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It may be because I grew up with a Game Boy and a SNES, but does it seem to anyone else that games just aren't what they used to be? A few points as to what I mean:

Graphics: Ok, games have always been pushing graphics to new heights, but now a days it seems like graphics are all that matter to developers/gamers. Look at Resident Evil 5: Some of the best graphics I have ever seen, but the "Survival" is only really there when your on Professional, and "Horror" is just plain absent. Gears of War is amazing looking, but try playing it online and you will run into so many glitches its not funny.

Content: I don't know if it's because I am currently playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a game where even the secret rooms have secret rooms (no joke), but if you look at alot of games, they don't have much. God of War 3, while I haven't played it, I have heard only has 6 hours of content. Likewise of Modern Warfare 2. Back in the day, unless you were playing a game like Mortal Kombat, you could expect a whole heck of a lot more. I have this game for my PlayStation that I had 60 hours logged in on one HALF of the storyline and the end wasn't even in sight.

Another thing that grinds my gears is the whole "Oh, this is going to hurt people's feelings! we can't put that in the game!". There are some developers that I respect, namely Rockstar, because they are making the games that they want to make, and damned be anyone who tells them "No!" I don't remember who said it where, but someone on this forum said it best: "Old game designers still had that whole "STFU, if our game offends your puritan beleifs don't play it!""

TL; DR: I'm just P-Oed that I can buy a "Game" (interactive movie more like) that takes years of developement for 60 bucks and get at max 10 hours out of them with little replay value, but then I buy, oddly enough, Castlevania HD, a game with no story, graphics ripped from DS games and tweaked a little, and as glitchy/problematic as hell, for $15 and squeeze 140 hours (last I checked, and still going strong) out of it, when it was thrown together in like two days and was basically a bait and switch move with the upcoming Castlevania: Lord's of Shadows.

Gaming is dying as an industry, me thinks. Or at least, the Chaos Gods have been displeased and have turned it into a Spawn....

I disagree.

Oh Castlevania SOTN, what a great game you are.

Anyway, you are right. however, game length isn't a major (at least for me) factor in it being good, some games are too damn long.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I disagree.

How so?

battle Brother Lucifer wrote:Oh Castlevania SOTN, what a great game you are.

Anyway, you are right. however, game length isn't a major (at least for me) factor in it being good, some games are too damn long.

Oh I know, that 60 hour game I mentioned I never did beat it, but still, 6-10 hours is just pitiful.

I mean, if you look at Halo 3, that games SP lasts around what, 10 hours? But Bungie at least throws in Skulls, which allow you to completely customize your entire experiance each and every time. Now you go over to multiplayer, and you have Forge and Custom Games, both of which allow you to make almost any game mode you want (I say almost because there were a few times my group and I were left wanting). Halo 3 is what all games should be, but only as long as we are talking what you can do with it. Never did care for the gameplay myself.

Graphics: Ok, games have always been pushing graphics to new heights, but now a days it seems like graphics are all that matter to developers/gamers. Look at Resident Evil 5: Some of the best graphics I have ever seen, but the "Survival" is only really there when your on Professional, and "Horror" is just plain absent. Gears of War is amazing looking, but try playing it online and you will run into so many glitches its not funny.

Resident evil five is an action horror, it is unequivocally better then the first three resident evils. As for gears, yes, it looks better then classic games. But online? Ok, go play road rash or final fantasy five online. Oh wait.

Content: I don't know if it's because I am currently playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a game where even the secret rooms have secret rooms (no joke), but if you look at alot of games, they don't have much. God of War 3, while I haven't played it, I have heard only has 6 hours of content. Likewise of Modern Warfare 2.

I can't speak to god of war, but modern warfare is primarily an online game but has a 15 hour campaign and 12 hours of multiplayer co-op content. The real meat of the game is in it's multiplayer of course, which makes this an erroneous comparison. Fallout 3 takes the average player 30 hours to beat and upwards of 60 when the player is attempting to find "All the secret rooms". Shadow complex, an indie xbla title takes a good 15-20 hours to beat and has plenty of secret rooms.

Back in the day, unless you were playing a game like Mortal Kombat, you could expect a whole heck of a lot more. I have this game for my PlayStation that I had 60 hours logged in on one HALF of the storyline and the end wasn't even in sight.

And some you could beat in 17 minutes.

Another thing that grinds my gears is the whole "Oh, this is going to hurt people's feelings! we can't put that in the game!". There are some developers that I respect, namely Rockstar, because they are making the games that they want to make, and damned be anyone who tells them "No!" I don't remember who said it where, but someone on this forum said it best: "Old game designers still had that whole "STFU, if our game offends your puritan beleifs don't play it!""

The hell are you talking about?

TL; DR: I'm just P-Oed that I can buy a "Game" (interactive movie more like) that takes years of developement for 60 bucks and get at max 10 hours out of them with little replay value, but then I buy, oddly enough, Castlevania HD, a game with no story, graphics ripped from DS games and tweaked a little, and as glitchy/problematic as hell, for $15 and squeeze 140 hours (last I checked, and still going strong) out of it, when it was thrown together in like two days and was basically a bait and switch move with the upcoming Castlevania: Lord's of Shadows.

You sound like you're easily amused. May I suggest the ultimate investment of a ball and paddle for the thousands of hours of joy it will give you?

Gaming is dying as an industry, me thinks. Or at least, the Chaos Gods have been displeased and have turned it into a Spawn....

No. Just no.

I disagree that the games industry is dying.

I beleive more that its individual companies that are giving the whole industry a bad name.

