Veterans .Who thinks pc gaming have really evolved in the last few years ..

[Moothead2]

Far too many games these days follow the same formulaic collectathon, crafting system, open world model with a side of cover shooter for good measure that it's become incredibly stale and ends up feeling like a product for market, rather than something someone has put thousands of hours into to make an experience worth having.

Also Big boxes. Big boxes will always win .

 

[KNiVES]

The only thing that's stagnated is CPU power, there still isn't anything worth upgrading to from an i2500k.

 

[Ayahuasca]

The only thing that's stagnated is CPU power, there still isn't anything worth upgrading to from an i2500k.

That entirely depends on what you play, some games are showing 20-30 fps increase in minimums between a 2500k and a 6700k.

 

[Gregster]

I am also a long time gamer (handheld pac man before the Spectrum/C64 days) and it is hard for a game to grab my attention for long unless it has that "something". Two games of late have had that for me and The Division as well as Elite Dangerous have hogged my gaming time. Others I have really enjoyed are Rise of the Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham Knight (both a bit short) BF4 to name a couple.

When I look back at history, games have always had to have that something to keep me gripped and there has been those through all the generations of computers to consoles.

 

[cheesyboy]

For me, I see that we have all this CPU power yet game/AI logic in the majority of games is total poop and sometimes inexcusable.

The problem nowadays is back in the day, a developer or group of developers would make a game in their spare time for the love of it. No commercial motivation. They just want to make a game as good as they can, in their own vision.

Nowadays, few take that "gamble", from day 1, they have Kickstarter/Early access backers to appease so they are already locked into commercial issues influencing their creativity/design.

You're ignoring much of the indie game scene.

Stuff like Fez, Dustforce, Pony Island, Undertale, Binding of Isaac, Stanley Parable, Superhot.... They were all labours of love for their small dev teams, and they are all niche titles, with the commercial risk being such would entail.

There's plenty of creativity - for someone with literally hundreds of hours in an ACE Team game, I'm surprised you don't see it.

If you're an old-school gamer then you're a niche. Once you understand that, you'll realise that AAA games just aren't made for you - by their nature they're made for a broad audience.

 

[MINUS12]

Ok so my recent game choices may not be to everyone's liking, but I think we can be too critical at times and not give games a chance to grow on us its as if our mindset is on assault the minute we try a new title .. I agree most games are visually superb compared to zx spectrum days and I guess only a few show real innovation.

Good question is what do we define as a ground breaking title which really grabs our attention ?

 

[MINUS12]

You're ignoring much of the indie game scene.

Stuff like Fez, Dustforce, Pony Island, Undertale, Binding of Isaac, Stanley Parable, Superhot.... They were all labours of love for their small dev teams, and they are all niche titles, with the commercial risk being such would entail.

There's plenty of creativity - for someone with literally hundreds of hours in an ACE Team game, I'm surprised you don't see it.

I totally agree about indie developers and the love they inject into there titles , it seems indie developers are the way forward .. EA take note

 

[Devrij]

As both a gamer that started with HHGTTG text adventure, and a game developer by trade, I think people complaining about the state of games today have a serious case of rose-tinted specs.

Yes, the big developers and publishers are risk-averse because AAA development costs hundreds of millions of dollars and is a huge risk now....but the boom in availability of development tools/engines has completely democratised the industry. There is *way* more choice available to gamers than there has ever been before.

If you're into storytelling the standout examples from recent years are Bioshock Infinite and The Last Of Us.

Agreed, I think we are much more critical of games these days.

I beg to differ - three of those aren't even fully out yet and Elite Dangerous is sorely disappointing in its current form ( to me at least ). Apart from the X series ( and as someone else in this thread has already stated I too think those games fail to convey a sense of being in space ) the only true success on PC has been EVE Online.

As for gaming now - is it better ? Yes, and no. I think there are more games being made but you have to wade through a bigger pile of rubbish and mediocrity to get to the real gems. Some genres have seemingly faded into the ether ie. flight sims, space sims ... even RTS games have fallen away appreciably with the exception of one or two big titles eg. StarCraft 2, Company of Heroes.

