Gaming trends you miss

[chronic lumbago]

 

Nuff said.

 

I think that most action/shooter games are getting especially boring and generic covers.

[mde2]

I miss when games had content instead of every Triple A developer trying to make interactive movies

[Leftist Bastard]

I miss when games had content instead of every Triple A developer trying to make interactive movies

You do realize that the most popular games on the market right now are the sprawling 100 hours+ open world type, right? that they're actually saturating the industry, if nothing else?

Like, back in the day for most game being 25-30 hours was considered long as sh*t. That's considered short now a days - what you're saying has absolutely no basis in reality, what so ever.

[Fu11Force]

For me, I miss looking forward to new games. Overhyping aside, it's mainly due to knowing that the game will likely have DLCs, microtransactions, season passes, more money making schemes. This makes me want to wait a few years for a "game of the year" edition to come out so I could get everything all at once. The game will be cheaper by then anyways.

I just.. don't find any up and coming games appealing anymore.

[Algonquin Assassin]

Bumping my own thread here...

 

Does anyone else miss when pre-orders had an actual purpose? Before digital sales and online distribution it was basically the way I got every anticipated title to avoid disappointment if it was a game that was a hot seller.

 

Now I would struggle to find any reason to pre-order a game when there are so many different ways to buy. It may sound strange I'm basically complaining about convenience, but I miss that rush and doubt whether a new game would sell out and pre-ordering was the safe route.

 

 

 

[Dr.Rosenthal]

I second a lot of stuff others have already mentioned; scribbled cheat codes, the smell of physical copies, LAN parties, booklets with actual content...

 

Another thing, wouldn't say I miss it exactly, but I like reminiscing about it; dial-up matches in Q1 level DM6: The Dark Zone. Also, starting up games on the old C64, which would have us wait for ages to play, and it was always worth the wait lol

[Commander S]

Unlockable outfits and whatnot, often with tweaked abilities/strengths/weaknesses, that you earn by achieving certain things, and then let you change up the way you play.

 

And I don't mean 'oh, cool - I've earned enough to get ______ upgrade, so I can change how my rifle works' - I'm talking things like 'beat a level under specific conditions, to unlock the ______ costume that has extra ______ but doesn't let you use ______'.

 

The perfect example of this would be Neversoft's PS1 Spider-Man games - for instance, in the original, getting a high score on the web zip-line training activity would unlock the 'quick change' outfit (just Peter Parker shoving a Spider-Man mask over his civilian clothes), which only had a maximum of two web cartridges, adding a bit of extra challenge. Or collecting all the comicbook covers for the gallery, which gave you the Spider-Man 2099 outfit, with increased melee attack power.

 

Same goes for the bandana in Metal Gear Solid, or even daft visual things like the tuxedo - even Saints Row 2 sorta did something like that, by unlocking unusual weapon variants or different toggle-able abilities if you bother to complete all the various side activities. It's a really neat way of getting players to explore things beyond just zipping through the story, and/or encouraging different approaches to play (either to unlock things, or as a result of using them).

 

 

...and yeah, unlockable outfits are cool in general, as are outfit-specific special abilities.

[Laker23]

5 hours ago, Algonquin Assassin said:

Bumping my own thread here...

 

Does anyone else miss when pre-orders had an actual purpose? Before digital sales and online distribution it was basically the way I got every anticipated title to avoid disappointment if it was a game that was a hot seller.

 

Now I would struggle to find any reason to pre-order a game when there are so many different ways to buy. It may sound strange I'm basically complaining about convenience, but I miss that rush and doubt whether a new game would sell out and pre-ordering was the safe route.

 

 

 

I still remember being completely paranoid about the store selling out of the old GTA's on their release days. Good times.

[CrysisAverted]

open betas

demos

singleplayer campaigns

free dlc

splitscreen

going online/creating an account without being pestered with all my personal info

little to no ads 

all the fugging game being there and not having to buy a bunch of stuff months after the fact to complete the product

glitches going unpatched

games having a larger scope, I don't mean graphics I mean older games allowed you to do a lot of inane things that weren't totally necessary but added to the immersion

free online

longer console cycles?

cheaper games

manuals

not completely empty game boxes barring the disk

simpler graphics meant less difficulty locating targets now everything is hd with glare and bloom its hard as f*ck to react to complex graphics compared to simpler graphics

quality control on devices was higher, I only had 2 controllers for my ps2 that I played all the time with, never needed any more because they never fell apart unlike my ps3 and ps4 controllers

 

 

 

putting the disk in and playing instead of putting the disk in, installing 50gbs, downloading 25gb update, installing 25gb update, installing all additional updates, loading up the game, its multiplayer only and the servers are dead

Edited June 12, 2018 by CrysisAverted

[Nutduster]

Don't forget: when gamers enjoyed playing games instead of just whining about them. 