Too many companies are taking a lot of well thought content that could be critical to the game and took it out, No Russian for Modern Warfare 2 being an example.

I cant name and shame a single company but its the usual trade of quality over quantity. Most companies are now just pulling games out their to sell quicker and make a quick buck instead of making a decent game that doesnt need serious patches to fix, looking at The Sims 3 here. So far 2 expansion and a few stuff packs yet some people can hardly play the base game due to glitches.

If I must then compare The Sims 3 to Oblivion. Completely different genres and companies but the way they were produced is completely different. Sure Oblivion took 4 years to make after the release of Morrowind. Yet those 4 years produced a very well made game, yes there were still glitches and such content that should have been removed AKA duping glitch(doesnt seem a glitch but a testing feature that wasnt removed). But the overall product was worth the 4 year wait. (Needs confirming by a Morrowind and Oblivion player, never played Morrowind).

So before you go bashing the industry as a whole, try nit picking different games from different companies.

Anyway thats my "2 cents" or "2 bobs" worth. (Yes I included both for the USA and the UK lol)

Side note: I hopefully plan on being a member of a game company in the future.

EDIT: Adding info I missed. I tend to skip info if another thought enters my head while typing something. 1st its happened on dakka lol.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Content: I don't know if it's because I am currently playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a game where even the secret rooms have secret rooms (no joke), but if you look at alot of games, they don't have much. God of War 3, while I haven't played it, I have heard only has 6 hours of content. Likewise of Modern Warfare 2.

I can't speak to god of war, but modern warfare is primarily an online game but has a 15 hour campaign and 12 hours of multiplayer co-op content. The real meat of the game is in it's multiplayer of course, which makes this an erroneous comparison. Fallout 3 takes the average player 30 hours to beat and upwards of 60 when the player is attempting to find "All the secret rooms". Shadow complex, an indie xbla title takes a good 15-20 hours to beat and has plenty of secret rooms.

Back in the day, unless you were playing a game like Mortal Kombat, you could expect a whole heck of a lot more. I have this game for my PlayStation that I had 60 hours logged in on one HALF of the storyline and the end wasn't even in sight.

And some you could beat in 17 minutes.

Another thing that grinds my gears is the whole "Oh, this is going to hurt people's feelings! we can't put that in the game!". There are some developers that I respect, namely Rockstar, because they are making the games that they want to make, and damned be anyone who tells them "No!" I don't remember who said it where, but someone on this forum said it best: "Old game designers still had that whole "STFU, if our game offends your puritan beleifs don't play it!""

The hell are you talking about?

TL; DR: I'm just P-Oed that I can buy a "Game" (interactive movie more like) that takes years of developement for 60 bucks and get at max 10 hours out of them with little replay value, but then I buy, oddly enough, Castlevania HD, a game with no story, graphics ripped from DS games and tweaked a little, and as glitchy/problematic as hell, for $15 and squeeze 140 hours (last I checked, and still going strong) out of it, when it was thrown together in like two days and was basically a bait and switch move with the upcoming Castlevania: Lord's of Shadows.

You sound like you're easily amused. May I suggest the ultimate investment of a ball and paddle for the thousands of hours of joy it will give you?

Gaming is dying as an industry, me thinks. Or at least, the Chaos Gods have been displeased and have turned it into a Spawn....

No. Just no.

Modern Warfare 2 is also glitchy, imbalanced, and just generally eye candy.

Also, that 17 minute game completion is a speed run, back then, that was a type of way the game COULD be played, not HAD to be played. There are people who beat Super Metroid in 20 minutes, and that took most people alot longer than that..

Read that part again. Most developers won't put stuff in because it will hurt sales. Back in the day, it was "We will release it when it is finished and when we feel it is actually a good game." Non of this "lets release it now, get money, and then work on a patch for all this stuff we know is broken."

And I reckon your burdened with an overabundance of schooling.

Go away if you don't like it.

Modern Warfare 2 is also glitchy, imbalanced, and just generally eye candy.

And it's one of hundreds of titles debuted every year. Whine more.

Also, that 17 minute game completion is a speed run, back then, that was a type of way the game COULD be played, not HAD to be played. There are people who beat Super Metroid in 20 minutes, and that took most people alot longer than that..

Yes, and there are ways to play modern warfare and god of war that take longer then 6 hours. Looks like you're defeating your own poor arguments.

Read that part again.

No.

Most developers won't put stuff in because it will hurt sales. Back in the day, it was "We will release it when it is finished and when we feel it is actually a good game.

Yeah, I'm sure twisted metal three was a fantastic game and there's no way that superman 64 was rushed because they didn't care about product quality.

Non of this "lets release it now, get money, and then work on a patch for all this stuff we know is broken."

Kind of like how seventh legion was shipped without broken pathing, huh? Oh wait. You ever play tresspasser? No, of course not, you somehow have this flawed view of the past where everything man did was flawless.

And I reckon your burdened with an overabundance of schooling.

I recken you're burdened with an unfortunate lack.

Go away if you don't like it.

You mean you don't want people to post in your whine threads? Why didn't you just leave this on facebook then? At least there all people can do is like or ignore it.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Modern Warfare 2 is also glitchy, imbalanced, and just generally eye candy.

And it's one of hundreds of titles debuted every year. Whine more.

Also, that 17 minute game completion is a speed run, back then, that was a type of way the game COULD be played, not HAD to be played. There are people who beat Super Metroid in 20 minutes, and that took most people alot longer than that..

Yes, and there are ways to play modern warfare and god of war that take longer then 6 hours. Looks like you're defeating your own poor arguments.

