The New Golden Age of Games?

[golden_boy]

realistic sells.

Make no mistake, I like reloading and taking cover and bandaging, but only as the icing on the cake.

Not as the cake itself.

[Bloodshot]

I agree, I would actually really like to see a realistic survival game set on a beautiful futuristic planet with outlandish design.

Kinda like Unreal, but with a lot more realism for the player - I don't mean cover mechanics and stuff like that, I just mean like management of your well-being in some form, and maybe if there are bigger aliens I want them to feel intimidating - not like these games with all these aliens that point and shoot like a soldier - if they are big I'd like them to pick you up and throw you, make you feel like you have to use your brain to defeat something like that if you don't have heavy weapons, not just shoot until it goes down, and not some stupid scripted sequence where you collapse something on them either. You know, reward the players for using the environment in ingenious ways.

I suppose that would be more along the lines of a first person adventure, but it would be interesting to see, even if it's not to everybody's taste. And it'll probably never happen because it would be a lot more effort then your standard FPS

[Phenom]

realistic sells.

Make no mistake, I like reloading and taking cover and bandaging, but only as the icing on the cake.

Not as the cake itself.

I'm not saying "I hate all the extra stuff in new games". I am saying "Why is there so much stale ness,re-hash-ness and in some cases complete overlook of important things that make good games great and memorable.

I probably wouldn't have liked Black Ops so much if I had played any of the other COD games, since I heard Black Ops wasn't the best in the series.

But I can't bring myself to go out and buy 3-4 other games exactly like Black Ops now knowing it will basically be new levels and guns with improved graphics and slight changes. I know that COD is a military game and perhaps it's not fair to keep bring it up when talking about "where games have gone these days"

But why can't we get another "WTF DO I DO" game like back in the early 90's? Games that made you think to win and not just "learn the grooves".
It reminds me of the Quake+DM3 epidemic where staleness turns me away from playing as much as I'd like since not everyone is on the same level me play style preferece-wise.

Serious Sam was wild, Quake 1 was wild, Hexen was wild with crazy stuff happening in them far from reality because... it was a virtual fantasy world.

If people really want to be blown away by realistic graphics and 100% interactive gameplay in military games then join the F'N army already.

For me I'd be happy if Q1 had a popular mod where you could pick different player models. Which has already been done in Q1.

realistic graphics can actually be a distraction in many cases and derive from the game play if they focus to much time on making their game look like the sh!t and then realizes it stinks like sh!t because most people experience issues with the halfa-assed built mechanics of the game. Most games don't have this issue and they're "just new games" but the ones who do suffer from this suffer bad (to me at least) hence why I never became a COD/Halo fanboy.

Whats so much different in Halo 1-2-3? Graphics, level, models story. How does the game play go? Play 1 you played them all.

The real treat these days seems is if the company makes a trilogy so you can spend even more money finishing their half-baked story lines.

Listen.... If a game is supposed to have a story line then focus on the g-damn story line, don't worry about how unreal the waterfalls look... If the gameplay fun-factor was there I wouldn't find myself bored and staring at waterfalls in-game.

In the end it's just another company making a product to pull money out of your pocket. Do you think they give 2-sh!ts about you?

[Rampage]

I agree, I would actually really like to see a realistic survival game set on a beautiful futuristic planet with outlandish design.

Kinda like Unreal, but with a lot more realism for the player - I don't mean cover mechanics and stuff like that, I just mean like management of your well-being in some form, and maybe if there are bigger aliens I want them to feel intimidating - not like these games with all these aliens that point and shoot like a soldier - if they are big I'd like them to pick you up and throw you, make you feel like you have to use your brain to defeat something like that if you don't have heavy weapons, not just shoot until it goes down, and not some stupid scripted sequence where you collapse something on them either. You know, reward the players for using the environment in ingenious ways.

I suppose that would be more along the lines of a first person adventure, but it would be interesting to see, even if it's not to everybody's taste. And it'll probably never happen because it would be a lot more effort then your standard FPS

So... Skyrim in space/future?