 

(Which is a bit rich considering my dissatisfaction with many aspects of GTA Online, of course.)

[Algonquin Assassin]

So since hooking up my old PS2 yesterday I have to say that I think PS2 game cases are some of my favourite in gaming.

 

Maybe to some people this might not be that important, but looking back PS2 game cases were really cool. One thing I’ve always loved about them was how they included a slot for your memory card.

 

Now personally I don’t remember using this much back in the day, but I can understand how this would’ve been useful if you were taking your games to a mate’s house and wanted to keep your memory card safe because God knows I misplaced a few of them.

 

But even the box art itself. I don’t know what it is, but most modern games have really boring and bland box art with maybe a couple of screenshots and that’s it. Very little in the way of synopsis on the back cover.

 

These old PS2 games and pretty much most games from this era feel like an experience when you pick them up like an inviting book and the first thing that greets you is the cover. My Gran Turismo 4 box art looks and feels more creative than the majority of my PS4 games,

 

I guess this is a consequence of the rise of digital media and while I enjoy the convenience of digital gaming there’s nothing like picking up a physical game however the oldies just do it better IMO.

[Fake Lilina]

I miss physical copies.

[LittleBlueTroll]

I miss companies not inviting YouTubers and Twitch streamers to pre release events and meetings, and getting their feedback on what's good and what isn't in the game. This is especially true of MP games. They're the minority, not the majority.

Release it as a general public beta to get your feedback, don't ask a bunch of people who will only tell you what they want/need to make their streams better.

 

BuT i CaNt QuIksC0pE Br0

[marciorafaelop]

I'm not missing just yet however I'm pretty sure I'll be starting to miss the physical copies soon.

[TheSantader25]

I miss horrendous dumb games like Ride to hell: Retribution. It's sort of like watching bad movies. It's fun to play these types of games with friends and laugh at how retarded they are. I'm seeing less of these games nowadays, or maybe it's just that I have less time for gaming nowadays so I play the quality games only each year and I don't look for them as much as before. 

Edited November 28, 2020 by TheSantader25

[DEADWOODZ]

I miss physical copies with big chunky manuals that went into full details of the game (such as the old GTA’s). Oh and that good ole smell of the manual, miss that sh*t.

 

 

Edited November 28, 2020 by DEADWOODZ

[sivispacem]

17 minutes ago, DEADWOODZ said:

I miss physical copies with big chunky manuals that went into full details of the game

I remember the old DID flight sims from the mid 90s like EF2000. I think the manual for that was over 200 pages.

[Original Light]

Rockstar Games single player DLC.

 

I know they only did it for a short period of time, from about 2007 - 2011. It was a short experiment, if anything. But a good one at that. 

[SageFan]

Gameplay! I miss actual gameplay in games.

 

What is the most critically acclaimed game of this year? The Last of Us Part 2? That's not a game, it's an interactive movie.

 

While I admittedly enjoyed some of the storytelling in certain Telltale games, they weren't technically games to me. They were also interactive movies. Apart from walking around exploring and QTEs, Telltale padded out their game's runtime with long and drawn out cutscenes. It was an interesting concept at the time, but it's so overdone now that it's become tiresome. 

 

Give me a rifle, tell me to shoot. Make it interesting for me. Give me limited ammo and tell me to manage it. Just give me something cool that I can actually do that isn't scripted or a cutscene!

 

And also, what happened to being a formidable badass in gaming? One of the reasons I love DOOM 2016 and Eternal is because I get to go around beating up demons and wreaking havoc. I don't want to wait around for a sappy cutscene to end before my character mopes around like an emo kid at a school prom! Too many games fall into this trap. 

 

Games are supposed to be GAMES. They're not supposed to be advertisements for monster energy, they're not supposed to be sappy Donnie Darko-esque philosophical commentaries. They're supposed to be an outlet where you run around killing sh*t as an unstoppable jacked badass. This is why Master Chief and the Doom slayer are such famous and renown protagonists, without even being too complex on their own. They're inserts for the player, how it should be. 

[SageFan]

10 hours ago, Cameron Star said:

Variety is the spice and stuff. You just like a specific type of game, not that there's anything wrong with it. I played a badass demon slayer Doom Eternal a few weeks ago and loved it. Now I'm playing a shy college girl in Life Is Strange for the third time and loving it, too. Playing games with guns all the time is so boring. If you don't like interactive movies then don't play them. It's not up to you to decide what is and isn't a game based on what you like.

Aye. I probably came across a bit too angry and passionate in my post. I realise that I probably didn't discuss it too rationally, but I will make an effort to explain it in more detail and maturity here. 

