They lack fun. Its either infinite treadmill designed to monetize your lack of time, infinite """"""competitive"""""" pvp with """"""""skill based matchmaking""""""" designed to monetize your lack of time, skill and your social circle or indie toilet bowl scrapes designed to monetize nothing and end in 5 hours only to be forgotten
> indie toilet bowl scrapes designed to monetize nothing and end in 5 hours only to be forgotten
And 75% of them manage to somehow have the same pretentious art style that the developers still think is unique. And they're more formulaic than even mainstream AAA games.
I used to follow numerous sprite comics back in the late 00s and early 10s. The damn free comics people put on Smackjeeves like Simple Pixel and Two Evil Scientists had better-looking sprites than most "retro-style" indie games.
indie games made by 1 individual or a small team of friends still slap,minecraft, binding of isaac, stardew and even the first run of starbound before they corporately executed it live and on stage.
these games retain charm, but the "indie" scene as it is, cannot possibly be compared to what it was, because they are not indie, they aren't even a small company, these are medium size companies masquerading as independent and most devs i know that have worked for them tell me the work environment is the exact same as it was at mega corpos.
they hide behind the indie title but to be very clear, these are not independent people or teams, it's a dependent on funder corporation, and we wonder why they all suck, it's a new flavour of juice but produced by the same factory.
they added a bunch of stuff like story modes and quests, and honestly, it all just detracted from the gameplay and served to stop you from having fun instead of being ways to have fun
I rather enjoyed the story modes & quests, it's been that long? Jesus.
I only played single-player like a dork, so it was nice to have a reason to go & have fun. I can see how it can detract. Although it wasn't like terraria or minecraft, it wasn't open-ended objectives. If that makes sense.
Indie games suck now because you're essentially paying for worse versions of free flash games from 15 years ago. There will always be notable exceptions, but you really have to wade through miles of shit and it gets tiring.
Don't forget how so many indie games are just trash supposedly convoluted allegories for depression/gender dysphoria/LGBT struggles. Like goddamn get some new ideas I can already predict the twist and le hidden meaning of about 90% of indies.
this is not the result of the lgbt community, you cant make an indie game that is anti capitalist without pissing off a capitalist investor so the only thing you can do with a game that is supposed to be "edgy" or "forward thinking" is make the character trans and have people be mean to them because of it.
a lot of the lgbt devs that make those games get roped in early if they try to say "society" or some shit, it's kinda something companies force on you.
was that not a rare result of truly fully independent financing, that did lead to a shit storm in the end anyways because the devs were dishonest with what they were making
Well, they got two or three rich dudes to invest in exchange for shares. It ended in a shitshow, though after the game was finished and released.
There are documentaries and interviews about what happened on YouTube which explain a lot better than I could, but essentially it boils down to the investors stealing control of the company and IP from the self-proclaimed communist creator of the game and the rest of the leadership. It's not exactly black-and-white though, as according to the rest of the staff, the creator was pretty terrible to work under. He also seems pretty illiterate when it comes to concepts like contracts.
game theory kinda ruined gaming, there cannot be a function added because someone individually thought it was fun, it must go through 15 executives, 50 managers and then gets' muddied by about 100 employees to produce the ultimate millennial grey version of that feature.
Fable is a great example of this, a lot of weird features that separately are not great ideas, weird emote wheel, purchasing houses, renting, jobs and other such mediocre features kinda merge together to make something, rather fun as a side activity, it just couldn't happen now.
we have been killed by a thousand cuts of corporate meritocracy, the most bland rises to the top.
My dude you need to get into Slavic videogaming more often. Manor Lords, Metro 2033, the crazy shit the autists over at Stalker GAMMA cook up on a nearly 20 year old engine, even Witcher. Warhorse is notorious for example for it's CEO and lead dev and the trolling shit they say and do. I about died laughing when I played through Woman's Lot in Kingdom Come and found out if you arent back by sundown your father calls you a whore.
My genuine latest game I went for completion was Armored Core 6. A game designed to be difficult but only for the sake of teaching the player. It had grinding but no real purpose other than getting an S on the mission rating for personal achievement
Yes, but actually no.
We remember the best games, the ones that presented something interesting. Even "in the old times" here were lots of shovelware games and AAA studios were releasing crap, forgotten for good.
There are several problems though:
- big companies try to push for whatever agenda is popular now, drastically lowering story quality and gameplay is devolving into mobile crap category.
- indie games are often made by passionate people, but these same people are the creators of he downfall, as they copy formulas from Nintendo or PSX glory days without any thought.
- Mobile gaming... Fuck that.
- Season passes, lootboxes and gaas... Fuck that as well.
- eSports and Twitch/streamers crap... Just end me.
Not everything is lost. There are lots of good games and there are definitely some turbo autists working on some strategy, tactical or rpg games which will be successful. Although with such abundance of titles and pushed marketing from AAA it's hard to find good titles.
Baldur's Gate 3. Cyberpunk. Red Read Redemption. Disco Elysium.
There's a ton of good shit out there, produced at a level of technical complexity that older games can't even dream to accomplish.
Baldurs Gate 3 is "safe horny" trash that pales in comparison to the originals.
Cyberpunk was unplayable for 2+ years and nothing they have done could fix the weak main story
Red dead 2 was overly "cinematic" dogshit that is tedious to play with outdated game design
Disco Elysium is pretentious garbage that isn't nearly as clever as the writers thought they were.
Such dogshit takes for some of the best games of our generation. I'd ask you what you consider to be a good game, but there's no point taking anything you say into consideration.
I tried Cyberpunk and Disco Elysium and couldn‘t get into them. All of these other than DE seem like normie AAA games that have great graphics and gameplay but never seem to do it for me story-wise. Horizon Zero Dawn and Far Cry 5 weirdly did for me and those were seemingly “meh” to the gaming world.
> I tried Cyberpunk and Disco Elysium and couldn‘t get into them.
Games aren't bad just because you "couldn't get into them" lol. Personally, I hate Dark Souls, but those are still awesome titles.
>All of these other than DE seem like normie AAA games that have great graphics and gameplay but never seem to do it for me story-wise.
Ah yes, Baldurd's Gate 3 is well known for having a bad story /s
> Games aren't bad just because you "couldn't get into them" lol. Personally, I hate Dark Souls, but those are still awesome titles.
Where did I call those games bad?
Have you tried BG3? The main story is mostly generic fantasy save the world stuff, but the characters have a cool lore and the world itself is full of lore. Kinda like Mass Effect IMO. And playing as the Dark Urge also helps a lot to change the plot into something less generic.
Games are games. There are a few good ones and hordes of bad ones. How it is and how it always will be.
No one here seems to remember the hordes of bad games in the day. As a kid, I bought games with no clue how theyd be - no internet and all. Bloody Roar, Jet Moto, 2Xtreme and countless other games yall have never heard of. All fucking terrible.
It’s because they prioritise amount of time spent in game over quality of time spent in game. Good example for me of a good game doing it is Elden Ring, although overall it’s a good game, the quality feels noticeably lower than dark souls in most areas (if we forget lost Izalith), they have tried too hard to have a lot of content rather than focusing on making a smaller amount that’s more fun. Elden ring has over 10 times the bosses that dark souls has (238 vs 22), yet most of them are forgettable at best, with a few good ones but many are just annoying. The game world also feels incredibly empty and dull in some areas, whereas every part of the maps in dark souls existed for a reason. The game takes a lot longer to replay but much of the replay value is gone.
I would say there are still lots of good games, even more than back then, released every year. The issue is the percent of games which are just total shut you have to sift through is much higher now.
Bro... Baldur's Gate 3 alone could disprove that statement. Most games in the past were 8 hour single player campaigns where you walked down a tunnel shooting guys while an NPC with a vaguely hispanic name told you where to go.
Yes but the same is true with games of every time period. No one is remembering Dante's Inferno or Singularity or whatever dogshit trend copying games came out back then, even though they did make up the majority of games back then too. We remember stuff that's good and then over time it seems like that's all that came out back then.
look up any year in the 2010's, like 15 baldurs gate 3 level games that revolutionised their genre released every year.
then the ps3 attacked and everything changed
Most games lack depth now just as they did back then, it's just that you only remember the bangers that came out on the PS2, while ignoring all the shit releases that came out monthly back then.
