Why modern gaming sucks.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Furthermore, as someone who started out in the 8bit/16bit era, I can guarantee that the ratio of quality/crap games was no better then than it is now.

Quoted for truth.

There were so so many terrible games "back in the day". It probably gets worse going into 32 bit, because so much was produced just to show off the technology at the time and just doesn't hold up today.

Modern gaming is now about big bucks and carries a higher profile - so the shit gets more coverage. It doesn't suck by any stretch.

[MSW]

Modern gaming sucks because the arcades have died. I mean true arcades from 1979 till 1989. The fighting games that came after were the last gasp, a noble effort, but didn't live up to the real arcades of the 1980s. For a quarter, in 1979-1989, you could have fun with any random arcade game. At least more fun that you could with a random console title from the time frame.

[BryanM]

There were so so many terrible games "back in the day". It probably gets worse going into 32 bit, because so much was produced just to show off the technology at the time and just doesn't hold up today.

The 2600 era is the worst on so many levels. If something is recognizable as a game and you can stand playing for more than one life, it is a good game by the standards of the time. Montezuma's Revenge, not really par for the course on that beast. Custard's Revenge, is more typical.

Early polygon work was pretty heinous, insisting on using textures before they were really ready. Where everything looks like poo, which only worked for stuff like Silent Hill, where everything was covered in poo. Flat shading like in Mario 64, Space Station Silicon Valley, Tobal, Animal Crossing.... looked pretty nice all told.

[Evilmaxwar]

Early polygon work was pretty heinous, insisting on using textures before they were really ready. Where everything looks like poo, which only worked for stuff like Silent Hill, where everything was covered in poo. Flat shading like in Mario 64, Space Station Silicon Valley, Tobal, Animal Crossing.... looked pretty nice all told.

When i was playing Descent on my 486 back in 1995 i though it was one of the most marvelous 3d thing ever, until next year when quake got out. Both of these games aged well, but a crap load of early 3d did not.

[louisg]

Early polygon work was pretty heinous, insisting on using textures before they were really ready. Where everything looks like poo, which only worked for stuff like Silent Hill, where everything was covered in poo. Flat shading like in Mario 64, Space Station Silicon Valley, Tobal, Animal Crossing.... looked pretty nice all told.

When i was playing Descent on my 486 back in 1995 i though it was one of the most marvelous 3d thing ever, until next year when quake got out. Both of these games aged well, but a crap load of early 3d did not.

Totally true. I think the thing about Descent and Quake is that they used perspective-correct texturing, which is why everything isn't bending all over the place. Though, when people go back and play old PC DOS 3d games, they usually play them in a higher res than was feasible, making them forget that pixels were a random jumble in the background. And something like Quake really did not run at more than 20 FPS on (nearly?) anything at the time (and maybe wasn't expected to, judging from the jerky animation on the characters).

[CMoon]

Modern gaming sucks because the arcades have died. I mean true arcades from 1979 till 1989. The fighting games that came after were the last gasp, a noble effort, but didn't live up to the real arcades of the 1980s. For a quarter, in 1979-1989, you could have fun with any random arcade game. At least more fun that you could with a random console title from the time frame.

See, this is what I disagree with. Arcades (from my youthful perspective) seemed to die out in the late 80's because of the prevalence of consoles, but then re-emerged quickly with more vital and creative titles. IMO, the early 90's were and remain the golden period of video games, not just for fighters, side scrollers and shmups, but also just 2D art in general. Games also took something of a leap as far as gameplay mechanics. Obvious fighters introduced special input combinations, but new scoring mechanics were introduced as well. Again, in general, there's just a huge expansion of depth.

I tend not to understand the nostalgia for the late 80's so much (though there are a few gems), but I totally don't get writing off the early 90's. This is the period of gaming I wish could have lasted forever.

[louisg]

OK, let's settle this. I have a GamePro here from 1998, which was the peak of the 32-bit era. Now, let's see.

Well, here we have Gex on the cover, and the question is "Great Gex for Nintendo 64?". Ugh. NFS 2 and 1080 are also on the cover, but I don't know if that makes up for the fact that these guys are really excited about Gex. MK4 is also featured, and if you were around then you might be wondering why the hell everything has to be 3d-- especially considering how MK4 turned out. The last game featured is Marvel vs. Capcom, which is really pretty good.

Turning the mag to the inside ad, you see a huge spread for Blasto, which I am pretty sure nobody remembers now. It was one of those army of games that had wise-crackin' one-liners now that systems could store plenty of sound samples.

