most games are not becoming better!!!!
polycounter lvl 14
Hi
remember the old days
silent hill 2 3 4
mdk 1 2
batman vengeance
shadow of destiny
megaman legends 2 & 1
onimusha 3 & 2
final fantasy 8
commandos 2
beyond good and evil
.
.
.
why some of the new games sucks?
example
silent hill 3 & 2 are better than 4
silent hill 4 is much better than 5
silent hill 3 had another taste, in my opinion... sh5 has no value at all :thumbdown:
there are a lot of different titles like this...
why game producers are concentrating on graphics rather than
[game play, music,....]
even the older games music are nicer, why is this so?
PS: pardon my English, no offense.
remember the old days
silent hill 2 3 4
mdk 1 2
batman vengeance
shadow of destiny
megaman legends 2 & 1
onimusha 3 & 2
final fantasy 8
commandos 2
beyond good and evil
.
.
.
why some of the new games sucks?
example
silent hill 3 & 2 are better than 4
silent hill 4 is much better than 5
silent hill 3 had another taste, in my opinion... sh5 has no value at all :thumbdown:
there are a lot of different titles like this...
why game producers are concentrating on graphics rather than
[game play, music,....]
even the older games music are nicer, why is this so?
PS: pardon my English, no offense.
Replies
this thread had potential
It's mostly nostalgia.
I've wondered about this too but how much of it is bad games, and how much of it is just cloudy nostalgia. I often used to think 'old games were so much better', and whilst there are plenty of cases where that is true, could it be that our expectations are also getting higher, doubly raising the standards we seek for new games?
I've gone back and played some old games which I used to think were amazing, and remembered them being so good, but playing them back now really shows that they weren't all that good. At least in comparison to some of today's games.
Some games were just good, because there was nothing else like it at the time. But now we see so many games, many of which are of the same genre, and the expectations are just so high what with all the pre release hype they get.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule, there are plenty of amazing games from times gone by, but there are also a lot of amazing games from more recently. Uncharted for example easily competes with old games in my opinion. World of Warcraft, and the franchise itself, love it or hate it, has storyline, universe, and gameplay which is undeniably incredible.
One thing to note though is that there's just so many games released now compared to back then. The Internet, media and people's ability to voice opinion has created immense pressure for designers and developers that just didn't exist back then. Add to that the huge costs and financing needed to make a current/next gen title and the fact that 'family games' now command such a huge market share and you begin to see why there are a lot of games that aren't as good, or at least not widely regarded universally as 'good'.
edit: thanks teeJay.
One phrase would sum it up nicely for ya though...
"Sometimes Jacks Rule the Realm"
We can't truly know if sales are declining because we don't have access to digtal sales numbers. The moment we have that information we can truly say how sales are doing.
On another note, I think it's nostalgia. I love games nowadays.
But then again, I never really played any games that I really hated, although I don't have much thought for The LAst Remnant, just because the combat is confusing and lack of customisation is stupid.
Every generation has plenty of its' share of great and garbage games.
Secondly your entire theory caves in on itself the instant you realize that the highest selling titles are time and time again the least innovative games.
It's nostalgia.
That just tells me the audience taste is stagnating(they dont believe they can get anything better). A lot of focus is on these few titles instead of a wider variety. Its not a good thing. If these titles dont live up. They dont care for anything but these games...no point in developers making anything new/innovative...no reason for new people...just an inbread audience which eventually decays, sheds members slowly.
We dont know if the industry is in decline because of lack of digital sales evidence,but when the majority of gaming is on the consoles, not digital. With the lack of conflicting evidence the only logical conclusion is decline(at least until someone comes up with proof that the digital is somehow increasing in line with the decline).
They'll never make a minecraft these days either.
Back in the days, pre 2000, people complained how games were getting shitty, they talked about how the console games had poisoned the games and that games were getting worse, and then 2000, deus ex hit.
