Adamantus wrote:
I've said this many times but I've been disolutioned by video games since about 2000 now. The PSX era was incredible and life-changing, PS2 had 1 or 2 good games and then PS3 had zero titles I enjoyed. I only ever used the PS3 as a media center. I tried the PS4 but found all the titles violent and disgusting (Tomb Raider and The Order).
Try some different types of games.
I went through pretty much exactly the same thing with those consoles: PSX era was pretty cool. PS2 was... let's just say I didnt care for that device, but it had some decent games. PS3 was just LittleBigPlanet. PS4 is... er... missing. I dont know where the bloody thing is, and honestly, dont care enough to look for it, which sums up my opinion of the damn thing. And the less said about the Xbox line the better.
Like you, I dont really care about all these super violent spectacle games, which is the best term I could come up with for them.
But that's just the AAA side of things. I know those publishers want you to believe that AAA games is all there is, but that's not the case.
I dont buy AAA games anymore. I stopped years ago, actually. Big releases? Dont give a flying fart. Well, Nintendo occaisionally puts out something nice, but that's about it. What I actually got into was indie games on Steam.
Why? Because no matter what type of game *I* personally want, it exists somewhere on there. I wanted games where the gameplay, not the graphics and spectacle, came first. Games that werent just guns and blood for the sake of having guns and blood, and games that didnt try so bloody hard to be movies. I wanted games from developers who understand what "fun" is. And I wanted things that were actually challenging.
What I discovered: there are entire genres that are completely missing, when it comes to the "big" games. I found the shmup and roguelike genres, and those gave me everything I"d been missing. I also found lots of retro-themed games, turn-based strategy (non-existent on consoles, which is a shame, because there's soooooooo much depth to so many of these), and even super-quirky yet super-awesome stuff like Dwarf Fortress. Not to mention games that are actually creative, something that doesnt happen in AAA games anymore (they literally cant afford to do that; too much risk of losing WAY too much money if a totally new idea fails). And lastly, I wanted games that werent made under the heels of greedy, shady, nasty corporate groups.
I went from buying games very rarely... because again, the "big" guys hardly ever put out a damn thing I cared about... to buying games very frequently, because there were just that many awesome things being put out.
My all-time favorite games, most of them come from this grouping. Things like Binding of Isaac for instance, which as far as I'm concerned is one of the greatest games ever made. Or Spelunky, which is just bloody brilliant and a rare example of emergent gameplay (a term that never, ever occurs in the AAA scene, yet is one of the most incredible concepts I've ever encountered). Or games that are much less known, yet equally awesome.
I personally dont play story-focused games, entirely because I dont really want to. With certain rare exceptions like Undertale. But if you want story-focused games, or classic-style RPGs similar to Baldur's Gate, or who knows what else, try looking in new places. There are TONS of them out there. And frankly, damn near all of them are better and deeper than what the Big Guys put out (since all they're after is spectacle and visuals, because that's what sells $60 games these days).
....Also these other games are very dramatically cheaper, yet last longer. I have multiple games where they cost about $10, yet I've gotten hundreds of hours out of them.
You used the term "incredible and life-changing", and honestly, that's been exactly my experience with these sorts of things.
25 Oct 2017, 7:00 pm
