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Is it just me or was 2004 to 2009 some of the dullest years in gaming.

M

mdzapeer

Member
I am probably biased on personal experience, but I remember 2004 to 2009 to be pretty dull in terms of games, not bad games per say just lacking in innovation.

Apart from a few stand out GOTY titles of course.

The graphical art style also trended towards darker tones as well. Big example were like Boomberman on the 360. Also the rise of the first person shooter as well.

It was also a period of bloom, loads of bloom.


Edit : From the perspective of coming off from the 90s and early 2000s ground breaking games. It just wasnt as big a leap, apart from few stand out titles for each year.

Also consider not everyone is a fan of a certain genre of game. Whenever thinking back to that time, there was an over-saturation of certain genres types mostly FPS or action adventure, with linear maps.

That's quite true, I do enjoy Japanese games. But I also immensely enjoy western PC games for being deep and open-ended. Homeworld, Half-Life, Unreal, Quake, Starcraft II, Diablo 2. I missed out on CRPGs back then though :(

This is a really good explanation of what I mean.

RedSwirl said:
Alright I'm back.

For a while I've had the feeling that 1998-2005 is the best era of 3D games, both on console and on PC. Roughly this corresponds to the PS2 era, but I include the last bit of the N64/PS1 era too.

1998 is still arguably the most influential year in terms of what games we're playing today. We got stuff like Ocarina of Time, Thief 1, Metal Gear Solid, StarCraft 1, Half-Life, and so-on. A lot of games that started franchises or game design trends we see to this day. It was the point where game designers were finally starting to figure out 3D games. It was the beginning of the era of refinement we saw during the PS2 years and the corresponding years on PC.

Another reason I think 1998-2005 was the best is that's when technology and budgets were in just the right place in relation to one another. Studios that were big enough to make big games but not so big they had to sell millions of copies, were able to make games with budgets big enough for respectable production values but not so big they had to sell multiple millions of copies, and still have top-of-the-line graphics. It's hard as hell to make a game today that feels as deep and engrossing as Deus Ex 1 or System Shock 2 with fully modern graphics. The budget would take it beyond the addressable audience for that kind of game versus another F2P shooter.

Around 2005 is when tech and budgets started to become too much. Hollywood-ization hadn't totally set in, but devs spent the next couple years figuring out new tech. We started to see the benefits of devs coming around to that new tech in 2007 with STALKER, Crysis, Call of Duty 4, or Bioshock. By that point though, the whole industry went after COD4 despite the potential leaps forward Crysis and STALKER presented. Budgets and tech forced publishers to follow the leader after that which killed developers and squeezed down genres on consoles that weren't action game and sports games. The greater economy probably had a lot to do with it as well. This is the real period I think was somewhat dull. There were bright spots like Far Cry 2, Uncharted 2, and Demon's Souls, but compared to 1998-2005, the retail console sector in the post--2007 period was filled with a lot of formulaic blockbuster stuff.

2011 was a high point though, with games like Deus Ex Human Revolution, the first Dark Souls and Skyrim. Other games started to signify a change in the tech too like The Witcher 2, Battlefield 3, and Crysis 2. In the years immediately following that though to me it felt like the AAA industry was having a hard time figuring out what it wanted to do. Very few big retail games in 2012, 2013, and 2014 interested me, maybe Dishonored 1 and Wolfenstein: The New Order, but I think I spent more time on indie games in that period. That's when indies started to really evolve beyond 2D platformers, especially on PC.

Since 2015 things have turned a corner in my opinion. A lot of it is probably the global economy getting better, but I feel like big developers have finally figured out where they want to go creatively. They've learned lessons from previous years and the influence of Call of Duty has worn off. The Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid V, and Zelda Breath of the Wild are all hallmarks of sandbox games. I'm seeing so many other big-budget games that are good-to-great like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Dishonored 2, DOOM, or Horizon: Zero Dawn. Online service-oriented games have found a really good groove with Overwatch, Rainbow Six: Siege, Destiny, or Final Fantasy XIV. Japanese developers have finally figured things out, getting their production pipeline in order for modern tech and borrowing just the things from western developers we'd been wishing for them to for the last 10 years without screwing things up. They've done this with MGSV, BOTW, and Resident Evil 7. This year has seen an impressive selection of Japanese games that remind us of the PS2 era like Yakuza 0, Gravity Rush 2, Persona 5, Nioh, or Nier Automata. Even more is on the way like Ace Combat 7, Tekken 7, Ni No Kuni II, and Marvel Infinite.

