Do we expect to much from games?

There are very few games that have ever been released that were fantastic but never had the build up to release like games do today.

Half life 1 and Deus ex being two of them that spring to mind. I didnt really hear a great deal or even see a lot of gameplay from them before being released and this was a good thing because everything was a suprise.

Bioshock was the same to some extent and I have tried to avoid watching anything bioshock 2 related so it doesnt spoil the game.

I expect good story and a well designed game. Not something that gives a high quality opening that once past this takes a dive off a cliff.
 
I think the the question is "what are you looking for in a game" before you set an expectancy. Are you comparing games based on your previous experiences or how you feel they compare to say film?

We often look back in nostalgia and over exaggerate how good things were and then compare them with something newer. We marvel at their greatness because at the time there was originality and thus the experience was magnified. As time passes, we remember these experiences and “how great they were”. We then dismiss anything that tries to supersede this memory we have, almost like our brains are protecting the experience we once had and quickly dismiss any threat this poses. Would the remakes of Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate factory been anymore successful if they had not been remakes? My point is we tend to be a little too protective in fear of loosing the experience when something comes with the intention to replace it.

I think this is the case of todays games and we set our expectancies too high but I also think that the aging consoles play a big part on the techology of the game too.
 
Capn' $qu!ff said:
...both games were too easy plus they destroyed the classic game that was fallout with thast 1st person nonsense!

Fallout 1, 2 & Tactics = WIN!
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Funny, before Fallout 3 came out, i got 1,2 and tactis all up and running again and TBH they were absolutely crap (this from a fanboy)
I thought 3 was excellent, and the 1st person took it to another level :)

But each to their own eh?
 
Eddmac said:
Funny, before Fallout 3 came out, i got 1,2 and tactis all up and running again and TBH they were absolutely crap (this from a fanboy)
I thought 3 was excellent, and the 1st person took it to another level :)
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You're not a true Fan of the franchise if you liked Fallout 3 better than it's predecessors True Glittering Gems of hatred shall always put 1,2 &tactics above all else!
 
I think we are getting far too many sequels that could simply be expansion packs or add-ons

Theres not many games offering something new, nothing original and no gameplay revelations, If anything pc games are getting dumbed down more than ever and it is lazyness yes, but as long as we keep buying they keep feeding us *!$*

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Just another thought, especially on FPS everything is getting too similar, noob toob in every game, spawn campers, snipers everwhere if its not that its a nade fest. Its always the fact that the people who play the most are the most sucessful, id like to see noobs get more rewards so the game is more enjoyable, That map in particular on BC2 beta hardly encourages new players when you get shot from 5 miles away evrytime you poke your head out by some 12 year old who has spent the last 16 hours finding the perfect camping spot

It took us forever to get out of the WW2 theater and now we seem stuck in Middle eastern urban streets, We should have destructable environments a long time ago they are only just breaking into BC2,crysis too but it was unplayable on release, Physics have never kicked on from HalfLife 2 and have stalled IMO,

All of this i blame on the console, they are too underpowered to do all this stuff and make a game playable, its not going to change until the next gen now
 
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I have recently become a game tester for capcom and the pressure publishers put on game devs is crazy. Some times when games get delayed you have to work on 2 or 3 games at once.

Even as a modest tester your given even limited time to find bugs and got to work to a deadline your encouraged to play the games as quick as possible, its no wonder a lot of bugs are missed or not fixed when the launch days come around.

Plus a lot of games designers work around 80 hours a week sometimes more and also go without sleep to get the games finshed on time.

If game publishers left the designers alone to make the best game they can you would defently see a increase in the number of qauilty games.
 
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Games like BF2 & Forza3 set high benchmarks, If they can do it for the retail price & profit then so can other companys.
 
I'm at a stage now where even if I only get a handful of Mass Effects/The Witchers/Psychonauts a year, I'm a happy camper.
 
I get the feeling that games are falling behind the h/w curve, we as enthusiasts overclocker's have lots of options when it comes to upgrading components - yet even the current releases do not even come near to utilizing the potential of what we can buy today.

