old VS new games why new games suck

I don't think imagination decreases as you get older. I think it simply changes as your idea of rewarding activity changes.

The games I played as a kid (old school D&D games) had much worse graphics and gameplay as compared to the RPG games today. But as a kid I saw a lot of value in playing for hours just to get a "Broadsword +5." I simply don't care about that today, or spending weeks on a game just to kill the final boss and see the end cinematic.

In contrast, I recently learned to play a new piece of music on the piano and I could imagine feeling very happy when playing this for friends and family. As a kid I only learned to play a music piece because adults forced me to learn it.

You imagine what you value. As a kid you value the adventure of being a spell casting monk. As an adult you may value monks because they symbolize peace of mind and a loving/calm heart. In both cases you value monks and imagine yourself there, but for different reasons.

Somebody should invent a game that gives you the down payment on your dream home when you finish the game. I'll bet that even if the game is mediocre many adults will say that was the best game they ever played

 

...why opinion threads make it past the first page is beyond me but w/e here goes nothing - games are fine. I'll say this again, GAMES ARE FINE. It's you, as a person who has changed. Back when I started gaming I didn't get every game I wanted so from my perspective the only games I received are the ones I REALLY wanted...now as an adult I buy games fairly regularly. Not all of them are AAA games, I don't expect them to be because of the quantity I buy. What I'm trying to say is this - as we get older we see more, we buy more, we play more, and our likes and dislikes change over time as a kid the gaming biz was fairly new, the quality of games were of course great (Because it's still new...) etc. The way I look at it...games have been good over the last 5 years not progressively getting worse like the OP suggested, so I 110% disagree with the OP

 

Well... what do we have here... if THAT's the case i guess we just have to agree to disagree

 

I agree with this because I'm going through the same thing. I've had more fun with games these days than ever before.

 

I personally agree with what kto expressed in his replay above. I think as we get older we do put more value in other things than gaming (gf,work,etc) and this reduces our enjoyment of it. Although I have to say I still enjoy gaming VERY much, I will not find myself playing for hours on end like I would have when I was younger... and I think that's healthier too. Only very late at night will you find me playing for hours on end, usually playing amazing games like Skyrim or Batman Arkham City.

 

Hindsight bias. You tend to remember your past gaming experiences as a selection of the very best. Your views in the present are more neutral as they are more oriented towards whatever you just experienced.

 

Very well put, and couldn't agree more. As a kid, you find almost everything freshing and got lot of freedom and time to spend on something you would like to do.

As we grow older, we are going to have more and more responsibilities and get more and more things to take care of, your focus of life are shifting from yourself to your whole family and kids, and the shift forces you couldn't just play whatever you like to your heart's content like what you could do when you were younger.

Due to the time restraint and the shift of the focus of your life, your interest in gaming will gradually wane. And as a result, fewer and fewer games will interest you, you either couldn't get yourself into a game or just find this or that in games are not exactly to your liking. Then sometimes we could be wondering, how great games were when we were younger and we could never get bored of a game.

I think it's not the fact that quality of games are decreasing, it's just we couldn't help ourselves being nostalgic when we find this or that unappealing and quit playing a game. It's not because games are changing(whether they are getting better or worse, it's irrelevant), it's because we are changing.

 

Precisely. Very well put.

 

conclusion: big AAA titles have higher chances of less fun games! take a look at need for speed! I'd play trackmania over this anyday!

 

I think a lot has to do with nostalgia, but it still has taken a turn for the worse as far as creativity, longevity, and replayability.

 

Not a fair comparison.
I just bought Arcania- Gothic 4, it's a decent game. But from what I hear [never played Gothic before], the "real" Gothic 4 = Risen. Arcania was made by a different developer [SpellBound], but same Publisher who owned the rights to Gothic [JoWood; now owned by Nordic Games]. The developer of Goth:1,2,3 and Risen [Piranha Bytes] is now with the publisher Deep Silver.