Also, you are chronically confused belias, picking titles here and there, from your own personal tastes with a mixture of games that people like and hate, there's no hard fact in the claims, there are no objective examples, there's the usual belias-science.
For all those games you mentioned there were another 10 really shitty games released those same years, it's like a roller-coaster where there will be awesome games one year, and then some shitty games next year, and then back again.
The main difference from then and now is that we're making way more games, and thus we're getting way more bad games, but we're also getting way more good games.
Not sure if serious...
The only logical conclusion to draw from a decline in retail sales is that retail sales are in decline. Which is unsurprising.
This is really the problem with statistics, people misinterpret them to suit the point of view they already had.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35923/Analysis_Is_The_US_Video_Game_Industry_Really_Declining.php
Hey! I actually like 4 the most. I never could get into 2 or 3 whereas I loved 4 for its concept of an apartment and how the world of silent hill revolves around it. Getting outside of that apartment was a shocker.
Jokes aside, I'm surprised nobody has come in with the
'I don't even play games anymore because they're so shit compared to how they were in 96' /sunglasses
Those people to me are like the ones who say they don't listen to a band anymore because the radio plays them...and uses words like underground and mainstream.
"I used to play Minecraft alpha, and then I stopped because it got so beta"
i sort of am
Silent hill 4 was an entire different story. And it was confusing as hell so they started posting the guides online. I've been planning to buy the silent hill 5 (because I am planning to start playing my ps3 again <.<) But I havent heard any bad reviews of it.
You seem to be a big fan of the Silent Hill, but seriously tho, isnt it too late to crit about Silent hill 5?
All of the konami-made games have really good graphics and i think they focused on the graphics then as well. I haven't played any of the games after the 5th one so I can't really speak about the rest.
I'm a bit surprised that you mentioned final fantasy 8 though, Belias. The later games in the series are at least as good.
Are there any newer games that you like?
Take a look at what happened to Resident Evil. RE series went to shit after the 4th game. What happened to the horror factor of the first 3-4 games? If I wanted to play a 3rd person shooter, I'd go for Gears of War or something.
like everyone else said, nostalgia plays a huge role here. I know i dont even really bother going back and playing older games from my ps1 days anymore cause it just ruins the memory. 99% of older games not only look atrocious compared to todays standards but major things like control of gameplay mechanics are just so god damned clunky.
ofcourse there are still shitty games released all the time, but then there are wicked titles like uncharted which seamlessly blend storytelling and gameplay to a near perfect experience that just blow away expectations of what a game can be.
I think things have gotten more simplified and streamlined over the past 5-10 years for sure, but only because the audience for gaming has grown so astronomically, and will continue to grow as more and more people grow up with games being so mainstream and all around them. I for one am really excited about how gaming is going to change within the next 10-20 years, I'm sure we cant even imagine how different it is going to be.
This^
Aside from that, I do hope that we will get to see more mature games pushing the boundaries for what constitutes a interactive experience though. Right now, most mainstream games try to give better experiences through better graphics and more engaging stories, with the same core game-play as the 90'ies save a few refreshing exceptions here and there.
So if I had to put my finger on something, it would be that we tend to treat games like movies, putting the player on rails to advance the plot by going through the motions. In turn expecting the player to enjoy the set pieces more than the actual "game" itself.
I might be wrong, but that is at least my impression.
yeah... those were the days.
seriously, the longest game in recent memory for me, was MGS4, and most of that was cutscenes. games nowadays are geared towards railtrack gameplay, with the illusion of choice or size. hell even the latest Deus Ex game was linear enough to be barely worth the name.
anyway, old discussion is old, but when it takes longer to complete sonic the hedgehog, than it does to complete bulletstorm, there's serious issues.
How much did sonic cost to make? You change the color of the sky and add some lava. Bam! New level
PS: i never played uncharted yet, will buy a ps3 soon..
