Are computer games these days, just not as fun as they were in the 90's?

Maybe I'm just being nostolgic, but whenever I play new computer games these days I feel that they're generally dumbed down action-twitch games.

I suppose some background is in order:

I'm a 30 year old happily married male in New England. I've been gaming since about 7. From Texas Instruments TI-80 playing games like Parsec, and Tunnels of Doom, to Microprose's wonders on the Comodorre-64, and the still breathing games of Origin's Ultima Series and Autoduel. Starflight, Pirates, Wing Commander, WC:Privateer, Bird vs Johnson, I could flip through websites like www.the-underdogs.org and honestly say its like walking down memory lane. I remember when the best way to judge between two different video games in the local Software, Etc, was to buy the one that was heaviest... Thicker manual meant more involved gameplay, and more complexities to get down before boredom set it. (Course some Tom Clancy games were notorious for side-stepping this by putting in the namesake novel.)

I find myself more often than not being disappointed by the games that come out today. Don't get me wrong, I loved GTA:Vice City, Freedom Fighters, and SW:KOTOR, but overall I feel the standards are not as high as they used to be. In the world of easily accessible patches, and MMORPGs with continual upgrades (in some cases fixing things that should have been in at launch) it seems computer game makers have lost their way. The sense of wonder is gone, replaced with ultra-real graphics with no substance behind the pixels. Half of me thinks this is a true statement, and the other half of me thinks maybe ennui is just setting in... I'm hoping that soon the computer game industry surprises me again, or at least releases a string of pretty decent games to take my mind off all the sub-par games I've bought lately.

My opinions above are humbly submitted for sanity checking, venting, and discussion. Blah! Happy Gaming!

I can honestly say that I feel the same, on the whole. On the other hand, I did enjoy Painkiller, just for that twitch style. I think the trick is that Doom had tension to go with the twitch style; you would jump at shadows. So many modern games are too bland, the twitch style does not appeal to me unless the atmosphere is there.

I have a room full of budget games because I remember them from the first time around and then thought, "Why not? It is only a fiver." when I noticed them. That and so many Zelda games that I cannot find them all...

I'm agreeing for the most part, but keep in mind that you and I both have decade(s) of gaming under our belts. That being said, such things are not totally dead. Return to Castle Wolfenstein has many problems, not the least of which was permenantly fearing the phrase "Alternate WWII history" on the off chance in involved facing down Rob Zombie in the middle of Stonehenge, but I must say the zombie crypt was the first time in a long time I've felt that aformentioned "atmosphere". A OMG OMG DON'T LET IT GET ME feeling. Also, the cutscene at the start of the crypt with the panicked nazis was sweetness.

Guess it depends what you want out of the games now...you can only play the same FPS a few times with out it getin boring...now UT 2K4!! that's where it's at for me now. We did UT for almost 2 yrs straight at LAN parties, but hated the 2K3. the new version brought teh fun back...for me anyway. Right now there's FarCry also, I love the demos...gots ta get the cash for the full version soon. It looks like it could be kinda Shadowrunny...in that we're in a tropical paradise killin smugglers, corps and mutants kinda way!

As I get older though I'm finding that I do expect something different out of the games (I'll be 30 in July)..and lots of current games don't provide it...I'm glad there are more demos out there though. Saves me from wasting my money

Speaking of FPSs my favorite "atmosphere" game was System Shock II, man did that game creep me out... I could only play it for 20-30 minutes at a time before I'd get too creeped out... and overdose on adrenaline...

Return to Wolfenstein was good, but suprisingly didn't bring back too many memories of the original (Mein Laben!).

I really liked the UT 2K4 demo, but there is only so much of the random online teenage bickering one can take.....

Farcray's demo was impressive... but the FPS genre is overwhelmed with utltra-realistic FPS's that have you face monsters in dark places.... Can't I just kill people?!?

Dues Ex II had a neat plotline, but I only really finished playing it too see how things would turn out... the engine seemed much more clunky than the original's, but the visuals were pretty.


As Caine said, maybe the problem I'm having is not that the games aren't good, but that the single player aspects are too short, and they don't seem to have alot of replayability... course I think thats a pretty general statement that really applies just to FPSs anyway.

I'm half considering digging up my old copy of Planescape: Torment... Hmmm..

*grumble grumble* Cannot find planescape torment anywhere... I really want to play it (my wife finished it and keeps telling me how great it was) but it is out of stock completely and I cannot bring myself to entertain illicit/illegal means of acquisition.

