ had already been done by other games, most notably the awesome Legend of Zelda. By it’s release, not only were the graphics sub-par, the story was virtually nonexistent and the gameplay was a serious and boring pain in the ass. With stupid looking enemies, a nonsensical battle system, and boring gameplay, this early NES game would turn anyone off to the genre. For years to come, this game’s pitfalls caused mainstream gamers to sleep on quality titles such as Lufia, 7th Saga, and Final Fantasy 2 – 6, or at least that’s what I think happened. After all, who’d want to play this crap when they could be playing Double Dragon or Castlevania?
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Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty franchise had successfully usurped Medal of Honor as the premier WWII FPS franchise. Unfortunately, it also took MOH’s place as the poster child for genre burnout. Thankfully, developer Infinity Ward realized this fact, and took the next COD game into a whole new era, or more specifically, the modern world. While players were initially worried that Modern Warfare will be exploitative of the War on Terror, they were happy to learn that the game took a different route. Instead of basing it on the current conflicts in the Middle East, Modern Warfare thrust players into an epic conflict that takes its cue from action movies as opposed to the evening news.
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