Poll: Have the last 6-7 years really been that good for video games?
- Thread starter StupidNincompoop
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Hit or miss 07 was great for games and some say 2011 was good ( I disagree but that's not the point) but other than those years no.
I think that the quality of games haven't been really going down as the variety of the top selling games have been nose diving. I mean if you look at the data the top ten highest selling games for Xbox 360, 7 first person shooters and 4 of those are call of booty. There are good games being made and no AAA guys are really making groundbreaking games anymore except for Bethesda.
Except Spec Ops: The Line that game was ridiculously amazing.
Except Spec Ops: The Line that game was ridiculously amazing.
Some have been good, but the non-RPG single player field has suffered a lot. For example, FPS games used to be pretty long, or at least decent, and now it is surprising if the break the 5 hour mark. They also seem to be more focused on looks than anything else (but with all the fucking babies crying about how the game sucks because the graphics are "so bad" because they don't require the very top of the line to run low settings, that doesn't surprise me much). FPS games seem to have also gone for the more "realistic" unlike the old insane guns and health bars. I understand regenerating health from a design point making it easier in campaigns, but in multiplayer it ruins it (especially with the games where you need a few clips to kill someone).
I'm at the point now in my life where I don't have enough time or inclination to spend staring at my computer or TV screen so if I get 4 games a year that I think are great then I'm pretty much okay with the game's industry. I use to think it was that games just aren't being made that satisfy my interests anymore, but the more I think the more I find it has less to do with the game's market changing and more with the changes in how I prioritize my life, and on my current list of priorities video games are pretty low. Yeah I kind of wish I could anticipate the October-December time of the year when all the big games are released, but really, I'm fine playing my 3-4 games a year.
Well of course gaming sucks nowadays if you only focus on the bad stuff. Come to think of it, gaming has always sucked, what with the Sega CD, 32x, and Phillips CDI and games like Wand of gamelon, E.T. for the 2600, Dick Tracy on the NES, almost everything else the angry video game nerd has reviewed.
Do you see what I'm doing there? I'm applying your thinking to the "Golden age", if only to get you to realize that if you don't exclusively focus on things that suck then gaming will seem a hell of a lot better.
Do you see what I'm doing there? I'm applying your thinking to the "Golden age", if only to get you to realize that if you don't exclusively focus on things that suck then gaming will seem a hell of a lot better.
Post 2000 but not because of any inherent quality that they might have but because I am a gamer and as a gamer I want to check out new releases, I feel it's only natural that way. It would be weird for me to compare gaming decades without taking a look at today's releases. I rarely play older games today because I played the s**t of out of those 90's games up there(was a kid and had a lot of spare time as opposed to now) in the past and while I still do get excited for new releases, most fall flat on their ass in my eyes because I've seen better.SecretNegative said:Opinions, we all have them.predatorpulse7 said:LOLWUT?
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 Thiefark 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.
Instead of critisising your opinion (which is pointless) I'm going to ask you; Have the latest 20 games you've played (prior to reading this comment) the majorite being pre-2000 or post-2000?
I'm not saying that you have to agree with me but the past decade or so has mostly failed to bring new IP's into the light and innovation has been brought to a near stand still. New and interesting game mechanics I can count on one hand if I am being generous. Streamlining(read:dumbing down) is mainstream now, AAA titles are bloated beyond belief being rehash after rehash after rehash. The modern era of gaming has managed to dumb down even the first prison shooter(with regenerating health, chest high walls etc), something which I thought to be impossible back when I was playing Doom or Quake.
If I do a genre by genre comparison 90's versus 00's, very few categories would go to the 00's. 90's simply have better innovation(some say 98' is still the greatest gaming year ever), more classics IP's and developers took more risks back then. Now everybody's crapping their pants if their new IP doesn't sell 5 million to justify the money spent on it so of course most studios are just gonna put out COD nr. 4000 and hope you still buy it.
you mention the death of sim and demolition derby games. they died for a reason, obviously people were not buying them, or they were getting terrible reviews, or the teams that made them moved on. the industry evolves, just like everything else, and i doubt that popular genres (FPS, RPG, etc.)will remain popular forever (though admittedly, the demo derby genre in particular was very niche). also, you think animation is stiffer now?? play Call of Duty, or Halo:CE, and then play Blops II or Halo 4, and tell me that again.StupidNincompoop said:
OT, I think that the V.G industry is stronger than ever. popularity is up, game quality is up, and, most important of all, p.c gaming has been brought from the brink of death, to thriving once again.
