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[Fafalada]

Infinite is cool, shock is awesome but 2 is superior in hindsight

Infinite really didn't live up to the hype - it was 'fine' - but nothing that hasn't been done over a decade prior.

Anyway one big thing that could have changed how the gen visually turned out is TAA (and reconstruction) - PS3 in particular could have utilized that really well (including image reconstruction) - but the research just came into its own too late.

 

[Fafalada]

Has a better game world, interesting plot and endearing characters than 99% of the shit that comes out these days.

Sure. Still looks like a PS2 game though...

</runs>

 

[adamsapple]

Sure. Still looks like a PS2 game though...

</runs>

TBH it looks worse than many AAA PS2 games.

but ...

 

[RedC]

I hope you weren't joking, cause Deadly Premonition *is* a fucking masterpiece.

It's the most ambitious game ever built on a tiny budget and retailed at $19.99 only.

Has a better game world, interesting plot and endearing characters than 99% of the shit that comes out these days.

 

[nkarafo]

It was the generation of the piss filters and overuse of bloom.

The generation that made 30fps the standard, even though the previous gen made good progress pushing for 60fps.

The generation that killed Arcade racers. So few arcade racers in a span of 8 years and most of them run at 30fps.

The generation that started the trend of the dreaded motion controls. Thanks Nintendo.

The generation that made the transition from the good quality mature CRTs to the first batches of LCD/flat TVs that were worse in every aspect except resolution.

The generation of low quality built consoles and the biggest failure rates. This is the sole reason i stopped buying consoles ever since and stuck with PCs.

The generation that lasted longer than any other, holding back games for some time with the measly 512MB RAM limit.

The generation where PCs stopped being the target platforms for almost everything except mouse driven games and MMORPGs. Probably because of the 512MB RAM limit of consoles?


Am i forgetting something?

 

[Porcile]

A lot of (actually nearly all of them) Western devs really began to sniff their own arses especially after Gears of War, Modern Warfare and Bioshock came out and they all thought they were the next Stanley Kubrick. There really weren't many devs just trying to make solid good games without being pretentious as fuck about it.

One company whose output I enjoyed at the time was Eurocom who sadly went under.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Am i forgetting something?

>Oversimplification of multiple mechanics like health, role playing systems, level design, etc; for the sake of making games more appealing to normies.
>Beginning of paid online
>When every major company began chasing online games
>"Muh mature games" also started there
>Horse armor

 

[nkarafo]

>Oversimplification of multiple mechanics like health, role playing systems, level design, etc; for the sake of making games more appealing to normies.
>Beginning of paid online
>When every major company began chasing online games
>"Muh mature games" also started there
>Horse armor

Thank you, how could i forget the horse armor.

 

[TMLT]

I know i'm in the minority but ive never really experienced this phenomenon of games not holding up. Yeah sure they might have technical issues by modern standards but I dont find it hard to put myself back in the mindset I had at the time and adapt. My 360 gets more use than my PS5 tbh. After Starfield pissed me off I went back to Fallout 3 and New Vegas and regardless of graphics or frame rate they absolutely blow Starfield away, its not even close. Ive replayed the Mass Effect trilogy, GTA IV and Uncharted 1-3 over the last couple of years too, and again, most modern stuff doesnt compare imo. And the whole Mass Effect trilogy and OG Uncharted trilogy came out in the span of 5 years, and Fallout 3 and New Vegas were only 2 years apart, completely unthinkable now.

Probably the best console generation imo, either that or the PS/GC/Xbox gen.

 

[SkylineRKR]

A lot of criticism about this gen is correct. They pushed shitty ass LCD TV which were sold for a premium still. Xbox especially was horrible by having to pay a premium for extra storage and wifi. I hated a lot of things about this gen. Not to mention the fall of Japan. They tried to ape western game tropes that had just catched on (co-op, dudebro, shooters).

But, from playing strictly offline PS2 games in complete isolement I suddenly teamed up with others to play Gears of War, CoD, TMNT Arcade etc. And I could finally play SF3 against some friends I had at a distance. There was something good about this gen too. Especially at first. Oblivion, Advanced Warfighter, PGR3, Chromehounds, LoTR, Gears of War, Dead Rising, essentially all came out within the first year.

Rate of output was still fine, even though PS4 would solve the time to pixel lol. ND pushed out 4 games + DLC, 2 IP even though at the surface TLOU indeed looks a lot like UC. Insomniac pushed out an FPS trilogy, and a platform trilogy. Bethesda released 2 TES games, and a Fallout. And then outsourced NV. Rockstar did Table Tennis, bet you forgot, 2 GTA games, RDR + add on. And I guess Max Payne 3. But I learned games are easier to develop now.

 

[Alan Wake]

It's very hit and miss I'd say. Some games hold up extremely well while others feel very old. It was a long generation and the ups and downs were huge.

 

[Saturn Dragon]

Bearing in mind that one of the most important games from the current gen is just a graphical update from PS3 2009.. I don't think so.

 

[Hero_Select]

Resident Evil 5
Skyward Sword/Twilight Princess
Skyrim
Mass Effect 1/2/3
Gears of War
Modern Warfare 2
Fallout 3/NV
No More Heroes
Xenoblade Chronicles
Donkey Kong Country Returns

etc etc etc

It was a very fun generation and all of those games still hold up, I had a lot of fun

 

[Danjin44]

Every generation we people say stuff like this.....the fact every generation we have good game and shit games.

