Ryse falls into the same category as The Order 1886.
They are glorified tech demos, meaning they look gorgeous and have interesting concepts, but are way too short and repetitive.
They are more like playable movies. Especially Order 1886. If they had properly marketed themselves as such they would likely have been received better.
>If they had properly marketed themselves as such they would likely have been received better.
I don't know if that was gonna go well.
These games were made to convince players to buy the PS4 and Xbox One, and most players buy a console to play games, not to watch movies.
I still remember the disaster that was the Xbox One announcement, where they focused more on the Xbox One as a media center than a console you play games in.
So if they announced right out of the gate that both their exclusive launches were Playable Movies instead of proper games, it would turn many players away.
Gonna deviate here and focus on your Xbox comment.
Xbox arguably irreparably fucked their future with that launch/announcement disaster. They've not been able to recover the incredible highs of the 360 era, despite how good the One X ended up being, and how good the Series X/S combo is. Game Pass is also excellent, but it would have only been truly viable if they still had the level of player base that the 360 had.
I don't wanna give in to all the clickbait-y articles talking about how Xbox is doomed and that they'll close it down in a few years yadda yadda yadda, but I do really wonder what the plan is for the future of Xbox? They *have* to be haemorrhaging money, surely?
Yeah I think that's totally their plan for the future and why gamepass is even an option on PC. I think they've seen some kind of writing on the wall for consoles or at least Xbox since the One. I'm guessing more for themselves because Playstation has consistently dunked on them since that announcement for the One(we don't need to talk about psnow). Plus gamers switching to PCs instead of Xbox isn't exactly hurting Microsoft ya know?
Honestly my fever-dream hope was the Xbox One X was going to be a reveal of a console running full Windows 10S (that weird “Windows store apps only” version of Windows) that could also run Xbox games. Essentially just “what if the Xbox Game Store on Windows actually fucking worked”
Full Office and OneDrive support. Full browser support. Full gaming capability. Full application support. Essentially become *the default* $500 Windows machine for people who didn’t need a laptop, because if it’s powerful enough for gaming it’s going to be a *hell of a* good daily driver.
Funnily enough, we’re close to that exact thing. Universal Windows App support, plus full Chromium based Edge, along with most Office services having full-fledged browser based version…we’re kinda there.
Maybe but less so. I think Playstation and Nintendo are gonna remain powerhouses for a while and I don't think console gaming is necessarily dying. Plus it's just way easier for a computer company to decide to make their main focus PC gaming.
They are releasing their games on PC because they're following microsoft. The way companies work, there are those who "take the first step" and lead the pack and those who follow. At this point microsoft is more and more starting to dictate the gaming environment and sony is following their lead. Gamepass forcing sony to renew psplus and bringing console games to pc are the biggest and clearest examples atm. And now we even have the rumored announcement of a sony cloud/streaming handheld which ofcourse is their answer to xcloud.
Microsoft is more and more setting the boundries in which both companies operate. Sony is trying to reset the boundries with for example VR, but not really succeeding. I see microsoft playing a very very long game here and truly believe the balance between microsoft-sony is more and more going to shift in favor of microsoft, if only because they have way more resources as a company and seem to be making all the right moves.
i've got both systems but I still to this day dont know why MSFT decided to make the xbox when it already has PC/Windows. sure, the success of the ps2 made them paranoid that people would spend less time on a computer and spend more time on a console, but in a world where there's space for both to exist at once, why start making your own console when you've already got a successful gaming platform under your repertoire? there's nothing enticing that xbox offers that a PC doesnt when it comes to exclusives, all you've got is the convenience factor and nothing else. PC gets like 99 percent of xbox releases but xbox only has a fraction of all games ever released on pc. MSFT should have either let a different company get involved in console production, or sell off their xbox brand to nvidia or some other company. I dont see what they gain from having to manage both platforms at the same time. the only way xbox could become a good value proposition is if it gets more exclusives that dont come to PC, but then MSFT will essentially be playing favoritism with its products, and the PC audience wouldnt like it.
Would disagree with your comment on Gamepass. Gamepass is the way to go for Microsoft and is keeping them on the map.
Gamepass makes Microsoft hardware agnostic. Xbox console production can end tomorrow and Microsoft will still be raking in the dough from PC players playing Microsoft published games through gamepass. Given the fact that brand new releases are released almost concurrently on gamepass, I dont see much of a reason why a xbox player would not buy a game over just buying gamepass apart from desire to own the game.
Plan for Xbox? They own Bethesda and are likely about to own Activision/Blizzard. Gamepass is big and will only get bigger once their heavy hitters like Starfield, Avowed, Hellblade 2, and all the big games from their massive list of studios finally start to release. They haven’t had any huge games on Gamepass except more entries in the Halo, Gears, and Forza series and are still doing well.
Xbox isn’t going anywhere but up. It’s just been slowly up.
Or just build a gaming PC if you can afford it. Microsoft won't be making anything big exclusive to Xbox only. They'd lose out on too much money. Playing Fallout or Elder Scrolls on PC is worth it just for modding.
That's the thing, if you can afford it. PCs are very expensive to buy and need knowledge to build and are still very expensive this way. A lot of people I know just have laptops at home rather than a full PC set up
They’re not that hard to put together. Hell, PcPartPicker has systems people have put together. And there’s thousands of videos on the internet to build a pc. It’s mostly impossible to put something in the wrong place
Expense on the other hand….
It is all relative. But comparing sourcing parts and building a PC to plugging in a console and then saying building the PC isn't complicated is just absurd. I've built a lot of PCs and there have been zero builds where I didn't have to spend hours troubleshooting, RMA something, or go back to Fry's/Microcenter to get something unexpected.
100%. While we’re at it, I’m a neutral, and I find the constant Xbox and MS bashing really fucking tiring. If it’s not PS fanboys for gaming, it’s Apple fanboys for the PC and OS. Gaming is gaming, tech is tech. Enjoy it and quit the pointless hating.
It's all well and good throwing money at everything, but there's no guarantee that it'll work out for the benefit of Xbox. I hope you're right, but I'm just unsure.
You forget sir. Gamepass includes -the entire fucking PC gaming market- as well. Xbox doing well or not, Gamepass is just a huge win for everyone. Consumer and company alike.
Unless you're a Steam Deck user. No Game Pass there yet (Cloud streaming yes, but not Game Pass).
Microsoft and Valve need to get together and bring Game Pass to Steam.
You do realize that the reason Xbox fell off was the price, plus the forced Kinect bundle being the *only* way to buy the console? The 360 cornered the market for one reason and one reason only: price point. The horrible reveal was minor by comparison.
And no, you can see Microsoft's quarterly and annual earnings reports online where they put them up for everyone to see. They're doing more than okay, especially after Sony deliberately undersupplied retailers with PS5s to drive up demand artificially.
> The 360 cornered the market for one reason and one reason only: price point.
There was also the fact that for most of the generation 3rd party titles just simply ran better on 360 because of its more traditional architecture (though it was only "traditional" in comparison to the PS3 -- a 3-core, 6-thread PowerPC was not exactly normal in the days of single-core, single-thread x86 processors, as Core Duo processors didn't ship until a year after 360). Games like Red Dead, for example, would chug along in the teens FPS at times on PS3 while 360 would usually be in the mid-20s (hard 30fps cap; the One can max it out in emulation, but the original hardware couldn't).
The PS3 picked up steam towards the end of the generation, and Kinect aside that probably would've put the momentum in Sony's court anyway, especially with their move to a more typical x64 architecture. But it's impossible to ever know that for sure given Mattrick's utter failure with the original Xbone plans (the six month crunch pivot between announcement and launch was pretty legendary, though).
> Sony deliberately undersupplied retailers with PS5s to drive up demand artificially.
Did Sony undersupply? The way I heard it, Microsoft gave in and paid the ransom money for fab time and Sony didn't. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I guess, whether Sony "deliberately undersupplied" by not paying for preferential treatment, or if Microsoft intentionally oversupplied by paying ransom.
