Controversial opinion: Most of the fifth generation was trash.

Azureth

Azureth

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 29, 2008
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Yeah, I realize it was early 3D and using mid 90s tech but it doesn't change the fact most of it looks and plays janky as fuck. Keep in mind I grew up with the PS/N64 and while I did have fun, even then I thought they looked and played pretty bad for the most part. Very hard to go back and play games from that generation today.
 
i disagree

it got sony in to consoles and basically signaled the end of nintendo competing in the "high end" console scene.

i guess the nintendo playstation wasn't such a bad idea now was it nintendo.
 
Yeah, I agree that a lot of those games (at least the 3D ones) were pretty rough and hard to play today. With that said, they were the first console generation who really went after 3D, so graphics and gameplay mechanics were still very new to the genre. I remember camera position/control was a big issue back then but has become sort of a non-issue in today's games.

Also, PS1 introduced polygonal boobs (and floaty boob physics thanks to Dead or Alive), so the 5th generation was an important generation.
 
Azureth said:
Yeah, I realize it was early 3D and using mid 90s tech but it doesn't change the fact most of it looks and plays janky as fuck. Keep in mind I grew up with the PS/N64 and while I did have fun, even then I thought they looked and played pretty bad for the most part. Very hard to go back and play games from that generation today.
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I would say the ratio is probably the same an any other generation really. There are still plenty that holdup perfectly well, but I'd wager that most of them that do weren't trying to be fully 3D. So I agree with you that the poly-jank doesn't age well.
 
I don't remember the N64 looking bad back when it came out. It was rather revolutionary when previously we only had sprite-based graphics for the most part. Plus the concept of playing split-screen 4-player games was awesome.

Kinda seems like some anti-nostalgia going on here.
 
MavericK said:
I don't remember the N64 looking bad back when it came out. It was rather revolutionary when previously we only had sprite-based graphics for the most part. Plus the concept of playing split-screen 4-player games was awesome.

Kinda seems like some anti-nostalgia going on here.
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I still play Mario 64 and Zelda OoT once in awhile. Still a lot of fun for me.
 
I think the current generation is trash. Almost everything that is worth something is cross platform. I literally played one decent game so far on the ps4 in the past year. The best titles are re-releases of PS3 games mostly.
 
M76 said:
I think the current generation is trash. Almost everything that is worth something is cross platform. I literally played one decent game so far on the ps4 in the past year. The best titles are re-releases of PS3 games mostly.
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Horizon: Zero Dawn
God of War
Bloodborne
Spider-Man
Red Dead Redemption 2

Plus upcoming titles like:

Last of Us 2
Death Stranding
Ghost of Tsushima
Days Gone


Can't really agree with your assertion.
 
PlayStation had one of the best libraries of games of all time. They're even better these days due to emulation. Love going back and playing the classics when I get tired of all the modern day bullshit.
 
MavericK said:
Horizon: Zero Dawn
God of War
Bloodborne
Spider-Man
Red Dead Redemption 2

Plus upcoming titles like:

Last of Us 2
Death Stranding
Ghost of Tsushima
Days Gone


Can't really agree with your assertion.
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How do unreleased titles count in this gen sucking up to now? The console has been out for 5 years, and you can list 6 games? 3 of which were released this year? Apart from Horizon Zero Dawn I haven't found any decent game of interest yet. Red Dead was just released, and I bet it's as exlusive as GTAV was. So that doesn't count either. The rest of the games are of no interest to me. So yeah, this generation sucks. This is not an assertion this is what I think. We don't even have a decent Gran Turismo, and from the looks of things this generation might not even get one. That in of itself is enough to encite my wrath.
 
I remember thinking "How is this slow, chunky, fuzzy, choppy, hard-to-control junk on my TV an improvement over the beautifully crisp and responsive SNES?" then went back to playing Doom or Quake or whatever...

Mario 64, Zelda, Final Fantasy games were enjoyable enough though. my favorites being Paper Mario on N64 and FF Tactics on PS1

funny enough going back to the older games doesn't feel as bad, although my #1 complaint are the bad camera controls and that is still an issue in today's 3rd person games.

not sure we have hit the golden era for 3d games yet, maybe once we really nail down things like clipping, LOD/texture pop-in, and some other annoyances...
 
I will say that until OOT came up with Z-targeting (which is still used today), many 3D games were done in by poor camera controls. But there was a ton of good games as well across multiple consoles.
 
MavericK said:
I don't remember the N64 looking bad back when it came out. It was rather revolutionary when previously we only had sprite-based graphics for the most part. Plus the concept of playing split-screen 4-player games was awesome.

Kinda seems like some anti-nostalgia going on here.
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I ended up trading my N64 for a boxed TurboDuo.

Best trade ever....
 
FF7 was the only reason I bought a PS1. I can't remember another game I played on it back then. That's when I got back into PC gaming and not look back.
 
Alot of developers just stopped making games for consoles I think the PS3 and Nintendo Wii were the last great systems for exclusives and original hits.
 