Sure, there are boring games out there. But what do you expect from 8th installment of franchise? Of course it's going to get dry and boring, not necessarily because it sucks, but because everything kind of gets boring after a while.
Also, sales are declining? Retail sales sure, but there's more money in game industry nowadays than ever.
My wife tagged 150 hours in dragon age and 142 hours in fallout3, finding games over 5 hours is way easier though.
33 hours for me in deus ex human revolution, only one playthrough.
Im pretty sure sonic the hedgehog can be beat quicker than bulletstorm.
Yer cos massive financial crisis never puts a dent in any sales what so ever
4 was considered a far, far superior game by most. Even 5 scored 20 points higher on something like metacritic than 3. I think (as allot of people have already said) that it's rose tinted specs, having been around a few years I always compare most MP fps games back to quake which is where I was young, had a ton of time to spare and have a ball playing it compared to these days where im time limited, slower and allot worse at them. Doesn't mean they are a worse game, just means I don't enjoy them as much.
Old games are great because we remember them. Usually a game will be memorable because it was pioneering and tried new things. Tomb raider, MDK, oddworld series, dungeon keeper are good examples. Its harder for developers to create new ideas these days. So maybe we aren't quite as impressed with games these days because we've pretty much seen it done before.
New games are only new until they are old
I actually like games being short or at least give you the option to stick to the main mission. I much rather have short and beautiful game with a good story and good gameplay then a big game that has parts that don't live up to the current standards.
But then again that's personal preference
It could be boiled down to the defense-mechanism of the human brain, which makes you remember the good games, and forget all the bad ones, by suppressing the traumas of your gaming-childhood :P
You are more likely to remember all the games you enjoyed than the ones you didn't think much of or hated.
I think that's the crux of it. It's no different from music and other creative media.
Alot of my friends hated it, but I was giggling like a kid most of the way through it.
Hell I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the entire Halo series!
Sure it wasn´t some epic plot and awesome story experience, but to me it was just pure fun.
Also games over 5 hours.. thats easy.. According to my Steam library I have put 158 hours in to Mass Effect 2, 40 hours into Witcher 2 (and im not done), 13 hours on Crysis 2, 11 hours on Dead Space 1 (1 play through), 80 Hours on Dragon Age 1, 102 hours on Dragon Age 2, and I am 10 hours into the new Deus Ex.
Not to mention crossing the 400 hour mark on Battlefield Bad company 2 (though mostly multiplayer).
Fuuu too much time wasted gaming in the last few years :P
On a side note, games that try to be long just for the sake of being long like MSG: Guns of the Patriots, usually end up being boring tripe.. I think the most enjoyement I got out of that game was laughing at the insufferably bad cutscene dialog and god awfull characters.
Graphics and sounds were nice though.. which was about it for me on that one.
Problably one of the more boring games I´ve played in years.
I honestly dont think games of old are any better than games today by any means. We might feel like some are, because we had not played a game like it before, or something in it grabbed us. Also as we get older we become more and more jaded towards games, just like we do movies. We are harder to please than we were when we were young.
Online multiplayer, DLC's, achievement/trophy systems had made quite an impact on the way games are played and the way the function. Some of the design principles had changed too; modern games are far more forgiving and are more about effortless fun and constantly rewarding the player. Storytelling relies heavily on exposition, cutscenes and scripted events. Most of all, almost everything is a shooter now
I don't have any issue with people not being bothered by that. But honestly, I just can't help but feel annoyed whenever people act like nothing had changed and dismiss any complaints as nostalgia. This gen is by far the most revolutionary we had in a while and obviosuly not everyone feel happy about the direction the industry is taking.
Because as mentioned, there was also the PC-generation that was dominant before the console-generation hit big.
But at the same time we got even more games that focus on being hardcore such as the souls series and monster hunter, and we have games that drive storytelling in ways that old games never even attempted like the portal series, or shadow of the colossus by having the story be told in the background. Or actually making rpg's where the world becomes ever more expansive and increasingly more intereactive.