Read that part again.

No.

Most developers won't put stuff in because it will hurt sales. Back in the day, it was "We will release it when it is finished and when we feel it is actually a good game.

Yeah, I'm sure twisted metal three was a fantastic game and there's no way that superman 64 was rushed because they didn't care about product quality.

Non of this "lets release it now, get money, and then work on a patch for all this stuff we know is broken."

Kind of like how seventh legion was shipped without broken pathing, huh? Oh wait. You ever play tresspasser? No, of course not, you somehow have this flawed view of the past where everything man did was flawless.

And I reckon your burdened with an overabundance of schooling.

I recken you're burdened with an unfortunate lack.

Go away if you don't like it.

You mean you don't want people to post in your whine threads? Why didn't you just leave this on facebook then? At least there all people can do is like or ignore it.

I am not whining, I am reminiscing. Big difference.

Oh please, show me these other ways, becuase those games are LINEAR. They are made to be progressed from one area to the next. With Metroid, you could go all over the place to fight different bosses in different orders. Can you do that with the others? Nooooo.... moving on.

64 was also after what I was talking about.

And maybe you should spell check your own posts before you spell check yours. It's spelled "reckon", not Recken. Or do you simply enjoy coming off as an E-thug?

I admittingly have never played Seventh Legion nor Tresspasser, but as a whole the games were much better back then.

I will leave my posts where I want, and I will discuss with people who don't try to ram their opinions down other people's throats. However, when someone comes and talks down to me, as he does with everyone else, with comments like yours, I am going to get snippy because of it. Don't like it, tough, and you can smooch my excretionary orafice.

I am not whining, I am reminiscing. Big difference.

Thats not what it sounds like.

Oh please, show me these other ways, becuase those games are LINEAR. They are made to be progressed from one area to the next. With Metroid, you could go all over the place to fight different bosses in different orders. Can you do that with the others? Nooooo.... moving on.

Yeah, modern warfare is linear. You have to hit start, then go to multiplayer, then you have to join a lobby. Pretty damn linear for the hundreds of hours of unique gameplay that can follow. Or, following from a previous example, you can just walk off into the wastes in fallout and run through the story completely out of order. The story, you know, that thing that metroid didn't have.

64 was also after what I was talking about.

You brought up the playstation in your very first post, so no. Don't try and give me that gak now.

And maybe you should spell check your own posts before you spell check yours. It's spelled "reckon", not Recken. Or do you simply enjoy coming off as an E-thug?

Don't understand irony much do ya brosky? I also haven't capitalized two thirds of what I should have been.

I admittingly have never played Seventh Legion nor Tresspasser, but as a whole the games were much better back then.

I'm sure they would be if you never played any of the bad ones. I bet no one died back then because you're still alive too.

I will leave my posts where I want, and I will discuss with people who don't try to ram their opinions down other people's throats.

Isn't that exactly what you are doing?

owever, when someone comes and talks down to me, as he does with everyone else, with comments like yours, I am going to get snippy because of it. Don't like it, tough, and you can smooch my excretionary orafice.

Are you mad because I said that you were wrong about everything? It's nothing to get mad about. Just stop being wrong and it all goes away!

ShumaGorath wrote:

I am not whining, I am reminiscing. Big difference.

Thats not what it sounds like.

Oh please, show me these other ways, becuase those games are LINEAR. They are made to be progressed from one area to the next. With Metroid, you could go all over the place to fight different bosses in different orders. Can you do that with the others? Nooooo.... moving on.

Yeah, modern warfare is linear. You have to hit start, then go to multiplayer, then you have to join a lobby. Pretty damn linear for the hundreds of hours of unique gameplay that can follow. Or, following from a previous example, you can just walk off into the wastes in fallout and run through the story completely out of order. The story, you know, that thing that metroid didn't have.

64 was also after what I was talking about.

You brought up the playstation in your very first post, so no. Don't try and give me that gak now.

And maybe you should spell check your own posts before you spell check yours. It's spelled "reckon", not Recken. Or do you simply enjoy coming off as an E-thug?

Don't understand irony much do ya brosky? I also haven't capitalized two thirds of what I should have been.

I admittingly have never played Seventh Legion nor Tresspasser, but as a whole the games were much better back then.

I'm sure they would be if you never played any of the bad ones. I bet no one died back then because you're still alive too.

I will leave my posts where I want, and I will discuss with people who don't try to ram their opinions down other people's throats.

Isn't that exactly what you are doing?

owever, when someone comes and talks down to me, as he does with everyone else, with comments like yours, I am going to get snippy because of it. Don't like it, tough, and you can smooch my excretionary orafice.

Are you mad because I said that you were wrong about everything? It's nothing to get mad about. Just stop being wrong and it all goes away!

Unless you have reading problems and have an autoreader, I don't think this sounds like anything

And Multiplayer isn't what I was talking about with linear, either. No gak the multiplayer isn't linear. Show me a multiplayer that is. And before you try to wise ass it, a Competative mutliplayer, not co-operative.

I am not trying to give you that gak, that gak is what you are saying. I was mostly meaning games that came before that, but that was still an example.

Shuma, I suggest you go ask your momma and dadda for a hug, but I suppose you would have to go to hell first, then, wouldn't you?

And no, that is not what we are doing, you are barely discussing this in a veil of insults to me, just like you do in every "debate" you get into.

I am mad about several things, some of them being personal, but most of all I am mad at the lack of quality and ass wipes like you who think that they are right because they are sarcastic. Enjoy your fancy scholarships in an enviroment without jobs, I'll be laughing my head off while your flipping burgers at BK.

