Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
This is the worse gaming generation....ever!
Shinami
Member UncommonPosts: 825
I remember how amazing the 90s were for both, PC gaming and console gaming. Back then we had a golden age....
Computers were a pioneering platform for game development and every genre had something unique. Even games in the same genre had something different. Compare UT, Quake, Doom, Half Life. etc and you got different kind of distinctively laid out shooters. Real Time Strategy was divided between Command and Conquer and Starcraft and not to mention early warcraft. Simulations had popularity like Flight Sims, Simcity, Simtower..and no one really complained if another played Sims. The 90s also had the Flight Combat Sims like Wing Commander. Toss in your MMORPGs and you easilly found something different, but also challenging too....along with cute things like dropping your entire inventory when you were killed, and nice inventory hacks to certain dungeon crawlers.
Consoles were amazing too. Each console had the majority of its titles exclusive to that one console. There were countless games that had cool worlds and strange but really nice things and the music was even nice. Earthworm Jim, Battletoads, Phantasy Star, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II. Back then the Final Fantasies were good and even when Playstation 1 came around it brought out a lot of amazing titles. It was during those days when Saturation was a problem and genres started getting flooded. Roleplaying changed from traditional to Hybrid RPGs. Back then the problem was too many games existed and everyone sided with one console or a company. back then, Working Designs and Square Soft (before Square Enix) were favorites...(I liked Enix too, apart from Square)...
Today, this is the by far the worse gaming generation I've ever seen.
The three consoles (Xbox360, PS3 and Wii) all have practically almost every game made for them. Almost no titles are exclusive and from the ones that are, few are good. Back then there was challenge and there were limitations in gameplay but games were fun. If you were to go to www.ebgames.com and just browse the Console + PC list...Most of the games are the same thing.
Today Consoles and PCs suffer from a strong lack of games....a centralization of loyalties by companies towards pushing users to spend their time playing 1 or 2 games. Lets not forget the diminishing ideas are out there....We look at RTS games and find that a lot of the good series have ended. We look at FPS games and nearly all of them are either about fighting in some War in some period in time, be it WWII or somewhere in Iraq/afghanistan, which displace others to make them look generic. Flight Sims and Simulations have become a backwater genre where if anyone is caught playing them by a serious gamer, its regarded now as a "girls genre" due to the Sims.
If we look at Console Mascots (Crash, Mario and Sonic.....) we find that they have become old farts, not as fun as their younger days. My favorite Sonic game was Sonic CD. Favorite Mario Game was Mario Brothers 3. I also liked the second Crash Bandicoot game.
What ever happened to fun and crazy games like Twisted Metal? and its crazy endings...Armored Core and its heavy customation. What about Fighting Games? Anyone remember Street Fight Alpha III? That to me was one of the best games ever made...
The fact that 4 - 5 out of 10 games released for consoles these days are PC games consolized says a lot. Too few games out there in the industry, and right now the games that are feeding consoles are PC games (consolized) along with the few exclusive titles to series that are near their end or going through a facelift.
Games today are missing all the attitude of the 90s. Back when you can die to a bot and be sworn, insulted and ridiculed. Back when getting playerkilled meant dropping your entire inventory. Games where you can look at billboards and find something shocking and uncensored that it would make you laugh. Even the concept of going to hell and back in Doom was something amazing. 
Even early sports games and sport entertainment games back then had some attitude. I remember watching kids play those generic wwe games (back when it was wwf) and players grabbing chairs, steel pipes and destroying each other very violently with all the blood and gore. Today you get games that have been stripped of atttiude and heavily censored in one way or another thanks to some minority.
Back then you didn't get the majority of players insulting and putting down others or everyone holding your hand or shaking you down. You were thrown into the fire and learned to play a game. Today everyone expects a tutorial level and a very low difficulty level.
Think RPGs were hard because of puzzles and things in Golden Sun? (which was a good game), go play Phantasy Star II where there was no forgiveness. Yes, back when you cast a heal spell on a bot and it said "Heal only works on biological life" or back in the days when your party died, they didn't come back with 1 hp, along with Magic Regeneration and other things. Back then when you died you had to get ressurected at a shrine and in some cases sleep at an INN.
I am hoping that Next Generation Consoles turn out to be better than all the crap that has come out today. Same with computers. I remember when it would take me 2 weeks to create 3 - 5 levels in a game...Now it takes 3 - 6 months to build my own super-level from scratch that is worthy enough for "Make Something Unreal" contests.
