9 ms·

I bought loads of silly machines over the years - CD32, CDTV, CDi, 3DO, Jaguar... It feels a little bit like we are in a little golden age of video games. I’v

I bought loads of silly machines over the years - CD32, CDTV, CDi, 3DO, Jaguar... It feels a little bit like we are in a little golden age of video games. I’ve just finished up BotW (amazing), maybe 50% through Mario Odyssey (amazing again), I’ve got Rayman Legends to play through and Splatoon 2 to get stuck into, in between the odd game of Rocket League. That’s just on the Switch! On the PC I’ve got countless games I’ve bought for next to nothing in steam sales to find time for, Cuphead, Just Cause 3, Metro, Wolfenstein to finish and highly acclaimed indy titles galore... Then I have tons of retro games I’m eager to play for the first time, or play through again, easily accessed and for next to nothing. My biggest complaint is also the lack of time I have to digest it all.

stinkytaco 9y ago
Is it a golden age, or do games get generally better as technology improves? They are bigger, smoother, more complex, better connected, and so on. That's why I don't quite follow this article either. Games are objectively better. Perhaps he doesn't find them as fun or as engaging, but that's less to do with the games and more to do with the person. That and the DS/3DS is probably the richest game console to date in terms of sheer volume of quality content. If you can't find a game you like on the DS, you might not like games.
- Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
  This is highly subjective so probably some people will strongly disagree, but I do think there have been significantly better and worse "ages" in videogames. It's not been constant progress. For example, I'd say 1999-2005 was a quite crappy age. Dominant consoles were Playstation 1 and 2, the first XBox and the Game Cube, which of course had some fine outlier games but nothing compared to the mind-blowing catalogs of e.g. the SNES or the Neo Geo, which were brimming with gems, many of them are still widely considered among the best games of all time. In the PC, after breakthrough games in the previous years like Daggerfall, Quake, Master of Magic, Doom, Civ II, Ultima Underworld, Fallout, Warcraft, Starcraft, GTA, etc., most of what dominated the market in that decadence period were sequels of those and others, and unoriginal games. This opinion is not just due to my being a cranky old timer wanting people to get off his lawn. I do think the situation improved a lot from 2006 onwards. Team Fortress II, the Wii, Portal, Minecraft... were truly revolutionary concepts in the late 2000s in different ways, and indie games began to flourish with titles like World of Goo or Braid (or said Minecraft). Fast forward to now, and we have the Switch, Pokémon Go (geolocation games), and a blooming indie universe. I do think we are at a golden age, it would be a great time to be 15 again and have lots of time for videogames.
  - inertiatic 9y ago
    I find that statements like this serve only to reflect the writer's nostalgia. The Playstation/Saturn/N64 generation wasn't even mentioned despite being the one to introduce 3D games which are still being perfected and laying the foundation for the mechanics that are still the basis of almost every single game coming out today.
    - Apocryphon 9y ago
      And perhaps it's fueled by nostalgia, but games like Super Mario 64 and Final Fantasy VII are still acclaimed today despite their aged tech and the creation of better successors. And in some ways they are timeless, in the same ways NES or Atari classics are.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
      3D ganes were introduced in the 90s, before the dark age I described. I did mention 4: Doom (OK, pseudo-3D), Ultima Underworld (full-fledged 3D in 1992, almost modern controls and has aged better than many games 10 years newer), Daggerfall (extremely ambitious full 3D with a world of a size and scope never since seen) and Quake (full 3D, essentially the same game gameplay wise as most of the later FPSs released until today, just with less detailed textures, and a breakthrough in scriptability and moddability). In the console world I could of course mention Star Fox of the SNES, and Mario 64 of the N64, which were also seminal games, but quite prior to the age I'm criticizing. The 3D games of the 1999-2005 era didn't really introduce significant new elements that weren't in these, they were mostly variations of the same thing, sequels or incremental improvements.
    - toast0 9y ago
      Those systems introduced 3D gaming, like the Atari 2600 and it's contemporaries introduced home video games. However, there's not that many great games from either of those times. I enjoy playing the Atari generation games because of the intense focus on gameplay and immediacy of the platform, but it's hard to get others interested. I expect the same is true outside of a very few 3d titles from that era between load times, poor textures, bad cameras, etc. (But maybe I'm just old and grumpy)
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Higher-tech games are not objectively better, though that's a very common fallacy among "hardcore" gamers and hardware devs. You can do things you couldn't before, which opens up new kinds of gameplay, and it's certainly nice when games are extremely pretty, but the indie revolution of the last decade should have conclusively killed the idea that tech trumps gameplay. Just for one example, Spelunky essentially founded the "roguelikelike" genre and played a huge part in kickstarting the indie surge, and it (at least in its first incarnation) could just about have run on the SNES.
kbenson 9y ago
I'll second that. Just got a switch, BotW and Mario Osyssey for the family for Christmas, and I've been logging a lot of time with Zelda at night when the kids are in bed. The game is massive and dense, which is awesome in an adventure/exploration game. I was a little worried I would be let down because of all the hype, but it's delivered so far. I haven't even really started Mario yet, but I loved Mario 64 so I imagine there's a lot to like there too.
striking 9y ago
I can't wait to retire.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
And in 30 years, you won't regret having sold your entire console collection for even $50. It will have been taken from you when the various services you have to log into to access it become inaccessible. The golden age of consoles has past. PC games are obviously not immune to the issue, but at least there's not a single point of failure for every game ever made for it.

