Modern Gaming Sucks!!! Or Does It?
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
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Sturgeon's Law: If 90% of modern games are bad, that's because 90% of all games are bad. It's just that, from the really old generations, nobody except the people who record every single game that's ever existed even remember the bad games exist, so it seems like there are only good games from those generations. And if you think I'm lying, watch a few episodes of The Angry Video Game Nerd (aim for around 2007), and see how many of the games on that list you've heard of outside of that context.
Bad games have always existed, and good games continue to exist. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something, whether they know it or not.
Bad games have always existed, and good games continue to exist. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something, whether they know it or not.
Hmmm...
I think it's mostly people conflating "modern games sucking" due to how they play out instead of any weird "malicious" intent some fuckheads spew out like soccer mom complaining about kids that aren't hers not wearing helmets while reading their bikes.
A lot of games now just have a lot of padded out filler, like all those dumbass cinematic walking sections you can't skip, crappy skill trees/progression systems that slow the pace down, and overall just really bad pacing that kills any momentum you have while playing. And after a while, people just got fed up with how games are now.
Take for instance something like GOW Ragnarok vs GOW 3. 3 Literally only has 2+ hours worth of cutscenes, the rest being gameplay with 3d combat and some puzzles sprinkled in.
Ragnarok has 7. SEVEN. HOURS. worth of cutscenes.
You could beat DMC 3,4, or 5 in that amount of time, r do 3.5 runs of Streets of Rage 4 Arcade mode, Or finish all the Metal Slug games in one sitting.
And it's not like DMC/Metal Slug don't have its grandiose spectacles when it comes to bosses either. A lot of people's sentiments towards most modern games are "this would've been a helluva lot more enjoyable if I actually got to play the goddamn game instead of just bullshitting around endlessly in open world, 5 hour long cutscene, 10 million perks + upgrades garbage."
But can we all agree
That Gacha games are definitely a problem?
I think it's mostly people conflating "modern games sucking" due to how they play out instead of any weird "malicious" intent some fuckheads spew out like soccer mom complaining about kids that aren't hers not wearing helmets while reading their bikes.
A lot of games now just have a lot of padded out filler, like all those dumbass cinematic walking sections you can't skip, crappy skill trees/progression systems that slow the pace down, and overall just really bad pacing that kills any momentum you have while playing. And after a while, people just got fed up with how games are now.
Take for instance something like GOW Ragnarok vs GOW 3. 3 Literally only has 2+ hours worth of cutscenes, the rest being gameplay with 3d combat and some puzzles sprinkled in.
Ragnarok has 7. SEVEN. HOURS. worth of cutscenes.
You could beat DMC 3,4, or 5 in that amount of time, r do 3.5 runs of Streets of Rage 4 Arcade mode, Or finish all the Metal Slug games in one sitting.
And it's not like DMC/Metal Slug don't have its grandiose spectacles when it comes to bosses either. A lot of people's sentiments towards most modern games are "this would've been a helluva lot more enjoyable if I actually got to play the goddamn game instead of just bullshitting around endlessly in open world, 5 hour long cutscene, 10 million perks + upgrades garbage."
But can we all agree
That Gacha games are definitely a problem?
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Because it's a much longer game with a bigger scope. How good or bad depends on the person. I didn't mind the long journey, but that whole Agnabroda section should've just been a cut-scene. Way too much padding for little accomplished. That is literally my only problem with Rag from a story pacing perspective.
Though the parts where you tower rooms turn in the late game I don't find fun in DMC3 (especially on DMD) and DMC4 has the lazy backtracking. You're not wrong, but I am just pointing the problems with those games or my personal distastes, even though I love this franchise. DmC 2013, ironically has the best pacing compared to 3 and 4 when it comes to level pacing
Both of the Norse GoW's are more 3D Metroidvanias than open world games. Though has much more exploration of the different realms than its predecessor, but that is the point. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a straight up 3rd person platformer with open zones and optional side quests to do and explore. The Sony Spider-Man games tend to have much better pacing most of the time for their open worlds, though I heard Spider-Man 2 (2023) did fumble a few times. Tshushima has an open world that is just fun to roam around and take in the scenery. Astro Bot just came out, so hopefully that will give Sony a big fucking wake up call.
If most AAA games aren't doing that, then it's a lot of them being stuck on the "live service" gravy train. I noticed it's the Western and Chinese gacha developers stuck on this more than Japan. Usually, though not all the time. It's exactly why I stick with mostly AA and indie, with a few AAA in-between.
