Are games today really that bad? Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 NEXT | |
So the fact that EVERYONE considers the period of video-games that they grew up with as the "best" is irrelevant, considering that *GASP* Fallout 3 wasn't your cup of tea. Oh yeah, you played some older games that you've liked, congratu-fucking-lations. I guess we can all have a productive discussion where we cherry-pick games and then draw broad conclusions from them as if it is indicative of the entire medium. | |
That's grossly inaccurate and hyperbolic. OT: No, people just like bitching yea. Sure some games are crappy and derivative. But to reduce all modern games to that. Well it's just BS. | |
Level design in'twhat it once was, I have yet to see anything current gen that has wowed me like Jedi Knight, Half-Life, and MDK did back in the 90s. Hallways and crates are all I remember about most game's I've played lately. | |
No, they aren't people are just looking back on old games with Nostalgia. Nostalgia is like a hallucogen, makes you see things better than what they truly are, stops you from realizing that, even though you LOVED that game in your childhood, it actually sucks kinda deal. It's a little heartbreaking to realize that, so a lot of people chose not to. And instead let Nostalgia guide their ignorance. Games nowadays are arguably better than before, except in the challenge area. | |
Although I think the lack of challenge has enabled some pretty lazy design. If a game is desiged to be hard and has broken mechanics, it becomes either A) exploitable, or B) borderline unplayable. If a game is designed to be easy and has broken mechanics, it's harder to tell that the mechanics are broken in the first place. | |
Only that you know, it's not that I "loved" those games. I still "love" them. I still play them, take time to re-play them every now and then. And they are still better than most of the mainstream shit that comes out. Seriously, you're saying as if we finished a game in 2001 then put it on a pedestal, and never touched it again. You'd be dead wrong to think so. | |
Technically I "grew up" with the ZX Spectrum (with games like Cauldron, Terminator and a whole bunch I can't even remember) and NES/SNES, as well as playing Sega Mega over at friends. I still hold a foible for certain franchises from that time like Mario, but if you'd ask me to put a time period for the "Golden Age" of gaming it's somewhere between 1995-2001 with an abrupt full stop/coming to a crashing halt in 2004-2005 with the Release of the Xbox360. I also don't regard the movies I grew up with for that matter to be the "best ever" in the early 90s cause they had just discovered special effects and were like "let's blow stuff up and make a movie about it", a lot of them are better nowadays since they use SFX in regards to telling a story and atmosphere and less for "look da, explosions!", although there are still a few of those kind of directors around (Michael Bay) and I recognize that in regards to acting there are a lot of classics from the 60s/70s outshining stuff from today, since they were mostly relying on that back in the day and didn't have "tricks". | |
Starcraft... Half Life... Painkiller...
Yeah, Megaman, Mario, Metroid, all notorious for their horrible controls. Well, that's not fair. Define old. Are we talking first generation 3D stuff like Resident Evil and Mario 64? If so, yeah, I don't think anyone can argue those controls sucked.
I think you've summed up why people resent the current age of gaming so much - too much emphasis on the presentation. Graphics are expensive. The more Frostbite engines we see, the more expensive the games become which forces the developers to make something as safe and marketable as possible so everyone from the short-bus kids to the Ph.D. Candidates can play it on even ground. There's increasingly little variation among the AAA $60+ games. We even see companies like Capcom prepared to dump the "Survival Horror" concept on Resident Evil because horror games aren't as marketable as action games.