 

Couldn't agree more. People forget that 95% of games a decade ago were unoriginal piles of suck, just like 95% of games today are. People conveniently forget to list the 5% of modern games that rule (Mass Effect series, Skyrim, Batman: Arkham series, etc) when listing great games from the past that spanned a decade or more.

And don't get me started on the whole "games used to be longer" diatribe. No they didn't. Want a short super-soldier game? Never mind MW3, let's talk Contra.

The incredible shrinking game: the truth of game length in the modern industry

 

Kind of a simple question...but I never get a legit answer. If you guys (those who this applies to) don't like current gen games...why buy them or the system they were developed for? You can buy an old system for 1/10 of the price and their discontinued game. idgi

 

the problem with comparing old games to new games is you see them how you remember them. they were marvels when they were made, but if you go back and play them you are like "...what is this piece of crap" fact is, old games are glitchy, ugly, and unimmersive when compared to new games. and while old games may have a better story, they fall flat on gameplay because they dont have the capabilities new games have.

 

THIS.

When people talk about 16-bit RPGs, they always mention Final Fantasy III (aka FFVI) and Link to the Past and Secret of Mana, like there were a dozen games like that each year. Nobody mentions Paladin's Quest, one of the thousands of unremarkable "me too" RPGs of the time. Beyond RPGs, nobody ever remembers BattleToads or ClayFighter. Or Lord of the Rings (SNES), the worst game I've ever played. People forget that you could beat StarFox in an hour or less...and not just 15-year-old Korean superstars doing speed runs, but ordinary folks like you or I could. TMNT: Turtles in Time lasted about as long. People forget just how flawed the combat in Command and Conquer 1 was (selling silos exploit, computer never rebuilt bases or defenses in single-player, GDI had A-10s from the start in multiplayer no matter how many SAM sites NOD built, etc).

 

Back then everything was new and exciting. Nowadays everything seems even cliche and redone.

It's harder to compete now. Being Objetcive, games are much better in every area, however... we have seen too many of the same thing and we don't get as excited as we once were.

That plus nostalgia, among other details might detract you from newer games being better.

But to be honest, games nowadays are fantastic and older games tended to be crap by today standards. This is not 100% true but most of the time, specially due to tehcnical limitations.

 

I hate how modern games are all basically the same! There used to be such variety!

Doom 2 - Gameplay 1 - YouTube

Heretic Gameplay - YouTube

Hexen Gameplay [Part 1] - YouTube

Strife Gameplay - YouTube

Blood (1997, PC) gameplay part 1 - YouTube

Marathon Gameplay - YouTube

Alien Breed gameplay

Damage Incorporated gameplay

 

i agree on this, like the one i said several posts ago in this thread, it is we, the gamers who have been playing a lot of generation games i.e. from atari to win7 (in my case i only gamed in 1 console, ps1) 'your eyes' have seen a lot already. you get older doesn't mean you have the same thinking, doesn't mean you have less imagination (actually you have better insight on later age imo).

you are just beginning to have other priorities. when i was a kid, at thinking of gaming through the day (yeah after i do my chores) then that is it, no other things to do, no job to think for the next, i was totally focused on the game, no matter how it looks, no matter how hard it is for me back then. i have all the time in the world.

just imagine that the games in the olden days doesn't even have a save point, we only have passwords that we had to jot down every time i beat a boss that seemed like eternity for me to beat back then. im always excited when after megaman beats a boss, if i could get a good weapons or something like that. i never had the idea of taking 'cheats' thru internet. it was fun as it is now. when we were kids and gaming neophytes, we have a 'simple happiness' and was solely contented about that.

 

I know you're being cynical but a few minutes of gameplay does not tell nearly the whole story. Sure there were same-same knockoffs. But that doesn't change the fact that you could play the damn game, not be led through an interactive movie, and explore on your own. Part of the problem I believe is 3D tech was relatively new. A lot of new ground was being broken in 3D gaming it was fresh. These days there's nothing really fresh to peak our interest. It's all sequels, and spinoffs of sequels, and sequels of those spinoffs and a bazillion knock-off wannabe's of those IP's. Portal is one of the newer games that made things fresh again. You don't get much of that any more.

