20 years since 2004. The greatest step forward in PC gaming?

Uriel

Uriel

Uriel

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Just thinking back to 2004 releases. Half Life 2, Far Cry, Rome: Total War, World of Warcraft, Counter Strike: Source, Doom 3 and my personal favourite Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (although released in a dreadful state before patching).

Huge leaps forward that year - some of those still stand up pretty well now.

Has there been a bigger step forward in a year in PC gaming? Makes me feel old that it was 20 years ago...
 
Games now days are just a flash in the pan to a lot of people and want the next new one , I have more fun playing older games 2000-2010 etc games back than had more heart and soul to them .....most of the new games now days will just be forgot in a few years ..
 
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1996. The release of Quake. The first PROPER 3D game - you could walk UNDER something you just walked OVER for the first time.
 
Modern games look & sound better than ever...gameplay is the issue too many are just texture streaming fancy graphics overloaded with GPU filters with minimal or basic gameplay plus nearly everything is just a console port with PC being the best looking version most but not all of the time.

Doubt it will change anytime soon games are just too expensive to make requiring an army of developers so the end product is nearly always what will appeal to the mass audience.
 
Games now feels like a step backwards from the 00s. Less features and less imagination. Graphics have improved but not all that much. Sound hasn't changed, maybe gone backwards as developers don't give it much priority anymore. Or AI, which has definitely gone backwards. I don't think there are any real AI programmers in the games industry now.

Games like HL2 still have a large player base even now. Because of the mod support and private, dedicated servers which modern games lack. Games from 2 years ago are vapourware.
 
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There really has not been much innovation at all. They look prettier, and that is about it.

A lot of recent releases seem to take vast backwards steps in terms of immersive-ness/interaction etc as well.

I think sadly most big game companies just take the easy route and rehash games, and sell skins and loot to children/teenagers.

For Rockstar's faults (I know they are as money grabbing as the best of them), they do at least seem to push innovation/what is possible in their games. RDR2 was incredible, and I am expecting GTA 6 to really push things forward as well.
 
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Nah 2023 was way better. There is no comparison to the amount of pc games that release these days, games for every possible taste and mood
 
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NZXT30 said:
Nah 2023 was way better. There is no comparison to the amount of pc games that release these days, games for every possible taste and mood
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There was one good game in 2023 which was Baldur's Gate 3. But even then it wasn't really anything new. The rest were meh. The most anticipated one (Starfield) wasn't on par with Skyrim or even Oblivion. Their much older titles.
 
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Recently replayed Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Half Life. Loved them more than most modern games. Of course there are games released recently that I have really enjoyed, but the majority of games I will remember and recall in thr future were years ago.
 
Nasher said:
There was one good game in 2023 which was Baldur's Gate 3. But even then it wasn't really anything new. The rest were meh. The most anticipated one (Starfield) wasn't on par with Skyrim or even Oblivion. Their much older titles.
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That's just your opinion and in my opinion the only outstanding game in the OPs list is Rome total war. People forgot how disappointing Doom 3 was, huge flop and I remember half life 2 boring me to death.

F.E.A.R. came out a year later now that was proper FPS and made hl2 look like a joke.
 
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NZXT30 said:
That's just your opinion and in my opinion the only outstanding game in the OPs list is Rome total war. People forgot how disappointing Doom 3 was, huge flop and I remember half life 2 boring me to death.

F.E.A.R. came out a year later now that was proper FPS and made hl2 look like a joke.
Click to expand...

Doom 3 wasn't a flop, it scored pretty highly on metacritic. Its a much better game than the more recent reboots which are just a series of small arenas with none of the great map design the originals were known for.
 
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NZXT30 said:
That's just your opinion and in my opinion the only outstanding game in the OPs list is Rome total war. People forgot how disappointing Doom 3 was, huge flop and I remember half life 2 boring me to death.

F.E.A.R. came out a year later now that was proper FPS and made hl2 look like a joke.
Click to expand...
FEAR1/2 still holds up even now. That was mind blowing for it's time, I did all 3 last year (yet again) 2 was my favourite, and still looks incredible.
Only issue with 2 is, it feels a lot shorter? That bit in the school corridor with the lockers slamming shut!!!
 
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My favourite time a as PC gamer was 2002 to 2004 but I would say the PC games market is a in decent state at the moment. There's a lot of variety and good quality titles out there provided you ignore the the headline grabbing titles of doom (LOTR: Gollum, Starfield, TLOU Part 1, Cities Skylines 2 and Forspoken). The biggest change in PC gaming compared to early 2000's is people tend to play the same titles for a lot longer I meant just look at the Steam results to see what people are playing and about 1/2 the 10 top has had the same titles in it for years now. Steam has been a big help in giving Indie developers a platform to showcase their titles, frankly are spoilt for choice compared to our console cousins.

The drawbacks of modern gaming should be obvious (content striped from the base game and repacked as DLC), loot boxes and micro transactions etc all leave a bad taste in mouth. Mostly that's the fault of large publishers who can get away with treating their customers like crap but Indie developers are no angels either (numerous KickStarter campaigns that are little more then a cash grab).

The one thing I do miss now compared to 20 years ago are RTS games which seem to have gone the way of the Click & Point titles. Not sure why the interest in those sort of titles has waned over the years, I would love to see a modern take on Command & Conquer Generals (preferably with none of EA's usual 8ull8hit).
 
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