Never stops being fun does it?

[Amethyst Wind]

Skip to the end if you're too lazy to read the main post.

Since I've been generally disappointed with the level of current gen gaming I took one- then two- steps backwards and played FFX, then IX, and now just finished VIII.

It really hammered home just how potent the staying power of a truly solid game is.

I loved playing through X again, even using some characters I don't often use and using the different Sphere grid this time, I could even forgive the NARM-y voice acting because the story is just so entertaining.

Then I plugged in IX, slightly worried that the dated graphics would annoy me.

Turns out, graphics are not worth a damn thing in terms of game quality.

IX holds itself up by being generally awesome and plain fun, like a game should be. No achievements, no douche-y, competition-based multiplayer, just 40 hours of solid entertainment.

And then I played VIII.

This was the most fun of all, because it marked the first time I've legitimately finished the game (I've done it once before with a cheat disc, but it wasn't satisfying and I forgot nearly everything of the ending).

The 4-stage Ultimecia boss was just awesome, by this point I was jacked up to my eyeballs with gamebreaker items, also happened to be 35 levels above hers, and was therefore never really challenged, especially since I got lucky in the character roulette and got 2 of my 4 big dogs straight off; Whooped her first stage and proceeded to 2-shot Griefer, then when she pulled the Griever-mecia combo I one-shotted it with the only Lionheart Squall whipped out all fight. The 4th stage didn't last much longer since I beam-spammed it with Irvine 3 times along with Ridiculous whoopin's with Zell.

The ending was definitely worth it and really let me enjoy the hints that had been dropped earlier in the game. Angelo running all over the show and Selphie in a cowboy hat were very welcome too.

Alright, /gush. Now onto the point I alluded to before:

TL;DR - Has the spectacle of modern gaming, struggling to appeal to the mainstream, made games more razzle-dazzle and less fun? Do today's games have the staying power of those made before the bubble really took off?

 

[Estocavio]

Some games are generic like this, but its unfair to generalise them as such. Its only some that do this.
EDIT: Well, a bit more than 'some', but not the majority.

 

[Resphyre]

depends how you look at it... MW2 used to be fun cos you could run around and stab people and make people rage... oh god it was fun... the only people you could get though were people who played to much halo and were confused when anything less than an entire clip could kill you... fun is all in the way you look at it.... if your not having fun at a game because your playing it properly then stop doing that

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Nope. That's just nostalgia, sir, and your fine memories of playing those games before.

Sure, there are loads of games that still hold up today and will hold up for many more, but, the truth is, if you put a person with no gaming beckground whatsoever and show him, let's say, the NES Bionic Commando and Just Cause 2, I'm fairly sure the latter one will be better.

 

[Gitsnik]

*cue groaning masses screaming 'not again'*

Damnit people I keep telling you - play nethack! I go from FPS to RTS with no real concerns, but always go back to nethack every few months. The immersion is great and my imagination does the most of the work.

Most fun I ever have is staring at a tiny little screen with nothing but light-green @ symbols chasing light green h and L symbols around a screen filled with | and + characters.

 

[likalaruku]

Well, most of my favorite games were made in 2001, give or take a year. I also agree with Pirate Kitty about Neverwinter.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

That's just nostalgia

Way to dismiss an entire argument with a 3-word cliché.

It also doesn't stand up under cross scrutiny. After digging out the PS2, I played through plenty of other games I considered good in the past too, they didn't stand up to my evolving expectations, yet those three did. Liking a game because of 'nostalgia' is a lie.

My main point was whether or not gaming was going through a sort of 'mid-life crisis', where instead of looking for something worthwhile it has instead opted for the pretty face with little behind it.

Games nowadays seem to be less able to be games that can be played by yourself and still provide solid entertainment without the secondary input of other players or by pandering entirely to a player's magpie-esque instinct to hone in on something shiny/colourful.

A final analogy: Games don't seem like a full course meal anymore that sates your appetite anymore, rather constant snacking that'll keep you going through the day but will leave you constantly hungry.

 

[iForget2Sleep]

That's just nostalgia

Way to dismiss an entire argument with a 3-word cliché.

It also doesn't stand up under cross scrutiny. After digging out the PS2, I played through plenty of other games I considered good in the past too, they didn't stand up to my evolving expectations, yet those three did. Liking a game because of 'nostalgia' is a lie.

My main point was whether or not gaming was going through a sort of 'mid-life crisis', where instead of looking for something worthwhile it has instead opted for the pretty face with little behind it.

