What happened to computer games?

[SuperflyJohnson]

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

But name one Carmack CREATED game post Romero that you would actually play regardless of the engine. (All he has done is rehash the past since.)

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.

Yes but the trend of extended cutscenes and music and celebrity voice overs has taken a life of it's own since GTAVC and frankly games today seem to have far more cutscene time than gameplay. There is an old Carmack quote, "story in games is like story in porno; expected but not important." Even I have to admit that he got that one right.

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

The gaming world has been completely stagnant for a decade which is why I stick to my original statement until someone proves me and the gaming world wrong.

That, i agree with

Check this article out: http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/ Over and above their complete utter contempt for Romero and Ion Storm and ballwashing of Carmack, they CLEARLY take themselves WAY too seriously and expect the games that rule the industry to be high art.

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)

Yes those guys outsmarted Carmack and Romero - 10 years ago. I'm talking about a new, non corperate controlled generation of gamers. I'd personally like to see a blend of the classic and the new in the next decade. (Classic sidescrolling action games with a 3D twist with LEVELS and wait for it, HIGH SCORES!) Even Romero himself has to be sick of constant deathmatch games by now and I'd like to see that genre take a back seat for something more fun.

[Bad Sector]

You are in need of indie games my friend

[cmoreland]

Aarrrgh! It's so annoying trying to download a game that the homepage is in chinese or japanese or whatever, I have no idea what i'm downloading.

This is what I'm talking about, these indie games may be great, and i've played a few of em, but man are they obscure and difficult to find, download and run. At least you could pick up the Doom/Duke/Wolf/Hexen/Heretic/etc shareware at nearly every major store on the planet back in the day. MAN I miss those days

[Bad Sector]

What are you talking about? There are many indie games around and most of them are in English (granted, there are many coming from Japan, but its far from all the indie games).

Check out the above site, it has hundreds of them. Also check the indiegames blog (now part of the IGN) and gametunnel.

[cybdmn]

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)

Just for the record, Valve bought CS and TF, they did NOT developed them.

[Boone]

Oh shit.  I just realised something today - I am still playing DUNE 2000!  I must have bought that back in like...1998!  Shit digger - that long ago.

The cut scenes are still welcome and I love the style of film making - cheap green screen shenanigans!  They are usually 2 minutes at most and usually to the point.  Really nice graphics for their time, fantastic sound track, and although its so easy to swap the enemy the game play really stands the test of time.  The AI is well shit though!

I've got games like Emperor: Battle for Dune, C&C3 etc...but D2K is the one I keep coming back to the most.

[SuperflyJohnson]

Oh shit.  I just realised something today - I am still playing DUNE 2000!  I must have bought that back in like...1998!  Shit digger - that long ago.

The cut scenes are still welcome and I love the style of film making - cheap green screen shenanigans!  They are usually 2 minutes at most and usually to the point.  Really nice graphics for their time, fantastic sound track, and although its so easy to swap the enemy the game play really stands the test of time.  The AI is well shit though!

I've got games like Emperor: Battle for Dune, C&C3 etc...but D2K is the one I keep coming back to the most.

I hear you and Dune was a solid game. The stuff RSG makes takes it to extremes that almost eliminate gameplay completely and replaces it with music videos and crappy remakes of Miami Vice and Scarface.

[Boone]

Dear god - can't some games companies get it through their head that 3D is highly cumbersome to play "Ninja" in?

Recent headache in question: Metroid Prime 1.  Some of those boss battles were fucking frustrating, not because of being faced with a challenge, but with requiring player to fuck about with stupid mode-switching and not enough playing field - and the fact its in 3D.

The last boss, Metroid Prime, for example - first you have to fuck about with it shock-waving you, then avoiding it's ramming(oo-er!), then run over to the spot where it drops a phazon pool...then fuck around with switching to different visors - THEN PISS AROUND WITH TWO FUCKING METROIDS THAT PROCEED TO RAPE YOUR ASS!

ARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

By the time you've pissed around with the two metroids, the pool is gone and Mr Prime is flying about in a different spectrum twating Samus around the head "HA-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Too slowwwwwww Miss Arannnnnn! HA-HAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

This fight, along with the previous Prime mode and Ridley was like wrestling in quick sand.  The exploration part of the game is pretty good, as well as most of the combat - but these particular boss battles suck all the fun out of MP1.  Its a good job they are at the end of the game, as I might not have enjoyed it as much as I have. 

