Leaving Modern Gaming Behind?

[MarkO]

I am 48, I am not very good at Video Games, and never have been..

 

Back in the 1980's , on the Apple ][, I liked Wolfenstein ( RIP Silas Warner ), Lode Runner ( RIP, Doug E. Smith ) and the Infocom games. On SNES, Yoshie's Island and Tetris Attack . About the only modern games I really like to play is MineCraft on the PC or Android Phone..

 

I have played Call of Duty on the Xbox 360 with my son, but I don't play that type of game on my own....

 

Over the years I have bought different consoles for my kids.. My youngest daughter and son have a SNES and SNES2 ( modified to run Super Famicon Games ), N64, Game Cube, Wii, and my son has an Xbox 360..

 

So I can say I have dabbled in Modern Gaming.. But I very much pick and chose what I spend my time on..

 

MarkO

[AtticGamer]

I find myself burning out on modern games rather quickly if it's not a perfect fit for me.

 

I have taken a taste for "easy" or "no death" games, even non-games like Proteus. Sometimes I just like to breeze through a game.

[Petran79]

the only thing worth in modern games will be Oculus Rift support. Till they make good use of that accessory, I'll be waiting.

Also if they improve artificial intelligents like in the game Facade

You'd have adventure game puzzles in real time!

 

Modern gaming industry is in a bubble that is ready to burst, both in computers and consoles. We'll might see a second video game crash soon. It is not a coincidence you abstain from modern games.

In the 90s video game industry was booming, despite having serious problems back then too.

 

New games I enjoyed the most were indeed the ones inspired by retro looks or mechanics.

Most notably : Faster than Light

It is a very hard game too. I havent finished it on normal yet.

 

Also Freedom Planet, inspired by old 2D platformers, was surprisingly much better than I expected.

 

Tried other platformers like Super Meat Boy and They Bleed Pixels. Never finished them after having lost hundreds of lifes. As you said, they're hard for the sake of being hard. They dont make you a better player. Gianna Sisters:Twisted Dreams was similar, prior to the patch at least. But its target audience were the hardcore computer platform gamers and a lot of those games were broken

 

In contrast, I beat A Walk in the Dark, that had a toned dowm difficulty, just like the older 80s-90s platformers.

 

Finished few months ago Bioshock Infinite, DLCs included. Felt exactly like you described! Felt like I was watching a movie, while been emerged in cheap gameplay. Unbelievable that this game cost millions to develop. An indie FPS could have achieved the same, if not better, results with 1/20 the price.

At least Bioshock 2, Minerva's Den included, made a better effort in balancing that sort of gameplay.

 

Regarding The Last of Us, I'd have said the same thing, but I recognize that this game is unique in story telling and pushing facial CGI animation to new and previously unseen levels. This in turn will have an effect on CGI animation in general, as the Last of Us animation director was an influence for many animators. But this was a game I didnt buy yet watched at my friend. With his PS3 he saved me lots of wasted money indeed.

 

 

[HardZero]

I feel that modern gamers are starting to wise up to the crap that is being given to them and are starting to demand better experiences. I think that's why we have been seeing the nostalgia train toted around so much these last couple years from Nintendo and the like. I definitely play on my NES more often than I turn on my PS3 or Xbox 360. I've had more fun playing Gyruss and Rad Racer than any of the newer releases that I pick up. The hand holding is a problem with modern games and it is so weird that it is a problem in the first place. That baby gloves stuff makes me feel like the game companies think we are all idiots who don't know what a game is or how to play it. It also can't be cheap to put in, and in a market where every company is whining about how they put so much money into a title but didn't break record sales, I just don't see why they would bother with the hand holding and tutorial stuff.

[ZippyRedPlumber]

I agree with Petran79. Even though I've never played it (yet...), Freedom Planet rules!

[Grimakis]

There's good and bad in modern gaming. Unfortunately a lot of the mainstream stuff is bad. Nintendo still puts out quality titles.

[ZippyRedPlumber]

 

There's good and bad in modern gaming. Unfortunately a lot of the mainstream stuff is bad. Nintendo still puts out quality titles.

