Games getting worse...

Fry750

Fry750

Fry750

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While ever-improving standards in games have provided some fantastic benefits over the years, I can't help but feel games in general don't seem to be as good...

Some comparisons (personal opinion of course)

Resident Evil 1-3 vs Resident Evil 4-7 - I loved the original Resident Evil; the story, the *genuine* survival horror, the 3rd person fixed camera angles and the scares. Resident Evil 7 is fine but the first person nature and terrible villains don't resonate as much with me. Genuine cannibalistic zombies are scarier than mould splodges.

Destiny 1 vs Destiny 2 - A recent example but still relevant. I was a HUGE fan of Destiny 1, I loved the fact that while microtransactions were present, they weren't obligatory. Step up Destiny 2, completely undone EVERY decent thing in Destiny 1 and stuck everything behind additional £££. They say microtransaction revenue helps keep other updates free, so what exactly did my £90 preorder fund?

Dead Rising vs Dead Rising 2-4 - Like REvil, Dead Rising really struck a chord with me. The open shopping centre, adult humour and gory nature etc all made the game great. Fast forward to DR4 and they're completely different. No (decent) humour, less gore, completely different in terms of attention to detail - like it's completely aimed at kids.

WWF Here Comes the Pain/No Mercy vs WWE 2K18 - Think what you like of wrasslin' but the games were always supreme fun. Whether on PS1, PS2 or N64 fun was all but guaranteed. Play any wrasslin' game today and they feel so cheap in comparison. Matches don't feel like anything could happen and they just feel gimmicky.

Rainbow Six 3 and Black Arrow vs Rainbow Six Siege - I like Siege and still play it but I enjoyed 3 and BA so much more. I remember a level in a hotel, you started in the car park and fought your way up, sounds simple but it was obscenely good to play. Playing terrorist hunt in a small house doesn't really feel the same.

Starwars Battlefront (Xbox) vs Starwars Battlefront 2 - I've never played a BF game however, back on the original Xbox I had friends that were playing months after it came out. Starwars fans frequently praised it saying it was the game that fans deserved. BF2 gets released and is showered under a barrage of bad PR due to a horrendous lootbox setup.

Tekken 1-3 vs Tekken 4-7 - *Sigh* Tekken 3 was one of my favourite games. Even playing today it's enjoyable. I started playing Tekken 7 and lasted about an hour, it's absolutely nowhere near as enjoyable. It's too fast, too cheesy and just pales in comparison to T3.

Doom 3 vs Doom 4 (2016) - I really like Doom 4, it's incredibly well optimised and runs like a dream. However I did enjoy Doom 3 more, it was genuinely scary and featured a co-op mode which was also great fun.

Gran Turismo 3 A Spec vs Gran Turismo 5 - This comparison's a little old but GT3 was so much more fun to play than GT5. The range of cars, mods and single player campaign made GT3 feel fantastic and well worth £40 at the time, GT5 had far less in comparison and was promptly sold later that week.

You could argue that I've got rose tinted glasses on or something but there are some games that have truly gotten better with age; GTA, Fallout (DLC aside) and PES to name a few. With the combination of weaker/less original storylines, games riddled with lootboxes/microtransactions, the more is better mentality (in terms of characters/mechanics etc, NOT content) and dare I say a younger target audience, I find it next to impossible to get excited for any games these days (Destiny 2 has absolutely killed it).

I'll still expect big things from RDR2 but Rockstar seem to get the big decisions right. Should we stop expecting any modicum of decency from games going forward? £50 on a game doesn't seem to mean anything anymore, you'll need £50 for the disc, a further £25 for each season pass and even that doesn't guarantee quality DLC.

What say you OcUK?
 
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The quality games are still there, just hidden in the deluge that is todays gaming industry. Greed is king.

Never played WWF, tekken or Rainbow six back in the day. Battlefront is basically the same. Doom 3 was the odd one out, I preffered it myself.

Destiny, dont get me started. Not the game we should have got.