[MH]

<snip>nail-on-the-head awesomeness</snip>

Couldn't agree more. Everytime I watch a YouTube preview of the latest hype of the month I just get cold. All you're doing is moving from one set-piece to the next and with little in the way of real gameplay involved. Yet the PC kids cream themselves over this stuff nowadays. Sigh.

GB also nailed it - cover system stuff can be a fun mechanic for sure, but in moderation and with a healthy mix of other play styles too.

[Phenom]

I think we'd get better games if the developers gave us more access to their games like certain companies do such as UDK.

Let the community decide 30% what the game will be like using their engine(70%).

With structure and focus groups of course.

[Baker]

I think we'd get better games if the developers gave us more access to their games like certain companies do such as UDK.

I'm rather confident that won't be the answer.

Macroeconomics, history and product life cycles foretell a different future.

Digital calculators in the 1970s were expensive. Like $2000 [from what my Dad told me in a conversation about 6 months ago]. By the 1990s, they were children's toys in boxes of cereal.

Eventually game engines will be standardized and true development will be effectively in the public domain.

Large companies never look to "share". They look to dictate. Large companies generally cannot be trusted to develop standards because the nature of large companies means this is a conflict of interest. And the larger they are, the more this is usually true.

Let the community decide 30% what the game will be like using their engine(70%).

With structure and focus groups of course.

In a way, part of the problem with this is that most people can only imagine the way things are.

Usually, forward advancement comes from concepts that "most" people would never take seriously changing dynamics.

[Korax]

I'm a huge fan of classic 90's FPS games. I don't care much for uber GFX and uber-realism. I love to fire up games like the first two Doom games via zDoom and some Quake via UQE and get my fix. I think the point most companies are missing is that most of the time we are playing games to have fun, not to direct a movie, or interact in one. Ok, with the exception of companies producing RPG games.

For me, the rest should all just be less story, more fun factor. Great graphics is a bonus, but it shouldn't be the #1 priority. I also like simple controls and UI. The UI was a huge turn-off for me when I played (read: tried) The Witcher 1. Infact, TW1 and TW2 was such a huge turn-off for me I have given them away. Thats even with their "great" graphics.

I still see games like the first two Gothic games as the best RPG games I've ever played, especially Gothic 2: Night of the Raven... heck, I'm getting in the mood to get those installed for a replay as I'm typing this! Oh, and I think TW1 & TW2's overall gameplay and graphics sucked bad for an RPG. I could have forgiven that if they were actual fun. In RPGs the theres 4 huge things that count for me: world freedom, storyline, graphics, level of interaction.

You know a game is bad when you are trying to convince yourself to try and stay in the game and see if its going to grow on you. The camera/player controls and movement was utter crap in TW1. I can't believe they actually have a world with that level of detail and never thought that the controls/movement is very crappy.

For modern day RPG games my all-time current favourite is Risen. (can't wait to get myself lost in Risen 2)

Even the few RTS games that I have. I don't care about the campaigns (story). I buy them just for the skirmishes, setting up a few CPUs and trying for hours to own the map. Don't get me started though on why game companies that released recent games and I cant get them working on my 1920x1080 display!! Seriously, BFME1 & 2 are not that old, yet they crash because I got a 1920x1080 display and I gotta hack the ini to get a crappy letterbox rez (which is all it supports) and to add insult to injury you gotta have the DVD in the drive to start it up, because they are worried that the 2007 reject game (cause they're not patching it) will still be pirated. I guess they got my money, no love for the game or the customer. That and games like Witcher is a big reason why I don't really buy much games at all, and worry if it shit or not evertime I do buy one.

In anything else, games can be like they were in the 90's, uber fun.
Since I feel so strongly about playing fun games for a change I decided to try my hand at actually making a 90's styled (gameplay) FPS game using the idTech4 engine. It should be very possible. I'm already a few weeks into the code development for it. The biggest change for me to have to do to the idTech4 engine is to get rid of that slow player movement and that "stiff" feeling when playing it. In Doom3 its great to have it like that, but for a fast-paced shooter where bodycount is the priority, you want speed, even if its unrealistic.