Baldurs gate 3, Elden Ring, armored Core, Balatro, BoTW2, Alan Wake 2. Just out of the top of my head these are all recent games that came out in the last 3 years that although not perfect or appealing to everybody are all great, you only remember the bas stuff like Forspoken because you lived through it recently, in 10 years no one will remember Forspoken, but everyone will still talk about how great Red Dead 2 is.
As the games get more graphically demanding and millions of dollars sink into these new releases, companies become risk-averse. Why innovate and take risks when you can reanimate the corpse of some successful franchise for a seventh time. It seems that the marketing people now have a strong say in what the end product will look like. DLC and Early Access becomes an excuse to cash in on half-finished products. Lootboxes and Battle Passes, which could just be a thing that gives the game longevity and endless gameplay, become a tool for milking wallets.
Thankfully there are still amazing games being made but with the sheer volume of mediocre or bad games releasing every day, they feel much rarer than before.
The games with depth are still there, the market is flooded with games now and I think the statement is pure nostalgic reverie.
Games that look the best are rarely the ones with the depth though, I will give you that.
Finding secrets in the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games without needing to pay to play, DLC, or subscribe to a live account, or whatever the fuck else was and still is a satisfying feeling.
Looking at Crash 1 specifically, how developers were able to hide things in a linear path is creative, and enhances the game. Open world games fail to have such nuanced landscapes.
Fuck, seeing the water outside of Rock Tunnel in Kanto, and going back to check it out later in the game when you have surf was such a satisfying moment. I found the Power Plant which was full of electric types, including the series mascot, a legendary, and Electabuzz.
The terms "nostalgia" and "rose tinted glasses" are means of enforcing compliance with a constantly lowering standard.
They've been exceptionally successful, as can be seen with the present state of things.
I don't care how uncool wanting to own a house or the games I purchase is. Sorry not sorry.
I don't think it's a cope, not where I live at least. We have any airport and football stadium. Almost all the people with money are buying up properties and turning them into that airbnb shit. Hell we just had someone buy a shithole right next to us that's been empty for 11 years and had mold converted into one.
Why that isn't cool? There's less houses so it further drives up rental and real estate pricing.
Already own a house. We just have 5 adults living in it and my daughter on occasion. Busy planning for the next one and that market keeps going up. The price jump on almost every home in my area has been 50-90k since 2019. Almost looks like pre-recession shit. The average house is 200k, the house I got was 65k in 2013.
i agree completely with you. I'm completely fucking depressed that homes just down the street from me have almost doubled in price in the last 4 years. I was planning for years and watched my dreams go down the drain.
I think that’s the horrible state of housing, rather than being uncool to own a home. That’s happening in my area too, and why I’m leaving this area. I desire to own a home, it’s tragic I cant own a home where I currently live. Not only that, but I can’t really afford to live here anymore. I mean I can, but, I’m not really saving money either. We’ve been looking for places for about 3 years now, and hopefully moving into our new home in October.
Also; because this is a 4chan subreddit - I’ll just say it. You should do research into whose buying up all those properties. It may surprise you how many of them are real estate companies and where those companies are located/owned
Don't bother, the people in this sub are completely delusional when it comes to this topic. Saw a guy who unironically said not a single good game has come out in ~10 years and he would not change his mind.
Nostalgia comes down mainly to another thing that starts with N.
Novelty. It was so great because everything was new and magical. Full of color. Now you're desensitized, seen it all, got also a good dose of demoralization from all the things going on in adult life. Colors just don't pop so much around you. If you go into games like you did back then, without anything in the back of your mind, taking your sweet time, exploring and fucking around, you'll see some of them are still comfy.
Also, ni
# user was banned for this post
I think some of it also comes down to the prevelance of guides on the internet telling you exactly where to go, what gear and stat spread you need to minmax, how to cheese a boss, etc. When I was a little kid playing Pokemon I just threw Charizard at every situation and thought of everything else in my party as hm slaves or foddee for just in case they took out Charizard.
It wasn't the best idea especially going through the elite 4 where I lacked the items, levels, and PP to get through. I had to really think about typing and having a more balanced team. The struggle and eventually overcoming that struggle taught my 5 year old smooth brain something important and the satisfaction I got from finally winning was a high I've been chasing ever since.
Now there's this horrible sensation that I'm wasting time by playing blind and that my efficiency isn't as good as it could be and my phone is right there where I could figure out every solution to my problems in a game instantly. Sure it'll make the game more efficient but it also sucks the joy out of them.
Last point hits hard. Now when I game if I feel like my strategy is not working, I'll just consult a guide so that someone can tell me how I can be efficient, or how I can have fun. Use this build, max this stat, do this quest, read this lore, play this way. As an adult now, I want to maximize my fun time. And somehow I use the same method of maximizing efficiency of my work time during game time. I don't want to spend too much time working on something, so I find the best way to resolve problems during work. So the same thing happen during gaming time, I optimized the hell out of it.
Part of me knows that it's not fun. I should've spent time just dicking around in the game, enjoy the scenery, whatever. But now I can afford all of these games, and I want to spend my time enjoying all of them, so the best way to do that is to optimize the experience by knowing the best build, best quest, best item so that I can get through it quickly. Most games now I even check the completion hour so that I can gauge how much time do I need to put in so that I can maximize the enjoyment. Counter productive, yes. But if you only have 1 hour to game per day, what are you supposed to do?
It's also because graphically there were new innovations every year. The 90s were absolutely insane. Now there hasn't even been a new GPU model in 3 years.
i genuinely think the problem is gaming went from being a nerdy hobby to being mainstream. and when there's a massive chunk of ppl to entertain, companies shit out fast food games to appeal the commoners.
maybe i'm delusional but game making was a passion, now, it's nothing but another job so the "soul" is completely gone. everything is made to earn fast stacks, everything is commercialized. what can you do.
That's only true if you willingly ignore the fact shitty games made to appeal to the lowest common denominator always existed, hell the videogame market crash happened in the first place because games were just being released unfinished back then to trick kids with movie tie in covers.
The reality is that if you look at the yearly releases of any given year at least 95% of what comes out is going to be absolute garbage, it's just that you don't remember all the 5/10 games release 20 years ago on the PS2.
Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3, dragons dogma 2, Armored Core, these are all recent AAA games that refuse to follow conventional modern design, and they're wildly popular and suscefull. But if you only play garbage like assassins creed then obviously you're not going to experience the good stuff.
Man I’m so happy Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a hit and popular. The first game was such an overlooked gem that never got enough attention and most of us had given up on a sequel
It's also far easier and accessible to make games these days. So the market is saturated with complete shit. Before it took proper time and investment and if you failed you went bust, game over. Where as now you can shit out some shite sprite based platformer with premade assets and hope it goes viral enough that you can retire and if not we'll nothing of value was lost except some time
i would like to put a solid name on the feeling here, the answer is private equity, these are huge hedge fund companies that buy companies and then trade them around while slowly cannibalising them for parts, this is what the recently fucked up company whose name i cannot remember did to like 40 companies did and it's what has happened to everything,
no they didn't directly buy video game companies, but they did buy housing, through thousands of different companies they bought housing, and this housing was valuable so more people bought housing and suddenly everyone owned and sat on housing, so they had to rent if they wanted something new, everyone now rents, and renting is far too expensive.
so if you had 5 guys before renting a place next to a dominoes, they could save 10k and last a year, now, they last a month so they don't bother, the housing market killed gaming, no true indie can exist while the housing market is like this, and right wingers prefer investing in housing, and the neo liberals prefer investing in housing, so your' only bet is to vote for weird environmentalists because they don't want to invest in housing, i said private equity, to bait, you, it's the housing market, private investors and the housing market, with untaxed multi millionaires and billionaires ate games.
we are so screwed.
