What happened to computer games?

[Bad Sector]

Hahahahahaha

That was clever

[cmoreland]

Biggest problem I see is the dang E3M2 on nightmare. I hate all those nooks and crannies! I always seem to run out of ammo.

[Rizimar]

Biggest problem I see is the dang E3M2 on nightmare. I hate all those nooks and crannies! I always seem to run out of ammo.

My biggest fear would be The Icon of Sin

[Hugo]

yeah.. I feel ya! I've bought a new computer so I could play Crysis at Very High. But it wasn't any fun, neither were the other modern games.

--


I still play WAY TOO MUCH doom (mainly 2). Right now I'm trying to beat the doom 2 levels by restarting in every level;
so I start every level with only a pistol and 100% health on the nightmare skill level. It's hard.. really hard.

I've just beat 'level 7 : Dead simple'. Which was alot easier than I thought, probably the easiest of the ones I've played so far.

[Boone]

Well, I have to say one good thing about the PC:  Snapping up old classics for dirt cheap and switching the detail to max.

Neverwinter Nights: Platnium edition with Diablo2 for £15.  Both games on full detail and no problem save for applying the latest patch for Diablo2.  You could spend £40 on a PS3, Wii or 360 game and still not have decent gameplay.  Hell, I was thinking about getting FF4 DS but for a rip off price of £30 they can piss off. 

I think if you are endlessly upgrading your machine to play the latest PC game you are wasting time and money.  Wait for the game to come onto budget: by that time you save a good £15 and new patches will be released putting paid to any problems. 

Something I found recently is that I would rather play the old Metroid Prime on the gamecube than play Crysis or FPS#257 on the PC.  Even with vastly outdated hardware it actually looks better than most modern FPS on the PC.  Even with its stretched textures etc - its gameplay, attention to detail, music, huge game world...incredible.  I would rather see a FPS on the PC have a focus on design rather than taking part in the latest arms-race for the best GPU shader they can develop.  Doom3, Quake4, HalfLife2, Crysis - they are all the same shit.  You really might as well be playing Quake2 because it is the same thing but with higher polygon counts.   I just wished there were more FPS which create believeable worlds rather than repetitive levels.  Hell, I'd make one myself if I could properly program 3D games! 

But in the end, if a game is awesome to begin with then its either worth playing on lowish detail for or revisting later for when hardware has taken a dramatic leap.

[cmoreland]

Couldn't agree more Boone, in fact, they have an awesome Duke Nukem 3-D mod that makes everything very cool lookin (and in actual 3-D too, yes, even teh boobies) I've been playin that and havin a blast! "Time to kick ass and chew bubble-gum....and I'm all out of gum".

[Boone]

DOOM, DukeNukem and Dark Forces seemed to be the FPS daddies of their day. The three 'D's so to speak! ^_^

[cmoreland]

Aww man I hated the swamp/garbage level in Dark Forces! Those sh*t monsters scared the .... well, sh*t outta me poppin out of the sludge like that...*shakes fist*

[Boone]

Ah, I hear ya buddie; that level sucked donkey balls in my books and I was glad to see the back of it.

[DoomGater]

DOOM, DukeNukem and Dark Forces seemed to be the FPS daddies of their day. The three 'D's so to speak! ^_^

But the daddies have nice children and brothers: Blood, Heretic & HeXen are awful, too

[Rizimar]

Awful? I think you mean awesome!

[DoomGater]

Awful? I think you mean awesome!

Sorry, my english sucsk- you're right, of course!

You think right - Me think not.

 


l

[Woodthunder]

I'm nostalgic for the old days of pc gaming myself, sadly as gaming became more and more corporate, pc gaming rapidly shrunk, part of it is due to the fact that people don't want to pay a grand to 4 grand to play one game, maybe if pc hardware became significantly less expensive things could change, but the fact is, developers go with consoles cause that's where the money is.

I can live with consoles, as I go where the games go, but I'm sad to see that the quality of writing in games is nothing compared to old times, another negative aspect of gaming being so corporate. Fallout 3 for instance, while a great game, doesn't compare to the previous games in terms of writing.

thankfully the gaming industry will continue to evolve as new innovative ideas will potentially reshape gaming in times to come

[SuperflyJohnson]

I'm nostalgic for the old days of pc gaming myself, sadly as gaming became more and more corporate, pc gaming rapidly shrunk, part of it is due to the fact that people don't want to pay a grand to 4 grand to play one game, maybe if pc hardware became significantly less expensive things could change, but the fact is, developers go with consoles cause that's where the money is.

