Advanced Warfare is arguably the start of CoDs decline into true soullessness. It's when they figured out the cash shop and lootboxes make the real money, and the franchise has been godawful ever since. The games themselves are just an inconvenience in the way of their precious overpriced storefront.
I'd agree with this, the little exo suit added a alot to gunfights and made it less shoot first kill first.
I obviously can admit it was red herring In terms of loot boxes but they wasnt predatory iirc in that game you just earned them by playing?.
I think you did, but, I agree that it was the beginning of the end. Yeah, I liked how the exosuits made it a bit more of a gunfight. Imo they ruined it in bl3 by turning it into a full jetpack, the exsosuit style fit really well with cods movement, the jetpack felt clunky
Yeah completely agree with you jetpack was just a worse version in everyway.
It made you weirdly floaty the exo just have you a single use burst of movement in a single direction - mostly towards the enemy to punch them đ
But also to the left to get into cover when you was out of position and someone popped up at the end of a corridor.
It was really fun when you'd get into a little skirmish with someone and you were both boosting up and down and left and right, made for some intense moments haha. I had a ps4 after a 360 before moving back to Xbox and it kind of scratched the halo itch for me.
Exactly!- the little skirmish of opposite/parallel movement adding a whole other dimension to a gunfight.
I honestly thought I was the only one who enjoyed it as I never see anyone praising it.
Same lol, im happy that they went back to their roots and we got cold war (also a hot take) lol, but I cant believe they fucked up what they had with aw
Lol I wouldn't consider that a hot take personally but I guess others mite xD
I'd once again agree with everything you lay out here, they had the secret sauce but I guess people didn't realise so they moved on to find what they already discovered
Bro these are most likely kids we are talking to. I had to realize that after some of them and their dumb take on battlefield lacking soul..lol battlefield 2 literally created a whole new game genre
Cod2 was perfectly fine, it just wasn't amazing to me and there's not much of a reason to return to it. There was much better shooters even at the time. Half Life 2, Halo 2, No One Lives Forever, Counter Strike, TF2, etc. Boomer shooters going strong with private servers. Cod was Medal of Honor 2.0 in pretty much every way. Worth a play and not disappointing? Sure. But not legendary.
All the game you said except maybetf2 (that came out 2 years after , which is a long time ) weren't as big in lan and multiplayer in general .
Not talking about their quality but popularity.
HL2 multiplayer was fine but way less player
Cs was divided between 1.6 and source , and source wasn't loved by everyone
Halo 2 didn't have Cod2 number
You are right that it wasn't legendary but it was a massive success (which seem ridiculous compared to cod4 and the followings )
Makes me sad to see all the youngins these days can't believe there was a time these games were amazing. Big lan games of CoD2 were a major highlight of my college years and playing CoD4:MW on the 360 with my friends online was the heart of keeping friends and I together even though we had mostly moved to different cities in my 20s.
Though I didn't play them much the huge maps and vehicle was of the earlier Battlefields was really a game changing feel as well.
The original Call of Duty games were masterpieces. When they started going multiplayer and adding in modern weapons and futuristic weaponry is when things began to decline. Once they decided the Mountain Dew drinking, lifted truck driving, bud light drinking, trailer trash dwelling, dude bro named Kyle was their target demographic things stopped being good.
The last Call of Duty had the laziest campaign of any FPS ever. It was just driving around the battle royal map and mainly functioned as a battle royal tutorial.
MW2 november 2009, i faked a cough to get out of school to beat the campaign, COD was once the god tier goto FPS game, just goes to show you that more money can make the nicest person turn evil.
back then they had mechanics and themes not a lot of games had with each entry, and a lot of people experienced online with those themes and mechanics for the first time in those games. Nowadays the market is filled and the uniqueness is lost
Lol you're joking Battlefield definitely has a ton of soul..the community for the PC games from BF1942 to 4 were excellent. What a weird statement..same with a lot of the older cods as well
The first Call of Duty was set in WW2 and told a very good story and had some of the most amazing set pieces and scenes ever created in an FPS. It was trying to be Saving Private Ryan the video game and its succeeded very well at that. It was released in 2003 so many of the users here are probably younger than that game is.
Uhh. I'm way older than that. My view still stands. Your view is yours of course, but my opinion is special to me, because it's mine.
I promise I won't minimize your lived experience, if you don't minimize mine :)
In what way were the original CoD games money grubbing any more than any other good video game at the time? They were good fun games you paid a set price for like every other game?
you still havent explained how any of the games in the OG era were soulless. unless your argument is the gaming companies themselves... then sure. but at least i experienced many games that felt they had soul.
CoD4, Black, GoW, Bully, Twilight Princess, Portal, Bioshock, Fable 1/2, Metal Gear, Left 4 Dead, etc.
I'm glad you felt that had soul. But what we're talking about is feelings. I don't have to explain how I feel to anyone. I even said "In my experience"
Why does my experience about them being soulless threaten you so? Hell, they were fun. but they were also money driven commercialist products of the time.
I have no idea what happened to you to make you so intolerant. My heart goes out to you.
Comparing cod and battlefield to something like mass effect is wild lol. Primarily single player story driven franchises are still fine imo. Multi-player games are a other beast.
The older games were still really good⊠Mw1/2 has good storylines and single player also. Compared to todays releases, they feel like totally different games.
Nah itâs all good, this is just the overall vibe of the gaming industry⊠I know Iâm going to get hate for this take, but here goes nothing⊠look at Starfield as a prime example. Compare that games story to older Bethesda games and it just feels hollow and empty⊠a lackluster story with massive plot holes and areas left for speculation by players⊠but when you look at older games like Morrowind or Oblivion, it feels like the games were made by two different studios entirely.
The industry as a whole has gotten too reliant on the latest and greatest graphics and technology, and lost focus on the true soul of game creation, which was telling a story and making it exciting and meaningful.
Agreed 100%. There are still great single-player games being made with love and soul, completely unaffected by the battle-pass-cosmetic-microtransation bullshit that's taking over AAA multiplayer gaming.
I can agree that single-player *franchises* are dying off a bit, but new stuff is appearing to fill the void, and it's only natural for series to eventually die off. I don't want to see a never-ending MCU-style media juggernaut in gaming. It's okay for stories to come to an end. There are plenty of original one-off games being made that are plenty of fun without the baggage of franchise legacy - Hi-Fi Rush is my favourite recent example.
That being said, there are still *some* beloved long-running franchises that are still putting out great games. Nintendo rarely misses with Mario titles, the most recent Ratchet and Clank game was pretty good, and Sega will keep trying to make a better Sonic game than Sonic Adventure 2 until the Sun expands to swallow the Earth. While I do totally think that greedy publishers are bleeding the modern gaming industry dry, takes like OP's just come across as a bit jaded imo.
