Although this may be due to nostalgia blindness. It feels like developers were more free to persue passion projects and new and creative ideas, and while there are still new and creative/exiting games. Every year it feels like more and more games are just derivative . Its so sad and disappointing that most new games i discover and fall in love with even now are 10+ years old
Are there 2 different people speaking here? Anyway, nostalgia brought me here too. This is just the way things are now. Our generation is sunsetting already. Music was the same. When last have you seen a cd rack in a living room? Everyone used to have one like a high-rise alongside their tv cabinets. Who's collection was bigger? "Look at my tastes, such refinement, much distinguishment." I'll never forget (until I get Alzheimer's) the feeling of walking into a massive Musica store (the size of a warehouse) and spending an hour rifling through the alphabetically ordered and genre sorted collections, then walking out with 1 album that you would play (in order) on repeat for weeks while browsing through the booklet that came with it and reading every line, even the fine print. Now it's all randomized streaming. Convenient, but just different.
i messed up the audio a few times, so i had to re-record some areas and use my phone to do it because i ran out of AA batteries for my audio recorder. reading your comment made me so nostalgic, i miss those days.
You are on to something here and while I have also tried to quantify what this is, most people assume you are just nostalgic for a return to childhood. Even as a kid, old games treated you like an adult. My favourite series were Civilization, XCom, and Total War. These were complex games that allowed the user free reign to learn as they went and it went very deep, and this made you want to discover more. Nowadays you are spoon fed at every step. Take Medieval Total War from 2002. The original would take many, many hours to progress. I remember it was something like 24 turns just to build a cathedral which allowed late stage units, and to even get the option to build this was already late on in the game. By Medieval 2 you could have the best units in the game after only a dozen or so turns. This is the same for most games now. The irony is as games become more expansive your options become more limited. Its a large world, yes, but you have to follow a very specific, defined road through this world as the devs think you might lose interest otherwise. And to be fair, most young folk today probably would get bored. Also take something like XCom Terror from the Deep. Apart from the lengthy manual, it came with a supplementary book explaining the history of the war, weapons, tactics, and it was glorious! Cant imagine a game coming with something like that again. Then there was Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri, gaming peaked at that point and nothing will change my stance on that!
What makes games really stand out to me today is UI. Compare something like Shadow of War to the old Resident Evil (1, 2) games, Dragonquest VII, or even something newer like Cuphead: In Shadow of War UI is dead simple and uninspired, lacking any creativity; those other games incorporate their themes into their UI, creating more immersive gameplay. Bad UIs are jarring to the eye and kill immersion. BUT, it's easier to suspend your disbelief as a child, so even many past games are just as bad. But generally, good UI shows that the devs took great care in the game as a whole, and knowing that they had passion is enough for me to enjoy and immerse in the game a whole lot easier.
i've never played the psp , only had nintendo handhelds , and i barely played the ps1 before being able to play the ps2 a bit at my neighbor friend's place , and then later getting to play it a lot when someone lent me their ps2 (which a bunch of the games being in japanese o: ) , but i still empathize with your nostalgia fellow retro gamer brony T^T .....