Anyway, as I said, I am mad about several things, though one of them is about to be non existant. Instead of just forcing the Mods to lock the thread/send us both on a vacation, I am just going to be the bigger man. Good day
Mr. Gorath. We won't be speaking again.

And Multiplayer isn't what I was talking about with linear, either. No gak the multiplayer isn't linear. Show me a multiplayer that is. And before you try to wise ass it, a Competative mutliplayer, not co-operative.

So you admit this was an erroneous comparison that you are making just to try and trump up the values of repetitious non linear dimestore platform gameplay? MW2 is a multiplayer game with a single player game on the disk.

I am not trying to give you that gak, that gak is what you are saying. I was mostly meaning games that came before that, but that was still an example.

So you can use the PS1 but I can't use the n64 because you have some sort of special power that just makes it so?

Shuma, I suggest you go ask your momma and dadda for a hug, but I suppose you would have to go to hell first, then, wouldn't you?

I would have to drive 120 miles, but I live far enough north where I still wouldn't be in hell. You need to learn your geography.

And no, that is not what we are doing, you are barely discussing this in a veil of insults to me, just like you do in every "debate" you get into.

This isn't a debate. I'm slinging insults at you through thin veils because you posted a giant incorrect whine thread about how you wish every game could use svga graphics and be a explore-platformer or an endless, ugly, storyless JRPG about a blonde youth fighting a random evil empire.

am mad about several things, some of them being personal, but most of all I am mad at the lack of quality and ass wipes like you who think that they are right because they are sarcastic

I don't think I'm right because I'm sarcastic, I think I'm right because I am of the opinion that I am right.

Enjoy your fancy scholarships in an enviroment without jobs, I'll be laughing my head off while your flipping burgers at BK.

...

Are you high right now? That was a pretty random aside.

Anyway, as I said, I am mad about several things, though one of them is about to be non existant. Instead of just forcing the Mods to lock the thread/send us both on a vacation, I am just going to be the bigger man. Good day
Mr. Gorath. We won't be speaking again.

Are you going to go back to beating the same castlevania over and over again? Good luck sir! Have fun finding the same secret room as last time!

I'm fething tired of hearing people talk about how games are better back in there day I've played games that were both before I was and after I was born they are neither worse nor better.

I have to disagree with the OP on most of his points. I feel that video games are refining themselves into a real art form and have made their claim as a form of "mainstream" enterainment and element of culture.

Graphics within games have undoubtably gotten better. The older pixel based games had a certain charm with how they were able/forced to represent things, but there's simply no question that games have gotten and will continue to get more engaging and technically advanced graphics. One could make an arguement that aestheically some games are superior to today's games (Castlevania: SOTN had beautiful background and one of the best musical scores ever, as did Final Fantasy 6), but you're delving quickly into the realm of opinion there. It would be like saying Picasso was a superior artist to Da Vinci. A masterpiece is a masterpiece.

The content is another arguable point. Part of it depends on how you choose to approach a game. I have friends that love to play with cheat codes that blast through a game in a couple of hours and whine about how short it was. Well, that was your choice to ignore the meat of the game in favor of bludgeoning your way through it. If you took the warps, you could finish Super Mario Bros in about 15 minutes - never mind that you would miss 5 or 6 levels of content. Today's Fallout 3 is quite similar. You CAN focus on the main quest and technically finish the game in a matter of hours, but you miss the vast majority of what the developers provided for you. It's always been a case of some games being incredibly deep and some games being a bare puff of wind. C:SotN was an incredibly deep game. I myself have 40 or 50 hours logged as well. At the other end of spetcrum are games like Resident Evil 2. A well regarded game, RE2 was more or less designed to be beaten in 2 hours - you might milk it for 6 or 7 if you dithered around a lot. I tend to like longer games myself, but I can appreciate that a video game is similar to a movie - you have to set the proper pace for it. Some lend themselves to hours of exploration, story, and character development. Others are intense bursts of adreneline to be consumed and discarded in favor of the next.

Content in video games is more or less the same as it's ever been. Most shoot for a broad audience while some cater to the very young or a more mature crowd. Leisure Suit Larry was as racy as can be and was a somewhat popular game in the 80's. Mortal Kombat was probably the real turning point for sensationalized violence in video games, but it was always there at some level. MK just happened to be advanced enough that people who weren't gamers started putting things together that something was going on with this video game thing.

There are more folks then ever developing games, with a lot more money at stake. Back in the day, poor games would whither and die in obscurity. Nowadays they have advertising budgets so they whither and die in the limelight. The cream to crap ratio is probably about the same, advertisers just make you more aware of the stinkers.

I think it would be hard to argue that the writing/acting/production values haven't increased to a remarkable level over the years. Back in the day, most games told their story within the first two pages of the instruction manual and/or the back of the box and that was about the extent of it. If you were lucky, you might get some poorly translated text comments between missions. A few games DID tell a story (Maniac Mansion, Vice: Project Doom), but most were of the "The princess has been kidnapped...for some reason...go rescue her!" variety.

And don't kid yourself about how glitchy games were back in the day either. If you wanted to play computer games, you darn well had to become an expert in getting the things to run. There was no such thing as installing a game and having it work perfectly. You always had to mess with settings and drivers and do a little voodoo dance to get the dang things to work (especially when they were transitioning from DOS to Windows). Even cartridge games had their issues. Solar Jetman was a great game...when it worked. Plenty of glitches, lockups, corrupted saves (on the microscopic number of games that had the feature) to get you frustrated. I'm not even sure how to classify the ritual of blowing out the Nintendo cartridge and machine, then jiggling the carriage to try and get the darn thing to read.