 

I think the main point I was trying to make was that while I certainly see the appeal of games focused much more on storytelling and narrative rather than gameplay, I think that this convention is overdone within modern gaming today. It was fresh and new around the time of the first Last of Us game and the first Walking Dead game, but it has quickly gone stale.

 

Life is Strange is a decent game because it was released at a time where it was fresh and new, much like the Telltale games. For instance, The Walking Dead is a powerful and phenomenally written game but I feel like it's just not as interactive of a game as other titles. The appeal of it is like an interactive movie. You make certain decisions which shape the events that succeed it. You watch the narrative unfold as a spectator and while you are occasionally thrown into the role of Max, you have a certain sense of disconnect from her. She is a predetermined character with enough space for the player's personality to be inserted but not enough to where you see Max as an avatar of yourself represented within the game. Contrast this with other characters like John-117, the Nerevarine or even Commander Shepard in some aspects. While they certainly have predetermined characteristics, there's enough breathing room for you to truly put yourself under the helmet and immerse yourself within the role. As a result, it's a much more personal experience. 

 

Now don't get me wrong, Life is Strange and other episodic adventure games can be emotive. I realised that when I first played the game. There's certain characters within the story that can evoke emotional responses from the player such as with the friendship Max forms with Chloe or the fatherhood Lee forms with Clementine. But I feel like you're not really Max or you're not really Lee, they are their own characters and should be treated as such. It's similar to how even though we see the perspective of Michael Corleone in the Godfather movies, we aren't truly him and we don't control his actions. He is a creation of the writer's script and not the viewer. 

 

Interaction forms connections between player and protagonist. The protagonist of a game is different to a movie protagonist in that they aren't entirely their own character; they are vessels for the player. Their actions reflect the control of the player. The more your character is unique to you, the much more connected you are to them and vice versa. When you are controlling the survival of your player character, it is a deeply personal experience. It's a hefty proportion of why 

Spoiler

fans were so made when they killed off Joel in the cheap way they did. 

 

I could write a column on this, but I will skip over it to truly get to the nuts and bolts of my view. 

 

If you like interactive movies, you're not wrong for liking them. I just think that mainstream AAA video games in the industry right now have a tighter focus on narrative rather than gameplay. If it was one series like Life is Strange or The Walking Dead, it's not a bother and in fact, at that point it's a new and unique idea. When every game starts doing this however, it presents a problem, because the entire reason games were established as a medium in the first place was to escape the restrictive linearity of movies. When the majority of the best selling video games place a priority on having the player watch cutscenes, it removes the sense of interactivity associated with video games. 

 

This is also why I don't like Call of Duty campaigns much anymore. Instead of doing the epic actions yourself, you merely have to watch while your teammate does them. Even if you are presented with the chance to do something epic, it's in a boring QTE or button smash prompt. The most iconic and well known scenes in the franchise are literally nothing more than cutscenes where you spam "A" to punch. Don't even get me started on the annoying prompts within the cutscenes themselves, like the absolutely insulting "Press F to pay respects" that came out of Advanced Warfare. 

 

In short, you're completely right that I was probably a bit ill mannered to claim that these types of games aren't games. I was trying to evoke humour and exaggerate my post. They're obviously games. But they strip the core of what makes a game down and replace the bulk of it with scenes and animations that the player has little to no control over. I'm a believer in games having well-written and nuanced stories but if that story gets in the way of the meat and potatoes of what should be the game, it's not what many others or I seek in video games and to see that many of the most popular games today use this design philosophy is more than just slightly depressing. It's a resignation from being video games and a displacement of what made video games so popular in the first place. 

[TwistOfLime21]

While I understand why, opening up a case and reading the manual. Seeing the artwork, learning new things about the game etc.

[Algonquin Assassin]

I don’t know if these necessarily count as “trends” as such, but they’re pretty much non-existent nowadays nonetheless.

 

I booted up 360 again after not playing it for 3/4 years and I remembered that it was possible to play games off disc or to install them. 99% of the time I always installed them, but I loved having the option to play them straight away even if it sounded like the 360 was going to take off.

 

With the relatively small storage space of the PS5 and Series X/S this would be handy for the games that take up a lot of SSD/HDD space.

 

Also on the 360 and PS3 if I recall you could download movies/tv shows to the HDD without needed to stream which for some reason was removed during the PS4/XB1.

 

And just a small thing that I’ve noticed on the 360 some games on the store have all of their trailers you can download. I know you can just watch them on YouTube, but at one time I must’ve downloaded every single trailer for GTA IV on my 360 as there’s a folder set up for them. Very cool.

