[jkingsman]

It really is incredible. I've been playing through my childhood games on retro handhelds, and recently jumped from <$100 handhelds to a Retroid Pocket Flip, and it's incredible. Been playing WiiU and PS2 games flawlessly at 2x res, and even tackling some lighter Switch games on it.

[reactordev]

It truly is. My issue though, like in 2010 when I built an arcade cabinet capable of playing everything is you eventually just run out of interest. In it all. Not even the nostalgia of it keeps my attention. With the exception of just a small handful of titles.

- Excite Bike (it’s in its own league) NES

- Punchout (good arcade fun) NES

- TMNT 4-P Coop Mame Version

- NBA Jam Mame Version

- Secret of Mana SNES

- Chronotrigger SNES

- Breath of Fire 2 SNES

- Mortal Kombat Series SEGA32X

- FF Tactics PS1

I know these can all be basically run in a browser at this point but even Switch or Dreamcast games were meh. N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters.

[Novosell]

Outer Wilds, Baba is You, Blue Prince, Hades 1&2, Disco Elysium, Hollow Knight, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, Clair Obscur, What Remains of Edith Finch, 1000xResist, Return of the Obra Dinn, Roboquest, Rocket League, Dark Souls, etc. I could go on, and on, and...

Not rehashes. Original, phenomenal games covering damm near every genre and if there is a genre you're missing, I can find a modern game to match.

Do you actually engage with modern games?

[chongli]

Those may be some amazing games you listed but none of them scratch the itch that some folks have for twitchy NES games. For some reason, modern indie developers never try to emulate the tight, twitchy, highly responsive controls of NES games. Instead, they go for floaty, slow acceleration-based, more forgiving controls.

The puzzle games in your list have no equal though. The NES is pretty light on puzzle / adventure games, though it did receive really nice ports of the MacVenture games (Deja Vu, Uninvited, Shadowgate) as well as Maniac Mansion, and it has a couple of unique ones with Nightshade and Solstice that blend in a bit of action while remaining primarily adventure games.

[CoolGuySteve]

A large part of this is because the latency on modern TVs can be anywhere between 4.7ms and 150ms so games have to allow for a lot of slack in their input.

The NES and SNES had 1-3 frames of latency depending on the game.

[Grazester]

Don't modern TV's come with a game mode to reduce this latency (turns off any kinds of image processing)?

I have a 12 year old Samsung LCD monitor that is advertised as 2.5ms

[CoolGuySteve]

Yes but like all non-default settings, a large portion of the player base doesn't have it enabled. Games have to be designed for a large market, not just high end OLED buyers.

Even then, most VA/IPS/LED displays have something more like 20ms of latency in game mode due to slow LCD refresh rates. Controllers are also randomly delayed by 2.4GHz interference.

This 8bitdo Pro 2 on my desk has 18ms latency all the time. It actually kind of sucks and it's one of the faster wireless controllers.

[jasomill]

Yes. I get about 5 ms latency on my 2024 LG OLED (a bit more at 120 Hz, a bit less at 144 Hz).

But there are other sources of latency that stack.

[vunderba]

Oh they absolutely do - you just might be unfamiliar with them. I grew up playing Ninja Gaiden, Megaman, etc. There's definitely an audience for 2D games with extremely tight controls. Off the top of my head:

- Shovel Knight

- Spelunky 1/2

- Rogue Legacy

- Cuphead

[chongli]

I’m familiar with all of those games. They’re few enough in number that I see the same small set brought up every time I make this point.

I think they’re the exception that proves the rule. There are fewer of them (noteworthy ones anyway, I’m sure there’s a long tail of obscure ones) than there were popular games of this kind on the original NES. I think Derek Yu’s release of UFO-50 is indicative of his similar need to scratch that itch!

[vunderba]

I think noteworthy is the key. Others with tight controls and timing that I can think of (that are less known) are Downwell, Caveblazers, Celeste, Super House of Dead Ninjas, Tiny Barbarian DX, VVVVVV.

