What's Wrong With Modern Games

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I'm back to address some criticism and questions about my list.

-Bloom (ZoMG arrgghhh)
"Bloom (sometimes referred to as light bloom or glow) is a computer graphics effect used in computer games, demos and high dynamic range rendering (HDR) to reproduce an imaging artifact of real-world cameras. The effect produces fringes (or feathers) of light around very bright objects in an image.

It has a reputation for being a visual boost on high-end demos, and has the advantage of taking focus away from uninteresting areas. It has therefore become an often used way of covering up low detailed areas, often due to the demogroups hardware, comporules or skill limitions for this particular demo."

Bloom effect everywhere

Bloom looks nice when it's used properly, but often developers just abuse the effect to make up for bland looking graphics.


-DLC that is not free (let's charge for that part of the game we intentionally left off)
I don't need to buy the stuff, but they shouldn't be selling stuff that should have been in the game I just bought in the first place. Often, whole areas of a game are in your game disk but inaccessible until you pay them. What a bunch of crooks.


-Charging to unlock stuff (ridiculous)
EA pulled this shit with one of their GTA clones and I'm sure others have done it. It made quite a splash on the intarweb because you had to pay to unlock certain weapons that were already in your game disk. lol. So I'm boycotting them now because they're a bunch of dicks.


-$60 dollar games (no)
Games were ridiculously overpriced for many years, so they came down in price to the more reasonable $40-50 when people realized they were getting ripped off only to shoot up to ridiculous prices like 60 bux again

-Online releases (PSN, XBLA games)
Take those online games, polish them up and put them on a disk for 30$. Total win. I can bring it to my friends' houses and I won't lose all my virtual property if my HD decides to crap out on me.


-Casual gaming (Cooking Mama selling like a million? lolz)
Nintendogs, Cooking Mama, Imagine Babiez, Brain Training and such games are insipid crap that don't deserve to sell. They just encourage devs to fill the market with crap to cash in on the tools. Fuck casual gaming. Give me a God Hand sequel. That is a game that deserves to sell like a gazillion.


-Licensed games (srsly stop buying that shit)
They been around for ages, but it's just getting worse.

[Neon]

Licensed games aren't all bad, don't really care about any of the other stuff.

Check out Data East's Jurassic Park pinball table. Awesome.

Actually I need to try one of those new Star Trek games, bet theey're badass

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I'm not talking about every game being bad. It's just that when almost every one of them is garbage, it's ok to generalize.

[iatneH]

That's the way the industry is going. If you don't like the new games then don't buy them, don't play them, and please leave the people who enjoy them alone. Nobody is stopping you from playing old games.

[Udderdude]

Nintendogs, Cooking Mama, Imagine Babiez, Brain Training and such games are insipid crap that don't deserve to sell. They just encourage devs to fill the market with crap to cash in on the tools. Fuck casual gaming. Give me a God Hand sequel. That is a game that deserves to sell like a gazillion.

So you'd rather developers make games that won't sell enough to pay the bills .. and then what? Will they ask for government grants to continue developing hardcore games that can't survive in the market? No, they will go out of business.

That is the reality of the market - there are far, far more non-gamers who just want a simple non-game to play around with in their spare time, than their are crazy hardcore gamers who refuse to play anything that doesn't require months of training to complete "properly" (1cc, 1lc, optimal score, etc).

Hardcore games will survive, but they will be relegated to the same niche status they are in now.

[DEL]

Seems like everyone so far has agreed with the grey and brown, with one exception.
Out of the top 50 PS2 best mainstream sellers, I did an image search on:
Metal Gear Solid - a sickly hue of green
Medal of Honour - in a tasteful 'fog grey'
Halo - I found 'sand' colour in addition to grey
God of War - sickly green, grey and some dull red
Twisted Metal Black - sickly green, grey, touch of yellow (sometimes)
Chrome Hounds - as it suggests = 1 colour ->monochrome
Tomb Raider - never more than 2 colours per screen - grey, brown. Blue did make an appearance...once.

The conclusion is that these western games never like to display more than 2 or max 3 colours per screen . Mostly 'depression inducing' colours. So UFO is right; all this next gen power and no use of the huge colour/color palette.

[PROMETHEUS]

I'm worried about PC gaming. I've heard a couple of times (on IGN) that some developers complain about piracy of PC games, for instance there's been a news lately that said crytek are thinking of not making PC exclusive games anymore after crysis sold "only" 1M copies so far compared to 4M copies for Halo3 in its first weeks of sales.

Solo FPS's often are incredible games and I hope developpers will find a way around piracy for the industry to come back in full health and produce more masterpieces.