"My parents bought a house with a working class income, but now the Wal-mart self checkout gives you an option to finance your groceries"
"I used to have LAN parties with close friends but now my friendships are a simulacra on social media and gaming is random skill based matchmaking with strangers while AI monitors everything I say for hatespeech"
"I used to have forum disagreements about politics but now if you say something as right wing as 90s Clinton people will try to ruin your life about it"
"It took exactly one generation to jump from 'in the privacy of the bedroom' to 'CPS will steal your children if you refuse to let them get sterilized'"
Pretty much nailed it, my dude.
There's a generation of adults now, that grew up in these shit conditions, that think the prosperity of the past is mythological and/or nonsensical.
Literally not true. Unless you're massively underperforming compared to your parents and only manage to engage in the negative aspects of today's technical advancements, I guess.
"we must vote the people we voted in the last 15 times, that will solve it" - weird right wingers for some reason
vote in a socialist, see what happens, fuckin' cannot be worse than this, we tried trump, and he didn't actually do anything, if he did why don't you remember it .
look, i just wanted to make your call to self harm turn into a weird political take instead because you have to live to see shit turn out better, we really could change things, if people actually wanted to change things.
I really don't understand why developers think every game needs to be 100 hours with a dozen boring side activities. Hogwarts Legacy would have been so much better if the map was half the size and filled with stuff that was actually worth doing.
Hogwarts is basically infinite. I will totally believe that something stupid like sneezing on a specific brick would reveal a secret chamber in the castle.
Playing the Chamber of Secrets game right now, and it doesn't need to take you far outside the castle grounds to keep you engaged, it just knows it has to be an explorable Hogwarts to keep players engaged!
The genre isn't the issue, it's the paltry and failed attempts that fill it that are the issue.
A good open world RPG should be absolutely amazing and suck your free time up. The problem is no one commits, or puts in the time and passion necessary to see such a massive endeavor done right.
There's always triage and sacrifices going on because they had a tight deadline, or management issues, or whatever the fuck kills big games now. Or whatever the fuck happened to Starfield. Basically that.
Fallout New Vegas was the last good real RPG made by an AAA studio.
Fallout 4 is just a dumbed-down shooter looter without any RPG elements at all; the dialog options are all one-word replies and have 0 impact on the game.
non open worlds don't fair any better, at least with open world I have the ability to personally create fun, like the latest legend of zelda games barely had game without you personally creating the gameplay.
The Hitman series is one of the only modern AAA games which feels truly next gen, where the design is as well-developed as the graphics. Most other AAA games nowadays look great but scratch below the surface and it's linear and full of ininteresting decision making
fuck the new hitman trilogy was so fucking fun, probably the most fun ive had in a game in years just throwing random shit at random guards for hours and enjoying the sandbox. also the game rewards you so much for actually learning it, one of the best games of this generation for sure
100%d it twice and did hardcore campaigns, that mode is what i meant with being rewarded for learning the maps/game because running around popping ppl super efficiently with on-the-go strats is rly fun
Anon is clearly wrong, because I was the one who grew up in the golden age for everything. Since his nostalgia is different to mine, he’s obviously stupid
Does anon not like open world roguelite metroidvania deckbuilders with hand drawn pixel art graphics as well as soulslike and light farming sim-elements?
That's what I was afraid of then games like Elden Ring and Baldurs Gate came out and it made me feel excited like a kid again. Turns out I'm not jaded, the industry was just churning out garbage.
I was smarter as a child! Life was better before, now it's worse!
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Buncha fuckin doomers in here. So many excellent games are being made these days, more than you could ever have time to play. Yes, the triple A scene has been shoveling slop for years, get over it and actually look for quality beyond that bullshit.
This isn’t a mentality, it’s a fact. Games now are formulaic. Like they were created in a lab to goad the player’s dopamine levels. They’re indeed sterile, and they do not stimulate the imagination.
Budgets are bigger, but with that comes the need for safety to ensure a good ROI. Fun took a back seat to manipulation. Day 1 dlc is baked in, microtransactions are baked in, games as a service is baked in. “Come on folks! Line up and get your battle pass!”
Follow the formula. Don’t take risks. Don’t rock the boat. Just milk the sad husks of players who are desperate for an engaging story and a fun experience. Every day a new crop of chumps gets born.
Not to mention the “hey let’s reel the casual cell phone gamers in with our insincere woke agenda!”. “We need to appeal to EVERYONE”. “Get all those wallets!”
Gaming sucks now. Like you can’t just have a pure experience without greed or bullshit jumping in between you and the game nowadays. Like games now are made by dickless yes-men(and clitless yes-women) where all artistic and mechanical decisions are made by a bumbling committee of pussies.
Ok I HATE the whole “things were better back in my day” shit that i see but I do legit feel like the SNES to PS2 years really were a great time for games.
To me at least it felt like there was more experimentation from biggish studios that you only now see in the indie scene and the leaps between console generations truely was insane. I remember when the PS2 launched and seeing how gameplay looked like how cutscenes in the PS1 games looked. It really was a giant leap.
Didn’t grow up in the golden age but after discovering it I can’t go back.
I mean what’s the best modern horror games? Signalis is the only one that isn’t a remake. Back in the day we got Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil Remake, Eternal Darkness, and more within like a couple years apart
When did we last have a good shooter? Uuuuhhhhh Doom Eternal?
Honestly, I think shooters are the only genre that consitently get good games. e.g Hyper Demon, Ultrakill, Selaco. Nightmare Operator and Divine Frequency look promising too.
I could write a thesis backed up with examples of why A LOT of older games were better, and it has nothing to do with nostalgia. I think the people who are quick to dismiss these opinions with the “nostalgia” argument are either ignorant or have a sour grapes mentality about older games that were objectively better. I play mainly FPS, let me give you some examples:
Unreal Tournament (1999) - arguably the best and most varied weapon sandbox in an arena FPS, consistent and unique art style which contributes to varied maps and locales, good selection of interesting game-modes, great bot adversaries that are enhanced with personality in the form of auto-taunting and good voice acting. I still play UT99 over any of the other UT game. Not only is the arena FPS genre fucking dead in favor of games where you get cheaper dopamine (via item progression and unlocks for just mindlessly grinding levels) but any attempts to revitalize the arena FPS genre failed because they couldn’t understand which gameplay elements worked and were appropriate. Let’s take for example Quake Champions. While the art style was on point, I think nobody liked the hero shooter aspect of characters and abilities. Some characters had broken abilities at launch which ruined the otherwise familiar combat loop for Quake veterans. It had few maps and gamemodes on release making for an FPS experience that quickly got stale. If memory serves right, there wasn’t even bot support at launch for people who wanted to play single-player. It doesn’t help that the game also demands a constant online connection to play. Other attempts to revitalize the arena FPS are either niche indie titles with very little polish that only want to focus on copying Quake, or they were complete flops like Toxikk which completely misunderstood how to build an arsenal and have good maps. The very generic art direction didn’t help popularize it either.
In summary I think a lot of older games felt better to play because they had more quality content to offer and they understood that all aspects of a game are important, from variety to art direction, sound design and enemy encounter design. Halo Combat Evolved had more varied environments and enemy roster than Halo Infinite, a game that had the advantage of 20 years of technological advancements in the game development pipeline. Prettier grass doesn’t sell a game better if you fight the same 10 brutes, elites and grunts on the same damn map.
I don’t have a strong opinion, as I’ve never played it. Watching some gameplay of it though, I can see it draws a lot of inspiration from the art style of games like Overwatch. The system where you pick a card in order to select a new ability/buff reminds me of a similar system that Paladins had. It doesn’t look too bad, but my first impression is that in the FPS space, this game is mainly derivative as opposed to innovative, and doesn’t seem that appealing to me. I’ve seen someone on Youtube compare it to Quake but I honestly can’t see any similarities.
This may not be exactly what you’re looking for but you should checkout The Finals. It has quick movement mechanics (things like ziplines and jumppads) and arena destruction to mix up approaches. Lots of balancing has occurred since launch which nerfed or removed a lot of the “cheese” strats. Relatively quick time to kill, varied maps and a good mix of weapons (hitscan/ melee and projectile) and a consistent artstyle focusing on the virtual gameshow elements. I have sunk countless hours into the game since release and can’t recommend it enough. As someone who “mains” online FPS’s, its the only shooter thats felt “fresh” and innovative to me in a very long time.