And these are just ones that I've personally played.

[techpression]

NES games are pretty darn slow and not very twitchy at all compared to something like Super Meat Boy. I’m not into the genre too much but I know there are quite a few more of them. And Street Fighter still requires very exact frame execution if you want to take it to the extreme.

I’m as nostalgic as anyone, but games today are just so much better in every way.

[anyfoo]

Dark Souls and Hollow Knight were among the listed titles, come on.

[chongli]

Those may be difficult games but they don't have the twitchiness of a game like Super Mario Bros. They're on the order of 1/4s to 1/2s maneuvering (with great anticipation) whereas SMB is loaded with 1 frame tricks (1/60s). It's an order of magnitude difference.

[yellowtaxi9sols]

This still feels like a lack of knowledge on the medium, and a bit of faffery around the meaning of "twitchiness". There are still a ton of momentum platformers being made, UFO 50 alone has like 5 included. Even ones with full on mechanical restrictions, such as Yelow Taxi Goes Vroom, which tried hard to go the opposite way, and has has no conventional jump button to preserve momentum with, it's almost entirely about precision setup and aerial readjustment.

[anyfoo]

Huh? 1 frame tricks are the top shelf of speedrunning moves, definitely breaking how the games are designed to be played by orders of magnitudes.

Speedrunners use 1 frame tricks in more modern games as well. It is considered extremely hard even amongst the already insane speedrunning community, no matter whether the game is SMB, Odyssey, or anything recent.

[darth_aardvark]

Have you tried UFO 50?

[chongli]

I haven't. I'm a huge fan of Derek Yu though, so I need to!

[YurgenJurgensen]

2019, 2019, 2025, 2019, 2019, 2017, 2017, 2021, 2025, 2017, 2024, 2018, 2020, 2015, 2011.

I only see three games here less than five years old. The oldest is from three console generations ago. Do /you/ actually engage with modern games? Remember the time you’re comparing to had 5-year console generations. This is like someone on the release date of the PlayStation 3 saying that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a “modern game”.

[Novosell]

I just listed a few games off the top of my head, and in contrast to the person who I responded to having listed a bunch of 90s/early 2000s games. In comparison, mine are certainly modern.

If you want "modern", 5 years old maximum, then we have, for example:

Backpack Battles. Elden Ring(Nightreign). Tainted Grail. Monster Train 2. Escape from Duckov. Nine Sols. Hollow Knight Silksong. Black Myth Wukong. WH 40k Rogue Trader. WH 40k Space Marine 2. Spirit of the North 2. Patrick's Parabox. Stacklands. Balatro. Ender Lilies/Magnolia. Tunic. ANIMAL WELL. Dome Keeper. Inscryption. Reus 2. Astral Ascent.

I just had a scroll through my steam library and picked some games I really like/love that felt like they should be less than 5 years old. I've not double checked. This is what I meant by "etc. I could go on, and on, and...". I wasn't saying that cause I ran out of games to list.

[YurgenJurgensen]

Why were those games on the top of your head? If things were as healthy as you claim, surely your head would be full of exciting new titles? Would you have, in 2006, brought up Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Doom as titles to show modern gaming’s superiority over the Atari 2600?

[Novosell]

Why are you trying to do weird gotchas instead of engaging with the discussion? I don't get it.

And comparing time periods like that isn't proper, 10 year old tech now is a lot more similar than 10 year old tech was in 2006. 1996 and 2006 are vastly different tech-landscapes. 2016 and 2026? Barely different.

Or do we wanna pretend the leap from Doom to Crysis is the same as the leap from the Witcher 3 to Clair Obscur? Modern is a relative term and we did not define it at the start of this conversation.

So for you to just join in afterwards and retroactively try to apply your own definition, which you are yet to share, on to my original comment just doesn't make much sense?

What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to convince? And of what? Chill out man.

