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[Ascenion]

No. Racing genre is all but dead, only one company gives a fuck about traditional single player titles, the AAA space is excessively becoming a monetizing shit show (I feel we discussed Battlefront, Origins and Shadow of War’s lootboxes more than the damn games), GaaS and MT are seemingly offsetting the price hike to $69.99 that should’ve happened, but destroying the titles at the same time.

Not to mention there hasn’t been a single masterpiece this generation (Switch is technically 9th Gen) and Sony and Microsoft have yet to drop a single sequel to anything they’ve put out some 2014. Games are a shit show atm.

 

[mdubs]

No. Racing genre is all but dead, only one company gives a fuck about traditional single player titles, the AAA space is excessively becoming a monetizing shit show (I feel we discussed Battlefront, Origins and Shadow of War’s lootboxes more than the damn games), GaaS and MT are seemingly offsetting the price hike to $69.99 that should’ve happened, but destroying the titles at the same time.

Not to mention there hasn’t been a single masterpiece this generation (Switch is technically 9th Gen) and Sony and Microsoft have yet to drop a single sequel to anything they’ve put out some 2014. Games are a shit show atm.

You say this in the year which we are getting Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, among other games like Nier, Persona 5, Horizon, etc.

Lol.

 

[stuminus3]

I’m struggling with the OP because so many games in that list are ‘modern’ by my standards...

/old

 

[ToxicPhantom]

Yup, they sure are.

 

[mokeyjoe]

Hard to say. The polish is there, but much of the inventiveness isn't.

For me it's being kept aloft by the indie scene.

With that said RE7 VR will be my game of the year as the only genuinely new gaming experience I've had in many years.

 

[Steve.1981]

Are games better than ever?

Absolutely, yes. There's no doubt about it in my mind.

 

[b0bbyJ03]

I've been playing over 32 (33 if you count the first experiences) years and I can say that games are the best they've ever been. The game industry on the other hand is the worst its ever been in terms of all the bullshit you have to deal with. All the microtransactions, the preorder bullshit, nickel and diming, etc.

 

[pretty done]

All genres seem incredible right now outside of team based FPS.

 

[Soul of the Beast]

Who cares? Does that make a difference?

 

[Renna Hazel]

It all depends on what you're into. I feel too many games have shifted to a focus beyond gameplay, which makes gaming worse today than in the past. Some like those changes. It's all about what you're into.

 

[CopperPuppy]

People are going to shout about recency bias but I personally think so, yes.

 

[Arion]

Without a doubt. Since 2015 I've had more fun playing games than ever before. Although it does depend on what genres you are into since some have dwindled down to a few games.

 

[SaiyanRaoh]

Absolutely not. Not with the focus on multiplayer, co-op, social crap and loot boxes. I long for the says where everything wasn't "connected".

That is why I appreciate games like the Witcher 3, Zelda BOTW and the Divinity Original Sin series. Very meaty SINGLE play campaigns.

Anyone get the feeling that Battlefront 2 campaign will be a tack on?

 

[guyssorry]

Nah. The potential is there (visuals, sound, technology, etc.), but too many developers either try something way way way too ambitious or something that is generic and mainly visual candy. It's nothing like the early-mid 2000s and all of the quality output of that time.

 

[Magic Mushroom]

It all depends on what you're into. I feel too many games have shifted to a focus beyond gameplay, which makes gaming worse today than in the past. Some like those changes. It's all about what you're into.

I don't really see that. Games like Doom, Bloodborne, Prey, Hitman, Breath of the Wild, Cuphead, Nex Machina and Mario Odyssey are all about the gameplay. If anything, gaming is more diverse with those kind of games as well as games that are more narrative driven.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

Witcher 3, Zelda BOTW and the Divinity Original Sin series. Very meaty SINGLE play campaigns.

oh you mean games that are coming out nowish?

... I think it's the best time ever to play games now, and I'd cite Witcher 3 and BOTW as two reasons why. I haven't played my copies of Divinity on Steam yet -- picked up the first on sale a while back and bought into the hype on the 2nd game (just haven't taken the time to start yet).

There's a lot of shit happening in the game industry right now for sure, but I still think the exceptionally good stuff is far outweighing it. I can look at a game like Shadow of War, which I would've lapped up probably without much thought or criticism just a few years ago, and think to myself... Nah, I got other stuff to play that'll be way more worth my time and money.

 

[gioGAF]

I would say definitely not. Ever since the "games as a service" and free to play monetization schemes entered full price (~$60) gaming, it has become a much more unenjoyable medium. There are still great games out there, but for every one of those we have a bunch of the loot crate crap games.

Most games are more about the "hook" nowadays instead of great gameplay. It is not about making a great game so that people buy it because they enjoy it, it is about making games that exploit human psychology (gambling impulses mostly).

