Lest not forget that one hit wonder studio Turtle Rock Studios for giving us Back 4 Blood. That game looks unashamedly generic, unbalanced and bleh.

Though tbf there might be other smaller games that are quite decent and you might enjoy. Like I've been playing The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes on the side and its pretty awesome. If you like horror games and narrative based ones (stuff like Until Dawn, Detroit Become Human).

Feels like most AAA this gen has been poorly optimised tbh. Like there hasn't been a AAA I've bought this yr or last that made me go "wow not only is this GOTY material, but really well polished".

Instead it's "what AAA game is going to nickel/dime me out of more than £60 and how badly optimised is it going to be (including DRM), let alone "is it gonna be exclusive?".

Days Gone is alright, but they still didn't fully remove the weird hitching effect. Hoping GoW gets the good treatment, because it's seen as one of Sony's biggest IP's. 

AoE IV hasn't really grabbed me at all, mostly because it looks like a slightly modern AoE II, but with a Relic touch (UI is way too clean and reminds me of DoW III). Also doesn't help that the game features less civs, unit animations are tied to projectiles (homing catapults and arrows just looks so fucking weird in 2021), infantry are almost the size of buildings (pretty much like most CiV based games, which looks odd for an RTS like AoE).

But to be brutally honest, last 5-6yrs haven't been all that great for me AAA wise anyway, because it's either exclusive, a botched port, a late port or a genre I'm not even remotely interested in, or the same old same old. It's why I'm more interested in indie titles these days, because AAA can't seem to do anything right, let alone innovate (RT is great, but not worth the perf cost and not every studio gets RT right either for example). 

Yeah, B4B looks insanely generic, has a tedious card system and MT's, which still remind me of their Evolve mess, and feels like they still haven't fully learned that they could just make a really good L4D and not shove MT's or a stupid system into it, that makes you grind for progress.

Also hate how they put the SP progress update on the backburner, instead of fixing it for week 1. Like no way in hell am I going to touch that shit if you consider SP with co-op Ai not important. 

Seven days to Die feels more fun than B4B, and that's already an old ass indie game, still in early access. 

Well, in some cases those problems come from strict deadlines and developments still suffering from the pandemic we're still going on.

In other cases there is no excuse, tho.

Yea pretty much. I liked Cod MW cause it felt like it was a return to form but Cod Cold War was sleep and Vanguard is terrible from what I hear. BF2042 had two studios working on it, no campaign, I believe less maps than some of the previous BF games yet it's terribly optimized compared to the previous iterations.

Hopefully we will have more interesting games next year but man, what a lame first year to the new generation.

I didn't even know the latest BF had two studios working on it, and yet all that game is added to itself is the adaptive weather system (which still seems to be ignoring levolution and overall destruction in favour of big shiny spectacles), and since it's got no SP campaign, and less maps, there really shouldn't have been a need for two studios, no wonder why it's a disaster in the making. 

So weird how BF used to have great SP/MP, now it's just got MP and that isn't even all that good/innovative, then there's CoD which had great Sp, then dumped it for MP and got good with that, but over the years they got shit with both (even the new zombies is overly convoluted).

I wasn't all that big on Doom Eternal's story/combat either (compared to DOOM 16, which I thought was the better game), so I guess shooters are going through a shit phase atm. 

We just need a decent reboot of FEAR and I think that would get me going (good mix of scary gaming and slow-mo shooting is something I still crave), that or a new Timeshift (pls give us back unique shooters with time powers).

Granted I haven't played it but judging from the reviews and hands on I've seen it just looks like L4D, but worse.

True, the card system looks like your typical MTX model which is shoveled in most modern games. Adding in unbalanced and uninspired characters, weapons and spawns on higher difficulties. It just looks more frustrating than pick and play fun that was L4D. Its like they were trying so hard to recapture the essence of L4D and tried to modernise it, that they totally missed what made their first game special. And what they ended up with a an almost tribute game, which is sad really as a lot of us just wanted L4D 3 (or a spiritual successor).

Halo by 343 is gonna be awesome. Don't you guys mess with my hopium.