[framapotari]

Elden Ring, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Baldur's Gate 3, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Dredge, Blue Prince, Balatro, Astro Bot, Hades II, Silksong, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Pacific Drive, Death Stranding 2, Split Fiction

[YurgenJurgensen]

It’s too late for that. You crafted that list after seeing the criterion, so it does nothing to disprove the point that the games people think of when they think about “good modern games” aren’t actually modern.

[iamjackg]

Maybe your point was that, but that's not the point the person you replied to was addressing. Nobody was arguing about the specific definition of "modern."

The original commenter made a very clear claim: that the most recent "peak" system was the Xbox, which was discontinued in 2005, and that everything after that has been a rehash.

[framapotari]

Haha what? Do you believe that it's somehow been proven that "people" think about good modern games in some specific way? Based on a comment from one person?

[phatfish]

Of course there are good modern games, but I agree there was something special about the first 3D generation of hardware (hardware cheap enough to be in home consoles at least) and the games it enabled.

Only VR has come close recently, but that hasn't hit in the same way because it is still too expensive and cumbersome.

[reactordev]

This. Half-life was amazing, and not because it was Quake 2. It was a story. Less about blowing stuff up with guns and more about uncovering the secrets of Black Mesa. Then came along mods…

The first one was Team Fortress. Remember that? Still strong today as a ftp title TF2. The second one was a spec-ops style delta force mod (I can’t remember the name) but it gave the 3rd modder the idea that a modern setting could work. Counter-Strike was released as an early alpha on my forum and the rest was history.

I mention this because this was a tuning point from fixed function pipelines to programmable pipelines (shaders).

There was this awe of what we can do, what could be possible, and today’s modern games are a fulfillment of that. I feel this same sense of awe when it comes to some of these foundational models. It’s just incredible what they are capable of.

In reality, while AAA titles have been pumping out annual titles to keep shares high and pigs fat, there have been some wonderful indie titles, smaller budget games, that have made a significant impact on the games industry as a whole.

[anyfoo]

I loved Half Life 2, and it was highly influential, but that influence lives on.

Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Dark Souls, and Return of Obra Dinn were among the mentioned titles. All of these games tell a story, each of this game does it in its own, magnificent way.

You act a bit like those kind of games are hard to find, but some of them are highly popularized best sellers that keep getting remasters (I don't mean remakes), and still find a huge audience in entirely new YouTube Let's-Plays alone.

[lgl]

> Half-life was amazing, and not because it was Quake 2.

Half-Life used the GoldSrc engine [0], based mostly on Quake 1 and also some parts of QuakeWorld and Quake 2

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldSrc

[skhr0680]

It was just called the Half-Life engine then. It was developed in parallel with Q2, and in general has feature parity with Q2, with a few huge features that they were able to add because of the extra year of development like skeletal animation.

[reactordev]

Which is why I mentioned it. The engine itself was a copy pasta blend of idTech stuff with their own architecture.

[reactordev]

Ok, I’ll give you Rocket League. That’s an entirely new spin on a genre I didn’t see coming. The rest are just RPGs or platformers you like. Good games, but not innovative. Yes, some new franchises have been born and some successful indie titles have been launched but most of the market share in the games industry is held by the top 5.

Yes, I have over 1,000 games in my Steam library going back to 1999. I engage in most games that make the top 500 and have so since I was a teenager making games myself.

[TimorousBestie]

I hope I never become this jaded and cynical about video games.

[reactordev]

Keep playing them for 20 years :D

[anyfoo]

Into the Breach only came out 8 years ago, but I'm still playing it vigorously.

I'm sorry to say, your nostalgia-colored-glasses are so strong, you're actually blinded by them. I grew up in the same gaming era as you (started around early to mid 90s, but the peak was later), and I too have fond memories. But there undeniably has been some magnificent progress in pretty much all aspects of gaming.