I still own and futz around on Half Life, Doom and Quake II now and then for fun. Know what I dumped the day after I finished it cause it bored the crap out of me? CODBLOPS. Is Doom better as far as a technical achievement goes? No, but it is a hell of a lot more fun to me. I imagine there's a great deal of the gaming public that would happily take lower end graphics if it mean developers could take more chances and possibly put out more, cheaper, and interesting titles. Not PC owners, obviously, they spent $9000 on a machine that'll be worth $2000 in 4 months.. gotta justify that investment somehow. | |
You act as though textboxes are a BAD thing. Just because you don't like literacy in your games doesn't mean the rest of us don't. I'm not saying that modern tech somehow made games worse, but it's allowed designers to get lazy with writing. I don't want to throw salt on a fresh wound, but just look at Mass Effect 3. Limited dialogue options (which, in the end, meant diddly squat) a lot of it was auto-dialogue at that. As for the majority of games this console generation in terms of storytelling? You cannot say those had "good" stories with a straight face. Those were crap at worst, excuse plots at best. But let's keep going, we need to finally see what the ratio of crap writing to good writing in the last console generation has been. I'm just gonna work my way backwards using google and various gaming sites as sources. Bad: Ok, this is taking too long. Let's just move along to the Good list. Take in mind, only games that actually improved or equaled the older games like Planescape in storytelling make it on this list. Good: ummm... hmmm... what else... I can't think of anything else that falls into the "subjective" territory here. Wait! Journey. That's all I've got. So after the final tally, we have 22 bad (and those are just the ones I included on the list before it started becoming a second job) versus 9 Good. Wait, throw Skyrim onto "bad". Maybe Oblivion as well. So 24 bad vs. 9 Good. Not looking very bright right now, is it? | |
I think games these days are stronger than they ever have been...I enjoyed so many games in 2011; Dark Souls, Catherine, Resistance 3, El Shaddai and From Dust were some of the highlights. All fantastic, immersive, beautiful experiences the likes of which simply wouldn't really be possible with the technology of 10 years ago. There are always going to be missteps and disappointing games, but I think that gaming on a whole is better than ever :) | |
Did you stop to think about the good storytelling games of the past though? There's not a lot there either in terms of ratio. If anything, writers now have a harder job these days because they can't just write off the setting or the back story. Textboxes are passive; telling not showing. RPGs have always been fairly strong in terms of stories, so there hasn't been a lot of change in that genre. But the other genres have all advanced in terms of storytelling. Shooters have arguably come the longest way in terms of story. (My brother and I used to play Wolfenstein 3D all the time and I never even knew there WAS a story beyond "Kill all the nazis"). | |
-in response. starcraft, half life and painkiller. I say starcraft 2, life 2 and a game like the new serious sam are pretty much equal but with better graphics. And even though graphics aren't essential they do help immersion and make it, to me, just cooler. -with old games I was thinking of stuff like the old doom and warcraft. I will agree that was a bit of a cheapshot. -focus on graphics being the problem. I do agree that it's kinda tough for people to get into that AAA market with variety. And I do believe shooters have suffered the most from this. But with new players getting things like portal, braid, limbo and minecraft made I think the easier access to the technology allows for great creativity in the indie circuit and for that knowledge and succes to be applied in newer AAA titles. I guess my point was, I'm getting tired of gognards. in the tabletop community you have people whining all the time that 2nd edition D&D is better then 3th edition, which in turn is just completely better then 4th. They are different games with different merits and sticking to one just because it's the original is stupid. same with music, and that has the additional problem of comparing the absolute créme the la créme of the age against today's entire catalogue. Believe me each age has it's giant turds of silly stupidness. Same goes for video games. and I think it's just a huge slap in the face of the people that made games like Bioshock, Mass effect, Portal, Starcraft 2 and Arkum assylum. To be saying "duhhhrrr all current games suck, old games are soooooo much better!" | |
You just had to get that in there, didn't you? Cause it's obviously those "evil" PC owners who buy Call of Duty and Gears of War in droves and leave everything "Indie" on the sides, Minecraft selling 5 Million copies was just some mistake, and there's absolutely no way that someone could appreciate games like Crysis, Battlefield 3 or Witcher 2 for their graphical prowess but still enjoy Indie games or fresh new experiments more xD
Either your standards are really low, or your sense of self-irony went way above my head here... | |