My only complaint against video games today is increased genericness, or rather, what I feel is a decrease in the number of games that manage to stand out from the crowd. But then I don't really think it's that surprising. Publishers have grown more powerful in the last decade than they used to be, and they hold a lot of sway over development. Games that don't stand out too much are a safer investment than games that take risks with new or odd ideas.

I think this is part of it too:

There are more folks then ever developing games, with a lot more money at stake. Back in the day, poor games would whither and die in obscurity. Nowadays they have advertising budgets so they whither and die in the limelight. The cream to crap ratio is probably about the same, advertisers just make you more aware of the stinkers.

Welcome to this thing called hype. Game makers have realized it makes money regardless of how crappy your product is

modern warfare is primarily an online game but has a 15 hour campaign and 12 hours of multiplayer co-op content.

Are we talking Modern Warfare or Modern Warfare 2? Cause Modern Warfare just has 15 hours of campaign (That would be on hardened). MW2 had a, hold your surprise, a whooping 8 hours of gameplay on Vet difficulty, and maybe 10 hours of coop with crappy networking that doesn't even have an easy method of finding people to play with. EDIT: Ignoring replay value of course.

You have the same problem most old gamers have ( I used to too ) Your letting nostalgia completely warp your views of old games compared to new.

I disagree that gaming is dying, but I can understand your sentiment. There's a touch of hard-to-please in me - I've been a gamer my entire life and I know what I like - but there are plenty of examples of games today where gameplay has fallen behind graphics and hype. Almost everything Rockstar has done with the GTA label since the original GTA3 is a great example - but there's also nothing wrong with marketing it to the latest wave of kids with parents either.

Now I play the crap out of some games that a lot of casual and hardcore gamers consider piss-poor in terms of gameplay (SupCom, Guilty Gear series), so I won't carry on too much about it. I bought every Guilty Gear rehash because I didn't want to get tech-stomped by every other fan that picked up the new version. It's like buying the new Warhammer rules - the old ones still work, but the new ones are new!

I'm a gamer. If it has the same or slightly improved and refined gameplay I loved in the original and looks better, I'll love it too. (TA/SupCom as a personal example)

If it was made out to more than it actually was, I'll be slightly disappointed, but will still enjoy it if I loved the original. I don't blame advertisers for being advertisers, or hopeful fans for being too hopeful. (Half-Life/Half-Life 2 as a personal example)

If it's the same game I 'sort-of-like'-d, with improved textures and physics and the same essential gameplay, I'll be pretty neutral.
On the other hand I loved the Resident Evil gamecube remake for pure nostaligia. Basically I liked the remake way more than the original.

I liked GTA more than I liked GTA2. The second was just corny in my opinion - not that the original wasn't - it just went too far in the wrong direction IMO.
GTA3 was great, and a completely different game (based on a tried-and-true concept). It was 'shocking' to a brand new generation of censors and lazy parents like the old ones, but it was nothing new to us - it just had shiny graphics.

Now in the context of new games, there's nothing like the original Coca-Cola (or whatever you drink). I hate cola myself but my point stands. Cherry/Vanilla coke are still coke, and every GTA game after GTA3 is essentially a different flavour of the same thing with the latest in artificial flavours used to make sure you can't taste your kidneys dying better than ever before. Then again, GTA is marketed nowadays for the everyday no-taste gamer, just like coke. No great steps have been made with that series, except that they remembered to put bikes back into the game for San Andreas. On the other hand I sit down to have a GTA bash, I'll start up GTA5.

When I play a Final Fantasy or Castlevania game, I know what to expect, but I'm happy to invest those hours because I'm a gamer, and I know what I like. I wish that new games would be as constantly amazing as they were when they developed through the nineties (which was my 5-to-15), but I know that sometimes they still are. Great games come out all the time, and if anything I spend too much time doing what I love and know rather than frustratedly trying to find a new love in every new game and being constantly rejected. When I was a kid that's what games were like, but it's different now.

Somewhat offhand, I find it difficult to take Mafia 2 seriously because I saw an ad that said, "A lot of games just try to be a Grand Theft Auto, but this is different... You're in a gang."
So much for all that effort, developers. Your advertisers are as dumb as gak.

The only thing that gets on my nerves, is kids these days simply say they WONT try an older game because the graphics look terrible. Really? You are willingly missing out on some of the best games ever made, because the water effects dont look like water? How stupid is that?

But, saying that, There were terrible games back then, and terrible games today. Good games back then, and good ones today. Its not changed at all folks. I play my share of Q-berts as much today as I did as a kid. The industry isnt dying, your just getting pissed at yourself because you think you might be loosing the interest you once had in it.

KingCracker wrote:The only thing that gets on my nerves, is kids these days simply say they WONT try an older game because the graphics look terrible. Really? You are willingly missing out on some of the best games ever made, because the water effects dont look like water? How stupid is that?

But, saying that, There were terrible games back then, and terrible games today. Good games back then, and good ones today. Its not changed at all folks. I play my share of Q-berts as much today as I did as a kid. The industry isnt dying, your just getting pissed at yourself because you think you might be loosing the interest you once had in it.

This this this.

And to the OP: I grew up on a Snes. Epic joy of nostalgia.

Arctik_Firangi wrote:Now I play the crap out of some games that a lot of casual and hardcore gamers consider piss-poor in terms of gameplay (SupCom, Guilty Gear series)

You take that sh** back; SupCom was the greatest thing to happen to the RTS genre since f***ing Starcraft!