But then we have people say this generation suck not because the games are bad but because graphics are not "next gen" enough.

 

[nkarafo]

Gen 7 wasn't better or worse than later gens IMO. We had the brown aesthetics, piss filters and overuse of bloom then, we have other shitty post-processing effects now like vignette, chromatic aberration, auto exposure, blurry TAA, etc.

If you want clean looking games you need to go to gen 6 or older or game on PC and disable/mod out any of that ugly stuff.

Story/character wise, they were just as bad as they are now. Then we had the dude bros and generic space marines, now we have the woke, strong women. Older gens didn't have the best stories or characters either but i don't remember them getting in the way that much, they were easier to ignore.

Gen 7 massively improved the open world map genre since previous gens couldn't handle then properly. Yes, San Andreas (the most advanced 6th gen open world game) still has to look low poly and ugly as sin to be able to handle that world. Gen 7 made open world games look and feel just as good as regular, linear games.

However, i do think gen 7 had more regressions overall, like how it made low frame rates the standard again (after 6th gen pushing a lot of 60fps content) and the arcade racing genre died because of that. Horror games also took a back seat and there was a much bigger push for action games. At least the later gens fixed that one.

 

[ahtlas7]

That’s progress for ya. The new makes the old look bad but at the time we loved it. Now, compare pswiibox to Atari. And why is my hair greying?

 

[Alexios]

No more than how "a lot of" games suck now. Hundreds of stuff release every year, you get what, 5 at most? Even double that it's still a tiny minority that you enjoy.

 

[FreeY$L]

All i remember from that gen was how every developer was obsessed with COD numbers, very dark times.

 

[Parazels]

720p games look terrible on a 4k TV, unless they were patched up to 4k on Xbox One X.

Some games now run at 60 fps (GTA 4, Metal Gear Rising), but still look awful.

Dead Space 1-3 aged well, perhaps, thanks to their dark and creepy atmosphere.

 

[Player Respawn]

Probably me favorite gen up until 11’. gaming wasn’t as much fun until switches first year on the market (felt like ps360 gen part 2 for me)

 

[Trilobit]

I had high hopes for the PS3 console as I had had so much fun with my PS2 with Sly Cooper, SSX, Burnout, Ape Escape etc. I was salivating at the thought of playing them with much better graphics. So it launches and I wait until my favourite games have arrived. And time goes. And shooters arrive. And I start to realize that there has been a massive pivot in gaming to genres that I had zero interest in. So the only consoles I got until my PS5 were Wii and Switch. So that gen was almost dead to me. Wii had Super Mario Galaxy and some other few interesting games and I could play Gamecube games, but other than that generation 7 nearly killed my interest in gaming. Except for Nintendo the whole industry suddenly seemed enamoured with "realistic" brown slop instead of fun colorful cartoony games.

 

[Morrie’s wig shop]

I don’t know, you were a kid during that era. So that makes you around my kids ages then.
They too, have a lot of shitty opinions.

 

[consoul]

Most games in every generation kinda suck. People have fond memories of many games played in their youth that don't really hold up today.

I don't think the PSWii60 generation was worse than any other in that regard. There are loads of bangers in there.

You think 360 was bad? Try Xbox ONE. That was a goddamn wasteland.

 

[SimTourist]

All i remember from that gen was how every developer was obsessed with COD numbers, very dark times.

Now everyone is obsessed with fortnite numbers.

 

[Humdinger]

Yeah, I tried to revive my love for 6th/7th gen games. I bought a used 360. I enjoyed a couple of the games I revisited, but I was mostly underwhelmed by the results of my little experiment.

I just couldn't get into most of the games I had enjoyed earlier. Various reasons for that, which others have covered well. I'd add poor checkpointing, which resulted in plenty of wasted time. Also, I found that although I had fond memories of many games, I didn't enjoy replaying them much. They were best left as memories. I also noticed that playing old games felt a bit isolating, because you don't have anyone to trade opinions/impressions with.

I know many good games came out during that gen. No doubt. I just found that I "couldn't go back home again." The 360 is in the closet now. Maybe I would've had different results if I'd stuck only to remasters/remakes, I don't know.

Additionally the writing/characters/stories on some of these games are generally extremely sub standard. As a kid I used to defend the writing of these big blockbuster games to my dad who looked down on gaming in favor of literature/film/television but holy hell what was I thinking? A lot of it is very poor I'll just say.

Definitely. I was older when I got into gaming, and that's something that stuck out like a sore thumb. By and large, the writing was abysmal (a few exceptions). I don't think that will ever change. Game writing will never compare to good literature or even good film/TV.

Sometimes I appreciated the writing, though, simple as it was. It didn't get in the way of the game the way it does now, where you have to listen to long sheets of boring dialog that doesn't add much and just seems to drag on and on. The characters back then were mostly simple, easily understood stereotypes. They spoke their lines for a few minutes, then it was right into the action. Not hours and hours of cinematics.

 

[SHA]

Metacritics is a joke, try different genres and you'll eventually find great games without looking at metacritics, cause these people who play certain genres they mentioned on their profile, they pushed it to it's limit, so don't take their critics as face value.

 

[tomato shrub]

As a weeb, it was a very bad era, only barely saved by handhelds.

Still, I think Dead Space and Arkham City hold up /shrug

 

[XXL]

Gamers (on forums) think every generation sucks aside from the PS2 generation.