This is what the indie scene is there to mend, ultimately.EHKOS said:
Personally, I blame the lack of love of development that AAA-developers now show on the publishers, for reasons that should be obvious.
Are games today really that bad?
- Thread starter dtgenshiken7
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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.
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.Abandon4093 said:That's grossly inaccurate and hyperbolic.DeadYorick said:Games are becoming more cinematic because people want to see big budget movies, just paying 60$ for them and playing them for 5 hours.
I'll just leave this right here
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.
(◕ᴥ◕しϡdtgenshiken7 said:
Did you know that some people with opinions like to discuss these opinions in-depth and try to persuade others that their opinions are right?
Half life isn't known for its narrative, its known for making a trend that you will see in almost every singe modern FPS, which is basically being able to move within a cutscene. Well that and physics puzzles. Half Life's narrative is basically science dudes unleash aliens onto a facility and you must escape said facility or destroy all aliens. Half Life 2 is basically going to do the same as above but this time to free humanity, its not very deep. Call of Duty's story is basically just a bunch of random war like situations with very loose tie in, and a giant hate for Russians, can't forget that.TheKasp said:Ah, an elitist who thinks than FPS can't have good writing. Get your head out of your ass please.Dexter111 said:I can't even take the other guy serious trying to compare the writing of Bioshock, Mass Effect and Half Life: Episode 2, basically a bunch of shooters where you shoot stuff and watch some Cutscenes to the likes of Planescape or Fallout 1 and I'm just hoping he never played them before
And yeah, especially those HL games are soo well known for their narrative through cutscenes...
FPS games now in days is basically wanking off the army of choice.
FPS games that had a good narrative are the Deus Ex games, which actually give you a deep and interesting world to take part in. Be it reading about it in newspapers, listening to the troubles of passer-bys or simply by looking on bill boards. Half Life is a terrible example when you actually look at it through a mirror, its not a mystical story that is interesting, its just a bunch of GO GET X or KILL X to get to the next fight and I bet more people killed Barnie to get into the action faster instead of listening to him.
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Complexity is gone because game developers want everyone to play their games, despite the subject matter. Thats why there is hand-holding up the bum is because they want kids to play their game to get more money, not because they think everyone is stupid. Granted, I'm probably thinking to much into this but from playing a game that basically gave you a hint every thirty seconds to shit you already know how to do, meaning that they want every spectrum of person to play it, which is fine but it definitely opens the gate way for kids to play it.
Games today are nowhere near as bad as people make them not to be, not to say there are no shitty games, because there are.
A lot of the supposed "decrease" in quality comes form nostalgia, people thinking older games a better then they are because they liked it back then and have had ages to stew in a stream of constant self-reinforcement that this "image" is right.
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Cracked pretty much summed up why most of the "games are worse today", or "have worse plots" or "are less original" arguments are bullshit.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-tell-youre-getting-too-old-video-games/
A lot of the supposed "decrease" in quality comes form nostalgia, people thinking older games a better then they are because they liked it back then and have had ages to stew in a stream of constant self-reinforcement that this "image" is right.
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Cracked pretty much summed up why most of the "games are worse today", or "have worse plots" or "are less original" arguments are bullshit.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-tell-youre-getting-too-old-video-games/
Yes it is, the most often talked about thing of half-Life is how fucking good and realistic is characters are, and how its so fucking good at telling a story.Aprilgold said:
I don't think that's reading too much into it at all - there's definitely an issue where developers conflate accessibility with shallowness/ease. And who's to blame them - games with actual depth to them get their metascores (which shouldn't exist, but that's another rant) dinged with reviews that boil down to "but it's [http://www.atomicgamer.com/articles/1321/dark-souls-review] too ha-a-a-a-ard [http://ds.ign.com/articles/856/856601p2.html]Aprilgold said:
[http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/03/01/crusader-kings-ii-cruel-to-be-gavelkind/]"
TheKasp said:
I'm not going to bother arguing much, but you need to realize that Half Life 1 or 2 wasn't written well, and thats where a narrative really exists, if its horrible being said or read, then it will not be pleasant to hear. Half Life 1 had a ton of areas to where it basically flat out told you what to do. Throughout the entire first half your basically told "GET TO THE SURFACE, GORDON!" and causing several people to die in the process. Then you find out the military is there to kill you, then your knocked out confirming that they want you dead then you transport to the aliens world to stop them from destroying earth, you succeed and end Half Life 1. Half Life 2 had you, Gordon Freeman come out of G-Man stasis in order to basically free Humanity from the brink of extinction by basically kicking the aliens off the planet by being the main role model of the rebellion. You meet new friends, old friends and eventually accomplish just that, end Half Life 2.
Half Life's strongest point was never the plot, and what made it game changing was in the mechanics of how they told the plot, not the plot itself. Deus Ex's games had a good social commentary in them and were overall deep and very well written, compared to Half Life which was basically just a bunch of gun fights strung together with neat set pieces, which there is nothing wrong for.
My point was that Half Life is very poorly written, its plot isn't all that deep and the world is mainly bland, but the combat is what it excelled at. Deus Ex basically leaks plot and immersion all over you through every corner of the world, when a game makes you ask "Would I have done that?" Then it is making you think about it, in Half Life I never questioned nor could I object to having to go insight a rebellion.
There is nothing wrong with a game that is using the plot as a way to support combat, but that doesn't mean that its a well written piece. Half Life is good at telling the story, but the actual story itself is rather stale.
Its known for its story telling is what I meant, it is not relatively well written. I still think that the acting of the actors themselves is what made only one of the characters good, which was Alyx who actually acted like a person, but the plot has many holes such as "Why must I go in there all alone, by myself and take down a entire prison camp?"SajuukKhar said:
And did you know that's what I was going for. I wanted opinion. I posted because I wanted to see what you people thought was better. And the point of 'opinion' is to have your own thoughts, and share them with other people. and sometimes, as according to Zero Punctuation, they are just wrong, and thus NEED to be changed. But I'm going off topic. This is an argument. What is the point of an argument? To persuade others that your view is correct.Kahunaburger said:
On top of that, the bad games of the past are washed away from our memories, simply because we don't want to remember them. This will also happen with the bad games of today in about 10 or so years. So even though the old games are good, it's only the good ones that people are recommending, hence you saying "play an old, universally acclaimed game you haven't played before."Kahunaburger said:
As gaming advances into new areas, old restrictions are lifted (e.g. a lot of technical limitations) but new ones are imposed (spiralling cost of content, need to appeal to casuals). New problems and pathologies crop up and it takes a while for best practice to develop and overcome them. I think we're still advancing fast though, and even though some game types are no longer viable for AAA budgets (e.g. turn based strategy) indie gaming is serving them quite well. There are solutions on the horizon for most of the problems, e.g. procedural generation and director AI so that we can back off from such linear experiences without the creative director having a heart attack about expensive content going to waste.
I generally agree with Indie Gamer Chick [http://indiegamerchick.com/2012/03/17/nostalgia-gone-mild/] on the fact that nostalgia is overblown and old games aren't just generally 'better' than modern games. As with pop music, most of that perception is just filtering, we remember the hits but not the sea of crap that surrounded them when they were released. I certainly played enough worthless shovelware on the Amiga back in the late 80s / early 90s.
I generally agree with Indie Gamer Chick [http://indiegamerchick.com/2012/03/17/nostalgia-gone-mild/] on the fact that nostalgia is overblown and old games aren't just generally 'better' than modern games. As with pop music, most of that perception is just filtering, we remember the hits but not the sea of crap that surrounded them when they were released. I certainly played enough worthless shovelware on the Amiga back in the late 80s / early 90s.