Nah. 2010 was a much better time to be a gamer. I was in my 20s and worked like 20 hours a week.

Lol I thought starting with 3 hearts was considered too easy. You start with one heart in Max Mustard and have to find them, max 3 (not silly 40+ like modern Zelda) And when you fall they're all gone again.

And yes no in game map works. See Dark Souls. I still have the entire place mapped in my mind. Witcher 3, no clue where what was.

Fez was also a gem, pen and paper next to my laptop, figure out the language etc.

And Riven is still a masterpiece and I'm glad I got to enjoy it at the right time, without spoilers nor solutions available. I did eventually have to look up the answer to one puzzle using a faq. Yet figuring out the numerical system etc, that was the reward.


Modern games just seem to be made for secondary screen time. Do / watch something else while playing / grinding / do the same stuff over and over. Hence I'm sticking to VR nowadays. Those game are more designed to have your full attention. AAA games are just "Simon says". Some don't even give you 30 seconds to look at a 'puzzle' before throwing the answer at you.



And the argument that older controls suck holds little weight. It was the other way around when I was used to those "sucky" controls. Analog control was a learning curve. I played Duke Nukem 3D, Doom with keyboard only. First I couldn't get along with Quake, dismissed it cause the mouse control made me feel sick.

Same when transitioning from digital to analog input with racing games. I had perfected the tap tap tap input method for cornering. Basically morse code for turning haha. It took a while to get used to analog steering.

And the transition from tank controls to camera oriented controls still screws me up today. When the character is on the ceiling in a weird camera angle. I know perfectly fine where to go from the character's orientation, yet can't figure out which way to press from the camera angle. Same with ladders, up is suddenly down. Just let me steer the character instead of the view. It's a problem in VR too where forward is the direction you're looking. (or the way you're pointing your hand, but that only makes it worse) No, I don't turn automatically when I look to my right. I can run/walk in a straight line while looking around me. Modern controls aren't all that great.

Nah someone who comes from the 90s to play today's games would be just as lost as the other way around. Controls aren't easier/better, it's just what you're used to. Actually controls were a lot less complicated back then.

I miss manuals. I liked looking at the art. Look at the Zelda NES Manual art. I still wish they would make a game with that art.  Some modern retro collections let you view original game manual art via PDF which is neat but I reach over grab my copy of MUSHA or something and hold it and seeing it for real hits different. Renting games was fun as well. You went by the cover alone. Some stinkers and some gems. When I got a game as a kid I would read the box front to back and manual until I got home to play it. A couple of times I snuck a game in my Backpack to look at it when I could just so I had something to look forward to when I got home.

Earlier today I played Radiant Silvergun on Saturn then read old gaming magazines. Best shooters of 1998 winners were. G Darius. Eienhander. Damn when shmups were respected and just considered shooters back then. Not some Gaas online only MTX pile of shit that pays Geoffs bills winning that shit. Best RPGs that year. Panzer Dragoon Saga. Shining Force III. Xenogears. I think Rebirth is a good game but better RPGs and games came out this year but the usual shit will happen at the TGA's and the most predictable shit wins.

I feel this so hard within my soul (bolded). The last game I can remember off the top of my head that I was both excited before and after release was Cult of the Lamb (because it oozed charm, and felt like something slightly new, mixing a village sim with a hack n' slash dungeon crawler and starvation mechanics).

Since that game came out I think 2 yrs ago?, I haven't really been excited or hyped for anything since, and before that it was Cyberpunk (hyped before release, massively disappointed upon release and the yrs that followed).

I fondly remember the times where I would boot up my PS1 and be enamoured by the Sony logo bootup sound (still does it for me to this day, by far my fave start-up sound), and popping in my Resi 1-3 games, my Die Hard Trilogy, my destruction Derby, Crash Bandicoot, Medevil, Syphon Filter, Twisted Metal 2, etc, and just being so happy to play all those games.

Today I'm less excited for so many reasons, ones like:

• How much space will the game demand of my drives?.
• How much is the game going to cost above other games?.
• How many MT's will the game come with?.
• How many bugs is the game going to ship with?.
• Is the game going to throw me on a Battle/season pass hamster wheel?.
• Is the game going to respect my time and actually treat me with respect and not have me grinding some pointless crap?.
• Will the game even be available in my own region? (Issue created once Sony started enforcing PSN, causing regional lock-outs).
• Will the game even be sold on my client of choice? (Issue introduced as soon as EGS showed up, EA and Ubisoft were selling on Steam before, when EGS showed up they followed Epic's false leadership).
• Will the game run on my current hardware? (Some Japanese studios still haven't caught up in terms of port quality, and Unreal Engine 5 provides more shader compilation stuttering than ever before). 
• Will I have to check PCGaming Wiki to resolve multiple issues? (Seriously, no one should have to use it for new games, except for games ranging from 1980-2010).

