Pause for thought: Remakes and ports are delaying innovation in games

Gaming’s zombie apocalypse is upon us in the form of the HD remake.

The new console generation has made a slow start. Both Xbox One and PS4 are still yet to see successes they can call their own, excepting Titanfall. As summer draws to a close and we barrel roll towards 2015 the status quo seems to be that old games are good games.

This week Capcom resurrected Resident Evil from beyond the grave for an HD spruce up headed to Xbox, PlayStation and PC early in 2015. It’s a port of a remake; in 2002 Resi was enhanced for GameCube as part of a series exclusivity deal with Nintendo. Resident Evil first sprang to life on the original PlayStation way back in the last millennium. That’s a thousand years ago! Okay, maybe not, but the core of Resident Evil is approaching its twentieth anniversary. Twenty years feels like a thousand in gaming.

Let’s be clear what we’re not talking about here. Reboots, revisitations to the style of earlier games in a series or incessant sequels can all be problematic in their own right. That means no DmC, New Super Mario Bros. or *cough* yearly Assassin’s Creed for both current console generations. Ports are existing games enhanced for or tailored to new platforms. Yet at their core, they’re the same game they ever were.

Familiarity is supposed to breed contempt but it’s not easy to criticise the quality of ports. Appropriately enough, an archaeologist unearthed this trend when Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition arrived for next-gen in January. Since then The Last of Us Remastered has found a 1UP mushroom to become arguably the killer app on PS4 so far. GTA V and Sleeping Dogs are being tricked out for Xbox One, PS4 and PC release later this year. Grim Fandango will dance again on PS4, PS Vita and eventually other systems. 2007’s BioShock is floating over to iPad and iPhone this summer with added touch controls. Square Enix is happily mining its JRPGs on iOS, Android and Steam.

Has originality entirely swept out of AAA games in favour of a quick and easy return? As the release schedules clear of new big material, pushed back to 2015, we’re left with a slate of tweaked versions of what we already have. That’s not great news for next-gen console owners who’ve shelled out hundreds of quatloos at the heralded dawn of a bold new era in gaming only to twiddle their thumbs playing remakes and ports. Innovation is being left to the indies.

It’s easy to see the reasons for this trend. Remade titles are huge names and proven sellers. They’re guaranteed to make money with relatively little effort required compared to the process of thinking up, designing, programming, playtesting and marketing a new game. There’s a reason we’re not seeing any announcements about an updated version of Hideo Kojima’s Policenauts or an HD remake of Burning Rangers on next-gen in 2015. For a port to sell well it needs to have ridden the hype rollercoaster at least once before.

Ports and remakes aren’t necessarily a bad thing, unless they’re Turtles in Time Re-Shelled. Fans and those unfamiliar with a game get to continue playing a classic, or something even better if the right improvements are made. Resident Evil Remake became perhaps the definitive version thanks to vastly improved graphics and sound, spooky new areas and enemies that added to the plot. It also got the ball rolling for innovations in Resident Evil 4… just not that giant quick-time-event boulder. Like cinema, gaming has grown into a mature art form that has its own achievements to match Citizen Kane and Star Wars.

Gamers couldn’t be blamed for feeling that the best classics aren’t good enough nearly a year into a new console generation. But if they do feel that way, they’re still buying. The lesson the games industry seems to have learnt is if it ain’t broke, ramp up the resolution and re-release it on as many different systems as possible. Oh – just not Wii U.

Featured image: Naughty Dog