Other than that I'm saddened by how stupid MMORPGs are the games that make the most money.

[Twiddle]

Crysis is a shitty game and worth shedding no tears over.

If PC gaming dying means changing the focus of the first person shooter genre from NEW BLING BLING GRAPHICS GIMMICK TECH DEMO to actually making gameplay faster and fun, I'm all for it.

[ED-057]

So you'd rather developers make games that won't sell enough to pay the bills .. and then what?

why are they racking up such huge bills in the first place? Sounds like you've uncovered the curse of modern gaming right there. Powerful target hardware and the associated high expectations for graphics necessitate large dev costs which in turn are funded by selling copious amounts of unoffensive filler-ware?

[Ex-Cyber]

To me, the thing that stands out about many (but not all) modern games is that they have basically lost touch with the concept of mastery, or more generally developing skill to do better in a game. It seems that most games now, to the extent that they encourage exhaustively playing/replaying, just reward any player who puts in enough time to grind through a checklist (or even unlock extras for merely putting in enough hours). Others are competitive, but usually not in a way that really rewards getting better at the game - if you don't play with others at a similar skill level, it's just not fun (almost every multiplayer FPS ever made, for example). Obviously, this is something that applies more to some genres than others - with RPGs, leveling and item collection is part of the experience, and I'm not suggesting that these should be replaced with button-mashing minigames or something. OTOH, it's annoying when action-oriented games like platformers are set up so that you can get "100% completion" more or less just by sitting in front of the screen long enough. This is related to the concept of modern games being too easy, but it's a different thing; it's not merely the degree of difficulty, but allowing the player to play so as to be able to achieve various levels and kinds of accomplishment. Arcade games tend to have this quality, but I don't think it's just a matter of losing the "arcade feel". Some non-arcade games/series that I think have this aspect include:

- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater / Underground: you have to be able to pull off the tricks/combos demanded by the game, so completion requires developing some skill. The game also scores whatever combos you can come up with, which allows for informal high score competition (provided that the scoring isn't broken; I haven't played enough to get a good sense of this)

- Mischief Makers: the basic game isn't so difficult, but to see the full ending you have to get an 'S' rank on every level.

- Super Mario 64: it's possible to "finish" the game with only a fraction of the total stars, but to get them all requires some dedication, and there's a special (if underwhelming) reward for people who do.

- Portal: You have to master certain maneuvers in order to keep going. Somewhat diminished to the extent that there is a designed solution for most of the rooms, but there is also a mode for finishing the puzzles with a minimum number of portals, and some rooms allow considerable shortcuts with creative use of the portals.

Hopefully this illustrates what I'm trying to get at. If not, oh well.

I think one huge culprit is the Hybridization of genres. I mean, something like Kingdom Hearts is interesting at first, but now every RPG developer is trying to cash in on the Action RPG market.

Action RPGs go back a lot farther than Kingdom Hearts (and I don't really see a post-KH "cash in" phenomenon) . My favorite action-RPG hybrids are ones from the 16-bit era developed by Quintet, Ancient (Yuzo Koshiro is always a plus), and Climax Entertainment. FWIW, I though KH was neat overall, but I don't really care for the gameplay. People have told me that KH2 is better, but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

-Licensed games (srsly stop buying that shit)
They been around for ages, but it's just getting worse.

I can't really agree with this; if anything, I think they're getting better. It used to be that a license was like an excuse to make a borderline-unplayable POS. Nowadays it seems like they usually manage to at least make them mediocre.

[JoshF]

DVDs don't cost $60 and I don't see any big studios going under.

[ROBOTRON]

so im the only person who has not bought in to this gens (ps3 360) consoles?

same here.

Better graphics does not a good game make. If the gameplay sux what good is eye candy?

New consoles hates shmuppers...we are the last thought of genre. Putting classic shmups on a nextgen doesn't count.

[Turrican]

Seems like everyone so far has agreed with the grey and brown, with one exception.
Out of the top 50 PS2 best mainstream sellers, I did an image search on:
Metal Gear Solid - a sickly hue of green
Medal of Honour - in a tasteful 'fog grey'
Halo - I found 'sand' colour in addition to grey
God of War - sickly green, grey and some dull red
Twisted Metal Black - sickly green, grey, touch of yellow (sometimes)
Chrome Hounds - as it suggests = 1 colour ->monochrome
Tomb Raider - never more than 2 colours per screen - grey, brown. Blue did make an appearance...once.

The conclusion is that these western games never like to display more than 2 or max 3 colours per screen . Mostly 'depression inducing' colours. So UFO is right; all this next gen power and no use of the huge colour/color palette.