Ehm, telling the story through textboxes in an interactive medium is a bad thing. It has nothing to do with "liking it", in modern days it is just bad design. Also: You missed my point by a landslide. You are just one of those stuck up elitists comparing mediocre games of today with the best of old times. And just to put some salt on your elitist face: I could do literally the same list for old games. For every good one I could pull out 5-10 bad ones which probably all sold better and have to fall into your category of mentionworth games... Still wondering why you mentioned Planescape: Torment if you are one of those people who just look at the sales *hint at the idiocy of your list*. | |
Anyone in here. It has been proven that the things you like during your teenage years will stay with you forever. It goes for movies, music, people. You brain chemistry does things to you during puberty. Nostalgia is a fact. Get over it. If you insist that games havn't gotten better over the years I suggest you go watch some "Angry video game nerd". That you take out the pearls of your youth is no different than than when your Grandma remembers it snowed every Christmas. | |
Yup. 100% nostalgia, right there. Clearly this has nothing to do with the game being balanced enough to build a competitive scene around. Also, I'll re-post this:
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Geeee.... That proves it right there. Having a massive community based around people who enjoyed something in their teenage years completely disproves what I said.... -.-' | |
They have a massive community because it's a balanced, well-designed game. See also: basketball, chess. There's a reason only certain games can support a competitive scene. You're not going to run into a competitive tic-tac-toe scene, for instance. | |
I find as a community we are richer and have access to more and more content than we did in previous generations, we are also more informed due to the internet. We no longer see this as a past time more a hobby now games nowadays ARE better, but we play to much. If you watch countless great movies, and even great movies end up been shit. that may not make sense, i am currently very tired :( | |
I'm going to go on a limb here and suggest that the reason why today's games seem 'worse' than games which were released before the advent of mainstream massive-budget games is partially attributable to one significant factor independent of the games themselves. Hype. Before, we never got massive, CGI trailers promising a unique game experience. We never got massive advertising budgets and cross-media promotional campaigns telling us how awesome this game is. I suspect that one of the reasons that games today seem 'worse' than what they used to be is partially due to the promotional hype that is generated in order to get people to buy them. We, as players and consumers, get told that game X will be great/amazing/profound/epic/pantwettinglyorgasmic and then, when we actually get to grips with it, we're often left with a 'meh' experience - not because the games are actually worse, but because the game in question cannot possibly live up to its own advertising and hype. Sure, in the past, games were definitely promoted - but can that compare with the hype surrounding titles such as Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Call of Duty, God of War etc? | |
First of all.... yes there is a competitive tic-tac-toe scene. It is tiny, but it exists. Just like everything else in the world. Secondly... the whole argument is that "games today are bad!" Do you really want to start comparing community sizes as an argument? | |
[citation needed] At a certain, absolutely minimal level of mastery, it is literally impossible to lose a match of tic-tac-toe. Ever.
I was actually addressing the whole "nostalgia" argument, which is IMO pretty silly. | |
I think it's more of a case of games trying to prove how awesome they are. When they release we all get sad about how we have been betrayed by the industry. This is probably caused by a variety of problems such as the games being made by people more interested in the money produced by the leading to increased advertising and hype. The difficulty of outperforming the competition with graphics and gameplay when you don't have a larger advertising budget meh I'm going to sleep it's late goodbye. | |
I am starting to miss depth in games nowadays, and the enormous amount of bad console ports dont add games to the good list. Luckily there is more on the market then EA and ubisoft (both suck), paradox interactive has a lot of very strong games which take a little time to master and are a challenge to master. But in the last few years i have grown bored of the FPS genre, its just no more fun (black ops has missions you can finish without killing anyone just sprint from cover to cover and make the enemies behind you despawn as you reach the next trigger). And RPG's are losing depth fast, what happened to stats and in some cases even to inventory. | |
Well ill one up you on your tic-tac-toe People will love ANYTHING. And for the whole nostalgia argument. | |
I'd say that in my personal experience, I've played more old games that were enjoyable and had great writing, than new games that were enjoyable and had great writing. That's, of course, based on my own personal opinion and preference of the games. | |