 

True that!

 

When it comes to modern gaming for me, I've always been & always will support Nintendo's side (though there has been some exceptions like my older brother's Xbox 360 I use only for Sonic Generations.)

Edited October 16, 2014 by ZippyRedPlumber

[Flojomojo]

Good games are good games. I mostly like retro-styled indie games nowadays, regardless of platform. I think I left most "modern games" behind back when the PS2 was new. Welcome to old age!

[rhindlethereddragon]

I won't buy any game system that requires me to connect to the internet for any reason.

[Keatah]

A connected game console could have been a nice development. But instead it mutated into becoming all about control and restrictions, making money and advertising/marketing.

[+Random Terrain]

A connected game console could have been a nice development. But instead it mutated into becoming all about control and restrictions, making money and advertising/marketing.

And if you are new to a game and try the online multiplayer version of it, trolls and 1337 bullies will attack you like rabid wolves. YouTube is full of attack videos and they have a ton of 'likes.' These delusional A-holes think they are Neo from the Matrix, but Neo wasn't twisted and evil.

 

I like my Xbox 360, but I keep it single-player so I can have fun and play with as much or as little skill as I want.

 

[82-T/A]

You know... reading through a lot of these posts it got me thinking. We are mostly only remembering the good games from "back in the day." And... there were a lot, mind you. But there were also a lot of crappy games. If we're just talking PC/Atari/Amiga/etc... I can think of a few games that were less than stellar.

 

But then again... I can only thing of perhaps 1 or 2 games over the past 6-7 years that I'm even remotely interested in. And if we're talking over a decade... maybe 5 games total.... actually, not even...

[Ransom]

I have a PS4, a Wii U, and a 3DS that connect to the Internet, but I mostly stay away from the online multiplayer stuff. In the games where there's any opportunity for people to make your life miserable, someone will do it. It's just not worth my time. That's why I only play local co-op when it comes to multiplayer (except for a brief flirtation with online Mario Kart, but once I realized how terrible I am at the game in comparison to those people, I stopped playing; I just can't devote as much time to playing any game as a teenager can, so there's no way I can compete).

[Keatah]

You know... reading through a lot of these posts it got me thinking. We are mostly only remembering the good games from "back in the day."

 

But then again... I can only thing of perhaps 1 or 2 games over the past 6-7 years that I'm even remotely interested in. And if we're talking over a decade... maybe 5 games total.... actually, not even...

 

Why waste time on remembering the bad ones. Make a note of recognition and put them aside.

 

Very true too. Over the past 10 years, I've become interested in perhaps 20 games at best. And this included homebrews. I'm the complete opposite of adding an "I want one too" to every thread that spews forth a new announcement. Especially sight unseen.

[Gregory DG]

Online multiplayer was cool in the early days when I played it with Quake and GameSpy. But even then people cheated or just became so incredibly good at the game that it ruined the enjoyment for everyone else. Today, I don't bother to play them because who wants to get fragged every 10 seconds?

 

I think the last game I played online multiplayer was Mario Kart Wii. That was okay, but online multiplayer will never be as good as face-to-face gaming. I say ask your friends over and have a LAN Party! It'll be much more fun than playing against faceless, cheating, online punks!

[Keatah]

Before LAN parties came to be known as LAN parties I hosted my own back in the day. They worked best on extended weekends. And we'd all bring over our consoles, carts, and controllers, to one house and set everything up.

 

We had the essentials covered, Atari 400/800, 5200, VCS, Intellivision, Colecovision, Astrocade, Vectrex, TRS-80 CoCo, C64, Vic-20, Apple II+ and Apple //e, all the 8-bit goodness there ever was. In various configurations and combinations. And we'd just play play play. And play s'more. There were no rules aside from you didn't steal anybody else's gaming paraphernalia or hog one machine all night long..

 

Sometimes heated matches would spring up out of thin air. Joysticks would go flying. Sometimes the mood was quiet contemplative programming. Or it all turned into a big wAReZ fest, with the cartridge systems helping fill the time during extended disk-copy sessions.

