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originally posted in: #modern gaming sucks
6/27/2024 4:15:25 PM
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I can’t watch the video ‘cause I’m at work, but I’ll bet you 50 snails he only talks about big name AAA games, and does so while leaving out most anything Nintendo, and other similarly great devs like From Software.
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  • ijokeijoke

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  • https://youtu.be/cBmUWl_D6sQ?si=5ZlDW_jragnNLaiG

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  • https://youtu.be/HCmNJ5nMn3A?si=lGUtOmWeUB--t41S

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  • indie games are pretty bleak as well in my estimation, and i play quite a few of them. nintendo took 7 years to release a zelda game with the same overworld map geometry as its preceding installment for 60+ dollars, which is practically unheard of for them. from software's success could only happen in a gaming era this anemic; if there were plentiful alternatives their output would be correctly clocked as modern equivalents of two worlds and hydelide. they're the 'best' of a bad bunch. you can in fact find enjoyment in modern gaming, but when the highest fidelity products on the market are remakes of content more talented people who left the industry years ago created, it isn't a great sign.

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  • What indie games are you playing to say that they're bleak? Not counting this last month--where I was explicitly not spending any money--I've always found something really good whenever looking for something to play. Just recently, I started Rusted Moss, Quantum Protocol, and Freedom Planet 2, and all of them are pretty spectacular. Like, seriously, almost all of my favorite games have come out in the last couple of years. I mentioned this on the other thread--the one that made Loner make this one in the first place--but I genuinely think gaming is at some of the best it's ever been, as long as you don't focus on the trash like Fortnight. As for Nintendo, BotW/TotK are definitely the exception. I personally don't like either of them, but they're also pretty much the only thing Nintendo has put out that I'd argue isn't up to quality. Splatoon 3, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Pikmin 4, and while we don't [i]technically[/i] have a new Mario Kart, the more recent MK8DX DLC literally doubled the amount of tracks in the game, so I'd consider that a modern release too, which was fantastic. And that's not even mentioning the stunning remasters they've been putting out, like TTYD and Metroid Prime. Saying that From Software actually sucks and is only popular because everything else sucks more is a ridiculous statement. They're not "the best of the worst" they're genuinely great. Their games are among some of the best action RPGs period--not just in modern gaming, but of all time. If they're not your thing, that's fine, but trying to say they aren't high quality is silly. I'll admit, looking at your favorite games list on the other thread, you do seem to play a wider variety of games than most of the people who try to argue that "modern gaming is dead", which does at least give your opinion a little more validity than the people who exclusively play CoD & Halo. Even so, though, I still think it's a rather ridiculous claim. I've never been able to hop onto (insert game store of your choice here) and reliably find amazing games as easy than I have in the most recent console generations.

