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[Dr Kaneda]

Games were good back then and they're good now. Anyone that says games now are objectively worse than they were before is a jaded twat that would have disliked the games back then if they had the same mentality they have now.

 

[Krappadizzle]

 

[GametimeUK]

I think games are better today, but I think for the time games were better in the past. Luckily we live in an age where gaming has never been so diverse. We have amazing retro inspired games like Shovel Knight, cult series getting sequels and breaking mainstream like Souls, AAA has some gems despite what people say etc. We are connected online a lot more easily and honestly when I look past the nostalgia I have to admit that gaming is booming and everyone's tastes are accounted for.

But for me, I haven't had the same comparable highs as previous gens. Call it getting old, but I genuinely believe for the time the best games from the past beat the best that we are offering now.

 

[laynelane]

I've been playing Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne lately , about to start Nioh 2. All AAA games without predatory monetization. It depends on what you like and want to play, I think. I've made the choice to avoid any games with excessive microtransactions, time savers, etc. and still have more games to play than I have time for.

 

[Fbh]

I like modern games.
Lots of great stuff out now and coming in the future. People get too fixated on the crappy GaaS shit and use it as an example of how everything is bad now while for some reason ignoring all the good stuff.

Yeah stuff like Avengers are disappointing and at times feel more like a product designed to push microtransaction than an actual game made with passion.
But we just had Ghost of Tsushima which was great, we just had Crusader Kings III which fans of the genre seem to be loving, Flight Simulator, Wasteland 3, Iron Harvest, etc and that's just looking at the past couple of months. Then you have stuff like 13 Sentinels, Yakuza Like a Dragon, Cyberpunk, Hollow Knight, Serious Sam 4, etc.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Remember Majorca’s Mask? That said games are 100% better today a AA game today could pass as a AAA game 20 years ago

 

[Veysetia]

Its highly dependent on source data, for example if you only look at reddit for game suggestions you'll think there was only one game released ever (The Witcher 3). If you explore games in the same way you used to its a lot easier to find great games, ignore hype, avoid game suggestion forums, i find them truly unhelpful. Divinity Original Sin 2, fantastic game for example, but youll never have it suggested to you if you only browse Reddit.

 

[MiguelItUp]

I understand what you're getting at OP, honestly, sometimes I feel the same way, but only with AAA studios and games.

The cost of AAA development is insane. So a lot of the time AAA devs/pubs just want to develop projects that they KNOW will sell. It's why we see so many remakes, sequels, and games blatantly inspired by other successful titles.

That being said, the nice part is that we DO still get a solid AAA title that feels unique and screams originality. It's just not as frequent as we would like. But at least they DO exist! You just gotta look for them.

Indie games are definitely carrying the torch when it comes to stuff like that, and they have been for several years. However, I feel like in this particular timeline (at least the past few years) we've seen a lot of games inspired by other games. Which, is to be expected, even if it's a bit on the nose. But like all the things, it fluctuates.

Great original games come and they go, it's the nature of the beast. Some years feel better than others for sure, but I feel like it's been that way ever since I began playing games as a child. Though I admit as an adult it just feels different, and sometimes it just kind of makes me sad. Because I'd love to see games like X or Y, but I just have to accept the fact that something like that may never exist. At least the way I'd want it to.

 

[JOEVIAL]

I understand what you're getting at OP, honestly, sometimes I feel the same way, but only with AAA studios and games.

The cost of AAA development is insane. So a lot of the time AAA devs/pubs just want to develop projects that they KNOW will sell. It's why we see so many remakes, sequels, and games blatantly inspired by other successful titles.

That being said, the nice part is that we DO still get a solid AAA title that feels unique and screams originality. It's just not as frequent as we would like. But at least they DO exist! You just gotta look for them.

Indie games are definitely carrying the torch when it comes to stuff like that, and they have been for several years. However, I feel like in this particular timeline (at least the past few years) we've seen a lot of games inspired by other games. Which, is to be expected, even if it's a bit on the nose. But like all the things, it fluctuates.