I flip past another ad for these 4 games: Blasto, Crash Bandicoot, Jet Moto, and 2Extreme, all of which suck but were pretty prominent back in the day. Here's an ad for Quake (n64 ver), which was really piss-poor as anything but a tech demo and comp sci experiment.. I flip past reviews for decent games like NFS3, Diablo PSX, and Rampage World Tour (hey, I said decent, not great). It's got Pitfall 3d getting high marks. I've never played it, but I can't imagine that doing anything but sucking. There are reviews for VR Sports Powerboat Racing and Speed Racer. Remember VR Sports? No? Ok, neither does anyone else. A 3d runaround ReBoot game (probably featuring a busted camera) gets good reviews, but it honestly looks pretty dire. Oh, here we go. Fighters Destiny. Mace: The Dark Age. All fine games

Oh, and here's the huge 8 page feature on the new Gex! Hooray!



This mag also came out at a point in time before Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time, and Gran Turismo. So, if you were stuck in May 1998, there's no playing those, either. Hope you're happy with crap like Reckin' Balls, Vigilante 8, Contra: LoW, and.. ooh, Bug! might get a cartoon show.. ARRGH!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Stuff that came out in 1998: Half-Life, Thief: The Dark Project, StarCraft, Unreal, Metal Gear Solid, OoT. Moreover, I cleared Apocalypse (starring Bruce Willis) recently. With analogue sticks and vibrations it was delicious.

Early polygon work was pretty heinous, insisting on using textures before they were really ready. Where everything looks like poo, which only worked for stuff like Silent Hill, where everything was covered in poo. Flat shading like in Mario 64, Space Station Silicon Valley, Tobal, Animal Crossing.... looked pretty nice all told.

Um, yes and no. I agree that Brown & Grey™ texturing worked in very few games (Quake, Silent Hill, Vagrant Story - graphically marred by clumsy character animations and weird proportions, but texturing can't be blamed for it). That being said, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Bomber, Tail Concerto and a handful of other polygonal games had pretty clean and tidy texturing. Of course no matter how good textures PSX games had, with the optional PS2 smudging enabled they all look rather bad (sheer thought somebody out there may be actually using it gives me the creeps). Even early interlaced 3D worked not just for flat shaded stuff like Tobal 2, but also for Ehrgeiz - a game with decent texturing, high resolution (since there was no hardware deflickering and texture filtering, looks sharper and cleaner than most PS2 games), low-poly yet likeable models, solid framerate and excellent animations.
Granted, I play those games in best possible conditions (good CRT with a SCART socket and an RGB lead).
So it was more nuanced than just "early texturing sucks". Sucks in R-Type Delta, works a treat in Einhänder and so on. The thing I like about software rendering and those lo-res, pixellated textures is sharpness. Pixel art can be good or bad and the same can be said about early texturing.

[louisg]

I dunno, Einhander is pretty bendy, but reasonably nice looking. At best, texture mapping on the PSX and Saturn was only a little warpy. I'd say they jumped the gun on offering that feature.

And Half-Life was a prime example of why I could not wait for that generation to end. It was slick as PC games go, which I think was why it is so fondly remembered. But it had a broken autosave system (which had on occasion saved me about 300 milliseconds before death, and my prev. save was a ways back). The AI was busted-- sure, it threw grenades back, but I could get it to do weird unnatural things pretty frequently, and it often wasn't clear if my hits were registering. It had cinematics where you could die if you weren't hanging back and admiring them (walk into a room and die from a scripted explosion kind of thing). And the entire thing, like other PC games at the time, was pretty much balanced for quicksave/restore/quicksave/restore. That's about as fun as saving compulsively because you're worried a game might crash. I don't really like Halo a whole lot, but checkpoints were a much better idea. IMO, Half Life is all cinematics, no gameplay.

[Obiwanshinobi]

At best, texture mapping on the PSX and Saturn was only a little warpy.

After a long period of playing PC games I could barely stand it, but then it's become an acquired taste for me. Current gen games are full of just as quirky effects overdone merely because developers had no better idea what to do with the shaders.

I'd say they jumped the gun on offering that feature.

Do you think this would look better with no textures whatsoever?

And the entire thing, like other PC games at the time, was pretty much balanced for quicksave/restore/quicksave/restore. That's about as fun as saving compulsively because you're worried a game might crash.

Max Payne was designed along those lines and I didn't mind one bit. So was Thief.

[maxlords]

Thief was one of the best PC games EVER. Graphics don't matter...the game is just amazing. Also... OoT is one of the most overrated games EVER IMO. Mind you I said IMO....I've never not gotten slammed for saying that....