That leaves eBay or blind luck...

My only major beef with games today is the obsession to use reversed controllers. What the hell is up with that? If I wanna turn left, I'll turn left dammit, not right.

Oh god...System Shock 2.

SHODAN is what Dues wants to be when he grows up.

Also: smashing psionic monkeys with giant wrenches and eating their chips: one of the most fun experiences in videogaming.

I do miss Xcom, Operation Europe, Total Anihilation, Master of Orion 2, and Allegiance. But there are some good games coming out. Also, try Universal Combat, the latest in the Battlecruiser series. It is pretty inovative. And it really rocks to be captain of a big naval ship, fight a naval battle, then switch to first person shooter mode to take part in a boarding action.

Planescape: Torment. When I first got it, I played it through twice in about a month -- that was a lot of sleepless nights, because I'm not good at those sorts of games. Since then, I've played it through once every 6 month or so. Always gets my vote on the Best PC Game Ever polls.

Other games that I've played through again and again include, in no particular order, Doom, Doom II, Half-Life, Baldur's Gate & BG2, Master of Magic, Master of Orion & MoO2, Xcom: Terror from the Deep (I never played the original Xcom, so TftD was good enough), Jagged Alliance 2, Fallout 2. Steel Panthers: World at War and Falcon 4.0 should be on that list but they can't be played through per se.

I can't say that I think games have gotten worse lately, though. I just haven't bothered to get my hands on new games. I bet I'd love Operation: Flashpoint, the different Total Wars, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Alien vs Predator II, the newest Elder Scrolls, and I know I'm forgetting many.

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, TotSC and ToB. Battlefield series. Total Wars. NWN, SoU, HotU. Diablo 1 and 2 + Exp. Mechwarrior 4s.

I love them all.

mechwarrior is THE game. nothing like a kodiak with some lrm's a gauss, med clan lasers and some ac2's

I prefer a Nova with a pair of PPCs and some ER Lasers to back it all up. Biggest engine you can cram into that thing, and jump jets.

Mmm, skirmishing. *Track 09!*

~J

You know, I think I played all of the original battletech games

I only ever did get to play Mechwarrior II.

Jade Falcon has my loyalty.

~J

MechWarrior II and Mercenaries, I even lead a clan for Mercs for a while. Game balance was completely screwed in that, though. No point ever using any weapon than Medium Pulse Lasers, sometimes SSRM6 and LRM5s if you had to, and you could fly a 65tonner for 5 minutes with 5 jumpjets.

And yeah, Jade Falcon all the way. Wolf are a bunch of wussies.

Jade Falcons - pffft!

Wolves - pffft!

I swear undying devotion to Cassie Suthorn!

Jade Falcons -pfffttt!

Wolves - pffttt!

I swear undying devotion to Cassie Suthorn!

Erk, sorry, double post.

I actually miss my old Sonic the Hedgehog games. I might have been much younger, but they just seemed so much more, compared to the games I play these days. It's probably the nostalgia...that, and the older you get, the harder it is to find something that impresses you.

The sonic games these days are nothing compared to what sonic team did back in the day...

I have to agree with you. Right down to the core. Somewhere the PC game market just give up on quality and has decided that marginable is fine as long as they get your money. Especally what with the quad system releases everyone is doing now. Seriously, lets look a a few of the newer games across genras.
Deus X 2. Pretty, passable story line, clunky interface, limited replay value, annoying as hell menus untill it was patched, NO multiplayer story line, and single player mode not quite long enough.
Need for Speed 7 (aka Underground). REEKS of a 4 system release, limited controls, inferior physics and damage engines to NFS 5, poor AI control, ass-tastic online abilitys, little replay value, VG graphics, great soundstrack, limited usefull custimization, overwhelming corprete advertising.
Neverwinter nights. Good (alibit somewhat dated) graphics, great story line, awsome toolkit, rail roaded story, multiplayer a little funky, but still fun.
UT 2k4. Great graphics, HUGE footprint, online play mildly annoying (voice comm good idea, but too many stupid players), voice orders kinda work sometimes, few new game modes, large rehashing of ut2k3, single player mode not long enough.
C&C Generals. Badly scaling diffuculty, large power gap between units, very limited unit selection, moderet graphics (but lacking if zoomed in to detail), passable story line, lackluster FMVs, decent unit versility.

