What a great time to be a gamer

Vicarious on 15/11/2016 at 22:40

A few months ago I've been playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and for some reason it made me realize something about modern games. During the exploration of Prague, I walked into a store and started looking around. There were all sorts of products on shelves, lying around and it got me thinking: someone has modelled all those items and came up with all sorts of covers and logos, different types of things, food, drinks, entertainment, so on and so forth. It was one of those "I knew it but now I REALLY get it" type of revelations. It made me realize just how huge video games are today and how much thought and effort goes into them. In that moment I've found a new appreciation for just how impressive this medium is. There's so much great art that gets easily overlooked just because it's not directly related to the gameplay.

I've been playing games since the early 90s, I've seen them change and evolve. And unlike many folks my age, I've never hit a low point of "all games suck, oh where are the good old days when I was a teenager?" I've been playing consistently for all those years maintaining an opinion that there are always gems to find and good stuff to enjoy.

But this year is kind of special for me. For the first time since the original Deus Ex I honestly feel like "holy shit, games are really great now!" Just 6 months ago we had what I consider to be one of the best shooters ever made which is DOOM4. A big budget AAA that somehow managed to bring back the visceral joy of shooters that's been lost for many years. Then there was Mankind Divided, a game with many flaws but also the best hub area I've seen in a long time and some of the most immersive areas, characters and sidequests. Just recently I had a lot of fun with Shadow Warrior 2 that, again, despite it's shortcomings, made me feel like a kid playing Duke3D back in the 90s. We had XCOM2, an amazing strategy/tactical title that really is a modern X-COM done right. I have just started playing Dishonored 2 and I'm doing my best to like it... But I felt not including it would be cheating. ;)

The cool thing is that I think we're at the point where technology is often no longer the primary focus and it's also advanced enough that devs can make cool things without compromises. Consoles are just powerful enough not to hinder the creative visions and more and more thought is being put into gameplay. Games that are more complex or more difficult are no longer off-limits just because someone might get lost or frustrated. And then there's also plenty of stuff being made with oldschool graphics and mechanics.

And that's the cool thing. We have some brilliant AAA games with absolutely stunning visuals and art styles and we have smaller indie titles with delightfully dated graphics. We have action games, RPGs, strategy games, platformers, horror games, puzzle games, top down shooters, games that focus on the atmosphere, games that are experimental. We have DOOM4, Deus Ex, SOMA, Hotline Miami, Undertale, The Stanley Parable, Dishonored, Pony Island, Beginner's Guide, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Shadow Warrior, XCOM. We have games that are slow, fast, sad, happy, badass, dark, depressive, beautiful, funny, long, short and sweet, easy, hard, games that make you think, games that are focused on blissful fun... There really is something for everyone. There's so much variety and the quality seems to be going up. I just get this positive vibe where I feel glad I get to play all this cool stuff.

It's not all perfect and flawless and it never is but I really think that in many ways this is a wonderful time for gaming. I don't know if anyone agrees with this, after all this is just an opinion and a perspective of a single person. But personally I think things are pretty damn awesome now. To me it's not so much "it's not bad but I hope it gets way better" anymore. More like "it's awesome, can't wait for the future!" Maybe it's just me though.

Anyway, I'm just throwing those thoughts out there for no particular reason.

Renault on 15/11/2016 at 22:58

Agreed.

To me, Indies have changed everything. They've given us a ton of creative, non AAA gaming experiences, and so many choices. At the same time, they've put the the mega devs on notice, basically saying that we don't all want to play the same old Call of Duty clones time after time.

And Steam too, by providing genuine game reviews that can't be bought by corporate advertising.

demagogue on 15/11/2016 at 23:51

Yes we're definitely in a golden age of gaming. I've thought that a lot of times before. Sometimes it takes effort to find the jewels in the rough, but just on the tech and creativity sides of things we're doing great. If we have a problem it's actually that there are too many good ones we can't get to them all and slow play them to savor all the details, like an embarassment of riches problem.

Dev_Anj on 16/11/2016 at 23:31

Paging @GMDX Dev for extra hilarity... on second thoughts, nah. Though I still would enjoy the resulting drama, especially if he loses the debate a third time.

froghawk on 17/11/2016 at 01:15

^hah that was my exact thought

Starker on 17/11/2016 at 01:30

Ctrl+f "Dark Souls" ... (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Jason Moyer on 17/11/2016 at 04:17

Everyone knows the greatest time to be a gamer was a 3 month period in 1998.

Malf on 17/11/2016 at 09:32

I'd also like to add that I've become smitten with Steam Workshop; it adds so much to games, and genuinely affects my decision-making process when looking to buy games. This makes installing mods, no matter how small or large, as trivial as a button-click. Gone are the days of searching various sites, getting limited download speeds, and then having to tweak various files to get a mod working. Sure, you may still get conflicts if you install too many, but thanks to the centralisation of mod availability, even this is becoming less of a problem thanks to community feedback and authors being able to talk to each-other quickly and easily.
It's even gotten to the point where if someone releases a game on Steam, I'm irritated if it doesn't have Workshop support.

I don't want to sound like a Steam fanboy here, as if a game's available on both Steam and GOG, I'm more likely to buy it on GOG to avoid DRM, but the workshop definitely adds massive value to games that support it.

henke on 17/11/2016 at 10:00

Vicarious, I share your positivity about the current state of gaming. :)

And ditto about the Workshop, Malf. I love that thing.

Quote Posted by Vicarious

There's so much great art that gets easily overlooked just because it's not directly related to the gameplay.

Yeah, I had a similar realization when playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate recently. I ran through a train station filled with NPCs sitting on benches, walking around, talking to each other. Men, women, kids, whole family units. Immaculately detailed and animated. Yet I'd ran through most of the building in search of the next objective before I stopped, glanced back at the room and muttered "holy shit, just look at all of this". It almost feels wasteful.

Thirith on 17/11/2016 at 12:41

In that respect my playthrough of Syndicate differed considerably from when I played Unity. With Unity, from the first I rushed from waypoint to waypoint, from chest to shop to mission, which greatly diminished my enjoyment of the environments. With Syndicate, I forced myself to walk from A to B until I knew the surroundings well (and unless I was in some sort of timed mission), and while this was weird at first, I ended up enjoying Syndicate's London much more than I enjoyed the Paris of Unity. I'm hoping to return to the latter to do some of the side missions at my own pace and to explore that gorgeous version of Paris.