Why do I hate everything?

[Freakyweakywoo]

Serious question. I and many of my peers it seems hate everything these days, but why is this?

Were things really better back in the days of Amigas and STs? Or were we just kids who, much like kids now, think pretty much anything is amazing. Now we varnish everything with so much nostalgia polish nothing could ever beat it.

Are these old games actually good games, are they so much better than the dribbling of creativity from the teat of EA or Acivision-Blizzard? Or have the standards just been raised so high that nothing can live up to them?

If I were to critique a modern game and then apply those values onto an old 'miggy game how would it hold up?

Maybe game should be perfect by now, it seems simple right? Gameplay mechanic x is good except for part y, remove part y and you have improved, but after almost 30 years of development things seem to be getting worse?

So am I and my peers at fault here or is it the game developers?

[killergorilla]

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!?!

COME ON FREAKY WAKE UP AND SMELL BOB DINNERMAN!

I disagree, I think some new games are top notch, but most are shit.

Just like every generation of games

[keropi]

the fact that we where kids was to blame... all seemd awesome and NEW and we did not have any comparisons (to some extend...)
there are awesome games nowdays too, I have found the followinf Xbox360 games to be great: Rise of the Argonauts , Devil May Cry 4 , X-Men Wolverine's Revenge, Dynasty Warriors 6 ... so yeah for me even today awesome games do get released
don't forget that we also grow up thus losing much interest in games....

ps. the very last game I finished is Zelda the Wind Waker for the gamecube... a bit late but it was worth it!

[blade002]

I have been questioning that one inside my mind myself and i still can't come up with an answer. I think what i am starting to realise is that the more time i spend analyzing how much better things were back then (which i do A LOT) the more i realise that its kind of a waste of life and i "could" really be enjoying it a much more than i already do if i just let it all go and embrace many new things.

Of course there ARE things Today that i just COULD NOT even TRY to like and its not really about TRYING to like something, if you don't then you don't, but if there is something that you know you could "possibly" enjoy playing around with and its new, then give it a shot! you may still hate it, or you might love it to bits!

I myself am highly analytical but i am now 35 which although is not real old, its not like am real young anymore either and wasting my time analyzing won't get me really anywhere. Time to enjoy things as they come whether they are old or new but of course there isn't much that will beat those childhood/teen memories.

Anyway, that's just my take on that

[TCD]

Still find (some) games very impressive, but indeed the ideas are kinda worn out, so you find things to be more repetitive (and a COD each 10 months or so surely doesn't help). Back in the day(tm) there were a lot of 'fresh' games that were not too hard to get into. That might influence how we see games now and that we aren't really impressed by most of them.

[mk1]

The question that comes to my mind is that did the people who had played with their early 80s and late 70s computers/consoles think the same way when the 16bit systems arrived? Any clue?

Somehow I felt that the general attitude towards "modern" stuff back then was more optimistic and now it's all just Hollywood stuff with only a few companies running the business and games like MySims Kingdoms and Horse Life 2. :P

[s2325]

I like now Wolfenstein 3D (plus mods) and similar games from that time (Catacomb Abyss, Corridor 7, Blake Stone) but when they were new they were for me boring crap with good graphics.

[Jgames]

I don't think it has to do with age ( i am 32 ), there are many good games back in the 8 bits and 16 bits systems, and there are many good games now also;
Back in the late 80's early 90's there was no emulators, and the collection of games one could play was small, (no goodsets or tosecs back then)
Now, there is an awful lot of new and old games, especially if you use a PC;
You can't enjoy 50.000 games, you'll enjoy only a hunderd for example, the same as things were before;
When i played in the arcades, there were like 50 arcade cabinets, and i remember only playing on 2 or 3 cabinets, why? because good games are rare, and i can only enjoy good games;
The same now, you have every months dozens of games, but how many games are good? maybe no one!, but still sometimes, you encounter a really good game, and you find yourself absorbed into playing again;

Another problem is the lack of artistic beauty in the games of late 90's till now, they tried movies in games, but this didn't work, we want hand drawed games;
That is, even if we could have real thing movie quality games, i will not like that, i would like to see red, blue and rainbow colours in the game, it has to be suspension of beleif;

Also, I think that, approaching the 40's, we could loose interest in gaming, and that's a good thing, we tend to care for other things in life, like take care of our family, children etc...

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by mk1

The question that comes to my mind is that did the people who had played with their early 80s and late 70s computers/consoles think the same way when the 16bit systems arrived?

Check the letters pages of mags like Amiga Power in the early nineties and you'll find loads of letters from misty-eyed readers saying how "games are too expensive and they're not as good as on my old Speccy/C64/etc". It'll happen when the kids who have only known the current gen of consoles grow up too. Human nature?