You want attitude? How about Quake 3 on Acid? Its called OpenArena and those who are into anime, shooters...and a healthy dose of SDA can really see part of the attitude preserved. Being tired of many games (I am not saying that there are not some games released in the past 5 years that are good), out there....I started playing through my old favorite games and just from playing them I am so happy that I still have them and found myself playing games from a true golden age...A time forgotten and sold away to the highest bidder...for those who all they care about is eye candy and making a game as easy as possible to please everyone.
The whole thing boggles the mind. Im a heavy fan of games, but I dont side with consoles, pcs or developers. I side with the least defended side, games themselves...because they really have changed and its so unfair that so much is stripped out just to please people, while in non-electronic games no one ever strips anything out.
Do you ever see anyone stripping out sport rules? How about changing the rules to card games and board games....or games like Sudoku or CCGs? You hardly do, but Computer and Console games are being stripped all the time of their worth. 
Seriously, play old games out there you grew up with...and you will reopen your eyes and wonder...Its like the old 90s movies...How did we go from super violent movies where everything gets blown up with some hotshot attitude main character who is take-no-prisoners....to "What? You dis me? Lets settle it on the dance floor...STEP IT UP AND DANCE!"
You are all welcome to share your thoughts on all of this. Enjoy!
Comments
actually when i play some of the older games, like zelda and such i find that they were much better in memory than in reality. Though it is true that most games seemed to be a lot more challenging back in the day. most people don't have the time of inclination or attention span to really try and beat a difficult game. I was glad to see demon souls released, that game is pretty tough.
...............and i remember waiting 20 min for a game to load from tape on my commodore +4, only for it to not load and for me to have to rewind the tape and start again....
Early consoles had virtually no libary of game titles to choose from post launch - for months. For every good game there was a dozen awful games. Back in the early days of gaming some of the best features of a game were their box art and manual.
In real terms games are infinitely better today than in the "golden age".
I agree, it also doesn't help the pc users. Because GAMES WILL ALWAYS FOLLOW TECHNOLOGY! Or be the reason to help advance it. Hell could be argued that D&D started the internets.
I think that the games already were going down in the 90s, the game of the 80s were a lot more diverse and in many ways more fun.
The problem is that games cost more and more money to make, in the 80s could a guy make a game at home in a month, today it takes as much money and as large team to make a game as a motion picture.
That means a lot less games, fewer companies and opens up for a few large publishers to dominate the market.
On the other hand are game looking great today and becoming better all the time.
It might come another era where games can be made by fewer people again, the guy who made "Minecraft" proves that it is possible but right now EA and Activision Blizzard decides how games should be and that is what we gets.
Funny enough did both EA and Activision great games themselves in the 80s, and now turn most of the games into sequels and copies of other games....
That game was pirated, wasn't it? And 20m? 5 it was more like 5, I had 2 different C-64 and an Amiga myself, or are you talking about Vic-20? It just felt like 20 minutes because waiting sucks.
Anyways, yes, there were a lot of awful games at the time, but there were a lot more games so it still released a lot more fun game every month than today. How many good games comes out in a month now? 5? In the late 80s we are talking about 20-30. That it also were 200 crap game each month really does not matter.
I had to write my own game from a magazine, that was already printed out, I had to rewrite the whole thing and if I made no mistakes I was able to play it. And it was quite a few lines and difficult if you were 5. I never got to play that game and I still remember the name of it. Hawkmen of Dindrin, I had to settle with Zork =/
I think if went from FUN to Realistic.....social...ewwww...kill me now.
The OP's spouting a load of tosh, this is all complete and utter nonsense; the ramblings of a person who's lost in nostalgia and not going with the flow. You're the same as every old person who looks at the new generation and says "these kids these days, they don't know what's going on or what they're doing" as if YOUR generation was superior. You, my friend, are old, and there is nothing wrong with the gaming generation but you, who cannot adapt to it or find belonging.
Starcrafts, Warcrafts, Command and Conquer all still exist, Mario still exists, Sonic still exists, all your genres and icons are still here, they just all havent evolved the way you wanted to and now you're unhappy about it. In my opinion, Warcraft and Starcraft blow chunks compared to the newer strategy games like Company of Heroes (A PC EXCLUSIVE, you know, good exclusives that, according to you, dont exist).
Go play your old games, but don't pretend like that was the DEFINITIVE GOLDEN AGE of games because it's not. These silly points don't hold any real truth but whats inside your biased head. I think Everquest 1 was the most immersive MMORPG ever made, does that mean MMOs nowadays aren't just as immersive or just as good? No, it's my nostalgia.