Great original games come and they go, it's the nature of the beast. Some years feel better than others for sure, but I feel like it's been that way ever since I began playing games as a child. Though I admit as an adult it just feels different, and sometimes it just kind of makes me sad. Because I'd love to see games like X or Y, but I just have to accept the fact that something like that may never exist. At least the way I'd want it to.

There we go. Totally agree! A lot of people here seem to think I am calling out ALL modern games being worse... which I'm not (though the thread title kinda' sounds like I am).

I have been loving indies lately, with the occasional truly excellent "AAA" game thrown in. I definitely need to play Ghosts of Sushi... and the last excellent AA game I played was Control... which was a total throwback to just truly amazing design. Incredibly fun game!

So yeah... amazing games are still being made... but the cancer of GaaS and microtransactions has jaded my view on modern gaming... I will totally admit to that. I just need to learn to look past that and enjoy the great games that are being released

 

[Aggressive Carrot]

There are plenty of games today that are as good as games from years ago. If a lot of today's video games are an issue, find games that remind you of what you used to like about them. Ignore the AAA stuff, GaaS, microtransactions, DLC (if you hate that too), and you'll be fine. I don't even bother with all that extra stuff. Things like cosmetics mean nothing to me. It's not like I'm going to spend all my time admiring an outfit or alternate color. I do feel there was a lot more creativity back then though.

 

[MiguelItUp]

So yeah... amazing games are still being made... but the cancer of GaaS and microtransactions has jaded my view on modern gaming... I will totally admit to that. I just need to learn to look past that and enjoy the great games that are being released

It's understandable man, and I'm there with you. I personally feel a lot of AAA devs and pubs don't want to risk their studio potentially taking a hit or closing because they focused on an original but risky project. Along with, well, some just want to make money and be popular. So AAA is an interesting pool for sure. But man, it was so much better when the cost of development was cheaper. It felt like we saw a lot of big names putting out interesting titles one after another.

Exactly! It's hard to not look at some titles and go, "Really?! WTF?!" But at some point you can train yourself to just ignore them and focus on the really good ones. So then it's like the ones that make you go "UGH!" just don't even exist!

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Old arcade-era games were designed to consume as many quarters as possible without boring/aggravating the customer too much, and while still being fun and relevant as new titles came out. Modern gaming industry expects you to play this year's new hotness and discard it for next year's new hotness. The arcade market was not without its flaws but the business model resulted in tighter, more self-contained pieces of entertainment. Nowadays everything is very bloated in comparison.

 

[Sleepwalker]

Games are absolutely better now. We are just more demanding, as we should, because the circumstances and tech allow for way better games.

 

[Spaceman292]

Honestly. They used to be better. I'm talking back in the 90's and early to mid 2000's. Back when gaming was still a niche market (early 2000's wasn't so niche). Yes I know, there were a lot of "bad" games back then, just like there are now, but I am talking about the "good" games... compared to the "good" games of today.

Games weren't mainstream then. As such... they were made by people who had a passion for what they were making. The driving factors were to make a fun experience... and they were made by talented people who wanted to get their artistry to the masses. Back then there weren't terms like "AAA" experiences and *shudders* games as a service. Most devs weren't driven by making money. They just wanted to make a fun game that people liked. There's no more perfect embodiment of this than James Halliday in Ready Player One. The Halliday character was inspired by late 80's, early 90's devs who just wanted to create fun games. There was a lot of experimenting going on back then. Lot's of new and fresh things, so most devs didn't really know what would make money anyways. Their thought process was just "We made this game... we hope you enjoy it"

Modern gaming is driven by money. The shareholders and executives make the decisions now. Not the creators. Not the people putting their hard work into the games. It's all so clear to see with a few games nowadays.
They weren't purposely designing mechanics to be addictive and predatory to make you "feel like you need to buy this cosmetic or boost." Most all "AAA" games today have some form of predatory mechanics.

And listen... I'm not saying ALL MODERN GAMES ARE WORSE.... just making an observation that it used to be a simpler time. Games used to be just about having fun.

