cheapchips
Veteran
64 itself was so much worse that Super Mario Kart. The move away from tightly focused circuits to slushy long 'tube' courses was a huge step back. Battle mode was good though!
Its not just me, games used to be better
- Thread starter ZebMacahan
- Start date
64 itself was so much worse that Super Mario Kart. The move away from tightly focused circuits to slushy long 'tube' courses was a huge step back. Battle mode was good though!
the original Mario Kart is the best. The formula didn't improve, it's just built upon what was great already. Current MK games are excellent, sure, but the original one was more differentiating, each character had their own advantages and disadvantages. Donkey Kong Jr. -my fav- was the fastest, along Bowser, but they were slower when accelerating.
Now it's more like there are the heavy characters and stuff but everything else feels the same, like a different character is just a different skin of another character rather than a character you can master and get a benefit compared to using other characters.
Diablo creator harshly criticizes the current state of ARPGs: “Now it’s all about killing everything in seconds, I find it almost ridiculous”
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/b...ith-fast-leveling-throwaway-loot-and-enemies/
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/b...ith-fast-leveling-throwaway-loot-and-enemies/
ARPGs aside, i's a tendency of many modern games to please the player as easily as possible. For instance, I enjoy the new Doom games, but the monsters fear the Doom guy, it's not the other way around. I find that extremely boring.
I want to respect the enemies. Monsters shouldn't have to fear you, it's the other way around. And you don't have to imply that they fear you in the main story, we have Easy difficulty for that. I play games on Easy sometimes to learn, when enemies kick my ass on other difficulties.
I want to respect the enemies. Monsters shouldn't have to fear you, it's the other way around. And you don't have to imply that they fear you in the main story, we have Easy difficulty for that. I play games on Easy sometimes to learn, when enemies kick my ass on other difficulties.
I think it is a matter of taste. Some games explore the concept of being the feared one, others explore the concept of being the one who is in an ugly situation, others sit in the middle.
On the other hand I get what you are saying. Enemy personality is reduced to just target meat. They are barely leaving their mark as enemies.
I think the first Devil May Cry nailed that balance of being a badass character who's badassness didn't come from being overpowered. His badassness came from personality and the player becoming skillful enough with a very specific repertoire of moves.
Demons were aggressive and pushy enough as if oblivious for whoever he is and sometimes not even giving shits. It is why every boss and enemy was memorable as fuck in the original. He wasn't as cocky either as the next games. It was kind of like the survival horror equivalent of bad ass action. Nelo Angelo specifically showed that the enemy had their Dante equivalent to put him in place.
But yes Doom maybe is trying to be a bit "comedic" in a dark way with the enemies or in it's effort to create a flow of gameplay mayhem, Doom guy's personality became the fearsome unstoppable force. Doom characters don't have much of a personality I would say. The game itself is the personality of flowy demon slaying. Doom kind of feels to me like side scrolling shooting games like Resogun turned into a glorified AAA 3D first person shooter.
cheapchips
Veteran
I don't think the orginal Doom guy ever showed much fear of the enemies? Mostly look like he was trying to figure out if he left the stove on.
"Good analysis! The key is that Xcom2 streamlined everything about previous and similar games, making it a very fulfilling player-centered experience. Instead of making it about "I can't wait for my current boredom/frustration to pay off with something fun later!" Xcom2 streamlined base planning and missions to make everything result in, and come from, combat. Everything is a fast, fun feedback loop, rather than a delayed payoff loop.
Want to mod it? Go ahead. Save scum? Absolutely! You can play it the way you want to, rather than being forced through artificial bottlenecks like competitive play, leaderboards, monetization, etc.
It's a great example of how removing features can actually make a game better, which is a breath of fresh air in an industry often focused on bloating its games with unnecessary content."
From here:
Want to mod it? Go ahead. Save scum? Absolutely! You can play it the way you want to, rather than being forced through artificial bottlenecks like competitive play, leaderboards, monetization, etc.
It's a great example of how removing features can actually make a game better, which is a breath of fresh air in an industry often focused on bloating its games with unnecessary content."
