Playstation single player games will no longer be ported to PC

Flogger23m said:
I disagree. Few games are as ground breaking as they were before.
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Define "ground breaking". If you mean they don't have new gameplay mechanisms, well ya, it is hard to come up with new things in a mature space, a lot of kinds of gameplay have been done and it isn't easy to just magic something new in to existence. When videogames were new it was much easier to have "ground breaking" gameplay. Hell Pong was ground breaking...

...unless you look at air hockey. When you look at other media, it turns out that games really are never ground breaking. You can find antecedents in literature, film, board games. etc. All art is effectively derivative, we are all influenced by the things we consumed and it influences what we create. It's why you can look at any novel and talk about other novels that came before it that it is like, or any band and talk about the other bands before them that their sound is reminiscent of.

I think things were not as groundbreaking as you want to think, you just felt that way because it was the first time for YOU.
 
M76 said:
I'm specifically about AAA games, indie games don't scratch the same itch. And I can't name a single AAA game since 2020 that I'd consider great. Heck, there are barely any worth playing. We used to get at least 5-6 games every year that I'd at least consider. In 2026 I purchased two game so far, and only finished one and even that was meh.

Whose 8/10? The crap that gets high scores from games media and the games that get dragged for ideological reasons makes these scores completely useless. If you think games are just as great now as ever start listing the classics from 2025 and 2026 that stand on the same level as Half Life, Far Cry, Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins, The Last of Us, Max Payne, Portal, Mafia, Splinter Cell, C&C, Fallout, etc.

I's 2026 and the most you're looking forward to is replaying a 2017 game. Clearly something is not right.


Survivorship bias and rose glasses from 2020?
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AAA gaming is definetly in the shitter right now. I've had my 9070XT over a year now and no real games to use it on, other than just replayed CP2077 and Wircher 3 next gen with some raytracing on. Only now with Blood Of The Dawnwalker I am experiencing something really good since BG3 but even this is a AA game, just like BG3 technically. Otherwise I have been playing indies and I could do that with my previous 3070.
 
The problem is very evident on this thread. You can't shove 20 gamers in a room and get them to agree on what games are "great". They all have opinions based on their experiences, their age, and what games they played in their formative years. As an example, I'll use a TV show ... Breaking Bad. By all accounts heralded as an amazing TV show. Never seen an episode of it. Don't like the premise so why would I watch it? The same, for me, applies to pretty much all side scrollers and FPS. I'm pretty much a third-person action/adventure type guy so I tend to consume those games exclusively. That means I don't have a bugger all idea what is happening in those other areas. Currently I'm playing Crimson Desert and, to be honest, I'm loving it. I think it is a pretty damned great game. Some people I'm sure won't like it but for me it is consuming all my gaming time. I'd put it up against Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey which are two games I've replayed _almost_ as much as the Elder Scrolls series of games. But, if you asked me about FPS and side scrollers? Not a clue what's going on. RTS? No idea if any of them are good enough to eat. Racing games? I have a wheel and pedals home gathering dust.

So, take that 20 gamers and you'll get people arguing that a specific RTS is brilliant, and the FPS gamers will scoff at the entire genre. How can you honestly say what's great? The only metric that isn't personal opinion is sales numbers but then people nitpick that as well because gaming sales are heavily dependent on the overall health of various economies. Right now game sales are generally down across the board because, unlike my generation that grew up on Atari and Intellivision, the current kids seem to prefer mobile games to anything else in terms of hours spent gaming. I find it bloody irritating but it doesn't really matter because I'm not the target audience.

So what makes a great game? I don't have a clue. I only know what makes it great for me when I actually play it because objective metrics can all point to brilliant and then I find myself bored out of my mind. I wasn't prepared to be sucked into Crimson Desert but here I am spending hundreds of hours playing. So people arguing that Cyberpunk 2077 is a "great" game are right. But, so are the people arguing that it isn't a great game. You can't objectively say something is "great" unless you define what that means and come up with metrics that are independent of personal opinion. That debate would never end.
 