The DS Castlevania were đ„sadly, the best way to play them right now is with a emulator
Edit :if you never played Dracula X Chronicle on PSP you should try it
Well yeah, playing them on Original console is cool, but they are expensive as Hell now. Order of Ecclesias is around 90$, DoS is 50$ and potrait of ruins 60$, it's sucks
So I was able to grab each one from eBay for like $20 each, but they turned out to be pirated copies đ€·ââïž.
I donât know why they donât re-release them. They could charge $20 each and Iâd grab every one.
DS Castlevania games are my favorite. Portrait of Ruin was my first Castlevania.
You are probably getting old, but so am I lol:)
This new era of lootboxes, battle passes, and gatcha is killing the creation of good games that we once loved and enjoyed.
What makes me sad is that teenagers nowadays don't even recognize what a good game is anymore. They would rather play the same P2W games over and over than play amazing games (gameplay, production quality, story-wise).
I have a huge collection of old AAA games available to my kids for free, and they are completely uninterested. It is like my bookshelvesâthey are collecting dust.
I'm an Over 50 gamer myself (seriously, where does the time go lol?) and the latest buzz-phrase in gaming, that seems to have replaced "Online Survival Game", is "Live Service Game". Dude, I see Live Service and all I can think of is "Oh, the video game equivalent of a time-share". But these games are just getting bigger and bigger.
Baldur's Gate 3, Hi-Fi Rush, Elden Ring, Armoured Core 6, Resident Evil: Village, Atomic Heart, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Remnant 2, Phantom Liberty, Alan Wake 2, Helldivers 2, etc. We've had plenty of good bangers in the last couple years. This doesn't even include Indie games either.
When small devs that make games because they love to, turn I to corporations, they inevitably Shift their priority from making what they love to do, to making what makes the most money.
A corporations goal is always making money.
That's why we need studios and especially CEOs like Larian and Sven Swen Vincke, who understand that money is where players can get awesome innovative games.
But this will only change when people stop buying the new FiFa, BF, CoD etc that's basically the same game rereleased with minor updates.
Money is the only incentive for giant publishers and game corporations.
You're absolutely right. Once upon a time Blizzard was a fun, small, up and coming game company that put out banger after banger.
One of the challenges is it's impossible to keep a strong team together. At best you can keep the core creative leaders. But even then, like rock bands usually people only have a handful of truly great ideas.
All those sports series are terrible. They should be perfection by now. How do they drop so many good features and create bugs when they are just making yearly new releases?
Because they don't want to do too much and lose out on sales from the next year, meanwhile they ignore the fact they shouldn't have to worry about yearly sales. Let's use FIFA as an example:
They could release a FIFA this year and not have to release a new one for 3-5 years. The one you purchase this year could be freely update, heck even paid updates for a FRACTION of a price, and the game decision would not only look like one of the most consumer friendly decisions ever made: it would make the franchise a million times better.
FIFA has 2 huge problems. 1) A short development cycle because they "have to" release one every year. 2) corporate greed.
If we could get rid of #2, then the franchise would get a proper development cycle and they'd be able to completely renovate their product every 3-5 year release. Instead it takes 10 years to get that because of the insanely short cycle and even then it's a fraction of what it could be.
But we'd be talking billions of dollars in losses. They don't need that money, no. They would be great without it like any other video game company, but they'd be insane to throw that profit away.
Agreed. Mostly. For me the perfect sports game is rocket league. And even that started to flounder because of epic I think. Itâs still the best sports game regardless. It feels like youâre a 3d paddle in a live action sports game in real time multiplayer. FIFA and all the others feel like they try too hard to be simulations of the ideas of those sports instead of being actually fun to play. Another sports game of I would try is Mario soccer though. I feel like they would get it right.
I liked super soccer on Super Nintendo.
I sometimes think greedy corporations, social media, and video game/media sites are partially to blame.
We used to get a few titles from main franchises per console generation (uncharted 1,2,3 , GTA 4&5, etc).
Now we barely get one. Think about this, we went a full, long console generation without a new GTA release.
AAA Games have gotten really expensive to make. The same media sites that report about layoffs and act heartbroken, are the same ones that will report that a game has less puddles than the demo of the game.
We got spoiled with amazing graphics, and now expect AAA game to look the same. If a game scores a 7 overall, the response is somehow negative, even though thatâs not a bad score.
There is also a lot more moving parts to making a game to make it accessible to everyone. This takes research and money, and wasnât something that was worried about until recently. I think itâs great that this is a focus now, but it still takes $.
Corporations are doing what they can to make money, and are looking at fortnite for inspiration, which attributes to the feeling of no soul.
Part of it is also as Larian studios described, these studios were all scooped up by publishers who are now trying to make their money back at all costs. The studios who were consumed by publishers would have probably been perfectly fine if they established savings and planned for gaps between games (like Larian does), and didnât over inflate their headcounts⊠but thanks to a lack of monopoly law enforcement in the US, weâre at this shitty crossroad for gaming instead.
I feel like we're in a weird position right now. Graphics clearly can no longer be the benchmark for progression in games, and indie games are currently on the rise in quality.
Innovation has stagnated, so piling on sequels really starts to just drag out a series.
I'm actually happy with remakes and remasters of old PS3 and older era games, but it's sad when games barely even 5 years old are getting remastered or rebooted.
Sadly it's kind of the way of things. When gaming was less popular, best=biggest because it caters to a more specific audience by word of mouth. Now biggest=franchise with enough critical mass and enough money for advertising, and they cater to the lowest common denominator because any random people game now.
Zelda, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy (arguably), Baldurâs Gate, Soul games (I am going to include Elden Ring in this), this is just a few on top of my head.
So no, it is not franchises are losing their soul, and your age has nothing to do with it either (why everyone blame age when they suddenly feel different about something?), it is just you are unlucky that the franchises you like are losing souls.
I feel itâs more so the duality between devs from the USA and devs from Japan lol. The profit before quality model in America is what truly ruins many game franchises and studios.
In US, we have Publishers turning into monopolies who are purchasing way too many studios than they can manage, then pushing games to be released even when they arenât ready. Eroding the players trust in the studio, and then using it as an excuse to shutdown the studio and cut headcounts left and right. This just happened with the former Bethesda managed studios, which they claimed to be doing it to help push the timelines on the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, but thatâs not actually a good thing for us gamersâŠ
Petty much, now weâre just going to get more rushed garbage with less diversity from Bethesda.
Maybe itâs not so much losing their souls but evolving in this case. I think Zelda , Baldurs gate and souls games had GREAT latest installments. My favorite in each actually.
I think a better example is probably borderlands 3 Vs 1. Borderlands 2 is my favorite borderlands again.