From here:
Completelu Average
Newcomer
Been gaming since the early 1980s with Atari and Intellivision.
I would say there were two periods in gaming where there was a large selection of very good games to choose from, but the truly great games were just as rare than as they are now. The late 80s to mid 90s was a time of advancement and change in the industry. 3D was becoming a thing, graphics were moving beyond super low resolution square pixels, and processors and system memory allowed the games to be more complex. There was a lot of creativity and expansion of ideas. It led to a lot of good games, but also a whole lot of not good ones.
And then then "golden age" of video gaming as far as I'm concerned was in the 2005-2012 range. This is when the hardware was finally powerful enough to let developers experiment with whole new gameplay ideas and mechanics, and entire new genres and subgenres were born. But, for every really great game of this time, there were dozens that were just good, and thousands that were forgettable. Some of the most common gameplay elements we see in games now came from less than great games of that time.
I think right now there is a significant drop in overall quality, but there are still some great games being produced. In fact I would say some of the greatest games I've ever played have been made in the past 10 years. I would absolutely put Witcher 3, Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 in my top 10 greatest games ever made list.
I would say there were two periods in gaming where there was a large selection of very good games to choose from, but the truly great games were just as rare than as they are now. The late 80s to mid 90s was a time of advancement and change in the industry. 3D was becoming a thing, graphics were moving beyond super low resolution square pixels, and processors and system memory allowed the games to be more complex. There was a lot of creativity and expansion of ideas. It led to a lot of good games, but also a whole lot of not good ones.
And then then "golden age" of video gaming as far as I'm concerned was in the 2005-2012 range. This is when the hardware was finally powerful enough to let developers experiment with whole new gameplay ideas and mechanics, and entire new genres and subgenres were born. But, for every really great game of this time, there were dozens that were just good, and thousands that were forgettable. Some of the most common gameplay elements we see in games now came from less than great games of that time.
I think right now there is a significant drop in overall quality, but there are still some great games being produced. In fact I would say some of the greatest games I've ever played have been made in the past 10 years. I would absolutely put Witcher 3, Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 in my top 10 greatest games ever made list.
Missed it by 1 year.
2004
Just in FPS games - FarCry, Half-Life 2, DooM3, UT2004, Unreal 2, Killzone, Halo 2, Counter-Strike Source, Metroid Prime 2, Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay (though there isn't much shooting in that one), Battlefield Vietnam, Tribes Vengeance Tron 2.0 and Painkiller. Red Orchestra won Make Something Unreal that year as well, setting up Tripwire Interactive as a real developer/publisher.
RPGs had 3 Pokemon games (leafgreen, firered, Emerald), Dragon Quest VIII, Drakenguard, Beyond Divinity, Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga, and LOTR The Third Age. Oh, and Knight of the Old Republic 2.
But beyond all that, Def Jam Fight for NY came out that year. And Steel Battalion. And Gran Turismo 4. And Outrun 2. And GTA San Andreas. And Katamari Damacy. And Minish Cap (in Japan). And MGS3....
this youtuber seems to be a game designer and he knows some of the people that worked in the original Age of Empires games. I discovered him today and his videos are super interesting, a diiferent way of thinking.
In this video he talks about ARPGs, PoE2 and Diablo 4...;
Is This How A Game Genre Dies?
In this video he talks about ARPGs, PoE2 and Diablo 4...;
Is This How A Game Genre Dies?
Couldnt agree more
A relevant observation - I'm a mod on a subreddit for playing games, aimed at getting player feedback for indies. I was invited to the role maybe a year ago, and have been on it for a couple of years, so my observations aren't extensive or properly catalogued.
However, I've just noticed something in low-tier contributions, A lot of the games being shared consist of very weak visuals and basic gameplay, with the hook being entirely the upgrades, amount of items, amount of junk on screen at once. There's less interest in pure game and more on filler. You also see this in indie adverts, particularly mobile games - 100s of blahblah, cosmetics, level up - with all the presentation being on how much stuff is in the game rather than the actual game experience. Screenshots have a surprising number of images of stores and level-up pages.