Bankie said:
Other than hardware pricing it's hard to imagine PC gaming being in a better place. One of the few better options; and one that would be on topic is that I would have liked to have seen Ghost of Yotei on PC. And now I won't.
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What you're seeing is the death throes of the Playstation platform. Sony knows that PC is eating away their market share, so they'll covet their games to give gamers a reason to buy a console. This isn't 1995 when the Playstation was $300 while a PC was $1,500, and the Playstation was technically far more superior to any PC in 1995. Consider what games ran on the Playstation and what it took to run those same games on PC. That isn't the case today when a PS5 Pro costs $900 and a comparable PC can actually cost less even during the rampocalypse.
Flogger23m said:
Silksong is probably nice for those that like retro games and I'm sure it is great for what it is. Elden Ring looks underwhelming but I dislike the concept of "Souls" games in the first place.
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Technically Souls games are retro due to their game play style. Reminds me Ninja Gaiden for the NES. Punishing and difficult games are what's in because people are sick of games like Wolverine that hold your hand.
M76 said:
You couldn't be more wrong, there are dozens if not thundreds of lore and exploration videos still being posted about the game today. The technical achievements are the least talked about thing.
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Wasn't talking about lore but gameplay. I'm sure Cyberpunk2077 has good lore, but I'm not invested enough in the game to find out.
You have the right to your opinion, but your personal taste won't change the status of the game as a cult classic. I couldn't get into the Witcher 3, but that won't change that it is also a classic. And I absolutely hate RDR2, but that's also considered a classic.
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Witcher 3 side quests were actually good and well scripted. I liked how the Witcher acts like a detective. My problem with Cyberpunk was the amount of trash side quests. It's the reason why I hate UbiSoft style games.
I don't spend weeks playing games that I don't like. Is that some cognitive dissonance, or are you a glutton for punishment?
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More like buyers remorse. I don't know the game isn't good until I play it, and sometimes it takes until the very end of the game to find out. Expedition 33 was underwhelming but passable until I got exposed to the open world and realized the game hates the player. I see this a lot in games like Atomic Heart where I liked the game at first, until I got outside and realized I can't kill nothing because everything literally respawns. That shit is game designers trying to waste your time and extend the gameplay. In Cyberpunk's case it was a lot of side quests that I thought would just get cleared but didn't know until late game that there's a shit ton of them. There are side quests that range from good to quick and dirty. Again, you don't know until you're knee deep in the game.
I think for something to be a classic it needs to do more than just being a good game. It needs to stand out of the crowd. The main reason BG3 stands out is because it wasn't made with big corporate money backing it, but by an independent developer. And for this reason it gets treated with kids gloves. It gets a pass for a lot of jank, that a game made by AAA studios would get shredded over.
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Baldur's Gate 3 did nothing special, other than make a good game. When I play a game I want to see fucked up stuff. I want to feel like I have enough control that I could break the games mechanics if I wanted to. I want a compelling story that doesn't make me question if the writer was on meth. If there are side quests, there better be as much or more effort than the main quest storyline. BG3 did all that and then some.
They are just not comparable to me. An indie game doesn't give me the same experience as a great high production value AAA title. Indie games are like hot hatches, they can be cool and fun when they hit the spot, but they are not comparable to hypercars. There are plenty of hypercars that I absolutely despise, but that doesn't mean that hot hatches can ever replace hypercars.
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AAA games that feel like a high production value game are not common. Most of the time I feel like a AAA game is a visual masterpiece that plays like a fucked up go-kart with one wheel missing. Rarely you get games like Doom Eternal which feels and plays like a proper AAA game.
 
Ididar said:
The problem is very evident on this thread. You can't shove 20 gamers in a room and get them to agree on what games are "great". They all have opinions based on their experiences, their age, and what games they played in their formative years. As an example, I'll use a TV show ... Breaking Bad. By all accounts heralded as an amazing TV show. Never seen an episode of it. Don't like the premise so why would I watch it? The same, for me, applies to pretty much all side scrollers and FPS. I'm pretty much a third-person action/adventure type guy so I tend to consume those games exclusively. That means I don't have a bugger all idea what is happening in those other areas. Currently I'm playing Crimson Desert and, to be honest, I'm loving it. I think it is a pretty damned great game. Some people I'm sure won't like it but for me it is consuming all my gaming time. I'd put it up against Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey which are two games I've replayed _almost_ as much as the Elder Scrolls series of games. But, if you asked me about FPS and side scrollers? Not a clue what's going on. RTS? No idea if any of them are good enough to eat. Racing games? I have a wheel and pedals home gathering dust.

So, take that 20 gamers and you'll get people arguing that a specific RTS is brilliant, and the FPS gamers will scoff at the entire genre. How can you honestly say what's great? The only metric that isn't personal opinion is sales numbers but then people nitpick that as well because gaming sales are heavily dependent on the overall health of various economies. Right now game sales are generally down across the board because, unlike my generation that grew up on Atari and Intellivision, the current kids seem to prefer mobile games to anything else in terms of hours spent gaming. I find it bloody irritating but it doesn't really matter because I'm not the target audience.

So what makes a great game? I don't have a clue. I only know what makes it great for me when I actually play it because objective metrics can all point to brilliant and then I find myself bored out of my mind. I wasn't prepared to be sucked into Crimson Desert but here I am spending hundreds of hours playing. So people arguing that Cyberpunk 2077 is a "great" game are right. But, so are the people arguing that it isn't a great game. You can't objectively say something is "great" unless you define what that means and come up with metrics that are independent of personal opinion. That debate would never end.
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Sales are a measure of success but independent of a good or bad game. The debate can only end (or close enough) when people make an effort at that and acknowledge it. The first step is not going "nuhuh!" over and over whenever a point can't be refuted.
Darunion said:
I mean two years ago we had our first AAAA game which should be monumental! (Skull and Bones for those that don't remember that).
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What does AAAA entail o_O?
 
Prince Valiant said:
Sales are a measure of success but independent of a good or bad game. The debate can only end (or close enough) when people make an effort at that and acknowledge it. The first step is not going "nuhuh!" over and over whenever a point can't be refuted.
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That's the point. People are debating the drop in great games but nobody can even agree on what makes games great. The whole argument is laughable.
 
Ididar said:
That's the point. People are debating the drop in great games but nobody can even agree on what makes games great. The whole argument is laughable.
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Of course everyone have different tastes but what makes this era different is that there is so little to look forward to, for everyone it seems like (except indie fans, they are doing better than ever). There was always the next interesting game right on the horizon and this was the case all the way from the time I was a kid with C64 and NES to the end of the Xbox360/PS3 era and to some extent PS4. Maybe I have just become jaded but now whenever I see something about a new upcoming game there is almost always something that make me roll my eyes, rub me the wrong way if not make me grit my teeth from disgust in worst cases.
 
