Back at the beginning of the year I had to make a nice 16 hour drive from Washington back down to Utah. In order to fill part of the time I listened to Giant Bomb’s huge game of the year podcast. In it, they discussed a dozen or so games they loved, and then quickly whittled their list down to GTA4 and MGS4. Oddly, it still took them almost 2 hours to decide on which one deserved game of the year, and odder still they both came out quite early in the year. Anyway, that’s beside the point. The reason I brought this up is because one of the podcasters, I think Brad Shoemaker, briefly defended Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. I remember hearing nothing spectacular about it when it came out, and since I was out of the country for the majority of the ridiculous holiday season rush last year, I hadn’t considered playing it. Well the podcast convinced me to add it to my ever growing list of games to play. Finally, 9 months later I’m giving it a whirl and it is actually quite good. A quick look at MetaCritic shows I’m not the only one who thought so.
This got me thinking, why have Rare games done so poorly since Microsoft purchased them? Looking over their list of games since the purchase makes me think it isn’t deserved. I never played anything they released on the original Xbox, but their 360 lineup seems fairly solid, barring Perfect Dark Zero, which was just absolutely terrible. I found Kameo, Viva Pinata and Nuts and Bolts to be at the very least above average and at times truly spectacular. All three had rich colorful environments, something I hear gamers asking for all the time these days in between purchasing every brown and gray shooter released. More importantly they all had solid gameplay mechanics that were above all, fun. Yet, none of them sold all that well. In fact, I’m fairly certain the brown and gray Perfect Dark Zero sold the best. Ironically, it is also the only one of their 360 games I actually own. :(
So what gives? Why isn’t anyone buying their games? Is the stereotype of 360 owners being interested in nothing but shooters actually true? Probably to some extent, but I think a large part of it is bad marketing. I mean, c’mon, Microsoft’s ads lately have been pretty horrendous. What I really mean though is it seems like Microsoft has been trying to use Rare as their gateway to smaller children. Right now the Wii and DS dominate the child gaming market and Microsoft wants in on it. The problem is they are marketing games like Viva Pinata and Banjo-Kazooie as childrens games, but then are making the games too complex for children to be interested in. I only played the demo of Viva Pinata and by the end started to feel overwhelmed by the amount of things I had to keep track of. Nuts and Bolts on the other hand isn’t overly complicated, but does require you to invent some pretty fine tuned vehicles, which may leave some of the younger children confused. Both these games offer rewarding and thoughtful gameplay that adults can enjoy, but because they are marketed toward children they are overlooked.
I have a feeling Rare and Microsoft have different ideas about what they want the studio to be, which is causing a bit of a problem in the way their games are handled. Hopefully Project Natal provides another outlet for the 360 to win over more of the younger market, freeing up Rare to do whatever it is they want. Though from the sounds of it, Rare is already jumping on making games with Natal and will continue their kid oriented games. Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and Rare is doing exactly what Rare wants. At the very least, it’s nice to know they are still capable of putting out a quality title, even if no one is buying them.
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