What I'm saying also is in slower games like RPGs the visual details are important, but the faster your gameplay gets, the less important the details of the game gets.

[Bloodshot]

IMO story should never be the main focus of a game. One of my favorite games to fire up and play randomly is Crysis, and that's because you can have so much fun screwing with the koreans and blowing shit up, not because of the story. I'm okay with having a story, but I really don't get how people NEED a story for an FPS game to keep them "emotionally invested" as they would say.

I would like to see more games do it like Unreal - there's loads of story there if you look, but if you don't care you can just bypass all that shit and play the game to get a challenge and have fun.

My favorite Western RPG is probably Daggerfall, because even though there's a pretty good story in it, I can just fire it up and play, and do what I want.

[ImperiusDamian]

The Golden Age was 1993-2000.

Doom
Doom II
Quake I
Quake II

'Nuff said.

[Spiney]

For me the key game was Half Life. If you look from the mid nineties towards the early 2000's there was plenty of experimentation in the shooter genre. Half Life set the bar for a new kind of shooter, a more directed experience, and other companies followed suit. Even Id turned away from 'cyclical' map design towards a heavily directed linear experience.

One good thing from 2005 onwards though are sandboxed shooters like Stalker and Crysis, typically large open fields or forests with hotspots and objectives.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Golden age of gaming obv is 1996-present (its a Quake1 universe)

[Rampage]

A lot of games nowadays are just unimaginative recycled crap, they tend to be a rinse/wash/repeat in a copy cat industry, everyone is just trying to earn mega bucks off a title (Activision).

Growing up, the sheer enjoyment of games that were purely for the gameplay and not so much the flash was what it was all about. I grew up on SNES (Killer Instinct tournaments in the basement, Street Fighter, and a plethora of wrestling games, Chrono Trigger, RPGs), N64 (4 player Mario Kart, NWO vs WCW world Tour, WCW Revenge, Mario 64, Goldeneye), and then your PC style games like Starcraft, Diablo, HL CS - TF - DOD.

I tried SC2 recently and its just such a joke, I have no idea why people like it.. quick to reward.. quick to build.. little strategy involved.. bulky feeling to it and just uninspiring.. SC was such a ground breaking game, and the mid 90's early 2000's era had a lot of those moments where you just marvel at discovering new things in video games, and discovering those with your friends (I used to lan/play locally with all my neighbors growing up/or we'd log online together and play Counterstrike or Diablo2).

I just find myself completely uninterested in any of the titles.. I try a new PC game and I just get bored of the same crap within a few minutes.. all the flash and everything doesn't cut it for me.. I couldn't take 4 days of the latest COD.. I play sports titles and Quake, that's about it.. but it used to be much better.. maybe there will be another golden age, who knows, but for now, it certainly has passed.

They need to get back to making it about gameplay, I think Diablo3 will be a step in the right direction, but I could be wrong. That's probably the only game I'm looking forward to.

[ImperiusDamian]

Same here, Diablo 3... that, and I play a lot of Age of Empires Online. Just because it is to me a worthy successor to the inspired original.

[grave_digga]

...They need to get back to making it about gameplay, I think Diablo3 will be a step in the right direction, but I could be wrong. That's probably the only game I'm looking forward to.

I don't think so, because to me it looks just like Diablo2HD. I loved Diablo2 but D3 looks only like an enhanced Version of it. Maybe i'll be surprised...

I had also lots of great memorys about gaming, startet with Atari 2600, then Atari 800XL/C64, Amiga, SNES, PC, PS3. Nowadays i only play a few Games on PS3 (God of War Series), actual Castlevania LoS, and from time to time a little Painkiller or Quake on my PC. I just don't have the time anymore and also there are not much games that get's me saying "i'll play this". Maybe it's also something about growing up and getting older but that i'm 40 now and still play games says "no" to that.