Never since the beginning of gaming have we had this amount of selection or different genres and difficulties to choose between, the selection of games are beyond the limited genres back then.
I'm a big shooter fan and love the most of them, but my games collection is hardly dominated by them, the games I've bought over the recent years have been very varied.
They just got reintroduced to the console market with the dawn of dual-sticks, if you had seen the pc market they were always there and thriving, it's not just for having guns, it's an easy way of understanding a game, which is one of the reasons minecraft hit so big.
The problem with the complaints is that they're short and narrow-sighted, they look at one part of the industry and see nothing else, the industry expands like a tree, in several different directions, we have the entire indie-games scene now which was non-existant back in the day, we have entirely new groups of people who never played games before that new games are made for. You have to look at the whole picture before saying that the change of one particular area of the industry constitutes the change of the whole industry.
I think I get worked up on it because saying that games got worse means that the person saying it didn't take the effort to actually look for the good games, which is a bit demeaning to the fantastic games we've got in the new generation.
And then the fact that I've come to experience it even back in the days, people always have a tendency to complain when it comes to this, like the pc-crowd did when consoles became big, and in their rage they refused to experience the entire amount of fantastic games that came out on the consoles, which includes the games that belias mentioned.
isn't that an interesting point in itself though?
the budget of a game goes up, but the quality and QUANTITY doesn't necessarily follow the same tangent.
how many games with a budget in the millions, or even hundreds of millions, are ACTUALLY worth the money or time invested in them?
A game in the days of sonic 1, and the first mario had perhaps an art team of 2-10 people, and sprite sheets for the entire game that could fit on a texture sheet for a hero character in a game today. Usually all made in one cheap software package like Delux Paint.
The expectations for game graphics has grown by infinite ammounts over the years, and as such, need more people by a crazy ammount, and seats for each on packages like Maya/max/zbrush/photoshop + various utilities.
This alone grows out budgets by alot as you know.
I find it ridiculous to even consider comparing game making back then, to game making today.
As someone who was last doing games professionally back in 2002, on something that was considered quite graphically beautifull (EvE Online), we were pushing the envelope on a Geforce 3!
Think about that for a second.. GeForce 3, in 2002.. The iPad2 is vastly more powerfull than that today. We need to look at the bigger picture to see how amazingly far, and how amazingly fast we have gotten to the point we are at today.
What follows in close behind these high costs, is the need to sell much larger quantities of games than back in the old days, and therefore games need to appeal to a wider audience which in turn means they have to be more accessable. This makes alot of games much easier for those of us that have been playing games for years, which is only natural.
The change started in my view back when Sony started really pushing their ad campaing for the PS1. A campain that made gaming look hip, and cool.
The years that followed saw a vast influx of gamers playing the more casual games, and now, their kids are growing up on the medium so the market is much much larger.
This high costs also makes making bigger titles very high risk, as they need to sell well to keep the studio making it going. This sadly leads to big companies like EA and Activision less eager to risk continuing development on titles that they dont see as sure fire sellers, which leads to everyone being less inclined to take risks.
The closing of studios as of late is partially due to that, and partially due to the economic landscape world wide at the moment.
Thankfully indie devs are filling the vacant spot of testing out new things, and are much more eager to experiment to set them selves apart.
And when they do stumble on something that works great, we see the bigger companies willing to take those ideas and expand on them.
Portal 1 and 2 are great examples, since that idea was started by a small team experimenting with gameplay mechanics and adopted by Valve.
Meh, this really is a subject one can ramble on about forever :P
...
...Belias is actually right on this one. It really isn't down to nostalgia either.
He gave viable examples of IP's that have gone downhill (not to mention the fact that IP's are being milked for all their worth, instead of studios creating new IP.) Resident Evil is a prime example, so is Silent Hill, so is Final Fantasy. Metal Gear went down the shitter, too. I still play the same games I did as a kid, it has nothing to do with what age I am.