M76 said:
They are just not comparable to me. An indie game doesn't give me the same experience as a great high production value AAA title. Indie games are like hot hatches, they can be cool and fun when they hit the spot, but they are not comparable to hypercars. There are plenty of hypercars that I absolutely despise, but that doesn't mean that hot hatches can ever replace hypercars.
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Agreed. AA games can be great, or even "A" games. But they would be better if they had a bigger budget with better graphics and more polish. Of course the problem often is the more expensive a project becomes, the studios tend to grow in size which means it is harder to sync a single vision, more chances of someone who will sink the project, more sales are required which often means making it for more broad appeal, etc.

But of course, if I look to a smaller indie game that I enjoyed (of which there are various), I would have enjoyed it more if it had a AAA production quality.

Sycraft said:
Define "ground breaking". If you mean they don't have new gameplay mechanisms, well ya, it is hard to come up with new things in a mature space, a lot of kinds of gameplay have been done and it isn't easy to just magic something new in to existence.
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That is the point. We're also seeing a big of regression. A good example is Far Cry 2 to Far Cry 5:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCeEvQ68jY8
 
Flogger23m said:
That is the point.
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In that case, you are just going to be a curmudgeon as you age, forever bitter about ALL media because that is just life. It is not possible to just be truly original. Even things that were "the first" like the Iliad are just the first we have a record of, it was influenced by earlier, oral, epics. The standard of "it must be groundbreaking" is a completely unrealistic one and as I said: It really says more about where you are in life if something is "groundbreaking" to you or not. If you are a kid, without a lot of experience, you may find something groundbreaking, whereas an older adult who is well read, well traveled, etc may not because they recognize all the influences on it.

Flogger23m said:
We're also seeing a big of regression. A good example is Far Cry 2 to Far Cry 5:
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I have no idea what the video is supposed to demonstrate. That aside: Yes, Farcry is a series that has gone in to the crapper, though I'd argue it was never all that great in the first place. Trying to use that to argue that all games are crap these days is just silly.


I mean I guess if you don't like gaming any more, move on. That's fine, interests and hobbies change as you age. But the idea that somehow things could just be super new and different and that the industry is bad for not doing it is silly. Only way for that to happen is to wipe your memory so things are new and different to YOU.
 
Sycraft said:
It is not possible to just be truly original.
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That is the point. Less games truly standout now. That is why an amazing game isn't as common as it used to be.

Sycraft said:
I have no idea what the video is supposed to demonstrate.
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Maybe you can watch/skim the video then? It shows how interactivity, small details and manipulation of the environment has regressed. Just look at destruction, NPC animations and interactions. And if you've played a lot of recent games you'd realize this is a trend for many games. They have become more static and this often applies to gameplay as well. Games have gotten longer on average, but more shallow with lots of copy/paste quests that may as well have been written by AI.

Sycraft said:
I mean I guess if you don't like gaming any more, move on. That's fine, interests and hobbies change as you age. But the idea that somehow things could just be super new and different and that the industry is bad for not doing it is silly. Only way for that to happen is to wipe your memory so things are new and different to YOU.
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You're arguing with yourself here. You seem to think every game is a 10/10, and seem to think there that the only type of game to exist is a 10/10 or a 0/10. Most games fall somewhere between that. Take Ghost of Tsushima, a 6/10 game. Neither great nor horrible, just average and features many of the shortcomings most modern mediocre games have. It would have been better if they cut the game length by 40%, cut the open world, and focused more on the story and made the story missions better.
 
Flogger23m said:
You're arguing with yourself here. You seem to think every game is a 10/10, and seem to think there that the only type of game to exist is a 10/10 or a 0/10. Most games fall somewhere between that. Take Ghost of Tsushima, a 6/10 game. Neither great nor horrible, just average and features many of the shortcomings most modern mediocre games have. It would have been better if they cut the game length by 40%, cut the open world, and focused more on the story and made the story missions better.
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No, I certainly don't think every game is great or horrible. I think the whining about games getting worse is misplaced. I think, well not think: know, that there were lots of shit games back in the day, that isn't a new phenomena. There were also lots of "meh" games back in the day, same as now. However there are plenty of excellent games these days.

My argument is that I don't need things to feel "groundbreaking" to somehow be good, because I know that nothing really is. I like books too and there have been some amazing books, impactful books, emotional books, etc that have come out in my lifetime. I also know that none of them are groundbreaking, even in the confines to literature because literature is such an old artform. The original Game of Thrones novel I still hold up as one of the best fantasy works of all time... but I also recognize that it is literally a fantasy version of the War of Roses, heavily influenced by Tolkien, and according to Martin himself directly influenced and inspired by The Dragonbone Chair.

I just don't see things like "revolutionary" or "groundbreaking" or "ever seen before" as necessary, or useful, to something being entertaining. I've played a lot of modern games that I have really enjoyed the hell out of, and that I find very well done in a bunch of different ways.
 