[GTA-Biker]

On 11/24/2017 at 9:25 PM, GTA-Biker said:

Singleplayer focus

Local multiplayer (just plugging in a second controller when your friend visits)

Buying a full game without the need for DLCs

Period pieces (however,that one seems to be coming back,at least in FPS games like Battlefield 1 and COD WW2)

To add a few more stuff to the list:

Live action cutscenes (such as the Road Rash intro and cutcenes on PC/5th gen console version)

Mobile games not needing updates (I can still charge an old cellphone I got in 2007 and play all the games I downloaded on it,but with many newer mobile games,like The Simpsons Tapped Out,I download a game and play it,but then need to update it every few weeks,then my phone runs out of free memory and since I can't update the game anymore,it doesn't let me play it either)

[The N. Bellic Man]

On 11/28/2020 at 1:52 AM, Algonquin Assassin said:

But even the box art itself. I don’t know what it is, but most modern games have really boring and bland box art with maybe a couple of screenshots and that’s it. Very little in the way of synopsis on the back cover.

I agree. Completely. But what makes it even worse, now that all games are digital if you're online (meaning you're updating your games and not playing offline all the time), is that it's not guaranteed that there won't be another cover for your game when the next patch arrives. This of course is usually tied to the seasons and dlcs, but nonetheless I don't like when my game cover suddenly changes. To make it worse they have discovered that the cover pictures can be used as an add. For those that didn't notice almost all Ubisoft covers included a pig head before and after Watch Dogs:Legion was released. All in all the companies are not treating their game covers as a piece of art or even something that could still present their game after a week or a year or even a decade. Of course this is not reality with every game but this trend is a bit worrisome. It's most annoying when the original cover was great and didn't need any changes at all but was still changed because the company wanted the game to look fresher. Or wanted to give us information that could have easily been given to us in another way or platform.

 

So, in short I'm missing a former mega trend or should I say a time when gaming companies had enough integrity and identity to keep their cover art as it was originally designed.

[Excalibur Voltaire]

I miss the sandbox-esque gameplay that classic fps games (such as DOOM) have, where the game basically drop you in a map and you have to find the exit door. You can just rush through the exit but there's nothing stopping you from simply exploring the map and uncover every secret the map have

[Mister Pink]

On 6/12/2018 at 8:51 PM, Commander S said:

Unlockable outfits and whatnot, often with tweaked abilities/strengths/weaknesses, that you earn by achieving certain things, and then let you change up the way you play.

 

And I don't mean 'oh, cool - I've earned enough to get ______ upgrade, so I can change how my rifle works' - I'm talking things like 'beat a level under specific conditions, to unlock the ______ costume that has extra ______ but doesn't let you use ______'.

Absolutely this. I mean RDR has them but I get you. These outfits are like badges of honour that you can wear with pride and a sense of achievement. Even better if you have some unlockable, rare outfit online so others can actually appreciate it or at least know that you did some challenging thing in-game to unlock it. Unfortunately devs/publishers have ruined the sense of achievement of unlocking items by putting them behind a paywall or a lootbox. Really? It's nice to find rare items but earning them from a difficult challenge is even better, especially when the outfit offers some advantage other than it being aesthetically pleasing. 

[Mindshower]

I miss the mid level games, it's either an uninspired pixel art indie game made by a game developing savant with schizophrenia who never makes a worthwhile title again or massive, triple A gambles that usually fail to live up to the hype and need 12 DLCs to function properly. 

[Riqitch8]

Dual wielding literally any weapon. Handguns, axes, swords, machine guns - whatever. Also, the ability to mix and match weapons as well. There was something great about holding a semi auto in one hand and a fully auto in the other; that's something I haven't managed to do since Just Cause 2 (and Halo 2 before that) and that game came out eleven years ago. I also used to love having the ability to fire each weapon independently as well, left with LMB, right with RMB (same with LT + RT, L2 + R2 etc). Even in Max Payne, man that was just the coolest sh*t ever. Looks like it was a 2000s thing, apparently...

 

Where did this mechanic go? Does RDR2 have it, for example (because it definitely should)? I can understand its absence in multiplayer titles, but in single player ones surely this should still be around, right? I highly doubt it was dropped due to practicality reasons, because when have games ever done that?

 

 

[Bigglo145]

Multiple games in the same category like gta, godfather, saints row, etc. also games taking 2 to 3 years to be made

[Excalibur Voltaire]

13 hours ago, Riqitch8 said:

Where did this mechanic go?

Wolfenstein New Order and the sequel New Colossus have that, you can dual wield pistols, assault rifle, shotguns and knifes. Also RDR2 allows you to dual wield revolvers and pistols

 

Speaking of which, I miss the concept where a game get progressively difficult the more you progress.