[Folsom]

Has anyone else been feeling this?

I think it mostly boils down to hyper-realism and bloated worlds.

Just recently I decided to try a few games again. Max Payne 3 was on my list. It's one of the worst games I've ever, ever, played. One and two where gold, I played them on all the difficulty settings. Why? Well not only do you get a different story but it was to solve problems by being creative with the gun fights. There were so many options on how you could conduct a gun fight. It was almost limitless. That's because you were not waiting for Max's drunk sloth ass to jump when you told him, to slowly pry himself from the floor in a gun fight, or limited on where you could jump or stand because you took designated steps of a fixed distance every time. Sure his feet look real in Max Payne 3, but you couldn't micro-step like you can in real life and could do in 1&2 by barely tapping the move key. It's less realistic just because the feet look more realistic. Can you imagine if real humans walked that way? The world would fall apart. Also the new game forces you to move on without picking up ammo so you're always out. He talks you to death about how he has no time. Everywhere you go feels cramped as shit, and you can't jump over anything, let alone jump without bullet time. In 1&2 I use to jump/lean over counters to shoot people, then launch a moltiv back at them while crouching (far enough to not get shot instead of like a dipshit with my head sticking out) then switch to the saw'd off  double barrel, carefully jumping into a crowd of dudes and running train on them like I was Christian Bale in Equilibrium; spinning, ducking, bullet time, and diving if time allowed. It was fun, took a LOT of skill to do right (learning curve involved a lot of death), but I was an absolute magi-surgeon at doing it. It made me feel like a badass when I did it right. The only reason I could do it was because there was so much freedom in the game for me to decide how and what I was doing. It took a long time to develop the ability. 3 can't offer this because it's extremely constrained to some slow ass pace where I'm waiting for the game to do it's thing, leaving no room for my own creativity. Most of the time in 3 I'm praying that I place every bullet because I'll run out, and not concerning myself with did I make the right choices for how I want the fire fight to go down, because bullet time is basically only useful for per-designated moments where you don't have time to kill someone or the mission fails, not to solve the problem of how you're going to kill specific strategically positioned persons, or entire mobs of them. You aren't solving problems, you're just asking for enough time to give more bullets than they do.

How is realism better when I spend 50% of the game waiting for stuff that happens no matter what? I can go throw myself on a floor and pick myself up slowly in real life. I can actually jump over more things and be more acrobatic than the game. I can peak around corners instead of sticking my entire upper body out. Why would I want a shit version in a video game of that? Why don't I want the majority of a video game to be my input, my creativity, and their story? This realism, where you spend 70% of the game waiting for your character to catch his breath, running errands, reloading like a stoned inept sloth, letting recoil make a gun flail in the air that actually kicks like a .22lr in real life, etc, isn't what makes a game fun! It's there, but no one ever started playing because of that. These things sound like an interesting idea, but the games people actually like and play the most don't play them up as much as their peers. Counter-Strike is still huge and the only "realistic" thing it has going is the recoil patterns (yes, patterns, like real guns and not the random diarrhea spray game tend towards). There are occasions where a realism attribute is used  to help balance a game, but anymore they're just thrown in with no concern for balance, because it's "better".

You want realism? Take away the mini-map you caudled babies... Back in the day online play meant walking to fool people, sneaking up on people, mystery, surprise. I use to do stuff like just stand in awkward places because no one would suspect it, back when going around a corner was a BIG DEAL instead of knowing where the dude is at and just hoping you're quicker than they are. It was fun, very fun. But you had to actually play to earn the reward of being able to not just get shot in the face because you played hero. Team work won more battles because there were options to create problems, and problems to be solved; that includes exploits of certain types. If you knew some dude was standing on a light fixture not big enough for a human to be on, in a room, and you had to get in there... Well you had to solve a way around the fact that he positioned himself in a very difficult places to overcome with the options you had. Did you use a grenade? Distraction? Did you have a teammate sacrifice themselves? That was back when a map was big enough that a group of people could stand in an area like in real life, instead of everyone being so big a bulky it doesn't make sense and you either are or not right there. It's like they're trying to reduce the possibility of someone hiding in a corner, because they're too big to not also be in the corner.