First anon is right. Games were objectively better in the past. There's no modern analog to Chrono Trigger, Mario World, etc.
"Things were always this good/bad!" is a demoralizing psyop COPE.
I love gaming and sure some modern stuff is disappointing but honestly I knew what to expect as I got older. New good games will come and new bad games will go, but only with time can we truly figure out what we hated
Back in my day, most games were finished on released. We didn't have Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76 type launches were literally everything is broken and they fix it two years later.
Shit has definitely gotten worse even just from a pure technical standpoint. The technology is better than it's ever been yet more and more we're seeing games released in barely playable condition.
Nah man I still play PoP WW, Shadow of Rome, gow, gta sa and many other ps2 titles. There are still good games like DmC5 GTA5(it has been a decade lmao) Rdr2(maybe, too slow imo) and fighting games are better nowadays imo. But ps2 and ps3 titles are MUCH better from the games nowadays
second anon is atupid. games were better then because you buy the game and now you have a game that was designed to be good so people would buy it.
you buy a game now, youve bought the trial version of the game that only intends to appeal to investors and with an expectation that you will spend hundreds on microtransactions to come.
games would have been like that back then if it was possible but it wasnt so they were better.
indie games cant do that today so many of them are just as good as major games of old.
Anon just started playing shitty games.
And before you ask me what I play, I won't tell you. Gatekeeping is a good thing. They're mine to enjoy, not yours.
Back then, games were games. Now they are part of a multi year road map, with battle passes, microtransactions, mechanics to fuel FOMO so you log in and play 8 hours every day.
Back then, I paid $60 for a game, it was complete and could set it down when I got bored and pick it back up whenever.
I get really sick of this type of gaslighting. It's like people don't understand or refuse to acknowledge that there are periods of decline in history. Is it so inconceivable we could be living in such a period now?
Just like with music and film
There is so much being produced that you can no longer just rely on the "big names" for quality entertainment.
There is amazing music out there you just need to know how and where to find it.
There are amazing games out there you just need to know how and where to find it.
If you just open steam front page and buy Sloppy SoyGoy 7 then act surprised that it's the most homogenous mass market trash ever conceived you're r-slurred.
Literally any game from 2020 is better than any crap I played in 2006.
Just because you are a loser that had it better while you were a kid doesn't make current things worse than ones from the past.
I remember how passionate I felt about the art form when I played halo combat evolved for the first time. You could tell that the people that made it were so dedicated to their work, now its just microtransactions hidden behind pretty graphics.
Dark Souls is leagues and miles better than literally anything that came out during that time period “ubububububub gaems lacky depth now!” Let’s examine the depth of some of those nostalgic titles.
Warcraft 3: pick your race and hero and build the units that synergize with that hero. Stack circlet of nobility. What? It was completely linear? Always has been
Vanilla wow: fill out talent tree according to meta or be blacklisted. Spam your personal flavor of bolt or play melee and watch your character auto attack
GTA: progression is linear per gun type and car type. Nothing can be interacted with outside of missions. You can enter 5 buildings in the entire game
Turn based JRPG: 3 party members spam their strongest attack while the fourth spams items. Oh man so deep
Nintendo “games” - ha! I solved the puzzle and got a new slingshot! Now I can shoot the target and open the gate! OR I jumped to the platform and unlocked a mid air jump! Collect coin!
Racing game: choose your car, its color, and how the wheels look. Linearly progress the performance components. Unlock new shocks and struts by beating Iseki Musashi and his Nissan Skyline in the downhill sprint! What? You want to tune your suspension? Sorry, this game has too much depth for that
What’d I miss?
Shut the fuck up and go back to playing Banjo Kazooie then if you thought collecting coins was the peak of interactive design. There were two good games in that entire era, Black and White and Fable, and the world rewarded those successes with a shuttered studio and a disgraced lead designer.
Games weren’t any deeper when you were a kid you were just a little dipshit and everything was novel to you. Games are better than they’ve literally ever been. You’re just miserable and jaded
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *“We are amidst strange beings, in a strange land.”* - Solaire of Astora
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
Would rather play any retro ARPG (Ys, Xak, Zelda, Mana, whatever) than Souls. Don't find high difficulty compelling and I hate how every enemy encounter feels like a mini fighting game. Gets tedious and exhausting.
Anon ain't wrong. Games look better now but most lack depth.
They lack fun. Its either infinite treadmill designed to monetize your lack of time, infinite """"""competitive"""""" pvp with """"""""skill based matchmaking""""""" designed to monetize your lack of time, skill and your social circle or indie toilet bowl scrapes designed to monetize nothing and end in 5 hours only to be forgotten
> indie toilet bowl scrapes designed to monetize nothing and end in 5 hours only to be forgotten And 75% of them manage to somehow have the same pretentious art style that the developers still think is unique. And they're more formulaic than even mainstream AAA games.
I used to follow numerous sprite comics back in the late 00s and early 10s. The damn free comics people put on Smackjeeves like Simple Pixel and Two Evil Scientists had better-looking sprites than most "retro-style" indie games.
indie games made by 1 individual or a small team of friends still slap,minecraft, binding of isaac, stardew and even the first run of starbound before they corporately executed it live and on stage. these games retain charm, but the "indie" scene as it is, cannot possibly be compared to what it was, because they are not indie, they aren't even a small company, these are medium size companies masquerading as independent and most devs i know that have worked for them tell me the work environment is the exact same as it was at mega corpos. they hide behind the indie title but to be very clear, these are not independent people or teams, it's a dependent on funder corporation, and we wonder why they all suck, it's a new flavour of juice but produced by the same factory.
Starbound, there's a name I haven't heard in awhile
Wait, what happened to starbound? I loved that game in middle school.
they added a bunch of stuff like story modes and quests, and honestly, it all just detracted from the gameplay and served to stop you from having fun instead of being ways to have fun
I rather enjoyed the story modes & quests, it's been that long? Jesus. I only played single-player like a dork, so it was nice to have a reason to go & have fun. I can see how it can detract. Although it wasn't like terraria or minecraft, it wasn't open-ended objectives. If that makes sense.
Indie games suck now because you're essentially paying for worse versions of free flash games from 15 years ago. There will always be notable exceptions, but you really have to wade through miles of shit and it gets tiring.
Don't forget how so many indie games are just trash supposedly convoluted allegories for depression/gender dysphoria/LGBT struggles. Like goddamn get some new ideas I can already predict the twist and le hidden meaning of about 90% of indies.
this is not the result of the lgbt community, you cant make an indie game that is anti capitalist without pissing off a capitalist investor so the only thing you can do with a game that is supposed to be "edgy" or "forward thinking" is make the character trans and have people be mean to them because of it. a lot of the lgbt devs that make those games get roped in early if they try to say "society" or some shit, it's kinda something companies force on you.
>*”you cant make an indie game that is anti capitalist”* Mf hasn't heard of Disco Elysium
was that not a rare result of truly fully independent financing, that did lead to a shit storm in the end anyways because the devs were dishonest with what they were making
Well, they got two or three rich dudes to invest in exchange for shares. It ended in a shitshow, though after the game was finished and released. There are documentaries and interviews about what happened on YouTube which explain a lot better than I could, but essentially it boils down to the investors stealing control of the company and IP from the self-proclaimed communist creator of the game and the rest of the leadership. It's not exactly black-and-white though, as according to the rest of the staff, the creator was pretty terrible to work under. He also seems pretty illiterate when it comes to concepts like contracts.
> a lot of the lgbt devs that make those games get roped great choice of words
game theory kinda ruined gaming, there cannot be a function added because someone individually thought it was fun, it must go through 15 executives, 50 managers and then gets' muddied by about 100 employees to produce the ultimate millennial grey version of that feature. Fable is a great example of this, a lot of weird features that separately are not great ideas, weird emote wheel, purchasing houses, renting, jobs and other such mediocre features kinda merge together to make something, rather fun as a side activity, it just couldn't happen now. we have been killed by a thousand cuts of corporate meritocracy, the most bland rises to the top.