I do wonder if the base mindset of game-design has shifted away from the gameplay and more onto the content. This parallels arguments about AAA games having pointless filler as if the number of hours engagement is more important than the quality of engagement in consumer decisionising.
However, I've just noticed something in low-tier contributions, A lot of the games being shared consist of very weak visuals and basic gameplay, with the hook being entirely the upgrades, amount of items, amount of junk on screen at once. There's less interest in pure game and more on filler. You also see this in indie adverts, particularly mobile games - 100s of blahblah, cosmetics, level up - with all the presentation being on how much stuff is in the game rather than the actual game experience. Screenshots have a surprising number of images of stores and level-up pages.
I do wonder if the base mindset of game-design has shifted away from the gameplay and more onto the content. This parallels arguments about AAA games having pointless filler as if the number of hours engagement is more important than the quality of engagement in consumer decisionising.
it seems so. If you watch youtube videos without a premium account, there are a lot of videogame ads of -mostly- mobile games that consist on killing HORDES on monsters as quickly as possible.
full immediate satisfaction, yours is an op character capable of destroying mobs of monsters in a jiffy, some of them are huge even so they split into dozens of mini monsters which are a copy of the huge one so you can defeat even more monsters, it's almost comical.
arandomguy
Veteran
A lot of these styles of games popular on mobile gaming today were already growing in popularity in the 90s. Starcraft especially (and later Warcraft 3) with their map editor really enabled accessibility for people looking to develop games without extensive technical knowledge compared to traditional game development. The popularity of those games also had an inherently built in large audience.
This then boomed for what I guess you would call "casual" gamers with the growth of the internet and flash gaming in browsers. Flash gaming opened up even more accessibility for developers compared to the conventional games and the prospective audience as well. As an aside you can argue browser gaming in some ways is a precursor to cloud gaming as in streaming.
What happened with mobile is that it enabled monetization for these types of games beyond what was capable in those previous eras. Game design made adaptions to the audience and monetization.
Not to mention I'm not sure what people think ARPGs grew out of relative to their time. Diablo already was about destroying huge hordes of monsters and giving the player a power trip. While superficially modern games might go for 8 bit (or whatever) visuals, the actual processing power available is simply way bigger nowadays allowing for even more "horde" sizes.
Or what about vertical shooters, such as Tyrian (a game from 1995)?
Games catering to the power fantasy of gamers have been around forever.
This then boomed for what I guess you would call "casual" gamers with the growth of the internet and flash gaming in browsers. Flash gaming opened up even more accessibility for developers compared to the conventional games and the prospective audience as well. As an aside you can argue browser gaming in some ways is a precursor to cloud gaming as in streaming.
What happened with mobile is that it enabled monetization for these types of games beyond what was capable in those previous eras. Game design made adaptions to the audience and monetization.
Not to mention I'm not sure what people think ARPGs grew out of relative to their time. Diablo already was about destroying huge hordes of monsters and giving the player a power trip. While superficially modern games might go for 8 bit (or whatever) visuals, the actual processing power available is simply way bigger nowadays allowing for even more "horde" sizes.
Or what about vertical shooters, such as Tyrian (a game from 1995)?
Games catering to the power fantasy of gamers have been around forever.
being quite familiar with the evolution of the Diablo series.... the mechanics and gameplay experience have changed significantly from Diablo II to Diablo III -and then Diablo IV-.
The shift from a more strategic approach in Diablo II, where finding the best gear required balancing Magic Find gear with combat efficiency where you couldn't kill much except specific bosses with the right MF gear, to the more action-packed, monster-heavy approach in Diablo III with Paragon levels needing HUGE mobs to increase your XP, whose cost was huge- and massive mob battles, represents a major transformation in the franchise.
You could have OP gear in Diablo 2 but it wasn't that fun. The fun was getting that gear, and in the end you didn't fight super hordes of mobs, for hardware reasons and so on.
Similar threads
- Locked
