What would you say was the last actually "get out, go to gamestop and play it"-worthy title? I'm trying to pinpoint where the industry started to go downhill, and I can't find a clear source
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Elden Ring
Yeah, it’s Elden Ring.
Next one is probably the new Zelda.
This - ER2 is going to be OoT, Halo 2, San Andreas, and MGS2 combined
I remember buying the copy of Official Playstation Magazine that had the Metal Gear Solid demo disc just because it had that demo. I'm not even sure I read the magazine. The demo let you play up to finding the DARPA Chief (first 15 minutes or so of the game), and I must've spent hours playing it. That was the only game where I did that.
When San Andreas came out I considered that the epitome of video games, because it was both open world and had a big enough map you could spend a very long time simply exploring it. I don't even think I ever beat that game: I just kept driving around exploring the map.
The last game I bought when it came out was Guitar Hero III because I was really into those games at the time. I was a young engineer with no responsibilities other than coding (ie. no meetings or emails), so I'd spend my days coding and my nights playing Guitar Hero. Good times. How I avoided Repetitive Strain Injury I'll never know.
Probably mobile games was what I'd consider the death knell of "old school" gaming, since that was when the game studios "found their razor blade" and started building microtransactions into as many games as they could. Games ceased to be a thing you simply bought and enjoyed and then became a platform through which the developer tried to extract more and more money from you.
It was, back then.
Final Fantasy 1.
The year with the most best games was 2003, so I usually say that the golden age was decade between '95 and '05. There's been a few good games since then of course, but nowhere near the same volume.
Red dead 2 was the last such game for me personally. Haven’t had that feeling you’ve described for any other game since.
I WAS really hyped for Ghost of Tsushima two years ago, but Jesus was that game disappointingly boring.
At the moment I’m having a blast playing back through the PS2 and PS3 era
I really don't know. I don't play AAA so I'm mostly unaffected.
Don't think I've ever bought a game at gamestop. Been a PC gamer for decades and before that most of my console games were gifts, though I randomly picked up FF7 and Chrono Trigger myself, both at Toys R Us.
Taking your title literally, I think great games are still being made. They're a lot more buggy on initial release than they used to be though, and indie games and "early access" really blur the line on what we consider to be finished games. I was having most fun recently with Ready or Not.
Probably Hogwarts Legacy.
This explains a lot about you.
Fuck off retard.
Depends on what kind of games you're talking about I suppose. Infiltration into gaming was slow and could only reach so far for the longest time.
Console gaming and AAA games obviously were gradually hit first (starting maybe around 2016 and only started to take a firmer hold by around 2019), took a while for it to even begin touching indie PC game development and there's still a fairly high level of resistance there.
Unfortunately, marketing options for quality indie games is still a bit of a mess, thanks to the endless shovelware on Steam (Steam really should've kept some iteration of Greenlight on the table).
As for specific titles? The Metro series. Exodus being the weakest title, but wasn't due to wokeness so much as a possible misstep into gunning for a shift to an open-world environment. Just didn't flow as well as the previous two titles. Still rather down to Earth and real every now and then, like the first two games.
And then there's the debatable question about the game originally being released on Epic exclusive (for one year), but I can understand why the studio took the money on that one. The studio was probably not in the most stable financial situation, still lugging along after the fallout from THQ splattering into bankruptcy.
Dragon Age: Origins.
Love that game. Still play it, but I need to use a hacked .exe with a large-address-aware patch to launch it now or it just crashes on me.
Yeah, I'd love for it to get a remaster, except that there's no way a western studio would be willing to keep the content the same. To much hetero and hot lesbian sex, too many serious topics taken seriously, too many dark themes, too much positive representation of the Christianity analogue.
Last GREAT game? Elden Ring. As for GOOD games, there are a handful of AA titles that are enjoyable with minimal woke crap. For example, Focus Home Interactive produces consistently good games that aren’t preachy diatribes on leftist politics. Vampyr, Greedfall, Styx, the Surge, are all fun games that are meant to entertain and not proselytize. Even the Plague Tale series, which features a teenage girl as the protagonist isn’t the standard “I am women hear me roar” bullshit, as the game is stealth based and getting too close to an enemy is instant death. It was very refreshing to see a game acknowledge that a grown man would beat the living shit out of a 15 year girl in an actual fight. The main enemy is the Inquisition but the game makes a point of showing they are actually a cult hiding in the Church, and there are multiple monks, priests, and bishops you encounter that are decent and honorable men. What’s more of a shock is that Focus Home is based in France of all places, yet their games are pretty apolitical and fun.
Basically for mainstream gaming at this juncture, if the game comes from: From Software, Focus Home, or Japan, it’s most likely worth checking out. Otherwise? Anything after 2016 is probably going to be trash. Though that’s true of all entertainment and art. The rot became pronounced in 2012 but the trash completely takes over by 2017.