 

I completely disagree with the OP.

In a few years from now, people will be looking upon 2011 and hopefully 2012 saying "Wow, I wish I was back in those years when games were fun to play."

 

This is a great rant on how modern games hold your hand way too much, and how older games elegantly 'helped' you along, but still made you think:

Sequelitis - Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X - YouTube

 

Except for a few old games, like Legend of Zelda, games were extremely linear (and that was only non-linear in that you could do dungeons in different orders, to a limited extent; you still had to do all the dungeons). You couldn't just explore and experience the world like you can in Skyrim, WoW, ToR, etc. You couldn't determine your character's entire personality like in Mass Effect. Doom, which basically defined a decade of action games, led you from locked door to locked door killing everything that moves, and each level was extremely linear given how you had to find each key to get to the next part of the level. Final Fantasy II didn't look linear, because there was a world map, but in fact, there was always only one way to proceed, and zero character choice. Fighting games and beat-em-up side-scrollers (both very common) were incredibly linear. Open-world games like Ultima VII (the first game I can think of where I had any meaningful choice as to how my character acted) were very, very, VERY rare--significantly more rare then than they are now, thanks to the Grand Theft Auto series and MMOs blowing the idea of "sandbox" gaming and "open worlds" wide open.

 

I miss flight sims.

Falcon, USAF, Jane's ATF, etc.

 

THIS! I must have dumped hundreds of hours EACH in USAF, Longbow, F-15, F/A-18, but most significantly Falcon 4 and Allied Force (probably 1000 hours there). Since then we've had only a few actual sim/games. DCS A-10 is phenomenal, but just don't have the time to commit to it at the moment. I would love for someone else to pick up the Jane's series and make the same awesome games they did back then. I ran a site called "Jane's Hangar" back then. Was quite popular, made a few bucks in advertising, joined Wargamer.com. Only remnants I can find of it are my F/A-18 loadout sheet here: http://www.vfa-41.net/media/FA-18_Weapons.pdf. Actually F/A-18 was my favorite Jane's sim for some reason, and second favorite next to Falcon.

 

Yep. Played all those games too. Also had the CH flightstick, Combatstick, Throttle, and rudder pedals back in the day. Even had this for my Amiga 2000. That's how far back we're talking.

Some of the best times were had on flight sims.

I don't think this generation has the attention span to play those kind of games. So I think we get the games we get today. Not that they aren't fun, because they are. But the old school games had more value and replayability that much of today's games lack.

 

You've listed six games from just two game franchises spanning from 1996 to 2005. That's about the same pace flight sims are released nowadays. You can count IL-2 (including the original title, Forgotten Battles, Pacific Fighters, 1946, and now Cliffs of Dover), DCS Black Shark and DCS A-10, and you're at pretty much the same total variety of games. If I recall correctly, DCS Black Shark has a 1000 page manual and one reviewer, not used to flight sims, needed a couple of hours before he could even successfully lift off, not to mention fly a combat mission.

Realistic flight sims have ALWAYS been a niche offering, with only one serious title for every thousand or so Doom clones (in the 1990s) or COD clones (nowadays).

 

I reckon it's a mix of both nostalgia and games getting worse. Granted, there are a few gems in todays range of games, but the majority are pretty meh.

However, I still think the gaming industry is going downhill, if for other reasons than originality. For example, games now are pretty much designed so that even a brain dead road casualty on life support would have no problem understanding them, I swear they're actually enchouraging people to drop common sense and reasoning for simply being told what to do and following. I'm not a huge "anti system" person or anything like that, but it's never a good thing if you simply do what something tells you all without any thought of your own.

/rant.

 

I agree 110%!

USNF, USAF, F-15, Longbow, Longbow 2, F/A-18 (Jane's), F/A-18 Super Hornet & Korea, F/A-18E Super Hornet (Interplay / DID), Falcon 3/4, Enemy Engaged Comanche-Hokum, Apache-Havoc, Comanche 3/4, EF2000, JSF, F-16, F-22, F-22 ADF, WWII Fighters, Combat Flight Sim 1, 2, 3, European Air War, IL-2 Sturmovik, SU-27 Flanker/2.0, Hind, MiG Alley.