Sycraft said:
I just don't see things like "revolutionary" or "groundbreaking" or "ever seen before" as necessary, or useful, to something being entertaining. I've played a lot of modern games that I have really enjoyed the hell out of, and that I find very well done in a bunch of different ways.
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Then you're the 8% of PC gamers then. If a game isn't doing something new or at least something better, then it's a waste of time. Who cares if it's a new game with a better coat of paint? That coat of paint isn't even looking good as Flogger23m's Far Cry video points out. AAA games can't even keep you immersed. Far Cry 2 is a 2008 game. I swear I had a hard time determining which is Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 5.
 
DukenukemX said:
Then you're the 8% of PC gamers then. If a game isn't doing something new or at least something better, then it's a waste of time. Who cares if it's a new game with a better coat of paint? That coat of paint isn't even looking good as Flogger23m's Far Cry video points out. AAA games can't even keep you immersed. Far Cry 2 is a 2008 game. I swear I had a hard time determining which is Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 5.
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I play old games as well, I can re-enjoy a classic, as well as something new. I find it even funnier that someone would be mad that a game is just "a better coat of paint" and then decide to play an older game that you've already played before. "I don't like things that are the same as before... so I'm going to play the exact same thing I've played before!"

But, whatever. I could list the newer games that I've enjoyed but I'm sure you'd just say they are new enough, or different enough, or good enough, or the right kind, or whatever. If you are determined to hate new games because Far Cry sucks (which it most assuredly does) then ok, I guess. I'll continue to play the ones that are good, and ignore the ones that are bad, same as I've ever done. I don't care if they are a new version of something I've played before. Some of my all time favorites are sequels.
 
Sycraft said:
I play old games as well, I can re-enjoy a classic, as well as something new. I find it even funnier that someone would be mad that a game is just "a better coat of paint" and then decide to play an older game that you've already played before. "I don't like things that are the same as before... so I'm going to play the exact same thing I've played before!"
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Playing older games is like remembering when games didn't suck ass. Also, I like to refresh my memory of the game.
But, whatever. I could list the newer games that I've enjoyed but I'm sure you'd just say they are new enough, or different enough, or good enough, or the right kind, or whatever. If you are determined to hate new games because Far Cry sucks (which it most assuredly does) then ok, I guess. I'll continue to play the ones that are good, and ignore the ones that are bad, same as I've ever done. I don't care if they are a new version of something I've played before. Some of my all time favorites are sequels.
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I think you missed the part where I said I liked some newer games like Elden Ring, Doom Eternal, and Baldur's Gate 3. These games were considered disruptive when they were released. I also liked SilkSong which crashed many digital stores. I'm OK with the recent God of War games. I will say the God of War games do offer some challenges, but I really hated God of War Ragnarok DLC where you enter Valhalla to die repeatedly just to get a few extra lore clips that you could easily find in YouTube. Repeatedly dying is the actual mechanic of the DLC.

Since I stopped playing World of Warcraft I'm trying to catch up on my game list and majority of them sucked. Mortal Shell II sucked, Last of Us Part 1 sucked, Kingdom Come Deliverance II sucked, Lies of P sucked, and etc. There were lots of OK games, but very few must play games. Resident Evil Requiem was a pretty Ok game, and one I might revisit. Doom Dark Ages was Ok but I hear the DLC is good so I might revisit it. Pragmata was boring and made to specifically make men want to have children, and no I'm not joking. Little girl serves no purpose other than the cute factor. Uncharted 4 sucked. Black Myth Wukong was pretty good but the story was confusing.

Now people want me back for World of Warcraft Forever which has me being a little skeptical. Season of Discovery was amazing but I don't know if Blizzard can recreate that amazingness.
 
Ididar said:
That's the point. People are debating the drop in great games but nobody can even agree on what makes games great. The whole argument is laughable.
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No it is not laughable, you are just using the ostrich policy. I already defined pretty well what the sign of a great game is: That it's still being talked about and used as a measuring stick many years after its release. Most games that come out nowadays are forgotten within months. Who the heck is still talking about First Light? Nobody.
 
