Is it me or are console games not as good as they used to be?

[HarmonicGenerator]

Short answer: It's me.

 

(I know this could have gone in the general gaming thread, but as a lapsed gamer I tend not to venture in there much, so I'm starting another thread).

 

I was looking at an article of 'the 15 hottest games coming out in 2015' (or something like that) recently. I used to be really into games, around the end of the PS1 / most of the life of the PS2 I would buy loads of them, play all the demos, etc. Now I'm lapsed, I'll get one or two games per year and probably not get around to finishing them. But I was looking at that list and barely anything on there appealed to me in the slightest.

 

The main problem seemed to be that most of them were basically the same thing. First person shooter, open world, first person online shooter, multiplayer open world, first person open world, online shooter BUT IN SPACE THIS TIME, online open world, fps, open world, fps...

 

I get that these are the things that sell, which is why they're making so many of them. But am I alone in not actually being that keen on these sorts of games? I've never liked first person shooters - I don't like the movement of them, I can never get the hang of the controls, I usually die within a couple of minutes. I've never played one I've really enjoyed. So that's quite a lot of the big offerings off the table for me.

 

Open world I'm a bit more okay with - I liked Red Dead Redemption, but I stuck quite strictly to the main story on that so it didn't feel too meandering. On the other hand, I tried Skyrim, went the wrong way right at the start, wandered about in nothingness for what felt like hours before eventually finding my way back to where I was meant to go, found the person I was meant to talk to, accidentally pressed the wrong button and killed him instead of talking to him. Then the fucker autosaved, meaning I'd have to start the whole game again to rectify my mistake. Pain in the arse.

 

Anyway, my point is, I don't mind an open world game once in a while, but reading this article, basically every big release that wasn't an fps seemed to be an open world one! You can have a good game which is open world, but the latter doesn't make the former. 

 

My favourite games on PS3 were the Uncharted ones. I finished all three of them, which is rare for me these days. Great adventure games. I saw in this article they're doing another one - excitedly, I thought, 'a new Uncharted, that could sway me into buying a PS4'. Then I saw they've made it another fucking open world game. I'm sure they know what they're doing but to me, it loses a lot of its appeal just from that.

 

As for the online thing... I know if I want to play multiplayer with actual people in the same room these days I basically have to have a Wii, but it seems that in a fair few of these upcoming releases, you won't be able to escape the online element of the game. The new Star Wars Battlefront really appeals, and again could convince me into PS4ing, but if even the single-player part of it ends up being online, it kills the fun for me. I'm not that great at games, and being killed repeatedly in an online mode before I've even got going does not sound fun.

 

 

So I ask the gamers, have I got it all wrong and gaming is actually better than ever, all these games that seem the same are really very different and varied, and I'm just old and hankering after a nostalgic past that wasn't actually as good as I remember? 

Have I just missed all the good games that have come out recently?

Or to the other people who dabble in games like I do, do you agree? Are there others who've wandered into Game and come back out thinking 'maybe gaming isn't for me anymore'?

 

 

[Undefeated Steak]

They're not. Gaming peaked with the PS2. It's all about realism and graphics~! now. Apart from smartphone games, but fuck them and their in-game payments. 

[Merzbow]

AAA games are all the same these days like you've already pointed out, Ubisoft are the worst as all their big games follow the exact same formula of being huge open worlds with a bazillion collectibles and towers to climb.

 

Get a Nintendo console, 3DS or Wii U.

[LaGoosh]

My favourite games on PS3 were the Uncharted ones. I finished all three of them, which is rare for me these days. Great adventure games. I saw in this article they're doing another one - excitedly, I thought, 'a new Uncharted, that could sway me into buying a PS4'. Then I saw they've made it another fucking open world game. I'm sure they know what they're doing but to me, it loses a lot of its appeal just from that.

 

Don't know where you've heard Uncharted 4 is open world. While the environments in the footage released look more open and wide it hasn't been announced anywhere that it's an open world game. I very much doubt that it will be, doesn't fit with the Uncharted premise of basically being a blockbuster movie experience based around a streamline narrative and huge sequences with strong momentum throughout. To make Uncharted 4 open world would radically change everything about the game.

[neil is brill]

My favourite modern game series is the Mass Effect Trilogy, despite the naff ending, it's a series I can go back to time and time again. Even though I have pretty much everything out there apart from an XBONE, I do struggle to get excited about what's coming out.

 

Non-stop first person shooters are the bane of my life. It's a genre I refer to as "guns go bang" I find the endless stream of them seriously lazy, as if developers are like "fuck making characters anyone can relate to, in fact, fuck making characters at all, they can play as a nameless gun, and all the baddies can be generic army-man-with-machine-gun."

