Purely your opinion, so say what you feel about the matter. For me, I grew up with a Nintendo 64, and stuck to games ever since. From what I feel, is that gaming quality has dropped quite a bit. Ranging from length of gameplay, to botchy launches. I know games are far more complex now than they used to be, but wouldn't that be the case years ago, and new tech? From what I've also noticed is the sheep like audiences just buying certain titles because 'everyone else is'. The amount of times I've heard this or seen online is just crap. Just look at the whole amiibos bandwagon. So a game 'selling well' doesn't determine it's quality. The games, yes, anyway. I've been playing Forza Horizon 2 again, and I've noticed how repetitive is really is. It's a fun game, don't get me wrong but it's just the same 4 modes and nothing really holds it up that much. Maybe it's the genre I follow so much, but I just feel like it's even the same with fighting games. Mortal Kombat X, was so fucking short, I never touched it after completing story mode. I guess what I'm getting at is, there's just no replay value left in games any more... well the ones I've played. What happened to crazy unlocks, or OP cars/weapons or even characters, a sense of completion? Usually I'd play Smash Bros ages after I complete it, but not this one.... I'm surely not alone?
I'd agree that quality has dropped a lot. Think about the logistics of the cartridges days. The carts themselves were quite expensive. Why even attempt to release a crap game game if you have to invest so much just to start. Also once the game was done, it was done forever. It's different today because everything is on a disc. You can buy 100 blank blu-rays for $50. They get released quickly and unfinished. Then they push an update later on to finish it. I feel like they just use to do it right the first time.
The issue is saying that ignores a ton of games that were literally 4 levels and you're done. There were tons of games that, when played now, are incredibly short on the surface, glitchy, or unpolished. But when you compare todays games, no matter their quality, with only the best of the best from yesterday, it's not always a fair comparison.
Yeah, not really a fair comparison, there are indeed quite a few publishers that try to rush the development team and ofcourse the released game is a unpolished buggy pease of sh*t. But there are also a ton of very good and polished games out there. And i'm sorry to say that the 80's, 90's and 2000's weren't that different. Have you seen the pile of garbage games that came out on ps1, atari, gameboy, etc...
Game quality has dropped simply because the market has increased. The more potential consumers, the more companies try to bring out their products and make money. Often preorders and launch sales already make a ton of money for the devs and publishers, so for them it isn't as important to make the game good, because they have already made their money. In my opinion publishers are the true evil ones and devs are being forced to work for them.
I agree with your post to a small extent, but generally when I read posts about "how games are so crappy now and old games are better" I think there's a bit of nostalgia involved. Similar to how your grandparents will say music from their time was the best. One thing I detest about current gaming is the "rush it out now, patch it later" model that many companies are doing. I mean, it's even at the point now where sometimes they're not even just patching bugs, but patching in actual features that they didn't have time to finish before the game was released. And the nickel-and-diming of DLC.
It's pretty much always about nostalgia. People played these old games as kids and look at them through rose-tinted glasses. Only if you ignore the metric tons of bad licensed games and all the Awesome Possums and Rise of the Robots that were trying to cash in on the latest craze.
You could say that good, memorable games are actually just some of the few games that don't suck. N64 had it's fair share of forgettable games. Many still linger in indie game shops, out in the open on a shelf, going for something under $3. The one or two good games the store might actually have in stock? Typical eBay price + 20%, sitting in a locked glass case, proudly on display. Same could be said for pretty much every other generation and console. 2600 and PS4 alike. Comparing awful games from one generation to another, I would rather play newer awful games than older awful games (in most instances). Sure all of them suck, but the higher complexity of new bad games tends to add a little more substance. A bad NES game will be painful to play already, but then it is amplified by dull, looping, 3-second-long BGM. In any event, I'd Street Fighter EX3 for PS2... No, even Mortal Kombat Special Forces for PS1... over Slaughter Sport on Sega Genesis any day.
Mortal Kombat X has a lot of replay value. There are things to unlock in the Krypt and you can play against your friends or online. You can do the Faction War stuff as well. I think it's a poor example to use to say game quality has fallen as I think MKX is one of the best quality games of recent releases. I'm not sure that there has been a quality drop. Remember that pretty much during any time span in gaming from Atari 2600 to now you have games that are really good and ones that are crap or just a mess. The SNES had Super Metroid. A great game most would agree. It also had Wayne's World and Wizard of Oz. The NES had Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros 3, etc. It also had many bad games too. And even if they weren't bad, plenty of sub-par ones. Today the types of games are different and there certainly is a trend to play it safe. If they find something gets good receptions and sales, they do more with it. They try to mimic successful games. While it's true older games certainly copied ideas from each other, maybe now things seem less creative. Maybe there are many unpolished titles coming out now. One thing that's certain is that in general there are more titles now than there were in the past. The market expanded and that happens. So maybe now it seems like the ratio of high quality to sub-par quality games is worse than in the past? I just think you can't really gauge this and you just kind of go with your opinion or perception of how things are. There are good quality games still.
