AAA gaming has gotten a little stale, what with the endless sequels that are mostly all safe, but Indy gaming has never been better!
Poll: Have the last 6-7 years really been that good for video games?
- Thread starter StupidNincompoop
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I think the quality is the same or better. Nobody on Earth is qualified to really judge this since so many games have been created in this time frame and such specialized knowledge is required to really be able to analyze everything, so obviously its not an informed opinion, but nobody's is.
Hell it's all a matter of perspective to me. Everyone isn't going to agree about games being better or worse, they are simply different.
As a person that is still stuck playing an original Xbox & a PC from 6 years ago I think everyone should fell lucky that they can play current gen games. Now i still love my old games & still play the hell out of them, but playing that shiny new game would be pretty fucking awesome too.
The technology & they way games are made now can't really be properly compared to older games, it's like comparing oranges to beach balls. Yeah they are both round, but they are very different things. Anyway that's just my two cents.
As a person that is still stuck playing an original Xbox & a PC from 6 years ago I think everyone should fell lucky that they can play current gen games. Now i still love my old games & still play the hell out of them, but playing that shiny new game would be pretty fucking awesome too.
The technology & they way games are made now can't really be properly compared to older games, it's like comparing oranges to beach balls. Yeah they are both round, but they are very different things. Anyway that's just my two cents.
The last 7 years gave me Bioshock. And Mass Effect. And Assassin's Creed. And Gears of War. And Lone Survivor. And Slender. And Minecraft. The list goes on. So yes, game quality (at least in terms of story writing) has improved.
In some ways, I do think quality has decreased a bit. I find that it seems like many devs and publishers seem to be under the impression that good graphics and explosions means quality, rather than depth of mechanics or complexity. of course game sales seem to be booming so i may be in the minority here. An example of this to me is the Civilization series. Civ 5 was good, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't hold a candle to Civ 4 BtS. Just my opinion.
I would argue that the quality and diversity of gaming has declined.
AAA First-person shooters have over-saturated the market and are very derivative in most cases.
Survival Horror has been pushed into obscurity, and action games like Dead Space now insultingly masquerade under the guise of somehow being a part of the once great genre.
JRPGs have turned into something we need to fight to get localized.
Many AAA RPGs have been watered down to appeal to a "broader audience". Gone are the tactical micromanagement and strategic battle systems, in favor of battle systems based entirely around reflexes, and yet not done as well as their action game counterparts. What the hell happened to turn-based RPGs?
Not to mention Day 1 DLC, On-disc DLC, Online Passes, Ridiculous DRMs, and all of the other wonderful things this gen has given birth to.
Yeah, if this generation is indication of where the industry is headed, we might have a bit to worry about.
AAA First-person shooters have over-saturated the market and are very derivative in most cases.
Survival Horror has been pushed into obscurity, and action games like Dead Space now insultingly masquerade under the guise of somehow being a part of the once great genre.
JRPGs have turned into something we need to fight to get localized.
Many AAA RPGs have been watered down to appeal to a "broader audience". Gone are the tactical micromanagement and strategic battle systems, in favor of battle systems based entirely around reflexes, and yet not done as well as their action game counterparts. What the hell happened to turn-based RPGs?
Not to mention Day 1 DLC, On-disc DLC, Online Passes, Ridiculous DRMs, and all of the other wonderful things this gen has given birth to.
Yeah, if this generation is indication of where the industry is headed, we might have a bit to worry about.
Or rather, given the widespread disapproval of the state of the industry at the moment, that a large change is underway.alphamalet said:
I don't really get why Civ V is apparently endemic of things being 'watered down'. All I can see between the two is just things being different; why make Civ IV again, after all?Eldrig said:
I think the 'many devs and publishers' is kind of a misnomer as well, rather the AAA devs and publishers seem to think that, but as a gamer we've got enough choice now to easily avoid EA and Activision and Ubisoft (to a lesser extent) and still find great games, so I don't think that's a problem with the entire industry, only the bloated-budget mass-market part of the industry.
The issue I take with this is the rise of the indie gaming scene in the last few years. Mark of the Ninja, Orcs Must Die, Frozen Synapse, Trine, Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac and FTL have provided me with a greater variety of gameplay experience in the last year or so than any 5 years prior to 2005 offered. Even within mainstream gaming there have been some interesting titles, Dark Souls, Human Revolution, Portal 2, Witcher 2 and Arkham City all stand out to me as games with enough refinements to their respective formulas to still have merit.Overusedname said:Well, I'm certainly not as excited about recent offerings as my peers, apparently.
I think we're in a steady decline in terms of variety, creativity, and deviation, with an obvious raise in production value and poly count. Which is nice when people have a good idea to make use of that value. For every Bioshock there are twenty Call of Duties.
