| Mummelmann said: Ugh, I think you may be right... Games keep aiming more or less for the same demographics and ages and we keep growing out of these. There were some truly amazing games in the 7th gen for sure, just less than in the ones before in my opinion. The good thing about it is that it made me a PC gamer again and I rediscovered how great a gaming platform it is, I also stumbled across many fantastic Indie titles that I would otherwise likely have overlooked. Steam and GOG has made my gaming life simpler, cheaper and filled with quality titles at all times. My backlog is terrifying though. |
Interesting you'd mention that. I had only a very limited knowledge of the greatness that is Steam prior to last gen. I've always played a bit on PC, but I had never invested much time and money into it. Mostly because I really like the streamlined aspect of console gaming. But somewhere around halfway during last gen, I started to think the console gaming scene was getting stale, and I was craving for something better. I had just gotten a new PC, one that was moderately current (it was a Core 2 Quad Q9300, 4GB DDR3 @1333 Mhz, and a newly released Radeon 5770.
Games developers were providing more and more games that would usually release only on consoles before. And my PC was more than capable of running them much better than both consoles could. So that's when I took notice of Steam, and eventually GOG. And when Steam released Big Picture Mode, that's when I knew I'd be a PC gamer as much as a console gamer from now on. I still prefer the mostly hassle free aspects of console gaming: you don't need to look for system recommandation to have the game run as intended, and, let's be honest, it's annoying (even if only a little) when your PC isn't capable of running the game at its highest settings.
Steam also had that effect for me, about the indie scene. I have played quite a few indie games thanks to the ridiculous pricing on those two PC platforms. I don't yet own a PS4 or a XBox One. But there was these metroidvania games I had to play. A indie game called Axiom Verge, and a indie/second party game from Moon Studio: Ori and The blind Forest. Back then, I wouldn't care much about that kind of games. But those two seemed to hit all the right nostalgia aspects that I loved during an other era, and I was really looking forward to getting this feel again. I wasn't disappointed. Those games are awesome. =D
But I digress. Right now, I have a lot of fun playing on the Wii U. And I feel the games Nintendo releases are their most polished ever. And they do try new things. Splatoon being a good example of that. But I haven't seem the same energy form the other developers. Including Sony and Microsoft. There are some neat games coming down the line, but the jury is still out on those ones. During last gen, I felt indie games where basically just trying to replicate what worked during the earlier generations, with some few exception. But right now, I believe it is those studios that will actually help push things forward with new ideas and concepts. Even if they're not what people call AAA games and the production values don't always do the games justice, the gameplay ideas that they bring more often makes up for all this.