Unless you buy the "Unlock all Krypt" item from the online store anyway Then it just boils down to online matches (which, personally, piss me right off as it's nothing but the same opponents doing the same thing. Spam spam spam! Much rather play with friends so I could punch them if they pulled that bullcrap.) For me, while the graphical quality has greatly improved over the years, it feels that that is where the big devs are putting their money into, which is all well and good, but at the cost of a half-assed or regurgitated story. Granted, if you think about it, that's pretty much the state of movies as well. All it means is that you just simply wait a day or so for a bunch of reviews, learn whether or not the game is worth the money, and then choose to buy it if it suits you. There are plenty of game reviewers out there (myself included) that give multiple different opinions and rundowns, so you can basically see every side of the story to make an educated decision on your purchase Back to the point, most of the money goes to the visuals rather than the story. Unfortuantely, that's what a lot of people seem to like nowadays. They want their pretty lights in front of them, and as such, the prettier games make the most money. Just look at the plethora of shooters as an example. The best looking ones made the most money (CoD, Battlefield, Halo, Destiny), while ones with a great story (Spec Ops: The Line) didn't sell nearly as much. Yes, you do have the market of people who want a quality story, people such as you and I, but I do realize that I am in the minority. That is why games that are pretty too look at that also have a great story tend to become worshiped by gamers because the combo of looks and quality just makes it stand out that much more.
Wouldn't say quality dropped, just the mainstream AAA scene isn't as reliable as it used to be with all this overhype and DLC/patch garbage. There are still good games, just have to look a bit harder than before to play them.
Try games in genre open-world/sandbox, that not made/published by Ubisoft (not Assassin's Creed and similar). Maybe some of them are pretty old, but they are surely have a replay value and much fun. Well, most of them. Also, games, that was based on Unreal Engine 3 usually may have serious limitation, that may bring less fun in open-world gameplay. http://www.gamerankings.com/browse.html?site=&cat=292&year=0&numrev=3&sort=2&letter=&search=
I think the scale of modern AAA games is far far larger than 15-20 years ago. I mean, yeah an old JRPG took 20+ hours to complete, but that was the rarity, compared to a platformer that would take 2-3 hours, or a fighting game that had 8 characters. I mean, now games like Skyrim you can easily sink 100+ hours into with side quests. Hell, many SNES and Genesis games didn't even save.
I believe that, like a lot of people are saying, the world changed. More content and the content is consumed faster too. It's not really comparable anymore. What I hope is, the games market should avoid turning gaming into a "service", like some corporations want. I've not adopted movies or music as services, but I know that a lot of people did. I hope that the licences for games keep coming in individual packages, preferably with instruction booklets. This is the worst IMO, not the quality of the content.
I think the problem here is there aren't any real hardware limits left to push. Games now just feel like an interactive movie or a re-hash.
This is what meant by quality, is that the whole "release now, patch later" mentality. I wouldn't go ahead and say all games earlier were simply better. There's always a fair share of bad vs good, no matter the time frame. However you'd think with all these years of experience there'd be less fuck ups, but there just is more. Problem with MKX, sure there's the Krypt, but you get fuck all coins to even unlock stuff. It's like GTA Online, it's a grind fest. That's a drop of quality, it doesn't turn out fun any more. I guess the only game recently, or just from this latest generation I've enjoyed so far is Alien Isolation, but it scares the crap out of me whenever I hear a thump
Yes and no. Back in the day most of us were kiddos and couldn't justify spending $60 on a "what the fuck is this" title versus what our friends said was good and we played at their place. And there was a LOT of garbage on the NES/SNES/Genesis/etc. These days we avoid crappy titles quickly. Arkham Knight anyone? Everyone and their mother knew about how poorly GTAIV performed on their PC before they even bought it because of the internet. Now in terms of gameplay itself? We've got ourselves and a generation coming up behind us with different tastes and experiences. I barely play games anymore largely due to lack of interest. I played my Genesis to death back in the day and now I have to force myself to spend time with games because there are so goddamn many I haven't even touched. Too many options usually causes humans to flip their shit and make no decisions. So here I am, replaying games I already know to be good but I've forgotten most of the story to like Deus Ex Human Revolution. I've bought Hyrule Warriors, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros (3DS and WiiU), Zelda: Link Between Worlds and barely touched any of them since buying them. Waste of money since they're going down in price.
