JarlFrank
I like Thief THIS much
Captive (1990) has 65 THOUSAND multi-floored dungeons and I've yet to come across any game that even comes close to that. (No, they're not randomly generated.)
How? :O
Captive (1990) has 65 THOUSAND multi-floored dungeons and I've yet to come across any game that even comes close to that. (No, they're not randomly generated.)
Captive (1990) has 65 THOUSAND multi-floored dungeons and I've yet to come across any game that even comes close to that. (No, they're not randomly generated.)
How? :O
With The Great Temple in Blood.
You list Buzz and Singstar as PS2 highlights when PS2 had Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne?There are some truly memorable titles on the PS2 like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and the Katamari games, and then later followed by gimmicky living room party games like Buzz, Singstar and Guitar Hero. You may scoff at them but they're damn fun.
Valve and Blizzard are still the only remaining AAA PC only developers
But compared to the situation before the 2001 collapse, the state of the industry is quite catastrophical.
PC gaming is more profitable than ever before yet there are virtually no PC exclusive big budget/AAA games.
These masses of people who've got into PC gaming recently are contempt playing multiplatform shit on their PCs. To them "PC master race" means better graphics, cheaper prices and being able to play the same game that console gamers play with keyboard and mouse, not games that are more mechanically complex and actually NEED the keyboard and mouse for a large amount of keybinds or fast & precise aiming.
The industry needs to return to the state where it was in the glory days, that is Western games on PC (some on Amiga) and Japanese games on SNES/Mega Drive/Turbografx/Neo Geo&Arcades and later on Saturn/PS1/N64/Dreamcast. But we all know that's not going to happen.
What's more likely is that this kickstarter incline thing is caused by 30+ year old people and old fag developers being nostalgig (with some younger, more "hardcore" gamers participating), and once those people are gone, the well will run dry for good. The young generation isn't being brought up even on consoles anymore, kids are playing games on their iPhones these days. Of course there are young kids who'll discover retro gaming on their own, thtourhg their parents or youtube and forums, but I doubt if that's a large enough demographic to fill in the gap once the old guard who was raised on 80s&90s games (or better yet worked on those games). It will increase the demand for these old kickstarter games and throw back budget titles, but I doubt it's enough for penetrating the A/AAA industry to bring to true incline to the masses. There will always be guys making indy games in their basements (Knights of the Chalice), but games like that have no large scale impact on the industry and trends in gaming.
TheGreatOne said:There are some truly memorable titles on the PS2 like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and the Katamari games, and then later followed by gimmicky living room party games like Buzz, Singstar and Guitar Hero. You may scoff at them but they're damn fun.
You list Buzz and Singstar as PS2 highlights when PS2 had Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne?
Blizzard and Valve are the only developers putting out PC exclusive AAA games like Starcraft 2. Since the release of Crysis and Witcher, I can't think of any other PC game that was made by some one else than Blizzard/Valve that was a big budget AAA game with lots of mainstream exposure. Mid budget stuff Paradox games aren't the kind of games that have enough mainstream exposure to be considered some of the biggest games of the year. In fact most games like that are downright obscure; unless you are into the specific genre, you likely won't hear/read about games like that (goes for console gaming as well)Care to revise your statement?
Start of decline, both for PC and console gaming, though the decline of PC gaming happened more rapidly.While I have certain ideas about what you may be talking about, I still want you to enlighten me of this "collapse".
I consider mac and linux to be part of PC gaming, where as IBM PCs and home computers like C64 and Atari ST were two different things. I would use computer games as an umberella term for all of them.when you say "PC exclusive" you mean "home computer exclusive". Please let me know if I'm jumping to conclusions on this one.
Not really relevant in discussion about single player games and the AAA game industry, MMOs are their own thing. LoL and DOTA are huge games but I don't really see them as being comparable to the fact that during 90s PC got a lot of high budget, high quality games that were exclusive to PCs. Everything is multiplatform these days.With that said, the biggest earning video games out there are only released on... PC and Macs. They're called "MMOs". If we expand just a little bit we get these games called "MOBAs". League of Legends? DOTA 2? How much can you imagine it cost to develop and maintain them? How much money are they making?
That we don't get big budget "AAA" PC games anymore like we did in the 90s, such as Sierra/LucasArts adventure games, Thief, Wing Commander and even those FMV atrocities.I get your point, but the inevitable question still pops up: Where's the problem?
The console controller is a bottleneck, yes, but it's still a clever little beast. I'm sure several flight simulators can be made to work perfectly fine with your average console controller.