I left out a bunch of stuff for brevity... but hopefully it will lead to interesting discussion points. What do you think GAF? How do the "good" games of today compare with the "good" games of yesteryear? Can you feel that something is missing?

Yeah no you're just tripping on nostalgia. Games today are brilliant.

 

[iHaunter]

Roses tinted glasses. Most older games were mediocre compared to today's standards.

 

[Laptop1991]

I don't class games designed around monetization as better either, so i agree to an extent, if the focus is on profit and not making a game for the enjoyment as they use to be made, then it won't be a better game, hopefully Cyberpunk and AC Valhalla will prove that wrong, and i'm looking forward to the Mafia 1 remake as it was made to be enjoyed by the gamer.

 

[Unknown?]

I wouldn't say they're better but games back then definitely had more creativity to them. Less cookie cutter. All that changed when GTA took off or at least was the start of it. Suddenly everything had to be a clone of GTA. Then you had space marines, etc.

 

[turtlepowa]

There are still good games out there, but for my taste the priorities of too many AAA games have shifted in the direction "walk, talk, character development, hours of story, scrited scenes, cutscenes". Sometimes i have the feeling they put 90% of the effort into those things and than they notice "Hey, wait a minte, we need some gameplay".

 

[O-N-E]

 

[Bryank75]

Where's my Maaaaaatlock expressway?

 

[sleepingbear]

No they weren't.

Message boards where people complain about every single flaw in a game ad nauseaum just weren't as popular. It was also a new medium a couple decades ago which means you were easily impressed.

Now that it has 'matured' you have a lot of jaded people who claim 'it was better before' like the early fans of a successful Rock band.

 

[Maxwell Jacob Friedman]

Sounds like OP isn't playing the right games

Sounds like he playing gamepass fodder

 

[cireza]

OP is probably confusing good games and AAA games. There are plenty of absolutely fantastic games nowadays.

Sounds like he playing gamepass fodder

Gamepass is full of great games, console warrior.

 

[JawaSaysUtinni]

It’s refreshing to see that everyone replying hasn’t fallen into the nostalgia trap. Games are so much better, and I think developers are getting ever so closely to realising their full game design dreams.

That aside, nothing will trump the experiences i had with Tomb Raider on the PS1. First game, first completion. Amazing soundtrack for its time. As much as I love that Crystal Dynamics is carrying on the torch, Core Design made some wonderful games.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Games have never been more amazing and I say this as a huge retro nerd. I think in the 360/PS3 era it had kind of started to stagnate down to a lot of brown fps and cover shooters, but now we have such amazing diversity, and a range of games from super indie to AAA and, crucially, everywhere in between.

Like we live in a world where games like Monster Boy can exist alongside games like God of War. Disco Elysium and Death Stranding. Life is good.

 

[Naked Lunch]

New games are almost all fucking trash. Anyone older than 13 knows this. Its not even close and not up for debate.

Some examples:
All these Metroidvanias flooding the market arent anywhere close to as good as their sources (Super Metroid + SOTN).
A game like Nier Automata gets dumped on by stuff like Ninja Gaiden Black or DMC3.
MGS1-3 is better than 100% of all these walking simulators.
Quake 3 and Counter Strike still shit on all other competitive FPS - Overwatch is a complete joke in comparison.
F-Zero GX and Outrun 2 are still unmatched for arcade racing.
Final Fantasy Tactics, Dragon Quest VIII, and Vagrant Story are better than all other jrpgs released since, combined.
I could go on for days. Days I tell you.

 

[UnNamed]

OP have a very romantic vision of what videogames used to be.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Also, arcade games were the original greedy microtransactions/pay to win

 

[Kamina]

Blanket stating that games used to be better is just looking at the past through rose tinted glasses.
Yes, there were some pearls, like Zelda Alttp, or Super Metroid, and many others, but as the Angry Video Game Nerd teaches time and time again: there were a ton of turds too, many more than these days.