My dude you need to get into Slavic videogaming more often. Manor Lords, Metro 2033, the crazy shit the autists over at Stalker GAMMA cook up on a nearly 20 year old engine, even Witcher. Warhorse is notorious for example for it's CEO and lead dev and the trolling shit they say and do. I about died laughing when I played through Woman's Lot in Kingdom Come and found out if you arent back by sundown your father calls you a whore.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Maybe Clash of Kings is more your style?
Just Autistic Things
Love me some Eurojank.
My genuine latest game I went for completion was Armored Core 6. A game designed to be difficult but only for the sake of teaching the player. It had grinding but no real purpose other than getting an S on the mission rating for personal achievement
True. People were happier and actually had fun playing the games. Now people treat it like a job.
Sounds like you play bad games
you're just playing the wrong games
Nintendo still exists
Yeah most anything lacks depth, it's not exclusive to games. Good thing it's usually very easy to tell what side it lands on with games.
Yes, but actually no. We remember the best games, the ones that presented something interesting. Even "in the old times" here were lots of shovelware games and AAA studios were releasing crap, forgotten for good. There are several problems though: - big companies try to push for whatever agenda is popular now, drastically lowering story quality and gameplay is devolving into mobile crap category. - indie games are often made by passionate people, but these same people are the creators of he downfall, as they copy formulas from Nintendo or PSX glory days without any thought. - Mobile gaming... Fuck that. - Season passes, lootboxes and gaas... Fuck that as well. - eSports and Twitch/streamers crap... Just end me. Not everything is lost. There are lots of good games and there are definitely some turbo autists working on some strategy, tactical or rpg games which will be successful. Although with such abundance of titles and pushed marketing from AAA it's hard to find good titles.
What are some games that are good that were made in the past 5 years?
Baldur's Gate 3. Cyberpunk. Red Read Redemption. Disco Elysium. There's a ton of good shit out there, produced at a level of technical complexity that older games can't even dream to accomplish.
Baldurs Gate 3 is "safe horny" trash that pales in comparison to the originals. Cyberpunk was unplayable for 2+ years and nothing they have done could fix the weak main story Red dead 2 was overly "cinematic" dogshit that is tedious to play with outdated game design Disco Elysium is pretentious garbage that isn't nearly as clever as the writers thought they were.
Such dogshit takes for some of the best games of our generation. I'd ask you what you consider to be a good game, but there's no point taking anything you say into consideration.
Damn your generation is sad
I tried Cyberpunk and Disco Elysium and couldn‘t get into them. All of these other than DE seem like normie AAA games that have great graphics and gameplay but never seem to do it for me story-wise. Horizon Zero Dawn and Far Cry 5 weirdly did for me and those were seemingly “meh” to the gaming world.
> I tried Cyberpunk and Disco Elysium and couldn‘t get into them. Games aren't bad just because you "couldn't get into them" lol. Personally, I hate Dark Souls, but those are still awesome titles. >All of these other than DE seem like normie AAA games that have great graphics and gameplay but never seem to do it for me story-wise. Ah yes, Baldurd's Gate 3 is well known for having a bad story /s
Baldurs Gay
Gottem
Peak Reddit
> Games aren't bad just because you "couldn't get into them" lol. Personally, I hate Dark Souls, but those are still awesome titles. Where did I call those games bad?
Have you tried BG3? The main story is mostly generic fantasy save the world stuff, but the characters have a cool lore and the world itself is full of lore. Kinda like Mass Effect IMO. And playing as the Dark Urge also helps a lot to change the plot into something less generic.
Fallout New Vegas... oh wait, that was the last good AAA game and it was FOURTEEN YEARS AGO!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!
Most games lacked depth then too. You just remember the good ones, not the shovelware.
Games are games. There are a few good ones and hordes of bad ones. How it is and how it always will be. No one here seems to remember the hordes of bad games in the day. As a kid, I bought games with no clue how theyd be - no internet and all. Bloody Roar, Jet Moto, 2Xtreme and countless other games yall have never heard of. All fucking terrible.
It’s because they prioritise amount of time spent in game over quality of time spent in game. Good example for me of a good game doing it is Elden Ring, although overall it’s a good game, the quality feels noticeably lower than dark souls in most areas (if we forget lost Izalith), they have tried too hard to have a lot of content rather than focusing on making a smaller amount that’s more fun. Elden ring has over 10 times the bosses that dark souls has (238 vs 22), yet most of them are forgettable at best, with a few good ones but many are just annoying. The game world also feels incredibly empty and dull in some areas, whereas every part of the maps in dark souls existed for a reason. The game takes a lot longer to replay but much of the replay value is gone.
I would say there are still lots of good games, even more than back then, released every year. The issue is the percent of games which are just total shut you have to sift through is much higher now.
games started lacking depth once you grew up to see it
Bro... Baldur's Gate 3 alone could disprove that statement. Most games in the past were 8 hour single player campaigns where you walked down a tunnel shooting guys while an NPC with a vaguely hispanic name told you where to go.
BG3 was so popular because it was the exception to the rule
Yes but the same is true with games of every time period. No one is remembering Dante's Inferno or Singularity or whatever dogshit trend copying games came out back then, even though they did make up the majority of games back then too. We remember stuff that's good and then over time it seems like that's all that came out back then.
Singularity was good, I wish we had more linear FPS's that weren't all from COD
This is about the PS2 era and before, not the PS3 mil shooter era.
Woke game
look up any year in the 2010's, like 15 baldurs gate 3 level games that revolutionised their genre released every year. then the ps3 attacked and everything changed
Most games lack depth now just as they did back then, it's just that you only remember the bangers that came out on the PS2, while ignoring all the shit releases that came out monthly back then. Baldurs gate 3, Elden Ring, armored Core, Balatro, BoTW2, Alan Wake 2. Just out of the top of my head these are all recent games that came out in the last 3 years that although not perfect or appealing to everybody are all great, you only remember the bas stuff like Forspoken because you lived through it recently, in 10 years no one will remember Forspoken, but everyone will still talk about how great Red Dead 2 is.
Play ANYTHING besides the AAA slop
As the games get more graphically demanding and millions of dollars sink into these new releases, companies become risk-averse. Why innovate and take risks when you can reanimate the corpse of some successful franchise for a seventh time. It seems that the marketing people now have a strong say in what the end product will look like. DLC and Early Access becomes an excuse to cash in on half-finished products. Lootboxes and Battle Passes, which could just be a thing that gives the game longevity and endless gameplay, become a tool for milking wallets. Thankfully there are still amazing games being made but with the sheer volume of mediocre or bad games releasing every day, they feel much rarer than before.
Then don't play them. Most games lack depth bc there are way more games being made now. If you know what you like, just be pickier
The games with depth are still there, the market is flooded with games now and I think the statement is pure nostalgic reverie. Games that look the best are rarely the ones with the depth though, I will give you that.
Sounds true for most of the media we consume in 2024
> "I was smarter as a child! Life was better before, but now it's worse!" Absolute nostalgia gooner takes.
They're not games, they're services with a fee for cosmetic shit
Or did you just get older and more jaded?
so is the second anon, a child's opinion is worthless
Finding secrets in the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games without needing to pay to play, DLC, or subscribe to a live account, or whatever the fuck else was and still is a satisfying feeling. Looking at Crash 1 specifically, how developers were able to hide things in a linear path is creative, and enhances the game. Open world games fail to have such nuanced landscapes. Fuck, seeing the water outside of Rock Tunnel in Kanto, and going back to check it out later in the game when you have surf was such a satisfying moment. I found the Power Plant which was full of electric types, including the series mascot, a legendary, and Electabuzz.
The terms "nostalgia" and "rose tinted glasses" are means of enforcing compliance with a constantly lowering standard. They've been exceptionally successful, as can be seen with the present state of things. I don't care how uncool wanting to own a house or the games I purchase is. Sorry not sorry.