Dead Rising was great, but after the first its like they totally lost focus of what actually made it so good.
 
I think games like music have just run out of ideas. A scientific experiment was done for music and it showed it has been getting worse since the 60s, I would expect a similar result with games. I look at trophies on Dark Souls 3 for example and some of the easier ones are rare. Not as many people are sticking with one game till the end. Waste of £50 if you ask me, and I know because I've wasted 1000s on games.
 
Not sure if they're getting worse but originality has gone down the toilet. Feels like most genres have been done to death now which is probably why PUBG has done so well, it feels fresh.
 
I am usually the first to call people out for being oblivious to their rose tinted glasses, but I think you have a point. I think early to mid PS360 was the peak in gaming- Forza 3/4, Dead Rising 1 and 2, Battlefield 2 on PC, Sims 2 and all its expansions, battlefront 2, COD 2 to 4. All these series have gone down hill in terms of convoluted systems designed to wring a constant stream of money from players, contextual button prompts and general hand holding and rail roading. I think this period of gaming was when games were not ludicrously expensive (and therefore risky) to make but pretty good tech was there.

However today games are technically / have the potential to be better and in the right hands can shine and be better than those old games, e.g. Witcher 3. It just doesn't happen much in my view.
 
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McBain said:
Not sure if they're getting worse but originality has gone down the toilet. Feels like most genres have been done to death now which is probably why PUBG has done so well, it feels fresh.
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Increasingly seems like more and more career game developers who don't care about making a game the best it can be - produce what they are expected to and move on and post launch/initial problem increasingly things often only ever get fixed these days if there is huge public scrutiny/pressure on unlike back in the day when many had a passion for what they were doing and wouldn't rest until things that made their work look sloppy or amateur were fixed, etc. obviously this is partly due to the increasing corporate/business impact as well.
 
I somewhat agree apart from rainbow six siege , this game is a really unique fps with all the different operators gadgets and the destructible walls etc. And the online multiplayer is the best it has ever been, and technically you don't have to pay for the new operators as the maps are free and the ops can be purchased with renown (although I play it enough to warrant getting the season pass :) ) and it's also shows now sign of slowing down either going into year 3 ..

Also I'm guessing you haven't played any of the switch AAA titles this year ? Mario and Zelda are both epic games and they're probably amongst the oldest running video game franchises/characters but are both amongst the best games I have ever played
 
I get what your saying but then then there is Horizon Zero Dawn as a new IP.

Not new ideas as such but it felt like it expanded on them and felt fresh.

You note Gran Turismo but Forza is really the leader these days.

With regards to Resident Evil, there are other survival horror games out there from Evil Within to Outlast and Until Dawn.

Regardless of it's bad press BF2 is hand down the best Battlefront.

I wouldn't focus so much on an old series but instead a genre.

I think we are spoiled to a certain degree. I manage to enjoy gaming today without micro transactions still
 
Do you think that originality isn't the issue but publisher risk versus recurring revenue on existing IPs?

When gaming was considered niche people could take a risk or two but now with investors etc involved publishers like EA or Ubisoft are never going to release something new at the expense of Fifa or Assassins Creed since they are guaranteed money.

I think the reason the Switch is doing so well is that people had forgotten gaming was supposed to be escapism/random and having that choice on the go or home has made it very appealing.
 
Check this video out as a huge example of how Dead Rising has gotten worse, not just in the sense you mentioned but also world detail.

It's shocking.

 
There absolutely needs to be new IP and I loathe the fact that many games will attempt a revival, often changing much and labelling it alongside an existing series.

I really liked playing Sunset Overdrive, completely unique and enjoyable. It's a shame a sequel hasn't been announced but even then there's a risk they'd break it by trying too much.

I bought Shenmue 1 & 2 on DC a few years ago (going through a retro phase) and completed them. Of course other games since then have been much better and more expensive to produce but at the time Shenmue was absolutely revolutionary in every way. With the upcoming Shenmue 3 I (like many others) am terrified it's going to be a turgid mess, the videos so far look pretty standard but since it's Kickstarter funded I'm hoping Yu Suzuki has the ability to get the best from the dev teams resources.