Games nowadays seem to be less able to be games that can be played by yourself and still provide solid entertainment without the secondary input of other players or by pandering entirely to a player's magpie-esque instinct to hone in on something shiny/colourful.

A final analogy: Games don't seem like a full course meal anymore that sates your appetite anymore, rather constant snacking that'll keep you going through the day but will leave you constantly hungry.

Well said.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Modern games have this too. It's a bit of selection bias in that you pick up something like FF VII over some other random game of that era that was just awful. Every generation has the great classics, and a hundred times more bumf. Final Fantasy games have just seemingly got worse.

 

[Someperson307]

I recently got Sonic Adventure on XBLA, and despite it being a Dreamcast game, it's gameplay holds up better than most modern games. I played it over and over back when it was on the Gamecube. This is my umpteenth playthrough and it's still incredibly fun. It took me a week to get bored of MW2, even though it's far more advanced and complex than Sonic. What does this say about modern games? Something terrible.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

That's just nostalgia

Way to dismiss an entire argument with a 3-word cliché.

It also doesn't stand up under cross scrutiny. After digging out the PS2, I played through plenty of other games I considered good in the past too, they didn't stand up to my evolving expectations, yet those three did. Liking a game because of 'nostalgia' is a lie.

My main point was whether or not gaming was going through a sort of 'mid-life crisis', where instead of looking for something worthwhile it has instead opted for the pretty face with little behind it.

Games nowadays seem to be less able to be games that can be played by yourself and still provide solid entertainment without the secondary input of other players or by pandering entirely to a player's magpie-esque instinct to hone in on something shiny/colourful.

A final analogy: Games don't seem like a full course meal anymore that sates your appetite anymore, rather constant snacking that'll keep you going through the day but will leave you constantly hungry.

Way to dismiss the second half of what I've said. Liking a game because of "nostalgia" is a lie because there are some games you've changed your mind on? That's no argument.

Your entire argument did not have anything to do with modern gaming but rather with how much you love FF8 and FF9. You could sum it up in a paragraph.

The truth is, graphics are important. Have you seen Uncharted 2? It's beautiful, beautiful not because of the "hey, lol, this totally looks like real life" thing, but because the designers had the technology to craft the world into what they wanted to. No 8-bit, 16-bit, 64-bit can visually stand up to that, because progress is a constant thing.

Okay, you know, probably the nostalgia thing wasn't enough to sum up what you've said. I forgot to add the "games sold out to mainstream" thing.

Oh, and the multiplayer thing you mentioned. How is Left 4 Dead any less deep than any game of the 8-bit era. It's a simplistic game, yet it contains so much soul and thought put into it that I wouldn't call it an appetizer.

While games did lose some of the charm that they had while being relatively new, the complexity and substance is all, all but gone.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

That's just nostalgia

Way to dismiss an entire argument with a 3-word cliché.

It also doesn't stand up under cross scrutiny. After digging out the PS2, I played through plenty of other games I considered good in the past too, they didn't stand up to my evolving expectations, yet those three did. Liking a game because of 'nostalgia' is a lie.

My main point was whether or not gaming was going through a sort of 'mid-life crisis', where instead of looking for something worthwhile it has instead opted for the pretty face with little behind it.

Games nowadays seem to be less able to be games that can be played by yourself and still provide solid entertainment without the secondary input of other players or by pandering entirely to a player's magpie-esque instinct to hone in on something shiny/colourful.

A final analogy: Games don't seem like a full course meal anymore that sates your appetite anymore, rather constant snacking that'll keep you going through the day but will leave you constantly hungry.

Way to dismiss the second half of what I've said. Liking a game because of "nostalgia" is a lie because there are some games you've changed your mind on? That's no argument.

Your entire argument did not have anything to do with modern gaming but rather with how much you love FF8 and FF9. You could sum it up in a paragraph.

The truth is, graphics are important. Have you seen Uncharted 2? It's beautiful, beautiful not because of the "hey, lol, this totally looks like real life" thing, but because the designers had the technology to craft the world into what they wanted to. No 8-bit, 16-bit, 64-bit can visually stand up to that, because progress is a constant thing.

Okay, you know, probably the nostalgia thing wasn't enough to sum up what you've said. I forgot to add the "games sold out to mainstream" thing.

Oh, and the multiplayer thing you mentioned. How is Left 4 Dead any less deep than any game of the 8-bit era. It's a simplistic game, yet it contains so much soul and thought put into it that I wouldn't call it an appetizer.

While games did lose some of the charm that they had while being relatively new, the complexity and substance is all, all but gone.