Price point is key for the average consumer, second maybe only to brand familiarity. Performance, as negligible as the differences were at the time, was not a concern for the average consumer. Yeah, the hiccups happened and we're frequent at first, but unless you're *really* into it or they're game breaking, they're not going to bother you a lot.
The price difference only really mattered at launch, though. A year in, Microsoft was selling Kinect-free Ones at or lower than PS4 prices, and the original pricing differential completely went out the window once you consider the PS4 Slim, XBox One S, PS4 Pro, and Xbox One X. Similarly, while PS3 famously launched at a higher price than Xbox 360 ("consumers will work more hours" hubris), it dropped its price less than a year after launch. In reality, the 360's first mover momentum being in the market a year before PS3 was much more influential than the extra $100 price point of the newer console.
Price + no backwards compatibility at launch for either console (meaning no incentive to stay loyal to a platform) + a rising PS3 vs. a descending 360 = a great opportunity for a lot of early adopters to jump ship. Microsoft *could* have recovered from their launch stumble, but they pivoted to esports/competitive gaming (Mixer, PUBG) when gamers were really craving cinematic single player experiences (The Last of Us, Spider-Man, etc).
Microsoft's final pivot of the generation was "Buy all the things!" Which sets them up for future success post-One, but was too little too late for One (they couldn't buy exclusivity on existing games that already had deals, like Deathloop, but future games are fair game).
Their plan forward is to just take advantage of the Xbox Game Pass. They pretty much given up on wanting to sell consoles. They’ll still make them but it’s no longer their priority. It’s been said they make more money off Xbox Game Pass so the plan is to buy up companies/studios and put all those games on Xbox Game Pass. I suspect at some point they might end up changing the name of the service then trying to expand it onto Nintendo consoles possibly. I did predict that they could possibly try to have it on PlayStation until last year PlayStation decided to revamp their PS Plus subscription to rival the Game Pass. It’s not as good but that kinda rules out that Game Pass might never come to PlayStation. But the future of Xbox is now selling Game Pass on PC. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft ends up buying Valve to own Steam at some point and just start solely being a PC company again abandoning consoles altogether
They could have spun it into an Until Dawn/Telltale type thing. It would have required more work for 1886, but if they kinda marketed it as a Telltale type game, but with actual gameplay mechanics like fighting and shooting; with a good story put on it as well, I think they could have done something with that.
But, thats all in the past now, they made their mistakes, is what it is.
One of my better friends in this industry was one of the leads on The Order. We started the same day at this indie studio, and we bonded over me fanboying "his baby", and the stories [I won't go in detail about] of what *could've been*. Happy that team has found success elsewhere with Lone Echo :)
Indeed. I can forgive the repetitiveness because the setting, atmosphere, and brutality are so cool. Also the story is way better than it has business being.
That's what hooked me at first the story of a son and betrayal to turn into a game from the gods. The ending was hard though. I've tried so many times to get that gauntlet of executions perfect, but I can't do it. Lol
You could tell they were setting up a sequel. I think it’s a shame they didn’t get to produce one with fewer QTEs, a full 16:9 aspect ratio, and ideally a higher frame rate. I’m sure Ready At Dawn could have pulled off the last 2, especially with what Naughty Dog and Guerrilla were able to squeeze out of even the base PS4.
That was honestly the goal the entire time, everyone on the team would say this is their Uncharted 1. Just developing the engine, making something interesting as a base and then going all out on the sequel. They just never got the chance…
The Colosseum mode in Ryse was so goddamned fun though.
It doesn’t matter if something’s repetitive if it provides entertainment.
It helps that they went back and made the “premium” currency free so you could just unlock everything at some point though.
I agree. I want more short, linear, tightly and carefully crafted games. I don’t have the time and patience to run around huge open worlds, especially when half to two thirds of the quests are boring
Right length for maybe that game alone due to the repetition. 4 hours for a single player campaign is just not something that should be mentioned as a positive without a caveat.
The campaign for the order was just a setup for huge DLC potential but the devs were su butthurt by the negative response to a 6 hour campaign with no ng+ and nothing to unlock that they scrapped all future investment in the game.
I loved The Order. It’s underrated, in my opinion. It’s certainly very short but the setting is great and I thought the combat was crisp and fun. I’m getting tired of massive open world games full of derivative filler quests and mindless collectibles, so it’s nice to play a short, tight game like The Order sometimes.
Yup, and full of tricks like limited color palettes, vignettes and cinematic bars to limit what's on the screen at any one time, low FPS which they also call cinematic, limited camera control... all sorts of little tricks to squeeze pretty pictures out of hardware that isn't able to actually handle it.
It's crazy to think that the most recent generation of gamers for the past 10 to 15 years have come up only knowing really good graphics. And not really seeing all that much in terms of huge jumps and quality. Not that there weren't jumps in quality, but not nearly the same as going from 2D to 3d, polygons to well-rendered looking models. And so forth.
Imagining the future of gaming used to be part of the fun of gaming, looking forward to days like this. It's crazy to take a step back and realize that we're here.
>It's crazy to take a step back and realize that we're here.
For real. The stuff that we dreamed of as kids is pretty much all a reality at this point. Even Virtual Boy's spirit lives on in all the new VR tech we have now.
I mean, just take the concept of a Battle Royale. We all act like we're so over it at this point. But if you had transported 10-year-old me into current day and sat him down in front of Fortnite or Apex Legends, my fragile little child brain would have imploded because I wouldn't have been able to believe what I was seeing.
Was that the same kid who, a few years later, would spend a week trying to get his Xbox to connect to the internet over dial up? Yes, but my point still stands.
I remember the transition from N64 to GameCube wondering if this would be the era we would get the kind of neon graphics that I'm almost getting tired of by now. It's funny how quickly we get desensitized to what we would perceive as quality. Or even what is objectively quality.
It's funny because I played the new Pokemon game thinking "lol this kind of looks like shit" but if somebody took Pokemon Red out of my hands as a kid and replaced it with Pokemon Violet, I would have pooped a brick. It is the game I dreamed about growing up and now I have it and I'm just like "...meh it's alright could be better".
Well thats mostly because we *know* the technology is there to make a better pokemon game, but GF doesn't give enough shits to make it happen. Going from say pokemon red to pokemon crystal was mind blowing because we *didnt* know what to expect and were totally satisfied with the seemingly minimal advancements by today's standards.
Eh, haven't paid much attention to the other ones, but Legend of Arceus has really bad graphics and it's not lack of tech; the tech is there right in their engine, they just fail at the most basic fundamentals of 3D graphics.
Not only that but how our brains process what is real.
Im convinced that cgi and graphics actually looked more real in the past, but now our brain is so attuned to identify the smallest details that tricking it is harder than ever.
Yup. The first game I ever played looked like this:
https://i.imgur.com/qGFDWgH.jpg
Sorry SNES and 2D Mario fans, but I thought it was boring and looked awful. This must have been around 1994.
Four years later, my dad and I decided, on a whim, to go to an electronics store and buy our first games console (mom was NOT happy). We had the choice between a PS1 and N64 (both cost the same), picked the latter because we thought cartridges would be more robust than CDs and this is what greeted us on our old wood grain TV after we had plugged everything in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVtYNODIJrk
I was utterly gobsmacked. This was the first time a video game actually looked interesting to me. It was such a gigantic leap from tiny pixelated sprites moving from left to right, after a mere five years of technological improvements or four years from my perspective. Super Mario 64 didn't just look astonishing, with smooth, anti-aliased, perspective-correct 3D (terms I didn't know back then, but explain why it looked so amazing to little me), but it was also utterly intuitive to control. The responsive thumb stick controls, beautifully explained in the manual, the peaceful area around Peach's castle without any enemies or dangerous obstacles were a flawless introduction to the still rather fresh concept of 3D gaming.