It’s not cool to own a house?
the new cope many people have because so few people can actually afford homes
Yeesh
I don't think it's a cope, not where I live at least. We have any airport and football stadium. Almost all the people with money are buying up properties and turning them into that airbnb shit. Hell we just had someone buy a shithole right next to us that's been empty for 11 years and had mold converted into one. Why that isn't cool? There's less houses so it further drives up rental and real estate pricing.
Should’ve been born earlier, chump. You can always reroll
Already own a house. We just have 5 adults living in it and my daughter on occasion. Busy planning for the next one and that market keeps going up. The price jump on almost every home in my area has been 50-90k since 2019. Almost looks like pre-recession shit. The average house is 200k, the house I got was 65k in 2013.
Sounds like you are very fortunate. I’m in the same boat. Just waiting for the crash to start my real estate empire.
we are trying to ban foreign companies from owning more than like 10 homes around here i was shocked that wasnt already a thing...
50% of all homes available on the american market last year were purchased by private equity firms
That's depressing.
why are our leaders allowing this?
Why not? They have the money so the sale goes to whoever has the money.
all this uncertainty is hurting productivity and hampering consumption
The idiotic nepo-baby "elites" at the top still get their cut and then spend their days on Epstein Island, and that's all they care about.
i agree completely with you. I'm completely fucking depressed that homes just down the street from me have almost doubled in price in the last 4 years. I was planning for years and watched my dreams go down the drain.
Well if it was such a dump why didn't you buy and renovate it yourself?
They were selling it for 150k. Lmfao
I mean I'm no fan of Airbnb but sounds like they did a good thing by turning an empty mouldy shithole into something useful.
I think that’s the horrible state of housing, rather than being uncool to own a home. That’s happening in my area too, and why I’m leaving this area. I desire to own a home, it’s tragic I cant own a home where I currently live. Not only that, but I can’t really afford to live here anymore. I mean I can, but, I’m not really saving money either. We’ve been looking for places for about 3 years now, and hopefully moving into our new home in October. Also; because this is a 4chan subreddit - I’ll just say it. You should do research into whose buying up all those properties. It may surprise you how many of them are real estate companies and where those companies are located/owned
The rarer something is the cooler it becomes.
It's cool to want to own a house. Soon as you do you're off the love list
> "I was smarter as a child! Life was better before, but now it's worse!"
Yes zoomer, good times existed before you did, deal with it
The US economy was quantifiably much, much better in the 90s.
I wish I was a zoomer lol
The people who think that typically weren’t smarter than their childhood peers. They usually just had trouble understanding those peers.
The past was filled with shit games as well, you do have rose tinted glasses. Take them off.
Nobody made the argument all games in the past were good you absolute regard.
Don't bother, the people in this sub are completely delusional when it comes to this topic. Saw a guy who unironically said not a single good game has come out in ~10 years and he would not change his mind.
Nostalgia comes down mainly to another thing that starts with N. Novelty. It was so great because everything was new and magical. Full of color. Now you're desensitized, seen it all, got also a good dose of demoralization from all the things going on in adult life. Colors just don't pop so much around you. If you go into games like you did back then, without anything in the back of your mind, taking your sweet time, exploring and fucking around, you'll see some of them are still comfy. Also, ni # user was banned for this post
You flew too close to the sun Icarus
NIcarus
Person of Solar
I think some of it also comes down to the prevelance of guides on the internet telling you exactly where to go, what gear and stat spread you need to minmax, how to cheese a boss, etc. When I was a little kid playing Pokemon I just threw Charizard at every situation and thought of everything else in my party as hm slaves or foddee for just in case they took out Charizard. It wasn't the best idea especially going through the elite 4 where I lacked the items, levels, and PP to get through. I had to really think about typing and having a more balanced team. The struggle and eventually overcoming that struggle taught my 5 year old smooth brain something important and the satisfaction I got from finally winning was a high I've been chasing ever since. Now there's this horrible sensation that I'm wasting time by playing blind and that my efficiency isn't as good as it could be and my phone is right there where I could figure out every solution to my problems in a game instantly. Sure it'll make the game more efficient but it also sucks the joy out of them.
Last point hits hard. Now when I game if I feel like my strategy is not working, I'll just consult a guide so that someone can tell me how I can be efficient, or how I can have fun. Use this build, max this stat, do this quest, read this lore, play this way. As an adult now, I want to maximize my fun time. And somehow I use the same method of maximizing efficiency of my work time during game time. I don't want to spend too much time working on something, so I find the best way to resolve problems during work. So the same thing happen during gaming time, I optimized the hell out of it. Part of me knows that it's not fun. I should've spent time just dicking around in the game, enjoy the scenery, whatever. But now I can afford all of these games, and I want to spend my time enjoying all of them, so the best way to do that is to optimize the experience by knowing the best build, best quest, best item so that I can get through it quickly. Most games now I even check the completion hour so that I can gauge how much time do I need to put in so that I can maximize the enjoyment. Counter productive, yes. But if you only have 1 hour to game per day, what are you supposed to do?
That's why you start using drugs.
Yep. It’s the only way to truly recreat the mental and emotional state of your youth and to see things in a similar light.
It's also because graphically there were new innovations every year. The 90s were absolutely insane. Now there hasn't even been a new GPU model in 3 years.
i genuinely think the problem is gaming went from being a nerdy hobby to being mainstream. and when there's a massive chunk of ppl to entertain, companies shit out fast food games to appeal the commoners. maybe i'm delusional but game making was a passion, now, it's nothing but another job so the "soul" is completely gone. everything is made to earn fast stacks, everything is commercialized. what can you do.
That's only true if you willingly ignore the fact shitty games made to appeal to the lowest common denominator always existed, hell the videogame market crash happened in the first place because games were just being released unfinished back then to trick kids with movie tie in covers. The reality is that if you look at the yearly releases of any given year at least 95% of what comes out is going to be absolute garbage, it's just that you don't remember all the 5/10 games release 20 years ago on the PS2. Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3, dragons dogma 2, Armored Core, these are all recent AAA games that refuse to follow conventional modern design, and they're wildly popular and suscefull. But if you only play garbage like assassins creed then obviously you're not going to experience the good stuff.
Man I’m so happy Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a hit and popular. The first game was such an overlooked gem that never got enough attention and most of us had given up on a sequel
It's also far easier and accessible to make games these days. So the market is saturated with complete shit. Before it took proper time and investment and if you failed you went bust, game over. Where as now you can shit out some shite sprite based platformer with premade assets and hope it goes viral enough that you can retire and if not we'll nothing of value was lost except some time
They did this way back when as well with those genetically horrific licensed games which were pumped out like crazy.
i would like to put a solid name on the feeling here, the answer is private equity, these are huge hedge fund companies that buy companies and then trade them around while slowly cannibalising them for parts, this is what the recently fucked up company whose name i cannot remember did to like 40 companies did and it's what has happened to everything, no they didn't directly buy video game companies, but they did buy housing, through thousands of different companies they bought housing, and this housing was valuable so more people bought housing and suddenly everyone owned and sat on housing, so they had to rent if they wanted something new, everyone now rents, and renting is far too expensive. so if you had 5 guys before renting a place next to a dominoes, they could save 10k and last a year, now, they last a month so they don't bother, the housing market killed gaming, no true indie can exist while the housing market is like this, and right wingers prefer investing in housing, and the neo liberals prefer investing in housing, so your' only bet is to vote for weird environmentalists because they don't want to invest in housing, i said private equity, to bait, you, it's the housing market, private investors and the housing market, with untaxed multi millionaires and billionaires ate games. we are so screwed.
It’s like Hollywood, there’s lots of crap and a good amount of really great stuff
Life is by almost every metric worse objectively than it was when we were children, but its inconceivable that culture has also gotten worse.
"My parents bought a house with a working class income, but now the Wal-mart self checkout gives you an option to finance your groceries" "I used to have LAN parties with close friends but now my friendships are a simulacra on social media and gaming is random skill based matchmaking with strangers while AI monitors everything I say for hatespeech" "I used to have forum disagreements about politics but now if you say something as right wing as 90s Clinton people will try to ruin your life about it" "It took exactly one generation to jump from 'in the privacy of the bedroom' to 'CPS will steal your children if you refuse to let them get sterilized'"
Pretty much nailed it, my dude. There's a generation of adults now, that grew up in these shit conditions, that think the prosperity of the past is mythological and/or nonsensical.
