Platinum Games opened up under the auspices that they were going to turn the Japanese gaming industry around. At the time, Japanese game makers were struggling. Creativity had seemed to dry up in the largest companies, and sales figures around the world showed that even the rehashed and rebranded sequels and prequels were failing to gain traction with consumers. Platinum promised to change all this by offering fresh, new IP's, and by doing things that no gamer had ever seen before.
The core group of designers and programmers who started the company certainly had a grand pedigree in the gaming world, having been key in the development of numerous massive franchises over the past fifteen years. But could they turn around the fortunes of a nation's gaming universe?
Platinum Games came out guns blazing, figuratively and literally, with the action-packed releases of Madworld, Bayonetta, and Vanquish. It seems to this writer that many people regard these as great games, however, is this really the case?
Using the premise that was propounded by Platinum Games itself, by rights it would be logical for the gamer to imagine that these first few games would be like something no one had ever seen before. But when you boil them down to each of their essences you start to see something a bit troubling.
Madworld, Bayonetta, and Vanquish, while having strong characters and art direction, end up being incredibly typical, boring, and stale.
Strip away Madworld's gimmick of blood and gore on the kid-friendly Nintendo Wii and essentially you're left with a bland beat-em-up with bad camera work and a non-existent plot. And let's not call the black-and-white-and-red presentation anything but what it is- a distraction and a gimmick. It doesn't take long till you're sick of three colors, and mashing three buttons. If Platinum's idea of revolutionary game development is being able to kill an enemy with 25 different signposts then they greatly undervalue the gamer's intelligence.
When Hideki Kamiya tried to dazzle us with Bayonetta he gave us the game that Devil May Cry would have been in an alternate universe in which Devil May Cry was never conceived until 2007. While a solid game technically speaking this is another one that, to me, falls drastically short of the Japanese revolution promised by Platinum. I've played hack-and-slash games with combo's and weapons and sexy hookers heroines countless times already. Where's something new?
Vanquish is a solidly passable shooter with exceptional gameplay, but in the end there's little to no character development. Nor is there a storyline that's any deeper than, let's say... 1987's run-and-gun action game Contra. Again, we're left with a technically proficient game with average presentation and little else.
In all three examples the visuals are only just as good as the next game in line, and while it takes more than visuals to really make a piece of software, it's this writer's opinion that the overall packages fail to congeal into anything as revolutionary as the creators had promised.
I'm saying that Platinum Games' games are like shaking hands with an empty glove. They're just not there.
Am I being harsh? A bit. But when someone walks into a room and yells, "Get ready, dillweeds, cuz I'm about to blow your motha*&%^in' minds wide open!" They better do a bit more than shuffle a deck of cards and walk out of the room.
I look forward to seeing what Platinum delivers in the upcoming years. As a huge fan of all things Japanese, and a lover of the outstanding, quirky, and above all innovative Japanese games of my youth, I wish them all the luck in the world.
