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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Are games as good as they used to be?

Some are. And I think the ones that are quickly rise to the top of the fandom. Not always the charts. Like Persona 5. It echoes the best of the PS2 generation. Zelda BoTW feels impactful in gameplay like Mario 64 or Zelda OoT did at first. Granted BoTW isn't as successful with story and epic twists, but it felt new, fresh, and eye opening. Octopath is also amazing. Hollow Knight Undertale, etc. Sure many companies wimp out for microtransactions, easy play, and repetitive sequels, but the good is still there, albeit more dispersed, for now.



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zygote said:

Some are. And I think the ones that are quickly rise to the top of the fandom. Not always the charts. Like Persona 5. It echoes the best of the PS2 generation. Zelda BoTW feels impactful in gameplay like Mario 64 or Zelda OoT did at first. Granted BoTW isn't as successful with story and epic twists, but it felt new, fresh, and eye opening. Octopath is also amazing. Hollow Knight Undertale, etc. Sure many companies wimp out for microtransactions, easy play, and repetitive sequels, but the good is still there, albeit more dispersed, for now.

BOTW is fresh I can give you that, but Mario 64 and OoT were groundbreaking and BOTW certainly isn't that. 



With all due respect. Fuck no.



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SuperRetroTurbo said:
With all due respect. Fuck no.

^

You win the internet sir.



bigtakilla said:
VAMatt said:

When games are broken now, they can be fixed.  Maybe you weren't gaming in the 80s and 90s  But, I was.  Back then, sometimes you'd get literally stuck in a game, with not choice but to restart.  That also meant huge lost progress, because of the relatively save options.  Sometimes, you'd get stuck in a glitch in the final level, and have to start the whole thing over.  Thankfully, those days are long gone.  Games now either work, or they're fixed.  

As for cost of entry, there's no comparison.  When adjusting for inflation, games are cheaper than they've ever been.  They're also much, much bigger, on average. 

So, sure, there have been some changes that one could argue are bad.  But, they're have been a whole bunch that are objectively good.  I simply don't see any case to be made for games being worse now than they were - let's say 25 years ago - except totally subjective personal opinions.

Yeah, but glitches weren't notorious in mostly every AAA game, they were fairly rare. And yeah, now games are fixed, YEARS after the fact in some cases. There really is no comparison.

As for cost, even when adjusting for inflation at best they cost roughly the same with season passes and dlc, I mean if you want the full game. Not to mention that only really becomes the case if you look at the beginnings of gaming, a PS2 game with all content cost substantially less than a PS4 game with all it's content for a majority of AAA games. Not to mention you are looking at inflation as a universal constant that effects all goods at a precise increase, and sure that makes gaming look good, but it's not exactly that precise of a measurement.

Bigger or longer games also don't necessarily mean better, that's a subjective personal opinion.

And there are a whole bunch of things you can argue is bad about modern gaming, and these are some of the reasons that aren't my opinion. *edit* But also, a lot of personal opinion does also go hand and hand when asking if games are as good as they used to be.

I would think Tomb Raider was AAA back then. I paid 89 guilders for it in 1996, which was about $52 at the time which converts to about $84 today. I could not finish the game as it crashed in the last level at the same place every time. There was no patch, no you tube to watch the end, that was just it. And while I prefer the tank controls of the old games, I doubt any new gamer would like to play modern tomb raider that way.

There were plenty PC games that wouldn't even run with no hope of a patch, or would simply crash after half an hour. Everquest was great, yet the server went down daily, link death was the most frequent way to die and lose a lot of progress. It cost $15 a month to play with paid DLC (boxed) added once or twice a year which you pretty much had to buy to keep up. It was great, I played it for 5 years, yet shudder to think how much money I spend on it.

Gaming is cheaper, easier, more streamlined than ever before. No more writing down level codes, making your own maps (although that was fun) or needing a big manual to figure out what to do, no more fussing with code wheels or enter word 15 on page 25, or praying the tape still loads or worry about the discs going bad / getting scratched. No more messing around with himem.sys autexec.bat to get games to run or the disasters windows 95 brought along.

As for the game content, longer doesn't necessarily mean better, yet if you like a certain game, there's a lot more to like nowadays. So many details to take in.

No man's sky was a complete game at release. I played it for months, it was great. Just one of those games hype ran away with, nothing compared to ET lol. Now the game is getting VR after getting tons of extra content already. Same with DriveClub. Apart from server issues the first couple weeks, it was a complete game. Then it got so much better still. Compare that with NFS 2, that had 9 cars and 7 tracks!



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Are they the best they've ever been? No, that was the PS2 era.

Though is it getting better? Yes, the eighth generation has much better games than 7th generation.



Bet with Intrinsic:

The Switch will outsell 3DS (based on VGchartz numbers), according to me, while Intrinsic thinks the opposite will hold true. One month avatar control for the loser's avatar.

I'd say that games are mostly better now.

I used to rent most of my games during the NES/SNES/PS1/PS2 eras because they were so expensive. People like to pretend otherwise but there was a high percentage of garbage games on all those systems. Licensed games and knock-off mascot games were the worst. Back then, you were mostly picking stuff up without knowing anything about it, so it was easy to sell bad games with good marketing.

Also, a lot of games used ratty conventions. Many of them had low amounts of overall content and would mask that by making you die a lot and thus repeating entire sections. One of the worst tactics of all, where you basically had to die to see how to win, was also used a lot. There are a lot of things about gaming that I'm glad have faded away.

Other than that, I guess it kind of depends on genre:

Platforming? I don't know and don't care.

FPP games? They've absolutely improved for the better. Technology advancing has been a real boon for FPP. Corridor shooters haven't aged well.

RPG games? Personally, I like turn based, so I'm not very enthused about "action" rpgs. That's a personal preference, though, so I won't say they're worse.

Racing games? Better, though they've reach a point where improvement is minimal.

Sports? Don't know and don't care.

Quite honestly, there ratio of good-to-bad is much better now among professionally developed games. There is an absolute ton of bad indie content but the best indie games can be simply incredible.



There are a few games that are better now than previous generations, but the average game keeps getting worse and worse. Making a game fun got lost somewhere along the way to save time and money.



As games became integrated into main steam media, just like any other form of medium, the flood gates were open to politics.

I've lived through mainly all generations and seen it all.

Marketing is everything in today's world of gaming. More so now than ever. When you take all things into consideration, although the question is vague, the answer is, no.

Fundamentally speaking games have obviously evolved into a form of art but the core of what I consider an "actual video game," remains the same.

Space and time.

How well can the developer utilize those two components? Call of Duty did it and did it well with guns, grenades, knives, rockets, multi-player, online, customization and all the amenities.

Tetris did it too. With blocks.

The 2d-16bit era was a special time in gaming. Comparing it to any other era is somewhat unfair...to any other era...and I say that with all sincerity.



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Those special 2D 16 bit era games are still being made


Beating Fez and The way felt every bit as satisfying as the older era games. Actually more as back then there was no internet to share the experience with like minded people.

Sure marketing only screams about the big AAA blockbuster games. No different from the past.