Before online connected consoles, I would have been okay with underage children playing video games, but in the present day, I think it is probably not a good idea since all you are doing is letting them start gambling early.

 

[The Albatross]

No, but there is a great variety of games. At least, games aren't better than ever for me, but there are many technical achievements that are better now in games than they ever have been.

There's that cliche that "whatever you love peaked when you were 18" or whatever it was. Like your parents might have said "Music was the best in 1968 and since then it's been crap!" or "The NFL was just better in 1998, and since then it's been crap!" or what have you. Well, my peak era of games was probably like 2001 - 2005, at some point in that range, which is unsurprisingly around when I was 18.

At the time I probably didn't really appreciate it, and we also have a tendancy to isolate a particular year today and say "No, this year sucks ass... just look at all the amazing games that came out in 2004!" Not recognizing that we probably were ignorant to a lot of those amazing games, or only played so many of them, or didn't appreciate them until later. OR, we group games from multiple years as being from all around the same period of time.

 

[low-G]

In some ways games are certainly better than ever.

Take PC gaming: Now you can have almost any game present and past at a very minimal cost. You can play the classics or the modern titles. We've breached the dream of the holodeck with high end VR. Indie games lead an expression of genres and quality unseen in gaming since the heyday of PC gaming in the 90's.

Consoles also achieve such fidelity and depth of experiences, along with the best controllers ever seen, great multiplayer, etc...

The old games still exist, so it's hard to argue it's not just better and better.

But modern games have a plethora of problems even as we resolve other problems. Games are finally getting good level design again for the last 5+ years, but now we have terrible loot box ideas. There's still a lot of problems with mainstreaming of games, especially when it comes to genre variety available from AAA developers.

 

[Poppy]

i mean, it is objectively bigger than ever

whether it is better is kind of a murky question. but there is a lot of choice out there, more than ever before i imagine, so i wouldnt argue too hard with someone if that was their opinion

 

[Magic Mushroom]

In some ways games are certainly better than ever.

Take PC gaming: Now you can have almost any game present and past at a very minimal cost. You can play the classics or the modern titles. We've breached the dream of the holodeck with high end VR. Indie games lead an expression of genres and quality unseen in gaming since the heyday of PC gaming in the 90's.

Consoles also achieve such fidelity and depth of experiences, along with the best controllers ever seen, great multiplayer, etc...

The old games still exist, so it's hard to argue it's not just better and better.

But modern games have a plethora of problems even as we resolve other problems. Games are finally getting good level design again for the last 5+ years, but now we have terrible loot box ideas. There's still a lot of problems with mainstreaming of games, especially when it comes to genre variety available from AAA developers.

I dislike loot boxes as well but they're easy to avoid. There are way more quality games that don't have them than games that do. Almost all of the acclaimed games this gen, I'd say.

 

[Undrey]

Honestly this is my least favourite time to be playing video games. I end up playing really old games most of the time. The only thing I actually like about the industry right now is the fact that indie games are more widely made. Games like A Hat in Time or Gang Beasts would not have been made a few years ago but are developed and do relatively well these days.

 

[Glass Shark]

.

 

[Team Filler]

I've been playing over 32 (33 if you count the first experiences) years and I can say that games are the best they've ever been. The game industry on the other hand is the worst its ever been in terms of all the bullshit you have to deal with. All the microtransactions, the preorder bullshit, nickel and diming, etc.

I would say definitely not. Ever since the "games as a service" and free to play monetization schemes entered full price (~$60) gaming, it has become a much more unenjoyable medium. There are still great games out there, but for every one of those we have a bunch of the loot crate crap games.

Most games are more about the "hook" nowadays instead of great gameplay. It is not about making a great game so that people buy it because they enjoy it, it is about making games that exploit human psychology (gambling impulses mostly).

Before online connected consoles, I would have been okay with underage children playing video games, but in the present day, I think it is probably not a good idea since all you are doing is letting them start gambling early.

These two posts pretty much sum up my thoughts entirely.

Lots of great games are being released, and will no doubt continue to release. However, with the industry dominated by scummy-as-fuck companies and the community mostly filled with bigoted fuckheads and sycophantic stooges, I find myself far less comfortable and willing to spend my time and money supporting gaming. If gaming continues on this trajectory, I'll just stop supporting it altogether and finish out my backlog.

 

[Exploratory]

You have Mass Effect 3 over Mass Effect 2 so I don't really know what to say in this thread that won't get me instantly banned.

 

[brian!]

Indie games are awesome

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

No, I don't think they are. They're not necessarily worse, either, though -- they're just different. There's been a lot of great stuff this year, in any case.

 

[AlexBasch]

No. But it's more my fault than the games, really.

They're not bad, but I do miss the time when online wasn't so prevalent and everything was "it's better with friends" like it is now.