I can live with consoles, as I go where the games go, but I'm sad to see that the quality of writing in games is nothing compared to old times, another negative aspect of gaming being so corporate. Fallout 3 for instance, while a great game, doesn't compare to the previous games in terms of writing.

thankfully the gaming industry will continue to evolve as new innovative ideas will potentially reshape gaming in times to come

Having read Masters of Doom cover to cover a number of times, reading the classic Game Spy articles and my own attempts to play games that are more recent have given me the following thoughts on the death of modern PC gaming:

1. (From reading Masters of Doom or MoD) Around the time of the Carmack/Romero breakup it became ALL about the game engine and not about the game. Romero damn near lost everything because he wanted to keep up with Carmack's game engines even though I am yet to see a Carmack creation post Romero that ACTUALLY PLAYS. (The engines may have been cutting edge but the games themselves were long, tedious and extremely boring.) Nintendo doesn't through out their entire system and try to sell a new one after their first batch of games. The problem in the late 90's is that MANY gaming companies and programmers started thinking that if you use an engine for a game, you couldn't use that same engine again. Gamers aren't THAT bad in terms of expecting something they have never done before 100% of the time. (Or else Counterstrike wouldn't have dominated the industry for years.)

2. Three Words: ROCK STAR GAMES. While Romero may have innovated the industry with Trent Reznor producing the music for some games in the mid 90's, RSG killed the idea completely by completely overdoing it. (To a point of having soundtracks that were DOZENS of songs long.) Add this to the fact that Vice City and beyond had FAR more movie footage than gameplay. Sorry RSG, if I want to watch Miami Vice I can pop in a DVD and get the real show, not a blocky immitation. They got so big so fast doing this, (how this is considered GOOD is beyond me,) that EVERYONE seemed to be doing this. Those two elements have out and out killed video games for years.

3. Everything's been done and nobody knows what to do next. Unless they can actually duplicate the Holodeck, there's nothing to innovate and nothing to improve on. There's a HUGE market for retro gaming and Nintendo has made a mint off of repackaging and rereleasing their own classics from the 80's and 90's. On the other hand PC gaming seems very afraid of going retro. (Yet Carmack does nothing but make sequels to Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein.)

4. The industry is so loaded down with VERY serious critics who treat gaming like high art that NOBODY seems to be having fun MAKING games let alone playing them anymore. (The Romero's of the world seem to be the Last of the Mohicans in terms of programmers who love the game and aren't just rejects from Microsoft or IBM.) We need more rebels who play by their own rules and love every second of it.

If I think of anything else I'll post it but that's what I think of why we're in such a stagnated stage in gaming history right now.

[Bad Sector]

I am yet to see a Carmack creation post Romero that ACTUALLY PLAYS. (The engines may have been cutting edge but the games themselves were long, tedious and extremely boring.)

The minions playing Quake 3 to this day, tend to disagree with this .

The problem in the late 90's is that MANY gaming companies and programmers started thinking that if you use an engine for a game, you couldn't use that same engine again. Gamers aren't THAT bad in terms of expecting something they have never done before 100% of the time. (Or else Counterstrike wouldn't have dominated the industry for years.)

Actually id Tech 3 (Quake 3) was used in many many games including games from the same franchise (such as the awesome Star Trek Voyager Elite Force and the less awesome but still good sequel, Elite Force 2).

2. Three Words: ROCK STAR GAMES... <cut>

I don't mind cutscenes or stuff (i haven't played any RSG game except vice city and my favourite GTA was the first topdown one) and i don't think a single company's games are so relevant to "kill" games.

Everything's been done and nobody knows what to do next.

"Everything that can be invented, has already been invented" - Charles Duell, Commissioner of the United States Patent Office, 1899

4. The industry is so loaded down with VERY serious critics who treat gaming like high art that NOBODY seems to be having fun MAKING games let alone playing them anymore.

That, i agree with

and aren't just rejects from Microsoft or IBM.) We need more rebels who play by their own rules and love every second of it.

Don't trash the Microsoft rejects, a couple of them (ok, not rejects, but they were in Microsoft at least ) made two of the best games ever, Half-Life and its sequel (not to mention that Valve is a huge pro-innovation company and every single game it has made or produced so far is a masterpiece*).

(*=for the audience they target of course - i don't like TF2 or Counterstrike but both games are huge in their respective audience and i can't just say they suck because personally i don't like them)