Are games today really that bad?

[Syzygy23]

Writing is getting better, gradually. (Very gradually.)

I'd disagree here, again on the quality of writing of the isometric RPGs. Stuff like Planescape Torment just absolutely rapes the face out of everything written in the last five years. Metaphorically, that is.

That's one game. You can't point to one single game from the late 90s and say it's proof positive that games suck nowadays.

Besides, for all I hear about how wonderful PS:T's writing was, it certainly wasn't good enough to keep me interested.

Chrono Trigger, Arcanum, Deus Ex, System Shock, Shadowrun, Earthbound, Fallout, Fallout 2, Baldurs gate...

You want me to keep going? Because it's no trouble, really. I can disprove you all day if you like.

Face it, games have been kinda on the sucky side these days.

 

[Kahunaburger]

people are smart enough to handle complicated control layouts, people are smart enough to figure out how to use items on the environment without glowing highlights around the interactable portions of the environment, and so on.

People who have played video-games for decades and have an extensive knowledge of recurring control-schemes might find it easy to play more complex games. But you are comparing those kinds of people with others who do not have the same experience.

So, let's talk about button layouts. The second game I played was Mechwarrior 2. The controls for the game are as follows:

I was like 9 at the time. If I and my 6-year old sister could figure out how to play that, I'm pretty sure most people can.

In fact, the whole standard FPS control scheme strikes me as targeted towards people who play a lot of FPS games, not people who have never played a game before. There's nothing inherently less intuitive about "set throttle to move forward" vs. "press W to move forward," assuming the game is balanced around the control scheme in question.

Saying "Oh, I didn't have any problems with learning how to play this game" is fucking meaningless. Moving around in a 3D-space is not a given, its something you have to become accustomed to. Knowing what kind of stats are in most RPGS is not a given, its something you have to have extensive knowledge on.

My point is more that people aren't stupid and can figure this stuff out pretty quick.

 

[dancinginfernal]

Dark Souls was one of the greatest games I have played in the last 10 years. So no, I don't believe games are becoming bad.

I believe that they are becoming different as they are introduced to mainstream media.

Dark/Demons Souls is an exception and a rarity in todays games.

That doesn't discourage me from believing that modern gaming has just filled up the market with placeholder games that hold no real impact, and that the true pieces of art (opinionated, of course) are hidden under the rubbish games. I don't think gaming has become bad, I just think there are a lot more games so quality has been eroded by quantity.

Excluding, however, developers who take their time with their creations. See: Dark/Demon's Souls, Uncharted Series, ME1-3(Ending Controversy aside), Bioshock, etc.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I'll assume it's already been linked to before, but I think this little video sums up what's wrong with gaming as a whole, nowadays. It's largely from the point of view of shooter players, but the same basic hand-holding is perceptible everywhere else.

<youtube=W1ZtBCpo0eU>

As games became mainstream, we were forced to find ways to convey information in increasingly clearer ways. It used to be shooters or even RTSes didn't need much more than patience or experimentation, but it feels like everyone wants to go from being a newcomer to "HARDCORE MLG SHIT, YO" in as little time as possible.

That involves the game spoon-feeding you its own strategies and tactics. It's not terribly bad in that it's laid out the ground work for a more social gaming scene (I don't think we'd have TF2 without the mainstream's integration, for instance) but at the same time, it's alienated those of us who play for the sake of being challenged or of feeling some sort of rush.

Having always been more of a casual gamer than anything else, I don't really mind the lack of seriously hard games in today's market, but I'd be hard-pressed not to understand how some people would.

Personally, though, I think most of the problem is in conveyance. We used to let the level design speak for itself, and now we tend to rely on tooltips or invasive tutorials.

 

[Kahunaburger]

<youtube=W1ZtBCpo0eU>

Haha that's hilarious. I also like this one:

the game spoon-feeding you its own strategies and tactics.

Yeah, drives me up the wall. The problem is that it's a lot easier to design a game that railroads players through scripted segments (or into specific builds) than it is to design a game that can accommodate a wide variety of builds, strategies, and tactics.

It's not terribly bad in that it's laid out the ground work for a more social gaming scene (I don't think we'd have TF2 without the mainstream's integration, for instance) but at the same time, it's alienated those of us who play for the sake of being challenged or of feeling some sort of rush.

I actually really like the way TF2 does things. You have classes like Medic, Heavy, and Engineer, with relatively easily-mastered mechanics, but can go all the way up to stuff like this. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFiclHxEPhw] There are classes for people who want fast, skill-intensive gameplay, people who want to focus on strategy, people who want to trick and ambush other people, and so on.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I actually really like the way TF2 does things. You have classes like Medic, Heavy, and Engineer, with relatively easily-mastered mechanics, but can go all the way up to stuff like this. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFiclHxEPhw] There are classes for people who want fast, skill-intensive gameplay, people who want to focus on strategy, people who want to trick and ambush other people, and so on.