i could prob write a book on it and still wont really get to a point. i think the reason you cant pinpoint it down why exactly they dont feel the same lays down to a lot of reasons and decisions changing the overall big picture. from digital copies, to the fact game companies shifted from nerds in a garage creating a game to big companies run by investors who dont even understand games. think about it: an investors mindset works like this: a million people watch soccer so that means soccer is good. less people watch chess or snooker so that has to mean that chess and snooker sucks. even tho even tho they have nothing to do with each other and people have different tastes but thats legit. how a suit wearing investor thinks. esports ruining gaming on a whole different level ontop. and the pure fact there was such a variety of games... i mean there are so many types of games that i feel dont even exist anymore...i used to really enjoy those joystick cockpit flight fighting games like aquanox or hawx or star wars rogue leader or weird helicopter dogfight shooting games that i dont even know the names of. where are they even? 80-90% of game genres from the 2000s are completly gone and most of todays games are fps games, multiplayer games, open world or various sort of single player games that all follow the same formular. but also many other reasons. i want to highlight one point tho i have never really heard people talk about that much. its exploration and human curiosity and figuring out stuff and finding treasures. back in the day without internet you go somewhere to a store a flea market, doesnt matter and you had ZERO idea what a game was about, how good it was or any of that, there were no critic ratings or youtube reviews either so you had to pick a game based on whats on the back of the case and if it sounds interesting and then figure out yourself if the game is good or not by playing it. that way you encountered every single game with a no bias opinion, exploring the game. this is pretty much impossible today. game releases are everywhere, with hype surrounding it or negative views, twitch youtube and alike, steam pages and comments. you buy a game and you already know exactly what you buy for the most part. you already have a bias opinion based on that and you wont explore anything. well... and then there is the sad me because i know i will never get that experience anymore. and its not because its not possible. trust me, i would love to set up a cozy small couch with a old crt tv and put a few consoles there and get some games... but because youtube and those freaking insane ''oh we have to collect everything like dumdums so i can have a perfectly playable game sitting on a shelf unopened because its more expensive this way'' people driving up prices of simple enjoyment of games by such absurd amounts that i simply cant afford it. 10 years ago you could go to a flea market and buy some old console games for like 1 or 2 bucks because they are old and noone wants them anymore. now you re paying like hundreds of $ for some freaking gamecube games and whatnot, its ridiculous. so the only option you have really is emulating and pirating those games because you can not buy them otherwise.
dude , you're the first other human in comments i've seen since the beginning of this website to mention aquanox , what even was that game when we played it lol , i didn't even find out till decades later there's more than 1 , it's an entire series o: , and i still can hardly remember any of it after i think beating them all....
I kind of understand what are you talking about. When i look back and think about how i played GTA2 on PS1 it warms my heart, but when later i've played it on PC through a creative way, it was kind of meh. Not sure what is wrong, i feel like i need to find a PS1 copy and try recreate original conditions.
or maybe move on and stop trying to relieve the past? you'll have a lot more fun if you stop thinking about how things used to be and be in the present moment and accept how things are
yeah nostalgia is a thing. Truth is, gaming has changed a lot, but you can still feel that feeling with new games. Just play indie games and you'll feel like those old days. If you still can't feel it, well, that's just nostalgia speaking.
I watched quite a bit of the video and it took you five minutes to bring up any modern games. The first examples you actually name were Call of Duty, God of War, and MX-ATV. I personally like the new God of War games, but if you're talking about how games have no soul or games don't feel crafted, maybe don't look to Activision, Sony, and THQ Nordic to provide that. They didn't become multimillion or billion-dollar companies by focusing on art. The design of big-budget modern games is often to get you to plow through it quickly so you can buy the next one in the same way that arcade games were damn near unfinishable so they could eat your quarters. If you want games that feel more crafted and feel like people care, play more indie games. Here are some suggestions from 2023 and 2024 alone: - Animal Well - A wildly intricate metroidvania/puzzle game that seems small at first but grows and grows. If you want a game where you know someone put that rock in that place on purpose, this is your game. - Children of the Sun - A shooter/puzzle game where you're a sniper with some powers that allow you to change the bullet's direction after hitting a target. You have to kill everyone in the stage with just one shot. It sounds simple, but the demo was really good. - Crow Country - A horror game very reminiscent of Resident Evil 1, Parasite Eve, etc. You can even turn on tank controls. - Tales of Kenzera: Zau - A metroidvania that uses Bantu mythology to explore death and grief. Weirdly, EA actually distributed it, which is odd from them. - Belatro - A poker roguelike. Basically, you're just trying to make the best poker hands with a mix of temporary and permanent changes to your decks. Lots of different playstyles and a very "one more try" feel to it. - Pacific Drive - You investigate weird stuff in the Pacific Northwest while trying to escape those same anomalies. - Dredge - A nautical horror game where you're a fisher who stumbles onto strange phenomena. - Indika - Basically answers the question "What if you made a gloomy Russian arthouse film into a game?" - Venba - A very casual/cozy cooking/puzzle game with a much larger focus on narrative than gameplay. About an immigrant Indian family settling in Canada. - Chants of Sennaar - Basically, you're investigating a culture and have to translate their languages to solve puzzles. The game is very hard to complete through guesswork and it requires you to actually understand the languages quite well to make significant progress, especially later. - Pizza Tower - A bonkers-ass platformer. Just bonkers. And here are some more indie gems from the past decade or so: Hollow Knight, Stanley Parable, Binding of Isaac, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Stardew Valley, Hades, Dead Cells, Cuphead, Hotline Miami, Shovel Knight, Celeste, Limbo, Undertale, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Subnautica, Papers Please, The Witness (I personally didn't like it, but tons of people think it's amazing), Gris, Inscryption, Citizen Sleeper, Braid, Firewatch, Talos Principle, Talos Principle II, Journey, This War of Mine, Rollerdrome, Neon White, Stray, What Remains of Edith Finch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Thomas Was Alone.
