There has been a problem with me recently. I have not been able to play console games even a quarter as much as I used to. Going from putting 18 hours a day into RPGs to plopping a game in on occasion to feel nostalgia for about an hour. Attributing this to a graphical style does seem a bit cheap, but I have many reasons for it. Even many other styles of games I play suffer from lack of replay or just plain fun factor every time I play them now. That is, only 3D games.

My first experience with my first woes with 3D was the change of Zelda: A Link to the Past to Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Among others, I then grew strong in the belief that Zelda, was never made for 3D gameplay. I still beat it, giving it the benefit of the doubt, but it didn't satisfy me at all. Of course, I still had Playstation RPGs. Playstation gave us classics from Squaresoft, Enix, Namco, Working Designs, and even Sony that are just hard to forget. Playing NES and SNES RPGs was great, but it never felt as wonderful as the first battle I fought in Final Fantasy VII. I believe it's because 3D was this beautiful new thing. No one expected it to have any flaws. Difference with the Final Fantasies for the Playstation, is their gameplay wasn't based around the 3D graphics. They played like the other Final Fantasies, but this time, more beautiful than ever seen before.

No, I noticed all the problems of 3D when the PS2 came into my home. It's a great system and all. Zone of the Enders was about the first action game I realized where 3D wasn't as great as it used to be. Sure the game looked incredible, as all 3D console games should, but the problem was the feel. Half of my play was oriented around what I could see. The camera was the 2nd most important aspect of gameplay. If an enemy was behind me, and I had to attack him, I had to get the camera on him with a lock on or some sort of technique. This was a minor thing, but performed over and over, it was strangely draining. The action would be more fluent if I didn't have to turn the camera or even just focus where I'm looking to rather than what I am looking at.

A lot of you readers may not think this is as big a deal as I am making. Heck, I am probably just getting old and growing out of video games. All I know, is that the feel of platformers, side or top view shooters, and top-down RPGs, all added an extra element. That element is restriction. This is mainly the problem in action games now. The older installments of the Contra series have proven to be some of the most challenging action games ever made. The only ones without challenge were the two for Playstation that had the 3D gameplay style. Why is it so much easier when you can move everywhere? I got it. You can move everywhere! That's absolutely what it is. If you got in the way of an enemy attack in 2D platformers, you were screwed. You could even get boxed in by multiple enemies. There was so much more skill involved. Now you can just randomly jump or fly around and dodge every hit since your landscape is 10 times that of the old days. Yeah they still make them hard, but they aren't as seemingly impossible as they used to be. There's less motivation involved when the goal of your video game seems so achievable.

There are a few exceptions in the world though. Games like Zone of the Enders does have a Very Hard mode, which is just that, very freaking hard! Problem is, it's not hard in the same way. Jumping pits where a pixel of space makes all the difference is no more. Instead, now you have to learn how to use 10 tools together really well, or use your environment to your advantage. In my opinion, this makes it easier. Games like Contra Hard Corps on the hardest setting, were extremely close to impossible. Action games were all about dodging and hitting. Now they are about watching, and feeling the levels you play in. This doesn't mean that new action games are less exhilarating, it just means that they are less fulfilling. I don't have as much reason to go back and play when I see Game Over on a new action game. I know I could beat this boss in 2 or 3 more tries.

How do RPGs suffer from this? This is the motherload of all 3D gameplay problems. Camera angles. Just about every RPG I have played that has a 3D camera has annoyed me when using it. It feels like an extra feature that I don't want to do, but I have to do if I want to progress. Final Fantasy X almost had it perfect. Every landscape was 3D, but you moved through them as if you were playing one of the Playstation Final Fantasy games. You didn't need to position any camera, which, in my honest opinion, is just a sign of a lazy development team, and you didn't even need to move your character to manipulate the camera.

I say let us focus on the game, not the camera or the levels build. Jumping is more important than having our camera home in on a flying enemy. These games do add an extra dynamic element, but they take away a classic gameplay feature that has drove us all. The impossibility of classic action games was always great. People who played Atari even, like me, still loved the old games for their endless gameplay. I don't really need to go that far back, though. The NES, SNES, and Genesis days, for me, were much better and well appreciated. I appreciate them more. I'm enjoying my GameBoy Advance, thanks to the realization that 3D games now have this boring aspect to them. Have fun with whichever you like, I think I'm going to keep supporting 2D till the 3D game developers learn how to make a game.