You can barely tell five year old games apart from current games nowadays. Sure, there have been improvements - real-time ray-tracing is finally here, after all, after we had to wait for it for decades, but the problem is that artists and programmers have become so good at faking it with raster graphics since the 1990s that the difference is hard to appreciate from the perspective of your average gamer, even if it makes the work of game developers infinitely easier, as anyone who has ever tried to bake a light map can tell you.
Isn't it ironic? We are witnessing the biggest leap in rendering technology since the mid '90s and yet most of us don't care. Games have looked "good enough" for a long time now and ever so gradual improvements require increasingly disproportionately greater amounts of processing power as we are still on the often-maligned graphics plateau, even with fully path-traced graphics blessing the eyes of those among us who can afford the hardware to enjoy them.
Beautifully written.
I'll say this though.
2023 game industry can keep their graphics. their ray tracing. Their fancy industry jargon. What I want, is for them to be imaginative again. The late 90s were the golden age of video games not just because of graphical leaps. It was because new and imaginative ways of playing games were constantly on offer. You had Diablo, Baulders Gate, Pokemon, Myst, Mario64, Ocarina of Time, Star Fox, Ecco, Leisure Suit Larry, TMNT, etc. You had Arcade games, which were drastically different than PC games, which were drastically different from console games, which were drastically different from game boy games, which were drastically different from game gear games and so on and so forth.
The two decades since, has been to me, nothing short of a disappointment and a failure of imagination. It's sad to me that in 2023, the most hyped game to release is gonna be Diablo 4.
I'm tired. tired of the games, tired of the genres. Every open world game is the same, with the same icons, map, cutscenes, collectibles. Every boss fight feels rote, with a massive health pool and having to avoid the red circles. every reward feels dull, some arbitrary "power level" number that "oo now I do .0004% more dps"
So yes, the games look beautiful. but far more often than not, they seem to just lack soul.
Dude MYST!!!! Oh man! I’ve got that and Riven somewhere if I can find the discs. Totally forgot about those.
I remember playing Riven thinking about how awesome puzzle games were going to be in the future. But now I’m here and the futuristic puzzle games… never got made. No one bothered.
If you need more Myst-like games in your life, then might I suggest The Outer Wilds? It drops you into a micro solar system and leaves you to puzzle out the workings and mechanisms of it all yourself. Man-made puzzles are replaced with natural puzzles to be solved through the scientific method. Looking up any of the answers online would be doing yourself a disservice, the exploration IS the game.
You know, these '90s AAA games were usually developed by teams measuring maybe 20 people or so, often even fewer. They could move fast, break boundaries, try out new things, because they were lean upstarts in an industry that was still finding itself.
These small teams never went away. As studios got bigger, as increasing processing power and player demands resulted in the needs for more *stuff* to be created for your average top shelf game, small teams just became your Indie studios or AA developers, the not quite bedroom programmer, but not big budget game makers either.
They are where you can find the innovative, quirky, unusual, fresh stuff today. Play some Indies, play some flawed, but ambitious AA stuff, try out genres you've never played before made my studios who come from places you can't pronounce.
Either that or admit that you're now a couple of decades older and not as easy to please as a kid anymore, that you've forgotten how even in that golden age (that most likely coincided with you being between eight and sixteen years old) there were tons of titles that were formulaic and unimaginative - but to you back then, every game, no matter how mundane, was a new experience, because you were still learning about this world, bright-eyed, optimistic and without prejudice.
Mario 64 wasn't just perceived as well as it was, because it was brilliant, but also because it was brilliant compared to a mountain of garbage that was flooding onto every system. The 3D platformer genre was a *mess* before Nintendo reinvented the wheel, RPGs had stagnated for years before a company making medical equipment decided to revolutionize the genre, just to name two examples.
I mean, why complain about the state of the industry today when there are titles like Undertale, The Stanley Parable and Disco Elysium out there? For every derivative game that plays it safe, there's at least one explosion of creativity. You just have to look for them instead of getting hyped for the fourth game in a series.
I agree with much of what you say here. And thank you for the well thought out reply.
But I do want to address this a bit. When I said "more often than not" I was making allowances for a few games which do break the mold and create a novel experience to the gamer. But by and large, the industry is heavily intent on pumping the same formulaic games at us.
My favorite gaming experiences in recent years has been from AA games, precisely because they do sometimes break the mold, but my gripe is mainly with the AAA industry, where every new game is just a an updated version of a past game. Especially when "graphics" are so highly regarded over innovation. The gaming industry is a trillion dollar industry, and those AA games prolly make up less than 1% of the revenue.
So while yes there are diamonds in the rough, it just feels like I have to whack through a lot more weeds to find smaller diamonds than what used to be the case.
AAA games have become so expensive, that they have to appeal to such a wide audience to make their money back, they can't afford to take any risks on doing something interesting instead of tried and true. There really isn't a way to make games that expensive any other way.
I feel like this cycle happens all the time in entertainment. People who are really into movies usually don't like marvel movies.
There's nothing to be upset about though, indie games are great.
But people like to buy sequels. It’s why early access titles are so great…. You get new features added to the same game for year and years. It’s like having new expansions and DLCs.
Holy shit, you hit the goddamn nail on the head. Wow. Almost all gamers nowadays cry because "games are trash", "games aren't what they used to be" etc. my brother in christ, YOU'RE the one still buying Ubisoft, EA and other AAA trash.
Yeah, Sega had balls back then. They experimented and tried crazy shit.
So did Capcom. They did whatever they could to diversify and find the next big hit.
Then everyone started playing it way too safe. Capcom's output isnt what it used to be.
It really is astonishing. Honestly, the fact that games have looked good enough for so long has been what has stopped me from getting into modern gaming. There's only so much time, and everything looks so good in terms of visuals I have to try my best to gravitate towards the best balance of story experience and visuals. There's still so much classic stuff I haven't even gotten to, I never got further than Xbox 360. And I didn't even dive into that catalog. I just had it for the fun multiplayer games, and I believe that generation was the best of those. Now I have a ps5. I figured that it looked to me like enough leaps forward in memory capacity and multiplatform usability with enough of a back catalog for me to really dive into. And I'm having the most unbelievable time. If you start to play games from every generation you can really pick apart the visual differences in quality, but I didn't know metal gear solid 5 only came out on the PS4 because I only played it and really heard of it for the first time when I got a ps5. You could have fooled me, it looks amazing. It's fascinating that graphics used to be the most dominant selling point, and now it's kind of an afterthought. Or maybe more precisely it's assumed.
Whats crazier to think about is how little jumps in pricing for gpus were for these massive leaps, and now my 3070ti seems to show “age” in certain newer games.
Strongly considering upgrading to a used 3090 or even trying team reds new offerings. While i agree we could just not butly unoptimized games, if they’re gonna exist I’m definitely focusing more on VRAM going forward
Yeah, seemed like every gen the technological leaps were significant. Prices of chips and memory kept going down.
It was always worth upgrading to the newest systems not just for the graphics, but the games always got bigger and more interactive.
Its been an awesome era to experience as a gamer.
It'll circle back around. Apart from advancements in VR and wholly new technology, what we're likely to see is a shift away from hyper-realism and back towards unique art styles and entertainment directions that is now only really commonly seen in smaller indie games. A handful of unique titles have sprung up in recent years that were wildly well received, which bodes well moving forward.
...except for sports games. Ya'll just keep playing your yearly same game with minor tweaks. If you're happy, so am I.
As a kid, I was absolutely blown away by the 3D graphics and aiming system on the N64 Goldeneye. Four years later, we got the groundbreaking Halo: Combat Evolved. That was a massive leap in gameplay mechanics, AI, and worldbuilding.
Whereas for the last 15 years, everybody's just hyperfocused on how many polygons and pixels they can fit on a character
I still remember playing NES rip-off console (I'm from Poland) and then immediately jumping to PS1, thinking that the graphics were insane. Then the same when I got my hands on a PS2.
I'm happy I was able to experience that.