I haven't bought a Switch and didn't buy a Wii U. For me, they just seem to much £££ for not a lot of gain. I totally admit that first party Nintendo games are seldom beaten but they're not so common. I long for the days Nintendo would produce a fully-fledged console, gimmick free. Mario 64 is still some of the best fun I've had playing anything but back then the N64 was technically superior to everything else out there.

As far as RS Siege DLC goes, it's probably the best way to do it. I think a new operator outside of year 1 is 20K renown but you can earn them by playing (a lot) or fork out £££, either way the player has the choice.

For games that 'grip' me, I'd gladly consider a successful sequel to expand the story, provide a new setting but retain the mechanics that made the original decent in the first place. Fallout for example, I'd buy every single Fallout title if Bethesda were to adhere to the above. Fallout 4 was really enjoyable, besides the criminally underwhelming DLC and 'gist of' dialogue options I don't think I could've enjoyed it any more.

I think I prefer simplicity in games, I was watching a trailer for Dynasty Warriors 9 and they're showcasing all these new features including an open world environment and yet there's a scene with a guy opening a door and the door clips through him... I'd much rather the developers sort those issues out than constantly adding new features, if they can't manage a door opening successfully after 8 versions of a game, how can they implement completely new features after 1?
 
antijoke said:
Check this video out as a huge example of how Dead Rising has gotten worse, not just in the sense you mentioned but also world detail.

It's shocking.

Click to expand...

That's exactly the video I saw. I think the problem is that the original game was a Japanese idea and bespoke, Capcom got more involved on #2 and the original attention to detail disappeared as a result.
 
One of the biggest disappointments I've had was with the new Deus Ex games. I never had a gaming PC when the original game came out but I played both of the newer games and felt that they got worse.

I never actually finished the last one as I got frustrated with it. So many performance issues and poor gameplay marred the experience.

Another thing that bugs me in modern games is the knocked out, dizzy, blurry crawling level that always seems to have to be put into a game. At some point in practically every game you will get captured/drugged/whack over the head and you will have to stumble through a stage in the most boring part of the game.
 
I think games seem to have dumbed down a fair amount - at a guess, maybe it's been done to aid accessibility or progress, for those of us who sometimes only get to invest an hour or so a day/every few days...

I have been fairly restrained this year, as I really have felt let down by a number of the 'triple A' titles, so haven't purchased much - instead, I've been going through my older games I only played bits of. Only recently finished Uncharted 4!

What with all the loot box and pay to win stuff, I'll certainly be keeping an eye on anything coming in 2018, and will leave it until its reduced, if it smacks of just greed rather than delivering a great product.
 
RedStarRiot said:
Regardless of it's bad press BF2 is hand down the best Battlefront.
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The original battlefronts are so much better dice just had to copy and pasted the game modes and add the BF2 visuals.

But they went down broken grind fest micro crap route with tacked on single player.
 
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As soon as gaming went from niche to big business this problem was inevitable.

If there is one word that I feels sums up the games mostly produced for a good few years now it has to be safe.

Decisions are not made by devs on what can be an outstanding IP its by the publishers and their shareholders on what they feel they can market to generate the best dividends. Markets hate uncertainty and risky new IP's aint gonna fly with the board!

So other than the odd exception, safe recycled IP's are sadly all we will ever get.

Well, unless gamers make a stand and refuse to buy the reskinned yearly releases. But you only have to go into the COD threads for the last few years to see many gamers behave like turkeys voting for Christmas.

.......cod sucks I'm never buying it again.
Then next title is announced:
.......The new COD looks great and im hopeful they will fix the issues from the last games.
.....then a week into release:
OMG this COD sucks, im not bothering again!!! Herp derp.

Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

So nothing will change, sadly.
 
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