Somewhere between 2005 and 2010, I thought I had outgrown gaming, and that no game would have anything to offer to me anymore. But years later I learned that that was just because I was stuck thinking that JRPGs were the pinnacle of gaming, it turned out that I had grown out of those. Obviously your story will be different, but I bet there is some story to you somewhere.

[Novosell]

I've been playing games since I could hold a controller basically, so 26-ish years, and I think modern gaming is phenomenal. I feel sad for you, but it is what it is. Just your loss in the end.

[buttercraft]

I've been playing them for 35 years and I don't share your opinion at all.

[mietek]

So, is Outer Wilds a RPG or a platformer?

[reactordev]

Open world game but also a mystery game as we’re a couple others mentioned above. Those go back to Carmen San Diego and Sherlock homes series. Open World, we’ve seen plenty of those.

[gambiting]

Well, nothing new has been invented since checkers, if you really think about it hard enough and reduce everything to a few buckets of games that everything can fit neatly into, then everything is just a mystery game or just open world or just a platformer. Again, I have a feeling like you're just looking at it mechanically and not how these elements work together to produce a game that is larger than just the sum of its parts. Outer Wilds has puzzles and open world and mystery element to it - and all of those have been done before. But has anyone else combined them this way to produce a game with this narrative? No, I don't believe so(happy to be proven wrong, as always).

Like the other commenter said - I hope I don't become jaded like this about video games, it still brings me joy to see how every new game twists the known formula a little bit more and in new and exciting ways, I believe there are several nieches where we haven't seen the game of that genre yet and I can't wait to see it emerge and how and who is going to do it.

[Rohansi]

Comparing Outer Wilds to Sherlock Holmes is way too big of a stretch for me. There are mysteries in both, yes, but it's the mystery of the (game's) universe vs. crimes.

I'm curious if you think this way about movies/TV too. It's very strange to me to just dilute things down to their genre(s) and then expect innovation to come out as new genres.

[gambiting]

>>Good games, but not innovative

Calling outer wilds or Clair Obscur "not innovative" just tells me you haven't played these games from start to finish, and I don't mean any offence saying this. Unless you mean just mechanically?

[YurgenJurgensen]

What’s innovative about Clair Obscur? Its battle mechanics are clearly heavily inspired by Paper Mario, Shadow Hearts, and Legend of Dragoon, it inherits a bunch of mid-level design stuff from Dark Souls, and its story structure is extremely standard, also borrows a lot of worldbuilding from Dark Souls with a hint of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Kingdom Hearts. It’s competent, somewhat refreshing and not actively consumer-hostile, and it’s a sign of how bad things have gotten that that’s all it takes to be heaped with praise.

[gambiting]

Oh don't get me wrong - mechanically I actually think it's boring as hell, which is why I asked OP if he only talks about mechanics. But I will say that in terms of story and world building it's exceptional - so many games nowadays are just some kind of variation on a standard fantasy/scifi trope, CO has a completely "fresh" repertoir of enemies and locations that feel new, and I didn't have any clue where the story was going until act 3 - I think its exploration of grief and the ability to make you bond with characters while not unique, it's definitely up there with the best video games ever made(imho).

>>also borrows a lot of worldbuilding from Dark Souls

I see that comparison a lot and I don't see it, and I've played every From Soft game from start to finish. Maybe the painted world from DS3 is sorta-kinda similar, but not really?

[reactordev]

I have played both. I stand by my statement.

[rpdillon]

What did you think after you got into room 46 of Blue Prince?

[anyfoo]

So Dark Souls is just another RPG, and not innovative?

[throwaway173738]

It was the first rpg I played where there was so much attention paid to continuity you could see all the other areas in the skybox.

[YurgenJurgensen]

That’s not a great example to pick, given that Demons Souls exists.

[reactordev]

And that was a successor to Kings Field…

These kids don’t know.

[anthk]

Innovative? Check Blade/Severance.

[haunter]

>The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died

lol

There are countless already classic modern story driven games which pushing the boundaries of video games forward.