But seriously, there were terrible games back then and there are amazing games today; you're letting your nostalgia get the best of you.

Slarg232 wrote:

Another thing that grinds my gears is the whole "Oh, this is going to hurt people's feelings! we can't put that in the game!". There are some developers that I respect, namely Rockstar, because they are making the games that they want to make, and damned be anyone who tells them "No!" I don't remember who said it where, but someone on this forum said it best: "Old game designers still had that whole "STFU, if our game offends your puritan beleifs don't play it!""

WHAT? Remember when Nintendo ordered that all games on the SNES had to be censored (the system you claim to grow up with) according to it's strict rulebook?

Read up man:
http://www.filibustercartoons.com/Nintendo.php

TL; DR: I'm just P-Oed that I can buy a "Game" (interactive movie more like) that takes years of developement for 60 bucks and get at max 10 hours out of them with little replay value, but then I buy, oddly enough, Castlevania HD, a game with no story, graphics ripped from DS games and tweaked a little, and as glitchy/problematic as hell, for $15 and squeeze 140 hours (last I checked, and still going strong) out of it, when it was thrown together in like two days and was basically a bait and switch move with the upcoming Castlevania: Lord's of Shadows.

I don't generally link enjoyment to game time. Morrowind lasted me over 100 hours but Ace Combat: Zero lasted me only 12 hours to play through the game's three storylines.

Guess which game I enjoyed more?


And how can you really say games back then were better? The Angry Video Game Nerd and the Nostalgia critic made careers out of gakky old games.

It's the nostalgia effect. You remember the good games you played and forget that the shelves at the store were as slam full of crap featuring all the "modern bad trends," you've pointed out.

But, games for the PS2 must have all been brilliant, cos I have about 10 on my shelf, and all of those are really fun to play!!

Oh Wait, I sold the ones I didn't like.

Maybe the games that you have that are all really good, are the only ones that you kept?

Because the rest weren't good enough for you?

I am SO tired of people ranting about how games were "SO MUCH BETTERZ!" then than they are now. Sure, super metroid was fun, but come on, it's called progress, people! Although some games don't pay enough attention to story I have to admit. But that is no reason to be playing a super nintendo when you could be playing games with awesome graphics on a xbox 360 or ps3.

This is one argument that I'm genuinely sick of hearing.

First of all, you have to understand the effect that a young and impressionable mind can have on the quality of a product. While there were some genuinely great games in the bygone eras of gaming, we have progressed so far in every single aspect of the medium that it's almost laughable to consider any previous era to be honestly superior. Nostalgia is doing all of the talking for you, and I'll go ahead and prove why.

I hear a lot of complaints about the 'focus on the storyline', and how it seems to be completely lacking in recent years. Here's the main problem with that sentiment: Up until the 64-bit era, 90% of the 'storylines' in games consisted of a single opening paragraph, and a congratulatory sentence. Sometimes, you weren't even given so much as a single word. As for the games that were more reliant on their storyline, literally nothing had been done before, so just about everything seemed fairly engaging and exciting. You could be partaking in what would now be considered to be the most generic adventure of all time, and it was still awesome as all hell, because goddammit, you were playing a videogame.

Even when the advent of the third dimension rolled around, storylines were still plagued with either completely awful voice acting (if a game was high-budget enough to merit that), or a fairly awful translation that you were simply willing to forgive (because the Japanese still dominated the console market at this point). There were a few exceptions to this, but for the most part, this was the common and accepted truth, because again, we didn't know any better.

Now, absolutely none of that gak flies. Games cost a ridiculous amount of money to produce nowadays, and even the most awful storyline for a game produced for a major system has a ridiculous amount of effort poured into creating a believable script and world. Even if you picked the most "generic" game you could find, 20 minutes of that game's storyline puts the effort behind the entire NES library to shame.

Now, onto gameplay. Believe it or not, all this ridiculous processing power serves a great purpose in building games that the previous generation couldn't even dream of, and it's not about eye-candy as much as you'd like to think it is. See, old school gaming didn't do a very good job of thinking outside the box. There were a few set genres, and each genre had a golden standard that you either hit or missed. There was not nearly as much room for differentiation; you could hardly innovate once the groundwork had already been layed.

Now, innovation and cross-breeds between gameplay elements is tenfold what it used to be, as three dimensions and what seems like limitless processing power (in comparison) gives you a never-ending canvas that is being pushed to new boundaries constantly. You're simply too numb and disaffected to honestly notice the differences between even the most 'generic' games. There is now room for multiple franchises to sit at the top of the food chain instead of just one, and it's all due to a ridiculous amount of innovation that this medium is now prone to. Keep in mind that even graphical quality (loosely defined) can even create gameplay that would not exist otherwise.

In terms of difficulty, some of us enjoy keeping our masochism separate from our gaming. I play games for enjoyment, not to potentially destroy household objects because I can't quite get that last pattern down and I have to start the entire game over out of failure. Play games on the hardest setting if you feel the need to; that's what the setting is there for. Enjoy the organic challenge of AI or a human opponent over an online service that did not exist until fairly recently. Or, if you're really looking for an old-school kick (with new-school ideals), invest in a handheld and play through all the new 2D renditions of your favorite classic franchises. Technology can always reverse, pushing forward should always be kept as a goal if you want the industry to evolve.

