all i do anymore: install a game, run around for 5 minutes, uninstall - by Abysmal
heywood on 12/10/2015 at 16:33
Something like this has happened to me a few times.
I used to be really into flight sims, starting with Hellcat Ace back when I was a kid in the Atari days. I got to this period in the mid-late 1990s where a lot of new high tech flight sims were being released and I wasted money on a lot of them. I kept hoping I would find something that provided a sense of realism or was just fun to play, but they all just seemed to suck for one reason or another. So I basically gave up on the genre.
Not long after, I also kind of gave up on racing sims and driving games. The hardcore sims got too hardcore, and the more casual games (NFS etc.) morphed to arcade drift-style street racers. I had a bunch of them just sitting in the drawer after only being played an hour or two.
Finally, I got burned out on first-person games somewhere around 2007-2008. Ever since Doom and System Shock, they just seemed to keep getting better and better and I kept buying and buying. But then it seemed like there was a string of rave AAA titles that just didn't do it for me. Prey, Oblivion, UT3, TF2, Bioshock, Crysis, Portal, FO3 and several more I can't remember right now. Bioshock was the only one of the lot that I put more than a few nights into, but I forced myself to finish that one out of some sense of obligation, not because I was enjoying it. After that I took the better part of 2 years off from gaming. The only games I recall playing in between FO3 and DX:HR were The Nameless Mod and Stalker. And some Wii sports. It probably didn't help that I moved three times in two years and suffered a bit of depression in 2010.
I did eventually get back into it. But life is busy these days, and gaming has to compete with other interests for precious "me" time. So I'm way more picky than I used to be, but still enjoying games.
zajazd on 12/10/2015 at 18:51
Games are simply not that fun anymore, they are too complex, and many devs think that open world is evolution of everything. I play a lot of PS2 gamez in HD coating.
Tony_Tarantula on 13/10/2015 at 01:09
Quote Posted by zajazd
Games are simply not that fun anymore, they are too complex, and many devs think that open world is evolution of everything. I play a lot of PS2 gamez in HD coating.
Exactly the opposite of "complex" is happening: they're just boring checklists of even more boring "content" that is terribly written.
It's part of what happens when you get an industry overrun by PC: all the joy, creativity, and interesting gets sucked right out of it.
Like I said, it's not a coincidence that the most memorable game of the year(hell, the past five years) comes from a country which has an extremely anti-progressive culture.
Jason Moyer on 13/10/2015 at 03:21
I've got to admit I kind of agree with zaj here, which is making me wonder if I've lost my mind.
I've also gone through every single genre in the manner that Heywood described above. I was (and am) a massive fan of Mig Alley, and loved flight sims back in the Sublogic Flight Simulator/Jet days, so I ended up getting Lock-On, IL-2 and all of the expansions as they came out, European Air War, Combat Flight Simulator, Project Strike Fighters or whatever it was called, Falcon 4.0 when it still came in the fat binder... And I really couldn't get into any of them. I mistook my love of Mig Alley for a love of flight sims in general.
Same thing with the GTA games. I really liked GTA III. So I bought Vice City, San Andreas, IV, the addons for IV and...I still like GTA III. Couldn't get into the ones after it.
Same thing with RPG's, Cyberpunk-themed games, first-person puzzlers, shooters, immersive sims, RTS, racing sims, etc.
For me I think the problem is that I like games that are good as opposed to games that fit a specific category. I feel the same way about music, actually, but with music it's less of a problem because it's always been easy to get a taste of a certain artist before committing to buying their entire discography. Even in ye olden days you could share mixtapes, buy genre or regional compilations, etc. I don't know if there's a similar thing for gaming. Maybe something like the Humble Bundles kinda fits that model, moreso the genre-themed bundles with individual developers rather than the ones that are like "here are 15 games by developer/publisher XXXX". Maybe instead of stressing out everytime I buy a bundle because I have another 10 games stuffed into my backlog, I should just treat it like an old K-Tel record and instead of forcing myself to play each and every game just sample each and see which ones hold my attention. Or we could go back to having demos again. That would be sweet.
henke on 13/10/2015 at 05:41
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Like I said, it's not a coincidence that the most memorable game of the year(hell, the past five years) comes from a country which has an extremely anti-progressive culture.
I think that has to do less with Japan's non-PC(by western standards) culture and more to do with how the AAA-gaming industry is handled over there. Whereas in the west the formula for big AAA games is "stick with what's been proven to sell", over there they seem more comfortable with simply finding a creative genius and giving them the budget and creative freedom to make whatever they want. And sometimes the result of that is games like Dark Souls, MGS V and Deadly Premonition.
icemann on 13/10/2015 at 07:18
Video games are one of the least release year dependent areas of hobby life styles. If you don't like games from a specific time period (eg games from 2010 - present day), then you have the following choices available to you:
* Go play an older game
* Go play a console and enjoy the wonders of retrogaming
* Download an emulator and play the hundreds of thousands of great games for the various systems over the past 3 decades.
* Download dosbox and play the awesome games of the 80s-90s.
Problem solved.
Personally I've been of the opinion that we're in the middle of a golden age of fantastic game releases over the past 10 years. Played some fantastic games over the past few years that are just as fun on replays.
henke on 13/10/2015 at 07:31
Quote Posted by icemann
Video games are one of the least release year dependent areas of hobby life styles.
Really? Would you mind naming some hobby life styles that are more "release year dependent"? Because I'm having a hard time thinking of any.
zajazd on 13/10/2015 at 07:36
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Exactly the opposite of "complex" is happening.
By complex I mean unnecessary feature filled, like every modern action game will have obligatory RPG elements tacked on which many of them are useless and distract from playing the game.
icemann on 13/10/2015 at 08:00
Quote Posted by henke
Really? Would you mind naming some hobby life styles that are more "release year dependent"? Because I'm having a hard time thinking of any.
A few that spring to mind:
* Pen and paper stuff, with the need to have the latest editions of the rule books (eg Dungeons and Dragons).
* Tabletop Wargaming - Keep up to date with the new minature releases + updated rule books (eg Warhammer 40K, Fantasy Battle etc).
Melan on 13/10/2015 at 08:17
Quote Posted by icemann
A few that spring to mind:
* Pen and paper stuff, with the need to have the latest editions of the rule books (eg Dungeons and Dragons).
Can't speak for wargaming, but there is a huge network of people playing various old editions of D&D, supported by a fairly complex cottage industry releasing commercial supplements on a more or less daily basis (not to mention the abundance of free stuff). These editions are supported by a back catalogue of PDFs, as well as numerous clone and knockoff systems ranging from 1974 Original D&D to Pathfinder, a 3.5-based game that has become a direct competitor to the official line. In recent years, gaming via video chat has also taken off, so if you can't find a local group, you can probably find someone to play with online. It is a rather well-networked and robust community, and that doesn't even include all the isolated groups that picked up a rulebook in 1990 or 1981 and never stopped.
P&P gaming used to be release year dependent, but that kind of artificial obsolence doesn't really exist anymore. The pool of players will always be smaller for older editions and non-D&D games, but it is there if you look for them.