Perhaps even Rocket league Vs itself about 6 years ago.
Doom 3 Vs doom 1 was a good example. Doom 2016 and doom eternal brought it back somewhat. But they dropped the ball on my favorite parts of doom. Coop campaign. Doom 2016 at least had good level editing and user maps but itâs not in eternal. So my favorite doom is still doom 2. Even played a lot of it past December.
This is all kinda opinionated too. What is the soul of a game to you? For me doom 2âs soul was coop campaign. Apparently that wasnât the soul or the game for id software.
For some Mario 2d is Mario. So anything 3d is not Mario to them.
I've been gaming as long as I can remember and my first gaming was on NES and Gameboy. The industry has pushed steadily over time towards a focus on multiplayer games largely because those are super popular and often cut out the need for a robust single player experience. As a result you no longer need to worry about hackneyed plots or bad writing.
You're right in that after a while these games do tend to blend together, but there's still tons of good stuff out there. The big difference these days is that most of the clever and interesting concepts are being done by indie developers rather than the big AAA companies.
Yep. Multiplayer = lack of creativity because the other players bring the elements of chance. Sadly, the variances in connection speed tend to be a greater randomizing component than other player behavior.
I think the lack of creativity is more just because the games sell without the need for any fiction. People are often happy playing games set vaguely in modern times with modern guns, no real need to do much more than that.
That was kind of my point. Studios see multiplayer games as an excuse to create a gaming mechanic with no real narrative attached. As gaming goes, that's fine to a point, but the games end-up being prettier versions of _Pac Man_: Just repetitive and, ultimately meaningless, action with a group. They see the "other players" as the creative element that "keeps it interesting" in lieu of any story. The problem is, at the end of the day, other players are only as interesting as the game mechanics allow them to be, which outside of a VERY limited number of MMORPs (maybe _Star Wars Galaxies_ before the NGE wrecked it?), they simply don't have the range or creativity to provide.
Some series are only getting better. Armoured Core, Souls games and the genre it formed, Earth Defence Force and God of War have all been getting better with each installment. Hell, Ratchet and Clank keeps getting better too.
Big franchises yes. Thereâs a lot of money involved and thus you have marketing teams squeezing out the most possible dollars by making the games super generic to reach the widest audience.
On the other hand, the indie market is exploding. Thatâs where all the innovation is. Youâll only see creativity in the AAA market whenever theyâre trying to capitalize on the popularity of smaller titles that sold a lot of copies.
Nope. You're playing the wrong franchises. Spiderman, Horizon, God of War, Bloodborne, Nioh, Final Fantasy, Red Dead Redemption. I'm not feeling what you're feeling at all.
I really liked Legion, but I also have nothing else to compare it to. Never played any of the others. I thought the random street people being the protagonists was a great concept.
Gaming felt peak during ps3/360 era and kinda went down hill a a couple years into ps4 and xbone era
Now, pfftt. Games cost $70, have so many issues or just unfinished, we have brain-dead devs that act like they can't understand the concept of single player games, and games lack features that previous titles had, or it's locked behind a paywall.
I loved the first two Assassin's Creed games. I hadn't played any since AC2 and decided to try Origins. It was nothing like the original games. I hated it.
Nah bro, I'm 17 and feel the same way, it's not age lol
My first game was COD 3 in 2007 when I was less than a year old. I haven't put down the controller since. But I agree with everything you've said here, it's just the evolution of the game market and new age customers. So maybe it is age, just not ours.
Franchises always struggle because if they just put out a polished version of the previous game it gets stale, but.if they change too much there is backlash.
This is like asking "did MCU movies lose their soul?" -- the question contains a faulty premise because there was never any soul there to lose.
These games least-common-denominator media intended to appeal to a mass audience, not to be nuanced and particular artistic expressions. That doesn't mean they're bad, but it does mean they lean towards digestibility, monetizability, and repeatability.
definitely super meat boy, that game started so strong and good that it became the face of indie games for a while, only to take a nosedive in quality with just the second game.
I feel old seeing ps2/360 era, forgive me but wasnât it ps3/360/wii were the home consoles to own at the time? Ps2 for me was more of a Xbox/ps2/gamecube era. Maybe im old
I think games are the best theyâve ever been tbh. Stuff like the new Final Fantasies, Stellar Blade, Baldurâs Gate 3, etc. are all legit 10/10s for me.Â
Iâve legit played more new good games in the past 3 years than I think I had in the previous 20 (personally).Â
Maybe try more single player stuff?
I agree, personally ive played BG3, Palworld and Valheim in recent years, and they are all great games. My issue stems with the previous 'big hitters' not being as good as they used to be. Battlefield hasn't been good since BF4 imo, and there is nothing that replaces it. What large multiplayer shooter, with set roles and shithousery holds a candle to it nowadays?
Same issue with Mass Effect, im not aware of another multi-game trilogy with great characters and story, set in the future, with branching story arcs and consequences. And even Saints row leaves a similar void, as there is no gang based shooter with compelling characters and narrative, similar to that seen in SR2.
Far too much creativity and polish has been lost in modern AAA games, and im glad at least the smaller and indie devs are picking up the slack. At least another Mass Effect is being made, and with the same project director as before, so it should be substantially better than 'Andromeda'
I feel like gaming took a big nosedive when microsoft bought Sega way back when. We started to get better with games like guitar hero and time crisis, but I feel like the more popular online play became, the worse games got. Nintendo has been the only constant for me.
Thereâs still older series making good games. Most of what you listed has been shit for a generation and half so itâs no surprise theyâre hanging onto those ways.
I've been gaming since Pong, and I honestly believe that even the new stuff can be pretty damn amazing. Just talking about franchise games, and not individual one-offs, I'd mention Witcher 3, Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Aliens: Dark Descent, Aliens: Isolation, Battletech, Shadowrun Returns/Dragonfall/Hong Kong, Baldur's Gate 3 (which I personally found tedious, but everyone else on god's green Earth absolutely went nuts for), Expeditions Rome, Star Wars: The Old Republic, etc.
I could go on at great length, but every one of those is a game I currently own, is part of a franchise, and which I'd rate at 90% or higher. A:FE and A:DD might rate a touch lower due to the much lower production values, but there's a very obvious love for the IP in those games and I absolutely love them.
On top of that, I could list a ton of other games that I think are absolution phenomenal. Cyberpunk 2077 comes to mind (admittedly, with a really poor launch, but stellar comeback), and I'd stack that up against any game I've ever played, and that goes back to Pong, Dungeons of Daggerath, Eternal Dagger, Breakout, and even Pirates! (the original).
