4 replies to this topic

[Grugore]

Is it just me, or are most games, these days, nothing but a lot of eye candy and not much content? Pick any mmorpg and it has some major issues, such as too much grinding, a lousy quest system or some other glaring problem. Seems to me that older games were a lot more fun to play. An example would be Chrono Trigger. That game was rated by many as one of the best rpg's ever. Everything about the game just clicked. Lots of games with really great graphics today, but most of them just don't measure up. I'm really hoping that MWO will break that trend. So. What do you think and what are some of your favorite classic games?

[SparkSovereign]

I think we're biased by current advertising. Games that are still being sold are still in our heads, so we notice all of them, the good and the bad. When we reach back further, we only remember the games we played the crap out of; the really good ones. I had a bunch of games in the 90s but I really only remember Age of Empires II, because I put literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours into it. Every era has good games and bad games, and how much attention they receive in their own time is a function of marketing rather than quality. Compare how many games were released in a given year and how many you remember as "good", that should tell you something about the average game quality. Basically, 90% of everything is crap. Accompanying the release of, say, the original Pokemon games, there are literally dozens of terrible games that most people have either never heard of or completely forgotten about. That Mass Effect 2 was released in the same year as Final Fantasy XIV Online and dozens of crappy Movie: The Games is no surprise.

Games aren't getting worse, I don't think; for one, go ahead and play the "old goodies", you probably won't find them the unimpeachable paragons of your memory (though they're still good, usually). We just notice the current stock of crap next to the jewels of past and present.

[Grugore]

SparkSovereign, on 15 July 2012 - 03:57 PM, said:

I think we're biased by current advertising. Games that are still being sold are still in our heads, so we notice all of them, the good and the bad. When we reach back further, we only remember the games we played the crap out of; the really good ones. I had a bunch of games in the 90s but I really only remember Age of Empires II, because I put literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours into it. Every era has good games and bad games, and how much attention they receive in their own time is a function of marketing rather than quality. Compare how many games were released in a given year and how many you remember as "good", that should tell you something about the average game quality. Basically, 90% of everything is crap. Accompanying the release of, say, the original Pokemon games, there are literally dozens of terrible games that most people have either never heard of or completely forgotten about. That Mass Effect 2 was released in the same year as Final Fantasy XIV Online and dozens of crappy Movie: The Games is no surprise.

Games aren't getting worse, I don't think; for one, go ahead and play the "old goodies", you probably won't find them the unimpeachable paragons of your memory (though they're still good, usually). We just notice the current stock of crap next to the jewels of past and present.

Good point, but I still think the current crop of online multi-player games could be better in a lot of areas. I can't recall one that doesn't have one or more negative aspects to it.

[SparkSovereign]

Grugore, on 15 July 2012 - 04:02 PM, said:

Good point, but I still think the current crop of online multi-player games could be better in a lot of areas. I can't recall one that doesn't have one or more negative aspects to it.

I struggle to think of an older multiplayer game that didn't have one or more negative aspects to it. Or a game in general that didn't have one or more negative aspects to it. There are some amazing games, but Super Mario 64 had its occasional camera-inflicted death, just as Mass Effect had its elevators. Was there a particular older game that you feel just blows everything after it out of the water? I can think of good games from any time period in the past two decades.

[Funkin Disher]

So long it is more like TF2 (from start to now, not just as it is now) than DDO then I'm a happy gamer.