There's definitely more, just what I could come up with top of my head. They all span from like 1995-2003. All notable and unique requiring a joystick, with many full HOTAS setup, and requires the patience to actually learn to fly, even if some had simplified flight models, no way a simple game controller would suffice in any way, shape, or form. I was a big part of the community back then.

Since 2004 we've had DCS Black Shark, DCS A-10, Wings of Prey, IL-2 Cliffs of Dover, and... that's about it! Sure you can count Falcon 4.0 Allied Force if you want or IL-2 1946 but they're basically just re-releases of the same game with improved code and in the case of 1946 compilation of all aircraft and some new missions.

Speaking of which, here's one of my shelves of games, mainly older and sim or sim-like (click the image to enlarge). You can see the spiral bound manuals to many of the sims on the upper left shelf:

Spoiler

 

There are a few games that are one of a kind. Can someone beat the story of Planescape Torment? Can someone match Grim Fandango in humor and storyline? Those kind of games for me reflect a genuine interest of making a great product over a great profit.

The console cross platform generation also has good titles in my opinion. Out of relatively newer games, I really loved Psychonauts (Tim Schafer FTW) for its originality. I also enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil as a concept.

I agree with nostalgia and selective memory arguments. I remember how in my mind Warcraft I Orcs vs Humans was a gorgeous game full of breathtaking magic spells, great controls and fun. When I came back to it about 10 years later, I found out it apparently has a terrible interface and graphics of an orc pixel throwing a spear pixel into a human pixel. That's not how I remembered it, haha

Mass Effect is a pretty average to poor RPG, I really have no clue why people obsess over it. I played and finished both the first and a second game, it got somewhat boring by the end of it. Fallout 2 had much better options for character development, Planescape, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate I and II as well as a number of other isometric titles had a much better story and more freedom in exploring. I even prefer Dragon Age Origins over it.

 

Flight sims (and expansion packs thereof) since 2004 (not a comprehensive list, just those good enough and detailed enough to get reviewed on SimHQ):

SimHQ - Review: SAMSIM

SimHQ Review - DCS: Black Shark 2

SimHQ Review - Air Conflicts: Secret Wars

SimHQ Review - IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover

SimHQ Review: Rising Sun - Phase 2

SimHQ Review - Third Wire?s Mirage IIIC DLC Pack

SimHQ Review - Wings of Prey: Collector?s Edition (PC)

SimHQ Review: Strike Fighters 2 - May 2011 Update

SimHQ Review - DCS: A-10C Warthog

SimHQ Review: Rising Sun

SimHQ Review: Apache: Air Assault

SimHQ Review: Strike Fighters 2 Israel - Suez Crisis Expansion Pack

SimHQ Review - Flaming Cliffs 2.0

SimHQ Review: Hat in the Ring - The First Expansion Pack for Over Flanders Fields Phase 3

SimHQ Review: Strike Fighters 2: Israel

SimHQ - Budget Simulations - Volume 1

SimHQ Review - Rise of Flight - The First Great Air War

SimHQ Review - Over Flanders Fields Phase 3: Between Heaven and Hell

SimHQ Review - Strike Fighters 2

SimHQ Review: DCS: Black Shark English Version - Part 1

SimHQ Review - Wings Over Israel

SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone - Review: Enemy Engaged 2

SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone - Review: Battle of Britain II: Wings of Victory - Update 2.06

SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone - Review: Whirlwind Over Vietnam

SimHQ Review - Burning Sands 1983 Mod by ?VinceH? for ThirdWire Series Simulations

SimHQ Review - The ?56 Suez Crisis Mod by Johan217 for the Third Wire Series

Okay, that's just SINCE 2007, and I'm tired of copying and pasting URLs. You can see their full list of reviews here ( SimHQ Combat Flight Sims Previews, Reviews, Features, Screenshots, Video )...sounds like there's a lot of flight sims out there in the past half-decade that you've missed. You might find one or two you like.