also to say every game felt amazing is such nostalgia blindness it's crazy, plenty of terrible half baked games were made but people only remember the amazing ones, and then you act like games like, Hades, hollow Knight, baldurs gate, smash ultimate, SF6? like all of these games are amazing
some games were half baked but every game i got as a kid was amazing. i also mentioned in the video that gaming is the best it’s ever been and how mainly indie devs are the ones making some of the best games.
![Fc ครับ ขอแนะนำให้รู้จักกับ "น้องเปียโน" l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HQU6Q_IYTLo/mqdefault.jpg)
Although this may be due to nostalgia blindness. It feels like developers were more free to persue passion projects and new and creative ideas, and while there are still new and creative/exiting games. Every year it feels like more and more games are just derivative . Its so sad and disappointing that most new games i discover and fall in love with even now are 10+ years old
Are there 2 different people speaking here?
Anyway, nostalgia brought me here too. This is just the way things are now. Our generation is sunsetting already.
Music was the same. When last have you seen a cd rack in a living room? Everyone used to have one like a high-rise alongside their tv cabinets. Who's collection was bigger? "Look at my tastes, such refinement, much distinguishment." I'll never forget (until I get Alzheimer's) the feeling of walking into a massive Musica store (the size of a warehouse) and spending an hour rifling through the alphabetically ordered and genre sorted collections, then walking out with 1 album that you would play (in order) on repeat for weeks while browsing through the booklet that came with it and reading every line, even the fine print. Now it's all randomized streaming. Convenient, but just different.
i messed up the audio a few times, so i had to re-record some areas and use my phone to do it because i ran out of AA batteries for my audio recorder. reading your comment made me so nostalgic, i miss those days.
You are on to something here and while I have also tried to quantify what this is, most people assume you are just nostalgic for a return to childhood. Even as a kid, old games treated you like an adult. My favourite series were Civilization, XCom, and Total War. These were complex games that allowed the user free reign to learn as they went and it went very deep, and this made you want to discover more. Nowadays you are spoon fed at every step. Take Medieval Total War from 2002. The original would take many, many hours to progress. I remember it was something like 24 turns just to build a cathedral which allowed late stage units, and to even get the option to build this was already late on in the game. By Medieval 2 you could have the best units in the game after only a dozen or so turns. This is the same for most games now. The irony is as games become more expansive your options become more limited. Its a large world, yes, but you have to follow a very specific, defined road through this world as the devs think you might lose interest otherwise. And to be fair, most young folk today probably would get bored. Also take something like XCom Terror from the Deep. Apart from the lengthy manual, it came with a supplementary book explaining the history of the war, weapons, tactics, and it was glorious! Cant imagine a game coming with something like that again. Then there was Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri, gaming peaked at that point and nothing will change my stance on that!
good examples
20 something man discovered nostalgia xD In 30 years people gonna be nostalgic about physical game consoles or other similar stuff
Developers gave it their best making history with the games they put their passion into.
