Am I alone? Unimpressed w/all next-gen consoles

Medic · Post by **Medic** » 2006-11-23 02:30am

I remember reading a few years ago about console-exclusive 3rd party games. Like Metal Gear Solid that ended up on the Gamecube? Yeah, they noted significantly that (paraphrasing) "nothing's gonna be truely exclusive, most titles will make it to other systems, just later and perhaps with additional modes and unlockables."

That's only good news although at the risk of busting out Wii hatorade, I'm not buying one till my shoulder's unfucked anyway.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2006-11-23 05:27am

I guess i would say i'm unimpressed by the new consoles. TO higlight:

When the PS1, Saturn, N64 came out:
Holy shit! I gotta get me one of those!

When the PS2, X-Box and Gamecube came out:
Holy Shit! I gotta get me one of those!

When PS3, Wii and 360 came out:
Meh.

Maybe it's because i'm more intersted in PC gaming now then i was back then?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-23 07:03am

It's probably just age. When I was a teenager shit like the Megadrive and SNES were OMFG teh AWESOME. Now consoles are just a way to waste time, and they're just not as important.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2006-11-23 07:50am

2000AD wrote:Maybe it's because i'm more intersted in PC gaming now then i was back then?

You're older. They never seem to make them like they used to, even if they did.

A lot of people who bitch and whine about sequels aren't bitching about sequels, they're bitching that video games don't make them feel as excited as they did when they were younger and it was brand spanking new to them. Now they have standards (a funky word for 'less easily impressed and more jaded), but technology and ingenuity only goes so far so fast and there's always that fresh, newly excited generation to appeal to who get enthusiastic about gaming in a way that the well-informed internet fan might not.

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2006-11-23 10:29am

It's the LAST generation that was meh to me. I only got the PS2 for FF/Tekken/CvS2/SC2/GG etc.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-23 10:48am

Lagmonster wrote:You're older. They never seem to make them like they used to, even if they did.

A lot of people who bitch and whine about sequels aren't bitching about sequels, they're bitching that video games don't make them feel as excited as they did when they were younger and it was brand spanking new to them. Now they have standards (a funky word for 'less easily impressed and more jaded), but technology and ingenuity only goes so far so fast and there's always that fresh, newly excited generation to appeal to who get enthusiastic about gaming in a way that the well-informed internet fan might not.

So that makes me a... grognard? Yikes.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-11-23 11:01am

Stark wrote:When I was a teenager shit like the Megadrive and SNES were OMFG teh AWESOME.

Same here, but make us about ten years old, which by itself just totally magnifies the sense of awesome-ness.

And having standards is really sort of a double-edge sword...

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2006-11-23 11:15am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:And having standards is really sort of a double-edge sword...

Never confuse 'standards' with 'the expectation that I'll get as giddy over a toy as I did when I was ten'.

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2006-11-23 11:40am

SPC Brungardt wrote:
It's an FPS on a console, that is the definition of frustrating controls, along with the Armored Core franchise.

Hey, Armored Core has great controls thanks to From Software's insistance that the player use every button.

Resident Evil 4 rocks and here's why.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-11-23 12:55pm

That was slightly amusing at parts, but oh my God so not funny overall.

Plus he's got that Southern Baptist preacher accent voice thing going on...

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2006-11-23 01:14pm

Everyone's a critic...

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2006-11-23 02:55pm

SPC Brungardt wrote: Still, that was PS2, I'm just worrying: PS3 may never recover, X360 may never woo over Japanese, and if Wii wins by default I hope to God developers don't kowtow to real or perceived biases [kiddy game system, Nintendo] and not innovate or port the good games on the other, potentially flagging systems. Then there's the sad fact that PS3 and X360 may have but a handful of gems that're exclusive to their systems. THAT'S the console-driven market screwing the customer over, the underlying point of my worries.

Mecha wise the Super Robot Wars series of games have always been mostly on Sony consoles ever since the PS1 came out. Nintendo still gets the best handheld versions, but all the big important SRW games have gone to Sony.

It might change with the Wii, but I'm slightly sceptical. The Gamecube SRW game was hardly Banpresto's greatest hit.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-11-23 03:40pm

Well, mecha-wise, I think the Wii as a platform would definately benefit from action and sim-oriented first and third-person view games rather than fighters. Otherwise it's not really taking very much advantage.