When I played counter strike I was so familiar with the Desert Eagle that I could fire it very fast but at the right time, because I knew the recoil pattern of how the gun would bounce up then down and come back to rest; which meant firing it precisely when it was coming back down, but not before it dipped below the crosshair posistion. Too fast of firing the recoil would just go up, to slow it'd be up and down, super slow would be normal, but just right.. it was a drill. I earned that skill, and it's more similar to real life where familiarity allows the reduction of recoil affects on speed and accuracy. What's not similar is shooting a gun so many times in the game it gives you a reward of reduced recoil. You didn't develop a skill, you just played a game a lot. That's lame. It gives you the perception that you "developed a skill" in the game, but that's because there's no room for you as a person to develop serious skill and experience in the game (especially with 100% random accuracy with recoil even point blank missing). There isn't room in the map or the mechanics.

Why do people play old games still? Why do they love them, and often not play new ones? Why is HL2 so damn, like maybe the best regarded single player game, and it doesn't basically any realism stuff in it? Why did Far Cry 3 revert to being much more like Far Cry 1 than the dreadfully hyper-realistic, spend all your time catching your breath from sprinting ten feet, Far Cry 2?

Are people never going to ask, is it better?

*AVP the original game is so legendary that it was re-leased on Steam like 10 years later. The humans can run very fast endlessly and carry an arsenal of badass guns to combat swarms of aliens that move at light speed, but are fragile to the firepower. But being a human is the scariest thing ever because you can't see much or motion track. The aliens can be very creative on how to sneak up on you. It's adrenaline pumping fun that can make you soil yourselves scared to death on a bright sun shining day at a 1pm after eating a turkey sandwich. There's no mini-map, it's you and dealing with a nightmare. Your life is precious and can be torn from you literally. You're small in a big industrial setting, and there's opportunity for you to move everywhere, and be moved against everywhere. If you had to run a mile as an alien in this game it'd take you 2.75 minutes. If Max Payne 3 did it'd take 15 minutes. This game is the anti-thesis to current games. A friend and I use to play co-opt sorta like the zombie games today, online. But it was adrenaline pumping and took coordination to manage the alien swarm coming down upon you (there could be 30 of them or more) in such a way that you could reach some ammunition to continue killing them. If you didn't change directions and watch the walls, even out in the open, you'd be dead. One dude might do management with a flame thrower and grenades to keep them off you as you ran into a bunker to get ammo, trying not to die himself. The game always, always, posed extreme risk to your characters well being. You didn't get shot a hundred times, them wait 20 seconds for your character to bandage himself, while some guy you're fighting is just on the other side of a shipping container doing the same.

*Why isn't the punishment of time consumption based on my actions, instead of a bunch of crap I have to wait for all the time? I use to play Joint Operations. It'd have 200 players on a map that covered a few miles. You had to work as teams in vehicles to get somewhere and not spend 5 minutes running (no huffing and puffing), your life was valuable. However your actions decided if you died or not, so you determined if you were going to spend all your time running. It wasn't a "built in" aspect of something to suck the life out of you, but a problem to be solved by taking strategic points, team vehicle use, and valuing your life. It was better not to engage at times in order to be able to fight more without the punishment of death. You didn't respawn in the action and spend all your time with the unavoidable aiming, up & down, huff & puff, just so you could have the option of standing in a handful of places and hoping you're a quicker trigger pull. If you wanted you could go hide in the grass and snipe people, or run through the grass hills near by with a knife shanking the snipers. You could swim, get in a bunker, hide in foliage, shoot rockets, fly a helicopter, flank 30 people at a time because you ran around the long way undetected for 2.5 miles. Rewards and consequences to time management, not waiting around developing grey hairs while the game is doing crap you have to wait on so you can play who pulled the trigger first but only slowly because you can't manage the recoil by counter-acting it via the pattern it has, like in real life when you try to hold the gun down or start by firing a little low to kick up dust n rocks, "splash".

I could probably rant for awhile, but seriously, I can't be the only one. And I'm not going to do a MMORPG...

[Woodsea]

I agree that games are getting dumbed down and twitched up.  Have you played Mass Effect all the way through?  Great fracking series and the game play just got better with each game, plus the storyline was superb.  Each weapon and power was unique. 

[Folsom]

Not yet. Playing Crysis right now. It's pretty fun so far.

