I have played games all my life. Ever since watching my brother play Sunset Riders on the SNES I have been positively enamored with it. At first I only played games for the pure enjoyment of the action, but as I have grown my reasons for gaming have changed. Now I see games as a form of expression, the conveying of many ideas through interactive means. I search for metaphorical subtexts and subtle plot devices.

I have conlcuded that this is one of the benefits of aging, when it comes to gaming. I see much more in games than I used to and that can only be a good thing.

On the flip side, though, I have a terrible conundrum on my hands: I find myself constantly reminiscing, and the games I play currently just don't match up to my memory of games past. I worry that the games that I play now will not have the same impact on me as they did when I was younger, be it the effect of my personal evolution or of the games themselves. Is gaming just another example of that drug trip roller-coaster they teach you about in middle school, where the car never gets up as high as it does the very first time, and only gets lower with every dip? I feel like I have experienced so many games that I have exhausted all the potential they have to astound me.

Please, I call out to the veterans: Are my fears unfounded? Will I spend just as much time in 5 years thinking back to Ratchet and Clank Future, Uncharted 2 and LittleBigPlanet as I currently do with Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts? Or am I doomed to an eternal quest for that most influential game, only to wander aimlessly and without purpose?

yes, you will, i felt the same for PS2/xbox/gamecube games but after that gen is over i went hypocritical as hell, saying past gen was better, no its actually THIS gen is better (by a long shot), its just my mind is blinded with nostalgia.

I have been playing since early-ish 90s and not only do older games seem better than current ones, but even when I play them they seem to be better. I think the earliest game that I still enjoy thoroughly and seriously is XCOM and that was in 92 (or something like that). HL1 doesn't hold a candle to some of today's games, but HL2 is still a better single player every time I play it than anything in the past 5 years (except for Metro 2033, holy shit that game is fucking amazing).

After everything is said and done I still love nostalgia. LOVE it. The way our memory preserves the greatness of our past experiences (and potentially irons out the not-so-great parts) is AWESOME!

Thanks, human brain!

My parents were away a lot when I was a child, they were always away on holiday & I was left at home with the hired help who weren't overly interested in hanging out with me, plus I have no siblings, so I spent a decent amount of time playing games in my youth even though I only played a few games a year (probably 4 or 5, I am the type of gamer the game companies probably hate, I only buy a few games a year and do everything in them and play them to death). I play rpg's almost exclusively (I only liked games I could really sink my teeth into), Lets just say till I was 16 I was bit of a shut in. My Dad loved electronics so we always had gaming machines around 

I agree with you fully, I started playing final fantasy at FF6, I played ultima and I even had an old amiga 500 with games like golden axe and the atari 2600 with things like Wizard of Wor (a game older than me). I am an obsessive FF fan and I will be the first to admit it, Every time a new numbered FF comes out I play through all the numbered ones in order before release of that game (probably gives an idea of how repressive my life once was and, I can still do it today (even though its more difficult to find the time now, even though the games are shorter because I know them so well) because I am gainfully unemployed). I do this exactly becase of what you mention, I find mainly that the old ones are still good but my top 5 in order, with using this system are 12,13,8,6 and 10, I don't expect anyone to agree with me and I am not looking for that but note that 3 of the top 5 are new FF's simply because, when constantly compared you lose the proverbial 'rose tinted goggles' effect of nostalgia on your older games and in my opinion, more accurately compare them to what is out there today, once again this is just my opinion, I'm not saying the order I have them in is 'right' I simply think that for my personal perspective (for me personally) it is the most accurate it could possibly be

Going back and playing games I adored at the time of their release like Baldurs gate 2, Planescape, Arcanum reveals them to be nowhere near as good as I first thought and games like diablo are positively awful (once again personal opinion here).  To cut a long story short I agree that nostalgia can make a game seem artificially good, starngely the games I find most resilient to the effects of this are the oldest, almost text graphics ones. Wizard of Wor is still intense 2 player and Nethack (an extremely early D&D styled diablo) is so interesting by degree of its complexity and difficulty that it makes Demon's Souls a cake walk by comparison (This and the original impossible mission are the only games I have never finished). But By and large I think you will find a lot of your older games are not quite as good as you thought they were if you replay them, at least from personal experience thats what I find, things are evolving slowly over time imo

the thing is, your favorite genre isn't much popular , i am not talking about the run and gun shooters i am talking about the puzzle based adventure shooters

JRPG fans feel the same way as you, since JRPGs aren't as popular as say last gen or the gen before it.

It is hard to tell. On one hand, as the graphics technology has gotten better, the story and the grip of the game has become more vivid and longer lasting. On the other hand, terrible voice acting approved by Diva-like developers with a God complex have me yearning for the days when characters such as Samus Aran were silent.

Overall, games have become more mainstream making them easier and more accessible. The major downside to this is new gamers come to expect single player campaigns they can breeze throughout without having to continue 100 plus times as we had with games like Contra and Contra 3: Alien Wars. Making games more accessible has watered down multiplayer competitiveness where guns have no recoil or sway, you are rewarded when you go on killstreaks with abilities to kill even more players, a radar to show other enemy players and on.

As a whole, we have gone from skill-based to score-based in multiplayer. As a consequence, the blurry line between skilled and cheap has become so blurry that even skilled players are accused of hacking, exploiting and on. I am talking about FPS as it is the genre where this trend has become the most apparent. Just compare Unreal Tournament with Modern Warfare 2. Unreal Tournament was an extreme niche game created to highlight just who the best FPS player was. MW 2 is a FPS created to sell more than 10 million, thus the score-based features of killstreaks and whatnot were put in to make it more accessible.

What you can count on is as video gaming becomes more mainstream, games will become more accessible, which those of us who grew up with our earliest memories playing Duck Hunt and Mario Bros. interpret as easier or:

Created for noobs by those who want to sell to noobs.

This you can count on.

IMO, the major thing that makes games today less interesting simply due to the massive amount of choices.

You no longer are stuck to one game for several months, forcing you to "enjoy" it inside out.

Nowadays, you just rush through as quickly as possible and jump right onto the next.

You just don't spend as much time discouvering all the nifty little details that would have made you like the game more.

Wait untill you get older... then you don't have the time for them anymore and you care a lot less for them.. you'll play them as entertainment for 30 minutes and then just go on with your life.. I enjoy games more now then I was 18.. back then videogames were more important in my life.. now I play them for fun and not trying to see metaphorical subtexts and subtle plot devices... I don't care about that shit.. it's just a videogame.. life at 27 already has it's own problems..

you make it sounded like 72, lol