Thus we have expectations of our h/w - we want graphics that we can aspire to upgrade to - and then we want the AI that we can throw computational cycles at.

Sadly the common denominator in the gaming industry isn't the PC gamer - it's the console market.
 
krooton said:
I'm at a stage now where even if I only get a handful of Mass Effects/The Witchers/Psychonauts a year, I'm a happy camper.
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Tell me a year or a period in time where more than a handful of such titles were produced.

Also, I am glad you are back from where ever you have been where repeated drose was released year after year after year for such a long period of time where you have been reconditioned to this mind set. jeezzzzz!!!!

I think we all suffer from wearing the rose tinted specs for so long it has made our memories go bad.
 
Plenty of games around, and plenty of those are good/fun - to the majority.

There are probably more quality games than there have been some time back in the past. However, with new games coming out pretty much weekly, there are also more rubbish games than there were some time back.

I just think people are less likely to stick with the games they like, and try to play most everything that comes out, thereby exposing themselves to more of the rubbish games, and feeling more negatively about the industry.

I also think games might have been more complex from a gameplay perspective in the past, but they have become more complex from a technical standpoint these days, making them considerably more difficult to produce. Hence they simply don't have the resources to not only make the game, but give it a huge amount of depth, so it's a balancing act.

I mean, everyone loved Wolfenstein 3D back in the day, but imagine someone trying to release that now? It could be knocked up fairly shortly now by a small team I am sure, but people want far more than that from a game in this day and age.

Feeling like poo and not making my point as well as I'd like, but there is plenty out there for people to enjoy.
 
RaMDOM said:
Tell me a year or a period in time where more than a handful of such titles were produced.

Also, I am glad you are back from where ever you have been where repeated drose was released year after year after year for such a long period of time where you have been reconditioned to this mind set. jeezzzzz!!!!

I think we all suffer from wearing the rose tinted specs for so long it has made our memories go bad.
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Well, I found that in the 90s my friends and I would rinse a single game for an extended amount of time.

Warcraft 2
Heroes of Might & Magic 3
Unreal Tournament
Command & Conquer

There were also adventures games to suck up the single player side of things, like the Monkey Islands, Space Quest, etc, along with RPGs like the Baldurs Gate series.

In the 00s, things seemed to change. There were fewer games that I would play for more than a month (UT2004, WoW), then in 2006 onwards things started to pick up a bit in terms of what I like.

Psychonauts, Mass Effect and The Witcher all held my attention from start to finish and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

There have been other good games to keep me interested for a while (HOM&M5, Borderlands, Kings Bounty), but they didn't deliver the sheer gamer satisfaction that the first 3 did.

I have less time to game now as I am getting older, so I don't mind fewer releases, provided they are really good.
 
i miss the days of doom, quake, duke nukem, publisher nowdays put all the effort into consoles, than PC's, thats why many releases now come out on the console before they hit the pc's.

all i can say is death to the consoles, except the WII which is ok
 
krooton said:
Well, I found that in the 90s my friends and I would rinse a single game for an extended amount of time.

Warcraft 2
Heroes of Might & Magic 3
Unreal Tournament
Command & Conquer

There were also adventures games to suck up the single player side of things, like the Monkey Islands, Space Quest, etc, along with RPGs like the Baldurs Gate series.

In the 00s, things seemed to change. There were fewer games that I would play for more than a month (UT2004, WoW), then in 2006 onwards things started to pick up a bit in terms of what I like.

Psychonauts, Mass Effect and The Witcher all held my attention from start to finish and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

There have been other good games to keep me interested for a while (HOM&M5, Borderlands, Kings Bounty), but they didn't deliver the sheer gamer satisfaction that the first 3 did.

I have less time to game now as I am getting older, so I don't mind fewer releases, provided they are really good.
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fair play.

I hear you on the getting older part, hence my post above.
 
I think consumers and reviewers are actually too soft on games. Look at the criminally bad stories, writing and characterisation in most AAA games which get 8/10 or above. People say there hasn't been a citizen kane for games and it's true.
 
there are good games out and about

but answer to OP question yes, if they can make good games back in the day why not now, or is it these pesky consoles or is it just gaming in general
 
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