stinkytaco 9y ago

Is it a golden age, or do games get generally better as technology improves? They are bigger, smoother, more complex, better connected, and so on. That's why I don't quite follow this article either. Games are objectively better. Perhaps he doesn't find them as fun or as engaging, but that's less to do with the games and more to do with the person. That and the DS/3DS is probably the richest game console to date in terms of sheer volume of quality content. If you can't find a game you like on the DS, you might not like games.

Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
This is highly subjective so probably some people will strongly disagree, but I do think there have been significantly better and worse "ages" in videogames. It's not been constant progress. For example, I'd say 1999-2005 was a quite crappy age. Dominant consoles were Playstation 1 and 2, the first XBox and the Game Cube, which of course had some fine outlier games but nothing compared to the mind-blowing catalogs of e.g. the SNES or the Neo Geo, which were brimming with gems, many of them are still widely considered among the best games of all time. In the PC, after breakthrough games in the previous years like Daggerfall, Quake, Master of Magic, Doom, Civ II, Ultima Underworld, Fallout, Warcraft, Starcraft, GTA, etc., most of what dominated the market in that decadence period were sequels of those and others, and unoriginal games. This opinion is not just due to my being a cranky old timer wanting people to get off his lawn. I do think the situation improved a lot from 2006 onwards. Team Fortress II, the Wii, Portal, Minecraft... were truly revolutionary concepts in the late 2000s in different ways, and indie games began to flourish with titles like World of Goo or Braid (or said Minecraft). Fast forward to now, and we have the Switch, Pokémon Go (geolocation games), and a blooming indie universe. I do think we are at a golden age, it would be a great time to be 15 again and have lots of time for videogames.
- inertiatic 9y ago
  I find that statements like this serve only to reflect the writer's nostalgia. The Playstation/Saturn/N64 generation wasn't even mentioned despite being the one to introduce 3D games which are still being perfected and laying the foundation for the mechanics that are still the basis of almost every single game coming out today.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    And perhaps it's fueled by nostalgia, but games like Super Mario 64 and Final Fantasy VII are still acclaimed today despite their aged tech and the creation of better successors. And in some ways they are timeless, in the same ways NES or Atari classics are.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
    3D ganes were introduced in the 90s, before the dark age I described. I did mention 4: Doom (OK, pseudo-3D), Ultima Underworld (full-fledged 3D in 1992, almost modern controls and has aged better than many games 10 years newer), Daggerfall (extremely ambitious full 3D with a world of a size and scope never since seen) and Quake (full 3D, essentially the same game gameplay wise as most of the later FPSs released until today, just with less detailed textures, and a breakthrough in scriptability and moddability). In the console world I could of course mention Star Fox of the SNES, and Mario 64 of the N64, which were also seminal games, but quite prior to the age I'm criticizing. The 3D games of the 1999-2005 era didn't really introduce significant new elements that weren't in these, they were mostly variations of the same thing, sequels or incremental improvements.
  - toast0 9y ago
    Those systems introduced 3D gaming, like the Atari 2600 and it's contemporaries introduced home video games. However, there's not that many great games from either of those times. I enjoy playing the Atari generation games because of the intense focus on gameplay and immediacy of the platform, but it's hard to get others interested. I expect the same is true outside of a very few 3d titles from that era between load times, poor textures, bad cameras, etc. (But maybe I'm just old and grumpy)
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Higher-tech games are not objectively better, though that's a very common fallacy among "hardcore" gamers and hardware devs. You can do things you couldn't before, which opens up new kinds of gameplay, and it's certainly nice when games are extremely pretty, but the indie revolution of the last decade should have conclusively killed the idea that tech trumps gameplay. Just for one example, Spelunky essentially founded the "roguelikelike" genre and played a huge part in kickstarting the indie surge, and it (at least in its first incarnation) could just about have run on the SNES.

kbenson 9y ago

I'll second that. Just got a switch, BotW and Mario Osyssey for the family for Christmas, and I've been logging a lot of time with Zelda at night when the kids are in bed. The game is massive and dense, which is awesome in an adventure/exploration game. I was a little worried I would be let down because of all the hype, but it's delivered so far. I haven't even really started Mario yet, but I loved Mario 64 so I imagine there's a lot to like there too.

striking 9y ago

I can't wait to retire.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

And in 30 years, you won't regret having sold your entire console collection for even $50. It will have been taken from you when the various services you have to log into to access it become inaccessible. The golden age of consoles has past. PC games are obviously not immune to the issue, but at least there's not a single point of failure for every game ever made for it.