Flogger23m said:
Agreed. AA games can be great, or even "A" games. But they would be better if they had a bigger budget with better graphics and more polish. Of course the problem often is the more expensive a project becomes, the studios tend to grow in size which means it is harder to sync a single vision, more chances of someone who will sink the project, more sales are required which often means making it for more broad appeal, etc.
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The big studio problem is caused by HR as I mentioned before. The bigger a studio the bigger its HR department and somehow the more influence it has. Bigger staff shouldn't automatically mean no vision. More eyes should in fact make the game better by finding more issues. But not if everyone is deathly afraid to speak up because they might get written up or outright fired for criticizing someone else's work within the studio.
Sycraft said:
In that case, you are just going to be a curmudgeon as you age, forever bitter about ALL media because that is just life. It is not possible to just be truly original. Even things that were "the first" like the Iliad are just the first we have a record of, it was influenced by earlier, oral, epics. The standard of "it must be groundbreaking" is a completely unrealistic one and as I said: It really says more about where you are in life if something is "groundbreaking" to you or not. If you are a kid, without a lot of experience, you may find something groundbreaking, whereas an older adult who is well read, well traveled, etc may not because they recognize all the influences on it.
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Originality is overrated, it is not necessary for something to be great. I don't think there is a single shred of originality in Cyberpunk 2077's mechanics and gameplay. Yet it jumped in the top 3 of my all time favorite games. Which instantly obliterates the theory that oh you are all just bitter and hate everything new. I know it's over 5 years old now, but in the greater scheme that is new, I was in the same age bracket then as I'm now. And believe you me, I have been accused of the same nonsense of "hating everything" long before 2020.
Sycraft said:
I have no idea what the video is supposed to demonstrate.
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It's supposed to demonstrate that current day developers don't take pride in their work, and don't pay attention to detail. Games made by modern game devs use the most barebones mechanics, stripped down, simplified imitations of past greats. Wolverine is also such a dull game, with zero interesting mechanics. Simple as a stick, boring as hell. A hollow imitation of a videogame made by people who have no idea what a great videogame is, because they are not gamers. It's just a job for most of them. And the few people who do care in the team are muzzled by HR so to not hurt the feelings of incompetent lazy hacks.
Sycraft said:
That aside: Yes, Farcry is a series that has gone in to the crapper, though I'd argue it was never all that great in the first place. Trying to use that to argue that all games are crap these days is just silly.
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What's silly is trying to argue that AAA gaming is perfectly fine while high profile multiple hundred million dollar games fail epically one after another.
Sycraft said:
I mean I guess if you don't like gaming any more, move on. That's fine, interests and hobbies change as you age. But the idea that somehow things could just be super new and different and that the industry is bad for not doing it is silly. Only way for that to happen is to wipe your memory so things are new and different to YOU.
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Oh, yeah, if you don't like it don't buy it. Trust me, we aren't buying it. But I'm not going to move on or shut up, because I love games and gaming and I want games to be great again. If people really wanted different why would remakes like the oblivion remake be so god damn successful? We want the exact same shit we always loved, but updated with modern physics, graphics, and QOL improvements, nothing more.

What we don't want is superficial dumbed down games designed to not be offensive. I want games where the villains are cunning and menacing and dread inducing. Not comically evil and retarded. I want heroes and heroines who are aspirational and overcome challenges, not confused wet rags with no passion, no morals, and no charisma.
 
DukenukemX said:
Playing older games is like remembering when games didn't suck ass. Also, I like to refresh my memory of the game.
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I agree with refreshing the memory, disagree with "when games didn't suck ass." Games, books, movies, I enjoy revisiting old favorites, but also enjoy new stuff. Depends on my mood.

DukenukemX said:
Now people want me back for World of Warcraft Forever which has me being a little skeptical. Season of Discovery was amazing but I don't know if Blizzard can recreate that amazingness.
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There's not really any recreating the amazingness mostly because you can't wipe your memory and experience something again for the first time, but also because things have changed. A big change in WoW was the introduction of third party tools, parsers, and so on. It forever changed how people can, and do, optimize their playstyle and thus how interactions with the game work.

Personally I've long been done with WoW. I enjoyed the hell out of it, have great memories, don't regret my time, but it holds no interest for me anymore.
 
M76 said:
I'm specifically about AAA games, indie games don't scratch the same itch. And I can't name a single AAA game since 2020 that I'd consider great. Heck, there are barely any worth playing. We used to get at least 5-6 games every year that I'd at least consider. In 2026 I purchased two game so far, and only finished one and even that was meh.
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I've bought and played a bunch of great games this year. Seeing EA buy up and murder studios used to be sad. AAA studios dying has been a long time coming and the world is better for it.

M76 said:
Whose 8/10? The crap that gets high scores from games media and the games that get dragged for ideological reasons makes these scores completely useless. If you think games are just as great now as ever start listing the classics from 2025 and 2026 that stand on the same level as Half Life, Far Cry, Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins, The Last of Us, Max Payne, Portal, Mafia, Splinter Cell, C&C, Fallout, etc.
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If you go back and play those 'classics' you'll see that they're not all that amazing now. If any of them came out now as a new title they'd get destroyed for being too basic. I loved many of them back in the day but I'd much rather do another run in Elden Ring or BG3 than spend another second in the Mako or 10 hours running into room after room spamming Bullet Time. We have mods now that are larger and more complex than those games. ME/DAO/TLoU are closer to today than they are to the beginning of gaming (I'm thinking Atari/NES here) so one could make the argument that they belong to modern gaming.

M76 said:
I's 2026 and the most you're looking forward to is replaying a 2017 game. Clearly something is not right.
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Well yeah, the year is almost over and I already played Silksong so there's not too much left but GTA6 comes out soon. Crimson Desert was a lot of fun and has one of the most interactive worlds in all of gaming. Rogue Trader is awesome and still getting DLC with new characters, areas, and quests. If someone wants a survival game then Valheim and Enshrouded both recently released 1.0. It's a great time to be a gamer; maybe not a fun time if you just hate things (I kid, it can be pretty fun to hate on the Concords and Marathons).
 
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Flogger23m said:
Maybe you can watch/skim the video then? It shows how interactivity, small details and manipulation of the environment has regressed. Just look at destruction, NPC animations and interactions. And if you've played a lot of recent games you'd realize this is a trend for many games. They have become more static and this often applies to gameplay as well. Games have gotten longer on average, but more shallow with lots of copy/paste quests that may as well have been written by AI.
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The hilarious thing is that FarCry 2 is the WORST of the FC games. You'd clear out an outpost, walk 5 feet out of it, turn around and it'd be repopulated.

