Are games today really that bad?

[irishda]

You act as though textboxes are a BAD thing.

Just because you don't like literacy in your games doesn't mean the rest of us don't.

I'm not saying that modern tech somehow made games worse, but it's allowed designers to get lazy with writing. I don't want to throw salt on a fresh wound, but just look at Mass Effect 3. Limited dialogue options (which, in the end, meant diddly squat) a lot of it was auto-dialogue at that.

As for the majority of games this console generation in terms of storytelling?
Uhhh... Saints Row the 3rd? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3? Gears of War 3? X-men Destiny?

You cannot say those had "good" stories with a straight face. Those were crap at worst, excuse plots at best.

But let's keep going, we need to finally see what the ratio of crap writing to good writing in the last console generation has been. I'm just gonna work my way backwards using google and various gaming sites as sources.

Bad:
Mortal Kombat (Arguable, I guess, unless you feel a game about ripping out spines needs a good story behind it)
Thor: God of Thunder
Warhammer 40k: Space Marine (And I LIKE 40k! A missed opportunity here)
Spiderman: Edge of Time
Bulletstorm (Actually, anything with Cliffy B attached is usually a good bet for this category)
Duke Nukem Forever (obviously)
All of the Lego Games (Might file that one under 'debatable' as well)
Killzone 3
Dead Island
Fable 3
God of War 3 (No, don't try to argue this one, the entire story is about a guy screaming in rage, punching out most/all of the greek gods, and porking at least 2 others. It's a teenage male power fantasy, nothing more)
Halo Reach
Dantes Inferno
Tron Evolution
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Prototype
No More Heroes

Ok, this is taking too long. Let's just move along to the Good list. Take in mind, only games that actually improved or equaled the older games like Planescape in storytelling make it on this list.

Good:
Fallout 3
Fallout: New Vegas (Post patch[es] at least)
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age 2 (Some might argue against this one. Personally i didn't like it, but the majority I've spoken to about it said the characterization was great)
Mass Effect 1
InFamous
InFamous 2
Bioshock

ummm... hmmm... what else... I can't think of anything else that falls into the "subjective" territory here.

Wait!

Journey.

That's all I've got. So after the final tally, we have 22 bad (and those are just the ones I included on the list before it started becoming a second job) versus 9 Good.

Wait, throw Skyrim onto "bad". Maybe Oblivion as well. So 24 bad vs. 9 Good.

Not looking very bright right now, is it?

Did you stop to think about the good storytelling games of the past though? There's not a lot there either in terms of ratio. If anything, writers now have a harder job these days because they can't just write off the setting or the back story. Textboxes are passive; telling not showing.

RPGs have always been fairly strong in terms of stories, so there hasn't been a lot of change in that genre. But the other genres have all advanced in terms of storytelling. Shooters have arguably come the longest way in terms of story. (My brother and I used to play Wolfenstein 3D all the time and I never even knew there WAS a story beyond "Kill all the nazis").

 

[Rblade]

ofcourse they aren't. try playing an old shooter or rts and you will notice... hell no....

Starcraft... Half Life... Painkiller...

old games, for the most part, were ugly and had clunky controls.

Yeah, Megaman, Mario, Metroid, all notorious for their horrible controls.

Well, that's not fair. Define old. Are we talking first generation 3D stuff like Resident Evil and Mario 64? If so, yeah, I don't think anyone can argue those controls sucked.

take the original deus ex. for all it's merits, that game was UGLY. it really hurts the eyes.

I think you've summed up why people resent the current age of gaming so much - too much emphasis on the presentation. Graphics are expensive. The more Frostbite engines we see, the more expensive the games become which forces the developers to make something as safe and marketable as possible so everyone from the short-bus kids to the Ph.D. Candidates can play it on even ground. There's increasingly little variation among the AAA $60+ games. We even see companies like Capcom prepared to dump the "Survival Horror" concept on Resident Evil because horror games aren't as marketable as action games.

Nobody truly wants to go back in time, anyone saying with a straight face that the original doom is a better shooter then the current generation is talking out of his ass.