There are obviously some good games on the current gen systems, but the jump from the 360/PS3 to the current systems might be the smallest I've ever seen. The good games of today are mostly just sequels to last-gen games with slightly better graphics. In many cases, only slightly better graphics. It's not like the jump to from Atari to Nintento, the jump from 8 to 16 bit, the jump to having real spoken audio, the jump to 3D, the jump to HD, etc.
Whatever the next systems are will probably be that same type of jump we're usually used to. For instance, just look at Destiny 1 on PS3 vs. Destiny 2 on the PC. GT5 on the last gen vs. the PC would also be similar. THAT is the kind of jump we usually get from one console gen to the next. Night and day visual differences.
I suppose VR would also count, but it's not like that's exactly lighting up the sales charts.
 
If you go purely on games that I in particular want to play, then pretty much every cycle is trash by this metric.
A console goes for what, 5 years? I play maybe half-a-dozen titles total? And that's a hard maybe.
I see no problems with your position. It's incredibly rare in my opinion for any game on any platform (including PC) to be worth playing.
There's maybe one (new) game a year on PC that's worth playing. If there are two it's an insane boon and it's probably because the two games are in incredibly different genres (like DX:MD and Civ:VI).

So if you want people to agree with your bitch fest, then there you go. But for what it's worth, I also feel this way about most forms of media content. Very few reach a point of being something really incredible or unique.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
If you go purely on games that I in particular want to play, then pretty much every cycle is trash by this metric.
A console goes for what, 5 years? I play maybe half-a-dozen titles total? And that's a hard maybe.
I see no problems with your position. It's incredibly rare in my opinion for any game on any platform (including PC) to be worth playing.
There's maybe one (new) game a year on PC that's worth playing. If there are two it's an insane boon and it's probably because the two games are in incredibly different genres (like DX:MD and Civ:VI).

So if you want people to agree with your bitch fest, then there you go. But for what it's worth, I also feel this way about most forms of media content. Very few reach a point of being something really incredible or unique.
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Now there's a controversial opinion. If you feel that less than 5 games each year for the last few years has been worth playing than you have extremely specific tastes. We've been in a gaming renaissance as far as I can tell.
 
CptCabbit said:
Now there's a controversial opinion. If you feel that less than 5 games each year for the last few years has been worth playing than you have extremely specific tastes. We've been in a gaming renaissance as far as I can tell.
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1 game a year. 2 in a boon. More than once, zero.

I was saying 5 games in a console generation. Average.
 
CptCabbit said:
Ah I misunderstood, I was also including PC releases. My mistake.
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PC releases for me I’d say are the same. 1 a year. Maybe.

Edit: I’d actually say I’m going conservatively high. Really it’s more like 1 every other year. Most games are garbage. A few are in the middle median. Only an extremely tiny percentage are at the top and are actually worth playing.
 
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MavericK said:
Horizon: Zero Dawn
God of War
Bloodborne
Spider-Man
Red Dead Redemption 2

Plus upcoming titles like:

Last of Us 2
Death Stranding
Ghost of Tsushima
Days Gone


Can't really agree with your assertion.
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I agree with you, tons of great games, what a bunch of fucking whiners on this forum, it's unbelievable. If you can't find a few titles on the PS4 enjoyable, I feel bad for you, truly, perhaps it's personalities and interests changing over time, outgrowing what once was. Who knows, things change.

Game interest are of course subjective, but to throw out a few more that were fantastic (though again, perhaps not everyone's cup of tea):

Until Dawn
Yakuza 0 and 6
Detroit: Become Human
Persona 5
Uncharted 4 (and also the The Lost Legacy, worthy of a nomination)
The Last Guardian
Ni No Kuni II

That's a ton of great titles for half a decade, and while there may be more, these really stand out as great experiences.
 
Plenty of 5th gen consoles were fun to play and so were the games. 640*480 + gaming was really going on in the PC segment at the time because the hardware was faster and updated at a brisk rate (unlike today)
 
Gotta agree there's a few that I've played and thought were really good. God of War reboot and Hellblade were good.

I started Dragon Quest 11 but the main character not having a voice actor really got to me . Maybe it's just getting older with more responsibilities in my case though.
 
What exactly is the "fifth generation"?

*EDIT* Ok it's what I thought, PS1, N64, and Saturn. Not sure how anyone could say this generation was bad. It was a major shift from 2D to 3D, media change from cartridge to disc (minus N64), and the start of some of the most successful IPs in gaming.
 
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I wouldn't say it was a bad generation, but a lot of games from the era have aged poorly. At the time a lot of those games were revolutionary and they were the starting point for many games and ideas that exist today. Its as silly as saying the NES and Master System was bad because the games don't hold up as well many years later. Its hard to go back to because a lot of what developers were struggling to figure out back then has been figured out now. The addition of analog control, both buttons and sticks, to video games changed the entire industry over the course of a couple years. The fifth generation was a time of constant change and experimentation. Once get towards the mid-to-end point of the era more and more games end up holding up better than you'd think. Interestingly, I feel like N64 games have managed to seem less ravaged by the passing of time than PS1 and Saturn games.
 
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