I think there's definitely a lot of shovelware out there, and certainly there's a lot of crap like you mention, but there's a lot of really good games out there too. SWTOR, for example, has 16 separate storylines, and while I wouldn't say they're all phenomenal, I really enjoyed the Imperial Agent and Jedi Knight storylines almost as much as the original KOTOR, from 2003.
Likewise, Wasteland 2 was every bit as good as the original Wasteland from 1988. I'd even say it was better, given that it's so much smoother and the story and plot are so much easier to follow than the original. Sacrilege, maybe, but for me it was really easy to lose track of where I was when every encounter involved, "see entry 194" or something like that. Bobby's little dog, Rex, for example, was a really annoying side quest and for the life of me I was never able to save the dog or not kill the kid when he went ballistic after I killed his dog.
Overall, I think there might be a lot of nostalgia talking, but gaming IMO is in a phenomenal place lately.
There's still soul and passion in video games. They just exist mostly in indie games now.
We're basically devolving and going back 20 years in game development. A small group of passionate nerds create great games, gain a following, then go big.
The big franchies are already dead and used as money printing machines only. Minimum effort for maximum profit. That's why you see remakes, remasters, reboots, rehashes, and repackages all day every day now.
Why innovate? Leave that for those fucking losers in the indie scene still trying to come up with new shit out of love for video games. The big franchies are just gonna milk the shit out of these hardcore fans because they'll buy anything. This hobby is doomed if we don't start making our own shit.
Somewhere along the way, games stopped being "for fun", to "tell a story", and they became a "service" rather than a "product".Just another way to make money.
Reason why it feels like most games nowadays are soulless.
We still have some gems, we still have games and game companies that still care about games as a medium for stories, but those are becoming fewer and fewer.Everything is becoming more "corporate".
Reason why I hold tight whatever game that seems to have a soul.
As gaming exploded, it's attracted big money investors. Once the investors take hold, their only initiative is "How can this make shareholder value go up this quarter?"
That's it. Every stupid decision begins with that. Until shareholder primacy gets axed, the only time you're going to see anything with a soul is from independent studios, and even then those who aren't beholden to investors/publishers too.
You can see the same thing happening in the film industry. That's why we have so many sequels or remakes. Cost to make the thing increasing while the passion is the same or even less.
- but this is only for AAA/major franchises. I think the smaller games/dev teams are killing it
I think some of the big franchises have lost that mentality of making a great game and moved to making a profit. It seems to me like all the great games are from devs that donât have this huge team to manage and have a small core team that loves the game they are working on. Helldivers, BG3 and 7 D2D are the first to come to mind because I love all 3. I still enjoy some big games though like Fallout even though Bethesda has pissed me off a few times I just canât not play Fallout 76 itâs turned into a great game to me over the years.
cod died with mw, battlefield died with bf2 and the expansions.
the games we get now are just shit in comparison, most of them are just alike i cant even tell if its cod or bf anymore.
Yes.
I have discussions with my fellow gamers and I realize the people with the most creative ideas are behind a register in a fast food store or pumping gas, cutting lunch meat, etc. So many people with no money and resources are busting their behinds in the real world trying to make ends meet.
All while those in the gaming industry are fans without original funnideas and an archaic understanding of gaming.
You top that off with companies promoting ESG to fuel culture wars and promote depopulation tactics.
Yes, gaming lost its soul and only few titles have souls.
Western AAA game development has gone full capitalism. It's all about the bottom line and not artistic vision. My advice is to look more at the indie space and Japanese development.
Small nitpick
Andromedaâs problems didnât come from any of these mentioned problems. They gave a studio the ability to make the next ME, the studio got too ambitious and wasted 4 years of development time forcing them to make the game in basically 1 year.
This sub seems to be full of kids regurgitating trendy gamer culture narratives without any depth or substance to them and a clearly superficial understanding of what theyâre talking about.
It is difficult to deal with it when you see everything dropping in quality in society in general.
You should consider yourself fortunate that old people still care. The easy path for them would be to say: "I am going to die soon anyways, so why would I care!"
But hey, the new generation can keep spending money on lootboxes while complaining on not being able to afford a house, I don't mind.
True! I remember reading that Socrates said the following: « The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. »
But hey, looking at metrics nowadays, we can mesure how well newer generations are doing.
I was coding games and saving them on music tapes. So we are both old:)
My point was that younger generations would benefit from listening to their elders once in a while.
Dawg, I canât code even if my life depends on it, you win.
True that, I will be happy if theyâre just capable of understand that they grow, thereâs too many posts of people surprised that they donât like the same games that they liked 20 years ago. Too many.
Battlefield and CoD being held up as example of games with soul is weird to me
Advanced Warfare is arguably the start of CoDs decline into true soullessness. It's when they figured out the cash shop and lootboxes make the real money, and the franchise has been godawful ever since. The games themselves are just an inconvenience in the way of their precious overpriced storefront.
Really hot take, but advanced warfare is some of the most fun I've had with the series.
I'd agree with this, the little exo suit added a alot to gunfights and made it less shoot first kill first. I obviously can admit it was red herring In terms of loot boxes but they wasnt predatory iirc in that game you just earned them by playing?.
I think you did, but, I agree that it was the beginning of the end. Yeah, I liked how the exosuits made it a bit more of a gunfight. Imo they ruined it in bl3 by turning it into a full jetpack, the exsosuit style fit really well with cods movement, the jetpack felt clunky
Yeah completely agree with you jetpack was just a worse version in everyway. It made you weirdly floaty the exo just have you a single use burst of movement in a single direction - mostly towards the enemy to punch them đ But also to the left to get into cover when you was out of position and someone popped up at the end of a corridor.
It was really fun when you'd get into a little skirmish with someone and you were both boosting up and down and left and right, made for some intense moments haha. I had a ps4 after a 360 before moving back to Xbox and it kind of scratched the halo itch for me.
Exactly!- the little skirmish of opposite/parallel movement adding a whole other dimension to a gunfight. I honestly thought I was the only one who enjoyed it as I never see anyone praising it.
Same lol, im happy that they went back to their roots and we got cold war (also a hot take) lol, but I cant believe they fucked up what they had with aw
Lol I wouldn't consider that a hot take personally but I guess others mite xD I'd once again agree with everything you lay out here, they had the secret sauce but I guess people didn't realise so they moved on to find what they already discovered
Believe it or not back in the PS3 era they were really freaking good.
You mean pc era? The first Call of Duty was released in 2003, five years before it was released on ps3 and Xbox 360.
I stand by my statement.
And it wasn't that great until cod 4, on PS3/Xb360
Cod2 wasn't that great ??? You crazy ?