------------------------
Everyone on this site:
1: MMORPGs are DOOMED, and I have the answers to save them!
2: THIS game's gonna kill WoW!
3: I wish things would go back to the Golden Age of MMORPGs, which only existed in my mind...
I disagree. Indie game studios are rockin it just as hard as the pioneers three decades ago.
I should've said this (not smart enough, haha), but I agree, and the only problem I can forsee with this is not enough people supporting them, but that's up to us, anyway, and it's up to them to make good content.
------------------------
Everyone on this site:
1: MMORPGs are DOOMED, and I have the answers to save them!
2: THIS game's gonna kill WoW!
3: I wish things would go back to the Golden Age of MMORPGs, which only existed in my mind...
Take some of the more awsome modern games back in time to your old self ... set the system or pc up and let your "back in time self" play them, then say "ok that was a taste, now I have to take these games back" and watch your "back in time" self kill you to keep those games.
It is changed, not worse IMO. I play mainly RPG and only sometimes others like FPS, RTS... So dont know about those.
Things in RPG got better and worse at same time. Difficulty went down very much which is very annoying, as most of games now takes 20h or so to finish (god damn it, it is just one sit down and game is down
) where in older games I remember when time count on saves reached 99:99:99. But the games has more choices in them these days, what I like most is Moral choices or World affecting choices which devs trying to improve.
But most of it remains the same. That is the problem. We got older but the games didnt. It seems like games got worse when in fact we just advanced and they didnt. Nowdays I take any older RTS which I remember was very difficult and beat it with ease, so you could say old games also got worse lol.
Only games which went for worse IMO is mmorpg. After WoW and some other titles genre is dead to me. All that is launched (mostly) are WoW alikes or the games which would be awesome (sandbox, inventive, new etc.) are underfinanced.
[quote]Flight Sims and Simulations have become a backwater genre where if anyone is caught playing them by a serious gamer, its regarded now as a "girls genre" due to the Sims. [/quote]
This made me laugh. If you like game why would you care what others thinks?
I saw CoH for ps3 and the shops today so sorry to burst your bubble lol, I can't believe you didn't mention SC2, or Dragon Age
Anyway I agree with this mostly.
Now for you to go and copy paste this to the loonies in the SWG forums x)
p.s. I gave my seat on the bus to an old lady today
old people are generally awesome, nostalgia is just a bitch sometimes
Ok -- first off -- right now most game concepts (assuming it isnt one of the many games that are a sequal (which is bad in itself)) are come up with by committee or at least vetted through corporate and committee.
When the game is coded it might be coded by 10 programmers and 50 graphics artists.
----
Go back 10 years and a game might be coded by 5 programmers and 5 graphics artists... Go back another 5 years and a game might be coded by 2 programmers and 1/2 a graphics artist. I know -- I was actually in a game company back then -- QQP -- and things were TONS different.
People had a lot more autonomy as a coder back then as well.
C++/Windows development along with all the libraries also has a major effect in making current games more buggy than they used to be and similar to other games.
All games that use say the unreal 2 engine are going to be similar on some level.
-----
Graphics have killed gaming on a lot of levels. It just takes a ton of graphics people to make a 3-d game in 1920x1200 graphics. MANY more than it took to make an EGA 2-d game. The amount of development of a game hasnt gone up by nearly the same amount... Hence the assets for a game become graphics heavy instead of story heavy.
Go back far enough and the programmers did their own graphics and they werent done with paint programs either... I remember putting bitmaps in code manually. When a tile was 8x8 and you had 3 colors to choose from max, it wasnt a bad way of doing it.
I think the problem with this generation of MMO goers is how sugar coated everything is. I remember playing UO back in 2000 or so. Was new to the game and went about wandering around aimlessly killing this and mining that until a kind soul took me under his wing, led me back to his small tower, and sodomized me.
Joking about the sodomy but he took me to his house and taught me how to play the game. He introduced me to his friends and guild mates and they all helped me get a grasp on everything. The same thing went when I started to play Everquest. The community was extensively nice and tried to help new players.
Now with games like wow out you have everything handed to you step by step on how to get to the end game in 7 days or less. There is no challenge to be had to reach the end game. Death penalties are non-existant, there is really no hard content at all.
People werent as cut throat as they are now because back in those games you NEEDED your community to accomplish things in game. Now you can do everything with the push of a single button.