And to top all of that off, like you mention, we have to wait untold amount of years for some games, from publishers who previously had decent track records for game releases. Because they take forever to release certain games, the excitement dies off, and the reality sets in, dulling the end-resulting experience. 

Also doesn't help that today's industry is largely driven by investor interests, the crap journalists like IGN/Kotaku spit out (both of those sites know very little on what gamers actually want, only what they want and they push their ideals way too hard, even against regular gamers that don't agree, and that's created such a bad tonal shift in the industry as a whole, and adds to less excitement build-up.

Then of course there's another part where the industry loves to trend chase, spewing out Battle Royale after BR, metroidvania after vania, or Souls-like after Soules-like, while other genres remain neglected, because they either don't have a big enough crowd or don't print money like Fortnite (which isn't a gamer issue, because I'm still waiting for the RTS genre to come back, everyone else making games are the ones who left me in the dust). 

Worse yet the rumors of SEGA revivals of Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi are Gaas games to chase after Fortnite.  If that's the case I will stick with the original CT and as for a new JSR. Bomb Rush has me covered.

Why can't we just have a single year go right for once?.

Like we've seen how Concord shat the bed, how other games came and flopped, and yet none of them seem to have learned from what happened to ALL those companies that tried to chase WoW, that tried to be the WoW killer, and they all ended up either dying or being gobbled up by the bigger publishers over the years. 

It's so wild to me how we've reached such a zenith point in the games industry, where C-suite execs and investors are so Looney Tuned to seeing nothing but dollar signs for a single trend or two, while ignoring everything else.

"our games cost more to make, and they take years to make on top of that!"

LOWER THE BUDGET, stop making games into movies, Stop ripping games into single game modes, stop trying to chase a trend that will die off before any one of us pops our clogs at 60. Jesus you'd think Sega would have learned from their own failure with Hyenas BR...

Kids naturally have a stronger sense of discovery.  Gaming hasn't changed, the discovery is there, but likely we have gotten older.  

Sense of discovery is still there if the game is designed in the right way, it’s just that most games aren’t designed in the right way nowadays.

BOTW is an example of a newish (it was released 7 years ago! Time flies damn it) that awoke the sense of discovery as long as you didn’t look things up online.

But let’s take games released fairly ”close” to each other where the dumbing down of the game franchise killed it. Morrowind you start and then have to figure out what to do and where to go from your journal (that is filled by events and talking to NPCs). You have to explore, understand ques given about directions and the geography and while trying to find your way you discover a bunch of stuff. Oblivion and Skyrim isn’t even go to the x on the map it’s just go where the arrow points. This in combination with a bunch of other changes make Oblivion and Skyrim so shallow compared to Morrowind with ni sense of discovery and exploration. Morrowind is a superior game because of this, even if the visuals are dated as hell.

I tend to agree with Morrowind vs Skyrim.  Skyrim never clicked for me.  Many modern games do feel cookie cutter.  But there are some gems.  I thought Elden had great sense of discovery.  

I think part of the issue with many new games is too many items.  The original Zelda had 3 swords, so finding a new sword was exciting.  Finding a new weapon in Souls isn't as exciting because weapons are around every corner.  

I also think new games should stop putting worthless collectibles.  Banjo 1 was perfect with collectibles having purpose.  Puzzle pieces open levels, musical pieces open doors, Mumbo tokens are needed to collect puzzle pieces and musical notes.  Jinjos play a role late game.  Even NPC conversations matter.  

So many new games need to put less in and spend more time making things serve a purpose.  

Having said that I still remember games like MegaMan 2 with constant slowdown, my character disappearing and unbalanced gameplay (metal kills everything).  

Edit

And absurd side quests are a major flaw with old games as well.  Don't get me wrong, I love FF7, but the gold chocobo breeding to awful.  Some heart containers in Zelda are just a giant PITA.  

I think what has killed discovery in new games is the internet.  Back in the day talking with friends and sharing secrets was fun.  There was excitement when a magazine was released.  Today, just Google the answer.  But that isn't gaming's fault.  

Edit 2

The one place I wholly agree with Leynos is missing manuals.  Tutorials are boring and I would rather discover gameplay or gets hints from manuals.  As a kid I would scour manuals figuring out how to play and what items did.  

Fully agree with you that collectibles that does nothing are just padding. On the other hand collectibles that does nothing are not essential to the game and can be skipped, just as achievements on some consoles/steam which is another feature I find useless and don’t care for. But sure time spent making those things could be better put intou actually making a good game.

Regarding internet destroying the exploration aspect (for people with no self control) an interesting mechanic would be a robust system that randomizes things in games. This system would need to be robust and not wonkey and should encompass not only the game world/level design but also stuff like movement patterns and weak spots of bosses among other things. Hard as hell to pull off but if done right would be awesome. This would never emerge from a big studio game in this day and age.

I have many great ideas for a potential game but lack the skills to make one. Also since I do like punishing games with no hand holding the potential game I would make would flop so hard after the first 3 people played it and then spread the word on internet.