Maybe we are growing out of games. I've been playing for years and every so often a really enjoyable game will come out, usually a couple per year but none of them really make me feel how the old ones did. Maybe because back then it was like losing my video game virginity.
I dunno.. I never get tired of new games. The non-commercial ones, that is. When I do, I pick up an ancient game again, like Master of Magic and find that I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I did.
I think the problem with new games is Game Design theory. Game designers are so obsessed with things like Game Balance and Features, that they forget that games are supposed to be FUN. Counter-Strike has screwed balance. Fallout 2 has really screwed up balance (i.e. the San Francisco exploit). Both of them are possible the best games ever made.
There's plenty of games which swear that they'll kill Counter-Strike. The designers claim they're better. "Experienced gamers" claim they're better. They have plenty of new features. They're "balanced".
But they seem to neglect the fun that comes from running in a small room and blasting the head off enemies, surviving a 3 on 3 battle or shooting all 3 enemies from behind. There's just a certain rush that comes from playing Counter-Strike that you don't get from FEAR or the Battlefield games. People will say that it's fun to play those newer games, but in the end, it doesn't approach the joy from Counter-Strike.
I don't think games are getting any worse. It's just that a good game is a matter of luck and love. The Black Isle guys were lucky they ended up with Fallout, and even luckier that the sequel was better. That's why they went bankrupt - because they thought they were heroes and made a whole load of other not-so-good games which other eople didn't like so much. It's like that guy who slays an invincible dragon by accidentally hitting him in the heel.
I guess you can't blame people for going for profit. Games are an art, like music or movies. If you try to clone art, you'll get a cloned art.. pretty much the same thing. It actually works for movies and music (try use the Winamp playlist generator and see how many of your songs sound exactly the same). It works for games too, but with the stupid games industry, it's just mix and match, or clone and change the surface. Spore could have been a great hit, but they decided to play it too safe and ruined a lot of things. It might have been an even better game if Will Wright decided to screw game balance and make everything totally random (and more organic feeling).
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I guess you can't blame people for going for profit. Games are an art, like music or movies. If you try to clone art, you'll get a cloned art.
Heh, my first thought here was The Underside
But I quite like how balance is affecting new games, take TF2. Some characters were horrifically balanced originally. They were all playable but you needed more skill to be an efficient pyro without dying too often. So they fixed that by giving the player the option (once they unlocked them) of new weapons that aren't better. They've just got different strategies attached to them. And thats it for me. I love a game that has been balanced so much that the only difference in class, weapon, whatever is the change in strategy.
Even old games had copious amounts of testing and balance though. The golden gun in Goldeneye (multiplayer version) had to be reloaded after each shot. The BFG churns through ammo, the chainsaw is brilliant but only for close combat etc.
IMO the problem now is that tech is overtaking the gameplay design. For all the new tech in GTA IV it's still not as fun as San Andreas or Vice City. And all that kinda nonsense.
I don't think you can generalise games. I've played a lot indie and commercial games and they both seem to have a portion of amazingly fun and well designed games.
I don't really think it's the tech. Tech has always been there. It ruined Baldur's Gate 1. It ruined Duke Nukem 3D and the Quake games (really, the quake games are rubbish gameplay-wise, they were just good for the time). If anything, excessive reliance on technology is a sign of a bad game, because the people who made it are thinking sales first, over quality.
I do like balanced games, but some games focus so much on balance, that everything becomes the same! There are no variety in a lot of balanced games. It really showed in Warcraft II, but I think Starcraft was a thing of beauty - perfectly balanced, but with 3 very different gameplay styles. Too bad it relied a bit too much on build orders.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
-Dark Martin- The dark is most certainly not your friend
Registered 05/06/2008
Points 21
8th October, 2008 at 14:16:21 -
Where did Muz go!?
Some games these days are good... for example that new sonic chronicles was epic.
The more newer series i guess are the good ones, which basically means any sequels are gonna suck.
The vast open nature of some of the levels and the big battles in them, I mean yea the corridor levels were absolute pants. It added little droplets of strategy with the limited number of weapons you could carry. The pacing was nice and the atmosphere was very well done too (this is my biggest beef with the other 2 Halo games. The setting made it good for me, being able to look up at this ring planet. Great concept that was squandered later on). The story was pretty good too - what with them ancient weapons and 'security systems' and all that. And they didn't have the age old problem of FPS games... They had good and easy to control vehicles.
And the multiplayer! Well originally I liked it because it was a good pace and wasn't a twitch shooter like HL2: DM, Counterstrike or the Unreal games. It was accessible to all my college friends. Shame you can't even pick a level when playing Halo 3 online but that's more a complaint about faulty lobby systems in console games.
The music was also very well done.
IMO it seeped quality which is why I friggin hate Bungie for messing the series up. By far the best console shooter since Goldeneye with its single player gameplay and accessible multiplayer.
I play my snes, sega genesis, nintendo 64, master system, dreamcast and saturn more than my wii and 360. I buy a new game and play it maybe 2 or 3 times. I think I played smash bros brawl twice and assassin's creed once. I usually go, oh that's cool, and then go and play sonic 3.
Originally Posted by Ecstazy What's so good about it?
It's just a average (back then, now even less) FPS with copy+paste level design.
You see, that's the problem with games these days. Everyone looks at things from a technical perspective. Are the graphics good? Does it use modern technology? Does it have cool features?
Heck, the only thing I care about Halo 1 was that it was fun from beginning to end. It made you feel like a hero. It made you feel like you were stepping inside the shoes of a hero and kicking some alien arse. It might have been the same as other FPSes, but it certainly felt different.
Same goes for Knytt Stories. There are just so many people out there who don't "get it". But for those of us who played it without judgment, it was a beautiful, beautiful game.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I suppose it boils down to taste in the end.
I can relate to what you say about how games makes you feel, for example whenever I play Fallout I nearly always take the good path, and everytime I help someone it makes me feel like I really made a difference in the life of that person, as silly as it may sound.
But Halo just didn't cut it for me. I felt much more of a hero when playing Half Life 2, and it enjoyed it a lot more. I think the difference (aside from being practically bored when playing Halo due to the constant feeling of deja vu with every turn I take) is also in the way the story is told. And maybe also that I can hardly relate to a person you never even see his (or her?) face.
I can't help thinking it's got a lot more to do with originality, or rather the lack thereof.
Modern games may be more sophisticated and graphically impressive (and that's arguable - I personally prefer good pixelart over 3d graphics anyday) than games of the '80s and early '90s, but they are, almost without exception, basically just copies of those older games. It's so rare now for a whole new genre of game to be created.
I'm not saying modern games are bad, but you're always going to be left with the feeling that you've seen it all before.
It seems to me that the Nintendo Wii, with it's unique controllers, could be the most interesting thing to happen to gaming for quite some time. Admittedly, I've never played on one, so I don't know if any of the games are any good, but at least it has the *potential* for developers to come up with some more innovative games.
I don't know how relevant this is, but the other thing I noticed recently, is that a huge number of the games now considered "classics", were created by just a handful of people (think Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux et al). Maybe we just aren't getting more of these kind of people in the industry anymore, or maybe their creativity is somehow stifled now that development teams are bigger and more money is involved? I don't know - just a thought.
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