I know nostalgia is a very strong drug and I also love the games I grew up with in the 90s but it's pure ignorance to say that 1, "storytelling died" 2, no innovation happened in video games in modern times (whatever that even means)

[reactordev]

You are misconstruing my love for nostalgia games for when you think I believe storytelling died. It didn’t die in the 90s, it died in 2010s. Everything since 2018 that I have played has been relatively easy to guess the plot line or it didn’t ever materialize to begin with.

[josephg]

These days there's 200-350 new games released on steam every week. There's plenty of excellent narrative driven games if that's what you're after, mostly from indie developers.

If you're looking for deep narrative from AAA games, then the best you'll find are games like Cyberpunk 2077 - which have some decent writing in between all the action. But if you want something that'll really scratch a strong narrative itch, you gotta go deep on indies. That's where all the experimentation is happening.

You might also just be getting more genre savvy with age. When you're a kid, story beats are mind blowing. But most narratives - especially in games - tack pretty close to classic hero arcs. Once you've seen 100 of them you can often predict the entire narrative arc once you've seen the end of the first act. In other words, it might not be that games have gotten worse. It might just be that you've gotten better at understanding classic narrative structures, so it takes more to surprise you.

[reactordev]

It’s definitely an age thing. Wisdom of experience and being able to dissect storytelling elements for what they are.

Don’t get me wrong. I love games. Obviously. I just see, as you said, 300+ games being released weekly and have really no desire to pursue them. I’ll occasionally jump on the bandwagon of steams top 100 but I don’t feel connected to the games I play anymore. I still play them. It’s good entertainment. I don’t care about buying battle passes, season passes, trinkets, cosmetics, DLC content, etc. If the game is good, sell the game.

[gambiting]

>>Everything since 2018 that I have played has been relatively easy to guess the plot line

Be honest- you guessed the plot of Claire Obscure before you got to Act 3? Or the plot of Death Stranding 1 & 2 before you finished them?

What kind of games have you played since 2018? Because yeah, there is a lot of predictable cookie cutter AAA games out there, sure. But each year there are games which are surprising in their storytelling, same as somehow there are still new and surprising films despite film being much older than gaming. Not to mention books.

[YurgenJurgensen]

Anyone who didn’t guess the ‘plot twists’ of Clair Obscur at least 10 hours in advance wasn’t paying enough attention to even remember how to spell the title of the game. It’s structurally extremely standard if you’ve played Dark Souls and more than a couple of 90s JRPGs, and its foreshadowing is about as subtle as being hit in the face with a stale baguette.

[gambiting]

I didn't realize until Act 3 what the real story was, and to be honest I don't really understand how anyone could. But maybe I'm just not good enough to understand all these subtle themes :-P

[reactordev]

Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed, just another Ubisoft title they could have had but didn’t.

By Act 2 the story was already falling apart. The game just leaves you feeling depressed. I guess since you felt something that makes it GOTY.

[gambiting]

>Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed, just another Ubisoft title they could have had but didn’t.

Ok, so you haven't played it then. I mean just say so, instead of making things up?

[12_throw_away]

Ok, this was a pretty well-done troll, you totally had me until this.

[shakna]

> Or the plot of Death Stranding 1 & 2 before you finished them?

... Yes? I mean, the games are not that subtle. Lore dump, sly smile, more game, repeat.

[mrguyorama]

You thought the height of video game storytelling was the era of Mass Effect 3 and Halo Reach?

Have you played Disco Elysium? "Thank goodness you're here"? Cruelty Squad?

[reactordev]

It’s been downhill since.

Yes I have played those games. DE is ok. Just because a game provides different story arcs doesn’t make it good.

I have not played Cruelty Squad yet.

[leguminous]

I disagree. There are some new (sub-) genres and great games since that period.

* Roguelites have proliferated: Hades is the most obvious example, but there are a variety of sub-genres at this point.