I’m so tired all of the sony exclusives that are first party having the same feel and formula to them.
I think you might just miss being a kid lol
What makes games really stand out to me today is UI. Compare something like Shadow of War to the old Resident Evil (1, 2) games, Dragonquest VII, or even something newer like Cuphead: In Shadow of War UI is dead simple and uninspired, lacking any creativity; those other games incorporate their themes into their UI, creating more immersive gameplay. Bad UIs are jarring to the eye and kill immersion. BUT, it's easier to suspend your disbelief as a child, so even many past games are just as bad. But generally, good UI shows that the devs took great care in the game as a whole, and knowing that they had passion is enough for me to enjoy and immerse in the game a whole lot easier.
yes
i've never played the psp , only had nintendo handhelds , and i barely played the ps1 before being able to play the ps2 a bit at my neighbor friend's place , and then later getting to play it a lot when someone lent me their ps2 (which a bunch of the games being in japanese o: ) , but i still empathize with your nostalgia fellow retro gamer brony T^T .....
nostalgia.
Let's get you to bed oldman
i am pretty tired
i could prob write a book on it and still wont really get to a point. i think the reason you cant pinpoint it down why exactly they dont feel the same lays down to a lot of reasons and decisions changing the overall big picture. from digital copies, to the fact game companies shifted from nerds in a garage creating a game to big companies run by investors who dont even understand games. think about it: an investors mindset works like this: a million people watch soccer so that means soccer is good. less people watch chess or snooker so that has to mean that chess and snooker sucks. even tho even tho they have nothing to do with each other and people have different tastes but thats legit. how a suit wearing investor thinks. esports ruining gaming on a whole different level ontop. and the pure fact there was such a variety of games... i mean there are so many types of games that i feel dont even exist anymore...i used to really enjoy those joystick cockpit flight fighting games like aquanox or hawx or star wars rogue leader or weird helicopter dogfight shooting games that i dont even know the names of. where are they even? 80-90% of game genres from the 2000s are completly gone and most of todays games are fps games, multiplayer games, open world or various sort of single player games that all follow the same formular. but also many other reasons.
i want to highlight one point tho i have never really heard people talk about that much. its exploration and human curiosity and figuring out stuff and finding treasures. back in the day without internet you go somewhere to a store a flea market, doesnt matter and you had ZERO idea what a game was about, how good it was or any of that, there were no critic ratings or youtube reviews either so you had to pick a game based on whats on the back of the case and if it sounds interesting and then figure out yourself if the game is good or not by playing it. that way you encountered every single game with a no bias opinion, exploring the game.
this is pretty much impossible today. game releases are everywhere, with hype surrounding it or negative views, twitch youtube and alike, steam pages and comments. you buy a game and you already know exactly what you buy for the most part. you already have a bias opinion based on that and you wont explore anything.
well...
and then there is the sad me because i know i will never get that experience anymore. and its not because its not possible. trust me, i would love to set up a cozy small couch with a old crt tv and put a few consoles there and get some games... but because youtube and those freaking insane ''oh we have to collect everything like dumdums so i can have a perfectly playable game sitting on a shelf unopened because its more expensive this way'' people driving up prices of simple enjoyment of games by such absurd amounts that i simply cant afford it. 10 years ago you could go to a flea market and buy some old console games for like 1 or 2 bucks because they are old and noone wants them anymore. now you re paying like hundreds of $ for some freaking gamecube games and whatnot, its ridiculous.
so the only option you have really is emulating and pirating those games because you can not buy them otherwise.
dude , you're the first other human in comments i've seen since the beginning of this website to mention aquanox , what even was that game when we played it lol , i didn't even find out till decades later there's more than 1 , it's an entire series o: , and i still can hardly remember any of it after i think beating them all....