 

[DeVeAn]

I feel ya. Uncommon for a game to release and be “complete” now.

 

[Paracelsus]

On average, games got better, there's less chance for companies to release complete garbage because they can't take risks anymore.
The highs however are much lower than the older ones. Most of the 90-98 metacritic games don't deserve that score and will age poorly or get completely forgotten, which is pretty much what happens to big movies with bs reviews after a month or two and what happened to a huge chunk of the PS360 era.
That's why every few weeks/months you have a thread like this, and people immediately rush to indies.

 

[Kev Kev]

you said it best OP...

 

[Bartski]

No.

It's just how it feels turning into a jaded old fart.

 

[TKOFromTokyo]

I think that it’s all about preferences. I like movies and I like games. I do not like when my games try to become like movies. I also don’t like when movies lack some rawness.

Give me Baby Driver, Mad Max Fury Road, Cuphead, and RE2make any day over the MCU, Spider-Man PS4, and Kojima movies. I liked the first 3 MGS despite the cinematic, but it’s too much for me now.

 

[Barnabot]

​

We had better movies We had better music We had better games

And none of that contemporary euphemistic-infested-artsy-fartsy-$60 multiplayer only bullshit.
​

Onimusha, GT, TXR, DMC, RE, Suikoden, FFT, HL2, Ridge Racer, BurnOut waaay too many to list ... etc.etc. all got replaced by indie-mbile-GAAS-crap. Back then, we had every year 10x damn good games.

Now we have 1x every 5 years or so of a Bloodborne, Witcher 3 caliber.
Replaying Half Life 2 today feels like playing something new, fresh.​

For each Kena, Little Devil Inisde, Cuphead there are 10,000 shovelware, mobile, indie games. Games are way too long these days, every asshole wants to have an open world, every dipshit need to have an online mode else they wont buy it, most games are not fun anymore.

I have seen, played all of them already.
VR better be the next big thing.

Yours truly, Betty.

truly spoken as a magician.

 

[Matt_Fox]

I've been a gamer and movie buff since the Seventies and there have always been two indisputable rules.

Rule 1: Movie sequels are worse than the one before

Rule 2: Video game sequels are better than the one before

Yes, there are outliers and exceptions but they are few and far between. Video games are the sum of creativity + technology. If creativity is a constant then thanks to Moore's Law technology always increases.

You never had it so good.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

i dont know if i would agree. feel like they are pretty damn good now. the amount of content alone is just insane. i agree the limitations on older games may have forced people to be more creative, but there is still amazing stuff being done with new technology.

if this was about movies and TV i would say yes of course, but with games, i'm not so sure...

 

[Airola]

the golden era of mechanics is over, i'll give you that much

everything stalled around 2006

Stalling started to happen much earlier. Maybe already in 2002, or even in 1999 actually. But yeah, by 2006 things were dead. I'd say Max Payne was the turning point where things started to go to certain direction and there was no turning back anymore.

Gladly Nintendo brought back the crazy and made things interesting for a while with the Wii. As I've said here many times, I had pretty much completely walked away from modern gaming around early 2000's and by 2006 there was pretty much nothing that interested me. I was full on "retro" at that point. From C64 to PS1 was what I was able to like (and even with PS1 the later games became less and less interesting). The Wii brought me back with Wii Sports but whatever the "hardcore gaming" included at that time was still completely lost on me and I still haven't been able to find what's fun in those games.

Can't stand playing Assassin's Creed, or Mass Effect, or Uncharted, or Halo. Can't even stand playing Dark Souls but at least I can appreciate the design philosophy on that. I'm currently mostly just counting on whatever indies cook up, and even there I often dislike modern mechanics they force into their games.

 

[FunkMiller]

Eh. No.

Nostalgia may be a wonderful thing, but going back to play games from twenty years ago is generally an awful experience.

And while mechanically games have rather stalled, you just wait until VR gets its act together...

 

[Barnabot]

Maybe the obsession with realism killed a bit of enjoyment to play newer games. Not only graphics, but realistic physics ( some exception for simulation or racing games), real life politics (yeah really), muh immersion. That's how I feel.