[Skykid]

OoT is one of the most overrated games EVER IMO. Mind you I said IMO....I've never not gotten slammed for saying that....

It's not.
Consider yourself slammed.

[neorichieb1971]

Comparing graphics from 98 to today? Lol. Gaming was better then because studios were working with moving technology. Now its matured they have found the nest and now only an atom bomb will move them from it.

Mind you, with me not buying shit these days (new games wise) and everyone else pirating i'm surprised there is a games industry at all. Not to mention some tidbits I just read about the 3DS now giving people headaches.

Keep it simple guys.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Piracy has been around since the dawn of computer gaming. PC gaming has been "dying" for nearly as long as it exists as well. Not quite unlike the Roman Catholic Church.
It's not like Capcom has not been exploiting Rockman/Mega Man for over twenty years now, recycling the engines and stuff.

[Siren2011]

Mind you, with me not buying shit these days (new games wise) and everyone else pirating i'm surprised there is a games industry at all.

I've thought about this too, and it applies to the movie industry as well. At what point does nearly everyone stop buying new games and seeing new films (or music for that matter)? At what point does this become a big enough problem to put Hollywood and the videogame equivalents (Bungie, Rockstar,etc) out of business? Federal agencies don't have a great enough hold on piracy (I'm not saying they should, or shouldn't). The shittier this economy gets, the more people are going to be tempted to download their shit instead of buying it. Hell, the last game that I bought (which was worth more than I paid for it) was Bayonetta...and that was the last current gen game that got me hyped.

Then again, hackers are a minority, and copy protection seems to be the only thing keeping most people from pirating the new games. But it sure as hell doesn't stop them from not buying them.

The more creative gems (Mirror's Edge) will most likely never get sequels, and it's only a matter of time before people move on from COD4 to the next mediocre gaming fad. Things look pretty bad, man. We'll most likely never see a truly revolutionary console again, either. The 360 is an awesome graphical powerhouse, but after that all I see in the future are shitty iphone games and Wii 2.

[Domino]

Early polygon work was pretty heinous, insisting on using textures before they were really ready. Where everything looks like poo, which only worked for stuff like Silent Hill, where everything was covered in poo. Flat shading like in Mario 64, Space Station Silicon Valley, Tobal, Animal Crossing.... looked pretty nice all told.

When i was playing Descent on my 486 back in 1995 i though it was one of the most marvelous 3d thing ever, until next year when quake got out. Both of these games aged well, but a crap load of early 3d did not.

And even today D1 and D2 are still killer games to play nowadays. Descent is still my favorite PC game series ever. Too bad they are only few people who play both games online.

[Ex-Cyber]

We'll most likely never see a truly revolutionary console again, either. The 360 is an awesome graphical powerhouse, but after that all I see in the future are shitty iphone games and Wii 2.

Yeah, the hardware tech on the PC and console side is more or less "done", at least until revolutions happen in related fields. A faster console to consistently support 1080p and ease the RAM limits a bit would be sort of nice to have, but there's basically nowhere obvious to go beyond that, and it's not necessarily enough to support a new console generation. Displays larger than 1080p aren't going to become standard anytime soon, and Moore's Law has nearly run its course. Everything after the 11nm node (Intel is selling 32nm today and has 22nm in production, and is building a facility for 16nm) is premised on the discovery and development of devices fundamentally different from MOS transistors; there will likely be Nobel Prizes in physics and/or chemistry involved.

[BryanM]

I have a GamePro here from 1998, which was the peak of the 32-bit era. Now, let's see.

Heh heh, a magazine? How... retro.

It feels like the magazines in GameCenter CX that obsessed over 3-4 games a year.

[CMoon]

Just to point out that there are new games that don't suck, LA Noire is looking awesome. Although there are not as many titles coming out now as it seems like there used to be, there are some great titles of one sort or another. I imagine somewhere on some FPS forum, there are gamers talking about how only modern gaming is good.

[dcharlie]

Portal 2 is out next week, Child of Eden not long either, LA Noire as well, Armoured Core 5 is now basically Chromehounds 2, a stack of indie offerings, 3DS launched with Ghost Recon which is excellent, Last Guardian coming soon... i dunno, looks pretty okay to me and that's without stretching too far to go pick out all the good stuff.

[MadScientist]

Plus you get games like Hard Corps: Uprising released at $15 and people will still complain that it's too expensive. Even the crappy PS1 Contras probably launched at double that price.

[Observer]

What I really miss is the creative things from "renowned" studios of old for PC. You could name Sierra, Shiny Enterainment, Epic Games (f$·%·$% traitors, yeah, I said it) and you knew they guaranteed awesome stuff. Hell, there was a moment when even Electronic Arts was great.