Graphics, story, atmosphere, grass catching on fire and spreading, etc. are all secondary to gameplay.
 
M76 said:
Sorry, but the notion that cp2077 is garbage is just as absurd as gaming being perfectly fine today. Whether you like it or not is another question, but you can't deny that it is still immensely popular and despite being a single player game it pulls more daily players than most newly released games. It's also constantly being talked about, and sustains multiple youtube channels dedicated to it exclusively, 5 years after its release. You can be a little contrarian and hate it, but it won't make it any less of a classic.

Expedition 33 is a fine game, but nobody talks about it anymore, it is not in the zeitgeist, it doesn't have deep lore to explore, no secrets to uncover still. As for BG3 it is doing a tried and tested formula very well, but I'd not call it a true classic, it is more of an homage to classics. The rest are not to my taste, so I know very little about them. And when I'm talking about the gaming industry, I'm talking about AAA, not one man band indies. Indies can be good games, but I'd never mention them on the same page as big budget productions. It's like comparing the best go-kart driver to formula 1.
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Whether you like it or not is another question, but you can't deny that it is still immensely popular and despite being a single player game it pulls more daily players than most newly released games. It's also constantly being talked about, and sustains multiple youtube channels dedicated to it exclusively, 5 years after its release. You can be a little contrarian and hate it, but it won't make it any less of a classic.

By that metric BG3 is also a classic because all of that is true of BG3. In addition BG3 just released more content in the game for free.
 
M76 said:
No it is not laughable, you are just using the ostrich policy. I already defined pretty well what the sign of a great game is: That it's still being talked about and used as a measuring stick many years after its release. Most games that come out nowadays are forgotten within months. Who the heck is still talking about First Light? Nobody.
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What? There are many modern games that are always being talked about; Silksong itself has probably had more discussion about it than all of 'classic gaming' combined. First Light was decidedly mid so of course there's very little discussion on it. I hardly ever see people talking about DAO, ME1, or Max Payne. If I do see it they're just waxing about 'the good old days'.
 
M76 said:
No it is not laughable, you are just using the ostrich policy. I already defined pretty well what the sign of a great game is: That it's still being talked about and used as a measuring stick many years after its release. Most games that come out nowadays are forgotten within months. Who the heck is still talking about First Light? Nobody.
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I don't think there's any way to determine what is or isn't a great game. It's art and therefore it's up for interpretation. If there was a method then you'd bet corporations would be manufacturing it. What game companies do today is the same thing they've been doing since the Atari 2600 days is take a successful idea and then recreate it. Frogger was popular? Better make a dozen clones of it. Battle Royal is now popular? Better make a dozen clones of it.

View: https://youtu.be/bgBlUtI3aAM?si=M8d6ZRL0TPcZQSrS

The difference between a good and bad game is how passionate the developers for their game. This is also why Indie games get a lot of favoritism because that's usually who's behind those games. Where as the people who made Wolverine probably never read the comics and maybe saw the movies once. There's also a good chance the people who made Wolverine don't actively play games. Then you have Sweet Baby Inc who absolutely doesn't play games, telling developers how to make Wolverine lame and gay. Wolverine had so many cooks in the kitchen that you can't tell what spice is in it because everyone kept adding their own spice. All you know is that you now have explosive diarrhea and don't know if it's from Wolverine or Taco Bell Flu.
Sycraft said:
I agree with refreshing the memory, disagree with "when games didn't suck ass." Games, books, movies, I enjoy revisiting old favorites, but also enjoy new stuff. Depends on my mood.
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Clearly I enjoy both new and old, but the thing with history is that there's a lot of it and you can go back in time and play a lot of classic games. Just because it's new doesn't mean it's good, and just because it's old doesn't mean it's outdated. Why subjugate yourself to new games that don't have demos and demand a $70 or even $80 price tag with a return policy that's offensive at best. Steam's refund policy is 14 days or less than 2 hours of play time. Like I said, you don't truly know how bad a game is until you're 40% into the game, which is usually far beyond 2 hours. Or pick up a classic like The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered because your dad and your uncle have been telling you it's a good game for the past 20 years. Then go to Loverslab and download as much sexy mods as you can to get the same experience your dad did 20 years ago.

Don't let me catch you playing Lawn Mower Simulator because it's a new game.
There's not really any recreating the amazingness mostly because you can't wipe your memory and experience something again for the first time, but also because things have changed. A big change in WoW was the introduction of third party tools, parsers, and so on. It forever changed how people can, and do, optimize their playstyle and thus how interactions with the game work.

Personally I've long been done with WoW. I enjoyed the hell out of it, have great memories, don't regret my time, but it holds no interest for me anymore.
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Season of Discovery is when Blizzard took classic and made it gooder. It asks the question, what if developers weren't Jeffrey Kaplan ("Tigole") and Alex Afrasiabi ("Furor")? Classic+ is such a big deal that Turtle WoW had to be shut down because it was that good. I'm absolutely a parser because the game would get super boring otherwise. Was #1 Ret for two years. Fuck Esfand that malaka.
myt parse.gif
 
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DukenukemX said:
Clearly I enjoy both new and old, but the thing with history is that there's a lot of it and you can go back in time and play a lot of classic games. Just because it's new doesn't mean it's good, and just because it's old doesn't mean it's outdated. Why subjugate yourself to new games that don't have demos and demand a $70 or even $80 price tag with a return policy that's offensive at best. Steam's refund policy is 14 days or less than 2 hours of play time. Like I said, you don't truly know how bad a game is until you're 40% into the game, which is usually far beyond 2 hours. Or pick up a classic like The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered because your dad and your uncle have been telling you it's a good game for the past 20 years. Then go to Loverslab and download as much sexy mods as you can to get the same experience your dad did 20 years ago.
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Funny thing is that a bunch of people were mad that Oblivion was dumbed down when compared to Morrowind. People just like to complain man.
 