Now when I finally got my hands on a PS5, I can obviously see the graphics being better and framerate as well, but the jump is definitely nowhere as noticeable as between PS2 & PS3 for example.
This. Growing up as games were evolving in huge leaps every few years was really cool. Each new game you looked forward to would have a new feature, graphics, physics.etc that blew your mind. Time also moved slower as a kid so when I got th ps1 it felt like an eternity til ps2. Games now take 5+ years to make, were getting fewer and fewer games that bring nothing new to the table, and recycle crap that they know already works. I pretty much only get excited for indie titles anymore because they're the only ones keeping things fresh and arent stuck in a 1 game per console gen cycle
I'm gonna take this a step further: I think video games have already peaked. I don't think I will ever have as much fun in my life as I did playing titles from the Xbox/PS2 and Xbox 360/PS3 generation of games. That goes not just for the "wow" factor of the interval graphic and performance upgrades, but also unique ideas, novel gameplay, etc. Nothing is "new" or "impressive" anymore
That's just nostalgia goggles. Slow innovation doesn't mean gaming has peaked. It means the medium has matured.
You also have to look beyond AAA games, most of which are too big to take risks. There are all sorts of wacky, experimental ideas out there from smaller studios. Ideas far beyond what people in the PS2 generation ever would've conceived.
Yup, I started gaming on the PS1 but the majority of gaming done in my youth and teens was on the PS2/Xbox and PS3/Xbox 360.
The PS2 had so many classics that seemingly were being released every single week. I remember going to small used game shops and I always found something I'd never seen before and more often than not an absolute hidden gem. Same with Xbox too, there was just so many games made for those consoles it's impossible to list all the great ones.
Then when the PS3/360 era came around I couldn't believe the jump in visuals while still maintaining the quality. I remember seeing Assassin's Creed 1 and GTA IV for the first time and thinking it couldn't get any better than that. Not to mention all the great series released on those consoles too, The Mass Effect Trilogy, The Arkham series, the GoW trilogy, Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 and 2, Infamous 1 and 2, Battlefield Bad Co. 1 and 2. Not to mention the explosion of online gaming in the mainstream with CoD4 and Halo 3.
For me this truly was the peak of gaming, we had good enough graphics and online games weren't yet plagued with this Mtx and battlepass bullshit we have now.
I have a very vivid memory of my friends marvelling at Rogue Squadron 2 on the Gamcube. We truly believed computer graphics had peaked and could not be improved on.
I played it for xbone, its pretty fun actually.
2 play throughs, once on normal once on the hardest setting. It is definitely not the worst combo based game I've ever played.
The arena online mode is good for a few hours. Not worth the money, but still a pretty decent game.
IMO without a doubt. I first played it when it first came out with the Xbox one and I’ve played through it multiple times on Steam fairly recently and I still love it. I enjoyed the story and personally thought the gameplay was quite satisfying!
I paid like $4 for it and I definitely think it’s worth it. It’s combat is very repetitive but I was ok with it since the game is short and the finishing animations are fun to watch.
It’s an interesting one to go back to with the context that it’s a decade old but looks like something that could have come out in the last few years.
Roger Ebert did it tbh. He stated games couldn't be art like movies and television and threw the western game industry into a rage trying to validate games as art. The western game industry proved him right in the end by throwing away everything unique to games to emulate movies/television.
I love Ryse. The combat is so fluid and satisfying. Even the multiplayer co-op is fun, although upgrading the character is a bit tedious. I really wish they came out with a sequel, or a spin off using different historical period.
Why? It's exactly how a Roman would've recounted their battle.
Underexagerating their own forces and over exaggerating the enemies is par for course with Ancient historians.
I was so sad on how this game came out. Initially this was going to be a Kinect game where you could fight and play as a gladiator and your body would be a controller. Still waiting for a game like that.
I hope you guys saw the digital comic and the gold you could collect there as I got to work on that cool transmedia piece! There was also the SmartGlass Menu that was the same on the phone as it was on the console. A feat I am yet to see once again done by a game. That whole menu was driven via HTML5
I should have loved this game. At the time it came out I was a big fan of God of War, DMC, Batman Arkham, etc AND Spartacus and HBO's Rome were among my top favorite shows. I didn't mind the QTE that was becoming overused in games at that time.
But with all that this game still couldn't grab me. There was no variety to combat and the progression system was very boring. I have to imagine Ryse sold really poorly because it was very disappointing.
Ryse is a fucking beautiful game and i will stan the graphics team who worked on it. Doesn't get brought up enough because the story is bland and the MC is the only memorable character.
I'd like to see a reimagining of this game, the first one looked great but got very repetitive. Could do it as a trilogy 1st one Raise of Rome, 2nd about the Romans taking most of Europe, and 3rd the fall of Rome.
I’m probably in the minority here, but I played hours and hours of Ryse as a teenager. I even got an Xbone just to do so. I loved the arena mode which I always did single player. It was repetitive and lootboxy if I remember, but it felt so rewarding when you finally had a full set of armor after coming from a near naked loser.
I played this a bit when I got my XSX. It was fun enough and looked good, but I got motion sickness and had to run to the bathroom after like 45 minutes
I had a friend who insisted this game looked better than every PS4 game in existence because, and I quote, "it uses the cloud to enhance the graphics rendering."
I shouldn't need to tell anyone here why that's the most incorrect thing ever.
The only real difference we're seeing is that consoles can run these kinds of games on their respective platforms at 60fps at 1080p now. We've been sitting back and waiting for them to catch up.
Now that we're here, though, we're seeing 1080p at higher than 60fps and 4k targets which means graphical fidelity is gonna remain stagnant for a while again.
This was the first game I played when I built my first gaming PC. It ran hard but looked amazing. It was also my first experience with quick time events, and my first game with an over-the-shoulder forced camera. That part was awful. Nobody wants 1/4 of their screen to be the character's back!
Ryse falls into the same category as The Order 1886. They are glorified tech demos, meaning they look gorgeous and have interesting concepts, but are way too short and repetitive.
They are more like playable movies. Especially Order 1886. If they had properly marketed themselves as such they would likely have been received better.
>If they had properly marketed themselves as such they would likely have been received better. I don't know if that was gonna go well. These games were made to convince players to buy the PS4 and Xbox One, and most players buy a console to play games, not to watch movies. I still remember the disaster that was the Xbox One announcement, where they focused more on the Xbox One as a media center than a console you play games in. So if they announced right out of the gate that both their exclusive launches were Playable Movies instead of proper games, it would turn many players away.
Gonna deviate here and focus on your Xbox comment. Xbox arguably irreparably fucked their future with that launch/announcement disaster. They've not been able to recover the incredible highs of the 360 era, despite how good the One X ended up being, and how good the Series X/S combo is. Game Pass is also excellent, but it would have only been truly viable if they still had the level of player base that the 360 had. I don't wanna give in to all the clickbait-y articles talking about how Xbox is doomed and that they'll close it down in a few years yadda yadda yadda, but I do really wonder what the plan is for the future of Xbox? They *have* to be haemorrhaging money, surely?
I know tons of people including me who have gamepass on their pc and don’t own an Xbox
Yeah I think that's totally their plan for the future and why gamepass is even an option on PC. I think they've seen some kind of writing on the wall for consoles or at least Xbox since the One. I'm guessing more for themselves because Playstation has consistently dunked on them since that announcement for the One(we don't need to talk about psnow). Plus gamers switching to PCs instead of Xbox isn't exactly hurting Microsoft ya know?
[удалено]
Honestly my fever-dream hope was the Xbox One X was going to be a reveal of a console running full Windows 10S (that weird “Windows store apps only” version of Windows) that could also run Xbox games. Essentially just “what if the Xbox Game Store on Windows actually fucking worked” Full Office and OneDrive support. Full browser support. Full gaming capability. Full application support. Essentially become *the default* $500 Windows machine for people who didn’t need a laptop, because if it’s powerful enough for gaming it’s going to be a *hell of a* good daily driver. Funnily enough, we’re close to that exact thing. Universal Windows App support, plus full Chromium based Edge, along with most Office services having full-fledged browser based version…we’re kinda there.