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  • Edited by die wily: 6/28/2024 1:39:36 AM
    [quote]Like, seriously, almost all of my favorite games have come out in the last couple of years.[/quote]That's good, at least. From my perspective, the indie gaming market peaked with the Hotline Miami stuff in 2012-2015 times (and even those were essentially flash game re-skins of Mission Impossible for the NES). Stuff like UnReal World and Dwarf Fortress are also fine but they've been in development for decades and aren't really part of this recent glut of indie games. I enjoyed Journey and a few of the games similar to Journey, but that was on the PS3. [quote]Splatoon 3, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Pikmin 4, and while we don't [i]technically[/i] have a new Mario Kart, the more recent MK8DX DLC literally doubled the amount of tracks in the game, so I'd consider that a modern release too, which was fantastic.[/quote]i played origami king and didn't beat it, it was okay i guess. [quote]Saying that From Software actually sucks and is only popular because everything else sucks more is a ridiculous statement. They're not "the best of the worst" they're genuinely great. Their games are among some of the best action RPGs period--not just in modern gaming, but of all time. If they're not your thing, that's fine, but trying to say they aren't high quality is silly.[/quote]They aren't high quality, though. They're specifically the Ocarina of Time shadow dungeon but the whole game. I kinda liked that shadow dungeon, I kinda liked Devil May Cry 3, but I really do feel like if every studio was still firing out max fidelity products at the rate of the PS2 era then every Souls-type game would be about as popular as Tenchu or Bushido Blade or Another Century's Episode. They're not 'bad,' but products of around their quality used to be dismissed because the cap was just that high. I don't even particularly enjoy castlevania games but CV4 and SotN have some really good soundscapes, and stuff like Grim Fandango and Beneath a Steel Sky and Planescape Torment are genuinely interesting even if you just watch a longplay of them. With Dark Souls you get a somewhat Diablo 1 and 2 tone in a game that plays like Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (which to be clear, is pretty fine). It's not bad, it's just the darling of an era of gaming that's creatively adrift. This industry won't even make a genuinely new Metal Gear or Silent Hill game anymore, let alone something like Parodius or Darius Gaiden or Metal Warriors again. [quote]I'll admit, looking at your favorite games list on the other thread, you do seem to play a wider variety of games than most of the people who try to argue that "modern gaming is dead", which does at least give your opinion a little more validity than the people who exclusively play CoD & Halo. Even so, though, I still think it's a rather ridiculous claim. I've never been able to hop onto (insert game store of your choice here) and reliably find amazing games as easy than I have in the most recent console generations.[/quote]I don't believe modern gaming is dead, I just think the creative spikes were highest in the 90s and tapered off by around 2006 times. There's a lot of QoL improvements across the board and you're less likely to get a game like Star Control 2 DOS where the sound card just mangles the entire game into jagged audio, but you also aren't getting Star Control 2's or Homeworld 1's scenario fidelity anymore. It's a mixed bag, and from my perspective it's a lull, but the industry isn't 'for' my perspective particularly so that's ok. I'm glad you enjoy the games you do. I'll check out the ones you listed I haven't played.

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  • Ah, well, your stance on this topic is a lot more nuanced than I find a lot of people's to be, so while I still don't agree I can at least sort of understand where you're coming from a bit more. Most folk I see on this topic do very much take the stance "modern gaming is dead". From my experience, a lot of the time, these are people who tend to center their gaming experiences around a single franchise, or small groups of franchises (most commonly 'round these parts being Halo and CoD), and since those particular franchises have taken a dip in quality, they tend to associate that with the whole market. This tends to be especially prevalent for FPS fans, which I will admit is a genre that seems especially vulnerable to the issues the industry does have for some reason. In any case, though; [quote]indies[/quote] I find that with indies, the more willing you are to leave your comfort zone, the better off you'll be. I love to hop onto the market every now and then, and just scroll through things, clicking on anything that looks even remotely interesting. While they aren't always winners, of course, I can almost always find something good. What's especially fun is when I hop out of my preferred genres, and find something entirely new. Othercide for instance was a really nice surprise, because I usually kinda hate X-COM styled games, but I found Othercide to be genuinely amazing. Admittedly, the indie market is a little flooded with Metroidvanias and Roguelikes, but I mean, trends are trends, and the important thing is despite the prevalence of these two genres, it's still pretty easy to find stuff that's neither if you look around. The important part, I find, is to go into the marketplace not looking for anything in particular. [quote]Nintendo[/quote] Admittedly, I didn't play Origami King, so that one may not have been great. I couldn't say. Still, my point was less that everything they do is amazing, more that they're pumping out a lot of amazing games that are. Unsurprisingly, I find a lot of the "gaming is dead" crowd don't play Nintendo games, usually because they brush them off as being too kiddy, and I noticed when looking at the thumbnail above it non-coincidentally had an Xbox and PS5 game on it, and nothing Nintendo. [quote]From Software[/quote] I don't know, I still can't really buy the argument that FromSoft games aren't high quality. I think you could maybe make this argument for the first Dark Souls (and probably Demon's Souls, I didn't play that one), but DaSII and onwards? With rare exception, they have really great level design, and are very well polished. But I don't know, I also disagree that games used to be higher quality or more creative than they are now, so that may be where we differ. If you were to put me at gunpoint, and force me to only play one generation of consoles for the rest of my life, I would choose Xbox One/PS4/Switch no question, and that's coming from someone who started gaming with the N64. I kind of genuinely don't understand where this attitude that games of previous generations somehow had something that the current generations don't. As mentioned above, I think there are specific franchises that were better back in the day, but overall I don't think the industry has "lost its spark" or anything like that. If nothing else, I find a lot of modern games that built off of classic titles, like Bug Fables to TTYD for instance, have by and large improved on the formula. As a side note, I'm not a big horror game guy, so I didn't play the old Silent Hills, but I know a lot of Silent Hill fans enjoy Signalis, and I quite enjoy Signalis too. Good game to look into. [quote]Creative spike[/quote] I dunno, though. I think the most I would be able to agree is that maybe a lot of the big studios are in a lull, maybe? As I mentioned, there are a lot of franchises or individual companies that used to be better back in the day, and so when people focus on them, such as comparing Destiny to Halo, I think it's easy to develop a negative outlook on things. I find that generally speaking, the more people are willing to let go of the past, the more they're able to enjoy gaming in the present. Once some realizes that the next great Halo game doesn't need to be Halo itself, then they can look whatever Halo's spiritual successor would be and appreciate the industry more. Don't ask me what the spiritual successor to Halo would be, though. I don't actually know if there is one; I don't play FPS games very often, but I think you get my point. :p