You people keep mentioning Descent and I wanted to add Forsaken. And Freespace 2. Goddammit, I still remember how my jaw dropped at the nebulae effects and the BIG LAZ0RS (c), missile barrages and ridiculously gigantic ships (I think it was the game with the biggest ships ever, if anyone remembers the Shivan Juggernaut Sathanas or whatever it was called). Then Starlancer, Freelancer (and thanks to the Itano Circus mod I keep playing it now and then!), Echelon...

Same deal with another of my favourite genres: RTS. Hopefully there are still of those but, man, would love something like the Homeworld series. It had the best narrator ever hands down, great voice acting in general (plus a lot of radio chattering, some of it pretty hilarious), nice strategic planning (you had to think in real 3D with many ship formations and options, the original had fuel taken into consideration for small crafts), it even had some of the best music on a PC game (the Garden of Kadesh, the Turanic raiders, the Bentusi, the freaking Adagio for Strings you heard in Platoon and a Yes song) and a sequel/expansion (Cataclysm) that succeeded in being scarier than any survival horror.

Yes, you were directing an army but the Beast was pretty well fleshed out, coupled with ominous music (and the screams you heard when the ships got infected) that you had to plan things with extra care to avoid losing most of your units. Starcraft 2 storyline/excuse feels like a joke in comparison... (especially the "In utter darkness" mission, with the bad guy spewing some of the most retarded one liners, especially when the mission is over) And I paid $10 for Cataclysm, and it was one of those big awesome PC boxes of old. Man I miss those too, they came with books and shit.

Or FPSes like, indeed, Serious Sam (bless CroTeam) or Clive Barker's Undying. The combination of a left handed irish crazy guy decapitating people with a scythe as well as the enemies having a complete set of different attacks and behaviors (like the surrealist "I-have-a-cluster-of-stars-instead-of-a-face" Verago or the Sil-Lith) was priceless.

Games like Amnesia, Penumbra and such give me hopes, there is people trying to do different stuff. Even in the mecha genre you have this game called Hawken that tries to cater to the Mechwarrior fans.

[Evilmaxwar]

Too bad they are only few people who play both games online.

Descent 1 and 2 online ! Good lord i did not even know you could play these online. I have not played these games for ages. Sadly my net connection is very laggy i cant really play online games other than RTS

And something like Quake really did not run at more than 20 FPS on (nearly?) anything at the time (and maybe wasn't expected to, judging from the jerky animation on the characters).

With an almighty pentium 133mhz, it would run fairly full speed smooth most of the time in full screen. But of course most people still had crappier systems. To play it on my 486 i needed to make the screen very small and it sucked.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I was gonna mention that indie mech game Hawken, for a very small indie team it looks really well polished. Speaking of indie shooters thats that indie / fan developed online FPS that has a look of Doom 3 but with walking sharks as usual I cant remember the name but im sure many of you guys know what game im going on about.

Heres one of those exta credit vids off the escapist site, The writer (a game dev) paints a rosy picture like many of his vids do. Personally while I agree that more change is coming. I think much of it wont be good for me personally. Still I dont have a crystal ball so who knows how the future will be

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... -Florentis

[Blackbird]

Hopefully there are still of those but, man, would love something like the Homeworld series. It had the best narrator ever hands down, great voice acting in general (plus a lot of radio chattering, some of it pretty hilarious), nice strategic planning (you had to think in real 3D with many ship formations and options, the original had fuel taken into consideration for small crafts), it even had some of the best music on a PC game (the Garden of Kadesh, the Turanic raiders, the Bentusi, the freaking Adagio for Strings you heard in Platoon and a Yes song) and a sequel/expansion (Cataclysm) that succeeded in being scarier than any survival horror.

Man, I still remember playing the original Homeworld and watching the opening scene where Adagio for Strings plays. What a gut punch... easily one of the most dramatic moments in gaming.

Don't bring Rockstar into this thread, though. Argh, I absolutely cannot -stand- them. I hate everything about them. Credited with creating the most boring, uninspired genre and a whole generation of obnoxious imitators. You know who else had really interesting, open worlds that you could freely explore? NINTENDO. And they did it a decade or more earlier. Also, their whole gangster/glorifiying crime shtick is f**king annoying, particularly because it only encourages young people to engage in these behaviors/attitudes even more than they already do.

Ah, I can feel the rage rising already. I'd better stop before I get on a rant.

