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

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I am an oldschool vetetan going back to the days of the zx spectrum ,amiga etc but Havent gamed for a while until recently as i have renewed my interest but I have read on a few forums that games have lost there innovation creativity and are just mostly repetitive and based on an old formula ..

I played a few games lately and found them to be highly immersive and graphically amazing and allmost photorealistic at times and i really feel games have matured in recent yrs , games like firewatch , oxenfree , the division , max Payne 3 to name a few ..

I found it a good idea to focus on different genres of gaming to renew my interest instead of focusing on my usual generic first person shooters etc

 

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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 ?

 

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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

 

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you were younger and had more dopamine.

Anybody who says that gaming right now is 'terrible' or lacking creativity or whatever is either just a cynical whiner, has ultra narrow tastes or just isn't looking in the right places.

I'd say we're in a golden age of gaming. I dont know how the quality of releases can keep up for much longer before we hit something of a lull, where we'll look back at 2015 and 2016 as some of the best years in gaming for a long time.

Easy enough to look purely at the AAA scene and point out the sequels and boring franchise exploitation and 'cinematic gaming', but that's such a small picture of gaming as a whole. And it ignores that there are still lots of good AAA titles that were made or are getting made, sequels or not. They're not ALL like that by any means. We've gotten GTA V, Souls games/Bloodborne, Dying Light, Alien Isolation, The Evil Within, Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Witcher 3, etc while coming up we have Dishonored 2, the new Deux Ex, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Dark Souls 3, Mass Effect Andromeda, Doom and on and on.
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And all the great AA games, including the resurgence of the CRPG. Thinking about games like Xcom 2, Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Legend of Grimrock 2, The Talos Principle, Grim Dawn, Dirt Rally, Project Cars, Elite Dangerous, Shadowrun: Hong Kong, etc etc.

I shouldn't have the list the insane amount of great indie games that have been coming out recently. It's absolute saturation right now and I honestly have a hard time just keeping up with the rate of releases(Hyper Light Drifter comes out tomorrow by the way!).

Gaming is fantastic right now. And PC gaming is better than ever, with more options and games coming out than ever before. Unless you're just burnt out on gaming, I'd say something is wrong with you if you cant appreciate what we have going right now.

Personally I really like a lot of new games like "rise of tombraider" or " the division" even though its an old formula Im really enjoying them and so wowed by the graphics compared to the days of jet set willy

 

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The fact that everyone refers to JSW is because of how good it actually was for its time, especially the freedom aspect. Graphics are better today obviously but the innovation and originality is terrible today. I have 2xTitan X's and i hardly ever use my PC for games because its a borefest tbh. Played FO4 a lot but that was it, bored of that after good few hours mind you.

2 Unused Titans ! Free to a good home

I guess back the days nothing like jsw had ever happened before so we were naturally wowed , but as you say most games now do lack true innovation , it mostly gimmicks like fine tuned game mechanics , better graphics etc . But to be honest I do still enjoy a few sandbox titles today as few yrs back I hardly gamed. Ill admit i am a eyecandy whore though ..

 

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Threads like this always make me scratch my head in wonderment.

PC gaming has evolved yes, but not in originality or storytelling... that age of true innovation and scripts that wouldn't be out of place in the finest comedies are long gone.

The fact is that you cannot say you have experienced any kind of PC Golden Age™ unless you were a gamer from around 1990 to approximately 2003.

That's not anyone's fault, it's just simply due to the fact that this period was the time when almost all of the concepts we know and love were invented, and the games you played were truly original and derived from almost nothing else. This means that the sense of wonderment when you played many of the games was real because there had literally never been anything recognisably like it before. Dune II, Monkey Island, X-Wing/TIE Fighter, Wing Commander, Dungeon Keeper, Baldurs Gate, the list could go on for hours.

Now, we are left with big budget derivatives that rarely if add anything truly new or original simply because as an industry we are now averse to taking risks, and creative freedom is something that exists only in a very small numbers of game developers outside of the Indie scene. It used to be that the big house publishers were the Indie developers and were basically allowed to do what the **** they wanted with (at the time) great resources to do so. On top of that you had knee-trembling talent in storytelling and scriptwriting such as from Lucasarts et al which was truly awe-inspiring, bordering on genius. Blockbuster quality at its finest.

Nowadays the gaming industry is ruled by like the likes of SEGA, EA and Ubisoft who do not care about originality, who do not care about taking risks, and who are happy to churn out variations of the same thing with upgraded graphics year on year because they have no respect for the user-base, they have turned into corporations that know that people will buy things regardless on the strength of recognisable branding and past glories. We are in the age of the franchise.

Of course I am generalising as I haven't got time or energy to list each and every exception such as in the RPG world which by it's very nature allows great creativity, and there are still some notably (but still, comparatively few) good games being produced in most genres and even now and then some sparks of real originality to be seen. There are also still some great ideas from books and movies which could be translated to gaming.

The current 2.5D model of gaming, while still alive, has entered a twilight period. VR and similar room-based technology will be the next golden age, putting you directly into the action. 4D is the future, where you enter the game and experience it as though you were actually a character.

So please, don't say PC gaming is going through any kind of golden age of originality or storytelling unless you were a gamer during the years I mentioned above, because however good games have been since then you will never experience the heady wonderment of those days when everything was new.

PS: I was also a Spectrum gamer and played on my friends Amiga, but do not consider those comparable experiences even back in the day.

I totally agree on the golden age of gaming from 1990 to 2003 , they were some of the best gaming yrs of my life , maybe its the consumers we should be shouting at as most seem to be happy with current state of gaming . But I d find a similar argument even with today's movies but that's another topic 4D would be amazing Bring on the next golden age