Actually I did address it. I mentioned, and I quote, "a player's magpie-esque instinct to hone in on something colourful", magpies, as we know, are scavenger birds who incorporate bright and shiny items into their nest-building, so magpie-esque would be to be attracted by spectacle rather than substance, which is exactly the situation you described (Bionic Commando vs Just Cause in the eyes of a layman). Nice try.

You also misunderstood my metaphor about meals vs snacks. To put it simply, I believe that the general gaming paradigm has shifted from self-contained, meals with chunk, that can fill you up on their own, to light-bite gaming where either the presentation (graphics) is expected to make up for the lack of quantity or it needs some filler (multiplayer, which requires other gamers, so people must pool their collective bites to make a full meal), so I find it harder to justify games as being a solid meal (of entertainment) if you don't have guests over for dinner. God help you if you forget the w(h)ine.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Actually I did address it. I mentioned, and I quote, "a player's magpie-esque instinct to hone in on something colourful", magpies, as we know, are scavenger birds who incorporate bright and shiny items into their nest-building, so magpie-esque would be to be attracted by spectacle rather than substance, which is exactly the situation you described (Bionic Commando vs Just Cause in the eyes of a layman). Nice try.

You also misunderstood my metaphor about meals vs snacks. To put it simply, I believe that the general gaming paradigm has shifted from self-contained, meals with chunk, that can fill you up on their own, to light-bite gaming where either the presentation (graphics) is expected to make up for the lack of quantity or it needs some filler (multiplayer, which requires other gamers, so people must pool their collective bites to make a full meal), so I find it harder to justify games as being a solid meal (of entertainment) if you don't have guests over for dinner. God help you if you forget the w(h)ine.

You did not address it in your original post, which is exactly the one I was referring to, after you blamed me for condensing your argument into one sentence.

The fact with Just Cause 2, it's not just shit blowing up, especially when compared to Bionic Commando - no the best example, sure, but it is far more deep and substantial (and big) than many of the games that were supposedly "solid meals".

Your stance on multiplayer as "filler" is pretty much obsolete in this age of gaming.

And your argument that games today "lack quantity" and replace it with pretty colours could be dodged by the fact that games of the earlier era did that same thing, but instead of the colours they played with the difficulty, artificially prolonging the game.

My main problem with your last post is that you expect me to take your comparison for granted, which I just can't do, because you do not approach a game and a meal with the same mindset.

 

[Iain McFadyen]

Gaming is at a pivotal point...newer consoles and game engines allow for the much more complex games to come into existence and you cannot let the immersion and beauty of a game fall by the wayside. But game designers in their infinite business sense are currently striving to make controls more complex, so we can do so more and this would be awesome if they hadn't at the same time dumbed down games to the extent they have.

There is definitely an element of nostalgia with these games...I remember the first time I played the old school prince of persia I was in love and even a few years ago when I went back to play it...I saw that it really wasn't special but I still enjoyed playing it and still found it enraged it me just as much...in a good way. Because it took me back to being a kid...In fact I think I must go get it and play right now.

Every console and every generation of consoles have benchmark games, games that will always stick with you. & regardless of how downtrodden and dragged through the mud FFXIII has been. I enjoyed it *prepares for onslaught of abuse* and can pretty much guarantee that in 10 years you'll still look back at the beauty of it when you first saw the potential of the PS3...same as FFX on the PS2 and FFVII for the PS1

 

[Amethyst Wind]

-snip-

Well, we've gotten into something of a flamewar here, so I'll try to jar this onto more stable ground. I'll have to do some deconstructing of your post here, but don't get angry, it is in the name of discussion, which will actually be my first point.

Here we go:

You did not address it in your original post, which is exactly the one I was referring to, after you blamed me for condensing your argument into one sentence.

If I addressed every point in my opening topic there wouldn't be any replies would there? Considering I addressed your point after you made it, not before, I can't see that there's anything more that I can do.

The fact with Just Cause 2, it's not just shit blowing up, especially when compared to Bionic Commando - no the best example, sure, but it is far more deep and substantial (and big) than many of the games that were supposedly "solid meals".

It's a fair point, and I'll concede there are examples of single-player games that put in a fair amount of chunk, but my argument is that the overall meta-game environment doesn't seem to support this practice anymore.

Your stance on multiplayer as "filler" is pretty much obsolete in this age of gaming.

Because? C'mon, that's half a sentence and you know it. It can be interpreted in several different ways. Here's one. You just helped my point, I mentioned that multiplayer-centric games don't get their full experience without reliance on other people, not being a 'full meal' on their own (they're essentially half a game out of the box and the other half is completely out of the hands of the developers). It's a very roundabout way of saying Yahtzee's view of multiplayer needing it's single-player to be able to stand on its own is something I agree with.