Well spoken lad
btw I'm not mad at you, great vid man LMAO
thank you, i do need try out the games you listed. i’ve only played smash ultimate from that list
I kind of understand what are you talking about. When i look back and think about how i played GTA2 on PS1 it warms my heart, but when later i've played it on PC through a creative way, it was kind of meh. Not sure what is wrong, i feel like i need to find a PS1 copy and try recreate original conditions.
or maybe move on and stop trying to relieve the past? you'll have a lot more fun if you stop thinking about how things used to be and be in the present moment and accept how things are
@@kaebrenwillis7442 what?
yeah nostalgia is a thing. Truth is, gaming has changed a lot, but you can still feel that feeling with new games. Just play indie games and you'll feel like those old days. If you still can't feel it, well, that's just nostalgia speaking.
I watched quite a bit of the video and it took you five minutes to bring up any modern games. The first examples you actually name were Call of Duty, God of War, and MX-ATV. I personally like the new God of War games, but if you're talking about how games have no soul or games don't feel crafted, maybe don't look to Activision, Sony, and THQ Nordic to provide that. They didn't become multimillion or billion-dollar companies by focusing on art. The design of big-budget modern games is often to get you to plow through it quickly so you can buy the next one in the same way that arcade games were damn near unfinishable so they could eat your quarters.
If you want games that feel more crafted and feel like people care, play more indie games. Here are some suggestions from 2023 and 2024 alone:
- Animal Well - A wildly intricate metroidvania/puzzle game that seems small at first but grows and grows. If you want a game where you know someone put that rock in that place on purpose, this is your game.
- Children of the Sun - A shooter/puzzle game where you're a sniper with some powers that allow you to change the bullet's direction after hitting a target. You have to kill everyone in the stage with just one shot. It sounds simple, but the demo was really good.
- Crow Country - A horror game very reminiscent of Resident Evil 1, Parasite Eve, etc. You can even turn on tank controls.
- Tales of Kenzera: Zau - A metroidvania that uses Bantu mythology to explore death and grief. Weirdly, EA actually distributed it, which is odd from them.
- Belatro - A poker roguelike. Basically, you're just trying to make the best poker hands with a mix of temporary and permanent changes to your decks. Lots of different playstyles and a very "one more try" feel to it.
- Pacific Drive - You investigate weird stuff in the Pacific Northwest while trying to escape those same anomalies.
- Dredge - A nautical horror game where you're a fisher who stumbles onto strange phenomena.
- Indika - Basically answers the question "What if you made a gloomy Russian arthouse film into a game?"
- Venba - A very casual/cozy cooking/puzzle game with a much larger focus on narrative than gameplay. About an immigrant Indian family settling in Canada.
- Chants of Sennaar - Basically, you're investigating a culture and have to translate their languages to solve puzzles. The game is very hard to complete through guesswork and it requires you to actually understand the languages quite well to make significant progress, especially later.
- Pizza Tower - A bonkers-ass platformer. Just bonkers.
And here are some more indie gems from the past decade or so: Hollow Knight, Stanley Parable, Binding of Isaac, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Stardew Valley, Hades, Dead Cells, Cuphead, Hotline Miami, Shovel Knight, Celeste, Limbo, Undertale, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Subnautica, Papers Please, The Witness (I personally didn't like it, but tons of people think it's amazing), Gris, Inscryption, Citizen Sleeper, Braid, Firewatch, Talos Principle, Talos Principle II, Journey, This War of Mine, Rollerdrome, Neon White, Stray, What Remains of Edith Finch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Thomas Was Alone.
im willing to bet op already knew about at least half of these games
Elden Ring feels like an old game. Through and Through.
I stopped to admire the landscape so many times, trapped in a sense of wonder and curiosity.
also to say every game felt amazing is such nostalgia blindness it's crazy, plenty of terrible half baked games were made but people only remember the amazing ones, and then you act like games like, Hades, hollow Knight, baldurs gate, smash ultimate, SF6? like all of these games are amazing
some games were half baked but every game i got as a kid was amazing. i also mentioned in the video that gaming is the best it’s ever been and how mainly indie devs are the ones making some of the best games.
it's not nostalgia blindness , if you've never played a video game before and i gave you a random one right now you would think it is amazing