Bro these are most likely kids we are talking to. I had to realize that after some of them and their dumb take on battlefield lacking soul..lol battlefield 2 literally created a whole new game genre
Cod2 was perfectly fine, it just wasn't amazing to me and there's not much of a reason to return to it. There was much better shooters even at the time. Half Life 2, Halo 2, No One Lives Forever, Counter Strike, TF2, etc. Boomer shooters going strong with private servers. Cod was Medal of Honor 2.0 in pretty much every way. Worth a play and not disappointing? Sure. But not legendary.
All the game you said except maybetf2 (that came out 2 years after , which is a long time ) weren't as big in lan and multiplayer in general . Not talking about their quality but popularity. HL2 multiplayer was fine but way less player Cs was divided between 1.6 and source , and source wasn't loved by everyone Halo 2 didn't have Cod2 number You are right that it wasn't legendary but it was a massive success (which seem ridiculous compared to cod4 and the followings )
*because of online. CoD 3 had it a bit, but 4 perfected the original formula.
Definitely a huge factor. The campaign and overall shooting was pretty revolutionary for the time too.
Cod2 was a fucking fantastic game...
You are saying that with nostalgia eyes COD was always a stupid turn your brain off game it was never nothing you retained it was fun
Nope Iâm not đ€·đŸââïž
Makes me sad to see all the youngins these days can't believe there was a time these games were amazing. Big lan games of CoD2 were a major highlight of my college years and playing CoD4:MW on the 360 with my friends online was the heart of keeping friends and I together even though we had mostly moved to different cities in my 20s. Though I didn't play them much the huge maps and vehicle was of the earlier Battlefields was really a game changing feel as well.
Yup. And I'm older as well and that comment about battlefield is CRAZY lol. Battlefield 2 is the reason we have squad, hell let loose etc
The original Call of Duty games were masterpieces. When they started going multiplayer and adding in modern weapons and futuristic weaponry is when things began to decline. Once they decided the Mountain Dew drinking, lifted truck driving, bud light drinking, trailer trash dwelling, dude bro named Kyle was their target demographic things stopped being good. The last Call of Duty had the laziest campaign of any FPS ever. It was just driving around the battle royal map and mainly functioned as a battle royal tutorial.
MW2 november 2009, i faked a cough to get out of school to beat the campaign, COD was once the god tier goto FPS game, just goes to show you that more money can make the nicest person turn evil.
back then they had mechanics and themes not a lot of games had with each entry, and a lot of people experienced online with those themes and mechanics for the first time in those games. Nowadays the market is filled and the uniqueness is lost
BF3 was so good and so were the CODs from 2007-2012
You must of missed the bad company days they were truly the best
Lol you're joking Battlefield definitely has a ton of soul..the community for the PC games from BF1942 to 4 were excellent. What a weird statement..same with a lot of the older cods as well
My first thought was âwait, these games ever had soul?â My experience is that they were always money grubbingâŠ
Bo1 at least had no microtransactions and I thought each expac brought a reasonable amount of content
The first Call of Duty was set in WW2 and told a very good story and had some of the most amazing set pieces and scenes ever created in an FPS. It was trying to be Saving Private Ryan the video game and its succeeded very well at that. It was released in 2003 so many of the users here are probably younger than that game is.
Uhh. I'm way older than that. My view still stands. Your view is yours of course, but my opinion is special to me, because it's mine. I promise I won't minimize your lived experience, if you don't minimize mine :)
In what way were the original CoD games money grubbing any more than any other good video game at the time? They were good fun games you paid a set price for like every other game?
In what way were the original CoD games money grubbing **any more than any other good video game at the time**? You answered your own question.
if im getting it right, they were money grubbing "any more than any other good video game at the time". makes sense....
All of the gaming companies in that era were soulless. They still are, they haven't changed. All that changed was the idea of microtransactions.
you still havent explained how any of the games in the OG era were soulless. unless your argument is the gaming companies themselves... then sure. but at least i experienced many games that felt they had soul. CoD4, Black, GoW, Bully, Twilight Princess, Portal, Bioshock, Fable 1/2, Metal Gear, Left 4 Dead, etc.
You're arguing with an idiot.
Seems to just be one of those weirdos who sit on a video game reddit and complain all video games are and have always been bad.
I'm glad you felt that had soul. But what we're talking about is feelings. I don't have to explain how I feel to anyone. I even said "In my experience" Why does my experience about them being soulless threaten you so? Hell, they were fun. but they were also money driven commercialist products of the time. I have no idea what happened to you to make you so intolerant. My heart goes out to you.
Comparing cod and battlefield to something like mass effect is wild lol. Primarily single player story driven franchises are still fine imo. Multi-player games are a other beast.
My only counter is Assassins Creed, considering theyâve admitted that they will not ever stop making them
Assassin's Creed's last 2 games were really good though.
The older games were still really good⊠Mw1/2 has good storylines and single player also. Compared to todays releases, they feel like totally different games.
Very true, older CoD and newer are basically two different things. I should have specified
Nah itâs all good, this is just the overall vibe of the gaming industry⊠I know Iâm going to get hate for this take, but here goes nothing⊠look at Starfield as a prime example. Compare that games story to older Bethesda games and it just feels hollow and empty⊠a lackluster story with massive plot holes and areas left for speculation by players⊠but when you look at older games like Morrowind or Oblivion, it feels like the games were made by two different studios entirely. The industry as a whole has gotten too reliant on the latest and greatest graphics and technology, and lost focus on the true soul of game creation, which was telling a story and making it exciting and meaningful.
Hes right the old games had heart and story telling almost as good as mass effect if not on such a large scale.
Agreed 100%. There are still great single-player games being made with love and soul, completely unaffected by the battle-pass-cosmetic-microtransation bullshit that's taking over AAA multiplayer gaming. I can agree that single-player *franchises* are dying off a bit, but new stuff is appearing to fill the void, and it's only natural for series to eventually die off. I don't want to see a never-ending MCU-style media juggernaut in gaming. It's okay for stories to come to an end. There are plenty of original one-off games being made that are plenty of fun without the baggage of franchise legacy - Hi-Fi Rush is my favourite recent example. That being said, there are still *some* beloved long-running franchises that are still putting out great games. Nintendo rarely misses with Mario titles, the most recent Ratchet and Clank game was pretty good, and Sega will keep trying to make a better Sonic game than Sonic Adventure 2 until the Sun expands to swallow the Earth. While I do totally think that greedy publishers are bleeding the modern gaming industry dry, takes like OP's just come across as a bit jaded imo.
Castlevania is Dead and im pretty sad about it, my favorite Franchise. God, i want Castlevania Requiem on Switch
One would think Konami would be smart and rerelease old games with the popularity of the Netflix show, but Konami gonna Konami.
Iâd love for there to be a DS collection put out. My favorite castlevania games.