 

LOL. Most of those aren't even flight sims, many are just articles pointing to older games with updates, DLC, or mods of older games I already mentioned. Several of those are arcade flying games too (Note first sentence of Air Conflicts - "Air Conflicts: Secret Wars is an arcade game, and it's not that good." / Apache Air Assault - "Apache: Air Assault is not a simulation... is a very well made and fun action game"). I've followed sims since the 1980's so I know what I'm talking about, not to mention frequent SimHQ. How many hours have you put into flight sims? Me, at least 1500 if not more.

 

Between Red Baron, Aces of the Pacific, IL-2, and Enemy Engaged, probably close to that. Though I never really bothered to count.

And congrats for not liking three games out of a couple dozen options. And yes, some are expansion packs. Some are not, including Rise of Flight, Over Flanders Fields, etc. Are you really just looking for new flight sims to play, or are you just trying to make a point about the modern gaming industry even if the facts don't match it? At the end of the day, there's a lot of new content out there for flight sim fans.

 

Actually, they are picking up another Jane's series.

Too bad, prepare to be disappoint. Way to kill it.

Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters Video Game, Debut Trailer HD | Video Clip | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com
-----------------------
For me, I adore Falcon except for 1.07 days uugh.

I think it was the 1.07 was the ridiculous amount of hostile SAMs and air activity.

 

Wow, that's as much of a departure from what Jane's games used to be as you could make it.

On the other hand, for serious flight sim fans, DCS Black Shark, DCS A-10, Over Flanders Fields Phase 3, and Rise of Flight are all well-executed, quality offerings from the past few years (or so I've read...I honestly haven't exhausted all the content in IL-2 yet). For someone whose very first flight sim mission (I still remember it) was zeppelin busting in Red Baron, the return of not one quality WWI flight sim, but two, is pretty awesome.

 

Well YOUR original point was that there were just as many quality flight sims now as there were in the 90's/early 2000's. MY point was that this is certainly not true, as anyone that has an avid interest in flight sims knows (pssst, ask 2.0).

Those were not a couple dozen options. They were expansions, a few of them just missions and jets using ThirdWire's Strike Fighter game engine. My one glaring omission was Rise of Flight. Otherwise my list stands. There has ALWAYS been a very avid mod community with flight sims mainly because of their nature to be open to modification. It's good for the genre. But if you wanted to count every single piece of mod/add-on in the flight sim industry, it'd be damn near impossible. Hell, I compiled and distrubuted a CD chock full of mods for WWII Fighters back in the day, that's just one game. Pretty much every sim has dozens of mods worth noting.

Spoiler

edit: found this trailer, and forgot about Jane's IAF (and probably at least a dozen more quality ones from days of yore):

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I don't get the interactive movie thing. I don't feel that way at all.

 

Pretty much anything released by BioWare or EA in the last few years is an interactive movie. If you can't see it, then that's sad IMO.

 

Dragon's Lair is an interactive movie. Dragon Age is not. If you think Dragon Age or Mass Effect or Crysis are interactive movies, you might as well call everything an interactive movie.

 

Everything we play is somewhat of an interactive movie....or did I completely miss the point of having a plot in a VG?

 

pacman is awesome!

 

YES IT IS!
Pacman
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Play free Games - a game from Arcade Online Games

 

One thing that I think has changed is the role of imagination in games. Older games were very simple and there was a lot of space to fill with your imagination. As time went on, that's sort of diminished.

 

Nice no-real-Scotsman argument. Adds a lot to the discussion.

In 2009-2011, we've had:

Rise of Flight
Over Flander's Fields
DCS Black Shark
DCS A-10
IL-2 Cliffs of Dover

That's five significant new sims in three years, four out of five from different development houses (so we're really talking new content, not just recycled content), and the two DCS games being radically different from each other (one being about helicopters, after all). Five significant flight sims in three years is a pretty damn good pace. You had said we'd have three significant new sims in seven years. That's just plain not true.