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  • Edited by die wily: 6/28/2024 6:08:03 AM
    [quote]Most folk I see on this topic do very much take the stance "modern gaming is dead". From my experience, a lot of the time, these are people who tend to center their gaming experiences around a single franchise, or small groups of franchises (most commonly 'round these parts being Halo and CoD), and since those particular franchises have taken a dip in quality, they tend to associate that with the whole market.[/quote]that's kinda just the police academy 5 / highlander rule of diminishing returns sequels and franchises incur. as creative endeavors the spirit of innovation is strongest with the first installment or two and then tapers off into a normalized / inert formula. [quote]This tends to be especially prevalent for FPS fans, which I will admit is a genre that seems especially vulnerable to the issues the industry does have for some reason.[/quote]FPS as a genre is odd because it's always been a quantity over quality game for them. games like resident evil 4 seem to end around the time they're out of ideas but wolfenstein and doom all took this approach of 'as many levels as the game can fit in it'. i think it's less about the genre getting worse (which it very arguably actually has) and more that when you reach a certain age you notice how uniform and trite it always was. the truth is that making unique maps that are fun and distinct is hard work and it's hard work on top of a gamble, so not every game is SWAT 4 fidelity and the games that *are* SWAT 4 fidelity tend to be insured against failure with one to three Modern Gaming-isms that tend to soil the tone of the experience in the name of the company actually making their money back. [quote] What's especially fun is when I hop out of my preferred genres, and find something entirely new. Othercide for instance was a really nice surprise, because I usually kinda hate X-COM styled games, but I found Othercide to be genuinely amazing.[/quote]the best 'TRPG' rebelstar/xcom-like i've found outside of xcom itself is probably [url=https://cdn.mobygames.com/covers/4288746-tactics-ogre-snes-front-cover.jpg]tactics ogre[/url]. i've heard good things about final fantasy tactics and fire emblem but i've not really found anything i myself like in those. for whatever reason that genre has been a go-to recently for inert IPs like metal slug and rabbids. i think into the breach might've kicked off the trend but idk. [quote]Nintendo I find a lot of the "gaming is dead" crowd don't play Nintendo games, usually because they brush them off as being too kiddy, and I noticed when looking at the thumbnail above it non-coincidentally had an Xbox and PS5 game on it, and nothing Nintendo.[/quote]nintendo makes games that look like they belong on a playstation 2 so anyone who's into buying new GPUs and monitors tends to be ambivalent to them. they're not seen as pushing the envelope in any meaningful way, and if i'm being honest the SNES was their best console library and probably always will be. in terms of creativity nintendo is also bogged down in remasters and sequels that are functionally the same as what came before, but that basically goes for the entire industry at this juncture. [quote]From Software I don't know, I still can't really buy the argument that FromSoft games aren't high quality. I think you could maybe make this argument for the first Dark Souls (and probably Demon's Souls, I didn't play that one), but DaSII and onwards? With rare exception, they have really great level design, and are very well polished.[/quote]i feel like spatial fidelity in games is an afterthought. super metroid has 'good level design' but i'd be hard pressed to logistically explain how zebes works in-universe because it's simply not built to be considered in that way. there's scant few examples of games where the designers put effort into making it seem like a holistically functional environment, and fewer still that are fun on top of all that. dark souls is absolutely just slapdash doom and gloom setpieces without much cogent throughline, and the settings are NES-style mishmashes of miscellaneous nouns. compare that to the thief games or the half life games or even the left 4 dead games and the difference is night and day. the genuine sense that you're actually exploring a place that could exist is rare and mostly done by fluke stuff like shenmue. because it's a big resource drain and doesn't necessarily result in fun, so again companies don't risk it. [quote]But I don't know, I also disagree that games used to be higher quality or more creative than they are now, so that may be where we differ. If you were to put me at gunpoint, and force me to only play one generation of consoles for the rest of my life, I would choose Xbox One/PS4/Switch no question, and that's coming from someone who started gaming with the N64. I kind of genuinely don't understand where this attitude that games of previous generations somehow had something that the current generations don't.[/quote]well the N64 had an anemic library for a console and the ps4 and switch are both mainly consoles you buy to play the libraries of older consoles you didn't buy. also, that attitude came from the SNES and PS2 eras and also the era where 3D rendering technology and sprite work was novel innovation. both of those things are pretty pedestrian now so there's not as much talent or wonder behind them of-themselves anymore. in terms of reactivity games have probably been getting worse since the NES era in the name of visual fidelity (ie, Castlevania 1 has extremely good controls and attacks and enemy placement; Castlevania 4 feels uncanny but it's easier and prettier). it's hard to express in words but something like Oddworld Stranger's Wrath or Pajama Sam 2 are extremely simple and have like 8 minutes of dialogue in them each but they capture emotions and settings extremely well and then end, and a modern game would be like Assassin's Creed [Country] where you play Assassin's Creed platforming on a map of a region for a few dozen hours and then struggle for positive adjectives to describe the experience afterward. It's arguably more content rich but it's all saltine crackers in flavor. You're eating paper, but it's as much paper as you want. [quote]As mentioned above, I think there are specific franchises that were better back in the day, but overall I don't think the industry has "lost its spark" or anything like that.[/quote]it absolutely has lost its spark. a lot of the big industry talent's best work was in the 90s or early 2000s, after which they either left the industry, were promoted out of development, bought out by a holding company, or reduced to kickstarter spiritual successors to previous works. a lot of the industry is stuck making sequels and remasters; a lot of the indie industry is similarly picking some random old game(s) and tweaking the resulting fruitcake with modern QoL and putting it up for 20-40 dollars. it very much feels been there, done that, and to be honest you're better off just reading almost any book over playing a modern game around 100% of the time. it's sad state of affairs but it's just where it is. [quote]As a side note, I'm not a big horror game guy, so I didn't play the old Silent Hills, but I know a lot of Silent Hill fans enjoy Signalis, and I quite enjoy Signalis too. Good game to look into.[/quote]i actually know about this one. signalis reminds me more of resident evil and another indie game called iconoclasts. there's a half life 2 mod called gstring (yes, really) that's around the same quality, and another game that i think is called 'brigador'(?). pretty enjoyable. [quote] I dunno, though. I think the most I would be able to agree is that maybe a lot of the big studios are in a lull, maybe? As I mentioned, there are a lot of franchises or individual companies that used to be better back in the day, and so when people focus on them, such as comparing Destiny to Halo, I think it's easy to develop a negative outlook on things.[/quote]it isn't just franchises, it's game formats. 'the best tactical squad shooter single player FPS' is still probably swat 4, a game that came out 19 years ago. the best roller skating game is still probably jet set radio future (or a game that looks exactly like it made 20 years later by a jet set radio future fan in his basement). the best stealth game is still thief 2 or hitman 2 or metal gear solid 1, all of which were released around 25 years ago. the best sandbox open world game is either GTA san andreas, 4, or 5 and all of them were 11+ years ago. there are scant few examples of modern games doing an idea better than it's ever been done, and most 'new' genres are actually just new monetization methods on worse versions of old genres. so we still have puzzle games but now the puzzle is how to figure out when the puzzle game has slowed down enough to progression gate you behind MTX. [quote]I find that generally speaking, the more people are willing to let go of the past, the more they're able to enjoy gaming in the present.[/quote]It's more that any sense of object permanence reveals the quality fade, and that new games are basically for onramping new generations who personally don't remember old games. Again this industry isn't 'for' people who grow up and continue to hope for commander keen 8 and get disappointed, it's for 6 year olds learning what money is by clicking the wrong buttons in battle cats. That's just what it is, and the people looking for richer experiences are upset about needing to migrate to different hobbies after the gaming well was tapped for them. Like the next Halo 1... is you maturing and reading Ender's Game and Starship Troopers and Larry Niven's Ringworld and Iain M Bank's Excession. The industry isn't particularly capable of giving you that, it's something a person undertakes themselves.