Many think that gaming is worse now because the pink glasses of nostalgia are present, when in reality, 80% of games back then were terrible. if you are speaking without bias, you could say that, at the most, 20% of games today are legitimately bad. While that number can still drop, it is a major improvement.
i agree with this line of thought. people keep asking for innovation in shooters, but most things that can be done have already been done. it will be really hard to innovate in this particular genre. don't get me wrong, though, that does not mean i give companies an excuse to copy/paste, just... refine. i think that COD is actually doing what it should. slight improvements here and there, but no big changes.Bhaalspawn said:
8 years to the day, tomorrow. It falls outside the timeframe.Lucky Godzilla said:
Anyway, OT: too subjetive to say. Depends on what one counts as "quality" and also personal taste, too. Even though all my favourite games are from just before 2005/2006-ish, I still I can't really say how has quality changed. There were good games, there were bad games in that period. The same with the games from before. Some of them I liked, others not, third I didn't really care about, etc. Again, just like before. I've seen progress, I've seen change, I've seen some downfalls. I think it's going as normal, overall.
But the game industry is still in flux and metamorphisis. However, we are as well - what we might consider good or not so much can vary from one point in time to another. I think it's fairly important to keep it in mind.
I'll actually have to agree that i haven't enjoyed AAA gaming since 2005-ish. Basically when the current console generation started, things just seemed to go in a bad direction for me.
I've been playing games since the early 90's so i've experienced quite a lot. (also have played games that were released in the 80's)
While i'll agree that games have improved in technical aspects and user-friendliness but in terms of asthetics, design and gameplay, i think they've declined in quality. At least in the AAA market.
All of my favorite games from the passed 5 years are indie games. It's a great time for indie devs, it's becoming such an awesome scene full of fresh ideas. If it weren't for the indie scene I think quality games would be dead.
(this is my opinion on all this. does it mean anything? maybe, maybe not)
I've been playing games since the early 90's so i've experienced quite a lot. (also have played games that were released in the 80's)
While i'll agree that games have improved in technical aspects and user-friendliness but in terms of asthetics, design and gameplay, i think they've declined in quality. At least in the AAA market.
All of my favorite games from the passed 5 years are indie games. It's a great time for indie devs, it's becoming such an awesome scene full of fresh ideas. If it weren't for the indie scene I think quality games would be dead.
(this is my opinion on all this. does it mean anything? maybe, maybe not)
I think gaming has improved quite a lot overall. Sure, I'd rather there wasn't quite so much emphasis on multiplayer, but it's no huge deal. There are still plenty of games that are awesome singleplayer too. The way I see things is that most of the 'Gaming is getting shitter' people are the same kind of people that have been saying PC gaming has been dying for the last 30 years, that kids' manners these days are awful and that all modern music is 'just noise'. People are always saying that everything isn't as good as it used to be, and to them I say: 90% of everything has always been shite. You just don't remember the shit bits.
We've seen a HUGE improvement in gaming this generation:
- We continue to have games made in the classic styles we grew up with
- We have new ways to play games like with motion controls (with good and bad results)
- New types of games have come out for cell phones, social sites and the like for generations of gamers who weren't interested in traditional hardcore games.
- Rock Band/Guitar Hero/etc brought party games to a whole new level
- We've seen steps forward in terms of character personality and investment IMO (Bioware for choice games)
- We continue to have games made in the classic styles we grew up with
- We have new ways to play games like with motion controls (with good and bad results)
- New types of games have come out for cell phones, social sites and the like for generations of gamers who weren't interested in traditional hardcore games.