* Vampire Survivors (itself a roguelite) spawned survivors-likes. Megabonk is currently pretty popular.

* Slay the Spire kicked off a wave of strategy roguelites.

* There are "cozy" games like Unpacking.

* I don't recall survival games like Subnautica or Don't Starve being much of a thing in the PS2 era.

* There are automation games like Factorio and Satisfactory.

* Casual mobile games are _huge_.

* There are more experimental games, sometimes in established genres, like Inscription, Undertale, or Baba Is You.

Not to mention that new games in existing genres can be great. Hollow Knight is a good example. Metroidvanias were established by the SNES and PS1 era, but Hollow Knight really upped the stakes.

I'm sure I'm forgetting things and people will have some criticism, but I really don't believe games have stagnated in general.

[jerf]

"Roguelites have proliferated"

I know it's easy to feel that this is people chasing trends, but I've really come to appreciate roguelites over many of the PS2 era games because they give me real progression in a single play session, but also, that single play session is discardable.

As an adult this is a very compelling proposition.

In the PS2 era, while you can find some early roguelite-like-things, you tended to have either the games that have no interesting progression (arcade-like) and the you would just play the game, or you had very long scale games like JRPGs that slowly trickle out the progression but are also multi-dozen-hour games. Compressing the progression into something that happens in a small number of hours, yet eliminates the "I'm 50 hours into this game that I stopped 2 years ago, do I want to pick it back up if I've forgotten everything?" has been very useful to me.

This has been a fairly significant change in gaming for me. I still have some investment into the higher end JRPGs but the "roguelite" pattern across all sorts of genres has been wonderful overall. I don't even think of it as a genre anymore; it's a design tool, like 'turn based versus real time'.

[YurgenJurgensen]

Roguelites are the worst thing to happen to video games since microtransactions. It’s an extremely attractive option to the cash-strapped indie dev, as it promises infinite ‘content’ for little development effort, but what it’s really done is turned every game into a combination of cookie clicker and a slot machine.

The fact that you think arcade games have “no interesting progression” shows just how toxic the roguelike design pattern is. The progression in arcade games is you getting better at the game. If a game needs a “progress system” to communicate a sense of accomplishment to the player, that’s because the gameplay is shallow.

[mlyle]

For the oldies but goodies in my list:

- Any one of the 194_ games

- Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past

- Super Mario World

- Final Fantasy VI, VII, IX

- Chrono Trigger (agree)

- Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition

- Metal Gear Solid 1-3, MGS: Peace Walker

But I think there's been good stuff since.

- The Super Mario Galaxy games

- Super Monkey Ball

- MGS4, MGS5

- Witcher 3

- The Bioshock games

- Minecraft-- probably the game with the most replay value of anything of all time.

I don't know what will stand the test of time. I don't want to play any of these games now, since I've burnt them out, but at some point I'll likely want to play them again...

- Undertale

- Bravely Default

- The Octopath games

- Dispatch

- AstroBot

- Clair Obscur

[reactordev]

Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition (whichever was the one with the most characters) as well as Street Fighter Alpha were great for the arcade machine.

Most of my buddies at the time would come over, have a beer, immediately hang it on the boat-coozy cup holders (the ones that gyro) and go to town shoulder to shoulder playing SF2. The cup holders gyro would prevent the beers from spilling as the arcade cabinet rocked back and forth from two grown men having a virtual fist fight. Best times.

[sbinnee]

Playing Metal Gear Solid 2 was one of my fondest memories I cherish. I could play it only at Taekwondo gym I was attending to. I couldn't finish it because I only had a couple of hours at the gym and I could play only during break time. Oh and I was always waiting for the break time!

[chongli]

If you're struggling with keeping your attention, you ought to try making a list of games you never finished (or never played) and commit yourself to playing through them in order. I have been doing that with NES games and really enjoying it. I alternate between RPGs/adventures and action games, to mix things up a bit.

