Thoughts on Gaming Epidsode 1: Games were better yesterday?
by
, October 31st, 2012 at 07:56 AM (3719 Views)
I have a lot of thoughts in my head. Particularly regarding the games and the gaming industry so I thought I'd share a few.
Now a lot of mature gamers out there see popular modern games as...well graphics focused over the more essential part of gaming which is gameplay, lore and atmosphere (or story for games that has them) often comparing them to the "golden years" aka the N64 era where most if not all titular series games came from. They say that current games lack originality or some such over the games of yesteryear where if your game sucks you don't sell much over the current "oh this game is pretty"
But is it really? Or is this just hipster talk?
Looking back there are plenty of awesome games that has come from the past. Zelda, Mega Man, Metroid just to name a few. Now a lot of these old title have become cult classics in which almost all games of their respective genres are measured against. Why? This was because these titles were ground breaking in their hayday and in some sense still are. This is where hardware simply cannot put out as much musculature details as it could and designers had to cram as much as possible in a tiny (currently) memory.
In most cases this spurred designers to be creative and really try to maximize gameplay in their limited space. But with the advent of super powerful systems (the PS3 is the most powerful hardware wise...seriously that thing is a beast) some gamers feel that games nowadays are simply prettier versions of their predecessors, playing almost exactly the same or becomes limited in certain extents like story or exploration. Sometimes a game looks so good that other elements seem to have been forgotten. Even then due to the availability and size of the current market compared today companies are willing to churn out half-finished or rashly designed games that only looks passable and plays horribly. In the day they couldn't get away with shit like that?! (Oh they did...boy they did) and don't get started on Movie Games (shiver)
Personally, this is not the case. Sure there are rather notable of offenders such as MW3, BF3 and CoD which are fore the most part are simply prettier FPS (but really how can you change a shooter aside from more realism?) but there have been gems in the past years. Xenoblade, Last Story, Bravely Default, Skyrim are just of the few titles that really stood out from the crowd showing amazing stories, gameplay and memorability
I notice that most are J-games...coincidence? Maybe but I think that is just my preference showing :3
But I think what gamers think lacking in modern games is not the lack of gameplay or what other game elements. I think they are simply looking for memorability. Years from now they will still be talking about Skyrim and the rest but CoD: Blacks Ops 2? Will be forgotten as soon as the next one comes out.
As a parting entry, I personally believe that the number of quality games has not decreased as some might gripe. There simply more stuff to shift through today than yesterday.
Peace. Hero of the Sun