You all sounds like you could support the Blue Sky in Games Campaign.
Get your banner here:

http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2005/11/b ... nched.html

[Etrian]

-Online releases (PSN, XBLA games)
Take those online games, polish them up and put them on a disk for 30$. Total win. I can bring it to my friends' houses and I won't lose all my virtual property if my HD decides to crap out on me.

This isn't a valid excuse at all. At all.

It seems like you're just nit-picking at random things to discredit the new generation of gaming, when in actual fact it isn't that bad.

A lot of games like N+ aren't big enough titles to warrant a retail release for a console, but they're fit for making an appearance on XBLA. It took the developers of N+ 220,000 dollars to get the game on Live Arcade, but it seems well worth it. By releasing it on XBLA, the game is available immediately and worldwide, and can be purchased immediately by adding points via a credit card. All of which can be done in the privacy of your own home.

The things you should be annoyed over is Xbox Live's service or how Microsoft won't remove your credit card unless you phone them. The rest of your complaints seem trivial to ones like these.

[MX7]

DVDs don't cost $60 and I don't see any big studios going under.

True. Obviously there's revenue taken in from theatrical releasing though.

The massively inflated cost of videogames these days is a direct hang up from the days when they HAD to cost a lot of money. Thankfully (for the game industry), the public has retained this schema.

[General Zod]

I’ve been playing video games since I can remember and one of the main differences I see now between modern and old skool gaming is the gradual rise of complexity. Some of the best selling and reputable games were successful because they were based on simplicity. I bought GTA IV the other day and now think I’ve bought into the hype. Sure, the story is deep but the controls are just insane. Response times hinder the game play, the player has to retain a lot of information, and the graphics are just standard, nothing special. But playing Mario I need to keep one thumb on one button and the other on the directional pad and save the princess – that’s it. OK so the graphics were pants but the concept was simple.

Plus games take too much time these days. I prefer holding X and releasing a condense array of fire power destroying meteorites than spend time wasting days on playing a complex story which once I complete will never play again in my life.

[JoshF]

True. Obviously there's revenue taken in from theatrical releasing though.

Same with rentals.

[DEL]

Turrican wrote; http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2005/11/b ... nched.html
^I'm glad that other people feel the same way.
It still wouldn't get me to play their non-skill based games, but it would be a move in the right direction.

Ex-Cyber wrote;

To me, the thing that stands out about many (but not all) modern games is that they have basically lost touch with the concept of mastery, or more generally developing skill to do better in a game. It seems that most games now, to the extent that they encourage exhaustively playing/replaying, just reward any player who puts in enough time to grind through a checklist (or even unlock extras for merely putting in enough hours).

Yes indeed, the removal of skill from such modern games has been discussed here before. For that matter, player skill has also been removed from UK fruit machines (AWPs), removing money making opportunities and bringing them down to a slot machine 'press Start' level . But hey, that's another story .

[PROMETHEUS]

Crysis is a shitty game and worth shedding no tears over.

If PC gaming dying means changing the focus of the first person shooter genre from NEW BLING BLING GRAPHICS GIMMICK TECH DEMO to actually making gameplay faster and fun, I'm all for it.

opposite of what's going to happen if all FPSs are now all made for consoles too. Do you like CoD4's MMORPG stupid gameplay more ? Or perhaps the overly simplified quake that Halo 3 is ? Do you find Shadowrun is fast ?

[The n00b]

Too many jrpgs with trite stories, boring enemy design, effeminate heroes, and horribly overly dramatic story telling.

[Ed Oscuro]

True. Obviously there's revenue taken in from theatrical releasing though.

Same with rentals.

Are you insinuating that publishers (let alone developers) see a dime of rental fees?

At the other end of the spectrum: To hear some game developers talk, the number of rentals is equivalent to that many sales lost (a similar argument is leveled at P2P).

As silly as that sounds, the name of the game is defraying costs. How many of us have spent more times with any single Star Wars video game than we did watching the original movie, or movies? I know I spent more time with Shadows of the Empire on N64 than I did watching all the SW movies, and I can't say I regret that (even though it wasn't really that great a game).

With all that said, movie studios only stay afloat because they continue to find sucker investors (Sony was one) to pay for them. When one actor is worth more than the rest of the production's budget, you know you're looking at a broken model. Still, it's the way they roll so they just swallow hard and keep trying. Combine that with pressure from non-traditional media, however, and I doubt the current movie studio model is going to hold up too many more decades.

[Twiddle]

opposite of what's going to happen if all FPSs are now all made for consoles too. Do you like CoD4's MMORPG stupid gameplay more ? Or perhaps the overly simplified quake that Halo 3 is ? Do you find Shadowrun is fast ?