 

Pizza got ordered in, frozen dinner containers filled the trash, soda made for burping and gassing contests.

 

I even held tech sessions explaining how modems worked and what the difference between Answer/Originate was.

[ryanmercer]

When the playstation 2 came out is about when I stopped playing modern games (with the exception of the Battlefield franchise on PC, which I didn't stop playing until last year) as they were too easy... 60$ game, sit down and beat it in 4-6 hours... PASS. There are NES games I can't get past the first handful of levels (Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers I can't get past the 2nd level to this day!) without cheating with memory editors like game genie. I happen to like a challenge, not something where I can mindlessly kill several hours.

[kiwilove]

My main reason for not playing the latest games and consoles/etc etc has always been the lack of money answer.

 

But also when you've played 1000s of computer videogames etc etc on 8 and 16-bit systems - you get burned out on playing games - that you turn into a games collector instead. Like collecting the ROMs and having them working in Mame, etc.

The only game I spent a lot of time playing on Mame turned out to be Shanghai - and with it's first version - you'd be amazed that it actually has a lot of replay value to it, you can reboot it into different presets to start off on - so you've never playing the same game twice in it's arsenal of layouts possible. Later versions don't have different presets available - so you end up replaying the same game - with no other choice possible.

 

Also as you age - say past your 50s - the violence in all videogames becomes toxic or rather a turn off. Sure i enjoyed the Streetfighter II games in their time - and other such games - but the first person shooter games format really turned me off playing games. The thought of just roaming around and killing what you encounter - of course impacts upon you - even if it is just a game.

 

I have gotten back into designing graphics for A8 (ie. 400/800/etc plus 5200) - for a spacey shooter game. The attraction is doing something not done before? Using GTIA modes and doing other stuff - that weren't done back in the day. There is the challenge of coming up with interesting and varied landscapes within a very restrictive graphics format - that the end result is worth all the time and effort I've put into it... I hope players who play the demo - really appreciate the work put into this project - as the programmer and I - have done something worthwhile (AtariBLAST!) - we think... It is a massive project now containing more levels/etc than first envisaged.

 

I am still very much interested in game design - and like to see game formats which don't use visual violence as such.

Mario Sunshine for the Gamecube showed how it could be done - that instead of normal shooting - he fired water instead of something deadly/destructive.

Tetris Battle Gaiden (for SFC/SNES) is another excellent example - also Snoopy's Concert for the same systems.

 

There are some universal laws regarding violence - that should be publicized. eg.

That you can never use violence to end violence. That using violence simply doesn't work.

The only way to stop violence - is to stop using it. Period. And the answer is always education. To be able to resolve conflicts without using violence.

I could go on and on...

I have lots of material that I like to see - being used in prime time TV series, for example. That I think stimulates the mind, instead of current TV shows - which end up glorifying those who perpetuate the worst crimes imaginable.

 

Harvey

[+Random Terrain]

I could go on and on...

Sounds like you might like some of the things on this page:

 

randomterrain.com/rt-game-design-ideals.html

[Keatah]

All this DRM DLC and keeping track of accounts is a huge detractor for me against modern systems.

[kiwilove]

Sounds like you might like some of the things on this page:

 

randomterrain.com/rt-game-design-ideals.html

 

For me - participation in sports has been the alternative to playing videogames - such as playing Volleyball and Table Tennis - and I go more for the 'play for fun' attitude, rather than play seriously/competitively...

People who don't do physical stuff of any kind - do not look after their health and well being - as the decades go by - it becomes more important to be physically active - and sports participation does encompass other elements besides just the physical exercise (getting your heart rate up)...

 

Harvey

[dashv]

I love modern games just like I love old games. Give me some Doom or a Call of Duty, I'm all in. Yep I like the new Tomb Raider too.

 

Throw me a Colecovision and I'll play that all weekend as well.

 

If your into the indie scene and your active on Steam this is arguably the best era of gaming (other than maybe the 80's).

 

The thing is I've always played computer games. C64 back then and PC these days and in the 90's.

