Things modern games are doing better.

[The Code]

Back in 'the day', there was always that one combination of button strikes that could carry you through a given level without so much as a scuff on your tunic and you could only approach the problem from one (or two for the more advanced games) angle. These days, you can come at an issue from almost any angle you can think of. Fallout 3 and New Vegas are two such examples. With NV, you could help the Legion, assist the NCR, work with Mr. House, or even take the Strip for yourself! Hell, even Bulletstorm gives you the ability to kill your enemies in so many epically gratuitous ways.

What have modern games improved? The use of strategy in achieving victory.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Really depends on the game and type, alot of games still fuck things up even tho those very things were worked out decades ago.
What constantly improved are graphics, animations, effects, and physics, everything else is pretty much all over the place.

- barely a handfull of new games bring a good story(tho this was always the same)
- most things are very casual(taking away the chance for any mastery)
- difficulty progression rarely hits the linearity that should be in all games
- tutorials are getting stupidly long(FF13 holds you down for 20h, and they said it this is just so every schmuck can pick up the game, but there is no alternative for the people who are not mentally handicapped)
- games moving from gameplay to cinematic(ending up in a piss poor game that only looks pretty, then why is it even a game...)
- lazy ass game mechanics, quick time events, button mash, regenerating health,... ya the game designer doesn't haveto think but the user get's stuck with crappy gameplay
- checkpoints replacing savegames(i.e. the game will only save when it wants to), don't even know in what universe this seems like a good idea...

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

They have the potential to be better in every conceivable way to old games. Sometimes they hit, most often they miss. It's always the same thing. The video games of old were mostly crap, some were good, and a few rare were so awesome we still talk about them today.

 

[Svrhero]

Games today have good walkthroughs that allow a little hand holding to get the player going instead of dropping you into the action where you were trial-by-fire sort of play, or you spent some time glossing over the user guide/manual.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Graphics, gameplay, less buggy in general, better walkthroughs. Although people whine about stories, there was very little like a Mass Effect or Fallout in the old days.

Sure you could make an argument about the old Ultima series I guess, but beyond that, stories did tend to be simpler affairs because games were simpler affairs.

Also, when exactly did modern begin? Because the lines seem to be very blurred to me. Halo is often crowned the first of the 'modern' FPSs, but it was only released a year after FFIX, which could not be more closely associated with the old fashioned way of doing things.

Putting the XBox as the beginning of the modern trend though, graphics have been steadily improving, gameplay is becoming a lot more streamlined, and less open to the sometimes unintuitive controls of the past, there are less game ending bugs, despite the occasional individual buggy release. There was a time, not so long ago, when every game would have bugs that made it unplayable if you got unlucky enough to trigger them.

Also, I cannot stress enough to advent of the well written walkthrough/tutorial. This for me sort of was hinted at with Tomb Raider III, which let you run around Croft Manor to warm up your skills, but games like Crash Bandicoot or Spyro, just chuked you in at the deep end and let the first level be your tutorial. It's contributed to the influx of new gamers who no longer see games as the realm of the obsessive psychotic, and makes all games even better as intuitive pick up and play experiences.

Yes, soemtimes graphics are focused on a little too much, yes sometimes walkthroughs becomes very hand-holdy, yes there is evidence that games are getting easier, but is that such a bad thing? It's like arguing about how only a brilliantly painted Mona Lisa can be art, because everything else isn't good enough, or how literature is going downhill now more people are writing novels. It's just a snobby elitist attitude that should be dropped.

 

[duchaked]

I gotta say, I do appreciate a cinematic story tellling style at times
and I can't say I'm against having a good save game function always...I don't have much time to commit to truly be hardcore =.=
and yes, online scoring. it's like "hey you stole my kill-oh wait I actually got a bit more points for an assist in place of a basic kill...okay credits for me yay" so it's all good

been playing through Duke Nukem 3D and it's a challenge just figuring out where I need to go!
rewarding when I do figure it out, and it ain't too bad when I look online for a clue
it's okay for most modern games to guide you through an epic experience, as long as there are still some (or just retro) games that let you figure it out and not hold your hand (again, only if you have time to spare to explore and...think haha)

 

[TiefBlau]

How is it bad to have literally no consequence for failure? Well, for one it makes the game embaressingly easy to "complete". It makes games distinctly less fun to play overall.

I want to be challenged!

Let me in, coach, I'm ready to play.

Yeah, a variety of games would certainly be much, MUCH more fun if the makers actually took some damn time balancing out the difficulty curve a little. Games that don't challenge people aren't games at all. They're more or less movies that stop every once in a while to remind you that you have a controller. Which isn't necessarily wrong--games like visual novels that just want that interactive aspect are perfectly fine and dandy--but you don't play those games for the intriguing gameplay.