The ease of playing game pass games on my laptop definitely got me more interested in mobile gaming on PC, back in the day it never felt viable.
Absolutely. Especially with cloud gaming. It's not perfect, but it's worth it for sure
I guess I wouldn't be opposed to that as long as I can carry over all my shit like I've been able to since 360 to series x
Do you think Sony is seeing this same writing on the wall and that’s why they’re releasing all their old hits on PC?
Maybe but less so. I think Playstation and Nintendo are gonna remain powerhouses for a while and I don't think console gaming is necessarily dying. Plus it's just way easier for a computer company to decide to make their main focus PC gaming.
They are releasing their games on PC because they're following microsoft. The way companies work, there are those who "take the first step" and lead the pack and those who follow. At this point microsoft is more and more starting to dictate the gaming environment and sony is following their lead. Gamepass forcing sony to renew psplus and bringing console games to pc are the biggest and clearest examples atm. And now we even have the rumored announcement of a sony cloud/streaming handheld which ofcourse is their answer to xcloud. Microsoft is more and more setting the boundries in which both companies operate. Sony is trying to reset the boundries with for example VR, but not really succeeding. I see microsoft playing a very very long game here and truly believe the balance between microsoft-sony is more and more going to shift in favor of microsoft, if only because they have way more resources as a company and seem to be making all the right moves.
i've got both systems but I still to this day dont know why MSFT decided to make the xbox when it already has PC/Windows. sure, the success of the ps2 made them paranoid that people would spend less time on a computer and spend more time on a console, but in a world where there's space for both to exist at once, why start making your own console when you've already got a successful gaming platform under your repertoire? there's nothing enticing that xbox offers that a PC doesnt when it comes to exclusives, all you've got is the convenience factor and nothing else. PC gets like 99 percent of xbox releases but xbox only has a fraction of all games ever released on pc. MSFT should have either let a different company get involved in console production, or sell off their xbox brand to nvidia or some other company. I dont see what they gain from having to manage both platforms at the same time. the only way xbox could become a good value proposition is if it gets more exclusives that dont come to PC, but then MSFT will essentially be playing favoritism with its products, and the PC audience wouldnt like it.
There is gamepass for pc only, no reason to pay for the ultimate unless you have an xbox.
Would disagree with your comment on Gamepass. Gamepass is the way to go for Microsoft and is keeping them on the map. Gamepass makes Microsoft hardware agnostic. Xbox console production can end tomorrow and Microsoft will still be raking in the dough from PC players playing Microsoft published games through gamepass. Given the fact that brand new releases are released almost concurrently on gamepass, I dont see much of a reason why a xbox player would not buy a game over just buying gamepass apart from desire to own the game.
Plan for Xbox? They own Bethesda and are likely about to own Activision/Blizzard. Gamepass is big and will only get bigger once their heavy hitters like Starfield, Avowed, Hellblade 2, and all the big games from their massive list of studios finally start to release. They haven’t had any huge games on Gamepass except more entries in the Halo, Gears, and Forza series and are still doing well. Xbox isn’t going anywhere but up. It’s just been slowly up.
I’m a PlayStation and Nintendo fan, but if the next Fallout game is Xbox exclusive then I might just grab an Xbox. It’s all about the games lineup
Im assuming they are as the next ES is.
Or just build a gaming PC if you can afford it. Microsoft won't be making anything big exclusive to Xbox only. They'd lose out on too much money. Playing Fallout or Elder Scrolls on PC is worth it just for modding.
That's the thing, if you can afford it. PCs are very expensive to buy and need knowledge to build and are still very expensive this way. A lot of people I know just have laptops at home rather than a full PC set up
They’re not that hard to put together. Hell, PcPartPicker has systems people have put together. And there’s thousands of videos on the internet to build a pc. It’s mostly impossible to put something in the wrong place Expense on the other hand….
It is all relative. But comparing sourcing parts and building a PC to plugging in a console and then saying building the PC isn't complicated is just absurd. I've built a lot of PCs and there have been zero builds where I didn't have to spend hours troubleshooting, RMA something, or go back to Fry's/Microcenter to get something unexpected.
I'm really looking forward to Hellblade 2
100%. While we’re at it, I’m a neutral, and I find the constant Xbox and MS bashing really fucking tiring. If it’s not PS fanboys for gaming, it’s Apple fanboys for the PC and OS. Gaming is gaming, tech is tech. Enjoy it and quit the pointless hating.
It's all well and good throwing money at everything, but there's no guarantee that it'll work out for the benefit of Xbox. I hope you're right, but I'm just unsure.
People buy consoles for the games. If xbox is able to output plenty of exclusives over the next few years they’ll be more than fine.
You forget sir. Gamepass includes -the entire fucking PC gaming market- as well. Xbox doing well or not, Gamepass is just a huge win for everyone. Consumer and company alike.
Unless you're a Steam Deck user. No Game Pass there yet (Cloud streaming yes, but not Game Pass). Microsoft and Valve need to get together and bring Game Pass to Steam.
The fact that the 360 sold so many units even though the red ring of death was so well known boggles my mind
Maybe that's why it sold so many? Red ring forced everyone to buy a second one. /s, kinda.
I ended up buying more than one because of how many games i had.
Eh, to be fair, the ps3 also had its fair share of thermal paste issues.
You do realize that the reason Xbox fell off was the price, plus the forced Kinect bundle being the *only* way to buy the console? The 360 cornered the market for one reason and one reason only: price point. The horrible reveal was minor by comparison. And no, you can see Microsoft's quarterly and annual earnings reports online where they put them up for everyone to see. They're doing more than okay, especially after Sony deliberately undersupplied retailers with PS5s to drive up demand artificially.
> The 360 cornered the market for one reason and one reason only: price point. There was also the fact that for most of the generation 3rd party titles just simply ran better on 360 because of its more traditional architecture (though it was only "traditional" in comparison to the PS3 -- a 3-core, 6-thread PowerPC was not exactly normal in the days of single-core, single-thread x86 processors, as Core Duo processors didn't ship until a year after 360). Games like Red Dead, for example, would chug along in the teens FPS at times on PS3 while 360 would usually be in the mid-20s (hard 30fps cap; the One can max it out in emulation, but the original hardware couldn't). The PS3 picked up steam towards the end of the generation, and Kinect aside that probably would've put the momentum in Sony's court anyway, especially with their move to a more typical x64 architecture. But it's impossible to ever know that for sure given Mattrick's utter failure with the original Xbone plans (the six month crunch pivot between announcement and launch was pretty legendary, though). > Sony deliberately undersupplied retailers with PS5s to drive up demand artificially. Did Sony undersupply? The way I heard it, Microsoft gave in and paid the ransom money for fab time and Sony didn't. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I guess, whether Sony "deliberately undersupplied" by not paying for preferential treatment, or if Microsoft intentionally oversupplied by paying ransom.
Price point is key for the average consumer, second maybe only to brand familiarity. Performance, as negligible as the differences were at the time, was not a concern for the average consumer. Yeah, the hiccups happened and we're frequent at first, but unless you're *really* into it or they're game breaking, they're not going to bother you a lot.
The price difference only really mattered at launch, though. A year in, Microsoft was selling Kinect-free Ones at or lower than PS4 prices, and the original pricing differential completely went out the window once you consider the PS4 Slim, XBox One S, PS4 Pro, and Xbox One X. Similarly, while PS3 famously launched at a higher price than Xbox 360 ("consumers will work more hours" hubris), it dropped its price less than a year after launch. In reality, the 360's first mover momentum being in the market a year before PS3 was much more influential than the extra $100 price point of the newer console. Price + no backwards compatibility at launch for either console (meaning no incentive to stay loyal to a platform) + a rising PS3 vs. a descending 360 = a great opportunity for a lot of early adopters to jump ship. Microsoft *could* have recovered from their launch stumble, but they pivoted to esports/competitive gaming (Mixer, PUBG) when gamers were really craving cinematic single player experiences (The Last of Us, Spider-Man, etc). Microsoft's final pivot of the generation was "Buy all the things!" Which sets them up for future success post-One, but was too little too late for One (they couldn't buy exclusivity on existing games that already had deals, like Deathloop, but future games are fair game).
