Anyone else think the current gen mainstream games are stale

[jfrost]

We've gone from an industry of borrowing ideas to just out and out ripping games off and I don't really like it

This is awesome. I see Darksiders as a collage of cool stuff taken from other games. Much like Tarantino's films. I think it's great.

[isiolia]

We've gone from an industry of borrowing ideas to just out and out ripping games off and I don't really like it

This is awesome. I see Darksiders as a collage of cool stuff taken from other games. Much like Tarantino's films. I think it's great.

Played Castlevania Lords of Shadow? 'cause that's pretty much the same deal.

[AmishSamurai]

I've been watching through Chrontendo lately, and it's really helped me put this sort of thing in perspective. For those who haven't seen it, Chrontendo is a video series that gives gameplay footage and brief reviews of every single Famicom/NES game ever released in order, usually with 15 games an episode. I've watched all 38 episodes, which covers up to December 1988, and to be honest, there are usually only 1-2 noteworthy games an episode. The vast majority of the lineup is made up of shovelware anime/manga/other Japenese media games, mediocre platformers, by the numbers shooters, dozens of identical adventure games (most of them being murder mysteries), and Dragon Quest rip offs that are at least as blatant as anything else complained about in this thread. We're looking through rose colored glasses, and we have the ability to pick out the good stuff retroactively rather than having to wait around for something good to be released. I'm not as into newer games much, but it looks like it's more due to the fact that the current trends don't really appeal to me than the good game/bad game ratio really being much different. 90% of everything has always been crap, you just need to sort through it to find games like Uncharted 2, Valkyria Chronicles, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, and the like in the same way that you have to sort through mountains of crap like Atlantis no Nazo and Super Pitfall to find Super Mario Bros. and Metroid.

Exactly. We forget about all the bad games from the past because they were, well, forgettable. We are aware of all the bad games in the present only because they are being released now. I will say though, that it is different now how the big players rely so heavily on sequels that are very similar to their predecessors. In all of the big E3 presentations by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, there were hardly any new IPs being promoted (though there were some interesting new IPs at E3 if you looked for them).

Exactly. When this gen moves on, noteworthy games like the Portal series will be remembered while duds like The Saboteur or Haze will be forgotten.

[o.pwuaioc]

One thing I think about: how many of the "duds" of yesteryear were extremely popular? I don't seem to remember bad games of the 90s being ones that everyone was talking about. Leafing through Nintendo Power magazines seems to generally confirm this. The best games were high up on their polls. When the N64 came out, everyone was talking about Mario 64, GoldenEye, and Mario Kart 64, but I don't remember everyone playing bad games like many do now with stale games. Anyone have a different experience?

[BoringSupreez]

I never read any gaming mags in the 90's, but I can remember that there was plenty of talk and excitement about the PS2 gen's stale games when they were current.

[o.pwuaioc]

I never read any gaming mags in the 90's, but I can remember that there was plenty of talk and excitement about the PS2 gen's stale games when they were current.

To me that's about when the industry really started to fall, although I saw it more in fifth generation of games.

[Gao]

One thing I think about: how many of the "duds" of yesteryear were extremely popular? I don't seem to remember bad games of the 90s being ones that everyone was talking about. Leafing through Nintendo Power magazines seems to generally confirm this. The best games were high up on their polls. When the N64 came out, everyone was talking about Mario 64, GoldenEye, and Mario Kart 64, but I don't remember everyone playing bad games like many do now with stale games. Anyone have a different experience?

I always thought that Mortal Kombat wasn't that great, but only popular due to the violence and the novel digitized actors thing, but that was the top of the charts. And as much as I enjoy Mega Man games, I have to say that they changed as little for most of the sequels as most modern fps games. Are the modern fps games that do this really much worse games, or are they just games that don't appeal to you that simply do what that series did? Then of course there's all the Street Fighter II rehashing, which is really no better than something like the Madden games when you think about it. Hell, the article in the OP bitches about having to pay $15 for four new characters and some gameplay tweaking in SSFIV, but back in the day, that small upgrade was called Street Fighter II Turbo, and it cost you like $60. On the Amiga scene, you had pretty but bland games like Shadow of the Beast being best sellers, and while the TurboDuo wasn't particularly popular, it's fanboys were (and often still are) nuts about the Valis games despite the fact that if you take out the novel at the time anime cutscenes, they're bland Castlevania clones.

So I'm not really sure that things are much worse now. I think part of the problem is that most of us just aren't into newer style games, so we call them "bland" when they don't change much, even though many of our favorite series didn't really do more, but we loved them.

[jfrost]

Exactly. When this gen moves on, noteworthy games like the Portal series will be remembered while duds like The Saboteur or Haze will be forgotten.

Is The Saboteur a dud? I read a couple of reviews and it seemed fairly solid, with a few problems. I'll tell you though, I sometimes like these games which are, indeed, flawed. I think it keeps them a little more interesting.

I can always play a first-party Nintendo game if I want some shining polish, but sometimes it's like with women. If they're too perfect, I think they're out of my reach.

[isiolia]

One thing I think about: how many of the "duds" of yesteryear were extremely popular? I don't seem to remember bad games of the 90s being ones that everyone was talking about. Leafing through Nintendo Power magazines seems to generally confirm this. The best games were high up on their polls. When the N64 came out, everyone was talking about Mario 64, GoldenEye, and Mario Kart 64, but I don't remember everyone playing bad games like many do now with stale games. Anyone have a different experience?

I think the comparison there is just off the mark a little. Stale or derivative games aren't the same as duds. While there have been plenty of big licenses that failed to deliver (like, say, Superman 64), plenty more are just decent-good games, but nothing more.

It's just harder to be objective with it. For example, you could look back on the scores of fighters that popped up in the wake of Street Fighter II. Plenty of them aren't half-bad, or have some interesting element to them. The fighters are clay, or monsters, or Ninja Turtles, or whatever. Realistically though, that's hardly different than something like Darksiders aping gameplay elements from other series and wrapping it up in a fairly well produced package.

[o.pwuaioc]

I think the comparison there is just off the mark a little. Stale or derivative games aren't the same as duds. While there have been plenty of big licenses that failed to deliver (like, say, Superman 64), plenty more are just decent-good games, but nothing more.

It's just harder to be objective with it. For example, you could look back on the scores of fighters that popped up in the wake of Street Fighter II. Plenty of them aren't half-bad, or have some interesting element to them. The fighters are clay, or monsters, or Ninja Turtles, or whatever. Realistically though, that's hardly different than something like Darksiders aping gameplay elements from other series and wrapping it up in a fairly well produced package.

Yeah, I wasn't making a direct comparison, nor am I talking about Darksiders specifically (I never played it, so I can't comment on it). I have seen a whole slew of FPSs pop up since Half-Life, and while that's great and all, many of them just suck, yet are still popular. I would consider them derivative, stale, and a dud. I'm not really trying to compare apples and oranges, but rather trying to get a broader perspective. You made me remember one game I can think of that was like that from the mid-90s: Clay Fighters. Stale and a dud. Although, I haven't played it in many years, so I could be misremembering it...