As for customizable difficulty levels? In my day games had one main difficulty, hard. If it was too hard the game called you a wuss and laughed at you. That's how I like it.

There's nothing wrong with wanting more people to enjoy your game. Adjustable difficulty is a great way to get many people to feel the exact same level of challenge, regardless of actual skill in synchronized button-pressing. It's not a good idea to let gamers over or underestimate their ability, though, so letting the game calibrate your difficulty might also be a good idea.

Games today have good walkthroughs that allow a little hand holding to get the player going instead of dropping you into the action where you were trial-by-fire sort of play, or you spent some time glossing over the user guide/manual.

And you don't even have to buy them these days

As a side-note, I have that exact mouse in your avatar!

 

[Chibz]

There's nothing wrong with wanting more people to enjoy your game. Adjustable difficulty is a great way to get many people to feel the exact same level of challenge, regardless of actual skill in synchronized button-pressing. It's not a good idea to let gamers over or underestimate their ability, though, so letting the game calibrate your difficulty might also be a good idea.

To really see what I'm talking about, ever see the Donkey Kong Country remakes (Game boy colour/advance)? Played one of them, it had "scalable difficulty". Well the remakes' top difficulty is actually identical to the original game. No changes at all. This is how easy gaming is now. Let's face it, folks, Donkey Kong Country has never been a particularly hard series.

Games today have good walkthroughs that allow a little hand holding to get the player going instead of dropping you into the action where you were trial-by-fire sort of play, or you spent some time glossing over the user guide/manual.

Games from my Hay Day (like Megaman) taught you something in a relatively safe place to learn it, then expected you to put it to more advanced use in the next screen. This is how I think it should be.

 

[Stammer]

Well, there's one thing that's kind of both a good thing and a bad thing-- the fact that games can be updated via the internet on a regular basis.

Game has a major bug that wasn't caught before? Game has some balance issues that need to be ironed-out? Game just got a few new cool things? Update via the internet!

On the downside, this seems to have made developers extremely lazy. Most PC, PS3, and 360 games during release now have tons of issues. Then you look at Wii games and pretty much every earlier console and you realize that each game that ever comes out for any of those is usually as good as it could ever get. I mean, if it weren't for the convenience of updates, what would Fallout New Vegas have done? It would have gone down as the laughing stock of 2010 (maybe even moreso than Final Fantasy XIV).

 

[TiefBlau]

There's nothing wrong with wanting more people to enjoy your game. Adjustable difficulty is a great way to get many people to feel the exact same level of challenge, regardless of actual skill in synchronized button-pressing. It's not a good idea to let gamers over or underestimate their ability, though, so letting the game calibrate your difficulty might also be a good idea.

To really see what I'm talking about, ever see the Donkey Kong Country remakes (Game boy colour/advance)? Played one of them, it had "scalable difficulty". Well the remakes' top difficulty is actually identical to the original game. No changes at all. This is how easy gaming is now. Let's face it, folks, Donkey Kong Country has never been a particularly hard series.

Well, in defense of all difficulty adjusting enthusiasts in the history of everywhere (all 5 of them), that's a fault of the game and not the system itself.

In any case, a large part of this turn towards easiness is just that controls these days are just so much more intuitive. Instead of using some directional pad to move in platformers, you can adjust direction with an analog stick or a mouse. You can actually target enemies to shoot down in more directions than the single one you're offered in most games. Good old fighting games will never change too much though. You'll always end up searching on the internet for how the hell your friend managed you rip out your spinal cord from fifty feet away while you only know how to punch and, if you're feeling saucy, kick.

Another large part of this is just what developers want gaming to be these days. They care less and less about giving the player a sense of achievement. Instead, they're trying to create an experience. If you die fifty times in a game, you're going to care a lot less about everything not related to gameplay. You can't really appreciate as much how cool your character looks if all you're focused on is punching in the right combo with the right timing. Neither direction is particularly wrong, in my opinion. It's like comparing Chess to Mousetrap. Mousetrap isn't particularly hard, but it sure as hell was a blast when I were a wee one. But it still doesn't match that smug sense of accomplishment I get when I beat people in chess. It's all about what direction people want to go in the making of their game. Now that they have the technology to render a wet-t-shirt with uncomfortable accuracy, they want you to notice it, so they're leaning more to the "focus on the experience" side.

...Yeah, I couldn't think of any better board game examples >.>

 

[Wintermoot]

the ability to use a regular save system instead of save points/level codes
also graphics (sadly developers are only interrested in brown ruins and gunmetal grey)

 

[Lyx]

About the only things i can think of, that modern games do better are:

- Interfacing: This indeed has come a long way. Some older classics are outright frustrating just because of the controls and GUI alone.

