Thinking on the way into work about games 10 years ago..

gigeorge

gigeorge

gigeorge

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And either im not looking hard enough or my theory is true, there seems to be a lot less games of differing genres, more onus around first person perspective shoot em ups..

Clearly this kind of thing is market driven but i was thinking how varied my program files folder used to be. Back in the late 90's there was a plethora of racing games, big red racing, micro machines, colin mcrae etc. Then the shooters -doom, quake etc. Then the strategy - civ sim city etc, all used to be quite good and playable games. A concern is that most pc games are geared towards gfx rather than story/ game play.. I cant wait for Cave to come out..

Either im not looking hard enough but there doesn't seem to be anything that stands out as a quality game in the market / on Steam - all their sale items look a bit pants and i'm slowly losing interest in gaming.

Re light my fire for gaming somebody, sick of bf3 / skyrim, dirt etc....
 
I think it's just that you're not looking hard enough, there are as many varied games if not more (with stuff like Steam, XBLA, PSN meaning more Indie devs can get their games out to larger audiences)
 
you're talking of an era where there were games without genre or the pigeon-holes and yet to become as rigid as they are now. The big publishers, like the movie companies only want to invest in sure-fire returns, the games you pine for are not sure-fire things at all.

There has been (imo at least) a drive in the indie community to provide this more experimental side of gaming and also the mod community is still throwing up new styles of play and games in general (see dota/LoL)

I dont think you'd get a large publisher willing to invest into a toe jam and earl for example nowadays.
 
You're not looking hard enough.

Games such as Minecraft and DayZ are far from focussed on graphics and are great, very refreshing.
 
gigeorge said:
Back in the late 90's there was a plethora of racing games, big red racing, micro machines, colin mcrae etc. Then the shooters -doom, quake etc. Then the strategy - civ sim city etc, all used to be quite good and playable games. A concern is that most pc games are geared towards gfx rather than story/ game play.. I cant wait for Cave to come out..
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There are still loads of racing games, shooters and strategy games. :confused:
 
Im not looking hard enough, thats fair statement. But i dont want to spend 10, 20 30 quid if i get a game that im thoroughly disspointed with (crysis 2) and waste money.

It all comes down to personal taste i know but still when people ranted on about crysis 2 i figured id give it a go and i cant stand it !!

Give me 10 decent indie or main stream games other than those mentioned for a whirl.. A 'spec me' if you like....
 
Limbo
Braid
Space Pirates and Zombies
Osmos
Trials 2 (or the latest one if you have a 360)
Terraria
Walking Dead
Castle Crashers


Just a few off the top of my head there.
 
If you're into your Roguelikes there's also:

Dungeons of Dredmor
Hack, Slash, Loot
The Binding of Isaac

They really aren't geared towards graphics and have excellent gameplay.
 
I think you will find the genre diversity today isn't as much as 10 years ago. Publishers are "scared" to invest in genre's which won't sell.

Take for instance adventure games like monkey island. No publisher will invest, hence why double fine had to use kickstarter, what that did show though is there's still a huge interest in that particular type of game, just not the 100's of millions publishers have come to expect now.

Development costs of games have become so insanely inflated now that if a triple A title doesn't a budget of 10's or even 100's of millions, chances are it won't work, and even in those cases games can and do fail.

Max Payne 3 is one of them, an otherwise great game, but it was and is a financial flop, costing in excess of 100 million dollars to make, it needed to sell 5 million copies to make a profit, it sold less than a million.
 
gigeorge said:
And either im not looking hard enough or my theory is true, there seems to be a lot less games of differing genres, more onus around first person perspective shoot em ups..

Clearly this kind of thing is market driven but i was thinking how varied my program files folder used to be. Back in the late 90's there was a plethora of racing games, big red racing, micro machines, colin mcrae etc. Then the shooters -doom, quake etc. Then the strategy - civ sim city etc, all used to be quite good and playable games. A concern is that most pc games are geared towards gfx rather than story/ game play.. I cant wait for Cave to come out..

Either im not looking hard enough but there doesn't seem to be anything that stands out as a quality game in the market / on Steam - all their sale items look a bit pants and i'm slowly losing interest in gaming.

Re light my fire for gaming somebody, sick of bf3 / skyrim, dirt etc....
Click to expand...

I think the problem is your looking for main stream games, its the main stream games that rely on the GRAPHICS more than the GAMEPLAY.
Theres some great little games on Steam an to make it even better there always cheaper.
 
CyberCrow said:
I think the problem is your looking for main stream games, its the main stream games that rely on the GRAPHICS more than the GAMEPLAY.
Theres some great little games on Steam an to make it even better there always cheaper.
Click to expand...

I ink it's more the fact main stream games are advertised and it's harder to find out about other games. Even if you frequent this sub forum. Unless you click on random threads and have a darn good read, you wouldn't find out about these games.

Mine raft and kerbal space program are two worthy games, all though the latter is still in devlopment.
 
Glaucus said:
I ink it's more the fact main stream games are advertised and it's harder to find out about other games. Even if you frequent this sub forum. Unless you click on random threads and have a darn good read, you wouldn't find out about these games.

Mine raft and kerbal space program are two worthy games, all though the latter is still in devlopment.
Click to expand...

Easy solution: Look at other sites - http://www.tigsource.com/ is a great site for finding non-mainstream games.
 
I kind of agree with the OP but two titles I picked up in the Steam sale which both turned out to absolute gems are Toy Soldiers and Walking Dead. Both these buck the trend of generic shiny FPS so there ARE quality non-standard titles being produced.
 
gigeorge said:
And either im not looking hard enough or my theory is true, there seems to be a lot less games of differing genres, more onus around first person perspective shoot em ups..
Click to expand...

I disagree, ~10 years ago the market was dominated by FPS games:

-Quake 3 Arena
-Unreal Tournament
-Halflife mods e.g. Counterstrike
-MOHAA
-BF1942
-RTCW
-NOLF/NOLF2
-Deus Ex
-Red Faction

Basically in the late 90s 3d acceleration took off and the posterboy for that new tech was the FPS genre, the industry and gamers alike were hanging on every word to come out of Carmack's mouth.

Whereas nowadays there is digitial distribution meaning you aren't restricted by what retailers/publishers are pushing, there are a whole raft of diverse (which doesn't necessarily have to mean indie, although it may do) titles available.
 
I was gonna say 'tbh, FPS games aren't THAT common, I don't think I own many'

Then I realised though, that I own L4D2, Half-Life collection, Metro, Borderlands, Fallout, F3AR, Deus Ex collection, Bioshock collection, ArmA 2, PAYDAY, Portal, STALKER, and tons more older FPS games retail.

Fepic ail.
 
Do you like strategy games?

Try something from paradox - I would particularly reccomend crusader kings 2, easily their most accessible, and just great fun

Another good strategy game I am enjoying at the moment is warlock master of the arcane - crazy wizard war fun.

Warlock is also published by paradox. Paradox are a relatively small publisher/ studio, their games won't have massive budgets, but they have found a niche. I think this is more akin to 90's gaming, lower budgets, no requirement for massive success allowing more individuality in game style.

Another great game published by paradox is mount & blade warband. I've literally never played a game anything like it. It gives a very real feeling of being a medieval soldier. The best combat I have ever experienced.
 
I think im going to give minecraft a whirl..

Id love another c&c game, like ra2...But not futuristic, with current day tech..
 
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