It seems like you've never actually played the first two you mentioned, which isn't surprising considering you compared aimbots to autofire. Halo 3 is now like playing Counter-Strike with respawns and healing (which are removed in a gamemode), COD4's "MMORPG" elements are a shameless ripoff of Battlefield's (a PC game series) and is much faster than the aforementioned game to boot.

Shadowrun is shit, but not at all worse than Crysis.

PC FPS has been horribly stagnating overall, even with exceptions to the rule such as Stalker (funny fact: Far Cry 2 will now follow Stalker/Deus Ex's gameplay model instead of just be a tech demo!) And when the top of PC new releases are games that are completely unconventional, or make use of few graphics gimmicks (Portal and Team Fortress 2) it's a question of what players (as opposed to the people who break and upgrade their video cards every 2 months being impressed solely by slightly sharper textures or models covered in plastic wrap, such as FEAR and Crysis) find actually interesting.

[Ed Oscuro]

I have been playing Shadow Man on N64 via emuratar lately

It's fun but also kinda not; last night I must've spent six hours looking for an area again (because I had mentally sealed off a certain spot thinking I had come across it much earlier...eggh).

Lately, and Shadow Man is no exception, I've been feeling over and over that "this is nothing new, or even very good."

Good things you find in recent titles:
- SOME nice architecture and art (but also lots of square rooms for puzzles, wtf wolfenstein engine)
- some nice dialog and cutscenes (wtf ripped off lyrics from slayer? I can't tell the walkthrough I checked out was horrid)
- multiple systems for warping around an already confusing world
- hub system for persistent world shenanigans (but this is no Morrowind; it's basically "go trudge through this place again")
- butter and $2K
- Jaunty and this guy
- THIS

The bad:
- Tomb Raider style puzzles and an ongoing 2D style collectathon game where you crawl all over a world for so long that it eventually becomes bland and uninteresting. Hey how is this stimulating my enjoyment of exploration when I'm looking for some muddy discolored patch of texture for a doorway
- On that note, let's make lots of terrible jumps that you will need to attempt over and over hooray
- Horrible combat. Shadow Man tries to break the mold here by having enemies get back to full health
- even though Acclaim had their own comic book label their plots still suck

There's more but I'm losing points as they come to mind, sorry

basically the upshot of it is that games are all like "he hah ho go here and there WATCH OUT IT'S A MONSTER" and you can pay your money and takes your choice

The only thing most games have been doing right recently is in trying to strip back the amount of confusion and item swapping/fetching that many older games have. I would absolutely hate hunting out spare medkits in DOOM if I hadn't been doing it for over a decade. This is why I end up playing the old Rainbow Six games as a lone wolf.

tl;dr
Zelda has had too much influence, but like Contra the imitators forget the parts that make it good. Usually clones have too much crap added on top. Of course, Contra and Zelda games have often lacked replayability (and in the case of Zelda, there hasn't been much challenge in most of the games).

[bakaichi]

The first Zelda is my favorite in the series, and it's not for nostalgic reasons. I played it for the first time two years ago. I just love the simplicity in graphics and gameplay (which is conserved in later initiations fairly well). It's just a beatifull action adventure that really trigger my imagination. None of my friends agree though arguing ALTTP and OoT are better games with superior graphics and story.

I don't by or play next gen games. I've played some Xbox360 at a friends place and graphics failes to amaze me, it's fairly relistic I guess but hey! reality is all around me every day all the time, and I don't even like FPS so I don't want to comment on the gameplay. I got a Wii but hardly ever use it. There are so many great games from the 80s and 90s I haven't played yet.

[JoshF]

Are you insinuating that publishers (let alone developers) see a dime of rental fees?

No?

The stores have to at least buy the games don't they? Now runteldat lol.

[SockPuppetHyren]

Random note:

I cannot be the only one who finds it sad that today's gamers so babied that they can barely figure out that up and B in Smash brothers is their recovery move...

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

More suck:

- In-game advertisement: ok for some racing games. No no for everything else.

- Shiny game machines: holy shit what's wrong with people . Shiny game machines suck. Fingerprints everywhere and dirt magnet.

[Ed Oscuro]

- Shiny game machines: holy shit what's wrong with people :x. Shiny game machines suck. Fingerprints everywhere and dirt magnet.

Yeah, the DS should've been styled more like the HP-95lx.

[Udderdude]

- Shiny game machines: holy shit what's wrong with people . Shiny game machines suck. Fingerprints everywhere and dirt magnet.

Treat them with care and they won't look nasty.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

They look nasty even if I clean them (PSP, DS) nonstop. My phat DS didn't have that problem.