So is there a reason that the best (in my opinion at least) games are all 5+ years old now? Starcraft, Torment, Quake 2, NFS 5, Fallout 2, Original UT, Total Annilation? There are SO many bad games out there right now. And dont get me started on MMOs...

I'm glad to see Total Annihilation (NOT Kingdoms) get mentioned a few times... that was without a doubt my favorite RTS game of all time. It usurped Dune II (the orignal) in my book, and was well beyond what was out at the time. It really introduced Unit AI into the genre.

I loved Warcraft II for the comedy... "What?!? More Work." but Warcraft II and Starcraft weren't able to top TA's replayability and depth for me. Don't get me wrong... they were good/great games but TA showed me they could have been better.

Not to mention the swarm factor in TA

Myth: The Fallen Lords holds best RTS in my book.

~J

See I like near photo-realism. The problem thus far is no game has combined that quality of graphics, with an equal quality story/plot, or in other cases physics engine. I spend the money to have ub3r l33t hardware, and anything (cept mabey Max Payne 2) that can tax my system has not had enough gameplay value to recommend yet.

It seems most people are nostalgic. I have to agree that a lot is missing from modern games that I remember in the "old days."

Has anybody tried the Geneforge series? Basically what Pokemon would be if the Pokemon liked to kill and eat humans and each other, and you gave it a near-apocalyptic storyline. Made by a Very small company (Spiderweb Software) that makes RPGs of relatively low-tech graphics but the gameplay and stories are always top-notch. Might remind you of the old days.

Someday I need to actually play through Exile III without cheating at all.

~J

You mean it's possible?

My most effective party was 4 fighter types, each with 1 level of mage and priest spells, each ambidextrous with two broadswords. The one high level priest and one high level mage. The fighters could eat just about anything they met from day 1, and could heal and bless themselves which made dungeon crawls a lot easier with everybody regenerating magic points instead of just the priest.

Magic is the way to go in my experience. A few good Fireballs will eat anything in the early game, and the only real way to slog through the endgame is frequent use of Avatar to make yourself temporarily more powerful than God. I did have fun outfitting my Archmage with a pair of Alien Blades. Mmm, poisoned waveblades…

~J

The problem with modern games is that the production of games has reached a point where costs are on par with major Hollywood movies. 10, 15 years ago, three people could put together a top-selling game. Today, you'd need about ten times as many people to create a real contender. Of course, the majority of these people are artists, followed by programmers, followed by business people, followed by game designers. What this means is that the process of actual game design usually takes second place behind game production, which are two completely different things. Let me explain.

Game design means this: When you try to come up with a game, you usually discover 100 game ideas that aren't fun and maybe one that could work. Now what you need to do is take that one idea, formulate your game, and playtest it using only pen and paper and maybe physical prototypes. While playtesting, you'll discover weaknesses in your original design, but at this point you can simply take a new sheet of paper, tweak your rules or go back to square one, and start over. Your investment so far has been next to zero, so it's very easy to adjust your design. Once you're satisfied with your design, you can compile a presentation, and if it's greenlighted, start production of your game.

Sadly, this iterative process of idea -> playtesting -> adjusting -> presentation -> design document -> production -> final product usually looks more like this: idea -> presentation -> production -> final product -> patch 1.1 -> patch 1.2 -> ... It is always most difficult to adjust your design during production: Programmers don't like it if they have to rewrite weeks worth of code, artists don't like it if they have to redo or scrap parts of their work, and the business people absolutely do not like it if the project falls behind schedule just because the game designer didn't do his job properly.

In the fabled "old days", backtracking was still bad, but it wasn't disastrous to a game. Most often, games became better through backtracking instead of worse. But today, that just isn't an option anymore, becasue the more you go back, the more you waste ressources. (those programmers ain't cheap, ya know)

Yes, but see heres where logic and practice break down. Why arnt their any good games out there? The market is so flodded with B grade games (or C grade games that should have been A grade *cough Dikitana Cough*. Why is it that the last RTS FPS hybred was released in 1999? Its just a complelling concept, and would play online great, but no... thats just not out there. I hesitate to say it, but with giants like Electronic Arts, they are very much resting on their laurls. Production cost can be held down and still have an amazing product. Look at Serious Sam, no name company, sells NEW at the stores for 20 bucks, and packs more targets in one area then should be leagl...all the while being a solid FPS.