Greg the White wrote:

Funny how inspiration is dead, when if this was 10+ years ago, we'd have almost nothing but side-scrollers and mascot platformers.

Sigh...i don't really want to reply to this. I feel like i have been trolling the forums as of recent when in reality i have just been speaking my mind on various matters.

Firstly i was actually agreeing with you. I don't know if you picked that up or not. I was agreeing that some games realism works but others it doesn't work. I described how FPS do not work for me nowadays particularly. Some of the FPS you described are actually still have the modern aspects i dislike regardless of the flashy addons but i will get to that.

My post was also targeting FPS games. However you hint at inspiration was dead 10+ years ago with the saturation of the market with side-scrollers and platformers. Firstly with regards to FPS you already know (i don't want to sound like i am being patronising, it is not the case) that the genre basically became popular 20 years ago. So to say that it was an uninspired era is not taking into account the fact that it was the era when the whole genre was birthed.

Secondly side-scrollers and platformers are basically dead. Kids nowadays don't play them. They are roped in with CoD or BF or whatever. Back in those days every major console had those games across them. Nowadays it's almost a niche market were the Wii basically holds all the ground for platformers and sidescrollers.

Greg the White wrote:

Funny how inspiration is dead, when if this was 10+ years ago, we'd have almost nothing but side-scrollers and mascot platformers. This stuff goes in waves. We get plenty of fun, over-the-top games these days. I honestly blame people being more of a problem if you can't/won't look for them, then blabbing about how they're not there when they really are. It strikes me as really rude to the developers who put in the time to make this sort of thing. For shooters, we just had Bulletstorm, a game where you throw mutants around with a laser whip while wrapping them in chain-mines, so you can use them as a way of blowing up their buddies, meanwhile getting points for pulling off fancy kill tricks, like an insane Tony Hawk.

I own this game. That's one game and like i said above. The game although having these features which is why i bought the game also has regen health and a two weapon carry limit.

Greg the White wrote:

Then there's Hard Reset from some of the old Painkiller guys, where you mow down hordes of murderous robots. Then Crysis 1/2, a game about a super-soldier who can turn invisible, jump 20 feet in the air, and shoot down squid-like alien gunships with a laser chaingun. Then there are other semi-recent games like the Left 4 Dead series, Borderlands, the Bioshock games (and upcoming Infinite), and a new Brothers in Arms, which is going away from my favorite series by making it into into a Nazi-chainsawing Grindhouse-wannabe, but it still proves my point. I'll admit the art was dormant while we finagled with new-gen tech, but it's far from dead.

Okay well i heard bad things about Hard Reset meaning i did not check it out. It seemed to be lumped into rehash territory like most FPS games these days. Though i am pretty sure i heard it had regen as well.

Crysis i have never played. Left 4 Dead is a great game but it is not a FPS with regards to other games i mentioned. It isn't a deathmatch type game, this is what i am talking about. Borderlands is an okay game if not extremely tedious in parts. Bioshock is good. Other i haven't played.

Greg the White wrote:

For other genres, we get Back Breaker, Blitz, fun little Wii/Kinect/Moves games for sports. Then there's Prototype, Infamous, No More Heroes, Saint's Row, and Just Cause 2 for open-ended action games. Point and click adventures are back with Machinarium, Whispered World, and Double Fine's Kickstarter project. Rayman: Origins and Super Meat Boy are there for platformers. Fuck, Legend of Grimrock is the first major Dungeon Crawl I can remember since what, Arx Fatalis? These are all great, fun, unrealistic games that are easily distinguishable from one another. With new tech and purchasing systems, we can and have been doing a lot of cool things. I love me my favorite old games of my youth, but with Steam, console marketplaces, and the new Kickstarter movement, gaming is only going to get better.

I was not talking about these genres. I merely stated that inspiration within FPS was essentially dead. The amount of rehashes is astonishing. The market is oversaturated with crap. For every one good FPS game there is about 10 shit ones. It's even widely reported across the web. It's not a new thing:

http://newenglandnerd.com/2010/09/27/shot-in-the-foot-why-first-person-shooters-are-destined-for-a-fall/
http://earok.net/sections/articles/game-dev/theory/end-autonomy-first-person-shooter

So i was not saying that these other genres have these problems. I haven't even thought about it. Though i would not call Machinarium a Point and Click Adventure. However i do know that some of the games you have mentioned here at least in my opinion are not good games. There's no point in being innovative if it sucks.

Greg the White wrote:

Alow, please don't take it as me being mean, I just really like discussion, and I realize when I try to be optimistic, I end up getting a little intense and it can sound insulting. I'm just enjoying having a friendly debate, and I can get carried away. And as far you saying the games suck, I'm just saying that there are a variety of games, however skewed the ratios are or what each individual thinks of them.

I will keep that in mind for future reference! Of course the games are down to each interpretation. Few of them i have not played but i have heard bad things about them.

