How have your tastes in video games changed over the years?

[daveman247]

When I was a lot younger, I usually went for casual games or anything with a "Lego" label on it. The shift started around when I got my Nintendo DS, my first actual gaming console. Now I'll pretty much go for everything, but don't usually play that many casual or licensed games. Popcap are still awesome though.

Haha me too! Lego racers was the best back then And spyro, and crash bandicoot.

I guess i got hooked on shooters around the time timesplitters 2 came out, my friend bought it and that is ALL we used to play when we sat down for a gaming sesh. Problem being that once i eventually got it with my ps2 i had pretty much already seen it all :/

- Oh and raging at metal gear solid 2. Did not understand the concept of stealth back then.
- Deus ex on the ps2 was probably the first game that floored me with story and the possibility of choices.
-And then.... timesplitters 3! My best game of all time and game that i compare to EVERY shooter since. None has beaten it yet as a whole.

Got round to getting an xbox 1 when the 360 was just coming out along with doom 3. I guess my taste for gore and horror started then. Disovered halo and splinter cell. Good times.

Was forced into getting a 360 when most of my friends had jumped to the 360. Got gears of war with it which was awesome back then.

I suppose somewhere along the line i branched out into other genres when the quality of shooters starting going downhill :/

 

[DustyDrB]

Actually...not so much. I grew up (in the 90's mostly on the NES and N64. I'm 24 now) loving mostly 3D platformers, RPGs, and adventure games (not point and click adventure, but games like Zelda). Those are still pretty much the genres I love today, though I don't play 3D platformers often just because they aren't being made (Alice: Madness Returns was a breath of fresh air for a while, but then the gameplay never evolved like the 3D platformers I love most).

I do go outside of those genres quite a bit more now (because I make my own money and can buy what I want). But games in other genres feel more like diversions than anything else.

Probably the reason why I never got caught up in the FPS craze is that it was never a part of my evolution as a gamer. The only FPS games I played growing up were a bit of Goldeneye and Star Wars: Dark Forces. And today the only games in that genre I like are Team Fortress 2 and Metroid Prime (though some people will argue me to death that the latter isn't an FPS).

 

[Seishisha]

This is realy for me a very hard question to answer, ive been gaming for a long time now and because of that ive seen some radical changes in both design and theme of games, starting with the platformers and side scrolling beat-em-up days to things like skyrim, i can honestly say at some point ive enjoyed them all, so as to weather my tastes have changed i dont know so much, it seems more logical to me atleast that as games changed my interested evolved to match them.

I will say this though now that im older im way less mature, i tend to look at most situations in games with some degree of perverse connotation even when such things do not exist, or atleast in a more cynical perspective.

 

[scorptatious]

When I was younger I would play a lot of platforming games like Mario, Spyro, Crash, Banjo Kazooie, etc. You might say I was a "casual" player of the nineties.

As I grew older though, I started to play slightly more complex games. I started playing shooters, (my first being Halo 2), I still enjoyed platformer games though.

Now though, I don't really play platformers all that much. I mostly play RPG's now-a-days since they are mostly pretty lengthy, giving me more for my money, and they mostly had really interesting plots and fun gameplay. Of course that didn't stop me from downloading games I used to play when I was little. (I'm so thankful for stuff like the Wii's virtual console and the PSN store)

I then noticed that some of the games I used to play when I was little didn't really hold up very well for me anymore. They were still fun, but I didn't see them the same way I saw them back then. I played through Crash Bandicoot 2 and beaten the final boss within a day. It was kind of strange how a game I used to have trouble with when I was younger is so much easier after years of practice and experience with other games.

Meanwhile games like say, Oddworld still held up for me because they still provided a decent challenge and they have aged well in graphics and aesthetic.

So I guess my tastes have changed somewhat over the years. Being older I expect some complexity in a game's mechanics and/or story. (Depending on what kind of game I'm playing.) But I haven't forgotten my roots. And I'll always look back on them with fond memories.

 

[Tony2077]

not really into modern shooter or ww2 one now its sci fi shooters

 

[phantasmalWordsmith]

Well my tastes haven't really changed but they've grown and my expectations for a game has grown as well. I used to be able to play any game for ages on end (probably due to childish simplicity) and only light games, nothing too exciting. Nowadays I play almost any game that isn't a sports/martial arts/simulator/casual puzzle, however I usually only play a game for a bit after buying it then stop playing once I'm content with my progress. So far only Bayonetta, Halo Reach, CoD Black Ops (I like the CoD points system), Skyrim and Dark Souls have proved immune

 

[Fanta Grape]

It can pretty much be summed up by:

Nintendo Fanboy > Valve Fanboy

Of course I play some Besthesda here and there but TF2 rules my life.

 

[John Pepperell]

I haven't changed much just went from Mario and JRPG games to almost nothing but JRPG with good stories to them. I have others but most games outside of JRPG seem to look like shooters which is not a style of game that I like. For me games are more about the story they give then the content and most(not all)shooters do not really have much to a story.

 

[talker]

not at all really. strategy and rpg games are what i like and always have liked.

 

[necromanzer52]

Well, I grew up playing platformers on the ps1/ps2. Then, when I was about 13/14, I got into FPSs. A couple of years later I became sick, and tired of FPSs. Since then, I haven't really been into video games as much as I used to be. I still play from time to time, and I'll play most anything these days if it's got an interesting story, and is fun to play.

 

[cgentero]

I've become more unforgiving of bad gameplay or too much text reading\cutscenes, I think that is the main thing that's changed for me.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well the best sum up would be to say I've become more demanding and less patient.
I've played good games, seen good mechanics, experienced good stories, ... now when a game tries to pull a fast one on me it just wont fly.

As a kid I was easily impressed and consequently enjoyed even the shittiest of games because there was simply nothing better, now I'm really hard to impress and the enjoyment factor does greatly diminish.
Ignorance (sadly) really is bliss.

 

[Lukeje]

It's reached a point where I prefer short games over long sprawling epics. I miss the days when I had the free time to play through a WRPG...

 

[Cowabungaa]

Oh yes, most definitely. Between 6-ish and 10 I played mostly old platformers like Commander Keen and the first Duke Nukem and stuff, I honestly spend a lot more time with my Lego's than videogames.

That changed when I was 10-ish when we got our first proper, post-DOS computer. After that I got into building games and RTS games a lot; Rollercoaster Tycoon, Simcity 3000, Railroad Tycoon, Theme Park/Hospital, Age of Empires 2, Red Alert 2 etc etc.

After that, I think I was around 12-13 or something, I finally met shooters and I started to heavily play Unreal Tournament, CS:S and Soldier of Fortune, all while trying to dodge my parents as they hated games like that. I also got a GameCube around that time so I started dabbling in console games as well.

When I was 14-15-ish I had a big MMO period and I tried a lot of those free Asian MMO's. When I got fed up with those regular, singleplayer RPG's came along.

In the years after that, not much changed. I took some of every gaming period with me and I still play all those genres, it's just that none of them dominate.

Perhaps I was better off revelling in explosions and pixelated blood, but there's simply no going back now...

I love being able to turn that complicated part in my brain off and just go "YAY EXPLOSIONS!!!" every now and then.

 

[Buffoon]

I've become a lot more discriminating, in that I play significantly fewer games and never persevere with a game I'm not enjoying. I guess it's natural as a kid, or at least a kid from a pretty impoverished background like I was, I never had much money for games, so the ones I owned, I really had to make them last and I'd play them to death even if they sucked.