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  • I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I'll admit I'm a little tired of the topic (not your fault, I was discussing this with Loner before our discussion, and I'm just a little worn out from it), but I will say I don't consider any recent console being "a console to make up for the games you missed". I really love playing old games, so don't be under the impression I dislike them or anything, but even if you removed all the remasters and remakes, I'd still choose the PS4/Xbox One/Switch console generation if you forced me to only play one forever. While there are some genres that I'd still consider the best game to be older, for the most part I prefer the newer games; Imo; The best stealth game/immersive sim is Dishonored 2 The best open world game is Elden Ring The best racing game is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (which is technically a remaster, but the inclusion of 200cc and the new 48 DLC tracks make it different enough imo. 200cc in particular dramatically changes the game, and is what makes it the best imo) The best action RPG is Neo: The World Ends With You The best turn based RPG (with action commands) is Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling The best "pure" turn based RPG is Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden The best Zelda-like is... Okay, that's still Majora's Mask, but the second best is CrossCode The best Metroidvania is Ender Lilies The best Roguelike is One Step From Eden The best first/third person shooter is Remnant: From the Ashes The best PvP game is Splatoon 2 And these are all the more recent console generation. Like, obviously this is all just my opinion, but I mean it when I say I think this last console generation really was the best. And honestly, I didn't even list all my favorite games. We've still got Bloodborne, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, Gravity Rush 2, and so on, all of which are PS4/Switch. I dunno, obviously people have different opinions, and as I said before your opinion is more nuanced than a lot of folk I've debated with this about, but I feel like people who don't see how great gaming is right now are either FPS exclusive players--which as you mentioned, is a genre that is arguably actually worse, which I can agree with--aren't looking around enough, or are a little nostalgia blind. But in any case, it was a nice chat. It was nice to hear a stance on the topic from someone who didn't completely hate the modern generations, even if I still don't quite agree. :)