Fighter_McWarrior wrote:

Greg the White wrote: Funny how inspiration is dead, when if this was 10+ years ago, we'd have almost nothing but side-scrollers and mascot platformers. This stuff goes in waves. We get plenty of fun, over-the-top games these days. I honestly blame people being more of a problem if you can't/won't look for them, then blabbing about how they're not there when they really are. It strikes me as really rude to the developers who put in the time to make this sort of thing. For shooters, we just had Bulletstorm, a game where you throw mutants around with a laser whip while wrapping them in chain-mines, so you can use them as a way of blowing up their buddies, meanwhile getting points for pulling off fancy kill tricks, like an insane Tony Hawk. Then there's Hard Reset from some of the old Painkiller guys, where you mow down hordes of murderous robots. Then Crysis 1/2, a game about a super-soldier who can turn invisible, jump 20 feet in the air, and shoot down squid-like alien gunships with a laser chaingun. Then there are other semi-recent games like the Left 4 Dead series, Borderlands, the Bioshock games (and upcoming Infinite), and a new Brothers in Arms, which is going away from my favorite series by making it into into a Nazi-chainsawing Grindhouse-wannabe, but it still proves my point. I'll admit the art was dormant while we finagled with new-gen tech, but it's far from dead. For other genres, we get Back Breaker, Blitz, fun little Wii/Kinect/Moves games for sports. Then there's Prototype, Infamous, No More Heroes, Saint's Row, and Just Cause 2 for open-ended action games. Point and click adventures are back with Machinarium, Whispered World, and Double Fine's Kickstarter project. Rayman: Origins and Super Meat Boy are there for platformers. Fuck, Legend of Grimrock is the first major Dungeon Crawl I can remember since what, Arx Fatalis? These are all great, fun, unrealistic games that are easily distinguishable from one another. With new tech and purchasing systems, we can and have been doing a lot of cool things. I love me my favorite old games of my youth, but with Steam, console marketplaces, and the new Kickstarter movement, gaming is only going to get better. Thank you! It's very annoying when gamers bemoan "the death of gaming" when it's obvious that games are capable of more now than they ever have been before.

At no point did i say anything to do with the "death of gaming". If you actually read my post i said that games hold infinite possibilities in what they can do. Therefore to sound the trumpets for the end of gaming would be the most retarded possible thing i could do. I did however say that games were becoming of a poorer quality.

This of course was within FPS and not indicative of other games. I can realistically talk about gaming as a whole to be honest, i wouldn't say the end of gaming, that would be foolish but the end to gaming as we once knew it.

It's easy to forget that the Video Game Industry is that, an industry. It's a business which will do what it takes to succeed and make money. It's like anything, this happens in film, music, whatever. The idea of milking something is not exclusive to those two.

Activision is the perfect example of this:

Bobby Kotick (2010~)
"You have studio heads who five years ago didn't know the difference between a balance sheet and a bed sheet who are now arguing allocations in our CFO's office pretty regularly," Kotick said.

He later added, "We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

You know as a gamer i remember being like "THOU DOES NOT HAVE AN INTEREST IN VIDEO GAMES, WHY MUST THY MAKE THEM?" It quickly becomes the case where "oh yeah it makes sense they are there to make money at the end of the day". Oh course you would think if they make a really good quality game then people would buy it and then more profit.

Look at COD though, it's the perfect example. Rehashed games, people continue to buy them, release literally same time every year. It's a businessman's wet dream.

...and the thing about these games is that there is very little difference between them besides probably a few different maps, guns. Fuck i remember seeing MW3 and noticing how they literally pasted the same fonts in, same guns, same music in at one point. It's just lazy.

HOWEVER this does not mean that there are not good people making games out there for people. Dare i cite Mojang who have actually a pretty poor history of releasing updates? But they at least worked with gamers and got them what they want. The indie dev is definitely on the rise which is great to see. Sometimes the games here however are not always the best either with the lack of big studio production.

So at the end of the day within FPS anyway it's a business which is to make money. With COD being pretty much the staple for regen health, two weapon carry limits, is it in anyway surprising that tons of games with these features/similar settings came out to cash in on this?

It's happened since the dawn of capitalism. Competition in this respect. However that doesn't mean that the products the other companies are making are necessarily good. Some of the ones Greg mentioned where examples i heard of poorer quality FPS, regardless of the fun features they stuck in. It seems to me to be an attempt to cash in.

Like i said earlier, i cannot blame them, it's a business, it seems to be the most logical thing to do but as a gamer who obviously isn't too concerned with the business aspect it's just a shit product which is actually the same as everything else (few examples stick out however as mentioned by Greg).

Vert1 wrote:

Thanks for the input so far (though we've gotten off-topic). Yea, Alowishus, Serious Sam 3: BFE - NO COVER. ALL MAN needs to be on the 'non-cover shooter games of comparison' list.

What? I have no idea what you are implying here? Are you saying it is a good suggestion or is this a "sarcastic" response cause this is the cover shooter thread and i mentioned it.

At no point did i state that Serious Sam 3 was a cover based shooter. Considering i own the game i know it has none. Hell the only thing i said was that it and TF2 where outside the current FPS trend.

Oh right cool, i need to work on my reading comprehension haha.