Bankie said:
The hilarious thing is that FarCry 2 is the WORST of the FC games. You'd clear out an outpost, walk 5 feet out of it, turn around and it'd be repopulated.

Graphics, story, atmosphere, grass catching on fire and spreading, etc. are all secondary to gameplay.
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Farcry 5 does something similar. Land a plane or leave a vehicle somewhere, walk away, go back, it's gone.
 
DukenukemX said:
I don't think there's any way to determine what is or isn't a great game. It's art and therefore it's up for interpretation. If there was a method then you'd bet corporations would be manufacturing it. What game companies do today is the same thing they've been doing since the Atari 2600 days is take a successful idea and then recreate it. Frogger was popular? Better make a dozen clones of it. Battle Royal is now popular? Better make a dozen clones of it.
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That's the point. You can't manufacture greatness with a bunch of devs who can't tell a great game from a bad one. What I've said is absolutely not up for interpretation, it's about as exact as you can get: Games that aren't great get forgotten, or only ever mentioned as cautionary tales. Games that are great remain relevant almost indefinitely.
 
Bankie said:
What? There are many modern games that are always being talked about; Silksong itself has probably had more discussion about it than all of 'classic gaming' combined. First Light was decidedly mid so of course there's very little discussion on it. I hardly ever see people talking about DAO, ME1, or Max Payne. If I do see it they're just waxing about 'the good old days'.
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The fact that you brought up those exact games proves you wrong. Those names still mean something even to you, because people mention them as positive examples of beloved games. To use your words nobody will be "waxing" about Wolverine or First Light or RE:Requiem 15-20 years from now.
 
rinaldo00 said:
Whether you like it or not is another question, but you can't deny that it is still immensely popular and despite being a single player game it pulls more daily players than most newly released games. It's also constantly being talked about, and sustains multiple youtube channels dedicated to it exclusively, 5 years after its release. You can be a little contrarian and hate it, but it won't make it any less of a classic.

By that metric BG3 is also a classic because all of that is true of BG3. In addition BG3 just released more content in the game for free.
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I'm not 100% against saying it's a classic, but I do think it's overrated because of its indie status.
 
M76 said:
The fact that you brought up those exact games proves you wrong. Those names still mean something even to you, because people mention them as positive examples of beloved games. To use your words nobody will be "waxing" about Wolverine or First Light or RE:Requiem 15-20 years from now.
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You brought up those games. :rolleyes:

No one is currently waxing about Giants:Citizen Kabuto, National Lampoon's Chess Maniac 5 Billion And 1, Trog, or Summer Games either.
 
Think there are more bad games today because just look at the state of AAA industry, wouldn't be in the shape and situation it is if it was just pumping out banger after banger.

2000s etc was a time of growth, even after the financial crisis

And for every one indie game you'd point to, that's ignoring the other 10,000 indie games that are shit, half baked, asset flips, abandoned, etc
 
Bankie said:
The hilarious thing is that FarCry 2 is the WORST of the FC games.
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I completely agree with that, but that wasn't the point.
Bankie said:
Graphics, story, atmosphere, grass catching on fire and spreading, etc. are all secondary to gameplay.
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Every aspect of a game is important, they all need to hit a certain bar for a game to be good. Gameplay is not really a thing existing on its own, it is how all the game mechanics work together with the level and mission design. Graphics is part of level design, story is adjacent to mission design. Everything is interconnected and must work together to form a cohesive whole.
 
Bankie said:
You brought up those games. :rolleyes:
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That doesn't change the point. Which AAA game released in say the past 2-3 years do you think will be brought up 15 years from now as one of the greats?
Bankie said:
No one is currently waxing about Giants:Citizen Kabuto, National Lampoon's Chess Maniac 5 Billion And 1, Trog, or Summer Games either.
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I assume the point you're trying to make is that all games are forgotten eventually. That's true, but it matters whether they are forgotten by the next news cycle or in three decades.
 
M76 said:
The big studio problem is caused by HR as I mentioned before. The bigger a studio the bigger its HR department and somehow the more influence it has. Bigger staff shouldn't automatically mean no vision. More eyes should in fact make the game better by finding more issues. But not if everyone is deathly afraid to speak up because they might get written up or outright fired for criticizing someone else's work within the studio.
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It is both. Honestly it is hard for one person to explain something to someone else. You can have two people say the same thing but their interpretation can be quite different. A smaller team with a similar background, understanding or have played the same games (or life experiences they have be drawing from) as an inspiration are more likely to conceptualize something similar than a larger team. Placing your idea into the head of 20 others is a hard task, but doing that for 150 others is even harder.