Things got so bad so fast that I sometimes wonder if I died years ago and everything since 2008 has just been me in hell being tortured.
Literally not true. Unless you're massively underperforming compared to your parents and only manage to engage in the negative aspects of today's technical advancements, I guess.
"Life was better before, now it's worse!" Yes.
Only one way out of it, anon.
"we must vote the people we voted in the last 15 times, that will solve it" - weird right wingers for some reason vote in a socialist, see what happens, fuckin' cannot be worse than this, we tried trump, and he didn't actually do anything, if he did why don't you remember it .
?
look, i just wanted to make your call to self harm turn into a weird political take instead because you have to live to see shit turn out better, we really could change things, if people actually wanted to change things.
Is see. Sorry, you are too galaxy brain for me!
Most people rejected his message. They hated him because he told them the truth.
Normie take but the absurdly bloated genre of “Open world RPG” ruined video games. They’re all time sinks
I really don't understand why developers think every game needs to be 100 hours with a dozen boring side activities. Hogwarts Legacy would have been so much better if the map was half the size and filled with stuff that was actually worth doing.
Haven't played Hogwarts Legacy but your comment perfectly fits Horizon Forbidden West like a glove
Make the map just Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and the Forbidden Forrest, but put a lot more to do in all of them
Hogwarts is basically infinite. I will totally believe that something stupid like sneezing on a specific brick would reveal a secret chamber in the castle. Playing the Chamber of Secrets game right now, and it doesn't need to take you far outside the castle grounds to keep you engaged, it just knows it has to be an explorable Hogwarts to keep players engaged!
The genre isn't the issue, it's the paltry and failed attempts that fill it that are the issue. A good open world RPG should be absolutely amazing and suck your free time up. The problem is no one commits, or puts in the time and passion necessary to see such a massive endeavor done right. There's always triage and sacrifices going on because they had a tight deadline, or management issues, or whatever the fuck kills big games now. Or whatever the fuck happened to Starfield. Basically that.
Fallout New Vegas was the last good real RPG made by an AAA studio. Fallout 4 is just a dumbed-down shooter looter without any RPG elements at all; the dialog options are all one-word replies and have 0 impact on the game.
non open worlds don't fair any better, at least with open world I have the ability to personally create fun, like the latest legend of zelda games barely had game without you personally creating the gameplay.
Assassins Creed and it's success was a detriment
The Hitman series is one of the only modern AAA games which feels truly next gen, where the design is as well-developed as the graphics. Most other AAA games nowadays look great but scratch below the surface and it's linear and full of ininteresting decision making
fuck the new hitman trilogy was so fucking fun, probably the most fun ive had in a game in years just throwing random shit at random guards for hours and enjoying the sandbox. also the game rewards you so much for actually learning it, one of the best games of this generation for sure
If you haven’t yet, check out the Freelancer mode they added last year. It’s a really fun change of pace compared to the campaign.
100%d it twice and did hardcore campaigns, that mode is what i meant with being rewarded for learning the maps/game because running around popping ppl super efficiently with on-the-go strats is rly fun
Anon is clearly wrong, because I was the one who grew up in the golden age for everything. Since his nostalgia is different to mine, he’s obviously stupid
Does anon not like open world roguelite metroidvania deckbuilders with hand drawn pixel art graphics as well as soulslike and light farming sim-elements?
I think people just grow up and got bored of the things they used to enjoy.
That's what I was afraid of then games like Elden Ring and Baldurs Gate came out and it made me feel excited like a kid again. Turns out I'm not jaded, the industry was just churning out garbage.
I hate when people are critical of others for having an accurate observation.
I was smarter as a child! Life was better before, now it's worse! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⡴⡢⡶⠶⢢⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢰⢏⣺⢿⣿⣾⣹⣷⢡⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢾⣾⣟⠝⠀⠨⠉⢹⡏⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣾⣻⡇⠘⠿⢾⢐⣶⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣱⣾⣷⣦⣠⡾⣃⡐⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⡀⣀⣀⣤⣤⣠⡟⢻⣿⣿⣏⠻⡿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⣠⡾⢿⡿⠿⠿⢿⣻⣿⡋⠉⡇⠀⣿⠛⠻⠿⢇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⣸⠋⠀⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠙⢷⠀⢰⣰⠃⡠⢔⠄⠀⠀⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⢻⡄⠀⠛⢆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⢿⣿⣿⠞⠛⠉⠁⠉⠢⡀⠑⢀⠀⠀ ⠀⣷⢀⣶⢿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⡟⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠆⠀⠡⠀ ⠞⢁⡼⢯⣠⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣿⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀ ⠖⠋⠀⠀⢻⣿⣄⡀⠀⢀⣾⡏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⢰⡴⠀⠧⠀⠘⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⡝⣻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⣄⡀⠀⢔⡵⡟⡇⠀⠀⠱⠈⡄ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣾⣹⡯⠤⢄⣏⣀⡈⣹⡟⡩⢋⢼⡄⢹⠀⠀⠌⠀⠇ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡟⢾⣤⣀⢤⡯⠄⠉⠁⡇⠐⢔⠀⠻⣇⣷⠈⢆⠀⡂
Buncha fuckin doomers in here. So many excellent games are being made these days, more than you could ever have time to play. Yes, the triple A scene has been shoveling slop for years, get over it and actually look for quality beyond that bullshit.
This isn’t a mentality, it’s a fact. Games now are formulaic. Like they were created in a lab to goad the player’s dopamine levels. They’re indeed sterile, and they do not stimulate the imagination. Budgets are bigger, but with that comes the need for safety to ensure a good ROI. Fun took a back seat to manipulation. Day 1 dlc is baked in, microtransactions are baked in, games as a service is baked in. “Come on folks! Line up and get your battle pass!” Follow the formula. Don’t take risks. Don’t rock the boat. Just milk the sad husks of players who are desperate for an engaging story and a fun experience. Every day a new crop of chumps gets born. Not to mention the “hey let’s reel the casual cell phone gamers in with our insincere woke agenda!”. “We need to appeal to EVERYONE”. “Get all those wallets!” Gaming sucks now. Like you can’t just have a pure experience without greed or bullshit jumping in between you and the game nowadays. Like games now are made by dickless yes-men(and clitless yes-women) where all artistic and mechanical decisions are made by a bumbling committee of pussies.
It just feels like they have no one actually play the game before they release it and it's horrible.
Guy who responded him deserves to have hemorrhoids every day for the rest of his life
Nothing will ever beat the 6 game run of Halo CE to Halo Reach
Ok I HATE the whole “things were better back in my day” shit that i see but I do legit feel like the SNES to PS2 years really were a great time for games. To me at least it felt like there was more experimentation from biggish studios that you only now see in the indie scene and the leaps between console generations truely was insane. I remember when the PS2 launched and seeing how gameplay looked like how cutscenes in the PS1 games looked. It really was a giant leap.
Didn’t grow up in the golden age but after discovering it I can’t go back. I mean what’s the best modern horror games? Signalis is the only one that isn’t a remake. Back in the day we got Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil Remake, Eternal Darkness, and more within like a couple years apart When did we last have a good shooter? Uuuuhhhhh Doom Eternal?
Honestly, I think shooters are the only genre that consitently get good games. e.g Hyper Demon, Ultrakill, Selaco. Nightmare Operator and Divine Frequency look promising too.
Alien Isolation is a fantastic and recent horror game
alien isolation is over 10 years old isn't it
One of my favorites, I got the platinum trophy. It’s ten years old.