I still own and futz around on Half Life, Doom and Quake II now and then for fun. Know what I dumped the day after I finished it cause it bored the crap out of me? CODBLOPS. Is Doom better as far as a technical achievement goes? No, but it is a hell of a lot more fun to me. I imagine there's a great deal of the gaming public that would happily take lower end graphics if it mean developers could take more chances and possibly put out more, cheaper, and interesting titles. Not PC owners, obviously, they spent $9000 on a machine that'll be worth $2000 in 4 months.. gotta justify that investment somehow.

-in response. starcraft, half life and painkiller. I say starcraft 2, life 2 and a game like the new serious sam are pretty much equal but with better graphics. And even though graphics aren't essential they do help immersion and make it, to me, just cooler.

-with old games I was thinking of stuff like the old doom and warcraft. I will agree that was a bit of a cheapshot.

-focus on graphics being the problem. I do agree that it's kinda tough for people to get into that AAA market with variety. And I do believe shooters have suffered the most from this. But with new players getting things like portal, braid, limbo and minecraft made I think the easier access to the technology allows for great creativity in the indie circuit and for that knowledge and succes to be applied in newer AAA titles.

I guess my point was, I'm getting tired of gognards. in the tabletop community you have people whining all the time that 2nd edition D&D is better then 3th edition, which in turn is just completely better then 4th. They are different games with different merits and sticking to one just because it's the original is stupid.

same with music, and that has the additional problem of comparing the absolute créme the la créme of the age against today's entire catalogue. Believe me each age has it's giant turds of silly stupidness. Same goes for video games.

and I think it's just a huge slap in the face of the people that made games like Bioshock, Mass effect, Portal, Starcraft 2 and Arkum assylum. To be saying "duhhhrrr all current games suck, old games are soooooo much better!"

 

[Kahunaburger]

Anyone in here.

It has been proven that the things you like during your teenage years will stay with you forever. It goes for movies, music, people. You brain chemistry does things to you during puberty. Nostalgia is a fact. Get over it.

Yup. 100% nostalgia, right there. Clearly this has nothing to do with the game being balanced enough to build a competitive scene around.

Also, I'll re-post this:

I ran into stuff like Deus Ex, Homeworld, Planescape: Torment, and Super Metroid years or decades after they were released. I suspect I'm not the only one who likes these games because they are really good games, not because of a nostalgia filter.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Anyone in here.

It has been proven that the things you like during your teenage years will stay with you forever. It goes for movies, music, people. You brain chemistry does things to you during puberty. Nostalgia is a fact. Get over it.

Yup. 100% nostalgia, right there. Clearly this has nothing to do with the game being balanced enough to build a competitive scene around.

Also, I'll re-post this:

I ran into stuff like Deus Ex, Homeworld, Planescape: Torment, and Super Metroid years or decades after they were released. I suspect I'm not the only one who likes these games because they are really good games, not because of a nostalgia filter.

Geeee....

That proves it right there. Having a massive community based around people who enjoyed something in their teenage years completely disproves what I said....

-.-'

They have a massive community because it's a balanced, well-designed game. See also: basketball, chess. There's a reason only certain games can support a competitive scene. You're not going to run into a competitive tic-tac-toe scene, for instance.

 

[Shinigami214]

I'm going to go on a limb here and suggest that the reason why today's games seem 'worse' than games which were released before the advent of mainstream massive-budget games is partially attributable to one significant factor independent of the games themselves.

Hype.

Before, we never got massive, CGI trailers promising a unique game experience. We never got massive advertising budgets and cross-media promotional campaigns telling us how awesome this game is.

I suspect that one of the reasons that games today seem 'worse' than what they used to be is partially due to the promotional hype that is generated in order to get people to buy them.

We, as players and consumers, get told that game X will be great/amazing/profound/epic/pantwettinglyorgasmic and then, when we actually get to grips with it, we're often left with a 'meh' experience - not because the games are actually worse, but because the game in question cannot possibly live up to its own advertising and hype.