I'm not saying it can't be done, it just becomes harder the more people you have. Modern studios having extra layers of management, trying to chase trends, etc. just adds more complexity on top of it.
 
M76 said:
I completely agree with that, but that wasn't the point.

Every aspect of a game is important, they all need to hit a certain bar for a game to be good. Gameplay is not really a thing existing on its own, it is how all the game mechanics work together with the level and mission design. Graphics is part of level design, story is adjacent to mission design. Everything is interconnected and must work together to form a cohesive whole.
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All of those 'classics' must no longer be good then. Their graphics, sound, etc. aren't even close to modern games; indie or otherwise.

M76 said:
That doesn't change the point. Which AAA game released in say the past 2-3 years do you think will be brought up 15 years from now as one of the greats?

I assume the point you're trying to make is that all games are forgotten eventually. That's true, but it matters whether they are forgotten by the next news cycle or in three decades.
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The point is that there have always been mid and bad games that get forgotten. The games I already mentioned; Silksong, BG3, ER, E33, etc. will all be talked about in the same way as those older games. I still don't understand why you think AAA is going to save gaming. If there are no recent games that you like then it's probably time to pick up some other hobbies.
 
I'm reminded of music. People love to say period X was the best time for music and the new sounds are lousy. No, it's more likely that things are different, not worse, and that nostalgia means you cherry-pick only the best memories. The '90s had some awesome artists, but we forget about all the middling or mediocre bands that didn't get much traction.

Same with games. We like to remember Quake, or Civilization, or Splinter Cell... but we forget, say, Prophecy of the Shadow or countless other games that, at best, only had a brief moment in the sun. Kram182 is right in that the 2000s (and 1990s) were a period of growth, but there was also a ton of derivative (or simply poor) material that sometimes came from major developers.
 
Bankie said:
Funny thing is that a bunch of people were mad that Oblivion was dumbed down when compared to Morrowind. People just like to complain man.
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There's always a group of people who complain, but what matters if they're valid. I don't know what the complaints are because I've played both Oblivion and Morrowind and couldn't tell you what they did that would make some people angry.
kram182 said:
Think there are more bad games today because just look at the state of AAA industry, wouldn't be in the shape and situation it is if it was just pumping out banger after banger.

2000s etc was a time of growth, even after the financial crisis

And for every one indie game you'd point to, that's ignoring the other 10,000 indie games that are shit, half baked, asset flips, abandoned, etc
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Every generation of games had piles of shit. I like my NES classics but I won't pretend the NES didn't have a lot of shit games. The problem is that modern games are acting like they deserve not only $70 but maybe $100? Look at Skull And Bones where Ubisoft gave their game the prestigious title of AAAA, when realistically you'd have to pay people to play this game.

Going back to Sony, they also have this problem. Sony thinks their games are so good that you'd have to buy a PS5 to play them, and pay the ridiculous $70 price tag. This might have been true for Sony since the PS3 and PS4, but lately the PS5 hasn't been getting those banger games. This might have been true with BloodBorne, God of War, and Racket and Clank games but not so much their other games. Last of Us Part II is hated because they killed Joel but did sell 10 million copies so Sony thinks this game has a future. Playing as Joel was satisfying because you can understand his frustration when this woman wanted to take this girls brain apart and I thought the game would give me the choice to let her live or die, but game made the choice for me. For this reason I avoid Last of Us Part II, but you can bet a lot of people bought the game based on Part 1 and found out that Joel is now dead because someone from Sweet Baby Inc wants to fantasize killing their dad. Same goes for Ghost of Yotei, which you can bet was riding on the success of Tsushima.

The direction Sony is going will end up like Xbox when the PS6 is released.
M76 said:
That's the point. You can't manufacture greatness with a bunch of devs who can't tell a great game from a bad one. What I've said is absolutely not up for interpretation, it's about as exact as you can get: Games that aren't great get forgotten, or only ever mentioned as cautionary tales. Games that are great remain relevant almost indefinitely.
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Passionate people are what make great media. Look at Star Wars for example where it's literally influenced on a 1958 Japanese film The Hidden Fortress. Another example is Undertale is influenced by Earthbound on the SNES. Classics that nobody heard of but a few passionate people did. Pizza Tower is influenced by Wario Land 4. Where as an employee from Sweet Baby Inc has probably never played a game but absolutely hates straight white men and will tell game developers who only play Call of Duty how to develop Wolverine an action beat-em up game without ever knowing let alone playing Streets of Rage 2 the best beat em up ever. This developer wasn't chosen because he/she was the best, but because he/she was cheap and can't form a union.

Another example is Hollow Knight developers who live in Australia and were influenced by games like Metroid and Zelda II. I know there's hate around Zelda II but I loved the game and lots of games took influence from it like Shovel Knight. But you can see these modern game developers went to the past where games didn't suck ass to learn how to make a new modern good game. Nobody is going to pick up Wolverine in 30 years and use it as a source of influence for modern games. It'll be forgotten next week, let alone 30 years.

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/tycPtuNXNTU?si=Lycn5PeYCviE80hH
 
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DukenukemX said:
Every generation of games had piles of shit.
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Sure there's shit in ever generation. But now there's so much it's undeniably hurting them (AAA) - and as with indies - if there's more indie devs now then ever (especially cause of layoffs let's say) - there's just going to be more shit as well there.
 
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