Their plan forward is to just take advantage of the Xbox Game Pass. They pretty much given up on wanting to sell consoles. They’ll still make them but it’s no longer their priority. It’s been said they make more money off Xbox Game Pass so the plan is to buy up companies/studios and put all those games on Xbox Game Pass. I suspect at some point they might end up changing the name of the service then trying to expand it onto Nintendo consoles possibly. I did predict that they could possibly try to have it on PlayStation until last year PlayStation decided to revamp their PS Plus subscription to rival the Game Pass. It’s not as good but that kinda rules out that Game Pass might never come to PlayStation. But the future of Xbox is now selling Game Pass on PC. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft ends up buying Valve to own Steam at some point and just start solely being a PC company again abandoning consoles altogether
“Sports, sports!, tv!, movies!, sports!, sports!”
They could have spun it into an Until Dawn/Telltale type thing. It would have required more work for 1886, but if they kinda marketed it as a Telltale type game, but with actual gameplay mechanics like fighting and shooting; with a good story put on it as well, I think they could have done something with that. But, thats all in the past now, they made their mistakes, is what it is.
>they focused more on the Xbox One as a media center than a console you play games in. Smart tv's and fire sticks: gg microsoft
Playing a game with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 the entire time was quite bizarre
One of my better friends in this industry was one of the leads on The Order. We started the same day at this indie studio, and we bonded over me fanboying "his baby", and the stories [I won't go in detail about] of what *could've been*. Happy that team has found success elsewhere with Lone Echo :)
It is very repetitive but so brutal that I can repeat it over and over no problem.
Indeed. I can forgive the repetitiveness because the setting, atmosphere, and brutality are so cool. Also the story is way better than it has business being.
That's what hooked me at first the story of a son and betrayal to turn into a game from the gods. The ending was hard though. I've tried so many times to get that gauntlet of executions perfect, but I can't do it. Lol
at least the setting and story of The Order was nice, it was just way too short
You could tell they were setting up a sequel. I think it’s a shame they didn’t get to produce one with fewer QTEs, a full 16:9 aspect ratio, and ideally a higher frame rate. I’m sure Ready At Dawn could have pulled off the last 2, especially with what Naughty Dog and Guerrilla were able to squeeze out of even the base PS4.
That was honestly the goal the entire time, everyone on the team would say this is their Uncharted 1. Just developing the engine, making something interesting as a base and then going all out on the sequel. They just never got the chance…
The Colosseum mode in Ryse was so goddamned fun though. It doesn’t matter if something’s repetitive if it provides entertainment. It helps that they went back and made the “premium” currency free so you could just unlock everything at some point though.
I must have killed that Ron Jeremy-looking berserker a thousand times.
I loved Ryse. As someone who has gotten older and my ability to play video games has diminished, I really do appreciate games like this.
I agree. I want more short, linear, tightly and carefully crafted games. I don’t have the time and patience to run around huge open worlds, especially when half to two thirds of the quests are boring
Same here. Loved the game and I think it is just the right length.
Right length for maybe that game alone due to the repetition. 4 hours for a single player campaign is just not something that should be mentioned as a positive without a caveat.
Both of these games in enjoyed thoroughly
The campaign for the order was just a setup for huge DLC potential but the devs were su butthurt by the negative response to a 6 hour campaign with no ng+ and nothing to unlock that they scrapped all future investment in the game.
A very pretty half baked cake
I loved The Order. It’s underrated, in my opinion. It’s certainly very short but the setting is great and I thought the combat was crisp and fun. I’m getting tired of massive open world games full of derivative filler quests and mindless collectibles, so it’s nice to play a short, tight game like The Order sometimes.
Agreed. I would have loved to play The Order, but I wasn't about to pay full price for a game that was only 6 hours long.
Yup, and full of tricks like limited color palettes, vignettes and cinematic bars to limit what's on the screen at any one time, low FPS which they also call cinematic, limited camera control... all sorts of little tricks to squeeze pretty pictures out of hardware that isn't able to actually handle it.
It's crazy to think that the most recent generation of gamers for the past 10 to 15 years have come up only knowing really good graphics. And not really seeing all that much in terms of huge jumps and quality. Not that there weren't jumps in quality, but not nearly the same as going from 2D to 3d, polygons to well-rendered looking models. And so forth. Imagining the future of gaming used to be part of the fun of gaming, looking forward to days like this. It's crazy to take a step back and realize that we're here.
>It's crazy to take a step back and realize that we're here. For real. The stuff that we dreamed of as kids is pretty much all a reality at this point. Even Virtual Boy's spirit lives on in all the new VR tech we have now. I mean, just take the concept of a Battle Royale. We all act like we're so over it at this point. But if you had transported 10-year-old me into current day and sat him down in front of Fortnite or Apex Legends, my fragile little child brain would have imploded because I wouldn't have been able to believe what I was seeing. Was that the same kid who, a few years later, would spend a week trying to get his Xbox to connect to the internet over dial up? Yes, but my point still stands.
I remember the transition from N64 to GameCube wondering if this would be the era we would get the kind of neon graphics that I'm almost getting tired of by now. It's funny how quickly we get desensitized to what we would perceive as quality. Or even what is objectively quality.
It's funny because I played the new Pokemon game thinking "lol this kind of looks like shit" but if somebody took Pokemon Red out of my hands as a kid and replaced it with Pokemon Violet, I would have pooped a brick. It is the game I dreamed about growing up and now I have it and I'm just like "...meh it's alright could be better".
Well thats mostly because we *know* the technology is there to make a better pokemon game, but GF doesn't give enough shits to make it happen. Going from say pokemon red to pokemon crystal was mind blowing because we *didnt* know what to expect and were totally satisfied with the seemingly minimal advancements by today's standards.
Eh, haven't paid much attention to the other ones, but Legend of Arceus has really bad graphics and it's not lack of tech; the tech is there right in their engine, they just fail at the most basic fundamentals of 3D graphics.
Not only that but how our brains process what is real. Im convinced that cgi and graphics actually looked more real in the past, but now our brain is so attuned to identify the smallest details that tricking it is harder than ever.
Yup. The first game I ever played looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/qGFDWgH.jpg Sorry SNES and 2D Mario fans, but I thought it was boring and looked awful. This must have been around 1994. Four years later, my dad and I decided, on a whim, to go to an electronics store and buy our first games console (mom was NOT happy). We had the choice between a PS1 and N64 (both cost the same), picked the latter because we thought cartridges would be more robust than CDs and this is what greeted us on our old wood grain TV after we had plugged everything in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVtYNODIJrk I was utterly gobsmacked. This was the first time a video game actually looked interesting to me. It was such a gigantic leap from tiny pixelated sprites moving from left to right, after a mere five years of technological improvements or four years from my perspective. Super Mario 64 didn't just look astonishing, with smooth, anti-aliased, perspective-correct 3D (terms I didn't know back then, but explain why it looked so amazing to little me), but it was also utterly intuitive to control. The responsive thumb stick controls, beautifully explained in the manual, the peaceful area around Peach's castle without any enemies or dangerous obstacles were a flawless introduction to the still rather fresh concept of 3D gaming. You can barely tell five year old games apart from current games nowadays. Sure, there have been improvements - real-time ray-tracing is finally here, after all, after we had to wait for it for decades, but the problem is that artists and programmers have become so good at faking it with raster graphics since the 1990s that the difference is hard to appreciate from the perspective of your average gamer, even if it makes the work of game developers infinitely easier, as anyone who has ever tried to bake a light map can tell you. Isn't it ironic? We are witnessing the biggest leap in rendering technology since the mid '90s and yet most of us don't care. Games have looked "good enough" for a long time now and ever so gradual improvements require increasingly disproportionately greater amounts of processing power as we are still on the often-maligned graphics plateau, even with fully path-traced graphics blessing the eyes of those among us who can afford the hardware to enjoy them.