Personally, I would have taken the metroids out of the last fight.   Getting to the Phazon pool is bad enough without those two little cunts buzzing around getting in the way.  Prime's first form is more than enough for the final battle, and they should really end it in traditional Metroid fashion by giving Samus a proper Phazon cannon to take the last form down...

Poorly designed end battle to what was a 90% perfect game.  I'm going to go away and sulk now...

[cmoreland]

I have seen a glimmer of hope regarding gaming...and that is Mechwarrior. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent playing Mechwarrior2/Mech2: Mercenaries back in the day. It's about time they got back into the simulators of the 90's!

http://pc.ign.com/articles/100/1002275p1.html

[zfan]

you guys keep mentioning indie games. when i manage to get the computer back up(only the internet is working) i gonna redownload IJI
bricks will be shat...when you replay it. seriously i for one love plot (90's has one flaw... you have research the storyline) IJI combined replayabilty plot and ... playaiblty to make a PC masterpiece... and it was free

[HuntingBull]

I got so bored with modern games that I bought a coco2 on ebay and now I'm learning to program games on it. Got it hooked up to a TV and I even have the cassette recorder to save/load code so I don't have to type the source code each time. Yes, it works perfectly and it only cost me about $40.

[Bad Sector]

Well, if you wanted to make your own games you don't have to buy a vintage computer. Grab a copy of Python and PyGame, or even SDLBasic, and go write some code

[HuntingBull]

Well, if you wanted to make your own games you don't have to buy a vintage computer. Grab a copy of Python and PyGame, or even SDLBasic, and go write some code

I have used GW Basic also even on Vista, but I just had to try and capture that feeling like I had back when I first used the Radio Shack Color Computer ][, ah, those were the days.........................

I also have all of the Doom's in DoomLegacy, Quake, Quake][.
When I really want a blast from the past, I break out my Tricks of the Doom Gurus book and do some Doom hacking or level making. I have a huge collection of Doom and Doom][ levels not only from the book CD but also from collecting them during the 90's. My all time favorite has to be Aliens TC. When I first played that one it scraed the hell out of me!!

[CHRiTTeR]

Last game that really impressed me was Baldur's gate.


Cant think of any recent game that impressed me much.


Many of them look spectacular. But I strongly believe this is the source of the problem.

Games are getting too complicated, it simply is getting too the point it demands too much attention and effort from the player's brain just to decode what is going on on the screen. Its too confusing and thats destroying the experience.

Sure, everyone likes watching at nice imagery but in a game's case the graphics need to be 'efficient'.

Verry few designers keep this in mind. They want to make everything look as awesome (shiny with lots of details and flashy lighting effects everywhere) as possible and push the hardware to its limits. Adding too much unnecessary distracting details
. Everything is moving and flashing in a sea of epileptic chaos. 'Look at how awesome our game looks!'

Normal maps for example. How many games do you know where they dont go overboard with the  normal maps or specular highlights?!

And the sad part is that these kind of graphics are actually one of the biggest reasons a game sells these days.


As a graphic designer I love 3D. It can produce some awesome imagery, but its hard to handle if used in games.
It is a typicall problem. Graphic design is all about using space and not about filling every opening possible. Thats why we say 'less is more'. Sadly there dont seem to be many gamedesigners who understand this.

But I have high hopes for Starcraft2 and Diablo3. Blizzard is awesome and exceptionally good at this.
 They manage to make their games verry attractive but
at the same time clear and not too distracting and chaotic.
This way you can sit back, relax and enjoy with a clear overview on whats going on and worry about strategy instead of decoding screen-garbage.

Look at those oldschool games we al seem to love and miss so much. We didnt have millions of polygons with exagerated normal maps, eyeblinding speculars and lensflares.
We had simple pixelated but yet verry stylised graphics.

We didnt have enviromental effects comming from 7.1 channels. We had basic blips and bips.


Straight to the point.


The same rule applies to gameplay content.


Thats also why quake3 is so succesfull. Its a straight to the point shooter and its not desperetly trying to be more than just that.


So in short; things got too complicated and complicated things are hard to manage. Both for the dev's as for the players

[Bad Sector]

I fully agree with with your post. Actually i did a similar one back when UT3 was released - it took me a while to orient myself in this game because of the excessive detail (almost every pixel has some touch of detail). Although (much) later i got over it, i still prefer the look of UT99 to UT3 when it comes to *playing* the games (for walking around i prefer UT3 of course ).