Absolutely. I'm a halfway-decent Engineer myself, and I tend to suck at mostly every other class. I've got a gamer crush on the Spy class, but I can't play it effectively to save my life.

Engineer's easy and it's pretty relaxing, overall. All you need to do is get acquainted with where the other players need your gear or where they're *likely* to need it, and sit back while mothering your turret or your fellow Engies' own gear. Throw in the occasional shotgun frag or you setting up your turret offensively to mix things up, and you're good to go.

Not to mention that it's one class that really rewards experimentation. If you can use sneaky ways to reach unintended areas, you can literally make a killing. The easiest example would be the water in 2Fort's moat. I always stick a turret somewhere in there at some point in the match, and it takes *ages* for people to spot it.

Nobody thinks to check the water. ^^

 

[unstabLized]

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.

 

[Hyper-space]

Its a fact that your brain slowly filters out all the unnecessary memories (such as mediocre movies/video-games that you've watched/played), leaving only the good memories behind. So why can't we just get some fucking perspective and realize that nostalgia only skewers your view-point?

Because it's a bullshit argument, as I said before I CAN remember about as many bad games I played (e.g.: Lionheart , Daikatana, Urban Runner, Hopkins FBI etc., I remember that I thought Myst and Morrowind sucked for instance even though other people liked them, I still remember that one Tomb Raider game that sucked (Angel of Darkness), I remember that one Star Trek game they turned into a shooter and it was pretty bad (Generations), I remember that they turned King's Quest 8 into some sort of Hack&Slash/FPS game and that Ultima 9 wasn't running very well on top machines at the time and was buggy as fuck and so on.
It's a bullshit argument used by people who don't want to recognize that there's truth to it and it's easier to call on "nostalgia" instead of trying to have a discussion.

For that matter I also played Fallout 1 the same year I played Fallout 3 in, I thought Fallout 3 sucked like most Bethesda games and that Fallout 1 was one of the best games I ever played. Also played System Shock 2 for the first time some time ago (well like one year ago) and *gasp*, it looked pretty bad and had some issues but was still a lot better than most of the ultra-brown cover-based shooters nowadays.

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.

 

[Pharsalus]

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.

 

[sabercrusader]

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.

 

[Kahunaburger]

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.

 

[Vegosiux]

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.

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.

 

[Sylveria]

ofcourse they aren't. try playing an old shooter or rts and you will notice... hell no....

Starcraft... Half Life... Painkiller...

old games, for the most part, were ugly and had clunky controls.

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.

take the original deus ex. for all it's merits, that game was UGLY. it really hurts the eyes.

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.

Nobody truly wants to go back in time, anyone saying with a straight face that the original doom is a better shooter then the current generation is talking out of his ass.

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.

 

[Syzygy23]

Chrono Trigger, Arcanum, Deus Ex, System Shock, Shadowrun, Earthbound, Fallout, Fallout 2, Baldurs gate...

You want me to keep going? Because it's no trouble, really. I can disprove you all day if you like.

Face it, games have been kinda on the sucky side these days.

And this few titles prove what exactly? I can do it too, throw in some critically acclaimed titles (for their writing of course) and yell that it proves something.

All those games have bad to mediocre narrative compared to modern games with excellent story. Like Portal 1 / 2, Bastion, Batman AA, Alpha Protocol, Psychonauts. Narrative, the means to tell the story in an interactive medium, is also a big part of "writing" itself. And face it: Several games of the last year alone have tried more alternative means to tell a story than any of those you've listed where all you see are textboxes or cutscenes full of exposition.

Face it: You are weraing THICK, rosetinted nostalgia glasses or have your elitist stick so far up your ass that you truly believe yourself when you say that all games are sucky this days.

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?
Uhhh... Saints Row the 3rd? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3? Gears of War 3? X-men Destiny?

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:
Mortal Kombat (Arguable, I guess, unless you feel a game about ripping out spines needs a good story behind it)
Thor: God of Thunder
Warhammer 40k: Space Marine (And I LIKE 40k! A missed opportunity here)
Spiderman: Edge of Time
Bulletstorm (Actually, anything with Cliffy B attached is usually a good bet for this category)
Duke Nukem Forever (obviously)
All of the Lego Games (Might file that one under 'debatable' as well)
Killzone 3
Dead Island
Fable 3
God of War 3 (No, don't try to argue this one, the entire story is about a guy screaming in rage, punching out most/all of the greek gods, and porking at least 2 others. It's a teenage male power fantasy, nothing more)
Halo Reach
Dantes Inferno
Tron Evolution
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Prototype
No More Heroes

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:
Fallout 3
Fallout: New Vegas (Post patch[es] at least)
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age 2 (Some might argue against this one. Personally i didn't like it, but the majority I've spoken to about it said the characterization was great)
Mass Effect 1
InFamous
InFamous 2
Bioshock

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?

 

[Baron_Rouge]

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