- Rock Band/Guitar Hero/etc brought party games to a whole new level
- We've seen steps forward in terms of character personality and investment IMO (Bioware for choice games)
The issue, when looking at the descriptors above (mainly pointing to genre) is that looking at all those games you've listed, there's only about 4-5 that are truly different. Most of those are also old enough to be before studios were being fired for not selling 5m+ copies, or indie games. I'm not saying they're bad, i like pretty much all of them myself, but they're hardly indicative of a varied market.Lucky Godzilla said:
No-one is saying indie gaming is doing badly either (well, it is on consoles, but ho hum) so the indie game references aren't needed
Indie gaming on PC is the next true bastion of gaming for us enthusiasts. Indie devs are abandoning xbl and psn of course though, since the market isn't really all that great, it's far more awkward, and PC is simply the better platform to work with for those devs for many reasons.The issue is that there's not enough diversity in AAA games any more, and there definitely isn't the number of studios with the ability to take risks to give us that.
It's like dishonored - a game that was something a bit different to the norm now (stealth games are few and far between), but it probably wont get a sequel as it will have 'only' sold around 2m copies. Depressing isn't it?
I don't think game quality has gotten worse though, just game variety on consoles.
It was pretty much the end of the life span for the PS2, and the beginning of the xbox 360 and ps3.veloper said:
Back then, internet gaming was rare, pretty much the only well known games back then were runescape, WoW, club penguin, maplestory, adventurequest (kinda) habbo hotel and gunz (though not as much)
10 year olds with terrible mics didn't really exist.
People on online games were much friendlier towards each other compared to today.
There was more variety in games.
Games had more variety in that you had more than one way you could deal with a situation, such as you could go into a room, guns blazing or be stealthy. They also had different routes you could take sometimes, or hidden secrets (i.e dungeon keeper 2)
The games were generally more challenging as well, the game didn't hold your hand as much.
Games also didn't have so many special effects that they got in the way of enjoying the game, like they sometimes do today.
Oh, and the consoles were built like nokias- having one break on you was practically unheard of. Whereas today i've heard of people who have gone through like 4 xbox 360's.
Right, so you listed 22 different series or games there.Lucky Godzilla said:
Out of those, these ones don't really count, because they are part of a series that was started years ago, way before 2006 or 2005;
Metal gear solid/MGS
Deus Ex
Skyrim/ elder scrolls series
Fallout 3 (although the 3rd fallout game was so different from the first 2 that it doesn't really matter that those games came out years ago)
CoD (and to be honest, the CoD games are also slightly to blame for the state the industry's in currently, other games from different genres have started to try and copy features from CoD to try and jump on their success, but at the same time has also made some good series worse now)
Mario
Battlefield series
Halo series.
Also, like somebody else already pointed out, half life 2 doesn't count because it was made in 2005, and it was actually going to come out in 2004.
Minecraft.. yeah.
I hate calling minecraft a game, because it has about as much gameplay as dear esther does.
Really, i think pretty much everybody, or at least 90% of the players of minecraft, "play" minecraft for the building, not for the gameplay. If you took away the ability to build, minecraft would be terrible.
And minecraft isn't an original idea either. There were some games that came out before minecraft that were pretty much exactly like minecraft, but made ages before minecraft. Blcokland, roblox, return to blockland and probably a few lego games.
Conversely, the last few years also gave us these things:
-EA getting a reputation for being one of, if not the worst gaming companies.
-More present DRM for PC games.
-Duke nukem forever, tony hawk's pro skater HD, diablo III, some bad sonic and mario games, resident evil 5 and 6 (mediocre action shooters rather than survival horror), medal of honour: warfighter,
-APB: reloaded, a full priced £30 game which probably broke the record for the fastest an online-only game has become unplayable, with the game servers going offline just 3 months after release.
-Some pretty average (not bad, average) releases, such as the last few star wars games, GTA IV, the last few silent hill and resident evil games, The last few command and conquer games, etc.
I think the comfy chair pretty much just summed up everything else i wanted to say about that post.
However, on a slightly more positive note, i will say that you didn't add guild wars 2 and company of heroes to that list, two games that came out of the last few years that have been pretty good.
I really hope you're not being serious :/Nimzabaat said:
I wasn't saying that games are bad these days because nobody buys them and it's a failing industry that nobody's interested in, i never said that at all. Just because games are being bought more now doesn't necessarily mean that they're better.
There's now something like 7 trillion people on the planet, probably at least a trillion or two more than what there were in 2005. So that means there's more people around to buy games. And games are more well known now, there weren't that many female gamers at all a few years ago, and now we have a lot more.