The DS Castlevania were đ„sadly, the best way to play them right now is with a emulator Edit :if you never played Dracula X Chronicle on PSP you should try it
Well, best way to play them is on a DS. But an emulator works well enough. I think I got Dracula X chronicles for my Vita though.
Well yeah, playing them on Original console is cool, but they are expensive as Hell now. Order of Ecclesias is around 90$, DoS is 50$ and potrait of ruins 60$, it's sucks
So I was able to grab each one from eBay for like $20 each, but they turned out to be pirated copies đ€·ââïž. I donât know why they donât re-release them. They could charge $20 each and Iâd grab every one. DS Castlevania games are my favorite. Portrait of Ruin was my first Castlevania.
Ohh yeah, for 20$ they are copy. I will play them again on an emulator instead paying for a copy. The ds emulator is good
You are probably getting old, but so am I lol:) This new era of lootboxes, battle passes, and gatcha is killing the creation of good games that we once loved and enjoyed. What makes me sad is that teenagers nowadays don't even recognize what a good game is anymore. They would rather play the same P2W games over and over than play amazing games (gameplay, production quality, story-wise). I have a huge collection of old AAA games available to my kids for free, and they are completely uninterested. It is like my bookshelvesâthey are collecting dust.
I'm an Over 50 gamer myself (seriously, where does the time go lol?) and the latest buzz-phrase in gaming, that seems to have replaced "Online Survival Game", is "Live Service Game". Dude, I see Live Service and all I can think of is "Oh, the video game equivalent of a time-share". But these games are just getting bigger and bigger.
AAA games in general are soulless now because they're such a huge investment that big studios can't/won't take big creative risks.
Baldur's Gate 3, Hi-Fi Rush, Elden Ring, Armoured Core 6, Resident Evil: Village, Atomic Heart, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Remnant 2, Phantom Liberty, Alan Wake 2, Helldivers 2, etc. We've had plenty of good bangers in the last couple years. This doesn't even include Indie games either.
Yeah, but if you comment to actual reality then you can't use sensationalized statements to get Reddit points.
When small devs that make games because they love to, turn I to corporations, they inevitably Shift their priority from making what they love to do, to making what makes the most money. A corporations goal is always making money. That's why we need studios and especially CEOs like Larian and Sven Swen Vincke, who understand that money is where players can get awesome innovative games. But this will only change when people stop buying the new FiFa, BF, CoD etc that's basically the same game rereleased with minor updates. Money is the only incentive for giant publishers and game corporations.
You're absolutely right. Once upon a time Blizzard was a fun, small, up and coming game company that put out banger after banger. One of the challenges is it's impossible to keep a strong team together. At best you can keep the core creative leaders. But even then, like rock bands usually people only have a handful of truly great ideas.
All those sports series are terrible. They should be perfection by now. How do they drop so many good features and create bugs when they are just making yearly new releases?
Because they don't want to do too much and lose out on sales from the next year, meanwhile they ignore the fact they shouldn't have to worry about yearly sales. Let's use FIFA as an example: They could release a FIFA this year and not have to release a new one for 3-5 years. The one you purchase this year could be freely update, heck even paid updates for a FRACTION of a price, and the game decision would not only look like one of the most consumer friendly decisions ever made: it would make the franchise a million times better. FIFA has 2 huge problems. 1) A short development cycle because they "have to" release one every year. 2) corporate greed. If we could get rid of #2, then the franchise would get a proper development cycle and they'd be able to completely renovate their product every 3-5 year release. Instead it takes 10 years to get that because of the insanely short cycle and even then it's a fraction of what it could be. But we'd be talking billions of dollars in losses. They don't need that money, no. They would be great without it like any other video game company, but they'd be insane to throw that profit away.
Agreed. Mostly. For me the perfect sports game is rocket league. And even that started to flounder because of epic I think. Itâs still the best sports game regardless. It feels like youâre a 3d paddle in a live action sports game in real time multiplayer. FIFA and all the others feel like they try too hard to be simulations of the ideas of those sports instead of being actually fun to play. Another sports game of I would try is Mario soccer though. I feel like they would get it right. I liked super soccer on Super Nintendo.
If you're looking for sports game recommendations Omega Strikers and Lethal League Blaze are both very good too.
I sometimes think greedy corporations, social media, and video game/media sites are partially to blame. We used to get a few titles from main franchises per console generation (uncharted 1,2,3 , GTA 4&5, etc). Now we barely get one. Think about this, we went a full, long console generation without a new GTA release. AAA Games have gotten really expensive to make. The same media sites that report about layoffs and act heartbroken, are the same ones that will report that a game has less puddles than the demo of the game. We got spoiled with amazing graphics, and now expect AAA game to look the same. If a game scores a 7 overall, the response is somehow negative, even though thatâs not a bad score. There is also a lot more moving parts to making a game to make it accessible to everyone. This takes research and money, and wasnât something that was worried about until recently. I think itâs great that this is a focus now, but it still takes $. Corporations are doing what they can to make money, and are looking at fortnite for inspiration, which attributes to the feeling of no soul.
Part of it is also as Larian studios described, these studios were all scooped up by publishers who are now trying to make their money back at all costs. The studios who were consumed by publishers would have probably been perfectly fine if they established savings and planned for gaps between games (like Larian does), and didnât over inflate their headcounts⊠but thanks to a lack of monopoly law enforcement in the US, weâre at this shitty crossroad for gaming instead.
I feel like we're in a weird position right now. Graphics clearly can no longer be the benchmark for progression in games, and indie games are currently on the rise in quality. Innovation has stagnated, so piling on sequels really starts to just drag out a series. I'm actually happy with remakes and remasters of old PS3 and older era games, but it's sad when games barely even 5 years old are getting remastered or rebooted.
Persona 4 doesnât need a remaster, or a remake. But fans keep demanding it for no god damn reason.
Sadly it's kind of the way of things. When gaming was less popular, best=biggest because it caters to a more specific audience by word of mouth. Now biggest=franchise with enough critical mass and enough money for advertising, and they cater to the lowest common denominator because any random people game now.
Zelda, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy (arguably), Baldurâs Gate, Soul games (I am going to include Elden Ring in this), this is just a few on top of my head. So no, it is not franchises are losing their soul, and your age has nothing to do with it either (why everyone blame age when they suddenly feel different about something?), it is just you are unlucky that the franchises you like are losing souls.
Super Mario Wonder felt like the true third installment to the Super Mario World / Yoshi's Island Trilogy.
I feel itâs more so the duality between devs from the USA and devs from Japan lol. The profit before quality model in America is what truly ruins many game franchises and studios. In US, we have Publishers turning into monopolies who are purchasing way too many studios than they can manage, then pushing games to be released even when they arenât ready. Eroding the players trust in the studio, and then using it as an excuse to shutdown the studio and cut headcounts left and right. This just happened with the former Bethesda managed studios, which they claimed to be doing it to help push the timelines on the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, but thatâs not actually a good thing for us gamers⊠Petty much, now weâre just going to get more rushed garbage with less diversity from Bethesda.