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  • Edited by die wily: 6/28/2024 8:08:14 PM
    i'll leave most of that up to taste. I'm well aware that the 90s wasn't some perfect time in terms of artistry or playability that can never be surpassed, I just think for video game industry in particular that's where the creative gold rush was and will be for the forseeable future. I definitely liked having a PS4 more than the PS3/360 consoles, but that's mostly because of its back-catalogue as in you can play day of the tentacle on PS4/swtich. again there's a lot of QoL improvements so dishonored is less likely to have a level like thief 1's escape-the-basement mission or thief 2's basically broken casing-the-joint mission, and it has a lot more focus on combat and fluidity than either with the teleporting move and the gun. while this stuff *is* improvement in a technical sense (thief's human character models aren't exactly hard to outdo; almost every voice actor in thief 1 and 2 is just one guy doing silly voices, etc), it still just isn't as good and the vibe is almost entirely wrong or off. it's a similar situation going from system shock 2 to prey 2017; is that game bad? well it's arguably one of the better games from that year. does the game desperately wish harder than anything that it was as good as system shock 2, a game i already own and that the industry has known about for decades? yes. these games invite direct comparisons to more interesting, more varied, more memorable products that they can't really withstand. dead space as a franchise is very similar to system shock, but because it doesn't constantly invite the comparison to specifically ss2 and tries for its own tone to the material, i think it ended up better off. [url]https://youtu.be/V6NrfAG3m1k[/url]

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