Also, setting is another major complaint that I still can't quite wrap my brain around. The gaming industry now has the technology to give birth to any artist's idea. If you grew up on incredibly awful 8-bit proxies, then it might be understandable when an artist claims complete creative license and takes away your ability to imagine that cluster of pixels into anything more than it actually is, but this is again an example of an impressionable and imaginative young mind exaggerating something into the level of creative genius. Concept artists work far harder than they ever had to before in designing every conceivable aspect of a game, and if you're not content to pick apart the incredible details that set games apart, then that sucks for you. If you can't at least bring yourself to respect it, then shame on you.

I guarantee you that all of this old-school love, even now, is partially due to wanting to relive the awesome experience you had with the medium as a child, or at least as someone who had stumbled upon a new and exciting technology. The truth is, it's a fething tall order for something to impress you as much as it did when you were a child, and justification towards any other end is almost ridiculous, to be honest.

Chrysaor686 wrote:This is one argument that I'm genuinely sick of hearing.

First of all, you have to understand the effect that a young and impressionable mind can have on the quality of a product. While there were some genuinely great games in the bygone eras of gaming, we have progressed so far in every single aspect of the medium that it's almost laughable to consider any previous era to be honestly superior. Nostalgia is doing all of the talking for you, and I'll go ahead and prove why.

I hear a lot of complaints about the 'focus on the storyline', and how it seems to be completely lacking in recent years. Here's the main problem with that sentiment: Up until the 64-bit era, 90% of the 'storylines' in games consisted of a single opening paragraph, and a congratulatory sentence. Sometimes, you weren't even given so much as a single word. As for the games that were more reliant on their storyline, literally nothing had been done before, so just about everything seemed fairly engaging and exciting. You could be partaking in what would now be considered to be the most generic adventure of all time, and it was still awesome as all hell, because goddammit, you were playing a videogame.

Even when the advent of the third dimension rolled around, storylines were still plagued with either completely awful voice acting (if a game was high-budget enough to merit that), or a fairly awful translation that you were simply willing to forgive (because the Japanese still dominated the console market at this point). There were a few exceptions to this, but for the most part, this was the common and accepted truth, because again, we didn't know any better.

Now, absolutely none of that gak flies. Games cost a ridiculous amount of money to produce nowadays, and even the most awful storyline for a game produced for a major system has a ridiculous amount of effort poured into creating a believable script and world. Even if you picked the most "generic" game you could find, 20 minutes of that game's storyline puts the effort behind the entire NES library to shame.

Now, onto gameplay. Believe it or not, all this ridiculous processing power serves a great purpose in building games that the previous generation couldn't even dream of, and it's not about eye-candy as much as you'd like to think it is. See, old school gaming didn't do a very good job of thinking outside the box. There were a few set genres, and each genre had a golden standard that you either hit or missed. There was not nearly as much room for differentiation; you could hardly innovate once the groundwork had already been layed.

Now, innovation and cross-breeds between gameplay elements is tenfold what it used to be, as three dimensions and what seems like limitless processing power (in comparison) gives you a never-ending canvas that is being pushed to new boundaries constantly. You're simply too numb and disaffected to honestly notice the differences between even the most 'generic' games. There is now room for multiple franchises to sit at the top of the food chain instead of just one, and it's all due to a ridiculous amount of innovation that this medium is now prone to. Keep in mind that even graphical quality (loosely defined) can even create gameplay that would not exist otherwise.

In terms of difficulty, some of us enjoy keeping our masochism separate from our gaming. I play games for enjoyment, not to potentially destroy household objects because I can't quite get that last pattern down and I have to start the entire game over out of failure. Play games on the hardest setting if you feel the need to; that's what the setting is there for. Enjoy the organic challenge of AI or a human opponent over an online service that did not exist until fairly recently. Or, if you're really looking for an old-school kick (with new-school ideals), invest in a handheld and play through all the new 2D renditions of your favorite classic franchises. Technology can always reverse, pushing forward should always be kept as a goal if you want the industry to evolve.

Also, setting is another major complaint that I still can't quite wrap my brain around. The gaming industry now has the technology to give birth to any artist's idea. If you grew up on incredibly awful 8-bit proxies, then it might be understandable when an artist claims complete creative license and takes away your ability to imagine that cluster of pixels into anything more than it actually is, but this is again an example of an impressionable and imaginative young mind exaggerating something into the level of creative genius. Concept artists work far harder than they ever had to before in designing every conceivable aspect of a game, and if you're not content to pick apart the incredible details that set games apart, then that sucks for you. If you can't at least bring yourself to respect it, then shame on you.

I guarantee you that all of this old-school love, even now, is partially due to wanting to relive the awesome experience you had with the medium as a child, or at least as someone who had stumbled upon a new and exciting technology. The truth is, it's a fething tall order for something to impress you as much as it did when you were a child, and justification towards any other end is almost ridiculous, to be honest.

Erm... yeah, this.

PWNED!

To an extent games have become bigger and better and there is a lot more professionalism in modern games. Games are no longer about getting to the next level and now have stories, voice acting etc. However I would like to point out there is some validity to the *other* side of the fence besides the nostalgia argument.

I for one hate main stream games and cookie cutter FPS’ with a passion. Gameplay, length and content will always beat graphics in my book. In general and due to factors like the Global Financial Crisis, companies are taking less risks and there is less alternate content on the market. My current gaming plans as far as modern gaming goes is to wait for Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 to be released….that is all.

At the moment, I’m finding it hard to find good games nowadays where I find myself visiting older games from 5-10 years ago….that I never played. To be fair, I am not trying to compare a 2D sidescroller from the 80’s with something like Fallout 3. Comparisons like this are stupid but to give you a fair comparison, it would be like comparing FF7 with DOW2. As someone who has played both games for the first time recently, I will give you a breakdown below.