In 90s developers were able to port Wing Commander 3 to 3DO, a console whose controller has 3 main buttons and 2 shoulder buttons. There's a lot of misguided elitism when it comes to controllers. You can do a lot with those things as long as you're willing to combine keys, and a peripheral that was intentionally designed for controlling video games (analogue stick) is superior to one that wasn't (WASD). And if a game is turn based, you can cram an almost infinite amount of of depth and complexity to a console game as long as you're willing to stare at a lot of menus and submenus (Japanese SRPGs).Excluding FPS games, which everyone knows are better with Kbrd + Mouse rather than any controller ever made, what game types that are currently enjoying (good) sales and recognition, are benefitting from having a Kbrd + Mouse control scheme, rather than a console controller?
The popularity of AVGN type shows has made a lot of younger kids look into retro gaming. But I doubt whether that's enough to raise a new generation of kids who want to change the entire industry (and not just the small budget stuff that hasn't got any mainstream visibility). I want the industry to return to the state when the most marketed and hyped "big budget" (relatively) games were also the best games.I predict that a time will come where the "gamers of today" (dependant upon the era this will occur in) realize that the games of the 80s/90s/early 00s were the big shit, and they'll scour that era for ideas and inspiration to use in the games that they'll be making in their respective eras. That's the beautiful part of history, it'll always be there and some people actually LEARN from it. Just... don't count on being alive when this happens.
You said that "there are some truly memorable titles on the PS2" and then added how they were later on followed by gimmicky living room party games. How ever you worded it, I don't see how those games are the ones that should be mentioned first when there were a lot better games on the systemRead my post again, I listed Singstar and Buzz as "gimmicky living room party games", not "highlights".
(The underlined words? Learn2spell. And I'm drunk right now.)
Like Chuck Schuldiner used to sing: practice what you preach. I misspelled those words because I was tired and in a hurry to go to bed because I'm a respectable citizen who has to get up at 6 am and has no time to be drunk in the middle of the weekNostaliga
The apex of gaming is right now, simply due to an unprecedented level of availability and accessibility.
No matter what type of game you prefer, you can find a game that you'll like and be playing it within minutes. On virtually any modern platform.
You are not limited to playing games: sitting in front of a monitor; sitting in front of the TV with a game console; squinting at a non-backlit 2" screen. Playing Baldur's Gate or The Secret of Monkey Island on a tablet while riding the train in to work? Hell, yeah.
Emulation allows for almost the entire historical catalog of games, across all platforms, to remain playable and outlive the hardware they were created for.
Good Old Games continues to release classic PC games from the past, fully patched up and configured to run on modern operating systems. No farting around with EMM386.EXE, MSCDEX.EXE, disk caches, SET BLASTER=, or trying to load your mouse driver into that high memory block between 640K and 1024K. All of this at a very reasonable price.
Looking for a physical copy of a favorite or more obscure game? eBay.
Thriving fan communities patch games that were rushed out by publishers and create mods to add new content -- often for years after the game's release. Some of them will even rewrite older gaming engines from scratch (Exult, ScummVM).
Digital distribution, targeted online marketing, and alternative models of funding (i.e. Kickstarter) have made it more feasible to produce niche games that AAA publishers are reluctant to take a risk on. And we're really just seeing the start of this.
And if you're really a narcissist, you can record every moment you spend gaming and put it up on YouTube for the whole world to see.
By that definition it's impossible for gaming to get worse unless industrialised society totally collapses. We're talking about new releases.
The apex of gaming is right now, simply due to an unprecedented level of availability and accessibility.
No matter what type of game you prefer, you can find a game that you'll like and be playing it within minutes. On virtually any modern platform.
You are not limited to playing games: sitting in front of a monitor; sitting in front of the TV with a game console; squinting at a non-backlit 2" screen. Playing Baldur's Gate or The Secret of Monkey Island on a tablet while riding the train in to work? Hell, yeah.
Emulation allows for almost the entire historical catalog of games, across all platforms, to remain playable and outlive the hardware they were created for.
Good Old Games continues to release classic PC games from the past, fully patched up and configured to run on modern operating systems. No farting around with EMM386.EXE, MSCDEX.EXE, disk caches, SET BLASTER=, or trying to load your mouse driver into that high memory block between 640K and 1024K. All of this at a very reasonable price.
Looking for a physical copy of a favorite or more obscure game? eBay.
Thriving fan communities patch games that were rushed out by publishers and create mods to add new content -- often for years after the game's release. Some of them will even rewrite older gaming engines from scratch (Exult, ScummVM).
Digital distribution, targeted online marketing, and alternative models of funding (i.e. Kickstarter) have made it more feasible to produce niche games that AAA publishers are reluctant to take a risk on. And we're really just seeing the start of this.
And if you're really a narcissist, you can record every moment you spend gaming and put it up on YouTube for the whole world to see.