 

Not to sound like "it was better in my day" but I've been playing lots on the SNES recently, and I think the console limitations meant that developers had to have more of an imagination to get things to work out right. I'll pop in Castlevania 4 any day of the week. These days all the effort goes into the graphics, which indeed are superb, but gameplay suffers and seems to be an afterthought with a lot of titles.

 

Then there's quality control, the most recent Assassins Creed being the best example. We live in the age of "release it now, fix it later" which can be viewed positive or negative. If someone isn't online, they can say goodbye to that patch that allows them to play their games properly, but on the flip side, at least the companies are actually fixing their games, a luxury you wouldn't have with cartridge bases systems, or in the case of the PS1, lack of online capabilities.

 

I'm an RPG/JRPG gamer mostly, so I normally have to wait a while before something I want comes out, but even those are drying up because it's always medieval themed. Oblivion and Skyrim are great, all the others not so much.

 

Games look better than ever today, but it seems like all the charm and other things that made them fun to play is dying out.

[Merzbow]

Maybe Harmonic was thinking of Metal Gear Solid which has sadly become open world, although, i trust Kojima with my life and hope he knows what he's doing.

[Carbomb]

I think a huge part of it is that, back when games didn't have near-perfect graphics and sound, they had to have an emphasis on gameplay to make them worthwhile. Now, it seems like there's less pressure on developers to keep up that emphasis. I daresay that there are still tons of great new games out there, but it does strike me that there are also a lot out there hiding a lot of crap with garnish and bows and ribbons, something that older crap games just couldn't get away with.

 

EDIT: neil is brill got there ahead of me, but with much more detail.

[King Pitcos]

I'm in a similar boat, although it's a bit more "eyes bigger than belly" or severe ADHD or depression or something. This has largely been the case since the PS1 era, at a guess it's been the case since piracy meant games were plentiful. I'd get maybe two or three SNES games a year, four if someone in the area had ram-raided Woolies. Near enough every game was precious. The first year of the PS1 was glorious. Games still had that magic appeal but were a huge step up, stuff like Resident Evil blew my mind, and DEMOS! A magazine every month with playable games was just unfathomable -- I did have a Spectrum briefly before my NES, but could never get demos working with it. Then in early 1998, I had my PlayStation chipped and I would be on a game a month, sometimes more. Parasite Eve, Silent Hill, Clock Tower, Tenchu, whatever else. Play a bit, and move onto the next one. Puberty came along at the same time though, which added new interests like angst and frequent wanking.

 

This was much the case when the PS2 came out, and although I never had mine modded, I did have adult income so could buy any game I wanted. I remember once on payday buying Metal Gear Solid 2, State of Emergency and Legends of Wrestling from HMV. I broke Legends of Wrestling opening it on the way home (it was in a packet in the case which was sticky as fuck and knackered the bottom of the disc) and never even bothered to return it. I lost interest in gaming for a couple of years when I was at university. Never had San Andreas, for example.

 

The next generation coming out appealed to my terminal need to consume. I own a PS3, PS4, 360, Wii, 3DS, PSP and Vita. When I've got the disposable cash, it's very easy for a game to take my fancy enough to buy it. Harder to get me to actually play it. I bought Tomb Raider for the PS3 on Black Friday 2013, never played it. There are a bunch of early 3DS games that I bought that I played once or never. I paid well over the odds for the Wii from a scalper when it was popular at Christmas 2007, bought Mario Galaxy from Asda the same day, and never really played it until about 2011. When I got it, I did Wii Sports and Wario Ware. 

 

I love Littlebigplanet, but I bought the PS4 one before Christmas and haven't opened it. Same for GTA 5 (although I did play about two thirds of the story on the PS3 one), The Last of Us Remastered, Child of Light. I did finish PS4 InFamous, because I was on a tight deadline to trade it in for TLOU. I've got about a dozen or so downloaded Vita games that I haven't looked at. I got Walking Dead Telltale season one on the PS3, I got to the penultimate episode nearly two years ago and still haven't played the last one. I really want the South Park RPG on the PlayStation 3, but I know I won't play it. If I see it under a tenner, I'll still buy it.

 

Part of the thing that puts me off playing games is the open world aspect and the general scope of them now, particularly in terms of doing it wrong and having to start the whole thing again -- in fact, it was Final Fantasy VII when it changed, which was right before my PS1 got chipped. I'd not bothered much with RPGs before, it'd be wrestling games, football games and stuff like Donkey Kong. Articles about FF7 had me hooked for months with all the graphics and story and characters, but there was so much to do playing it that it felt like one misstep would ruin the lot. It seems like a massive commitment compared to a level of Mario or a game of Fifa or something.

 

TLDR: In my case, it's definitely me. Love that games have such depth to them now, but can't muster up the motivation to explore them. So I spend hour after hour playing Tetris in a web browser.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Gaming peaked when the Panda did a little dance after winning on Tekken.

