One of the unique problems with games is the tendency for nerds to want to obsessively find a way to label and organize them. Of all the problems creating obstacles to coming up with fresh ideas and concepts, this incessant need to put something in a group is something that should be innocently nerdy enough, but instead finds its way burrowed into the thick skulls of mouthbreathers hovering over every keystroke in the gayme forum world. Sure, you can go all the way back to The Official Nintendo Player's Guide, and I imagine well before that, to find plenty of innovative games that could hardly be classified into one simple group, but nonetheless found themselves herded onto the trains labeled "Light Gun Series" and "Adventure Series" sent off to the proverbial concentration camp of late '80s American households and eventually meeting their Xecutioner via the endless trend of angry reviewers that got old in 2006.
But the most fascinating thing about our herding instinct is that some of the simplifications are either TOO simple or just outright wrong. Much like with movies, you can quickly and easily take what some local hack or hip counterculture critic writes and take it out of context depending on what you're looking for. It would be just as easy for me to twist some words around and call Heathers a straight up "comedy" rather than a "dark romantic comedy" or even a "chick flick," for instance. The most important thing here, however, is to look at just how concrete the folks in the "gamer" community have become lately, like they're some kind of authority on ANYTHING, much less games they haven't even played and yet are FUCKING CERTAIN that they meet the criteria for a given genre. No matter what cool twists and turns you might find, no matter what level of innovation Xists out there, some assholes decided they had to lump everything into FPS, Sports, Fighting, Beat 'Em Up, RPG, Arcade/Rail Shooter, or Action Adventure, with the occasional Sandbox thrown in there for good measure. There's a point to this rant, and it's this: fuck you.
Understand that I have favorites in these genres. You know what my favorite FPS is? Operation Wolf. It's a First Person Shooter.
Now, if you're savvy to the world of the gayme reviewer scene, then you're probably more than ready to stop me right there and say "But PG, that's a Rail Shooter!" You're probably also gayfat. Before you get all autistic on me and insist that's the case (the Rail Shooter thing, I mean, not the gayfatness, which I KNOW is true), consider this: It's first person. And it's a shooter. That makes it a First Person Shooter. You know what my favorite RPG is? Fatal Fury. The second I put my quarter in, I am playing the role of white trash trucker Terry Bogard, and my role is to squeak by my opponents until I reach Geese Howard, who teaches me what it means to be a man when he informs me that he murdered my father and, very shortly thereafter, kicks me throat-first out of his high-rise window to my own death.
The great thing about totally innovative titles is that it just KILLS the folks who want to label and rate the fuckers as soon as they can and as simply as possible. One prime Xample of this is Grand Theft Auto 3. There was so much to offer, and in such a different way, that it baffled the masses for a bit. It wasn't until some time later that they managed to come up with "sandbox" as a genre, which is the gayest fucking thing since Liberace's glitter-coateed balloon knot spinning around on some Louisiana Blacksnake. It was additionally wounding to Nintendo console loyalists since it did so well without the word "Zelda" in the title. It's not Rockstar's fault that their beloved franchise titles hadn't innovated a fucking thing since the mid-1980s. It's not Simon's Quest's fault that Konami decided to try something different, only to be vilified as various combinations of curse words that aren't as catchy as "gayfat."
So the next time you come across something that comes across as a fresh idea, whether in a "defined" genre or not, I challenge you to take a quick look at it, give it a shot, and make some fucking effort to think of it as a standalone game in its own world rather than trying to fit it into what is now a soulless, streamlined collection of terms that some fat pseudointellectual asshole thinks he's smart for using in front of his ugly girlfriend, who I'm sure is a moderator at some forum he's joined.
