Bright Hub "Here is an article which looks at the main differences between current and older games, focusing on narrative, atmosphere and game play differences."
A detailed guide that covers all the weapons in Helldivers 2, definitive tier list that details how effective they are.
The new Escape from Tarkov Unheard Edition has the community in an outrage after promising exclusive access to the new PvE mode for $250 USD.
$250? Do they not know all the other games that already exist or will be made in the future that can do similar?
This is for the hardcore people that have 2500 h in the game. They basically play that one game the whole year.
Oh and those same people are mad as hell at this... what a way to reward fans of your game and annihilate newcomers.
The Nerd Stash: "The Wasteland is unforgiving, and there are a ton of brutal ways to die in the Fallout universe. We listed out the absolutely worst ones."
Classic arcade games focused on gameplay almost completely. The story was usually explained in the booklet or in a short cutscene, which actually means the players had to use a bit of imagination in what was going on behind the overall gameplay. I think when the first Zelda came out, and you could literally just go out into the world be nothing but a spirit of adventure, things really changed.
I saw a funny picture when it came to Shooters recently too. how classic FPSs like Doom put you in a giant ass maze of rooms and secrets, and how today a FPS is this: Cutcene ---> linear corridor ----> cutscene ----> Press X to Win.
Overall I think the game industry is moving forward, but there are definete games that have come out that have defined the genre and still are yet to be surpassed.
Well said mate, agree with everything. Odd how your name is Nuka Cola and I've just being going on FO3 8 hours binges...
Having been a gamer since the early 80's, I often look back and marvel at how a simple game like Pong kept our attention for so many hours. Not to mention games like Space Invaders or Asteroids. Developers back then were forced to use limited computing power to make something compelling enough that we would spend HOURS pumping in DOZENS of quarters into games at the arcade. Games like Qix, Tempest, Joust, Berserk, Robotron, Q*Bert, Missile Command, Centipede -- heck, even the original Star Wars and Star Trek arcade titles -- were simplistic by today's standards. (Although many of the N4G readers might be too young to remember it, we used to play an Atari football game that used X's and O's controlled by a roller ball! And we played for hours!)
And, yet we loved them because they were compelling. Today, with the level of graphics and sound, we don't get many of those unique titles. Games today focus on graphics, sound, story (not necessarily in that order), but many games today forget about those intangible things that make games unique and compelling. There are certainly some downloadable titles, like Flower, Super Meat Boy, Outland, Limbo, Journey (coming soon to a PS3 near you!) that give us those unique and compelling experiences of early games without the over-the-top graphics and set pieces that make up most games today.
Developers scratch their heads when big "AAA" titles don't sell well. They need to realize that while graphics are important today (I am a huge graphics whore), that gameplay is the key to making a great video game.
If you want an example of good atmosphere as well as retro type difficulty, check out demon's souls.
It is more scary than half the survival horror games as it really is so easy to die, that and some of the creatures in that game are disgusting! It instils fear in the gamer because you know if you die, you may lose about 15 minutes of gameplay for your failure and have to start over again with the aim of getting back to where you died so you can get your souls back.
Also, as a side note, I think about old school games and the thing is, I really liked the old graphics. It challenged developers to make their game stand out using the limited resources available to them. Some games did and some games didn't, but the point is that developers used to put so much effort into making their games unique and that's something I think we've been missing these days (with a few exceptions of course, like portal and demon's souls and catherine, which I've heard is also unique but haven't played).
This is far too simplistic an article. It implies that games went from being like primitive 2D cave drawings to detailed 3D games with nothing inbetween.
The truth is that, especially when the 16 bit age came in,
2D games looked increasingly sophisticated and colourful and some examples from the early to mid 90s still look great now. A game like Another World from that time was a good example of an experiment in blending a 2D with a 3D appearance.
When the early 3D games came they didn't look as polished as the best 2D games of the time. In fact some types of 2D games disappeared altogether like the relationship that Sega had with Disney in the 90s.
So, as I think I've said before, comparing 2D games to 3D games is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. There are some really great apples and some really primitive oranges and it is silly to imagine that 3D games necessarily always represent an improvement over 2D games. For a shooter like Metroid, 3D was an improvement but for some platform games, 3D ruined the pinpoint accuracy jumping and lovely 2D detail of the genre. I can't say that Donkey Kong Country 64's graphics are quite as distinctive as Donkey Kong Country's were. There was some ok lighting in DK64 but it was not a true 3D representation of the smooth graphics and gameplay of the SNES game. It was a different kettle of fish - it made you work much harder. It was like a difficult exam set by a teacher rather than a fun reward.