Fellow Gurus, When I was growing up I remember playing games such as Half-Life, X Wing Alliance, Wing Commander 3/4, Unreal Tournament, Dark Forces II Jedi Knight to name a few. These were really good games and thanks to websites such as GOG.com I can revisit them whenever I fancy which I often do! At the grand old age of 29 I now find myself looking at modern games and thinking that they are nowhere near as good or innovative as those I played when I was younger. They all seem the same and I get bored with them really quickly. Infact I usually wait for them all to go on sale before I even consider buying them. Maybe I am alone in this but games today are not what they used to be, I can still get immersed in games like Half Life and enjoy it every time I play it. I don't get that with modern games... Who knows, maybe I am getting old!
UT99, Half Life, Stalker, ... All these games had 1 thing in common: a great atmosphere. Even the damn menu music just smacked you in the face with that atmosphere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX5CpBfTg4o
I'm 29 as well, and rose tinted glasses. I love deus ex, chrono trigger, mario platformers. But there are still good games coming out, but the games market now is big and varied, you just need to find what you're interested in. I look for stories. Recently had a lot of fun with Hollow Knight and Wuppo. FF14 is always a good go to because i'm always behind the main content. Look outside of the big budget blockbuster releases, games are still good.
+1 I too am finding new games are the same old wash and rinse over of the last 5-10 years. And the price you pay is ludicrous.
A lot of studios these days are about making the most money with the least amount of effort.. which is kind of sad.
I'm 41. I think it's just nostalgia and nothing more. If you never played Deus Ex..etc, you probably would have a hard time getting into it. Today's games still have fantastic music, intense atmosphere...etc. You're just cherry picking a few gems out of the hundreds of old games that were total crap. You can do that much today. What about Metro series? What about games like Little Nightmares?...amazing atmosphere with graphics that enhance it 10 fold. Seems like a lot of modern day games get ignored when looking in the rear view mirror.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfA9GccfWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdUpO8vsiyg&list=RDfdUpO8vsiyg#t=1921 Brilliant!! LA Noir such great atmosphere...
AAA are getting pretty lame, trend department decides what needs to be in your game. I hate when they try to force you into online, I always had fun playing with bots in games like battlefront, or proper arcade modes in fighting games.
Back then games were made by people who wanted to make a good game. These days the developers may have the same intention and then the publishers choke them into casualization/broadening the audience.
I'm 35... and, it's just nostalgia. There are plenty of great games being released every year, just as there were plenty of bland, forgettable titles released back then.
Lots of older games I was influenced by and bias towards, lots of highly impactful moments and memories for sure. Everyone has their favorites, some because of the mood it put them in, or the soundtrack. A highlight for me in the last few years was surely Portal, and the shift in tone & atmosphere of the entire game starting at the 1:21 mark of this video of the ending: But yea, games of today seem much "less" than what they were in the past. Alot has to do with the business, and how companies treat each other amidst competition. What I find is among the detritus of crap games, there is always somebody who puts a little more effort into a project and it gets noticed right away and it sparks something across the industry. Witcher 3 is, I feel, a game that has already demonstrated to companies how beneficial it is to allow the creative process to flourish. I don't think we will ever get back to the golden age. Mostly because mega companies like EA will always exist. But the standout productions will continue to be produced, and they will always rise to the top.
I'm 33 and grew up with NES games like Zelda as well as Wolf3D, Doom etc. on PC. Later on Half-Life etc. They were great but yes there were lots of bland games back then too. Actually modern indie games are often better than low budget releases back then. Well, good indie games, not the usual Unity copypaste look I made a game bs. The old games were great but some modern games are too. Modern systems allow much more complex and detailed gameplay systems on top of graphics and audio. I got into Souls games early this year for the first time and now they are my absolute favourite games. First Souls game was released in 2009 so it is a modern series. Granted you can see it took a lot of influence from Zelda and.likes but it still is quite unique. There are still great and even innovative games, you just have to find them.
Luckily one of the good new ones. I think one of the issues is the constant rehashing. It really is time for some new IP's.
They still make good games, here's some from recent memory I would recommend: Alien Isolation Wolfenstein the New Order DOOM Dark Souls 3
Older than you and stroooooongly disagree. And look beyond "triple a", there are more good games now over a 2-3 year period than we used to get 15-20 or 30 years ago. "Old" gaming was more like amateur hour and in many cases actually was, look up how some people made it into the forming industry and became huge, people with little to no idea knowledge or understanding of what they were doing and lucked into success via proxy. (seriously check out a long recent interview of Molyneux to get an idea). There are better examples ofc like Urquhart and others, but they all have something in common - just how unqualified they really were to do what they ended up doing. If you are looking at EA and ubisoft and their likes, well, they've been releasing the same game with different names for years and years.
I can relate, i'm 29 and outside of my other hobbies, i used to play more games but today just replay old cnc titles and the only new game i'm playing a lot, is Tekken 7, which is the best tekken in the series and somehow, the series grew on me long time ago :0
^ This. Most ppl posting in this thread (me as well) suffer from the same symptoms. When you played the game decade(s) ago, it felt new and interesting, because it was new and interesting FOR US. New generations of players, who never played those games at time they were released, will never feel what we felt and will never understand our opinions about new games. With that said, games are improving. There is a lot of great games being released. But if you've played similar game 10 times already, don't expect it to excite you the same way as it did the first time.
It´s not always nostalgia, for example I was born decades after stuff like Jail house rock and boy I think music from that era is the best ever (after the classics of course)... I´ve even seen 16 year olds getting into retro gaming, crt and all. Ps.- There is no way around that they have been turning some of our favorite franchises into dumb fests and cash grabbers :banana: