Seventh Generation: The Years of Stagnation

[sega fan]

Well, the sixth generation brought us new series like Ratchet and Clank, and Devil May Cry, and a few others. This generation is just them getting prettier and being whored out.

Guitar Hero, Devil May Cry, any thing from Nintendo and Sony, are being whored to death.

There are a few Diamonds in the rough, Crackdown, LittleBig Planet, Dead Rising, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Dead Space are all good examples.

[MrMatthews]

Well, the sixth generation brought us new series like Ratchet and Clank, and Devil May Cry, and a few others. This generation is just them getting prettier and being whored out.

Guitar Hero, Devil May Cry, any thing from Nintendo and Sony, are being whored to death.

There are a few Diamonds in the rough, Crackdown, LittleBig Planet, Dead Rising, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Dead Space are all good examples.

Nothing new here. It's a trend that started with the dawn of business: if something is successful once, it will be run through the gamut again and again until it no longer is a viable commodity.

Frankly, I wish Nintendo would whore their franchises out more. I'm ready for a StarFox game on the Wii, as well as new Mario & Metroid games.

Oh, and Dead Rising won't seem so special in a few years, once you're done with Dead Rising 3. Capcom is the biggest game pimp there is.

[gamevet]

About Guitar Hero: I won't deny that GH has a huge following, so it must be fun. I only slammed it because I think ALL rhythm games are useless (patapon excluded)

I can't stand DDR games, but I can see why it became what it did; It is a relevant part of arcade and console game history.

It's quite possible that the accessibility of games like DDR and Guitar Hero, were influential towards Nintendo's decision on the design of the Wii.

[MrMatthews]

I totally agree.

[Tanegashima]

Speaking of Capcom I don't think there have been enough Street Fighter II games. They had the whole rest of the greek alphabet to go before they went to three. Bastards.

[tomaitheous]

Well, what do you call "innovation?"

When you play a DS game and it doesn't use the touch screen. At all. Now that's innovation

[MrMatthews]

When you play a DS game and it doesn't use the touch screen. At all. Now that's innovation

Ironically, the only games in my DS collection that don't overuse the touch-screen are first-party games . . .

[TheEdge]

I know people hate this guy but hes right.

Bernie Stolar
Q: From the time when you started in the game industry, what do you think is the biggest change that has taken place?

A: Thank you for indicating that I am the oldest person in the room. I appreciate that. I’m not going to have a filter for anything I say. I see too many games. Most of the games that I see, there’s a word for them. It’s called crap. I just don’t understand why people make product that’s not fun. That’s the only thing that anybody wants. Why build a store? Why go online and play games that you just don’t have any fun with. You want people to go back and keep playing games that are fun.

http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/07/ga...-crappy-games/

[GameUser-16-32-128]

That was about the only thing he was ever right about and totally agree with him on.

[Ace]

I couldn't agree more with Bernie(even though he was a dumb*** when he was with Sega). All I see nowadays for modern game consoles is crap; absolutely nothing that I would want to play. I'm pretty much stuck in the 16-bit/32-bit eras because of the junk on the current 128-bit consoles.

[16-bit]

I think a lot of the problem with this generation isn't necessarily the lack of innovation, I think a lot of it is "deinovation". The main example of this that I am thinking of right now is Bioshock. Bioshock was a pretty ok game, it had an amazing story (at least for a shooter), great graphics.

A few weeks before the game came out I bought System Shock 2, just to see what I was going to be getting when Bioshock came out.
I played it and I loved it, System Shock 2 is an amazing game, it had a great blend of RPG and FPS elements, and it was very challenging, but not to the point where I wanted to throw my keyboard out the window.

I was very disappointed with Bioshock, mainly because I thought it would be more like System Shock 2, I thought it would have the same great blend of RPG and FPS elements that System Shock 2 had.

But what I got was a game with glitches galore (every time I got a plasmid my Xbox would freeze) and a watered down version of System Shock 2, missing a lot of the RPG elements that made System Shock 2 so great.

[16-bit]

The other thing I noticed in this generation is that the hardware itself is pretty crap. The 360 has some of the worst durability that I have ever seen in a video game console, and I'm not just talking about the RROD. Every single time I've had to send my 360 back it's been problems other than the RROD, I've had the thing freeze on me, and I've had the thing scratch up my discs.

The Wii and PS3 are a lot better as far as durability is concerned, but I have still had problems with both machines freezing while playing certain games and browsing the internet.

I don't know if this is the problem or not, but game consoles now do a lot of really cool things that are not gaming related. I think if the console makers were going to put all of these extra features like: streaming movies, downloadable content and playing BluRay movies they should at least make sure that they work without bugs, and that the ability to play games remains the primary function of the console.

[johnnyb]

I`m only interested in a console that`s dedicated to gaming, I have no interest in a console that plays movies, music, stores pictures, browses the internet, or makes a cup of coffee. I have a hard time getting into playing online as well, yea it`s pretty cool to be playing with others from completely different locations but I would sooner have people there with you. And as for having a hundred different button inputs to play a game keeps the likes of my mrs and other friends who are not big into gaming from playing the newer stuff. They prefer 3 buttons or six at the most anytime, you don`t have to sit down and read a manual for half an hour first!

[Ace]

Another point: piss-poor reliability of the hardware. For 2 years, I told myself that I would NEVER buy an Xbox 360 because of the Red Ring. It was all a question of Microsoft being cheap. I heard somewhere that the reason why the Xbox 360 is unreliable and consistently malfunctioning is because Microsoft didn't want to go to an ASIC developer and spend the money to develop the GPU into an ASIC. Instead they made the GPU themselves, and what did we get? A pile of steaming crap that breaks down consistently. What a ton of BS.
Back to my point of modern-day games being mostly crap: I own a Wii, which has been collecting dust for 4 months because of the damn software being released on the Wii being complete trash, save for Sonic Unleashed, but I'm hesitant to get that, as I have the Homebrew Channel on the Wii, and don't want a System Update erasing it.
Another thing I hate: REGION CODES! God damn it, I had to to use the Homebrew Channel to get Gradius Rebirth for WiiWare, Gradius for the PC Engine, Gradius II for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM, and Salamander for the PC Engine for the following reasons:

1) Gradius Rebirth was taking too long to be released in North America.
2) Gradius, Salamander and Gradius II were NEVER released in North America. Well, Gradius II got a North American release, but it was too little too late.

And what pisses me off even more is Nintendo's enforcement of these region codes through System Updates. I got so pissed off I told myself the last 2 Wii games I'll ever buy are HeatSeeker and Sonic Unleashed and disconnected my Wii from the Internet in protest. I mean, this is seriously retarded. This is also not the Nintendo I know. Sorry, but I'm gonna be ditching them soon if they don't smarten up.

[TheEdge]

Well, the sixth generation brought us new series like Ratchet and Clank, and Devil May Cry, and a few others. This generation is just them getting prettier and being whored out.

Guitar Hero, Devil May Cry, any thing from Nintendo and Sony, are being whored to death.

There are a few Diamonds in the rough, Crackdown, LittleBig Planet, Dead Rising, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Dead Space are all good examples.

Prettier and whored out is a perfect way to say it.

Also Dead Space was a wonderful game.

Fallout 3 on the other hand, well lets just say I and every other Fallout Series fan is personally insulted by it. Beautiful game but this is not Fallout.