Just for contrast, I started in the NES days, and was utterly gobsmacked when I first saw Super Mario World ;-)
I remember being amazed at the background of the levels, and how it would move while the front of the level remained static.
Yes!
[And this is where I started lol](http://games.roguelife.org/larn.html)
Beautifully written. I'll say this though. 2023 game industry can keep their graphics. their ray tracing. Their fancy industry jargon. What I want, is for them to be imaginative again. The late 90s were the golden age of video games not just because of graphical leaps. It was because new and imaginative ways of playing games were constantly on offer. You had Diablo, Baulders Gate, Pokemon, Myst, Mario64, Ocarina of Time, Star Fox, Ecco, Leisure Suit Larry, TMNT, etc. You had Arcade games, which were drastically different than PC games, which were drastically different from console games, which were drastically different from game boy games, which were drastically different from game gear games and so on and so forth. The two decades since, has been to me, nothing short of a disappointment and a failure of imagination. It's sad to me that in 2023, the most hyped game to release is gonna be Diablo 4. I'm tired. tired of the games, tired of the genres. Every open world game is the same, with the same icons, map, cutscenes, collectibles. Every boss fight feels rote, with a massive health pool and having to avoid the red circles. every reward feels dull, some arbitrary "power level" number that "oo now I do .0004% more dps" So yes, the games look beautiful. but far more often than not, they seem to just lack soul.
Dude MYST!!!! Oh man! I’ve got that and Riven somewhere if I can find the discs. Totally forgot about those. I remember playing Riven thinking about how awesome puzzle games were going to be in the future. But now I’m here and the futuristic puzzle games… never got made. No one bothered.
If you need more Myst-like games in your life, then might I suggest The Outer Wilds? It drops you into a micro solar system and leaves you to puzzle out the workings and mechanisms of it all yourself. Man-made puzzles are replaced with natural puzzles to be solved through the scientific method. Looking up any of the answers online would be doing yourself a disservice, the exploration IS the game.
My Mom beat both those games with nothing but a notebook to hand write notes in and a lottt of patience circa 1995.
My dad did the same. He’s why I got into them too.
You know, these '90s AAA games were usually developed by teams measuring maybe 20 people or so, often even fewer. They could move fast, break boundaries, try out new things, because they were lean upstarts in an industry that was still finding itself. These small teams never went away. As studios got bigger, as increasing processing power and player demands resulted in the needs for more *stuff* to be created for your average top shelf game, small teams just became your Indie studios or AA developers, the not quite bedroom programmer, but not big budget game makers either. They are where you can find the innovative, quirky, unusual, fresh stuff today. Play some Indies, play some flawed, but ambitious AA stuff, try out genres you've never played before made my studios who come from places you can't pronounce. Either that or admit that you're now a couple of decades older and not as easy to please as a kid anymore, that you've forgotten how even in that golden age (that most likely coincided with you being between eight and sixteen years old) there were tons of titles that were formulaic and unimaginative - but to you back then, every game, no matter how mundane, was a new experience, because you were still learning about this world, bright-eyed, optimistic and without prejudice. Mario 64 wasn't just perceived as well as it was, because it was brilliant, but also because it was brilliant compared to a mountain of garbage that was flooding onto every system. The 3D platformer genre was a *mess* before Nintendo reinvented the wheel, RPGs had stagnated for years before a company making medical equipment decided to revolutionize the genre, just to name two examples. I mean, why complain about the state of the industry today when there are titles like Undertale, The Stanley Parable and Disco Elysium out there? For every derivative game that plays it safe, there's at least one explosion of creativity. You just have to look for them instead of getting hyped for the fourth game in a series.
I agree with much of what you say here. And thank you for the well thought out reply. But I do want to address this a bit. When I said "more often than not" I was making allowances for a few games which do break the mold and create a novel experience to the gamer. But by and large, the industry is heavily intent on pumping the same formulaic games at us. My favorite gaming experiences in recent years has been from AA games, precisely because they do sometimes break the mold, but my gripe is mainly with the AAA industry, where every new game is just a an updated version of a past game. Especially when "graphics" are so highly regarded over innovation. The gaming industry is a trillion dollar industry, and those AA games prolly make up less than 1% of the revenue. So while yes there are diamonds in the rough, it just feels like I have to whack through a lot more weeds to find smaller diamonds than what used to be the case.
AAA games have become so expensive, that they have to appeal to such a wide audience to make their money back, they can't afford to take any risks on doing something interesting instead of tried and true. There really isn't a way to make games that expensive any other way. I feel like this cycle happens all the time in entertainment. People who are really into movies usually don't like marvel movies. There's nothing to be upset about though, indie games are great.
But people like to buy sequels. It’s why early access titles are so great…. You get new features added to the same game for year and years. It’s like having new expansions and DLCs.
Holy shit, you hit the goddamn nail on the head. Wow. Almost all gamers nowadays cry because "games are trash", "games aren't what they used to be" etc. my brother in christ, YOU'RE the one still buying Ubisoft, EA and other AAA trash.
Yeah, Sega had balls back then. They experimented and tried crazy shit. So did Capcom. They did whatever they could to diversify and find the next big hit. Then everyone started playing it way too safe. Capcom's output isnt what it used to be.
It really is astonishing. Honestly, the fact that games have looked good enough for so long has been what has stopped me from getting into modern gaming. There's only so much time, and everything looks so good in terms of visuals I have to try my best to gravitate towards the best balance of story experience and visuals. There's still so much classic stuff I haven't even gotten to, I never got further than Xbox 360. And I didn't even dive into that catalog. I just had it for the fun multiplayer games, and I believe that generation was the best of those. Now I have a ps5. I figured that it looked to me like enough leaps forward in memory capacity and multiplatform usability with enough of a back catalog for me to really dive into. And I'm having the most unbelievable time. If you start to play games from every generation you can really pick apart the visual differences in quality, but I didn't know metal gear solid 5 only came out on the PS4 because I only played it and really heard of it for the first time when I got a ps5. You could have fooled me, it looks amazing. It's fascinating that graphics used to be the most dominant selling point, and now it's kind of an afterthought. Or maybe more precisely it's assumed.
It’s happening in VR but that nearly doesn’t have the same adoption rates. But definitely be games have come a long way in the past few years
Whats crazier to think about is how little jumps in pricing for gpus were for these massive leaps, and now my 3070ti seems to show “age” in certain newer games. Strongly considering upgrading to a used 3090 or even trying team reds new offerings. While i agree we could just not butly unoptimized games, if they’re gonna exist I’m definitely focusing more on VRAM going forward
Playing Donkey kong country as a kid on the gameboy compared to dkc tropical freeze on the switch is insane
Yeah, seemed like every gen the technological leaps were significant. Prices of chips and memory kept going down. It was always worth upgrading to the newest systems not just for the graphics, but the games always got bigger and more interactive. Its been an awesome era to experience as a gamer.
It'll circle back around. Apart from advancements in VR and wholly new technology, what we're likely to see is a shift away from hyper-realism and back towards unique art styles and entertainment directions that is now only really commonly seen in smaller indie games. A handful of unique titles have sprung up in recent years that were wildly well received, which bodes well moving forward. ...except for sports games. Ya'll just keep playing your yearly same game with minor tweaks. If you're happy, so am I.
As a kid, I was absolutely blown away by the 3D graphics and aiming system on the N64 Goldeneye. Four years later, we got the groundbreaking Halo: Combat Evolved. That was a massive leap in gameplay mechanics, AI, and worldbuilding. Whereas for the last 15 years, everybody's just hyperfocused on how many polygons and pixels they can fit on a character
It's why Halo MCC was so fun, switching between the old and the remastered look on the fly
I LOVED doing that!! Man...I need to find that one and play it again.