I don't begrudge you all for having fun, keep having it! Have enough for me to, cause I think this was a pretty underwhelming generation of games with more of the same then ever. My eyes have been so saturated with 'realistic graphics' and the same 'war never changes' stories played out with open-ended characters with no real personality that the entire mainstream spectrum has completely melted together. I have simply not been impressed by most of these offerings.
I'm sure I'm just missing the fun, but I've tried most of the games people rave about nowadays. I don't get the appeal. I think we're experiencing our biggest growing pains yet, where budgets have gotten bloated and patience and creativity have succumbed to strict deadlines put in place by people who have no idea how long it takes to make a game. (and that's why I tolerate Valve Time).
And I fully acknowledge I'm in the minority with that opinion, so need to rub it in.
I'd say six to one, half dozen to the other. The main thing I miss from older games is scope and ambition. I know this isn't universally true, but I remember games whose reach exceeded their grasp, and that was far better than the alternative. Even some big developers still have large scope.
I feel that the potential for games has only skyrocketed since then, but the actual quality of most AAA games right now is questionable, especially on consoles. We have had some of the greatest games in history since 2005, but several infuriating practices have been implemented by the industry as a whole and don't appear to be stopping soon.
Not to be a graphics whore, but in 1 year things improved immensely (today is the 5 year anniversary of Crysis, then things mostly stagnated. I'm not going to say they regressed, and there's certainly been progression in many areas, but considering the lack of graphical improvement overall gameplay should have evolved well beyond the point it is currently at.
LOLWUT?SecretNegative said:
That decade gave us some incredibly interesting IP's whereas this decade has mostly rehash after rehash after rehash.
I doubt that on the whole 2000-2012 had games as iconic as the 1990-1999 period with games such as Starcraft, Half-Life, the motherf**king Thief
ark Project(also known as the still the best stealth game around), Baldur's Gate, Grim Fandango, Fallout 1&2, Grand Theft Auto 1&2, Planescape Torment,Heroes of Might and Magic, System Shock 1&2, Blood Omen and Soul Reaver, Command and Conquer series, Age of Empires 1&2, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, Commandos - Behind Enemy Lines, Rainbow Six, Tomb Raider, Caesar III - Pharaoh, Civ 1&2, Mortal Kombat franchise,Day of The Tentacle, Gabriel Knight, Doom, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Full Throttle, I Have no Mouth and I must Scream, Rayman, Worms, Resident Evil, Quake, Elder Scorlls - Arena and Daggerfall(the second still being the best ES game IMO), Duke Nukem, The Last Express, Carmaggedon, Abe's Odysee - Exodus and many more. And mind you, I've mostly skipped the console releases of that time.These weren't just hugely popular games, most of those games up there introduced new game worlds and mechanics that are with us to this day and many of them are the best representatives of those genres.
The 2000-2012 period also some good IP's(best being Deus Ex) but most of them are spiritual sequels to many of those games up there and in many ways inferior to them despite having the techonological advantage plus much, much bigger budgets, especially in the modern era. Not to mention that innovation nowadays mostly resides in some indie games and smaller studios wheras the bloated AAA model releases rehash after rehash that the Mountain Dew crowd eats up.
I know some say it's nostalgia goggles but I feel that the games from the 90's had a far bigger impact on gaming than anything churned out nowadays.
IMO it's not the games that have gone downhill, it's the people that play them.
I think online has changed gaming a LOT over the last few years. It's a lot easier to find MP games these days but the people that play them are genuinely just dicks. Bad communities = bad gaming experience. (The exact reason I don't play CoD)
For example, I remember playing the Delta Force games online back in 2002-2005 and 90% of the community were decent - back in the days of "Good game guys" messages at the end of maps and using Ventrillio to chat nicely with other players.
These days it's all "lulz we totally pwned you, lulz. Your mum." & prestiging/glitching.
Shockingly this isn't even down to the age of the players - I.e. the stereotypical CoD player being 13, as the clan I was in had people ranging from 13-50!
I think online has changed gaming a LOT over the last few years. It's a lot easier to find MP games these days but the people that play them are genuinely just dicks. Bad communities = bad gaming experience. (The exact reason I don't play CoD)
For example, I remember playing the Delta Force games online back in 2002-2005 and 90% of the community were decent - back in the days of "Good game guys" messages at the end of maps and using Ventrillio to chat nicely with other players.
These days it's all "lulz we totally pwned you, lulz. Your mum." & prestiging/glitching.
Shockingly this isn't even down to the age of the players - I.e. the stereotypical CoD player being 13, as the clan I was in had people ranging from 13-50!
It's a shame that I'm too young (or at least, didn't start out on the PC) to have ever got into multiplayer in a big way because as far as I can remember there have always been unpleasant people over such a wide area.wabbbit said:
Then again, I don't look all that hard, so I'm probably wrong.