 

Doesn't mean that like all modern games. A lot of them stink. Just like a lot of old games stink. Every decade has it's garbage.

 

I've read this thread from top to bottom and this comment here I can relate to 100%.

 

I know I rag on modern game consoles a lot. For a lot of the reasons Keetah mentioned DRM, etc. But the reality is each generation has it's Diamonds and Reindeer Gems (no seriously, it's a thing. Google it).

 

I actually enjoyed the recent Tomb Raider reboot a lot. Yeah it was go from A - B. But so were the originals (I have every single Tomb Raider game ever released and have beaten most of them). Yeah they went over the top with their cinematic camera style but I'll take that over how I have to fight the camera in all the originals or take blind leaps of faith because I can't see what's in front of me. To me there is also more replay value in the newest one because completing all challenges 100% takes exploring each area inside and out. I was quite surprised at how many entire sections of each area I completely missed during my first play through.

 

I think what's changed with last gen (PS3 and 360) and present is the DLC...

 

So now the game could suck or rock... and the DLC could suck or rock.

 

As a consequence I love and hate the stuff.

 

Games like Burnout Paradise made it affordable, worthwhile, and awesome. Games that have become old like Scott Pilgrim vs the World get a second life with the release of things like online cooperative multiplayer! Then there are games like DOA that are selling what amounts to $400 worth of "virtual panties" while the core game itself remained so broken they could only fix it by releasing a new game (DOA 5 Ultimate). And lets not leave out games like Destiny where many folks bought it for the game they think and hope it will become once enough DLC has been released for it.

 

I don't have a PS4 or Xbone yet. But I do own a WiiU.

 

I am loving the hell out of New Super Mario Bros U and catching up on my backlog of Wii titles. I also have a few WiiU games set aside for Christmas Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, and a couple more.

 

My Retron 5 gets regular use for all my classic gaming needs.

 

Even my 36 inch CRT TV is seeing nes Duck Hunt, psx Area 51, and Who Shot Johnny Rock CDi action.

 

With all the retro gaming I've been doing lately I thought I was becoming a modern day gaming hater. Doing some more reflection I think I'm just looking for a well rounded gaming experience. There is much to appreciate in the old, the new, and the evolution from old to new.

 

Last point. Tutorials that make me want to drive a nail though my skull are certainly more prevalent in current gen but you can find offenders as far back as PS2 (.Hack I am looking at you). I sat through at least half an hour if not 45 minutes worth of tutorial picking up the game from the beginning.

Edited November 23, 2014 by dashv

[Unbeliever]

I just have to chime in...

 

I feel the same. I have two modern systems in my house (a 3DS and an Xbox 360) and the only one I play regularly is the 3DS (portable power...). The 360 gets exclusively played by my stepson, even though we just bought a bunch of games for it of which I have -zero- interest in. Now my Atari 2600? That gets played every day, faithfully, 7 days a week. The games are fun, short (unless you're good, which I'm not), and leave me feeling particularly satisfied once done. They don't hold your hand (well, for most Atari 2600 games, it's pretty similar and easy to figure out what you have to do, except games perhaps like Starmaster or Star Raiders), and it's easy to swap in, swap out games. Several gaming sessions can be played in about 20 minutes...

 

I long for an old computer again, such as a Commodore 64 with some games, the disk drive, etc., or perhaps an Atari 800XL computer. These I grew up with and LOVED the games that were on them. My C-64 was cherished, and I even took the time sometimes to pack it up to bring it over to a friend's house to play. Same with the 800XL...Archon was one of my favorite games for it. And the box art? Just plain awesome...one of the reasons I love my Atari 2600 so much is due to the box art.

 

Another favorite was the Apple IIE computer. My friend had one and I managed to get one later on in life with some of the great classics I played over at his house. Yes, I've been a geek for many, many years and still am today. I really am not thrilled at all with the modern systems, and the more they put out, the more I backtrack to my Atari 2600 for the games that really appeal to me. Hopefully sometime in the near future I can get my hands on an old computer again so I can collect and play the great games from that time period.

 

-Steve