Then again it comes down to my own personal tastes, I have better memories of playing GTA Vice City, MGS3 or JRPG's than playing Rainbow Six Siege, Destiny 2 or Diablo 3. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy those games, but the overall social aspect of gaming doesn't suit me at all. Single player games in this generation don't hold my interest for too long either, I'm finding a buyer for Horizon: Zero Dawn for example, I got bored of it after a couple of hours.

I'm gonna agree on the game industry being shit though, loot boxes, microtransactions and season passes are going to break down this thing but I have a huge backlog to burn if that happens.

 

[brian!]

Im pretty against all the "cinematic" shit tho, hope that stuff dies out in the next decade

Industry fukkin sucks, thank goodness for indie games

 

[redcrayon]

For every AAA £50+microtransactions game there's now a dozen great indies you can play that would have cost several times the price on 80s consoles like the NES/Master System etc. For me that's what makes gaming great today, there's just so much choice and for any budget and you can download it instantly. You can even support the ones you like the look of to help them get made, and sales are varied and often.

For all the complaints about the most visible end of the industry, that would love it if we kept all the conversation on them, all the time, as a barometer of the state of the industry, they make up a tiny fraction of the sheer number of games you can play that released this year. You can probably play a dozen of them for every major release with a dodgy business model. I've never been happier with gaming, I probably buy 6-10 smaller titles a year and back that up with a couple of the big hitters. If I only played AAA games, I'd probably be a lot more cynical about it.

 

[kiguel182]

Without a doubt.

There were never as many good games to play as there are today. Not even close.

There’s awesome games for a big variety of people. It’s great.

 

[Joe T.]

No.

Games today look better than ever and there's an overwhelming number of them available, but they're either failing to draw my attention or to keep their hooks in me once I've got my hands on them. Those that succeed in doing so are fewer and farther between. It's not for a lack of interest in the various genres either, more that today's marketing decisions and design philosophies are off-putting in general. I used to be a big fan of lots of franchises that are still around today that have lost my interest and there aren't any games/franchises that have stepped in to fill the void for me.

 

[Taliban Stan]

I don't agree. This has been far and away the most disappointing generation of games I've ever experienced. Genesis-era might have been worse but I was a child and didn't know any better at the time.

They definitely use more polygons and probably cost more to make than ever. Gaming might be better as a whole, only because it's easy to legally buy old games when the current crop lets you down. I don't want to give that props as if this gen had an awesome library though.

 

[18-Volt]

No. Dead genres are still dead and some of the most successful genres are dying for some reason: Sandbox driving-action genre is disappearing even though GTA5 had legendary success. Devs chose genres that easy to develop and sells better among mainstream audience, and that's... yeah that's FPS. There are waaaay to many FPS games around to get bored easily.

I think most dependable publishers are still first party ones, two of them: Sony and Nintendo. They are the only ones remaining that don't play for the mainstream. They try to keep genres alive (Nintendo is doing better job at this, where is my Sly 5, Sony????), and quality of their games never have been dropped.

 

[xviper]

only on the technical side, games nowadays are repetitive, no variety

 

[DocSeuss]

No. Dead genres are still dead and some of the most successful genres are dying for some reason: Sandbox driving-action genre is disappearing even though GTA5 had legendary success. Devs chose genres that easy to develop and sells better among mainstream audience, and that's... yeah that's FPS. There are waaaay to many FPS games around to get bored easily.

I think most dependable publishers are still first party ones, two of them: Sony and Nintendo. They are the only ones remaining that don't play for the mainstream. They try to keep genres alive (Nintendo is doing better job at this, where is my Sly 5, Sony????), and quality of their games never have been dropped.

You're objectively wrong. The FPS is one of the least-developed genres in the AAA space. We've had fewer FPSes being developed every generation since their peak in the late 1990s. Last gen, they were in, I think, 11th place per year? We've had years where we get 3-4 AAA FPS in a year, at best.

Third person action/adventure are the biggest, most prevalent games. This includes the massive open world games. I'm not sure why you think Sony isn't playing for the Mainstream. Like 85-90% of Sony's output is third person action/adventure games. It's practically all they do.

 

[jroc74]

The games are. The business practises are not.

Couldn't think of a way to say this. Thanks.

And even then it's still subjective.

And where the hell are the arcade racers???

 

[Rathorial]

Well games more than most artistic mediums tend to improve over time just because new technology lets you do more with the same formula, and if you make a large enough improvement you make that formula feel fresh again. Not every game does that though, where enough games now dilute out all their potential depth in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator person...so some games are indeed better than version of them that came before. I'd like to think the sheer breadth of titles out each now means you can find more great games than 5-10 years ago.

Immersive Sims tend to be my favorite kind of game, and while older ones like System Shock 2 are still impressive/fun to go back to...Prey (2017) feels like an improvement on that game in most ways. It lacks a SHODAN level character, but in terms of play it controls better, levels are more complex with more things going on, and the ways your abilities work let you simply do more than any game in the late 90s could do.

Not to mention all the convenience features we have now that we take for granted to lower the tedium parts of games. I do think the 360/PS3 gen was a weak point where big AAA games let hyper-linear cinematic spectacle neuter gameplay depth and/or variety, while mid-tier games took a hit. Now though, we seem to be moving out of that as big games adopt open-worlds, which by design tend to encourage more player agency and dynamic mechanics. Also, the indie scene is filling the mid-tier to lower void.

 

[Patrick Young]

Have you played any of the Resident Evil games? If not, I would get on those pronto, particularly Resident Evil 4 and the REmake of the first Resident Evil.

I tried to play 4. The controls are awful.

It’s just another zombie thing anyway.

 

[Syf]

Not if you like RTS. There are dozens of us

 

[Rathorial]

Third person action/adventure are the biggest, most prevalent games. This includes the massive open world games. I'm not sure why you think Sony isn't playing for the Mainstream. Like 85-90% of Sony's output is third person action/adventure games. It's practically all they do.

I think that has to do with people calling "open-world" a genre, rather than just a type of level design that it is. So people don't associate them as third-person action/adventure, even though that's what you're still doing in that big sandbox. FPS open-world games like Far Cry don't seem to lose the FPS bit, and my guess is that gun in first-person is incredibly obvious.

 

[Crossing Eden]

I tried to play 4. The controls are awful.

It's just another zombie thing anyway.

Lmfao what? Resident Evil 4 is still one of the best games ever made from a design and pacing standpoint. There aren't even zombies in RE4.

 

[kanaka]

The variety of genres, the cost of access, the diversity of themes and concepts, the huge number of tools available for development, and it is not a taboo to diverge from any industry "standard" as previous generations (like the boom of 3D and realism, or the WoW clones that plague the market, or the console only titles, now you can find 2D games and 3D games of any kind, for all tastes, everywhere), and it is way easier now to access old titles.

The quality of ideas and releases this year alone has been amazing: Nier Automata, Persona 5, Zelda BotW, Divinity OS 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Nioh, RE7, Hollow Knight, Metroid: Samus Returns, Night in the Woods, Cuphead, A Hat int Time, and many many more I am completely forgetting right now.

There is something for everybody! So yes, games are definitely better than ever!

 

[Kojirospath]

Got those terrible smackdown games on there but no WWF No Mercy? I stare in disbelief.

 

[FiveSide]

I tried to play 4. The controls are awful.

It’s just another zombie thing anyway.

 

[ArjanN]

Yes, generally speaking the quality of games is better than ever.

Also, to be honest even putting taste aside your list your list seems like you have some pretty big blind spots. (PC gaming for one)

Also, lol at the people claiming some games having loot boxes makes gaming in general in 2017 worse than in previous years. I could easily list like 50 must play games this year already, which is already more than 99% of GAF even has time enough for to beat in a year.

 

[NathanDiego]

I think are getting better and better,but the industry itself is the opposite

 

[synce]

Not even close. Just focusing on Sony's consoles this is how my collection breaks down

Granted, PS3 numbers would be a little bigger if so many games didn't have PC ports, but there's still no comparing 90's/early 2000's games to today's stuff, which can generally be boiled down to "walk forward/follow the marker and occasionally press a button, while characters never shut up along the way."

Here's an actual dungeon from World of Final Fantasy, a game which is considered to be above average by today's standards.

 

[1upsuper]

Kind of an interesting question. Most of my favorite non-indie games are at least fifteen years old, but lots of my favorite games are indie games from the last decade. I think outside of early outliers like Corpse Party, Yume Nikki, and Cave Story (or probably because of them) indie games have only really come into their own in the last decade. But I find myself playing fewer and fewer non-indie games these days. So yes and no, I guess.

As far as non-indie games go, the 8- and 16-bit eras are absolutely my favorites.

 

[orborborb]

I like Zork clones, Xevious clones, Lode Runner clones, Sokoban clones, Donkey Kong clones, Outrun clones, F-Zero clones, Doom clones, Myst clones, and Mario 64 clones

I don't like Tetris clones, Zelda clones, Renegade clones, Street Fighter II clones, Diablo clones, Warcraft clones, Symphony of the Night clones, World of Warcraft clones, GTA clones, Resident Evil 4 clones, Bioshock clones, Mineraft clones, or Dark Souls clones

I have mixed feelings about Super Mario Bros clones, Dragon Quest clones, Resident Evil clones, and Spelunky clones

so nope not really, but Destiny 1.0, The Last Guardian, Inside, The Witness, Obduction, and Nex Machina were really good