- Selfexplanation: The further you go back in videogame history, the less games explained themselves. Sometimes one really had to figure out by trial and error what's going on. For some games, that may have added appeal to them, but mostly it was just bad design.

I really cannot think of anything else. Difficulty and frustration-potential may on SOME older games have been outrightly frustrating, but modern games didn't really improve in that regard, but instead just made the opposite mistake. I'd say regarding difficulty, games probably hit the sweet spot (and range) somewhere between 1995-2000.

 

[Lyx]

Well, there's one thing that's kind of both a good thing and a bad thing-- the fact that games can be updated via the internet on a regular basis.

Game has a major bug that wasn't caught before? Game has some balance issues that need to be ironed-out? Game just got a few new cool things? Update via the internet!

On the downside, this seems to have made developers extremely lazy. Most PC, PS3, and 360 games during release now have tons of issues. Then you look at Wii games and pretty much every earlier console and you realize that each game that ever comes out for any of those is usually as good as it could ever get. I mean, if it weren't for the convenience of updates, what would Fallout New Vegas have done? It would have gone down as the laughing stock of 2010 (maybe even moreso than Final Fantasy XIV).

I'm sorry, but as you pointed out, that's not really better - in most cases, one may even consider the situation worse now. Here too, the sweet-spot was probably reached somewhere between 1990-2000... at that time, low-cost magazines did act as patch-distributors, but this meant that updating was tied with some degree of annoyance for the player. Thus, developers still attempted to make games mostly bugfree, yet if something did slip through, players could patch them without going through a labyrinth of phonecalls and mail-exchanges. Also, at that time a buggy release was not treated as "normal" by magazine - a buggy release meant that the game would be shredded to tiny pieces by magazine reviewers.

 

[Ranylyn]

The ONLY thing that I feel is done better now is conveying of emotion.

Use of voices and newer approaches to art styles make emotion far easier to convey than the old days of just text. Valkyria Chronicles is a prime example. The events of Fouzen and Marberry in particular. Most people consider the game cartoony but that's not the point. It's how they used their available resources to make you sympathize with those detained in the labor camps, just one example.

On the whole, graphics can burn in a horrible fiery pit, really. Many excellent games have been dismissed due to "bad graphics" and quite frankly, modern gamers need to shut up about graphics and give them a try. If they don't make your eyes hurt, and they don't, then there's really nothing wrong with it!

On the topic of saving and checkpoints, all they do is serve to make the games way too easy. In the old days, we had game over screens, or barring that, you'd lose half your money if you died or something. Incentives to stay alive, you know? Demon's Souls is a good example; it punishes death quite harshly, and due to the autosave you can't just load your file to avoid it. Compare to most modern games where your death is usually met with immediately plunking you right outside the room you died in. "lolololol I'll just die a few times until I win!" Where's the motivation to survive? Seriosuly?

I'm not saying that only hard games are fun. What I'm saying is that modern gamers are babied, which is why they don't like the games of the past, but instead they blame it on graphics. Seriously. Anyone who looks at a game and doesn't want to play because it's not in 1080p needs to be slapped in the face with a book and shown how graphics aren't everything.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Snip.

Then why are you playing 'easy' games? This isn't so much a lack of what you are looking for, as it is a failure of your part to look for it. Truly hard games, that put older games to shame, are plentiful. After all, most old games difficulty came, not from the game itself, but from the issues revolving around the game; whether they be graphical, poor development, or any number of other issues often plaguing such generations.

In regards to failure and the consequences thereof...

At first, I was opposed to a system such as Fable 3, in which dieing leaves you temporarily knocked out, acquiring a scar, and jumping back up and into the fray. Only, then I quickly realized the folly of my distaste.

Failure in most games, where when you die, you reload from a previous save...have you repeat almost the exact same actions that lead up to your death; with no other consequences, other than some wasted time.

This actually is not punishing you for failure.

Literally nothing is different within the game itself, other than you're now precognitive of events in the immediate future.

Whereas in games such as Fable 3, where when you die you receive noticeable evidence of your failure engraved forever more upon your character, is an actual punishment for failing.

Because, when it's all said and done, when both types of games have caught back up to one another after a failure, one of them look as though you never failed at all.

Actually just as a side note they can both look like you never failed at all as Fbale 2 had Res potions that stopped the scar affect from coming.

OT: I like the improvement in controls buth miss the cheat codes which were fun after you beat the game. One thing I don't like is how buggy games have become on release. I am sure codes have gotten more complicated but Devs really seem to have dropped the ball on this one. There was a time before updates and patches on consoles when games actually worked and wouldn't crash for no reason. The sheer scale of bugs and unstable games on release at least where I am sitting has rocketed. I think Black Ops is a perfect example of this.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Pretty much everything. Graphics, story, level design, pacing...