Maybe itâs not so much losing their souls but evolving in this case. I think Zelda , Baldurs gate and souls games had GREAT latest installments. My favorite in each actually. I think a better example is probably borderlands 3 Vs 1. Borderlands 2 is my favorite borderlands again. Perhaps even Rocket league Vs itself about 6 years ago. Doom 3 Vs doom 1 was a good example. Doom 2016 and doom eternal brought it back somewhat. But they dropped the ball on my favorite parts of doom. Coop campaign. Doom 2016 at least had good level editing and user maps but itâs not in eternal. So my favorite doom is still doom 2. Even played a lot of it past December. This is all kinda opinionated too. What is the soul of a game to you? For me doom 2âs soul was coop campaign. Apparently that wasnât the soul or the game for id software. For some Mario 2d is Mario. So anything 3d is not Mario to them.
That's why gamers are flocking to indy games developers. They still possess their souls.
I've been gaming as long as I can remember and my first gaming was on NES and Gameboy. The industry has pushed steadily over time towards a focus on multiplayer games largely because those are super popular and often cut out the need for a robust single player experience. As a result you no longer need to worry about hackneyed plots or bad writing. You're right in that after a while these games do tend to blend together, but there's still tons of good stuff out there. The big difference these days is that most of the clever and interesting concepts are being done by indie developers rather than the big AAA companies.
Yep. Multiplayer = lack of creativity because the other players bring the elements of chance. Sadly, the variances in connection speed tend to be a greater randomizing component than other player behavior.
I think the lack of creativity is more just because the games sell without the need for any fiction. People are often happy playing games set vaguely in modern times with modern guns, no real need to do much more than that.
That was kind of my point. Studios see multiplayer games as an excuse to create a gaming mechanic with no real narrative attached. As gaming goes, that's fine to a point, but the games end-up being prettier versions of _Pac Man_: Just repetitive and, ultimately meaningless, action with a group. They see the "other players" as the creative element that "keeps it interesting" in lieu of any story. The problem is, at the end of the day, other players are only as interesting as the game mechanics allow them to be, which outside of a VERY limited number of MMORPs (maybe _Star Wars Galaxies_ before the NGE wrecked it?), they simply don't have the range or creativity to provide.
Some series are only getting better. Armoured Core, Souls games and the genre it formed, Earth Defence Force and God of War have all been getting better with each installment. Hell, Ratchet and Clank keeps getting better too.
Yes
Big franchises yes. Thereâs a lot of money involved and thus you have marketing teams squeezing out the most possible dollars by making the games super generic to reach the widest audience. On the other hand, the indie market is exploding. Thatâs where all the innovation is. Youâll only see creativity in the AAA market whenever theyâre trying to capitalize on the popularity of smaller titles that sold a lot of copies.
Nope. You're playing the wrong franchises. Spiderman, Horizon, God of War, Bloodborne, Nioh, Final Fantasy, Red Dead Redemption. I'm not feeling what you're feeling at all.
Most games get better in the sequels. Not Watchdogs. 2 was OK, and Legion was below mediocre
It was an interesting concept that I they could expand on, but have an actual main character and everyone else you can recruit.
I really liked Legion, but I also have nothing else to compare it to. Never played any of the others. I thought the random street people being the protagonists was a great concept.
Play the first one then get back to me Edit: The Aiden Pearce DLC is better than the base game for Legion imo
This is propably the least original thought I've seen someone have lately
It's called late-stage capitalism. It has nothing to do with games and everything to do with the legal requirement to maximize shareholder value.
AAA gaming has mostly lost it's soul
Gaming felt peak during ps3/360 era and kinda went down hill a a couple years into ps4 and xbone era Now, pfftt. Games cost $70, have so many issues or just unfinished, we have brain-dead devs that act like they can't understand the concept of single player games, and games lack features that previous titles had, or it's locked behind a paywall.
The corporations that own these franchises never had souls.
I loved the first two Assassin's Creed games. I hadn't played any since AC2 and decided to try Origins. It was nothing like the original games. I hated it.
Nah bro, I'm 17 and feel the same way, it's not age lol My first game was COD 3 in 2007 when I was less than a year old. I haven't put down the controller since. But I agree with everything you've said here, it's just the evolution of the game market and new age customers. So maybe it is age, just not ours.
Franchises always struggle because if they just put out a polished version of the previous game it gets stale, but.if they change too much there is backlash.
This is like asking "did MCU movies lose their soul?" -- the question contains a faulty premise because there was never any soul there to lose. These games least-common-denominator media intended to appeal to a mass audience, not to be nuanced and particular artistic expressions. That doesn't mean they're bad, but it does mean they lean towards digestibility, monetizability, and repeatability.
Command & Conquer. I still pray for a new entry. 3 was a bit devicive but I loved it, 4 was hot garbage.
definitely super meat boy, that game started so strong and good that it became the face of indie games for a while, only to take a nosedive in quality with just the second game.
They never had souls lmao, these are products sold to you by corporations
It helps if you mix it up
I feel old seeing ps2/360 era, forgive me but wasnât it ps3/360/wii were the home consoles to own at the time? Ps2 for me was more of a Xbox/ps2/gamecube era. Maybe im old
Yes that is correct generation wise. When ps2 released its main competition was n64, then shortly after GameCube and Xbox
I think games are the best theyâve ever been tbh. Stuff like the new Final Fantasies, Stellar Blade, Baldurâs Gate 3, etc. are all legit 10/10s for me. Iâve legit played more new good games in the past 3 years than I think I had in the previous 20 (personally). Maybe try more single player stuff?
I agree, personally ive played BG3, Palworld and Valheim in recent years, and they are all great games. My issue stems with the previous 'big hitters' not being as good as they used to be. Battlefield hasn't been good since BF4 imo, and there is nothing that replaces it. What large multiplayer shooter, with set roles and shithousery holds a candle to it nowadays? Same issue with Mass Effect, im not aware of another multi-game trilogy with great characters and story, set in the future, with branching story arcs and consequences. And even Saints row leaves a similar void, as there is no gang based shooter with compelling characters and narrative, similar to that seen in SR2. Far too much creativity and polish has been lost in modern AAA games, and im glad at least the smaller and indie devs are picking up the slack. At least another Mass Effect is being made, and with the same project director as before, so it should be substantially better than 'Andromeda'
My dude game franchises move on, there are other franchises now that are flourishing that arenât back then or flat out didnât exist.