This is part of what I meant by 'bad games have always existed': 'good games with serious flaws' have always existed as well, and bad pacing is one of those flaws. And since you brought up a specific example, I'm going to demonstrate one of my own: Final Fantasy 7.
Final Fantasy 7 is not a perfect game. It is a good game, but it's not perfect, and one of its biggest issues (after the homogeneity of the playable cast mechanically) is pacing, which constantly gets shot in the head by unskippable minigames. A lot of them are even made harder than necessary by bad input detection or camera angles that make it impossible to tell what's happening. Junon is especially bad for this, with the back-to-back-to-back appearance of doing CPR for much longer than necessary, the dolphin jump onto the girder which is only really possible with a speedrun setup due to the camera angle, and the parade - both parts of it; joining the march is the one everyone hates, but the Simon says bit isn't great either. Another lowlight is climbing Gaea's Cliff, very slowly, and constantly having to stop to ensure you don't die of hypothermia, which kills the pace completely dead for too many minutes.
It's got brutally long cutscenes too, like the Kalm Flashback and the aftermath of the first Northern Crater visit - and by the way, none of the cutscenes are in any way skippable. The best you can do is mash through the text, and you can't even really speed it up. Whether you actually want to skip the cutscenes or not is a separate issue, of course, and I'd argue that's possibly true of God of War Ragnarok as well, that some people do actually enjoy watching those cutscenes. I haven't played it myself, but judging by BM's post just above, I'd say there's some evidence for it, at least.
OFC Spiderman makes good use of its open world. It's SPIDERMAN! Web swinging super warrior, does whatever a spider can. The crazy tricks and maneuvers you can is what makes open world games fun! Like how it is getting 5 starts in GTA, or getting into giant fights in Yakuza's harder difficulties during open world free roaming! Even if 2 fumbled a bit, people just wanna do cool spider-man shit!
Open world design isn't BAD. But it can be very shallow when the world doesn't interact with your actions or spice things up a bit.
Well... the whole length of cutscenes has a near 8 million views, not even including different dubs and translations and clips of cutscenes, + video essay recognition. So it's doing something right.
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Modern gaming certainly has some issues like accounts and microtransactions. But I think the real thing that sucks is modern gamers. Especially those assholes who rail against anything woke, especially in a fucken JRPG. Of course its fucken woke, its about having a diverse cast of characters and usually killing god.
Don't forget about the people who play online that think the issue isn't that they feel the need to insult or attack people personally if they aren't playing up to what they see as a required level, but that it's the job of the people being insulted to not take the personal attacks personally.
I don't really subscribe to anything, especially games or software (hell, I never even bought a microtransaction in a game once ever and I'm never installing an Adobe product on my computer). Even the weather app (Today Weather) on my phone was a one-time $10 price vs some stupid yearly fee. I don't subscribe to any streaming services either, I actually would if it was just something like $20-$50/month and I can just watch whatever I want. But I'm not going to have like 4-5 monthly services and I'm also not going to have to jump (join and cancel) from Netflix to Disney to Paramount to Peacock to Max to Hulu every month or every other month just to watch all the stuff I want to watch. Streaming used to be a great cable alternative but now it's basically cable again.
AAA games have become just horrible for the most part and the AA/indie devs have really picked it up. Whereas before, especially once we got into the 3D generations (PS1/N64), you needed decent money to make a good game for the most part. Recently, you can now make really good games on a rather low budget. If you're just basing the quality of games on the AAA landscape, game quality has massively dropped.
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Obviously someone is buying these things since companies keep putting them out. Doesn't matter if you don't, a whole lot of people are.
But people don't have to. If people don't put up with certain things, there won't be a market for that. It's like how Steam fixed piracy by just making a simple product that works.
Indie are mostly overrated. Can't even do what the studios did twenty to thirty years ago, because they don't have the money and imitate far too much. Exceptions are so few that it barely depends. When they finally do have the money, they instantly transform into the AAA slop factories.
No, you're just spoiled, full of shit, and want everything to be exactly like it was like in the old days. I'm not defending every single indie game either, but a lot of the ones I'm playing are pretty good and not some rand exception. Quality control, your mileage very; Yada Yada, I don't care.
Most of the indies try and actually get somewhere. Low budget or not. There are already a few games on the near level of AA studio and some AAA. Yet without all the dumb bullshit. I don't need every indie to act like a AAA either because that misses the entire point. The further there are away from them, the better as far as I am concerned.
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Of course people don't have too. but they do becasue marketing/fomo works.
- Apr 1, 2009
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- Whatever, just wash your hands.