Recently, I have played through Faxanadu, Dragon Warrior, Blaster Master, and am now working through Fire Emblem (translated from Japanese).

[RGamma]

Baldur's Gate 3 has awesome story telling for video game standards. Plan 100+ hours for a reasonably complete first playthrough though.

[vunderba]

Glad to hear the love for BG3. Grew up playing Black Isle games (BG1 and BG2) so it was nice to play against a substantially more intelligent AI that couldn't be cheesed nearly as hard due to the new turn-based combat as well.

For reference in case anyone "@" me on that cause rose-tinted glasses make people blind:

No one remembers using Animate Dead (a third-level priest spell with no summon limit) to summon a skeletal warrior and walking them up to the enemy's camp/ambush? Enemy wizards proceed to waste EVERY memorized spell on a f###ing summon - and half the spells are charm/control spells that are completely ineffective against undead anyway. Isn't intelligence supposed to be the prime ability score of a wizard? :)

[RGamma]

To be fair BG3 is not without its AI problems. Be it stupid companions walking into danger or getting stuck or enemies that do nonsensical things. It also has a ton of glitches as detailed in the excellent bg3.wiki or shown by speedrunners.

It's a complex game and I don't mind that whatsoever. With games I like I generally tread a careful path to not accidentally break it too badly (though there's also intended ways to break the game, like sacrificing Gale to BOOOAL and having the world blow up in three long rests, or destroying an important book in Gauntlet of Shar). Crashes have been few.

Also, without the wiki I wouldn't have enjoyed my first playthrough thus far as much as I do as it's really easy to miss things. Kinda intrigued by BG1/2 now.

[reactordev]

If you enjoyed Mass Effect, you’ll enjoy BG1/2. Old school BioWare.

[vunderba]

BG1/BG2 are excellent games but it can take some getting use to the RTWP (Realtime with Pause) system and AD&D rules (THAC0, etc).

BG2 in particular is fantastic. Highly recommend them.

> Be it stupid companions walking into danger

Oooo boy - you're gonna love the pathfinding in BG especially with 6 people in your party in tight corridors. /s

[reactordev]

To be fair, BG2 improved a lot with pathfinding and all that BUT you still have AoE spells and crap that don’t give you enough info to know when NOT to cast them because you’re blocked by a tiefling.

[reactordev]

My least favorite story of the Baldur’s Gates. Sorry. I gave it a 6/10 on Steam.

[RGamma]

Guess I'll have to play the other BGs next...

[irishcoffee]

> N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters.

I was a kid when ps1/n64 came out so I also have a lot of nostalgia about that era of gaming.

However…

There are a ton of great games out there from this era. Hell, the Uncharted series and Expedition 33 will get you 100-200 hours of excellent gameplay, Elden ring is another 200. Lies of P is a fantastic game, 50-100 more. The star wars Legos and star wars Harry Potter games are a lot of fun to play with kids, and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the Zelda games we wanted on n64 as a kid, I love those games. And they’re not a rehash, at all.

There’s a lot of fun things out there to play if you poke around. Your local library might surprise you with the collection for completely free games you can borrow. Modern games even.

[reactordev]

Money is not the limiting factor.

I agree there are many games and tons of hours of content available. That is never my issue. There’s lot of games. Games I play. I see the same mechanics in all of them. Some of them because there’s no better way to do it given our current input scheme, others, because they did it. As my kids are now grown, I no longer play kids games like Lego or Zelda (although I do recommend you play them, they are fun) but my argument about peak gaming was that we were still pushing the boundaries of what was possible, hardware wise even. Today, it’s more standardized, polished, refined, as we developed PBR rendering pipelines to recreate realism. My hill I’ll die on is that after that era, it’s been mostly rehashed franchises and game design we have seen before. Yes we have new stories, new graphics, new characters, but you’re still “kill X monsters” or “loot X from Y” style task rabbits. I am jaded because I know we can do better, it’s just the people who hold the purse won’t let us.