Sure, in the past, games were definitely promoted - but can that compare with the hype surrounding titles such as Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Call of Duty, God of War etc?

 

[Kahunaburger]

First of all.... yes there is a competitive tic-tac-toe scene. It is tiny, but it exists. Just like everything else in the world.

[citation needed]

At a certain, absolutely minimal level of mastery, it is literally impossible to lose a match of tic-tac-toe. Ever.

Secondly... the whole argument is that "games today are bad!" Do you really want to start comparing community sizes as an argument?

I was actually addressing the whole "nostalgia" argument, which is IMO pretty silly.

 

[Phisi]

I think it's more of a case of games trying to prove how awesome they are. When they release we all get sad about how we have been betrayed by the industry. This is probably caused by a variety of problems such as the games being made by people more interested in the money produced by the leading to increased advertising and hype. The difficulty of outperforming the competition with graphics and gameplay when you don't have a larger advertising budget meh I'm going to sleep it's late goodbye.

 

[hyplion]

I am starting to miss depth in games nowadays, and the enormous amount of bad console ports dont add games to the good list. Luckily there is more on the market then EA and ubisoft (both suck), paradox interactive has a lot of very strong games which take a little time to master and are a challenge to master. But in the last few years i have grown bored of the FPS genre, its just no more fun (black ops has missions you can finish without killing anyone just sprint from cover to cover and make the enemies behind you despawn as you reach the next trigger). And RPG's are losing depth fast, what happened to stats and in some cases even to inventory.

 

[ChildishLegacy]

I liked games from the 90s, I like games now. I'm happy with games.
Most of people saying games used to be better is nostalgia goggles, I don't care if you say otherwise, you ARE biased because those are the games you liked earlier on in life.

I really liked the Abe's Oddyssey/Exoddus games as a kid, and I still love them now, that said I don't call a rather simple 2D sidescroller a masterpiece and blows all current games out of the water, just like I don't call the crash bandicoot games way better than any 3D platformers released today. Because they're not.

They were amazing for the time, which is probably why they gave you such a good impression, just remember that it gets harder and harder to get these amazing first impressions over time, it doesn't mean games are getting worse.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Well ill one up you on your tic-tac-toe

http://www.worldrps.com/

People will love ANYTHING.

And for the whole nostalgia argument.
It is a medical fact. You brain chemistry is altered during puberty making the things you love/hate there stick with you forever. It has been tried and tested. If you think it is bogus you should conduct your own studies and get a grant.

Fun fact: rock-paper-scissors and tic-tac-toe are not the same game.

I also enjoy how you jump from "studies have found potential causes for nostalgia" to "nostalgia is why people prefer old stuff to new stuff." It's like we've moved on from "stop liking what I don't like!" to "this study I misquoted says you don't actually like the stuff you like!"

 

[theSteamSupported]

I don't know. I don't play many games due to a restricted budget, so I don't have that large perspective compared to you guys.

One thing I do know, though, is that no matter the circumstances, we as a community should always focus on making games better. Debating over the current state of the community and industry, does not count.

We are really asking ourselves the wrong question. Here's the question we should be asking each other and ourselves:

How do we make sure good games are being made?

 

[Mayhemski]

Lots of nostalgia on display tainting everyone's opinions, really there have always been good games surronded by a sea of absolute drek.

Now my favourite "multi-player" gaming experience is still Pong.. No need for flashy graphics just good old fashioned physical violence to distract disarm your opponent (friend/sibling) when it really matters. Until such time as the mods (parents) intervene and ban you (sent to room). I mean come on everyone does it right??

But yeah new games are still the same lots of drek the old rough diamond lump of coal...

And cRPG's honestly haven't changed that much since the old days of Wizadry when you strip away the graphics, they are still the same and just as limited as they where in the 80's, 90's & 00's - you only get what the designer gives you, designer doesn't think of it you don't get it, and chances are you are going to have to go where the designer wants you to if you want a chance of completion. And you can only hope they are half competent at telling a story.

For example of how little cRPG's have changed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN58_svR8nk