An attempt to Focus on the good: ways modern gaming is better than ever.

[Timeless Lavender]

Better :
-Voice acting
-Motion capture/acting
-Physic engine
-Lighting engine
-AI
-Story
-Animation
-Realistic surroundings
-Can handle a large population of characters

 

[babinro]

I'm very much PRO current day gaming compared to what I grew up with during the NES, SNES, N64 days, etc.

- Gaming has never been cheaper thanks to digital retro game stores, Steam, Humblebundle, etc.

- Plenty of excellent free to play games...a concept that's still pretty amazing to me.

- Genres past and present are heavily represented. You might not see many point&click and 2D platformers in the AAA market but indie devs got your back for just about anything oldschool and nostalgic.

- Games are better than ever. This is clearly a matter of personal taste but it's my opinion on the matter. Granted, content that used to be free is now heavily gated off behind pay walls/DLC/passes/etc. But at the core I find the games themselves to frequently be more fun than those in the past. Gaming has largely improved in terms of storytelling and character development. Years of sequels and refinement have helped improve gameplay in areas that really matter to me. I'll take the regenerating health over backtracking through mapless corridors for unused health packs any day. I'll take Nathan Drakes simple parkour/rock climbing over the old Half-Life style pinpoint accurate jumps or fall into death pits gameplay any day.

 

[JagermanXcell]

I tend to go for both pros and cons, but to hell with it! Let's go pure pro:

Graphics: They're nicer now... there's still room for stylization, and sure they limit gameplay to some degree, but all in all they're shiny and I do appreciate it.

Indy games: 75% of them are good/great. That I can dig over the usual hit or miss AAA.

Experimentation: Did you guys see Persona 5's trailer?! Did you play any recent Platinum games?! Those ever so slight changes to formula/status quo? Essentially what i'm saying is THEY'RE LEARNING. Wether it's AAA or Indie, they are trying to add new tiny things for the purpose of expansion. It's most certainly a slow start (for every Ass Creed, we get a Wonderful 101; for every CoD, a Dark Souls; ect.), but we're seeing a possible rise in new genres, and that's something to be plenty optimistic about.

Music: THIS GOT SO MUCH BETTER. TOO MUCH BETTER. Current day OSTs have so much more love put into them aesthetically. They're made for lasting impressions, meant to be played, bought, and downloaded for enjoyment, on the go or during play. VG music has definitely gotten better and succeeded at aging to perfection now.

Whatever molasses mold we've been in that brings so much negativity, I feel we're slowly chipping out of it......... buy more Platinum games.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

That's it escapists! Release the goooood!


Just imagine instead of chicken and rabbits he's shooting steam sales and indie games.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

The Witcher 2/3.

When RPGs and their father companies were bendind over and offering their beings & souls to the quick-buck, couldn't care less, formulaic, mass-production overlords - and in doing so going from legendary to absolutely souless and awful - along come CD Projekt Red and redifine the standard for RPG's.

TW2's arching story is just stunning, along with - IMHO - the rest of the game itself.

TW3 is the only game I've been excited about in years.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I'm gonna go with overall controls. Games are more responsive, more refined, and generally more consistent. You can pretty much bet that any game you get nowadays is going to have a control scheme that makes sense, and isn't a total pain to get used to. Please note how I'm saying "in general", because while the majority of older games controlled well, there were some which took a hell of a time to get used to, or just ruined the game totally. And I was rather adventurous in my earlier days, so without research I had a few nasty surprises time and again.

Also, inconsistencies such as aiming/free look with the left stick are a thing of the past, thankfully.