Topic: Been playing games since ought six dag nabbit!

[bullshark]

I remember text based games.  I remember crowding around a wood enclosed television set and playing PacMan and Combat with the neighborhood kids.  I remember hearing about some new thing called Nintendo and being blown away by Super Mario Brothers.  I remember the original Wolfenstein.  I remember BBS games over the new fangled interwebs.  I remember all that stuff.  I remember being blown away every year by new technology and graphics. 

But for a while now nothing really impresses me.  I mean, sure the graphics get a little better and a few things come along that will raise an eyebrow but the changes are more incremental and not the huge leaps forward they once were.  Is this what being a hundred year old human is like?  Or maybe it's something else?  I don't know.  Is there anything out there now or coming out soon that totally blows your mind?

[Xessive]

So far the main game that I'm very curious about, technologically, is LA Noir. The facial animations certainly seem leaps ahead of anything else so far.

[idolminds]

Its too expensive to take risks anymore. If we're going to see something new and innovative, its going to be in the indie section.

[bullshark]

Call me when my childhood dreams of what a game should be come to fruition.  When I was a kid I wanted a game where you could start out in a city and just do anything, ANYTHING.  Like, "Hey, I want to be Freddy Krueger and walk into a bank, open a checking account, and then fly to my house after getting into a firefight with some bad guys just because that's what I want to do today.  Maybe tomorrow I'll turn into a giant Carebear and defend the city in a tag team wrestling match to the death against King Kong and Godzilla with my buddy the giant StayPuff Marshmallow Man."

That's the game I'm waiting for.

LA Noir looks interesting, especially because I love the film genre, but I have a feeling it will just be a recycle of the same types of game-play that we've seen for years now.  Go do this mission, go do that slightly different mission, go do another mission with a slight twist, etc etc.  It's too late for me, save yourself!

[idolminds]

So you want Second Life?

[bullshark]

Not exactly.  Just totally open ended with limitless possibilities.

[Cobra951]

I remember text based games.  I remember crowding around a wood enclosed television set and playing PacMan and Combat with the neighborhood kids.  I remember hearing about some new thing called Nintendo and being blown away by Super Mario Brothers.  I remember the original Wolfenstein.  I remember BBS games over the new fangled interwebs.  I remember all that stuff.  I remember being blown away every year by new technology and graphics. 

But for a while now nothing really impresses me.  I mean, sure the graphics get a little better and a few things come along that will raise an eyebrow but the changes are more incremental and not the huge leaps forward they once were.  Is this what being a hundred year old human is like?  Or maybe it's something else?  I don't know.  Is there anything out there now or coming out soon that totally blows your mind?

I don't think it's your age, but THE age.  We're in a bit of a technological rut caused by several factors, not the least of which is diminishing returns.  As long as the paradigm remains one flat screen up front to display the games, any improvements are going to be incremental, and decreasingly so.  The jump across early generations of hardware was huge, but not now.  And if you think you have been gaming since ought-six, consider me.  I was alive and long conscious of the real world around me before videogames were even conceived of.  Yet even so, I had the same experience you did:  Generational leaps were awesome in the 80s, and are fairly boring now.

[W7RE]

What Cobra said. Until we move past one screen, or the screen altogether, things aren't going to change much technologically. Stuff will just continue to look smoother and smoother until there's less jaggies, more model detail, and higher res textures.

Games that stand out to me now are the ones that do something different. Bulletstorm does this in a sort of subtle way. It really doesn't change THAT much to have the skillshots, but I approach every enemy differently than I would in any other FPS. I play it differently, and that's a breath of fresh air. Until some drastic technological leap is made (and it's not 3D glasses), new ideas will have to come in the form of gameplay or presentation.

Also, I miss 2D platformers. I never liked 3D platformers much, and I don't like when people put a 3D model into a 2D game and it ends up all weird and floaty feeling. I don't like the way New Super Mario Bros looks and feels compared to something like mario 3 or mario world. To me, the Metroid Prime games were FPS with limited control options. They play nothing like the platforming greatness of the early Metroid games. I don't care for Zelda in 3D either, because of how differently it plays.

So really what I'm saying is, people are stuck on technology. Everything has to have as many polygons as possible. There's games that are good like that, but there are games that are better with simple graphics, or older graphics styles. At least we have indie games giving us some of that though.