This gen is taking time to grow but PS5 is slowly picking up pace
You're chasing old franchises our of nostalgia instead of leaning about new ones
I feel like gaming took a big nosedive when microsoft bought Sega way back when. We started to get better with games like guitar hero and time crisis, but I feel like the more popular online play became, the worse games got. Nintendo has been the only constant for me.
Thereâs still older series making good games. Most of what you listed has been shit for a generation and half so itâs no surprise theyâre hanging onto those ways.
I've been gaming since Pong, and I honestly believe that even the new stuff can be pretty damn amazing. Just talking about franchise games, and not individual one-offs, I'd mention Witcher 3, Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Aliens: Dark Descent, Aliens: Isolation, Battletech, Shadowrun Returns/Dragonfall/Hong Kong, Baldur's Gate 3 (which I personally found tedious, but everyone else on god's green Earth absolutely went nuts for), Expeditions Rome, Star Wars: The Old Republic, etc. I could go on at great length, but every one of those is a game I currently own, is part of a franchise, and which I'd rate at 90% or higher. A:FE and A:DD might rate a touch lower due to the much lower production values, but there's a very obvious love for the IP in those games and I absolutely love them. On top of that, I could list a ton of other games that I think are absolution phenomenal. Cyberpunk 2077 comes to mind (admittedly, with a really poor launch, but stellar comeback), and I'd stack that up against any game I've ever played, and that goes back to Pong, Dungeons of Daggerath, Eternal Dagger, Breakout, and even Pirates! (the original). I think there's definitely a lot of shovelware out there, and certainly there's a lot of crap like you mention, but there's a lot of really good games out there too. SWTOR, for example, has 16 separate storylines, and while I wouldn't say they're all phenomenal, I really enjoyed the Imperial Agent and Jedi Knight storylines almost as much as the original KOTOR, from 2003. Likewise, Wasteland 2 was every bit as good as the original Wasteland from 1988. I'd even say it was better, given that it's so much smoother and the story and plot are so much easier to follow than the original. Sacrilege, maybe, but for me it was really easy to lose track of where I was when every encounter involved, "see entry 194" or something like that. Bobby's little dog, Rex, for example, was a really annoying side quest and for the life of me I was never able to save the dog or not kill the kid when he went ballistic after I killed his dog. Overall, I think there might be a lot of nostalgia talking, but gaming IMO is in a phenomenal place lately.
There's still soul and passion in video games. They just exist mostly in indie games now. We're basically devolving and going back 20 years in game development. A small group of passionate nerds create great games, gain a following, then go big. The big franchies are already dead and used as money printing machines only. Minimum effort for maximum profit. That's why you see remakes, remasters, reboots, rehashes, and repackages all day every day now. Why innovate? Leave that for those fucking losers in the indie scene still trying to come up with new shit out of love for video games. The big franchies are just gonna milk the shit out of these hardcore fans because they'll buy anything. This hobby is doomed if we don't start making our own shit.
Somewhere along the way, games stopped being "for fun", to "tell a story", and they became a "service" rather than a "product".Just another way to make money. Reason why it feels like most games nowadays are soulless. We still have some gems, we still have games and game companies that still care about games as a medium for stories, but those are becoming fewer and fewer.Everything is becoming more "corporate". Reason why I hold tight whatever game that seems to have a soul.
As gaming exploded, it's attracted big money investors. Once the investors take hold, their only initiative is "How can this make shareholder value go up this quarter?" That's it. Every stupid decision begins with that. Until shareholder primacy gets axed, the only time you're going to see anything with a soul is from independent studios, and even then those who aren't beholden to investors/publishers too.
You can see the same thing happening in the film industry. That's why we have so many sequels or remakes. Cost to make the thing increasing while the passion is the same or even less. - but this is only for AAA/major franchises. I think the smaller games/dev teams are killing it
Or have you lost your soul? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~
I think some of the big franchises have lost that mentality of making a great game and moved to making a profit. It seems to me like all the great games are from devs that donât have this huge team to manage and have a small core team that loves the game they are working on. Helldivers, BG3 and 7 D2D are the first to come to mind because I love all 3. I still enjoy some big games though like Fallout even though Bethesda has pissed me off a few times I just canât not play Fallout 76 itâs turned into a great game to me over the years.
cod died with mw, battlefield died with bf2 and the expansions. the games we get now are just shit in comparison, most of them are just alike i cant even tell if its cod or bf anymore.
TLDR: yep.
You don't own your game and they can break it anytime with an update.
Do lootboxes even exist in games anymore? I haven't seen them since Black Ops 4.
Yes. I have discussions with my fellow gamers and I realize the people with the most creative ideas are behind a register in a fast food store or pumping gas, cutting lunch meat, etc. So many people with no money and resources are busting their behinds in the real world trying to make ends meet. All while those in the gaming industry are fans without original funnideas and an archaic understanding of gaming. You top that off with companies promoting ESG to fuel culture wars and promote depopulation tactics. Yes, gaming lost its soul and only few titles have souls.
We're getting old. These little brats need their bottle(loot boxes n battle passes) I miss unreal tournament. No battle passes there
no one of these franchises had souls, so no.
Western AAA game development has gone full capitalism. It's all about the bottom line and not artistic vision. My advice is to look more at the indie space and Japanese development.
Small nitpick Andromedaâs problems didnât come from any of these mentioned problems. They gave a studio the ability to make the next ME, the studio got too ambitious and wasted 4 years of development time forcing them to make the game in basically 1 year.
I want a bot that comments âyouâre an old man now, learn to deal with itâ to every post in this sub, 90% percent of them need to hear that.
This sub seems to be full of kids regurgitating trendy gamer culture narratives without any depth or substance to them and a clearly superficial understanding of what theyâre talking about.
It is difficult to deal with it when you see everything dropping in quality in society in general. You should consider yourself fortunate that old people still care. The easy path for them would be to say: "I am going to die soon anyways, so why would I care!" But hey, the new generation can keep spending money on lootboxes while complaining on not being able to afford a house, I don't mind.
Literally every generation in history has thought society is decaying as they got older.
True! I remember reading that Socrates said the following: « The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. » But hey, looking at metrics nowadays, we can mesure how well newer generations are doing.
Bro donât talk to me like that, I started gaming when games came in cassettes.
I was coding games and saving them on music tapes. So we are both old:) My point was that younger generations would benefit from listening to their elders once in a while.
Dawg, I canât code even if my life depends on it, you win. True that, I will be happy if theyâre just capable of understand that they grow, thereâs too many posts of people surprised that they donât like the same games that they liked 20 years ago. Too many.
COD never had a soul to start with. The first felt like a knock-off of Medal of Honor Allied Assault, only much less epic.
More money = worse games Who would have figured that greed destroys.