 

The last couple years there have been several sims, but a drought prior to that. I don't know what you're arguing? Facts are facts. Ten to twelve sims over the last eight years compared to 30+ from the previous eight is not equal. Where did I say three significant new sims in seven years? I listed ones of significance already.

 

@HTWingnut

Heard about this? Microsoft Flight: Free to Fly - PC Preview at IGN

 

Yes! Not released. Not a combat flight sim.

 

Of course there was a drought prior to that. But we're not in the drought anymore. The 90s were the classical era, the mid-2000s were the dark ages, and 2009 onward is the renaissance. And this thread isn't titled "old games versus games from 2005," it's entitled "old games versus new games." And you've got Michelangelo sculpting David in your backyard and Da Vinci sketching the Vitruvian Man in your kitchen, and you're still complaining about how miserable all these Viking raids are.

The mid-2000s were a dire, dire time for flight sim fans. We all agree on that. But that era is now in the past. There's a lot of exciting new flight sim content that's come out since 2009, and to ignore the fact that we're living in an all-out flight sim renaissance and continue complaining about how bad things were in 2005 in an "old versus new" thread...it's frustrating.

Okay, looking back, it was four games in eight years, not three games in seven. But still, you're lumping the dark ages and the renaissance together in an attempt to suggest that we're still stuck in the flight sim dark ages.

 

But it's not mainstream like it used to be, period. Games like Air Warrior, US Navy Fighters, USAF, European Air War, WWII Fighters, IL-2 had a very active online presence even with more "casual" fans. What I liked most about games like USAF is that they were "lite" flight sims that an average gamer could learn to control with a little work and be effective. Today it's mostly the hard core, die-hard fans that go online and you get smoked. Although co-op missions can be fun.

 

I agree. Absolutely. I simply think that for some of us, it might be an inward issue where we start to lack that 'wow' reaction to games and that might be linked to the general disillusionment of ageing amongst the average folk who're not engulfed in cutting-edge ventures of the Nobel Prize capacity, which takes me to the next point of how my statement was turned into a straw man. . . albeit with some excellent references.

Well. . . Heh. . . What am I supposed to say to that? Was my statement that mutually opposed to what you've cited?

Sorry. I see very little link between what the average age of Nobel Prize Winners -- a very niche league of thinkers with many other confounding factors -- has to do with the average creative flare or interest pike of the Joe-Shmoe gamer. You see, I wouldn't say I disagree with you, because what you've linked to is something independent of the very general observation where lack of enchantment amongst certain gamers by their inability to sink their teeth into interactive entertainment the way they could about a decade earlier in their youths. This doesn't implicate Nobel Prize winners, or shift paradigms of creativity -- it simply takes into account the possibility and influence of age-related diminishing enthusiasm, which shouldn't be out-right ignored.


In short: I don't understand how my statement can be perceived as a blanket judgement of ALL creative accomplishments, or be perceived as a declaration that the limits of creative flare or interest in the average gamer and the independent pinnacle accomplishments of those few pioneers -- regardless of their age -- are somehow mutually exclusive.

Sorry about that, if that's how you perceived the comment, because that wasn't my intention.


As you were, gents.

 

Wait, do you like "lite" flight sims or do you like dedicated? When we were talking about Apache: Air Warrior a couple pages back, you pooh-poohed it as an action game and not a real flight sim, and waxed nostalgic about full HOTAS setups (many of which, for the record, cost more than an entire gaming console does) and games that required patience to even learn how to fly and required a thousand-page spiral-bound manual. Now you're complaining that the 2009+ flight sim market is dominated by hardcore die-hard fans (which, let's face it, are the only ones who ever paid $400+ for a full HOTAS setup in the first place).

For what it's worth, here is gameplay from Apache Air Assault with settings on "realistic." It's no DCS, but to me, it looks along the lines of Wings of Prey or Enemy Engaged at 2/3s realism (i.e., what I'd call a "flight sim lite"), not at the level of Hawx or Starfox (what I'd call an "action game").

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVKejaCDIaM