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hybridial

My weird state on videogames

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A.K.A. why I am not excited for Doom Eternal :D

 

I considered having the above line in the title but I figure it would have been a little bit clickbait-y and I don't want people reacting just to the statement that I am not feeling any hype for Doom Eternal. That's not what this is really about, that game just happens to be probably the best example in what I am going to try to talk about. This is because I actually did at least feel some excitement for Doom Eternal as recently as just a couple of months ago. This is going to be a long, complex and probably extremely meandering attempt to understand what I think I am going through. And I am interested in hearing other people's thoughts on my feelings, and if they felt anything similar. So I think the first thing to do is get a few things clear right off the bat.

 

Am I a hipster? Yes.

 

Am I an Edgelord? With a capital E.

 

Am I a psychological mess? Most certainly.

 

Do I think the video games industry, well specifically the Triple-A industry has turned completely against gamers, but particularly those of us who grew up from childhood being into videogames? Oh hell yes.

 

I imagine that there is a character limit, and I believe I could easily breach it if I try to go into everything so I'm probably going to specifically leave certain things to talk about as the conversation develops, assuming you don't all throw your PC monitors out of the window and ran screaming away from this existential nightmare.

 

I think I will go into a little bit more personal context. So I am closing in on my mid 30s and I have been into videogames since I was about eight years old I think. The very first game I played was Super Mario Bros 3, but the very first games I owned were Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage 2, meaning of course a Mega Drive, at least that's what we called it, was the first system I owned. I don't think I need to add to that. I just think taking into account my age and how long I've been following the industry is the important information.

 

And also here is a disclaimer: I am not in any way trying to be a buzz kill of any sort. If you're excited for Doom Eternal, if you love modern games, go nuts. Just be prepared for the fact that I might say things in a very general sense that is quite critical of them. However, I don't think this has much to do with the actual quality of any of the games.

 

Okay, so I'd say this process has been ongoing for maybe the last two years? In that time I have played a handful of newish games. Every single one to be honest was extremely disappointing. I probably say that Doom 2016 was probably the least disappointing of the games I refer to. It's clearly a very good game. I would also say Resident Evil 2 Remake which was another was pretty good. I would also say that in the 2 to 3 years prior to that I was probably gradually becoming more and more detached. One of my bugbears is the fact that I very much disliked Dark souls 1 and 2. And I only really bring it up because the timing of when I played those games kind of fits. It feels like it was around then my enthusiasm started to really wane. I do think that I made the mistake of feeling a need to be with the in crowd and force myself through those games but I really didn't enjoy them. I did it to myself, but that might have been irreparable damage. 

 

Modern Triple A releases are treated like major events now, and even in the ones that aren't complete crap, I don't feel any longer that I feel anything about them is remotely exciting in any way. The other day I decided the best way to gauge how interested I am in Doom Eternal was to take the time to download Doom 2016 and play it for a bit and basically ask the question, it's going to be more of this, with some added stuff, do I really want that much to play that? I came to the conclusion that I didn't. So here is a less specific list of things that have made me generally feel like I don't care much for major modern releases, without going into the obvious, that being most of the big developers are scum.

 

1. I don't find them aesthetically pleasing any more.

 

2. I find in a basic sense that there is very little that these games do that haven't been done in games for decades now.

 

3. I feel that cutting-edge games made by huge teams, are rather needlessly extravagant for ultimately what are really simple things they are actually making.

 

4. That they lack the immediacy and efficiency of both older titles and new ones that are made to very similar design approach as those older titles. I think this might be one of the most interesting topics, because it kind of goes into games as an abstract activity, versus modern attempts to simulate an experience, tell a story.

 

5. I probably just don't want to be in the hardware rat race any more, because I don't feel I see any real benefit from it.

 

6. Yeah, might as well throw in there I have been betrayed and let down by the vast majority of game series' that I used to like, and as someone who has had a passion for storytelling since I was extremely young, I'm often very very cynical about the story driven games that are popular now.

 

I think further posts I could make would be good to extrapolate on those basic points. But what I will say now is I don't hate videogames, I still generally feel like I enjoy playing the ones that I have found do something for me now. I think games like Amid Evil, Dusk, Ion Fury, Blazing Chrome, Overload and some others are examples of games I still find to be engaging and fun. I think the reason why those games work for me is relatively clear based on the points I laid out above.

 

tl;dr So I'm not excited about Doom Eternal, but I am excited for Prodeus. 

 

So, if you are somehow still with me, do you identify it all with where I am coming from? Am I just going through an inevitable phase because I'm getting old? And I just really lame for not wanting to play these new games?

 

And the main reason I signed up to this forum is because Classic Doom gives me a lot of those things that I want, and I find it fascinating in a way that the new school games just are not. I don't know if I will end up getting into any kind of map making, because I feel in terms of hobbies that my writing should take precedence, and is it possible that this is all some weird form of compartmentalisation that my mind is forcing on me to make me spend more time doing other things than being a zombie that plays videogames all the damn time?

 

Anybody who takes the time to respond to this absolute travesty of a post, I sincerely appreciate it. I often feel like I am Mike Stoklasa in all of those Star Trek videos he's done.

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I can understand where you are coming from. I don't like a lot of the modern AAA FPS games except for Doom 2016. High-poly graphics often look like action figures and plastic to me; but pixely and low-poly graphics look delightfully oppressive and uninviting. Often modern AAA games feature-creep and lose balance which Doom Eternal may have a bit of, but I will likely still enjoy it. Also having such attention to detail in modern AAA games, makes level editing limited too. Overall, I tend to stick to Quake 1 and Doom 64 for these reasons.

I enjoyed Amid Evil and Ion Fury quite a bit. Also Prodeus and Wrath are two games to be excited for since they seem to have nice level editors too. I think its nice that we have so many options now. :)

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That's great and all that you made this post, but you said the "gamer" word and I mentally logged off. Unless you're someone like AVGN, LGR or some other videogame archivist, don't call yourself a gamer. It pisses me off on some subconscious level for some reason.

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I can see where you're coming from, although I'm not as jaded and I am in fact excited for Doom Eternal at least. Granted I'm not in my mid 30's. I do pretty much fit into every other label you gave yourself, so maybe give me another 10 years and I'll be able to fully grasp it :p

 

I don't agree with all your points, but I will agree that the modern AAA games I find engaging and genuinely want to play are too few and far between, and taking part in the "rat race" as you call it doesn't feel rewarding anymore. It's just extra expenses, specially if you live in a third world country.

 

Most of the titles I look forward to are indie, or by small studios, like Dusk, Amid Evil and the others you mentioned. I can hardly pin point what exactly it is about modern big budged titles that make me lose interest. It's not the more involved story telling surely, as I happen to be a a huge fan of Legacy of Kain series, which are very story focused, with only serviceable gameplay to match, and also Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 which I played as a kid kept me engaged even with their 20 fucking minute cutscenes.

It's not the new graphics, and not necessarily the dumbed down difficulty, although that can be a problem when the game just becomes a monotonous clicking gallery.

 

I feel like games just have went the way of movies and, by and large, lost their soul. And they haven't lost it just by virtue of being popular, it's just that in a capitalist society, popularity in art leads to staleness. And any successful product can be broken down into it's most marketable bullet points and be mass produced, modified just enough so it seems new, but also reiterates the same old tried formula.

 

But in counter argument to myself, it could also be that I'm old enough to actually keep up with what gets released, and the internet makes that all that much easier. I'm exposed to everything that comes out, the great titles that get announced, as well as the mediocre ones. It's easy to look back to the past and remember all the great games that stood the test of time while ignoring it's terrible contemporaries, but now that I am fed a steady stream of information on every single new thing both good and bad, it am obviously biased towards the old. In fact, you could level the same argument I raised towards modern games when talking about the many failed Sonic imitators, and the so called Doom-clones from the 90's that were desperately trying to replicate something that was a commercial hit.

 

Or maybe, just maybe I don't like video games nearly as much as I think I do. Idk I'm just a fool who likes to ramble, I need to take my meds.

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8 hours ago, FractalBeast said:

That's great and all that you made this post, but you said the "gamer" word and I mentally logged off. Unless you're someone like AVGN, LGR or some other videogame archivist, don't call yourself a gamer. It pisses me off on some subconscious level for some reason.

 

People that bitch about non issues piss me off on a subconscious level, suffice to say in this age of the internet I'm always subconsciously pissed off :P

 

6 hours ago, HorrorMovieGuy said:

I can hardly pin point what exactly it is about modern big budged titles that make me lose interest. It's not the more involved story telling surely, as I happen to be a a huge fan of Legacy of Kain series, which are very story focused, with only serviceable gameplay to match, and also Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 which I played as a kid kept me engaged even with their 20 fucking minute cutscenes.

 

Yeah, I mean those two as examples and some other games from the time did have either good stories or really interesting worlds in them, I feel its just more in the very recent times that the games are becoming far less interesting from a storytelling point of view. Something like The Last of Us, which I couldn't stand as a game in the slightest, also I felt was a bland, forced and even kind of infantile at times. Its the gaming equivalent of a pretty bad Oscar-bait movie, just because you do more serious subject matter doesn't mean you're doing it well. But otherwise, I'd say they're more just very uninteresting and have no ambition nowadays, and even ones that I can give tried, like Mass Effect, well the end of that story was Mass Effect Andromeda.

 

6 hours ago, HorrorMovieGuy said:

I feel like games just have went the way of movies and, by and large, lost their soul. And they haven't lost it just by virtue of being popular, it's just that in a capitalist society, popularity in art leads to staleness. And any successful product can be broken down into it's most marketable bullet points and be mass produced, modified just enough so it seems new, but also reiterates the same old tried formula.

 

Yeah, this is probably in the really blunt sense what it is. I mean I really don't bother with Hollywood stuff at this point because its all so unbelievably sterile and calculated. And even when critical and audience reception to big tentpole movies are quite negative, things like the recent Star Wars trilogy still make their money off of branding and nothing else and nothing is likely to change much. I still watch the odd new indy movie and even though I'm often disappointed sometimes something works. I quite liked Parasite, the hype for that wasn't totally unwarranted, and going to see Colour out of Space today which I've heard good things about. And god, don't even get me started on the saccharine nightmare anime's become. :P 

 

7 hours ago, HorrorMovieGuy said:

But in counter argument to myself, it could also be that I'm old enough to actually keep up with what gets released, and the internet makes that all that much easier. I'm exposed to everything that comes out, the great titles that get announced, as well as the mediocre ones. It's easy to look back to the past and remember all the great games that stood the test of time while ignoring it's terrible contemporaries, but now that I am fed a steady stream of information on every single new thing both good and bad, it am obviously biased towards the old. In fact, you could level the same argument I raised towards modern games when talking about the many failed Sonic imitators, and the so called Doom-clones from the 90's that were desperately trying to replicate something that was a commercial hit.

 

I think the addendum to that point is also we didn't really have the internet back then and that has changed things a lot. I think we all see through the back curtain now and the magic is long gone, and we want to try to claw even a tiny bit of it back. There was definitely something nice about the early days of id where those guys just made a game, were pretty open to the audience about it, and wanted their fans to "own" the games, I mean by releasing the source port and freely allowing people to use tools to make their own content. They loved their community, and it has to be said these days games are big business and I don't think I feel any love there. 

 

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Yeah, I can identify with many points that were made here (esp the beginning :D, but please, I fucking HATE this travesty of a word that "edgelord" has become).

 

My main gripe nowadays is not with modern games at all but just the triple-A games. I feel like they got stuck into the endless tech race and they just no longer have that much of a lasting value like old games did. It looks like unless you're making sequels it isn't enough these days.

 

There's still a wealth of solid games out there, but too many gems are easy to miss since the media tends to raise the visibility of the already popular titles, so the games that deserve more attention fall into even greater obscurity. That's a general problem I have with the internet honestly, way too much garbage to dig through to get what you want sometimes.

 

At any rate, I think my interest in video games has mostly remained the same if not actually increased over the years, although I find I have less and less time to try new games out so I just stick stick to older games I'm already quite familiar with, because I don't have the time I used to have once to just sit down a couple of hours just TRYING to learn to play a new game I may, or may not end up liking, and priorities ever-shifting make it all the more complicated than it already is - oh, and as an aside, don't let my general forum spamming activity fool ya, just because I'm spamming restlessly doesn't mean I have unlimited free-time or too much free-time on my hands, it's anything but that - and again, the endless race for new tech is too tiresome, it has become painfully obvious I just cannot keep up with it.

 

Also, games rarely support mods these days... they'll never be as long-lasting like the old. Remembered? Sure, but being remembered is not the same as staying alive.

 

BTW that "gamer" part above is bullshit ^ :p.

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Suspect age is a part of it, but I think you're also right about the costs impacting how the AAA titles are made, it's inevitable that they would.

 

But overall I think gaming is probably in the rudest health it's ever been from the point of view of the player.  Just ditch the triple As. As the costs associated with computing came down fast the indy/mainstream split happened much earlier than it did with cinema, there are tons of alternatives to choose from.  Granted, a lot of retreads, a lot of sameyness at the flagship, most budget intensive end of things but that's the same in any medium past its infancy. On the other hand, I think there are more kinds of games out than ever before and that even amongst the mainstream titles, mechanics and feel are the tightest they've ever been.

 

Just wish I had the time to play them. Totally relate to what you said @seed. With limited time, there's a natural incline towards things you already know and love. I don't like this effect of time moving on, responsibilities filling up and how it affects the mindset of older people. For me, music is more important than gaming, so that's where I keep constantly checking out new stuff and broadening my ears.

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17 hours ago, hybridial said:

Am I a hipster? Yes.

 

Am I an Edgelord? With a capital E.

 

Am I a psychological mess? Most certainly.

 

Do I think the video games industry, well specifically the Triple-A industry has turned completely against gamers, but particularly those of us who grew up from childhood being into videogames? Oh hell yes.

If anything i actually think you disqualify yourself a little by prefacing this with popular lingo like ''Edgelord'' and ''Gamer'' rather than that it enhances your point.

 

I also do not agree with your point that the Triple-A industry has turned completely against gamers - If anything, you would have to quantify what aspects you dislike about them. There is certainly a bunch of things with today's industry that affect consumers in a negative way - But i'd love to hear what the personal aspects are for you.
 

Quote

Okay, so I'd say this process has been ongoing for maybe the last two years? In that time I have played a handful of newish games. Every single one to be honest was extremely disappointing. I probably say that Doom 2016 was probably the least disappointing of the games I refer to. It's clearly a very good game. I would also say Resident Evil 2 Remake which was another was pretty good. I would also say that in the 2 to 3 years prior to that I was probably gradually becoming more and more detached. One of my bugbears is the fact that I very much disliked Dark souls 1 and 2. And I only really bring it up because the timing of when I played those games kind of fits. It feels like it was around then my enthusiasm started to really wane. I do think that I made the mistake of feeling a need to be with the in crowd and force myself through those games but I really didn't enjoy them. I did it to myself, but that might have been irreparable damage. 

.... So, why exactly did you dislike DS1 and DS2? This entire alinea says you liked certain titles, but you didn't like DS1 and 2 - And that's because of their timing? I definitely need some clarification on this because i very much doubt you dislike a game purely because of its releasedate.
 

Quote

Modern Triple A releases are treated like major events now, and even in the ones that aren't complete crap, I don't feel any longer that I feel anything about them is remotely exciting in any way.

They are treated as major events because developing games, as opposed to the 90s, has risen hugely in costs. Because eSports and other activities made the art of gaming a commerically viable source, combined with the rising cost of developing more high end assets that rely on shader based pipelines and PBR (As opposed to, say, a non shader based pipeline), there has been a necessity to hype new releases as a major event. Because their development costs effectively enable it. Even indie games aren't cheap to make these days.

You call most of the big developers ''Scum'', but that's a rather extreme accusation. The people who actively develop games are people like you and me, working beyond working hours to deliver a product they hope will see success. Who you may define as ''scum'' are literally people who enjoy games as much as you do.

I think what should be seperated here is the difference between an artist working for company X and a manager who works for company X. The impopular decisions, those that actively make people think a company isn't great, isn't done so much by the artist, but by the manager. The head honcho. I feel this distinction has to be made because i do not feel comfortable calling all big developers scum, when they aren't the people calling the shots.
 

Quote

1. I don't find them aesthetically pleasing any more.

 

2. I find in a basic sense that there is very little that these games do that haven't been done in games for decades now.

 

3. I feel that cutting-edge games made by huge teams, are rather needlessly extravagant for ultimately what are really simple things they are actually making.

 

4. That they lack the immediacy and efficiency of both older titles and new ones that are made to very similar design approach as those older titles. I think this might be one of the most interesting topics, because it kind of goes into games as an abstract activity, versus modern attempts to simulate an experience, tell a story.

 

5. I probably just don't want to be in the hardware rat race any more, because I don't feel I see any real benefit from it.

 

6. Yeah, might as well throw in there I have been betrayed and let down by the vast majority of game series' that I used to like, and as someone who has had a passion for storytelling since I was extremely young, I'm often very very cynical about the story driven games that are popular now.

  1. This heavily depends per game. What is true however is that most games nowadays rely on a PBR (Physically Based Rendering) pipeline. Every asset is modelled after real-world parameters, as opposed to the previous generation where an artist made an approximation through textures. Because PBR requires a standard lighting model, you will get that a lot of games do tend to look similar. This isn't new: Unreal Engine 3, of the previous generation, was often accused of looking ''samey'' for similar reasons, as its default lighting model had a very specific look. Later in its shelf life, you would see titles that dramatically changed the lighting, like Borderlands or Bioshock Infinite. Artstyle and lighting is a key factor in how a game looks, more than anything else. Even low quality textures can look good from a general sense if they are lit properly.
  2. Name some examples. We have gained physical interactions through physics, elaborate RPG systems and high class AI. Animation wise its not even comparable. There is some truth to be found regarding stagnation, which is what i think you are referencing. Physics engines still act like they did in 2004. But there are outliers. Something like Yedoma Globula, which represents a world made by Mandelbrot fractals, is something wholly different.
  3. This is a personal impression that i do not believe is grounded in practice. See the above on why asset work is much more complex these days. Lighting a floor correctly is really difficult, the same goes for interaction with objects on floors and what not. If anything else, these days it is much more about nuance than big progressions. Just because something looks simple, does not mean it is - And it usually isn't.
  4. I feel this plays again a part with the rising complexity of games. I'd like to hear more on what you mean by this however, as this is not instantly clear.
  5. Raytracing, both in visual and audio circles, is quite something new and it requires a compeltely new rendering pipeline to enable fully. As cards are based on rasterization, they need dedicated tech to process rays - See RTX.
  6. So, you are essentially admitting here that your disappointment with current games is a you problem - Because you are comparing it to the games of days past. The gaming industry is an evolving beast, what worked in the 90s simply can't work today. The whole reason Duke Nukem Forever had a 15 year development run is because 3DR operated on that 90s mentality, instead of modernizing their personnel structure. What you want, is a throwback to an age that simply would not work in today's industry anymore. I realize that this is a cold shoulder to give, but i think its equally cold to believe in something that cannot exist in today's world.
     
    Quote

    So, if you are somehow still with me, do you identify it all with where I am coming from? Am I just going through an inevitable phase because I'm getting old? And I just really lame for not wanting to play these new games?

     

  • No
  • Yes. I am just a few years younger than you - I agree that older games have more timeless gameplay, but i do not want to go back to an era that wouldn't work in today's world anymore.
  • No. I do not think you are lame for forfeiting titles, but i do question your arguments, as stated above. A lot of this is more grounded in how you feel about something than that it has an objective reason to be so. This is ofcourse fine (Its how you feel after all) but it makes less sense to me to forfeit the industry based on that alone. There is plenty of objective reasons to come up with that affect consumers negatively as compared to the past. But the majority of your point isn't about that.

 

Edited by Redneckerz : Typo

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It's the hype that always turns me off an upcoming game release, more specifically, fake hype.

You get these YouTubers who are just trying to cash in on a game as it was just released or is being released soon and they make a video about it, which is fine as that's what YT is about, but the fact that they have to lie about it and claim to have been fans of the game series from the beginning is what irks me.

These people make videos about games they claim to have been fans of for years, but their videos actually reveal how little they actually know about what they're talking about.

 

I didn't pay much attention to Doom 2016 before it was released and to be honest I still haven't managed to get into it as much as the previous games in the series.

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2 hours ago, holaareola said:

Just wish I had the time to play them. Totally relate to what you said @seed. With limited time, there's a natural incline towards things you already know and love. I don't like this effect of time moving on, responsibilities filling up and how it affects the mindset of older people. For me, music is more important than gaming, so that's where I keep constantly checking out new stuff and broadening my ears.

 

Things aren't sunnier there for me either. Discovering new bands from my experience is an extremely tedious and frustrating job, not to mention time-consuming, because it requires lots of research and careful listening. Sometimes you end up listening to a song that you might deem as trash in that moment, only to come back later and realize what a fool you were, and vice versa. The higher your standards, and the bigger the thirst for something new, the more frustrating it gets.

 

Sure, I love revisiting classics and bands I am already familiar with, but I constantly need something fresh, I can't stick to the same thing forever like others seem to have no problems with. And thanks to an accident I suffered back in 2018, it is now also painful, occasionally, as I suffer from tinnitus :(. I am MUCH better than I was when it happened, but I'm afraid a 100% recovery is an unattainable ideal... once the damage is done, it's irreversible. So I have to get used to occasional ringing and noises on the background... (read: going back to basics and learning to listen to music again... it's an extremely depressing thought). I don't know how @drfrag lives with it... 

Edited by seed : Grammar.

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This is the age of indie products, man. It's not just with videogames. I prefer to get games, news, film, music, and food from independent sources.

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34 minutes ago, seed said:

 

Things aren't sunnier there for me either. Discovering new bands from my experience is an extremely tedious and frustrating job, not to mention time-consuming, becausebit requires lots of research and careful listening. Sometimes you end up listening to a song that you might deem as trash in that moment, only to come back later and realize whatba fool you were, and vice versa. The higher your standards, and the bigger the thirst for something new, the more frustrating it gets.

 

Sure, I love revisiting classics and bands I am already familiar with, but I constantly need something fresh, I can't stick to the same thing forever like others seem to have no problems with. And thanks to an accident I suffered back in 2018, it is now also painful, occasionally, as I suffer from tinnitus :(. I am MUCH better than I was when it happened, but I'm afraid a 100% recovery is an unattainable ideal... once the damage is done, it's irreversible. So I have to get used to occasional ringing and noises on the background... (read: going back to basics and learning to listen to music again... it's an extremely depressing thought). I don't know how @drfrag lives with it... 

Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear that about the accident. It's a music lover's nightmare. Hope that if a total recovery is impossible that it at least gets less disturbing for you.

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8 minutes ago, holaareola said:

Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear that about the accident. It's a music lover's nightmare. Hope that if a total recovery is impossible that it at least gets less disturbing for you.

 

Thanks. It definitely got better, I can only hope its influence becomes minimal in the future.

 

Ironically, the doctor who consulted me told me that he made the same dumb mistake in his youth and eventually gifted his ears with tinnitus as well, yet he somehow made a full recovery down the line. I am hoping that maybe one day, I'll make a full recovery, but this summer marks 2 years since the incident and well, my hearing is still not what it used to be. A man can dream I guess, so until then I'll just have to get used to the occasional ringing and learn to ignore it.

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8 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

If anything i actually think you disqualify yourself a little by prefacing this with popular lingo like ''Edgelord'' and ''Gamer'' rather than that it enhances your point.

 

Okay the gamer thing becoming such a dirty word is literally news to me. I played videogames since I was a child, I'm a gamer. Maybe get over yourselves. The rest of it was me just trying to make a few general points about myself whilst being facetious, because I didn't want to get too heavy into that, it wasn't meant to have anything to do with my point out of adding context and I don't think that's particularly unclear, but maybe I should have adopted a different tact. 

 

8 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

I also do not agree with your point that the Triple-A industry has turned completely against gamers - If anything, you would have to quantify what aspects you dislike about them. There is certainly a bunch of things with today's industry that affect consumers in a negative way - But i'd love to hear what the personal aspects are for you.

 

Based on what you do point out later in your post, I should have maybe been less general in what I said about AAA games developers. Its really the major publishing houses, and its where the decisions are made, it comes to down to their business practices. I find it difficult to have any other view in light of what Activision-Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Ubi Soft, Tecmo-Koei and others get up to, be it micro-transactions, loot boxes (a matter which is gaining traction as a legal issue) or just gouging customers in general however they can. Then there's all the stuff you hear about crunch times and so on. There might be some companies who are generally better about these things, but its common nowadays. 

 

8 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

.... So, why exactly did you dislike DS1 and DS2? This entire alinea says you liked certain titles, but you didn't like DS1 and 2 - And that's because of their timing? I definitely need some clarification on this because i very much doubt you dislike a game purely because of its releasedate.

 

Okay on this maybe I wasn't clear enough (I did preface my topic saying it would get a bit rambling). I didn't like them because I did not enjoy playing them. I do own up to making myself play them out of ego to an extent, because of goading by others when I should have just ignored that kind of negative motivation. That's on me and I'm not trying to say otherwise. And in hindsight, my interest in videogames in general started to wane a lot in the time period after playing through Dark Souls 2. Doing that to myself might have contributed to it, but then again a lot of things could have contributed to it.  

 

8 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

 

  1. This heavily depends per game. What is true however is that most games nowadays rely on a PBR (Physically Based Rendering) pipeline. Every asset is modelled after real-world parameters, as opposed to the previous generation where an artist made an approximation through textures. Because PBR requires a standard lighting model, you will get that a lot of games do tend to look similar. This isn't new: Unreal Engine 3, of the previous generation, was often accused of looking ''samey'' for similar reasons, as its default lighting model had a very specific look. Later in its shelf life, you would see titles that dramatically changed the lighting, like Borderlands or Bioshock Infinite. Artstyle and lighting is a key factor in how a game looks, more than anything else. Even low quality textures can look good from a general sense if they are lit properly.
  2. Name some examples. We have gained physical interactions through physics, elaborate RPG systems and high class AI. Animation wise its not even comparable. There is some truth to be found regarding stagnation, which is what i think you are referencing. Physics engines still act like they did in 2004. But there are outliers. Something like Yedoma Globula, which represents a world made by Mandelbrot fractals, is something wholly different.
  3. This is a personal impression that i do not believe is grounded in practice. See the above on why asset work is much more complex these days. Lighting a floor correctly is really difficult, the same goes for interaction with objects on floors and what not. If anything else, these days it is much more about nuance than big progressions. Just because something looks simple, does not mean it is - And it usually isn't.
  4. I feel this plays again a part with the rising complexity of games. I'd like to hear more on what you mean by this however, as this is not instantly clear.
  5. Raytracing, both in visual and audio circles, is quite something new and it requires a compeltely new rendering pipeline to enable fully. As cards are based on rasterization, they need dedicated tech to process rays - See RTX.
  6. So, you are essentially admitting here that your disappointment with current games is a you problem - Because you are comparing it to the games of days past. The gaming industry is an evolving beast, what worked in the 90s simply can't work today. The whole reason Duke Nukem Forever had a 15 year development run is because 3DR operated on that 90s mentality, instead of modernizing their personnel structure. What you want, is a throwback to an age that simply would not work in today's industry anymore. I realize that this is a cold shoulder to give, but i think its equally cold to believe in something that cannot exist in today's world.

 

1. I think my point is the art of making games has become incredibly more complex, and you've noted a lot of the reasons why and I'm not a tech person at all, and I think I just want to bluntly state that all the points you make here, the results, what we get out of them, is what I question. I mean you point out things like animation systems but animation in a game is a means to an end. What's special about the "ends" we're getting at this point? I'm struggling to see that. 

 

2. Elaborate RPG systems? I feel like on that particular point the onus should be examples from you, because these systems are just facsimiles from games played with pen and paper. (An activity that I myself am getting into which I think is quite a bit better than videogames for a number of reasons) If anything I see that stuff is put in games where it shouldn't be, turning them into repetitive skinner boxes. To be honest its the same again as the last point, you seem to be technologically savvy, and you seem to place value in that by itself, in things like Asset Creation by itself. But these are tools. The end experience is about design. Now I feel like an example I could draw to is Resident Evil 2. A game I thought was well made. I still feel incredibly unimpressed by it because I don't think it did anything that hasn't been done before, I'd even say there's not much there that couldn't have been done back when the original was made, if it was a true 3D game of the time. Oh, I would have looked a lot more basic, obviously, but there's not much in the game from a design perspective that couldn't have been implemented in some way. Kind of like Doom 2016's glory kills, a pretty good mechanic, was very quickly implemented in the originals by several mods, and functions in the same manner, only more limited in animations. I'm not going to take away Doom 2016's implementation of it, good idea, good mechanic. But nothing mind blowing either. I'd pick to play Doom 1 and 2 over it. It's not that these games fail, its that the cost for their success is questionable to me. I don't even think you're challenging what I said, so much as pointing out I just feel a particular way about it, which is fair enough. 

 

3. Yeah, it is a personal opinion, and I feel everything you say here only reinforces how I feel on the matter, that we're constantly giving more for less results in a pragmatic sense. 

 

4. Yes, rising complexity has sapped games of their simple and direct immediacy. Even Doom 2016 was a victim of this, oh sure it made jokes about how it had a story and screw that story with the early scenes but then it still stopped the gameplay several times to have the story, and Doom Eternal is probably just going to go with the usual cut scenes and such (an improvement if they're skippable at least). Rather than getting into a debate over the merits though, with this point I just want simple pick up and play experiences that are more abstract, which by what I mean is they are more distanced from the concept of trying to simulate a particular experience in more detail relying on more investment from the player, and that is simply what I prefer at this point. You play something like Classic Doom or Contra, its just an immediate, tactile challenge which relies on simpler contexts to achieve their aims of engagement, and this simplicity in itself can be stimulating. I think Dusk is a good example, where there is a lot of atmosphere and there is more to it than just strictly a shooting game, and I feel as the product of basically one person (and a second for the music) it's not mind blowing either, but, it makes a lot of good choices which have cool results, and its modesty is something I really respect about it. You do get that personal touch from it that simple can't be there with big productions.  

 

 5. I know a little about Rasterisation and Ray tracing. Ray Tracing is probably what will address a real problem as I think the reason I think a lot of cutting edge games look outright ugly, mainly the ones going for realism, is because the lighting is just not complex enough to truly give an impression of realism. I only see what it fails to do rather than what it does, but I really find it impossible to ignore, its very blatant to me. But technology marches on. I get that.  

 

6. I think I spent my whole post assuming this is a "me" problem. However, I want to completely disagree with your point that what I want doesn't exist, because what I want does in fact exist now. It doesn't exist within the AAA gaming industry, it exists outside of it. But it is there. And really that's where I should take my solace. Rather than feel any real regrets, I should just embrace the positives, and support the people who make what I want.

 

Yeah I'm not sure much was accomplished here, but thanks, I appreciate that perspective you've brought to it. My heads a bit more clear than yesterday, and its telling me to accept my feelings and move on. Like maybe get on with those writing dreams I keep telling myself I have. 

 

@seed Sorry to hear about the Tinnitus. I have to say the volume of music you listen to based on examples like say that list you made in that thread before is almost intimidating to me. I probably feel a gradual need to find new things, but I also know for a fact I can fall in absolute love with a song and get so much from it for years and thousands of listens, and I'm very grateful for that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by hybridial

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I see what you mean, I'll take a short arcade-style game over a long, drawn out story-driven affair any day. Even those that draw heavy inspiration from older games I enjoyed (I couldn't get into Dishonoured at all the way I did Thief, for instance. The whole game went by like a blur and I can't remember much about it :p)

 

Anyway...

On 3/6/2020 at 9:51 PM, hybridial said:

I very much disliked Dark souls 1 and 2.

 

ibzAHJO.png

 

 

 

9 minutes ago, hybridial said:

 

Okay the gamer thing becoming such a dirty word is literally news to me. I played videogames since I was a child, I'm a gamer.

 

 

Don't worry about it, idea that "gamer" is a dirty word just some detritus from the more influential parts of the internet *cough reddit tumblr twitter *cough* that's washed up on our ancient shores. sacrelige, i say!

 

 

 

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18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

Okay the gamer thing becoming such a dirty word is literally news to me. I played videogames since I was a child, I'm a gamer. Maybe get over yourselves.

 

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

maybe I should have adopted a different tact. 

You definitely should have. I do not really feel compelled to go into superfluous detail because of this introduction. I didn't mean any ill will with my primary statement and it sucks you took it as personally as you did.

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

Based on what you do point out later in your post, I should have maybe been less general in what I said about AAA games developers. Its really the major publishing houses, and its where the decisions are made, it comes to down to their business practices. I find it difficult to have any other view in light of what Activision-Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Ubi Soft, Tecmo-Koei and others get up to, be it micro-transactions, loot boxes (a matter which is gaining traction as a legal issue) or just gouging customers in general however they can. Then there's all the stuff you hear about crunch times and so on. There might be some companies who are generally better about these things, but its common nowadays. 

So basically you can't elaborate the why, except that you mention that it comes down to business practices - Which i agree with. But you gotta understand who makes those deals. Its not the majority of people who work on a game.

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

I didn't like them because I did not enjoy playing them.

This is saying the same thing twice. If you didn't like DS1, why did you play DS2? Its not like the gameplay would alter significantly as that's not part of the Dark Souls core gameplay loop. I also find that this does little to support your original notion of AAA games, if its basically ''I didn't like them, because i did not enjoy playing them.''

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

 1. I think my point is the art of making games has become incredibly more complex, and you've noted a lot of the reasons why and I'm not a tech person at all, and I think I just want to bluntly state that all the points you make here, the results, what we get out of them, is what I question. I mean you point out things like animation systems but animation in a game is a means to an end. What's special about the "ends" we're getting at this point? I'm struggling to see that. 

Its fine to question why things the way they are, but if you are going to question things like that, then i do have to expect a rudimentary understanding of that what you are questioning.

In the case of animation systems, this has been so dramatically improved compared from the days of old that such alone has been a significant upgrade to back then. It is likely that you are simply used to these refined animations, and prefer the less refined implementations of the past.

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

2. Elaborate RPG systems? I feel like on that particular point the onus should be examples from you, because these systems are just facsimiles from games played with pen and paper.

If you are going to focus on one buzzword and then suggest i should provide examples, then this discussion will go south real fast. With an elaborate RPG system i could mean something like The Elder Scrolls or Cyberpunk. Despite the increased visual complexity, they do deliver a wildly varied experience. Is it as elaborate as the Might and Magic RPG's of the 90's? No. But again, those were, quite literally, ''simpler times''.
 

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

To be honest its the same again as the last point, you seem to be technologically savvy, and you seem to place value in that by itself, in things like Asset Creation by itself. But these are tools. The end experience is about design.

Modern tools enable new designs. See Portal for one implementation of this. Prey attempted something similar in the 90s and ended up being unable to do so because of technical constraints. So new designs may require new technical requirements.

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

3. Yeah, it is a personal opinion, and I feel everything you say here only reinforces how I feel on the matter, that we're constantly giving more for less results in a pragmatic sense.

I feel you want to get to back to an era in gaming that cannot exist as it was anymore.

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

 

4. Yes, rising complexity has sapped games of their simple and direct immediacy.

Fortunately, old skool games are on the rise whose gameplay goals are about simple and direct immediacy. Something like Dusk or Apocryph come to mind. Hell, you even mention the first tile yourself.

18 minutes ago, hybridial said:

6. I think I spent my whole post assuming this is a "me" problem. However, I want to completely disagree with your point that what I want doesn't exist, because what I want does in fact exist now. It doesn't exist within the AAA gaming industry, it exists outside of it. But it is there.

Its called older titles and retro games. That's the basic gist of your point.

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8 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

It's the hype that always turns me off an upcoming game release, more specifically, fake hype.

You get these YouTubers who are just trying to cash in on a game as it was just released or is being released soon and they make a video about it, which is fine as that's what YT is about, but the fact that they have to lie about it and claim to have been fans of the game series from the beginning is what irks me.

These people make videos about games they claim to have been fans of for years, but their videos actually reveal how little they actually know about what they're talking about.

 

I didn't pay much attention to Doom 2016 before it was released and to be honest I still haven't managed to get into it as much as the previous games in the series.

This is so important. I hardly watch any videogame Youtubers, and my enjoyment of "AAA" games has improved a lot.

 

If something big in videogames happen, like Doom Eternal getting announced, I'll just go watch Joel's reaction VoD off his streams. Maybe I'll watch some Jimquisition like say when Blizzard tanked all public trust in them. And to cap it off maybe some indepth-journalism channels, like George WEEDman's Super Bunnyhop, or Ahoy. But that's it. Fuck all those clickbait motherfuckers that make 4 videos a day on Doom Eternal, and then you click on it and it's them just speculating bullshit based on a 5 second zoomed in videoclip of footage that was already released 2 months ago.

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16 hours ago, hybridial said:

 

@seed Sorry to hear about the Tinnitus. I have to say the volume of music you listen to based on examples like say that list you made in that thread before is almost intimidating to me. I probably feel a gradual need to find new things, but I also know for a fact I can fall in absolute love with a song and get so much from it for years and thousands of listens, and I'm very grateful for that. 

 

No problem.

 

I prefer to slowly and gradually discovering new things as well, but anyway, the point there was that the thirst never stops, which is awesome, always up for something new. The problem is that it's very time-consuming and frustrating, depending on your standards and whatnot.

 

BTW the wall-of-text got even bigger :D . I am still actively updating it with bands I've recently remembered or just discovered. Hopefully nothing is repeating because I am really not keeping track of that.

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too many coments to read, so i will simply write what was probably already written by the others (and, of course, all about myself, because i love to write about myself).

 

from my PoV, everything is wrong with so-called "industry", and "AAA-studios". nobody there cares about their work anymore. executives never cared about games at all, only about money. and engineers/artists don't have enough resources to care (we all know what sweatshops AAA studios are).

 

execs usually know nothing about videogames (and about any art in a broader sense), so they demand the only thing they can evaluate: graphics. after all, people playing videogames for the K00L GrafikS, right? oh, yeah, and don't forget Teh Story, because videogames are all about picture, so we should do what Hollywood does, they know everything about selling moving pictures! nobody will play the game if it have less than two hours of cutscenes these days!

 

ah, and about new dooms. let's face it: they are not special. the devs dared to throw away some "modern and necessary things", like hour-long cutscenes and "realism". that's great. but doom2016 is a mediocre game. it is good only because others are worser, not because it is good by itself. if it wouldn't have "doom" logo, nobody will remembe it after two years. nothing special. that's why i don't care about doom2016, and i care even less about eternal.

 

tl;dr: "AAA" sux.

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48 minutes ago, ketmar said:

doom2016 is a mediocre game.

 

I find that I both agree with this and don't agree with it at the same time. I mean I do think care went into it as an action experience, and I appreciate that, when a lot of so called modern "action" games are slow and tedious and just bland, the fact Doom 2016 is as fast and frenetic as it is is quite admirable. It's most certainly not a Gears of War, Halo or Uncharted. 

 

Where I have issues is connected with what you said "in two years nobody will remember it." That's not going to be true, its done enough that a lot of people will remember it, but for me personally, I do think its lacking in replay value. It kind of has long tedious levels especially further in. It's not as pick up and play as classic Doom is and its not as interesting. And I did just genuinely hate almost all the boss fights which were gimmicky and tedious. 

 

I find it hard to identify why I find Quake 2 quite replayable, I feel its the closest direct analogue to what Doom 2016 is, and Doom 2016 is not, but for some reason that is the case for me. I do think to an extent the more abstract approach to graphics and level design is just more appealing to me. 

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sure, i have nothing to back up my words about d2016 lifetime, i just feel that if we'll take away Doom name from it, it won't last long. original Doom is better 3d action game, Painkiller is better arena shooter. i generally don't like arena shooters, but i still like to play Painkiller occasionally. dunno, i never wanter to replay d2016 (or even finish it). it just doesn't "click" for me. sure, it is still better than any "military shooter" out there, but...

 

anyway, what i really tried to say (and didn't managed to make it clear) is that i am very sad that it is enough to put a little fun (in a gameplay sense) into the game to make it stand out of the crowd today. "videogame industry" is dead, and it smells very bad. just like any other "entertainment industry" out there.

 

p.s.: btw, thanks for your avatar. i am going to watch that animation (no, not simply because i see bOObs there! ;-).

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2 hours ago, hybridial said:

Where I have issues is connected with what you said "in two years nobody will remember it." That's not going to be true, its done enough that a lot of people will remember it, but for me personally, I do think its lacking in replay value. It kind of has long tedious levels especially further in. It's not as pick up and play as classic Doom is and its not as interesting. And I did just genuinely hate almost all the boss fights which were gimmicky and tedious. 

 

You're by far not the only one seeing a problem here, and it is indeed a valid point.

 

By its nature and emphasis on arena style combat with all the lockdowns occurring everywhere, it will eventually get stale and boring, so chances are, once you've seen everything once or twice, you're done with it til the next game. The combat is pretty much the sole reason one might return for more afterwards, or missing bits of story and lore.

 

Comparing it with trash kinda is treason tbh:p .

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Excuse my post if this isn't exactly what you were getting at. Though the OP came off as a little scattered to me, I think I understand the general gist of what they're trying to say. It might get kinda long but eh whatever. (Also anyone with a Devilman Lady avatar is in their full right to call themselves an edgelord. )

 

I'm around your age and I was given my own PC at a very young age. My father taught me how to navigate MS-DOS so I could get into Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, etc, and he also owned a few consoles like the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive is a cooler name) and SNES so by and large I ended up living and breathing video games. As I grew older my father and his buddies would often swap games amongst each other or download pirated copies from various bulletin boards and later on, on the internet as we would come to know it. So I always had something new to play. Something new to discover. This led to me having very flexible tastes in terms of genres as often times as a kid I can recall having up to 20 different games installed at any given time. The PC was were I spent most of my gaming and it completely captivated me to the point I ended up doing poorly in school from an early age. I got scolded and punished for bringing big game manuals to school and reading those instead of doing my work. I always had something video game related on me. I got my family nearly kicked out of a church once because I snuck in my DOOM II manual to use as a reference to try and draw the Cyberdemon. That was the last time I ever set foot in a church. Point is, I was obsessed. Probably to an unhealthy level but there it is.

 

Flash forward a little bit and my dad walks in my room with a new game: Half-Life. The obsession was about to get real. I had messed with modding games in the past, using Wolfedit or Floedit for Wolf 3D, messing with the retail levels in DETH, fucking around in Build for Duke 3D, my dad got that Duke Nukem 3D level design handbook for Christmas one year and I probably read it over a dozen times front to back. Half-Life though... Half-Life changed my entire view on modding. After I beat Half-Life for the first time, I instantly wanted more. I went on the internet and quickly found communities and started downloading mods in bulk. They Hunger, Azure Sheep, Point of View, Heart of Darkness, Science and Industry, Sven-Coop, any and all. I fired up Hammer and actually sat down to try and learn it, I grabbed Milkshape 3D and constantly bugged modelers in the community. I started playing Counter-Strike and that created another obsession.

 

Once I played Half-Life, I went from obsessed about playing games, to obsessed about EVERYTHING about games. I was determined to enter the game industry (HA.) from that point on. (That dream did die.)

 

Growing up, I had a lot of games, yeah, but we were not rich. I was always a bit behind in terms of hardware. So I didn't always get to play the latest and greatest. I still remember struggling to play the FEAR demo when that dropped on FilePlanet. I played that demo so many times though on the lowest settings. I grew to appreciate games that may not have had cutting edge graphics and rendering methods, but they had great aesthetic qualities, great art direction, and now to this day I end up thinking a lot of older games are more pleasing to look at than a lot of modern games. I adore the way Quake looks, or how about Metal Slug? Symphony of the Night? Super Metroid? FF8? Yoshi's Island? Sonic the Hedgehog? Star Fox? I can pull a random game out of my ass, like Steel Gunner, or Crossed Swords, or Crash Bandicoot, and just looking at games like that makes me want to play them as opposed to something more modern.

 

Anyways, time goes on, I play and mod and dream and breath Half-Life for a long time, almost a decade. Until one day I realize I'm so burnt out on it that I can't stomach playing it for more than 30 minutes nowadays. My life takes some dark turns soon after, and while the passion is always there, I can't really focus on gaming much for a few years. Then, in 2015, my life got better, and I once again dove back in. Except something was wrong.

 

I would buy all these new games I missed, new games coming out, real cheap on sale. My Steam library had hundred of games. I would sit down and scroll through them. Eyeing them. And I would just... feel nothing. I wasn't excited to play any of them. In the back of my mind, I was sure they were probably cool. I was sure they were probably a spectacle, and there have been modern games I have enjoyed a lot like Bayonetta, SF 4, Ruiner, MGS 5, and lots of great indies, too many to name. But my partner had to practically push me to even play DOOM '16. I played it. I liked it. And it stopped there. It's a good game. But I just don't feel the same drive, the same passion to talk about it, gush about it, dissect it, put it under a magnifying glass, it's just... there. This game that was great and fun but also most likely cost 90 million dollars to make (or something close to that) and didn't really make any groundbreaking impressions on me? It was like a magazine. I flipped through it, liked some of the art, got excited at a couple points, and then I put it down.

 

I feel the same way about DOOM Eternal. I'm sure it will be a fucking blast, I'll probably end up getting it eventually and playing it. I got DOOM '16 in 2017 for $19. I'll probably do the same for Eternal. But I don't know. Games feel so... disposable now? Again, some great modern games are out there, RE2 Remake, DMC 5, Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out soon which I actually am excited for. So excited it's the third game I've ever pre-purchased. But I don't know. Gaming is different now. They cost a fucking ridiculous amount to make, and the teams making them inflated to the point that I think it's honestly very fair to say most did lose their "soul.", because when you have a small team, that gives everyone more opportunity to inject their character, their personality, their passions into a game. It's the reason DOOM turned out to be this Thrash Metal, Aliens, Evil Dead infused glorious mess.

 

For a few years, I was worried my love for gaming was done. It honestly depressed me. I felt like something must be wrong with me. I loved games so much, how could the passion just die out of nowhere like that? I thought it was over though. Until one day, I decided to go backwards instead of forwards.

 

I neglected to mention, but in 2010 to about 2013? I got super interested in computers. My obsession went from the games themselves, to modding games and game design, to the machines. I started doing my own research on computers. Apples, Commodores, the ZX Spect, Atari, Japanese computers like the MSX, FM-7, PC-98, X68, all of it. I became a sponge. After about 2013 though, I learned pretty much everything I wanted to. Like I said, I was a PC gamer through-and-through. Didn't think much about the console side of things.

 

Well, in 2018, I started poking around the emulation scene, I hadn't checked in on it in years and years, so I was curious how far we've come. Well, that snowballed rapidly, not only did it remind me why I loved gaming, I now have an obsession with learning everything I could about console technology now, and arcade technology. It created more obsessions, and re-ignited my love for gaming. It was probably around that time I finally dawned on me, that I'm probably more-so a retro gamer than anything else. That's why there's entire communities based on that. We are not alone in our thinking. Gaming was a radically different time. With radically different expectations.

 

Perhaps you're in the same boat? I've been having so much fun discovering new old games I never knew about. Because the level of quality, the expectations, they get met far more to what I expect a game to meet with older titles. So many things factored into the game industry changing the way it did, better or worse. Inflated budgets, inflated teams, social media, this always on-line attitude, streaming, gaming's rapidly increasing popularity, a huge shift to MP only focus, major pubs with their DLCs, Season Passes, loot boxes, piece meal fuckery, DRM, over calculated bullshit. All of these things have the potential to harm creativity, to dull passion, and like @HorrorMovieGuy mentioned, kill a game's soul.

 

Older titles and arcade games had great art direction, great aesthetics, killer fucking soundtracks, good action, they aimed to impress you, the customer, the fan. They aimed to wow you. Captivate you. Triple A's still aim to do that, but now with a lot of asterisks attached. If you are in the same position I was in, do what I did. Go back. Discover something new from a time when gaming was as you remembered it. Games are fucking awesome. I'm so overwhelmed with the amount of cool shit I know I haven't seen now, but it's great. Much better than feeling like it's all done with forever now. I still play modern games, it's just harder for them to reach my standards and pass my bullshit detector. And that's okay. I feel content.

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8 hours ago, CARRiON said:

(Also anyone with a Devilman Lady avatar is in their full right to call themselves an edgelord. )

 

And that's not even getting into it being my favourite thing ever that I was obsessed with since I found out it existed thanks to the internet (about a year and a half before it got an American DVD release which I imported at full price back when 4 episodes came on full price discs pretty much), or the fact its the subject of my current writing project (doing a full novelised adaptation). :P

 

Thanks for the detailed response, it was interesting to read. I'm trying to think back if any individual game did for me what Half Life did for you, and I don't think there was a single one but there was maybe a group of them, perhaps, which definitely included Resident Evil, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (Lucifer's Call here), Ocarina of Time, among others. Its strange but I only recently played through System Shock 2 but that felt like it belongs to that group, so maybe its not too late for others to add to it. I was a console gamer growing up and only really got into the PC scene later. 

 

One additional thought I had about Doom 2016. Doom is about Hell. Hell in Doom 2016 is incredibly bland, and for a game set on Mars (or one of Mars' moons to be pedantic), its hell basically looks like Mars again just with some medieval occult things lying around. It's very lacking in character compared to the hell of Doom 1 and 2 where there's a lot more unpleasantness, far more reminders of it being an unholy pit of suffering. I think that comes down to again, that small team that made it being willing to go there, to really give the game a horror focus that I'd say Doom 2016 entirely lacks. 

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On 3/6/2020 at 10:51 PM, hybridial said:

A.K.A. why I am not excited for Doom Eternal :D

 

The other day I decided the best way to gauge how interested I am in Doom Eternal was to take the time to download Doom 2016 and play it for a bit and basically ask the question, it's going to be more of this, with some added stuff, do I really want that much to play that? I came to the conclusion that I didn't

 

..... Am I just going through an inevitable phase because I'm getting old? And I just really lame for not wanting to play these new games?

Sounds very similar to my situation right now heh

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1 hour ago, hybridial said:

Hell in Doom 2016 is incredibly bland

 

Yeap, also this. Out of all Doom games, I really disliked the rocky swamp take on Hell they did in 2016. So glad they're shifting back to the organic mess of the classics for Eternal.

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7 minutes ago, seed said:

Yeap, also this. Out of all Doom games, I really disliked the rocky swamp take on Hell they did in 2016. So glad they're shifting back to the organic mess of the classics for Eternal.

They did have some organic body parts in various parts of the hell levels in 2016 as well but nothing terribly eerie, just blood pools and ribs, best it got was in one Multiplayer level. can you give me a link to a hell footage of DE? I must have missed it if they already showed it.

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4 minutes ago, sluggard said:

They did have some organic body parts in various parts of the hell levels in 2016 as well but nothing terribly eerie, can you give me a link to a hell footage of DE? I must have missed it if they already showed it.

 

It wasn't Hell itself, it was Earth when it started merging with it.

 

I think it was this video I was thinking about, from last year's E3.

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38 minutes ago, seed said:

It wasn't Hell itself, it was Earth when it started merging with it..

Yeah I saw that, it doesn't really give me those eerie vibes, sounds silly but It doesn't feel strange or bizarre, I don't know how to exactly describe it, but that's just me, I don't want to sound too demanding.

Edited by sluggard

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