I liked games from the 90s, I like games now. I'm happy with games. Most of people saying games used to be better is nostalgia goggles, I don't care if you say otherwise, you ARE biased because those are the games you liked earlier on in life. I really liked the Abe's Oddyssey/Exoddus games as a kid, and I still love them now, that said I don't call a rather simple 2D sidescroller a masterpiece and blows all current games out of the water, just like I don't call the crash bandicoot games way better than any 3D platformers released today. Because they're not. They were amazing for the time, which is probably why they gave you such a good impression, just remember that it gets harder and harder to get these amazing first impressions over time, it doesn't mean games are getting worse. | |
Fun fact: rock-paper-scissors and tic-tac-toe are not the same game. I also enjoy how you jump from "studies have found potential causes for nostalgia" to "nostalgia is why people prefer old stuff to new stuff." It's like we've moved on from "stop liking what I don't like!" to "this study I misquoted says you don't actually like the stuff you like!" | |
I don't know. I don't play many games due to a restricted budget, so I don't have that large perspective compared to you guys. One thing I do know, though, is that no matter the circumstances, we as a community should always focus on making games better. Debating over the current state of the community and industry, does not count. We are really asking ourselves the wrong question. Here's the question we should be asking each other and ourselves: How do we make sure good games are being made? | |
Lots of nostalgia on display tainting everyone's opinions, really there have always been good games surronded by a sea of absolute drek. Now my favourite "multi-player" gaming experience is still Pong.. No need for flashy graphics just good old fashioned physical violence to distract disarm your opponent (friend/sibling) when it really matters. Until such time as the mods (parents) intervene and ban you (sent to room). I mean come on everyone does it right?? But yeah new games are still the same lots of drek the old rough And cRPG's honestly haven't changed that much since the old days of Wizadry when you strip away the graphics, they are still the same and just as limited as they where in the 80's, 90's & 00's - you only get what the designer gives you, designer doesn't think of it you don't get it, and chances are you are going to have to go where the designer wants you to if you want a chance of completion. And you can only hope they are half competent at telling a story. For example of how little cRPG's have changed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN58_svR8nk | |
This is what the indie scene is there to mend, ultimately. Personally, I blame the lack of love of development that AAA-developers now show on the publishers, for reasons that should be obvious. | |
In technical terms games have never been better and I certainly don't want to say that gaming is worse nowadays, but I can't help but feel it's not quite there. It feels like we're at a point where we can't fit in those fancy graphics that are pretty much a requirement for any game hoping to breach the mainsteam market and actual substance at the same time, if there's a publisher enforcing release dates that it. Which is sadly the case for most game developers. I'd say overall games got better with time since they were first made, but there's certainly a lot more games that I personally loved from late 90's/early 00's than there is now, games that I still play periodically too, before I'm accused of nostalgia-ing. Again I really don't want to say it's worse now because I don't think that's the case, it's more of a... there's a lot more potential with the tools available now, but it's not being used as well as it could be. | |
You people have all have all missed the point. I posted this for PERSONAL OPINION. I asked for your thoughts, and yet you all flame, taunt, argue and natter on as though I asked for factual evidence about this. You all need to look again at what I posted. I asked: What do you think? not: what do the facts and figures say. Even as far as telling poeple it isn't about personal opinion. I know you'll quote me and tell me I've missed the point, but I made this thread. Thank you. | |
You are truly living in a fantasy world if you don't think Turok's level design wasn't standard at one time, nor is it realistic to think Call of Duty's corridor design isn't today's standard. | |
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In my opinion, most of the games today don't offer me the same "in-depth" feeling that they used to. In fact, I only like a few developer companies these days. People like Valve, Bethesda, and some others are the few companies that i trust when it comes to buying their product.
I'm still open to other games though, just that the games that are released by these developers tends to be a bit more.. better? than others. Also, the lack of challenge is killing me.
Also, announcing DLC after a week of launch isn't helping my liking. I miss "Pop n play". Now its "Buy,make accounts,update,etc." then play. Developers are getting greedy.. but who isn't greedy these days.