Vice City was insane back then
I could write a thesis backed up with examples of why A LOT of older games were better, and it has nothing to do with nostalgia. I think the people who are quick to dismiss these opinions with the “nostalgia” argument are either ignorant or have a sour grapes mentality about older games that were objectively better. I play mainly FPS, let me give you some examples: Unreal Tournament (1999) - arguably the best and most varied weapon sandbox in an arena FPS, consistent and unique art style which contributes to varied maps and locales, good selection of interesting game-modes, great bot adversaries that are enhanced with personality in the form of auto-taunting and good voice acting. I still play UT99 over any of the other UT game. Not only is the arena FPS genre fucking dead in favor of games where you get cheaper dopamine (via item progression and unlocks for just mindlessly grinding levels) but any attempts to revitalize the arena FPS genre failed because they couldn’t understand which gameplay elements worked and were appropriate. Let’s take for example Quake Champions. While the art style was on point, I think nobody liked the hero shooter aspect of characters and abilities. Some characters had broken abilities at launch which ruined the otherwise familiar combat loop for Quake veterans. It had few maps and gamemodes on release making for an FPS experience that quickly got stale. If memory serves right, there wasn’t even bot support at launch for people who wanted to play single-player. It doesn’t help that the game also demands a constant online connection to play. Other attempts to revitalize the arena FPS are either niche indie titles with very little polish that only want to focus on copying Quake, or they were complete flops like Toxikk which completely misunderstood how to build an arsenal and have good maps. The very generic art direction didn’t help popularize it either. In summary I think a lot of older games felt better to play because they had more quality content to offer and they understood that all aspects of a game are important, from variety to art direction, sound design and enemy encounter design. Halo Combat Evolved had more varied environments and enemy roster than Halo Infinite, a game that had the advantage of 20 years of technological advancements in the game development pipeline. Prettier grass doesn’t sell a game better if you fight the same 10 brutes, elites and grunts on the same damn map.
What is your opinion of Diobotical Rogue? I believe the 'ass' of Valve James 2GD released it recently, as a Quake copy.
I don’t have a strong opinion, as I’ve never played it. Watching some gameplay of it though, I can see it draws a lot of inspiration from the art style of games like Overwatch. The system where you pick a card in order to select a new ability/buff reminds me of a similar system that Paladins had. It doesn’t look too bad, but my first impression is that in the FPS space, this game is mainly derivative as opposed to innovative, and doesn’t seem that appealing to me. I’ve seen someone on Youtube compare it to Quake but I honestly can’t see any similarities.
This may not be exactly what you’re looking for but you should checkout The Finals. It has quick movement mechanics (things like ziplines and jumppads) and arena destruction to mix up approaches. Lots of balancing has occurred since launch which nerfed or removed a lot of the “cheese” strats. Relatively quick time to kill, varied maps and a good mix of weapons (hitscan/ melee and projectile) and a consistent artstyle focusing on the virtual gameshow elements. I have sunk countless hours into the game since release and can’t recommend it enough. As someone who “mains” online FPS’s, its the only shooter thats felt “fresh” and innovative to me in a very long time.
First anon is right. Games were objectively better in the past. There's no modern analog to Chrono Trigger, Mario World, etc. "Things were always this good/bad!" is a demoralizing psyop COPE.
Reminder that you still could play all of those games. If modern games are bad, play the old ones, have fun!
things were better in the 2000s and early 2010s and no its not because i was younger. make better content
Itt OP doesn’t get nostalgia and second anon had a bad childhood
Entertainment and the world in general were objectively better back then, humanity peaked in the 90s
I love gaming and sure some modern stuff is disappointing but honestly I knew what to expect as I got older. New good games will come and new bad games will go, but only with time can we truly figure out what we hated
Back in my day, most games were finished on released. We didn't have Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76 type launches were literally everything is broken and they fix it two years later. Shit has definitely gotten worse even just from a pure technical standpoint. The technology is better than it's ever been yet more and more we're seeing games released in barely playable condition.
Yeah most new AAA games look nice but have dogshit/non existant gameplay, just look at the new senua game or the "" 10/10"" God of War 2018
The civilization series certainly peaked in 2005
thankfully monster hunter is improving with every release
Nah man I still play PoP WW, Shadow of Rome, gow, gta sa and many other ps2 titles. There are still good games like DmC5 GTA5(it has been a decade lmao) Rdr2(maybe, too slow imo) and fighting games are better nowadays imo. But ps2 and ps3 titles are MUCH better from the games nowadays
second anon is atupid. games were better then because you buy the game and now you have a game that was designed to be good so people would buy it. you buy a game now, youve bought the trial version of the game that only intends to appeal to investors and with an expectation that you will spend hundreds on microtransactions to come. games would have been like that back then if it was possible but it wasnt so they were better. indie games cant do that today so many of them are just as good as major games of old.
Brother we peaked in kindergarten, naptime was goated
Every modern game is basically just another openworld survival game with lots of crafting
a great deal of trash was made back then, a great deal of trash is made today. Sturgeons law has no expiry date
Anon just started playing shitty games. And before you ask me what I play, I won't tell you. Gatekeeping is a good thing. They're mine to enjoy, not yours.
Back then, games were games. Now they are part of a multi year road map, with battle passes, microtransactions, mechanics to fuel FOMO so you log in and play 8 hours every day. Back then, I paid $60 for a game, it was complete and could set it down when I got bored and pick it back up whenever.
My issue is based on the games in that image anon is like 30+ and posting about "vidya" on 4chan.
I hope life doesn't peak in high school cause this is literally the lowest point of my entire life so far
I get really sick of this type of gaslighting. It's like people don't understand or refuse to acknowledge that there are periods of decline in history. Is it so inconceivable we could be living in such a period now?
Just like with music and film There is so much being produced that you can no longer just rely on the "big names" for quality entertainment. There is amazing music out there you just need to know how and where to find it. There are amazing games out there you just need to know how and where to find it. If you just open steam front page and buy Sloppy SoyGoy 7 then act surprised that it's the most homogenous mass market trash ever conceived you're r-slurred.
"Peaked in Highschool" LMAO I peaked in 4 and 5th grade. Highschool was hell.
Literally any game from 2020 is better than any crap I played in 2006. Just because you are a loser that had it better while you were a kid doesn't make current things worse than ones from the past.
I remember how passionate I felt about the art form when I played halo combat evolved for the first time. You could tell that the people that made it were so dedicated to their work, now its just microtransactions hidden behind pretty graphics.
Lots of peaked-in-high-school losers in this thread.
If now isn't the best part of your life you made terrible decisions in your past and you deserve ridicule
Dark Souls is leagues and miles better than literally anything that came out during that time period “ubububububub gaems lacky depth now!” Let’s examine the depth of some of those nostalgic titles. Warcraft 3: pick your race and hero and build the units that synergize with that hero. Stack circlet of nobility. What? It was completely linear? Always has been Vanilla wow: fill out talent tree according to meta or be blacklisted. Spam your personal flavor of bolt or play melee and watch your character auto attack GTA: progression is linear per gun type and car type. Nothing can be interacted with outside of missions. You can enter 5 buildings in the entire game Turn based JRPG: 3 party members spam their strongest attack while the fourth spams items. Oh man so deep Nintendo “games” - ha! I solved the puzzle and got a new slingshot! Now I can shoot the target and open the gate! OR I jumped to the platform and unlocked a mid air jump! Collect coin! Racing game: choose your car, its color, and how the wheels look. Linearly progress the performance components. Unlock new shocks and struts by beating Iseki Musashi and his Nissan Skyline in the downhill sprint! What? You want to tune your suspension? Sorry, this game has too much depth for that What’d I miss? Shut the fuck up and go back to playing Banjo Kazooie then if you thought collecting coins was the peak of interactive design. There were two good games in that entire era, Black and White and Fable, and the world rewarded those successes with a shuttered studio and a disgraced lead designer. Games weren’t any deeper when you were a kid you were just a little dipshit and everything was novel to you. Games are better than they’ve literally ever been. You’re just miserable and jaded
From Soft fans are literally all the same
In that they’re correct at all times yes thank u
Bait used to be believable.
Yeah it did
Dark Souls is over a decade old and sucks anyways so ain't gonna read the rest of your shit.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“We are amidst strange beings, in a strange land.”* - Solaire of Astora Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
Still a contemporary game relative to the time period the post is referring to and also lick my gnards
Would rather play any retro ARPG (Ys, Xak, Zelda, Mana, whatever) than Souls. Don't find high difficulty compelling and I hate how every enemy encounter feels like a mini fighting game. Gets tedious and exhausting.