General Gaming You wash up on a magical, desert island (with electricity) and can only play one games console (with all games available on it) for the rest of your life, what are you choosing?

[AbsolutSurgen]

1 minute ago, crispy4000 said:

 

I can easily see myself preferring older AAA games to today's crop of bloated & systems driven stuff.

... But there's just no way I wouldn't go with a modern console anyways.  There's never been more good games to play due to the vibrancy of the indie market.  And the big games of today would keep me plenty busy collecting shit and doing side quests made to fill a quota.

Many of today's Indie games are better than AAA stuff on older consoles.

 

I dunno, many non-F2P games actually handle the system-driven stuff really well.  I take your point on the F2P grind fests that so many people like.

[crispy4000]

24 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Many of today's Indie games are better than AAA stuff on older consoles.

Yes and no.  It's rare I play an indie game and think its better than old AAA gems.  I'd put Hollow Knight and Hades up there.

Indies also come up very short in some genres, like action sports and 3d platformers.

  

24 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I dunno, many non-F2P games actually handle the system-driven stuff really well.  I take your point on the F2P grind fests that so many people like.

 

There's too much of it, IMO.  Everything has to be an RPG-lite.  Often to push you forward because the gameplay without upgrades isn't all that much fun.  To bring up Hades again, that's a game that actually understands that, and gets the vibe right from the onset.

[AbsolutSurgen]

28 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Yes and no.  It's rare I play an indie game and think its better than old AAA gems.  I'd put Hollow Knight and Hades up there.

Indies also come up very short in some genres, like action sports and 3d platformers.

  

 

There's too much of it, IMO.  Everything has to be an RPG-lite.  Often to push you forward because the gameplay without upgrades isn't all that much fun.  To bring up Hades again, that's a game that actually understands that, and gets the vibe right from the onset.

I am not sure what the action sports genre is.  Is that like the old BMX/Paintball games?

I never thought the 3D Platformer genre was that interesting -- so I don't know for sure.

 

 

I think "RPG" elements elevate most genres.  It allows you to play with systems, and evolve the gameplay over time.  

[crispy4000]

28 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I am not sure what the action sports genre is.  Is that like the old BMX/Paintball games?

I never thought the 3D Platformer genre was that interesting -- so I don't know for sure.

 

Tony Hawk, SSX, NBA Jam, etc.

Indie 3D platformers, even the better ones, all feel somewhat budget constrained.  It's a genre where extra manpower can be is useful, but you don't see many AAA examples any more.  Thank goodness Psyconauts 2 got Microsoft's backing.

  

 

28 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I think "RPG" elements elevate most genres.  It allows you to play with systems, and evolve the gameplay over time.  

 

The best examples of which have great core gameplay to begin with, and upgrades that matter.

[stepee]

8 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Tony Hawk, SSX, NBA Jam, etc.

Indie 3D platformers, even the better ones, all feel somewhat budget constrained.  It's a genre where extra manpower can be is useful, but you don't see many AAA examples any more.  Thank goodness Psyconauts 2 got Microsoft's backing.

 

Demons Turf is a pretty good 3D platformer that made an unfortunate mistake of adding too much weird unneeded combat. There’s some other indie ones not out yet I’ve been eyeing but yeah they usually end up pretty rough. 
 

But to be fair to indies, it’s a genre most struggle with, with only Nintendo and a couple other devs ever putting out a great one.

[crispy4000]

4 minutes ago, stepee said:

Demons Turf is a pretty good 3D platformer that made an unfortunate mistake of adding too much weird unneeded combat. There’s some other indie ones not out yet I’ve been eyeing but yeah they usually end up pretty rough. 
 

But to be fair to indies, it’s a genre most struggle with, with only Nintendo and a couple other devs ever putting out a great one.

 

I always have hope that they'll get there.  I think Yooka Laylee 2 might shape up okay now with Tencent dollars and a better game under Playtonic's belt.

[AbsolutSurgen]

13 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Tony Hawk, SSX, NBA Jam, etc. 

 

Isn't Rocket League the pinnacle of that genre?

[stepee]

26 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

I always have hope that they'll get there.  I think Yooka Laylee 2 might shape up okay now with Tencent dollars and a better game under Playtonic's belt.

 

I think it’s such a hard thing to get right, to nail that feel that makes the moment to moment of simply moving the character fun. Though a lot of the attempts are yeah, pretty cheap which doesn’t help. I have faith in Playtronic for Yooka 2, impossible lair is a fantastic game and the overworld shows me that I think they can make that happen in 3D. 

 

Also Hat in Time seems very good, I’ve just been waiting for a good portable port to play it, so will dive in when I get my deck. I think indie’s are getting closer. Just get me a Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom level 3D platformer once a year even and Id be pretty happy.

[crispy4000]

26 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Isn't Rocket League the pinnacle of that genre?

 

Is it?

[crispy4000]

6 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

I think it’s such a hard thing to get right, to nail that feel that makes the moment to moment of simply moving the character fun. Though a lot of the attempts are yeah, pretty cheap which doesn’t help. I have faith in Playtronic for Yooka 2. Also Hat in Time seems very good, I’ve just been waiting for a good portable port to play it, so will dive in when I get my deck. I think indie’s are getting closer. Just get me a Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom level 3D platformer once a year even and Id be pretty happy.

 

Hat in Time is both wonderful and sloppy.  It's like a better and worse version of Mario Sunshine.  It's really forgiving to control and fun to bounce around, but there's definitely parts that feel slapdash and overly cluttered.  Camera control kind of sucks too, with you needing to zoom in to look up.

[stepee]

1 minute ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Hat in Time is both wonderful and sloppy.  It's like a better and worse version of Mario Sunshine.  It's really forgiving to control and fun to bounce around, but there's definitely parts that feel slapdash and overly cluttered.  Camera control kind of sucks too, with you needing to zoom in to look up.

 

Yeah I did play the first world and this sounds about my experience with it. But it’s one of my favorite genres and I really have to just take what I can get!

[AbsolutSurgen]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Is it?

My kids seem to love it, and still play it.  And my google search says It is still played by millions of players a day more than 6-years after launch.

[crispy4000]

57 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

My kids seem to love it, and still play it.  And my google search says It is still played by millions of players a day more than 6-years after launch.

Okay, so we’re both not really talking from experience here.  
 

I haven’t played it, but never heard it be called a classic before (though it could be).  Or a better arcade sports game than all that came before it.

[ort]

It has to be Xbox One or PS4.

 

I have so much nostalgia for different eras, but if that's all you've got, you'll get the most milage out of those two.

[AbsolutSurgen]

29 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Okay, so we’re both not really talking from experience here.  
 

I haven’t played it, but never heard it be called a classic before (though it could be).  Or a better arcade sports game than all that came before it.

I've played it (probably only for 10-15 hours though).  It's really good.  I suck at it.  Incredible depth for an action-oriented sports-like game, which are notorious for lack-of-depth.

There are 40k concurrent players on Steam as we speak. (And it is in their top 20 today.)  And it's an Indie game to boot.  So, people seem to like it.

I'll be honest, I didn't care much for SSX or Tony Hawk -- I thought NBA Jam was great in it's day in the Arcade though.  Doesn't really hold up for more than hour or two today.

Probably enough to suggest that Indie developers are still capable of making action sports games. 

[Phaseknox]

5 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Many of today's Indie games are better than AAA stuff on older consoles.

I wouldn’t necessarily say many, but some are. I guess that it depends on how old we’re talking about here. 

[stepee]

THPS3 and THPS1/2HD are two of the best games of all time.

[AbsolutSurgen]

1 minute ago, Phaseknox said:

I wouldn’t necessarily say many, but some are. I guess that it depends on how old we’re talking about here. 

Atari 2600

NES/Master System/C64/Amstrad/Speccy

Super NES/Genesis/3DO/Neo Geo/PC Engine/Amiga/ST

PS1/N64/Saturn

PS2/Game Cube/Xbox

 

My hot take is that the games of today are significantly better than most from games pre-2005.  UI, Controls, Game Play, Depth, Graphics, Sound, Multiplayer, etc have improved so much over the last 17 years.

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Probably enough to suggest that Indie developers are still capable of making action sports games. 

 

Didn't say they couldn't.  Rocket League is something original.  It's nice that it doesn't have an analog in the past, so the comparisons can never be too direct.

 

I am looking forward to Wave Break, that's one to keep an eye on.

[Phaseknox]

51 minutes ago, stepee said:

THPS3 and THPS1/2HD are two of the best games of all time.

My favorite Tony Hawk game is Tony Hawk’s Underground. Were you ever into skateboarding? I was a hardcore skater in my youth (teens/early 20s), so you would think that I would love skateboarding video games but nope! I would rather be out skateboarding for real than doing it in a video game. That’s part of why I was never into the Tony Hawk and Skate games as much as a lot of other people were. But if I remember correctly Tony Hawk’s Underground had character creation, a story and missions that made it more than just a skateboarding sim and that’s why it appealed to me more.

 

50 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Atari 2600

NES/Master System/C64/Amstrad/Speccy

Super NES/Genesis/3DO/Neo Geo/PC Engine/Amiga/ST

PS1/N64/Saturn

PS2/Game Cube/Xbox

I agree with all of those except for maybe PS2/GameCube/Xbox. I think that the AAA games for those consoles were still better than a lot of indie games.

 

50 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

My hot take is that the games of today are significantly better than most from games pre-2005.  UI, Controls, Game Play, Depth, Graphics, Sound, Multiplayer, etc have improved so much over the last 17 years.

I agree, but a lot of indie games try to mimic games from the past so much that sometimes they don’t even include any modern gaming elements whatsoever. I grew up with 8-bit and 16-bit game consoles so I can appreciate a lot of the retro style pixel art indie games that come out now as pixel art is an appealing art style IMO. But I don’t really care for indie games that mimic old 3D polygon graphics such as PS1/N64/Saturn since old 3D polygon graphics aren’t really an art style they’re just dated. 

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

My hot take is that the games of today are significantly better than most from games pre-2005.  UI, Controls, Game Play, Depth, Graphics, Sound, Multiplayer, etc have improved so much over the last 17 years.

I don't think there's a game today that has better depth than Starcraft 1's meta.

Controls are really arguable too, based on taste.  We're fortunately seeing plenty of 60fps games, which helps with input latency.  But there's a sense of twitch fun that old arena FPSs, character action games and arcade-styled games excelled at, that we don't see quite as much today in the AAA space.  There's a lot more obsession with controls feeling weighty on the whole.  Indies are a different story, but rarely best their inspirations.

 

Multiplayer... I guess that depends how much you value split screen versus and couch co-op.  I don't see the general loss of those once standard options as an improvement.  We've stepped forward in other ways, yes.  Still.

[stepee]

21 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

My favorite Tony Hawk game is Tony Hawk’s Underground. Were you ever into skateboarding? I was a hardcore skater in my youth (teens/early 20s), so you would think that I would love skateboarding video games but nope! I would rather be out skateboarding for real than doing it in a video game. That’s part of why I was never into the Tony Hawk and Skate games as much as a lot of other people were. But if I remember correctly Tony Hawk’s Underground had character creation, a story and missions that made it more than just a skateboarding sim and that’s why it appealed to me more.

 

I agree with all of those except for maybe PS2/GameCube/Xbox. I think that the AAA games for those consoles were still better than a lot of indie games.

 

I agree, but a lot of indie games try to mimic games from the past so much that sometimes they don’t even include any modern gaming elements whatsoever. I grew up with 8-bit and 16-bit game consoles so I can appreciate a lot of the retro style pixel art indie games that come out now as pixel art is an appealing art style IMO. But I don’t really care for indie games that mimic old 3D polygon graphics such as PS1/N64/Saturn since old 3D polygon graphics aren’t really an art style they’re just dated. 

 

I was never into skating, no! I think you are spot on honestly, i barely think of tony hawk as a skating game. It’s just arcade gaming perfection to me. I did like THUG 2 a lot on psp, played the crap out of that. I hated most of the sound track so I listened to so much Frank Sinatra - Glad to be Unhappy.

[Keyser_Soze]

I had skateboarding friends who loved every THPS.

[Phaseknox]

1 hour ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I had skateboarding friends who loved every THPS.

I always wanted a story/character driven skateboarding action adventure game that was similar to the movie Thrashin’, not just an always glued to a skateboard skating in small open-ish areas arcade game. Tony Hawk’s Underground is the closest thing that I got to that, but it was still a far cry from what I wanted.

[Keyser_Soze]

10 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

I always wanted a story/character driven skateboarding action adventure game that was similar to the movie Thrashin’, not just an always glued to a skateboard skating in small open-ish areas arcade game. Tony Hawk’s Underground is the closest thing that I got to that, but it was still a far cry from what I wanted.

 

How did you feel about Grind Session?

[Phaseknox]

49 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

How did you feel about Grind Session?

I never played it, isn’t it just a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater rip-off?

[Keyser_Soze]

27 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

I never played it, isn’t it just a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater rip-off?

 

You are correct but it felt not as good to play. I think I only played the demo.

 

How did you feel about Thrasher Skate and Destroy?

 

This one came out a month after THPS and there were a things I preferred about it more than that game. It was more simmy and physics based but ultimately more complicated and aimless than THPS so it lacked  a lot of the appeal.

[Phaseknox]

9 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

How did you feel about Thrasher Skate and Destroy?

 

This one came out a month after THPS and there were a things I preferred about it more than that game. It was more simmy and physics based but ultimately more complicated and aimless than THPS so it lacked  a lot of the appeal.

I never played it, either. I vaguely remember it, but I just wasn’t really interested in arcade or sim type skateboarding games. I always hoped that someone would make the action adventure skateboarding game that I wanted, but they never did. Instead they made crap like Tony Hawk: Ride.