As I'm sure many of you have found, it seems that games are in a steady decline of fun-factor and replayability.
I remember back when I played my NES, I could spend weeks, or even months beating a game. But I bought Oblivion, and had it thoroughly conquered in a matter of 2 days.
It seems as though here in current days, developers are spending their time thinking of ways to get gamers to spend more of their money, rather than think of ways that recreating yet another FPS/RTS/RPG could be original, and thus; more fun for the gamer.
I went back the other day and played through Suikoden II, I remembered just about everything there was to remember about the game, got all 108 stars AND the good ending, and it still took me 20 hours of gameplay.
Now, outside of the Legend of Zelda series, I can't think of any games that have taken that much time to beat, and been that much fun. I can't remember the last time I recommended a game to a friend and said "Best 20 hours of your life..."
With the advent of the Xbox Live Marketplace, and whatever PS3 and the Wii have, it seems like developers are being encouraged to release half-finished (content-wise) highly polished shiny games and expect you to pay full price knowing full well that in two-three months they're going to have a Content-Expansion with hours of new gameplay. They then charge you 5 more dollars for 1-3 hours of extra content....something that most likely could, and should have been included at launch.
Now, my thoughts are; maybe with age, things are just a little less fun, and the glitz and glamour of games has died with maturity...but I can't help but feel that there are still those games that I get school-boy excited over just thinking about. Diablo 3, Fable 2, and Warhammer Online - for example.
And that's another thing (for another thread, at another time.) But it seems like the only way to get a decent amount of content and video-game bragging rights (the days of 'check out my high score' other than your Xbox live gamerscore have all but died out) is through MMORPGs...and with WoW on the market, many potentially great MMOs have come and gone due to lack of exposure and experimentation. Players just won't leave their (war)crack behind to try some of the heroine(new star wars MMO) or extacy(Warhammer Online) around the corner...
So many of the GOOD or better genres seem to be dying out - Hack and Slash, Dungeon Crawlers (I'm looking at you Baldur's Gate, and Champions of Norrath), and the Good 'ol fashioned Local-multiplayer games... I play both PC and Console games..and I just can't help but think that things are in a sad decline. And the future of gaming seems bleak.
Maybe it's just me.
I remember back when I played my NES, I could spend weeks, or even months beating a game. But I bought Oblivion, and had it thoroughly conquered in a matter of 2 days.
It seems as though here in current days, developers are spending their time thinking of ways to get gamers to spend more of their money, rather than think of ways that recreating yet another FPS/RTS/RPG could be original, and thus; more fun for the gamer.
I went back the other day and played through Suikoden II, I remembered just about everything there was to remember about the game, got all 108 stars AND the good ending, and it still took me 20 hours of gameplay.
Now, outside of the Legend of Zelda series, I can't think of any games that have taken that much time to beat, and been that much fun. I can't remember the last time I recommended a game to a friend and said "Best 20 hours of your life..."
With the advent of the Xbox Live Marketplace, and whatever PS3 and the Wii have, it seems like developers are being encouraged to release half-finished (content-wise) highly polished shiny games and expect you to pay full price knowing full well that in two-three months they're going to have a Content-Expansion with hours of new gameplay. They then charge you 5 more dollars for 1-3 hours of extra content....something that most likely could, and should have been included at launch.
Now, my thoughts are; maybe with age, things are just a little less fun, and the glitz and glamour of games has died with maturity...but I can't help but feel that there are still those games that I get school-boy excited over just thinking about. Diablo 3, Fable 2, and Warhammer Online - for example.
And that's another thing (for another thread, at another time.) But it seems like the only way to get a decent amount of content and video-game bragging rights (the days of 'check out my high score' other than your Xbox live gamerscore have all but died out) is through MMORPGs...and with WoW on the market, many potentially great MMOs have come and gone due to lack of exposure and experimentation. Players just won't leave their (war)crack behind to try some of the heroine(new star wars MMO) or extacy(Warhammer Online) around the corner...
So many of the GOOD or better genres seem to be dying out - Hack and Slash, Dungeon Crawlers (I'm looking at you Baldur's Gate, and Champions of Norrath), and the Good 'ol fashioned Local-multiplayer games... I play both PC and Console games..and I just can't help but think that things are in a sad decline. And the future of gaming seems bleak.
Maybe it's just me.