I beat Aliens: Colonial Marines and thought it was a cool game except sorta easy and slow, bubbly, but with a decent story and what not. Also beat Dishonored and it was similar, kinda cool story but something with the Unreal engine is kinda a slug.

Crysis is much better. It looks better, and plays better. Far Cry 3 didn't have great fights, they sorta sucked, but it was an ok game.

I can't play too new of games on the laptop.

[Folsom]

Well it's fun but... I did just discover a guy in a tech suit fires a pump shotgun slower than a ten year old kid.

People trained with shotguns can fire more than once a second, on a pump. Kinda dumb.

[thunderbrick]

Has anyone considered that PC games may have run their course, and people are looking for new sources of entertainment?   

Disclosure:  I'm not a gamer;  last game I played was Space Invaders on an early Mac, over 20 years ago.

[Folsom]

People love consoles, but what's your point? It's not money, it's choices being made with computer games. I like console games to a point, but the controller just isn't serious gaming by comparison. It's like going from an mp3 to DSD.

Plus console games waste your time just as much PC games but at a slower speed. The games are often the same, just console is a low graphic slower version.

[wushuliu]

Answer is very simple: story. The quality of the writing has not kept pace with the visual effects. Now that multiplayer is mega big business there's now a bona fide excuse to ignore story altogether. I play games one every 2 or 3 years because it takes that long for any decent entries with a compelling story to be made. I'm the kind of dude that wants a good reason for popping off heads with shotguns or electrocuting with lightning hands or whatever. I can only think of two games off the bat that to me qualify as brilliant: Half Life and Bioshock. Baldur's Gate as well. But that's kind of it.

Fact is most males are perfectly happy to just blow stuff up with no real reason. And I single out males on purpose because of the other mega huge reason why games just get crappier and crappier (whilst looking better and better) - they need stronger female roles.

Video games have been around long enough now that they are running out of excuses. But of course what's going to happen is they will circle the wagons, double down on what they've beein doing until the revenues make them do otherwise.

I know someone who worked for a well known game company and he told me the story, writing, etc. are dead last on the priority list. And it shows.

[werd]

Its the only thing i play on PC are MMOs. Forums and party play is far better on PC than on consoles including popular console games that are sold by Steam.

Bailed out of wOw but will be going back for the expansion. 

All my shooters are all Xbox 1

[barrows]

Games are just games.  Real life is much more interesting.  Take up somethingn real, try rock climbing, or backcountry skiing, or perhaps BASE jumping if you want a real experience which will actually enrich your life.

[JackD201]

…..or take it! 

Seriously though I took my nephew to a go-kart track. He's a major gamer but the kid was not interested in driving on the track. I told him the real thing is much more exciting than the driver sims. He got his helmet on, got on the track and LOVED it. Gotta pull these kids out of their comfort zone.

That said, I don't find airsoft and paintball tournaments  much fun anymore with these bad knees. I'll take the video games these days.

[Folsom]

I tried Space Marine Warhammer 40k.... OMG boring.

[vegaobscura]

Has anyone considered that PC games may have run their course, and people are looking for new sources of entertainment?   

Disclosure:  I'm not a gamer;  last game I played was Space Invaders on an early Mac, over 20 years ago.

Definitely not. PC gaming is alive and well. It's just that the interest has been shifting. New games like Minecraft and MOBAs have taken over the FPS market and that leads to a new type of hardcore interest. It leads to longer matches (Hour+ games), but less of them, unless you're going on a binge.

But here's another thing to consider: people like playing video games as much as they like watching video games.

I'm not particularly good at LoL or Dota 2, but log onto twitch and you can currently see that over 115,000 people are watching League matches, over 105,000 people are watching Dota 2 matches, and over 40,000 people are watching Hearthstone and Counter-Strike.

Why? Because you can kind-of watch, absorb some of the game, and also do other things at the same time. You can watch a competitive match (like a normal sports game) while you're doing other things for extra entertainment. But you don't have to give the same amount of focus you would if you were actually playing.

It's an interesting change, secondarily experiencing games. But if the rise of "Let's Plays" and walkthroughs on YouTube have taught us anything--sometimes that's more convenient. Sometimes that's more desirable, even.

[chronix112]

At least for AAA games there is A lack of any real innovation. Developers are content on phoning it in, especially with successful IPs. Just adding A new feature here and there with a slight graphical update over previous installment .