If you like RPGs then they have regained popularity which is great to see, however I now lack the time to really get to grips with the lengthier ones. Old school RPG veterans may still be left wanting though if they insist on having full control of character stats, dice rolls etc.

True, but I was simply pointing out that there are space sims in development or released, and elite dangerous is a lot better than the original elite so if we are talking about whether games are better now or then...

Also, there are some rad RTS games out there besides the big two you mentioned. Ashes is shaping up very nicely and is a real spiritual successor to the immense supreme commander, and I have put over 50hrs into battlefleet gothic which is just so so good (released on the 21st next month).

I just think that people need to dig a bit deeper to find the games they want, and maybe give the AAA releases a miss if they feel they aren't delivering the experience they are after. One of the best games I've played was Brothers, a tale of two sons. Hardly a AAA title.

 

[melchy]

I was a huge fan of Frontier Elite II, but have no interest in MMO gameplay for this type of game. I was all set to get this until I read the SP game had been sacrificed for MP. Is Star Citizen released? Must have missed that one with my head buried in FO4.

You can play Elite : Dangerous in solo mode, so essentially what you get at the moment is a modernised version of Fronter : Elite II but with the original Elite flight controls. Nothing was sacrificed for the Solo game, the only concession made was that it had to be online all the time so that the commodities markets etc. could be updated dynamically. I much prefer this to the entirely static nature of the original Frontier. I've never played it in "online" mode and I've put a lot of hours into the game as like you I had no interest in it as a MMO game.

 

[Crimefighter]

I don't have time for too many games these days, but tellingly a lot of the games I do play (e.g. Xcom) are evolutionary sequels from games made in the 1990s or early 2000s. Not many brand new games grab my attention.

The exception to that rule for me at least, is Heroes of the Storm, which is a retake on a MOBA - a genre which has really taken off over the last 5-10 years.

 

[mid_gen]

For me, I see that we have all this CPU power yet game/AI logic in the majority of games is total poop and sometimes inexcusable.

Agree with that. One problem though is that beyond a certain point, multi-threading in game engines becomes insanely hard. Another problem is that talk of great AI doesn't work for marketing...screenshots do.

The problem nowadays is back in the day, a developer or group of developers would make a game in their spare time for the love of it. No commercial motivation. They just want to make a game as good as they can, in their own vision.

Nowadays, few take that "gamble", from day 1, they have Kickstarter/Early access backers to appease so they are already locked into commercial issues influencing their creativity/design.

Serious case of rose-tinted specs here. Game developers are people with bills to pay and families to feed, nothing has changed there. Arguably the easy availability of crowd-sourced funding for games is a massive enabler for developers to make games that otherwise would never see the light of day.

 

[Random Guy]

AAA has stagnated (if you call commercialisation in the sense of the Hollywood blockbuster model "stagnation" - call it simplification if you like), but there are still standout AAA franchises such as Battlefield (imo), Fallout, Dark Souls, Xcom, Starcraft etc.

Indie gaming has been a revelation in the last few years and it is here you will find the hotbed of creativity and talent that just might be tomorrow's next big thing. Golden age really.

So basically gaming has gone down both a predictable route but with a lot of offshoots into amazing territory (VR being the next big one I think). Pretty amazing stuff considering where we were 30 years ago.

 

[~>Dg<~]

i guess its what you play in how you answer.

AAA games are so dumb now its annoying.especially fps titles.

racing/driving games i would say have moved up a gear. generally better both visually and whats being done with them.

i tend to try game genres i wouldn't of now in the search for something different which maybe more interesting that the annual rinse and rank up game.

 

[almoststew1990]

It's been an interesting 5 years for gaming in general, with mobile and indie games and 'the cloud' coming into play. I personally see this as a bad thing. For 40 years games have been getting bigger, better by introducing full colour, full sound, full voice acting, Cutscenes, 3D worlds, two analogue sticks etc, the intention of creating a more immersive world and increasing enjoyment. Now however many/most indie developers are dropping all that in favour of being 'retro' and doing crap graphics, crap sound, simple gameplay, for £15. I do not like this one bit.