[HarmonicGenerator]

 

My favourite games on PS3 were the Uncharted ones. I finished all three of them, which is rare for me these days. Great adventure games. I saw in this article they're doing another one - excitedly, I thought, 'a new Uncharted, that could sway me into buying a PS4'. Then I saw they've made it another fucking open world game. I'm sure they know what they're doing but to me, it loses a lot of its appeal just from that.

 

Don't know where you've heard Uncharted 4 is open world. While the environments in the footage released look more open and wide it hasn't been announced anywhere that it's an open world game. I very much doubt that it will be, doesn't fit with the Uncharted premise of basically being a blockbuster movie experience based around a streamline narrative and huge sequences with strong momentum throughout. To make Uncharted 4 open world would radically change everything about the game.

 

 

What I read didn't have direct quotes or anything, but it said it "has a more open-world feel, with extra emphasis on stealth". I know that's not explicitly saying 'we're going open world' but it doesn't bode well for my enjoyment. If you can reassure me that'd be grand!

 

(On the same subject, 'emphasis on stealth' is another phrase that fills me with a bit of dread. What's wrong with wanting to leap in to the action, beat up some bad guys, and on to the next bit of the level? I've never got very far with an Assassin's Creed because I'm crap at / don't have the patience for that 'blending' stuff. I like doing things in a game!)

 

 

I think Pitcos has nailed it completely with the idea of commitment. I just don't have the time available to spend ages on a game anymore. It's half-hour bursts or nothing unless I'm on my Christmas holiday from work and everyone I know is busy. I understand games that require commitment and loads of in-depth playing are good if you can free up time for it, but I just can't, which is why if I put the PS3 on now, I'm far more likely to just play a quick MITB match on WWE 2K14 than I am to stick Shadow Of Mordor on. (And I really like Shadow Of Mordor despite the fact I've got to run around for ages finding something to actually do because open world, and when I get there I usually get killed by a boss orc and have to go back to a big tower and run around for ages again to get back to where I was - I just don't have the patience for that when I know I've got uni work to catch up on or a Meeting Of Doom And Dread at work the next morning.) I want 'pick up and play', and not many of the big games can offer that right now. Uncharted did, the Lego ones do, the Batman ones did to an extent, the Ghostbusters game did. That's probably why they're the only games I've finished in the current gen. And that aspect really is my problem. I love The Last Of Us, every time I play it I remember that, but you've got to devote time to it to get the most out of it, which I just don't have. It's been out, what, nearly two years now, and I'm still only halfway through… but I will finish it one day. It's too good not to.

[SpursRiot2012]

I haven't finished a game since GTAV on PS3, and before that I couldn't tell you when I last finished a game. Sometime in 2006 I reckon. I'm like you, I jump onto GTA: O or whatever for a half hour fuck around then it's off doing something else. No way I could play through a game like Skyrim (despite all the praise it got).

 

I probably won't even buy another game until The Division comes out, which is looking like next year. I'll just get my XBL Games With Gold and leave it at that.

[d-d-d-dAz]

I fucking hate stealth modes on games.

 

If I want to be hesitant of conflict situations and try to avoid them, I'll live my daily life and not spend £50 quid on a video game.

 

I don't play games that often as I don't have the time. When I do, I tend to stick to sports games and 1st person shooters on the easy level. Sports games, in particular, are way better than they used to be. Madden 15 is fucking incredible.

[Kaz Hayashi]

Not bothered getting a new gen console, mainly due to having a PS3 for years and over said years, I've owned about 7 games.

 

I did buy a Retron 5 when in the US in October. They weren't available over here at the tome but are now in limited quantities.

 

Completely love it a play it at least once a weekend for a couple of hours.

 

Its been fun to dig out the attic and garage, along with car boots and retro shops, hunting fir MD and SNES games.

 

For those who don't know what it is:

 

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/19/retron-5-retro-gaming-console-review-nes-snes-game-boy

 

 

It worked about £40 cheaper when i got it from the US. Quality purchase.

[Retro Red]

I'm glad to hear that it's a good buy, I've had my eye on it for a while but a lot of people have complained that it's not very well built. Got a large collection of NES & SNES games and it'd be great to have a console to play both on that I can hook up to my Plasma TV without the usual picture issues. 

[CavemanLynn]

Pick up and play is well and truly dead. Like a lot of guys have said, it's all graphics and pushing the processing capabilities of whatever platform it's on. Great games are about puzzle solving within the limitations of the game, but these days it feels like developers add player functions so you feel like a pilot rather than a character in peril. There's no buzz anymore that matches hopping moving platforms in Marble Zone in Sonic or creeping around in a box in MGS for me. The last time I regularly gamed was in uni where we lived on an N64, Dreamcast and PS2, and even though we had Pro Evo, the footie game of choice was always UEFA Dream Soccer because of the hundreds of glitches. I want escapist fun, not slavish realism.