Question of the Day, July 6, 2010

[The Escapist Staff]

Question of the Day, July 6, 2010



Game review aggregator, Metacritic, shows that review scores have risen by an average of 3.9 for each platform and that bad review scores are going down overall. Does that mean that games are truly getting better?

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[Kris015]

Pretty much the same i think, maybe we just experince them different as we get older.

 

[Trivun]

Personally, I'd say better. In the past we may have had such classics as Tetris and the original Sonic and Mario games, but even so, they were nothing compared to what they have become or could still become now. And with new technology, multiplayer, graphics and better storylines too, games are definitely getting better. Nowadays we have the likes of Halo, Lost Planet, Assassin's Creed, Alone in the Dark (reboot - hey, I liked it, okay?), inFamous, Heavy Rain, Total War, WoW, and so on. How can you look at those and say games are getting worse, eh?

 

[Hiphophippo]

They're the same. The only thing that's changed is our opinions on what registers as good.

 

[wooty]

For me, theyre getting better in terms of graphics, physics and presentation. But a few of the big releases have lacked a bit in the fun department. Some of them just seem to blend together and become indistinguishable.

 

[Le_Lisra]

There are some trends atm that I don't like (more simplification etc.) but generally speaking its the same. Good games come out, bad games come out.

 

[Jack and Calumon]

Meh, bout the same.

Calumon: Could be better or worse.

 

[Marmooset]

Bigger, fewer.
Bigger isn't necessarily better.
So I'd say the games are the same, but the choices are worse.

 

[erbkaiser]

Scores are being inflated.

Nowadays the lowest any game that does not actually explode your computer will get is a 70. So the real range is 0-50: broken in some way (the old 0-20), 50-65: bad (the old 20-40), 65-75: mediocre (the old 50), 75-100: good (the old range 50-100).


While there are better and better games coming out, the market is also being swamped with shovelware and dumbed down console games, so I doubt it's getting better as a whole.

 

[Egitor]

In general, I'm seeing more polish and less innovation. Games that essentially bring nothing to the table we haven't seen a hundred times before all around, really. I personally think the graphics of modern games are wonderful but they don't make them better games, in much the same way I think Avatar wasn't a better film than the first Star Wars even though the special effects are 'better'

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

Spent most my life gaming and it hasn't changed much, a few nuggets of awesome floating in a sea of crap. Only major difference is the crap looks alot nicer than it used to.

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Both, in different ways, so they sort of cancel each other. They're getting better in graphics and technical capabilities, stuff the player can do, however they are getting more shallow and taking less creative risks because they have to reach wider audiences to be profitable. Actually i'm not sure if i can say they are the same, or getting worse.

 

[Cyberjester]

I'd say games are getting better, but there's games like MW2 which I think are terrible. Well.. They're fun while they last, cinematic gaming at it's finest. But it really doesn't last that long. It uses the same story parts from the first game. Leaping out and falling, then getting caught by sarge was fun the first time round, but the entire second game seemed to be just that. Kinda lame story.

And it just didn't last that long, it's pure online gaming. And PC gamers got hit pretty hard by them.



But instead of looking out and seeing one or two games which I find totally awesome, there's now a list. Not as long as my list of old games I want to play mind, but there's still more than just one or two. Games industry in general sucks, only so many mario remixes before I give up on that particular publisher. But you don't have to look as hard to find good games.

 

[Anah'ya]

They are getting better. Or at least some of them are, as long as developers are brave enough to improve upon their titles.

 

[Keava]

Overall better, moslty thanks to technology advance. We have better, shinier visuals, we can incorporate mechanisms and simulations we could only dream of back in 8/16-bit era, we have online gaming..every technical detail is much much better and on top of that some developers actually learn from their works and try to improve it with next titles.

What changed for worse, from my, old gamers point of view, is more focus on so called "casual gamer" which in industry's language apparently means something along the lines of "half-wit that cant even fucking install the god damned game properly". Due to that games are easier, many of mechanics that were a challenge back in ye old times, now are being removed or replaced by more newbie friendly. They are supposed to be accessible and easy to get into for everyone and thus the quality for those who undergone the training of previous era is lacking.
Another factor is that thanks to the popularity of gaming and how huge the market became, developers, mostly the big ones, rarely try to actually experiment and figure out something new. Whenever something doesn't fit within the view of majority it is instantly considered terrible.

 

[V161]

In general, I'm seeing more polish and less innovation. Games that essentially bring nothing to the table we haven't seen a hundred times before all around, really. I personally think the graphics of modern games are wonderful but they don't make them better games, in much the same way I think Avatar wasn't a better film than the first Star Wars even though the special effects are 'better'

Damn, making the morning cup-o-joe made me slow to post. Egitor is exactly right. There are plenty of pretty looking and better playing games out there, but the overall experience has kinda stagnated for me. The games themselves haven't changed from the basic archetypes of shooter, racer, platformer, rpg, etc. Some games are basicly copies of others i.e. Splinter Cell Conviction and Batman Arkham Asylam (which is a better game IMO). It all comes down to story. That tends to be the missing factor that truly reignites these reused game types to make them fresh again, and more often than not that's just phoned in.

 

[The Cheezy One]

from what time scale? id say they are worse than 3 years ago (COD 4 was made in 2007! can you believe that?), better than 7 (anyone remember robocop?), worse than 12(the original zelda) and better than 20(some games need to die)

 

[Crayzor]

I don't think games are getting better or worse, They're just evolving as the technology changes.

 

[coldfrog]

Games are the same, standards are different. Sure, I MISS the simplicity of Mega Man, but I like the complex universe of Infamous as well. Games are good in different ways, and MetaCritic is... well, something I wish we could do without.

 

[ZephrC]

I think, overall, games are getting better. Although that has nothing to do with review scores getting higher, review scores are simply ridiculously inflated and getting worse. Pretty soon completely awful games will be getting 7/10, and mediocre ones will be getting 8s.

That being said, progress in video games has been more good than bad. We've lost things along the way, especially in big budget titles by major publishers, but I think that was inevitable and the improvements outweigh the losses.