Most of the games I enjoy could barely fill that bingo card.

 

[SF Kosmo]

On average, games got better, there's less chance for companies to release complete garbage because they can't take risks anymore.
The highs however are much lower than the older ones. Most of the 90-98 metacritic games don't deserve that score and will age poorly or get completely forgotten, which is pretty much what happens to big movies with bs reviews after a month or two and what happened to a huge chunk of the PS360 era.
That's why every few weeks/months you have a thread like this, and people immediately rush to indies.

AAA games have gotten less risky as budgets have gone up, it's true, but that has to be weighed against the fact that there's now a really big range of budgets and price points that are considered viable.

Back in the day, console games were mostly roughly comparable levels of budget, production value, and price point. Indie stuff was strictly the domain of computers. Then XBLA made it so we could have some smaller cheaper games but there was a hard limit of about $20 to what people would pay, which created a wide gap between indie and AAA.

But now that digital is viable across the board we see games of all sizes and prices points and it's easier for people to make. "big" game that takes risks and sell it at, say $40 with a lower budget. Disco Elysium for example. And you can have someone make something super weird and indie and sell it for a few bucks. Like Moose Life. And a game like MineCraft can become the biggest thing in the world. There's a whole range. It's not as important to be AAA anymore.

 

[Arthimura]

Hard to analyze without seeing your profile, to check which modern games did you finished.

Might be just your nostalgia, instead of an informed opinion.

 

[scalman]

yes yes yes games used to be better. MGS1, SH1, RE1, PE1, FFVII, and so on. /..games used to be better. they where getting your imagination as well.

 

[ProgenitorCastle]

I agree. That's why it feels great to visit retro game stores and soak in the atmosphere of the late 90s early 2000s, which is still alive in said stores. The one I visited recently had a giant stand-up advertisement for Dino Crisis...took me right back to that era even though I didn't get to experience that era myself as an adult at the time as I was like 4 or 5 ish at the time.

 

[hyperbertha]

The one good thing about back then was no GAAS trash. But outside of RPGS, point and click adventure games and Nintendo gems, most tps/fps games of the time play really badly compared to today's standards.

I'd say with lot studios going Gaas these days, the number of truly good games that came out back then and now is about the same.

 

[Maxwell Jacob Friedman]

OP is probably confusing good games and AAA games. There are plenty of absolutely fantastic games nowadays.


Gamepass is full of great games, console warrior.

MS low quality first party games is due to gamepass. Their games have been lacking and them shifting to more a games as a service is hindering their first party

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Remember Majorca’s Mask?

Nope

 

[cireza]

MS low quality first party games is due to gamepass. Their games have been lacking and them shifting to more a games as a service is hindering their first party

Are you even aware that Gamepass has a lot of third party games ?

And MS has been releasing some very strong games anyway, so this is purely a false narrative.

 

[JOEVIAL]

Blanket stating that games used to be better is just looking at the past through rose tinted glasses.
Yes, there were some pearls, like Zelda Alttp, or Super Metroid, and many others, but as the Angry Video Game Nerd teaches time and time again: there were a ton of turds too, many more than these days.

Title of the thread is a blanket statement yes (clickbait) but if you look at the OP, I specifically say I am not talking about all games. Mainly the "good" games of today compared to the "good" games of the past. And comparing the heavily marketed games of today (Fortnite, Halo Infinite, Madden) to the heavily marketed games of yesteryear (Super Mario, Crash Bandicoot, Metal Gear Solid, Halo CE).

 

[Kamina]

Title of the thread is a blanket statement yes (clickbait) but if you look at the OP, I specifically say I am not talking about all games. Mainly the "good" games of today compared to the "good" games of the past. And comparing the heavily marketed games of today (Fortnite, Halo Infinite, Madden) to the heavily marketed games of yesteryear (Super Mario, Crash Bandicoot, Metal Gear Solid, Halo CE).

Well Fortnite is definitely trash compared to past games, so you have a point.