If that wasn't your intention then you'll need to come back and finish the sentence. I look forward to it.

And your argument that games today "lack quantity" and replace it with pretty colours could be dodged by the fact that games of the earlier era did that same thing, but instead of the colours they played with the difficulty, artificially prolonging the game.

I'm not sure what point you're making here, games still have changeable difficulty, they even attempt to use it to prolong the game by making achievements/trophies for playing it through again on harder difficulties. If it was accepted back then it has to be accepted now as part of the package, not something which was then and isn't now. It's not a stable point of comparison.

My main problem with your last post is that you expect me to take your comparison for granted, which I just can't do, because you do not approach a game and a meal with the same mindset.

You don't approach a meal with the intention that the food on your plate serves to abate your hunger on its own, rather than that only being the case when the meal is taken with friends?

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

-snip-

Well, we've gotten into something of a flamewar here, so I'll try to jar this onto more stable ground. I'll have to do some deconstructing of your post here, but don't get angry, it is in the name of discussion, which will actually be my first point.

Flamewar. C'maaawn, that was nothing, nothing like that.

So, yeah, I'll probably do the same.

If I addressed every point in my opening topic there wouldn't be any replies would there? Considering I addressed your point after you made it, not before, I can't see that there's anything more that I can do.

Well, you did argue that my three word reply (which was actually not a three-word reply) did not do it justice.

I think the point you presented in your first post was fairly simple as it is.

t's a fair point, and I'll concede there are examples of single-player games that put in a fair amount of chunk, but my argument is that the overall meta-game environment doesn't seem to support this practice anymore.

I would disagree. More space = more room for features. More room = more modes. Most of the early days' games have one mode and one mode only. Now, look at Halo: Reach or MW2, or BC2, or any other game.

Because? C'mon, that's half a sentence and you know it. It can be interpreted in several different ways. Here's one. You just helped my point, I mentioned that multiplayer-centric games don't get their full experience without reliance on other people, not being a 'full meal' on their own (they're essentially half a game out of the box and the other half is completely out of the hands of the developers). It's a very roundabout way of saying Yahtzee's view of multiplayer needing it's single-player to be able to stand on its own is something I agree with.

No, it's basically everything I wanted to say. I find Yahtzee to be in the wrong when he reviews clearly multiplayer oriented games and then bashes them into oblivion. Multiplayer is not filler, neither is coop, since there are entire games based around that - they are just new ways to play games. You wouldn't fault CS for lack of substance, you wouldn't fault TF2 for lack of substance, yet there is little-to-no SP content in those games.

You may dislike MP, but you cannot deny it is a crucial part of modern gaming.

If that wasn't your intention then you'll need to come back and finish the sentence. I look forward to it.

No, that's basically it. With modern technologies, system link and online gaming services being widespread, multiplayer can no longer be considered "filler", imo.

I'm not sure what point you're making here, games still have changeable difficulty, they even attempt to use it to prolong the game by making achievements/trophies for playing it through again on harder difficulties. If it was accepted back then it has to be accepted now as part of the package, not something which was then and isn't now. It's not a stable point of comparison.

The habit of prolonging the game through "trial and error" gameplay was probably more hurtful to the substance of games than anything I can think of - hence my comment. Adjustable difficulties and "our game is short, but you will have to replay those same parts a fucking lot" are pretty different".

You don't approach a meal with the intention that the food on your plate serves to abate your hunger on its own, rather than that only being the case when the meal is taken with friends?

Yes, however, in a good company, the food can be much more enjoyable.

Actually, I don't find the meal thing relevant, tbh. There is no food that is made specifically for more than one person to enjoy at a time.

 

[randomsix]

depends how you look at it... MW2 used to be fun cos you could run around and stab people and make people rage... oh god it was fun... the only people you could get though were people who played to much halo and were confused when anything less than an entire clip could kill you... fun is all in the way you look at it.... if your not having fun at a game because your playing it properly then stop doing that

A game that becomes fun for some players by making other players angry is doing something very wrong.

 

[rockingnic]

Only problem with games nowadays is that most of the games want to cater to the majority rather than risk and make a completely different game. That's one reason why I always loved the Halo games, they never changed to become like CoD or other games in it's genre, it has it's own identity. You don't have to innovate to make a fun game but it sure does help to get away from the traditional stuff every now and then instead of playing the same old thing in different environments every time.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

A game that becomes fun for some players by making other players angry is doing something very wrong.

So that's most games you've just summed up there.

WoW, CS, hell, Halo: Reach?