Exactly my point.alphamalet said:
To add to that, racing games are now less popular, and have less features than they did a few years ago (like i've said a couple of times now, a lack of damage in many racing games, even though the technology is more than capable of at least simple damage features at this point)
Simulation games have mostly become a joke, with incredibly boring and poorly made titles such as garbage truck simulator, tow truck simulator and woodcutting simulator. Sims 3 has become much more monetized, with a bigger-than-ever presence of DLC and store content, and it's like the developers weren't too sure what they wanted it to become, so they made it more serious, gave it more cartoony looking graphics, and less fun (in some peoples' opinions) than the sims 2.
bullet_sandw1ch said:
When i said the destruction derby series, i meant it as part of the racing genre. They pretty much just made the fault that most developers do, and they made the 3rd and 4th destruction derby games way too cartoony, and gave the vehicles some stupid health bars rather than a damage "skeleton" or model (for lack of a better word).
As for the games improving, well like a couple of people already mentioned, it seems like over half of the AAA games produced today are shooters that follow the same exact model as CoD, with slight changes.
Some years ago, this would have been fine, because like you said, most of the games would have just been mediocre clones back then. But now we're in 2012, the gaming industry should more variety available by now. Instead, it's left up to the indie developers, who manage to make way more interesting games than the bigger companies. It really doesn't make that much sense when you think about it.
7 trillion people? Excellent choice in user name by the way. Oh and look up "sarcasm" and have someone explain it to you. (7 trillion hmm... can I borrow $5 bucks? It's a math joke)StupidNincompoop said:
Just so you know... all the games you "took out" of Lucky Godzilla's list you can put back in. Sequels and improvements are still... improvements. A sequel to a game is still a game.
Also, is anyone else pleasantly surprised with how good the new XCom is doing? The only thing I miss is when the aliens used to attack your bases. Those were some tense times.
I point out the fallacy here - you complain about the list being marginally different, and yet you pick Dishonoured of all things as an example of "being a bit different from the norm" when half of it's gameplay is (shamelessly) ripped from other games (namely the Thief series and DX:HR as Yahtzee pointed out in his review, and that's merely the surface)?The Comfy Chair said:The issue, when looking at the descriptors above (mainly pointing to genre) is that looking at all those games you've listed, there's only about 4-5 that are truly different. Most of those are also old enough to be before studios were being fired for not selling 5m+ copies, or indie games. I'm not saying they're bad, i like pretty much all of them myself, but they're hardly indicative of a varied market.
No-one is saying indie gaming is doing badly either (well, it is on consoles, but ho hum) so the indie game references aren't needed
The issue is that there's not enough diversity in AAA games any more, and there definitely isn't the number of studios with the ability to take risks to give us that.
It's like dishonored - a game that was something a bit different to the norm now (stealth games are few and far between), but it probably wont get a sequel as it will have 'only' sold around 2m copies. Depressing isn't it?
I don't think game quality has gotten worse though, just game variety on consoles.
OT - Depends where you look. Technology has advanced forwards, but we have things like Online Passes, DRM, the Origin Security Fiasco, and of course the destruction of many, many IP's from back in the day that actually make me *not* want to see quite a few games get Rebooted.
However, the other edged sword is the "Tech Demo", like Crysis and Rage.
However, I'd also point out that the AAA industry hasn't made bad games, and Indie games have also made a few things of fail. If we're willing to ignore business practices for a moment, Starcraft II and Symphony come to mind as examples from both ends.
For the future forwards, ignoring buisness practices again I'd say my biggest concern is Soundtrack. In the last ten years, it's mostly been overblown Orchestral. Now with groups like FLA writing friggin' Dubstep into things (for the record, FLA are an Industrial group), I'm starting to dread this may be the next direction for VG Soundtracks...which probably means I'll be playing my way though whatever comes next with the Music off.
The priority of games has changed.
On the one hand controls, animation, and voice acting are better than ever. On the other, overbloated budgets constrict games into "falling in line", sorta speak, with the 800-pound gorillas of the industry. Making most games feel very samey in regards to one another.
On the one hand controls, animation, and voice acting are better than ever. On the other, overbloated budgets constrict games into "falling in line", sorta speak, with the 800-pound gorillas of the industry. Making most games feel very samey in regards to one another.