[MSW]

See, this is what I disagree with. Arcades (from my youthful perspective) seemed to die out in the late 80's because of the prevalence of consoles, but then re-emerged quickly with more vital and creative titles. IMO, the early 90's were and remain the golden period of video games, not just for fighters, side scrollers and shmups, but also just 2D art in general. Games also took something of a leap as far as gameplay mechanics. Obvious fighters introduced special input combinations, but new scoring mechanics were introduced as well. Again, in general, there's just a huge expansion of depth.

I tend not to understand the nostalgia for the late 80's so much (though there are a few gems), but I totally don't get writing off the early 90's. This is the period of gaming I wish could have lasted forever.

As I said, that was the last gasp of the arcades.

In 1983-1985 when the console market was in the middle of the crash. Arcades were hopping. You could play Dragon's Lair, Q*bert, Pac-Man, I Robot, Karate Champ, Robotron, Xevious, Galaga, Elevator Action, Qix, Crossbow, Gun.smoke, Yie Ar Kung-Fu; this list really could go on. Point is the arcades in this time frame have no equal for the depth and diversity of the games on display, all lined up you you to sink your quarters into. Everything evolved from this point. Every. Thing!

[drauch]

It had cinematics where you could die if you weren't hanging back and admiring them (walk into a room and die from a scripted explosion kind of thing). IMO, Half Life is all cinematics, no gameplay.

What are you talking about? Half-life has no cinematics whatsoever. Scripted events, yeah, but you were always in control (which is why you died). If anything Half-Life is all gameplay.

[BryanM]

Lay off Doesn't Mean Anything Designs. So what if they encouraged some kids to grow up and become rocket foxes or play ping/pong?



Man, what kind of monster would hate Lemmings...

[louisg]

It had cinematics where you could die if you weren't hanging back and admiring them (walk into a room and die from a scripted explosion kind of thing). IMO, Half Life is all cinematics, no gameplay.

What are you talking about? Half-life has no cinematics whatsoever. Scripted events, yeah, but you were always in control (which is why you died). If anything Half-Life is all gameplay.

Dude.. the entire first 15 minutes of the game is you on a train ride during opening credits. There's not even the first hint of action until way after that. Just because you can move around does NOT mean that the game isn't all cinematics (just like Dragon's Lair).

I'd say they jumped the gun on offering that feature.

Do you think this would look better with no textures whatsoever?

Good question.. I guess I'd say that it might have looked better by using a flat perspective plane and using maybe some sprite tricks for railing. If you look at the seams in the floor or crates, they're all bent, which is really pretty bad looking. Maybe even nice 2d isometric art would have been a good choice. The main problem with only accelerating non-perspective-correct uninterpolated texture mapping and polygons is that it practically rules out the use of nicer-looking techniques that are specific to certain game/graphics styles such as raycasting or voxels. I don't think I saw a game with those on that platform, though AMOK did look very nice on Saturn.

And the entire thing, like other PC games at the time, was pretty much balanced for quicksave/restore/quicksave/restore. That's about as fun as saving compulsively because you're worried a game might crash.

Max Payne was designed along those lines and I didn't mind one bit. So was Thief.

I think that kind of design just enables the level designers to not have to concentrate on whether or not there are cheap deaths everywhere (aka balanced for God Mode). It's pretty incompetent imo. That's one thing that I've seen done a LOT better this gen, even on a not-quite-that-great game like F.E.A.R., which I was playing with a friend a few weeks back.

Another thing along those lines that Udderdude brought to my attention is that Doom 1 is exceptional in that it has a shotgun at the start of almost each level. You can save for convenience, but the game is perfectly playable without saves since you can power up to a decent level after death. I put this to the test a couple years back and played through 2 and a half episodes, dying, recovering, no saves. It's great because it allows the player to put his attention on the game instead of CTRL-Sing.. errr.. I mean quicksaving like a nervous tick. You can't even do that in Doom 2 or Heretic, which is a shame (at least Heretic is good about not having instadeaths).

[Domino]

Descent 1 and 2 online ! Good lord i did not even know you could play these online. I have not played these games for ages. Sadly my net connection is very laggy i cant really play online games other than RTS

Yes you can. If you have the latest D1 and D2 Win32 versions of D2X-XL it uses TCP/IP so you can play people online. Of course there's Kali but more people just chat than play online.

It's a shame, in a few more years they will be nobody playing these games online anymore.

I mess the mid to late 90s PC games when FPS were becoming popular. I guess I like the vibe from that era of gaming.

Edit: Go here: http://www.descentbb.net/index.php

It's the old Descent BB. People still go there. If you want to play online or get more info on D1-3 this is the place. I don't play Descent 3 online anymore since of lack of time.