Out of Pod Experience

Couldnt agree with you more, in the last 8 years game quality has gone nothing but down hill. Its laughable. Spending 50 euro on a game you will complete and be finished with in like 4 or 5 hours. And companies wonder why they are loosing millions to piracy still.

Gone are the days of Sacrifice, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, System Shock 1 & 2, proper games that are challenging and worth the money.

I do i do.. I never completed it i got stuck near the end.. In fact to this day i still have not been able to complete Final Fantasy 7, 8 or 9! Im stuck on the last boss in every one >.< lol hmmm think i might break out the PS2 when i get home and start FF7 again from scratch.

Sacrifice had 5 different campagins. Each campaign took you freaking AGES to complete the and story was incredible. and it was a damn had game!

Giants: Citizen Kabuto was HILARIOUS.. by far the funniest game i have ever played, not that difficult but the quality of the game always made it stick!

Or Mario Kart & Zelda: Orcarina of Time for the N64 if you want to talk about consoles also!

I remember when i first started playing System Shock 2, i dunno what age i was young maybe 14 or 15. I had to stop playing it cause it was scary and damn hard! in fact now that i think about it **** i still havnt completed that either. I could never figure out the code for the elevator near the end. the one where you have to find parts of the code in the pictures hung up around the place.

You sound older than me :D :D :D

I never played Giants or Sacrafice, I did however play Zelda, I tried and I failed at every Final Fantasy, I remember renting Final Fantasy VII out of "Global Video" when I was young and god, never got far in the week I played it lol.

I dont own a PS2 anymore, I was in the indoor market back home last month and this guy in the PC repair shop had a PS2 for sale for £20 BUT he was sitting playing NFS Hot Pursuit on a playstation 1. I offered him £50 fukin for it and all the games he had, he just would not part with it.

I still remember playing Pandamonium, that game was amazing.

I remember the first Resident Evil. It was terrible. Horrible voice acting, camera angles that prevented you from seeing the zombie that was 3 feet in front of you, a glack 9 mm that would fire one round ever few seconds...all the tension of the game was from ****** mechanics, not from actual scary moments. It was crap. It was just novel crap.

You should try FFV.

Also get Mario RPG on your Computer, it is... There are no words but it's like Mario Final Fantasy.

Used to have FF7 and 9, never liked 8. FF9 is my favorite, 7 has the best story.

I remember an old Indana Jones game for the computer'mostly adventure style. It was the GOD DAMN HARDEST game I've ever played. I had to draw chalk on the walls to not get lost. Now all modern games have a built in GPS system, even if your playing some wizard-knight-thing in the 12th century lol.

The only real big hits now that are actually a bit difficult and arent rehashed copies of more garbage are the X3 series, The Witcher, and KOTOR.

Mass Effect series and Edler Scroll series get honorable mention too. They may be dumbed down and casual but they ARE good.

Loved it. For a top down FF Game it had a brilliant story. My favorite part is when you first see the main villain.

Exdeath returns. Whole thing is good but the awesome is at about 2:10. Exdeath has Sephiroth levels of awesome while on SNES without the Girl Hair, Long, log sword and Overcoat, not that I don't love those things.

The whole FF5 Story is one of the best. I can't wait till they make a 3D version like they did with 1 through 4.

It depends on the game, some hold up much better than others. For example square rereleasing Tactics: Ogre was in some regards a better game than some of the newer FF games. I liked the rereleased DQ games on the DS more than I liked the new one. Older games in a newer shell (Legend of Grimrock) are fun too. That said, I like newer games too. Skyrim was cool. I love borderlands.

Generally I think the two most important parts of a game: gameplay (what you are doing) and story (why) can make or break anything.


As for eyecandy, it's new toys to play with and everyone is copying everyone else. If one AAA hit cut back on graphics by 25% and put that time and money into gameplay and the story being told, you'll see other game makers doing that.

I know how you feel OP
I always considered my self a wargammer, but real wargamming hobby, the cardboard counters and dice games like advanced squad leader , gmt s great battles of history series and the even better tabletop wargamming (excludind any of the latest warhammer spawns)
So alot of the games i bought are just the pc versions of that hobby
Games like the battlegroundseries
Campaign series eastern front , western front , rising sun etc
The operatonal art of war
Gary grisby games like war in the pacific and war in the east, other titles like battle of brittain and over the reich
And many more

So almost every game that comes out now for me just looks so dumbyfied what they used to call a arcade game they now market as a truly strategic/tactical wargame or super realistic flightsim mmehhh really kids don t want to any challenge any more only thing they want is instant gratification and a I WIN button

There are still good games out there but they are rare and tend to be more expensive

I realized just how bad games had gotten when I played Batman: Arkham Asylum. It was almost impossible to lose. It was more about th

How to make a winning game in the 21st century:

1) Checkpoints, checkpoints, checkpoints. Never make them replay more than a few minutes after a failure.
2) Remove lasting consequences by doing things like refilling health bars as a reward for not fighting for a few seconds. I'm looking at you, Halo.
3) Instead of side quests and branching storylines, ncrease playtime by adding arbitrary "achievements" for gamers to collect. After all, I can totally see Batman spending 30 hours trying to find all the hidden riddles before you complete the 4 hours of actual gameplay.
4) Attach content to those achievements rather than game progression. That cool new gun should come for picking up 300 coins, not because it's a critical element to the next level of the game.
4a) Bonus points for applying this to multiplayer, because nothing says "balance" like giving the best tools to the people who spend hundreds of hours making all the achievements.
5) Pay more attention to cinematic "coolness" than game mechanics. So long as the gamer gets eye candy and wins the game, they won't care how absurdly easy the game is.

I weep for modern console gamers. They've had so few games that do it right.