We have pushed technology but we have been limited in how far we can push narratives and reality. This gap is closing though. As for storytelling, there are some great stories out there, some predictable ones as well. The freedom of choice in games like Last of Us and Tell Tale Series helped push that a little further but we are still constrained to a linear timeline of events like it’s a movie or a book. Even games where it makes no sense to have it, has it as a way to tracking your level, or progress, or what areas you can visit.

Some stories should be told linearly. Some stories shouldn’t be. There was a time when you were given just enough narrative to understand the world you were in, but nothing more. Your story was your own making.

[irishcoffee]

> There was a time when you were given just enough narrative to understand the world you were in, but nothing more. Your story was your own making.

You should _really_ check out Elden Ring. If you're not playing with a notebook (and you're not looking anything up) you're doing it wrong. No quest ledger, no waypoints. Shit, the story is mostly up to interpretation. It is literally the game you're describing above.

[reactordev]

Played it. It’s ok. I’m not a fan of the hardcore, memorize all the moves of the boss, boss fights. It’s cool. It’s beautiful. It’s been in my library since launch and I have maybe 30 hours on it. That’s it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance and KCD2 were better. Even if the games weren’t innovative.

[erfgh]

You don't play Zelda because your kids are grown? What kind of logic is this?

[reactordev]

I find the game design to be lacking. Not that they aren’t fun. Not that I dislike Link. It’s just child’s play. I mostly played those titles with my kids when they were little. My kids loved Zelda Breath of Wild and I told them about my childhood with the golden cartridge.

[fragmede]

Paradox of choice. When you were single digit/low double years old, and you only had 3 games, you had to play the shit out of them. With every game available at your fingertips, there's no such compunction.

[surgical_fire]

Renting games was a thing. I had about 30 SNES games, and likely played more than 200.

What really happens when talking about retro games is that people remember the remarkable stuff. There were plenty of shitty games back then, they are just rightly forgotten.

[reactordev]

Blockbuster and Funco Land gave me all the titles I could get my 7 year old fingers on.

[bluescrn]

It's called getting older.

As a grown adult, nothing can recreate the feeling of exploring a new game as a child/teen. Especially during the 80s/90s, where gaming as a whole was new and rapidly-evolving.

But revisiting old favourites for the nostalgia can still be enjoyable.

[techpression]

What? Dreamcast was a marvel when it came to games, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, Power Stone, Jet Set Radio, Grandia, SoulCalibur etc.

[reactordev]

SoulCalibur was better on PlayStation.

Dreamcast’s only hit was Crazy Taxi.

[egypturnash]

Jet Set Radio Spiritual Sequel is getting to be its own genre at this point.

[ahartmetz]

I've heard great things about Shenmue from a friend. Probably not my kind of game, but very highly rated by critics.

[Grazester]

Say way? Crazy Taxi? The Dreamcast had an amazing library! Sonic Adventures Shenmue(1,2), Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia, Virtua Tennis, Entire 2k sports series, Samba de Amigo, House of the dead, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive 2, Jet Grind Radio, Test Drive LeMans, F355 Challenge, Rez, ...the list goes one

The weird yet cool games Roommania, Segaga, Seaman

Of course many of these games got ported over later on the other consoles or had sequels release on system after the Dreamcast's demise

[techpression]

The Dreamcast had some of the most innovative games by far, Samba de Amigo and Rez was unheard of in your home before DC and laid the foundation for many games. We also got dance mats for the home.

When someone says Crazy Taxi was the only hit I can only assume they haven’t played much at all, or is using some weird sales metric, by which all games were terrible on the DC because of how terrible SEGA did marketing.

[reactordev]

Definitely sales metrics. DC didn’t sell shit.

[wahnfrieden]

The Demons Souls lineage titles are another valuable innovation (I understand the earlier inspirations it had but those aren't playable like these modern ones)

For MAME I recommend trying Pang and Super Buster Bros