Then at the other end of the spectrum you have games like Call of Battlefield becoming huge business since 2010 or so, on par with the biggest Hollywood films (I'd assume?). This means the stakes are higher, less risks can be taken, and we get sequel after sequel with incremental improvements etc so no real game changers in game design.

I would like some middle ground between cheap, naff indie games looking back and the beige-wallpaper AAA games, which are enjoyable but bland. Unfortunately that can't happen any more, but when it occasionally does we get great-but-flawed games like Life is Strange. More of this please!

 

[Ayahuasca]

I think with a lot of people it's just nostalgia, if you went back to many of those games you thought were the be all and end all you would realise gaming has moved on a long way, in pretty much all aspects.

When you were young, you could put all your effort into gaming and not have any outside influences bothering you which also helped. I mean how many of us as adults can sit down and play games without worrying about their job, family/other half commitments, just general day to day stuff you need to do that you didn't as a kid/young adult. Anything like that is going to bring you away from the immersion you experienced when you were younger, when you didn't need to think about anything else for hours at a time.

 

[Gregster]

I think with a lot of people it's just nostalgia, if you went back to many of those games you thought were the be all and end all you would realise gaming has moved on a long way, in pretty much all aspects.

When you were young, you could put all your effort into gaming and not have any outside influences bothering you which also helped. I mean how many of us as adults can sit down and play games without worrying about their job, family/other half commitments, just general day to day stuff you need to do that you didn't as a kid/young adult. Anything like that is going to bring you away from the immersion you experienced when you were younger, when you didn't need to think about anything else for hours at a time.

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing and thanks to some clever emulation software, we can replay those old classics that are 'in my opinion' best left to nostalgia. The only game I couldn't put down was Super Mario Kart. Anything else from history (Dune - Amiga, Rambo - C64, Micropose Golf and Geoff Crammonds F1 - Amiga) to name but a few were best left in the memory banks.

 

[El_Watcher]

For me, the biggest change in games over the years, has been the over-complication of the control systems.

Remember a platform game like Sonic. You had left to move left, right to move right, down to enable spin mode, and any of the other buttons to jump/spin.
Or the old Fifa games, where you had three buttons shoot, pass and chip/change player.
A modern version will have extra controls assigned to each and every button available, some with multiple options depending on combinations of buttons being pressed.

When I buy a new game, I know I will have to spend the first few hours learning a control scheme that will likely be similar but slightly different to another similar genre game. Even then, I know at some point I will press the wrong button at the wrong time

 

[kinger8938]

I dont think its come far since half life 2. That was the last big pc game that i remember having to upgrade etc to play! Now its sort of leveled out to scale on consoles too

 

[Surfer]

Well, half of them are well-regarded 'frontier' games, another is a well-regarded sequel, and only one of them is The Division. So, y'know, his list was OK.

"frontier" games uhh lol

Well thats a matter of opinion

Firewatch: massively overrated, overpriced albeit interesting gameplay mechanic but if thats the future of pc gaming then we should just get used to paying £15 for 2-3 hours of "gameplay" That will be the norm and i guess we will love it

Max Payne 3 - A by the numbers console port. Ultra linear shooter with almost as many cutscenes as MGS4 but if you like that kind of thing hey ho.

The Division: Repetitve 3rd person shooter utilizing "diabolesque" addictive mechanic of increasing stats on tons of stuff. So in that sense i guess it can be appealing. But as the future of pc gaming uhm nah.

Oxenfree: Havent played this so this could actually be innovative, creative and do all sorts of things not seen in pc gaming.

Just my opinion but 3 out 4 of same old same old stuff tbh.

I just wouldnt use those games as examples of pc gaming that has evolved for the better.

 

[Raumarik]

I tried "The Division" beta and skipped it despite a lot of pressure from friends to get it, to me it's just Borderlands without the humour and in a realistic setting with unrealistic enemies and damage, tons of pointless grinding and a pvp zone that doesn't really work. All my opinion obviously but I didn't see Ubisoft sorting that out and at the time had to choose between Broforce and The Division so clearly Broforce won