As a person who has never played FF7 or given a crap about the hype, I recently downloaded FF7 off the playstation store and have been playing it on my PSP and I have to say I am enjoying myself. While the story and gameplay is not as good as FF8 or FF10, it offers a great, long lasting gameplay experience. For $20-$30, the game has a Month or 2 worth of gameplay in it, which is good value in my book.

DOW2 on the other hand isn’t worth its price tag IMO. It didn’t bring as much to the table as DOW1. With 2 campaigns that can be beaten over a few short gaming periods over a weekend, 0 replayability, no campaigns for the other factions and a lack of alternate game modes. Looks like players will have to wait for Dark Millennium to finally get a decent 40k game.

While this comparison doesn’t change anything and player preferences will always differ, the game industry is definitely in a bit of a rut at the moment and hopefully in 2011 it will get its mojo back.

candy.man wrote:I for one hate main stream game and cookie cutter FPS’ with a passion. Gameplay, length and content will always beat graphics in my book. In general and due to factors like the Global Financial Crisis, companies are taking less risks and there is less alternate content on the market. My current gaming plans as far as modern gaming goes is to wait for Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 to be released….that is all.

People fail to realize that mainstream games are the only types of games. If your game is not a 'mainstream game', your company goes bankrupt, because the current generation requires that you invest millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours into development. Trying to be a so-called 'underground gamer' in this age is about the least efficient thing you can do; you'd be stuck with nothing but piss-poor shovelware and indy games. Yes, the required investment to create a current-gen videogame can sometimes be limiting, but the potential it affords you is much greater than it ever has been.

I have already addressed the ways in which the current generation benefits innovations in gameplay (and how you don't care enough to see some of them), in comparison to the previous generation, and the obviously superior quality of content present in current-gen games has been explained clearly. Again, the length of gameplay has been brought up, and so I'll address it here. Games must be specifically tailored to their intended length. You cannot have a linear story with no statistical character progression that lasts 80 hours, which is the reason why most games usually end up lasting 6-10 hours (which is still far more than any other medium could boast). People seem to forget that back in the day, most games lasted no more than an hour or two, and the only sense of 'replay value' was the fact that if you died, you had to start over from the beginning of the game. Just because you landed on a few RPGs that took you more than an hour or so to complete doesn't mean that this was the common case; far from it.

At the moment, I’m finding it hard to find good games nowadays where I find myself revisiting older games from 5-10 years ago….that I never played. To be fair, I am not trying to compare a 2D sidescroller from the 80’s with something like Fallout 3 comparisons like this are stupid but to give you a fair comparison, it would be like comparing FF7 with DOW2. As someone who has played both games for the first time recently, I will give you a breakdown below.

Though I completely fail to see how FF7 vs. DoW2 could be construed as a fair comparison, I'll roll with it. How you revisit something you've never done before is also beyond me, but that's just worthless semantics.

As a person who has never played FF7 or given a crap about the hype, I recently downloaded FF7 off the playstation store and have been playing it on my PSP and I have to say I am enjoying myself. While the story and gameplay is not as good as FF8 or FF10, it offers a great, long lasting gameplay experience. For $20-$30, the game has a Month or 2 worth of gameplay in it, which is good value in my book.

Notice that you now have the ability to pick out the cream of the crop from the previous generations. I never said that the previous generations didn't have anything good, and I'm not denying that some games are timeless. I was stating that the general standard was far, far lower. The standard was so low that it was pitiful in comparison to our current expectations. If you had to wade through every awful game to get to the few games that were worth playing, it might change your tone a bit.

DOW2 on the other hand isn’t worth its price tag IMO. It didn’t bring as much to the table as DOW1. With 2 campaigns that can be beaten over a few short gaming periods over a weekend, 0 replayability, no campaigns for the other factions and a lack of alternate game modes. Looks like players will have to wait for Dark Millennium to finally get a decent 40k game.

First off, I have to state that the price tag on DoW2 is only 30 dollars, so you must've been thoroughly disappointed. From a neutral point of view, DoW2 definitely brought more to the table than the original game (The original was a fairly generic RTS set in the 40k universe with the inclusion of cover; DoW2 is the first true hybrid of 'RPG' and 'RTS', it eschewed many common elements of the RTS in favor of actual strategy, and even if you hate it, it is completely unique to itself). I could play CoH and get the same essential experience as DoW; there is absolutely nothing quite like DoW2, for better or worse. An RPG-esque leveling system with different potential outcomes is more replay value than the original had (as is the Chaos/Empire split present in the expansion), and the game has about as many modes as the original did, with just as much length and a focus on the same race in the campaign. Your argument is basically unfounded. I understand if you don't like it, but just leave it at that.

While this comparison doesn’t change anything and player preferences will always differ, the game industry is definitely in a bit of a rut at the moment and hopefully in 2011 it will get its mojo back.

Just because you didn't enjoy what it had to offer doesn't mean that an entire industry failed at the whim of your own interests. Entitlement and bias is the gaming industry's bane.

People seem to forget that before the FPS there were millions of cookie cutter platformers, point and click games, etc. In fact, given the development budgets and lack of specalist equipment required for such games, there were far more of them than there are modern games (since pretty much anyone could code up a new game, or at least make new maps for an existing game).

Sure, there are plenty of new games where you think "Hey, I've played this game a million times already!", but there are also a lot of games which have at least one elemet that makes them interesting.