On July 16, 1969, humanity first landed on the moon with its own two feet. Fast-forward seventeen years later to August 6, 1986, when Metroid first landed on the Famicom in Japan; it’s safe to say that the video game industry blasted off in its own unique way, too. Space offers boundless opportunities for creativity, but for video games, it seems like the shackles haven’t entirely been blown away yet.
For starters, at the time of writing, DOOM: The Dark Ages is set to launch in just a few short months. It looks great, and the game will surely appease fans of DOOM who like that fast-paced, off-the-wall kind of action, but what isn’t so great about it is its handling of the concept of space. To be clear, this isn’t about its setting per se; it’s more about how the game and the series in general could be way weirder. However, whether DOOM or many other titles like it offer any kind of “weird” or “unique” selling point outside of just shooting things is another topic entirely.
In any case, this industry seems to have been stuck with two mindsets: Call of Duty and Pikmin. Now, Pikmin might be one of the weirdest series ever, and that’s great because of what was established earlier: space should allow developers to get very weird with it. Because based on our findings over the years, we know that outer space is incredibly wild and wacky. So, the lack of more of this stuff is more than a little disappointing. But let’s examine that statement…
In terms of Call of Duty, at least when you look back a few years ago, all you were doing, for the most part, was blowing up stuff with a machine gun and killing various NPCs in space. For a general audience, this works, but for everyone else, it’s a mixed bag. The Call of Duty series is insanely popular, so it’s a bit sad to see it handle this concept in such a conventional way. Like DOOM, the franchise focuses more on looking cool than delivering interesting lore and weird alien designs.
That’s a big thing right there, too, because of the West’s tendency to prefer things with a huge scope that are designed to look cool and be somewhat safe; getting a new Star Wars or Alien is a rare occurrence. It’s not entirely clear why exactly this keeps happening, but Avatar movies keep being pumped out year after year instead of a new eXistenZ. Though, it’s all up to preference, so who knows?
But in terms of video games, the non-conventional and more out-there designs are usually found in Indie games, Japanese projects, and occasionally in an AA game or two. It’s not like games, such as Space Quest, don’t exist because, of course, they do, but to answer the question posed at the top of this article: yes, there are definitely not enough weird space-related video games. Outer space has captivated the human race for as long as it has existed, so hopefully, one day, DOOM can spread its wings and become the space game I’ve always wanted it to be.