[Freakyweakywoo]

I'm starting to see that no matter how bad a game is someone will really like it. I wasn't saying all games are bad, I too think some of the best games evarrrr have been released in recent years. It's just that I'm seeing remakes starting to pop up and we all know what that did to the movie industry, which if it wasn't for the odd gem, would have to be taken around the back of a barn and introduced to a shotgun.

Back on topic, this year has been pretty poor, I've bought 3 new releases! That's it. I managed that in two months last year.

My gf is into table-top role-play, so I turned to that, obviously it was DnD and I even found too many faults in that. Although the World of Darkness has tweaked the would-be horror director in me, so is providing some enjoyment.

I bought the a Sega compilation for my PS3 and it had the Phantasy Star, I played the original master system version and it was a deeply flawed game, but my god was it fun! It has left struggling to understand what exactly makes a good game. Phantasy Star was probably the most fun I've had with a game this year.

[DH]

Originally Posted by Jgames

Also, I think that, approaching the 40's, we could loose interest in gaming, and that's a good thing, we tend to care for other things in life, like take care of our family, children etc...

WHAT? I'm in my 40's and I love a good game, strangely enough, I always go back to something Amiga related or Arcade, like Defender. I take care of my family by keeping the kids occupied with games

There are good ones today, some are obviously rubbish but what's new. When the Amiga came out everyone wanted a piece of it + this was the start of the serious gaming world as we know it today There were good ones and bad ones too, but the ingenuity of the game developers back then was far better, they were creating stuff that were, at one time, only possible in the arcades, which was a new level for game designers.

Eventually we all fall into the same trap, how do you make a game that is different from anything else, well imho you can't, it's all been done before. The GFX may be different, the SFX and music may be different but the game-play can be tediously the same as other games you've played or a mixture of both.

[Anemos]

My own opinion is the spread of pirated software more and more to new days, and this brake authors who want to use imagination and fun in a game.
And now all makes fast and for money..

[s2325]

I love TwinWorld, Axel's Magic Hammer, 7 Gates of Jambala, Kid Gloves 1 & 2, why I can not find today anything similar? It's easier now to make game...

[DH]

Hmm. You can find similar ones on these classic game console things that have 200+ classics built into them. My sons got one, it has shit loads.

[s2325]

No, they're not similar.

[DH]

They are over here, some are quite similar indeed

[Freakyweakywoo]

Do we really want to play the same games over and over?

I bought Killer 7 and Valkyira Chronicles purely because they were different.

We can't expect developers to take risks if we won't buy anything different. That is if anyone still buys games at all.

I mean if all the "smart" people are just stealing the games via torrents and only "morons" pay for them, the marketing figures will show the comapnies that games loved by idiots make more money than smart games and obviously they will make more of them, which will also sell.

[killergorilla]

Well I personally still buy games (for systems where you can still buy games in the shops) and I don't buy dross, but I don't buy THAT many games anymore, simply because I don't have the time I had when I was a child to play them all.

I've recently started playing through my 360 games that I've not played that much, and refuse to buy new ones until I've actually played the ones I have properly.

Strangely enough, most of these games aren't anything massively different to the norm (Virtua Tennis, Orange Box, Gears of War 1/2, Far Cry 2), and I do find them all damn good, so there are some decent, "mainstream" games still being made.

[Charlie]

I think most of us hear have gotten to an age where we're allowed to be a bit grumpy.

The shine comes off all things after a while...
The good news must be that lurking around forums like this is a sign that we at least are still capable of having fun - you'd be amazed how many 'grown-ups' wouldn't know fun if it jumped up and bit them on the wedding-vegitables.

[Ironclaw]

One of the things I hate, is today's people. All they care about is good graphics. I know several of them, and when I introduce "retro" games too them, they just laugh and don't even wanna try them because they don't look good enough.

I don't give a SHIT about graphics... for me the game itself (playstyle, music, sounds, mechanics etc) is what I go for. And as I'm like that, of course I find older games better than today's ones. It's also almost like everything has already been done, but today they just LOOK better... which doesn't interest me at all (yeah yeah, there are some exceptions like MMORPGs and stuff).

But not all of today's games sucks to me , I love several... but WAY more retro games.

Why is it that that so many people of today are so stubborn (even stupid) and only think graphics is what matters?

I have two laptops, one new and one old, the old one can start most of the new games, but to play them smoothly I have to lower everything to the lowest. It's this old laptop I usually (only bring the new one on special occasions) bring to places when I'm playing with buddies. They just laugh at the poor graphics and low resolution I have to play with. Well, I rather have a game that runs smooth and fast, than good graphics.... but they just CAN'T get that . For some of them alot of games runs like SHIT!. Saw one playing Doom 3 with like 15 FPS and he was ok with it... he just HAD to play with everything on max rather than lowering it a bit and play it smooth... arghhhh.... I wanted to hit him

I end this post with a random picture:

[Wanna bet? Stop posting OT rubbish please - Graham]

[Sorry, old habit (and Monty Python is not rubbish) - Ironclaw]