Edit:
You can still find games with mature communities that give you the "old school" gaming feeling. I am currently playing Uncharted Waters Online and I have to say, it gives me the feeling of playing EQ, UO, and FF7 all rolled into one. Has a great community and a ton of content as well as presents a challenge in leveling up and progressing.
I never said old people weren't awesome, friend, lol...I just said they spent far too much time in their old little world rather than appreciating, or even changing, the new. I love old folks. =P
I dont like either SC2 or Dragon Age, and Company of Heroes isn't for PS3, I think you're just pulling my leg, though, haha. Starcraft 2 is proof that classic franchises are alive, though.
------------------------
Everyone on this site:
1: MMORPGs are DOOMED, and I have the answers to save them!
2: THIS game's gonna kill WoW!
3: I wish things would go back to the Golden Age of MMORPGs, which only existed in my mind...
Nice one Op
A very well written and thought provoking post
I wouldn't say all games are terrible but generally the quality ,difficulty and complexity has decreased
I play primarily RPG's and if I take your example above this really annoys me
Look at DA compared to Baldurs Gate 2 ....in the latter death was permanent until raised
DA is not a challenging game at all....it is entertaining but not hard and for me that detracts from the enjoyment
"after the time of dice came the day of mice "
Loke beat me to saying this. The cost of dev in the 80's allowed creativity/risk. Also imo games were more constrained to be games and not simulacra of other things that sometimes works but often the "fun" seems to evaporate. Games as games works for me.
There's also the fact that earlier experiences are better than later ones as the bar is raised each time you find a game you really like in a genre (simulation, rts,platformer, beat 'em up, MMO) I think also is part of it (& memory). That said there is some consolation: The Wii seems to have a decent collection atm (new motion controller) and being able to play loads of cheap titles eg Karate Champ on the iPhone is special imo.
It should be that the internet helps people's ideas for games become closer to a reality? Maybe that will happen, but I agree, there is so many bad games atm that lack innovation. A few exceptions eg Minecraft, maybe Child of Eden, Angry Birds, etc.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
You were still playing with C64 in the 90's lol?
90's ----------------------------------------------------------- -------> Today
X-com ?????
Baldur's gate,IWD,Eye of the beholder,Black crypt,Drakkhen Dragon Age, Dragenshang
Supercars II,Nitro,Vroom Need for speed
Any Comparison is hopeless .90's games were by far better in design ,content, depth,gameplay.Only thing that evolved was grafix and effects. Gameplay and game design went instead of forward backwards.
Im a fan of party based rpg's but tbh when u have played BG IWD and the rest party based rpg's i mentioned u find Dragon Age chieldish,easy,cuttered ,no immersion and thrill about battles (party characters can't even die in battles ,they just fell unconsious making battles un-intresting).Specifically comparing the grand adventure of Baldur's gate with Dragon age scenario is futile.Cant even compared.Whoever played Baldur's gate till the end know what im talking about.
Concerning car-racing games.I never was a fun but i remember myself clearly destroying 2 amiga joystigs throwing them at the wall after loosing games from rl friends hot seat in supercars II. Games was so addictive that were making u get stuck with them. Most games of this type were playing in same screen from 2 players and that was so fun.
As for x-com ufo enemy unwnown and terror from the deep? Simply aweosme. And despice all these long years to come none managed to deliver a 3d version (maybe even improved in gameplay terms?) so far.
Rest my case
I have a pair of +10 nostalgia goggles with a 10% chance of 8 bit to 16 bit graphics proc for sale on ebay if anyone is interested.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Ok just a quickie
Sonic is trying to go back to its roots. You can see that with sonic colors. Only thing I hated with that is that there is no chao raising. I want my chao!
Twisted Metal coming out next year.
Kirby, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus come to wii. Those are classics o.o And Wii Exclusives.
uhmm...I stopped crash bandicoot never was into it. I did enjoy Tomba games and wish theyd make more of those.
As for difficulty yes the games tend to be easier than the old ones but seriously. Watch Angry Video Game Nerd.
I agree with the RTS games. Remember Dungeon Keeper? That was epic! But there is Dungeons coming out january that will be like Dungeon Keeper so thats good!
I think this whole thing is because artists and modellers cost a lot. High res graphics? Ofc itl take months to make a map from scratch!
I think 2011 will be a great year in gaming with all the great releases!
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
( o.o)
(")(")
**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Ha, I made 2 text adventure games for my c-64, they were fun. Not as fun as the Hitchhiker's Guide games were.