Now if only developers and studios would get out of their rut and put some damn inovation into their mecha games...

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-11-23 03:44pm

It's possible that the recent performance of tactical third person shooters might rub off on mecha games.

After all, if it's fun to run around hiding behind blocks of concrete in ruined cities with Marcus Fenix and co, surely it must be more fun to do it with a giant robot hiding behind the actual cities.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-11-23 03:45pm

Yeah right, like Japanese studios would ever take pointers from American games.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-11-23 03:55pm

When everyone's finished pointing and laughing at Gundam: Crossfire, and more to the point, leaving it on the shelf to do so, they might start looking for ideas...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-23 04:07pm

When you get older, you start eating a wider variety of food, because you just can't take the narrow range of foods any more (unless you're a redneck; for some reason rednecks can eat the same damned shitty "homefried" crap for their entire lives and never want to try anything else).

Similarly, movie critics, who have seen countless films, become much more impatient with cliched and unoriginal material than people who rarely get out to the movies.

I think the same is true for videogames. The more experience you've had with games (a factor that tends to be correlated with age), the less patience you have with rehashes of the same material. One of the reasons I seized upon Rome Total War and its sequel was that it was a different playstyle from the FPS and RTS games that I'd pretty much played to death and lost all interest in. Oh wow, the latest FPS and RTS games have cooler graphics! Wake me up when it's over.

Medic · Post by **Medic** » 2006-11-23 05:18pm

Vendetta wrote:When everyone's finished pointing and laughing at Gundam: Crossfire, and more to the point, leaving it on the shelf to do so, they might start looking for ideas...

Comedy Gold! X-Play's review on that game. "Gundam: Crossfire gets a ONE out of five for being shovelware of the highest order -- and if you buy it, you're part of the problem."

Ritterin Sophia · Post by **Ritterin Sophia** » 2006-11-23 07:24pm

Darth Wong wrote:I think the same is true for videogames. The more experience you've had with games (a factor that tends to be correlated with age), the less patience you have with rehashes of the same material. One of the reasons I seized upon Rome Total War and its sequel was that it was a different playstyle from the FPS and RTS games that I'd pretty much played to death and lost all interest in. Oh wow, the latest FPS and RTS games have cooler graphics! Wake me up when it's over.

I agree, Wong, and if you've ever played Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo, this is exactly what it is, just updated graphics and two new MS (I think GM Striker and Dom Cannon).

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2006-11-23 09:19pm

Gameplay footage from Gundam Blue Destiny 1. Since I'm probably the only person on this board who ever played (and owns) a Blue Destiny game, I'm posting this video to give you guys my idea of a good Gundam. Despite it being somewhat simplistic, the gameplay is fast and fun. I figure if more Gundam games were made like this one then maybe they'd all be more enjoyable as a whole. Rise from the Ashes came close. It certainly improved on the limited controls of Blue Destiny.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-23 09:26pm

Except nobody who isn't a Gundam freak is even going to pick one up. They don't even come out in AU, and the county's full of anime zombies. Branding can work for you when your brand is staggeringly niche, opaque and reviled or ignored.

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2006-11-23 09:43pm

That's no excuse to make shitty games.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-23 09:52pm

Oh no, I meant it's unimportant whether they're good or not: they're so niche 90% of gamers will never even HEAR of them.

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2006-11-23 10:23pm

Back in the day, each successive generation of consoles represented not only a tremendous jump in graphics, but also allowed completely new forms of gameplay that would have been unthinkable previously.

The Atari 2600 could never have supported something as complex as Legend of Zelda, for example. The NES had to come along before that level of gameplay could exist. Nor could the SNES ever hope to support something like GoldenEye.

A new generation of consoles used to mean a quantum leap forward in gameplay and performance. Now it just means slightly better graphics. What PS3 or 360 game is out there that you couldn't do on the previous generation of machines, with somewhat fewer polygons?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-23 10:44pm

Yeah, but much of the advancement was pure CPU and controller geometry. The Atari was as limited by it's one-button controller than it's appalling graphics. There is a limit to that progression: PS2/360 controllers are about as many buttons as you're going to get.