We're not all the way back to where we were in the 1998-2005 period but it's feeling like developers and publishers have gotten back a lot of what they had during that period.
Click to expand...

pNwrQAE.jpg


Just so happy that we are out of those dark ages lol.
 
Corpsepyre

Corpsepyre

Banned
Don't know what you're on about. Those were some of the best years for gaming. And I'm not even talking about comparisons to today's dribble. They really were excellent gaming years on their own.
 
G

gblues

Banned
You're citing vgcats. Your argument is.. shaky.

2004-2009 is hardly the "rise of the FPS." The FPS genre on consoles, maybe.
 
S

Swiggins

Member
Yeah...2007 was such a bad year for gaming...right guys?!

Jesus, some of my favorite games of all time came out in that era.
 
T

thelatestmodel

Junior, please.
I mean, we could start writing big long lists of all the awesome games that came out in those years.

But let's not do that and just agree that OP is wrong
 
P

Pudge

Member
Xbox 360 Launch? BioShock? Lost Planet? Gears of War? Dead Rising? Team Fortress 2? Super Mario Galaxy? Portal, Peggle, Mass Effect, ROCK BAND...

Heard of any of those?
 
N

NinjaCoachZ

Member
2004 - 2007 had Super Mario Galaxy, Half-Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Persona 3, World of Warcraft, San Andreas, God of War 1 and 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Katamari Damacy, Mario Kart DS, Devil May Cry 3, Final Fantasy XII, Valkyrie Profile 2, Okami, Odin Sphere, Metroid Prime 2 and 3, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and numerous more I can't even think of right now.

You call that dull??
 
P

PumpkinSpice

Banned
There were a whole wack of amazing PS2 games in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

I way prefer that era of the PS3 and 360 to the remaining years of their lifespans.

Pretty much every good PSP game came out during that time. I could almost say that about the DS as well.

That's without even getting into the Wii.
 
V

VendettaRed07

Member
04-07 were absolutely fantastic. Some of the best games ever came out in that time frame.

2008-2011 was really shit though

There were obviously a lot of great games in that timeframe too, but it was probably the dullest and least exciting time ever in gaming for me. Felt like every year the big hyped up games were disappointing, e3 was lacking almost every year, Nintendo felt like they were gone and never really coming back. Things are so much better now than it was in that timeframe it isn't even funny
 
lyrick

lyrick

Member
To have that opinion someone must have not had a home filled with plastic instrument shaped peripherals.
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Those were the years to go PC and enjoy all the goodness before everyone else realized.
 
adamsapple

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
mdzapeer said:
Example games?
Click to expand...

2007 alone had:

- Mass Effect
- Modern Warfare
- Bioshock
- The Orange Box (Portal, TF2)
- Halo 3
- Rock Band
- The Witcher
- Assassins Creed
- Uncharted
- God of War 2

and a lot more .. and that's just 2007
 
L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
PS360 was easily the shittiest generation, but it did a lot in terms of building online infrastructure and opening things up to indies that would let the future become brighter.
 
T

theultimo

Member
Honestly the only bad thing i can think of was controller support on PC. Around vista timeperiod is when standardized 360 xinput really helped the pc controller area, its a shame they didnt go with direct input though.
 
L

LukasTaves

Member
NinjaCoachZ said:
2004 - 2007 had Super Mario Galaxy, Half-Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Persona 3, World of Warcraft, San Andreas, God of War 1 and 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Katamari Damacy, Mario Kart DS, Devil May Cry 3, Final Fantasy XII, Valkyrie Profile 2, Okami, Odin Sphere, Metroid Prime 2 and 3, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and numerous more I can't even think of right now.

You call that dull??
Click to expand...

I also had the entire library of 360 launch and 2 years in. Mass Effect, Gears of War, Halo 3, Bioshock, Oblivion, PGR3, Condemned, GRAW, Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Viva Pinata, Crackdown, Overlord, Blue Dragon, PGR4, Tomb Raider Legends and Anniversary, Naruto Rise of a Ninja, VF5, Assassin's Creed to name a few.

It was an amazing run of great games coming out anywhere.
 
haxan7

haxan7

Volunteered as Tribute
I was playing an MMORPG heavily (Final Fantasy XI) so I can't even contextualize these years from a gaming perspective outside of that.
 
BizzyBum

BizzyBum

Member
I love thread backfires.

OP, what kind of games do you even play if you thought that glorious era were the dark ages?
 
K

keidashxd

Member
In 2008 we had Mirror's Edge, Rock Band 2, Dead Space, BF: Bad Company, Left 4 Dead, Burnout Paradise, Smash Bros Wii and motherfucking Braid... what is op talking about?
 
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