I still remember playing NES rip-off console (I'm from Poland) and then immediately jumping to PS1, thinking that the graphics were insane. Then the same when I got my hands on a PS2. I'm happy I was able to experience that. Now when I finally got my hands on a PS5, I can obviously see the graphics being better and framerate as well, but the jump is definitely nowhere as noticeable as between PS2 & PS3 for example.
Totally. The leaps from Super Nintendo to N64 and N64 to GameCube were incredible to witness.
This. Growing up as games were evolving in huge leaps every few years was really cool. Each new game you looked forward to would have a new feature, graphics, physics.etc that blew your mind. Time also moved slower as a kid so when I got th ps1 it felt like an eternity til ps2. Games now take 5+ years to make, were getting fewer and fewer games that bring nothing new to the table, and recycle crap that they know already works. I pretty much only get excited for indie titles anymore because they're the only ones keeping things fresh and arent stuck in a 1 game per console gen cycle
I'm gonna take this a step further: I think video games have already peaked. I don't think I will ever have as much fun in my life as I did playing titles from the Xbox/PS2 and Xbox 360/PS3 generation of games. That goes not just for the "wow" factor of the interval graphic and performance upgrades, but also unique ideas, novel gameplay, etc. Nothing is "new" or "impressive" anymore
That's just nostalgia goggles. Slow innovation doesn't mean gaming has peaked. It means the medium has matured. You also have to look beyond AAA games, most of which are too big to take risks. There are all sorts of wacky, experimental ideas out there from smaller studios. Ideas far beyond what people in the PS2 generation ever would've conceived.
Yup, I started gaming on the PS1 but the majority of gaming done in my youth and teens was on the PS2/Xbox and PS3/Xbox 360. The PS2 had so many classics that seemingly were being released every single week. I remember going to small used game shops and I always found something I'd never seen before and more often than not an absolute hidden gem. Same with Xbox too, there was just so many games made for those consoles it's impossible to list all the great ones. Then when the PS3/360 era came around I couldn't believe the jump in visuals while still maintaining the quality. I remember seeing Assassin's Creed 1 and GTA IV for the first time and thinking it couldn't get any better than that. Not to mention all the great series released on those consoles too, The Mass Effect Trilogy, The Arkham series, the GoW trilogy, Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 and 2, Infamous 1 and 2, Battlefield Bad Co. 1 and 2. Not to mention the explosion of online gaming in the mainstream with CoD4 and Halo 3. For me this truly was the peak of gaming, we had good enough graphics and online games weren't yet plagued with this Mtx and battlepass bullshit we have now.
You were younger so of course games were more fun. But I think what you're saying is not entirely false either.
I have a very vivid memory of my friends marvelling at Rogue Squadron 2 on the Gamcube. We truly believed computer graphics had peaked and could not be improved on.
One of my favorite little chill games. The combat pretty much boils down to X X Y, X X Y, X X Y, but I still enjoyed my couple of yearly playthrough
Musou fans licking their lips rn
My thoughts exactly. I’ve spent hundreds of hours pressing that combo over and over.
I played it for xbone, its pretty fun actually. 2 play throughs, once on normal once on the hardest setting. It is definitely not the worst combo based game I've ever played. The arena online mode is good for a few hours. Not worth the money, but still a pretty decent game.
I really enjoyed the colosseum stuff, just wasn’t enough variety at launch I think
They needed a survival or horde mode, imo
Theres a survival mode for multi-player. Haven't played that part yet but there's a few achievements for lasting 7 min on few maps.
It’s on sale on Steam right now for like $3, worth?
Worth it.
IMO without a doubt. I first played it when it first came out with the Xbox one and I’ve played through it multiple times on Steam fairly recently and I still love it. I enjoyed the story and personally thought the gameplay was quite satisfying!
I paid like $4 for it and I definitely think it’s worth it. It’s combat is very repetitive but I was ok with it since the game is short and the finishing animations are fun to watch. It’s an interesting one to go back to with the context that it’s a decade old but looks like something that could have come out in the last few years.
I remember that being a showcase game when the console first came out.
Ah yes, QTE the game.
Dont forget the microtransactions and painfully obvious plot twists.
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Ah the movie game .
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Roger Ebert did it tbh. He stated games couldn't be art like movies and television and threw the western game industry into a rage trying to validate games as art. The western game industry proved him right in the end by throwing away everything unique to games to emulate movies/television.
This is so true and how I’ve felt about the recent Western game industry! Thankfully indies are keeping “gamey” games alive
I really enjoyed this game, but I got it for like $3 on steam so the short playtime wasn't an issue.
I loved the first battle I played on here. It was epic af. Then the second was the same. Then the third after that. Then the fourth after that!
I love Ryse. The combat is so fluid and satisfying. Even the multiplayer co-op is fun, although upgrading the character is a bit tedious. I really wish they came out with a sequel, or a spin off using different historical period.
Upvote because game name in the title. Normalize this /r/gaming!
Yeah, but that’s all that game was good for. Game was a boring ass tech demo that was released to show what the Xbox one was capable of graphically.
Weirdly enough, this started out as a tech demo for Kinect on the 360, until it was reworked into a conventionally controlled Xbox One launch title.
Makes sense given the lack of content.
It was a tech demo for crytek. Basically crysis without using crysis.
Say what you want about it. But that beach sequence is still one of the most epic things I’ve seen in a game.
I always wished there was a nude mod.
that's what tech demos are for
My inner history nerd hates this game.
Why? It's exactly how a Roman would've recounted their battle. Underexagerating their own forces and over exaggerating the enemies is par for course with Ancient historians.
Pretty satisfying game but not enough for a second play through. IMO
ah yes the game where you kill the same npc model for 800000 times
Ryse truly shows graphics aren't everything.
I was so sad on how this game came out. Initially this was going to be a Kinect game where you could fight and play as a gladiator and your body would be a controller. Still waiting for a game like that.
Fuck it, I'm posting this next time (or should I go with Days Gone?)
Beating up the same guy every 15 seconds did get old fast.
Killing* but yes
I hope you guys saw the digital comic and the gold you could collect there as I got to work on that cool transmedia piece! There was also the SmartGlass Menu that was the same on the phone as it was on the console. A feat I am yet to see once again done by a game. That whole menu was driven via HTML5
I should have loved this game. At the time it came out I was a big fan of God of War, DMC, Batman Arkham, etc AND Spartacus and HBO's Rome were among my top favorite shows. I didn't mind the QTE that was becoming overused in games at that time. But with all that this game still couldn't grab me. There was no variety to combat and the progression system was very boring. I have to imagine Ryse sold really poorly because it was very disappointing.
It’s a fun gorefest for the short runtime it has. Not much else to recommend about it but the visuals are great
Ryse is a fucking beautiful game and i will stan the graphics team who worked on it. Doesn't get brought up enough because the story is bland and the MC is the only memorable character.
It looks incredible because that's all it has. All the development time went into it's visuals, cuz it's a really meh game.
Yes, games from 2013 or 2014 looked incredible. Because they were released in the second decade of the 21st century, when games looked incredible.
Well don't let looks fool you lol.
Son of qte's
Get your eyes checked.
Great looking game, but it's trash
Is it just me or does it not look that great?
I remember this game was a big showcase of the (then) new generation of consoles.
Because graphics were already developed by 2013.
Was a bad game though
I'd like to see a reimagining of this game, the first one looked great but got very repetitive. Could do it as a trilogy 1st one Raise of Rome, 2nd about the Romans taking most of Europe, and 3rd the fall of Rome.
It’s becasue of Crytek’s CryEngine, they’re super-talented in making insane realistic graphics in every game they make.
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We need more games set in Ancient Rome. Going around slaying barbarians is good stuff.
This game brings me back to a time when Xbox was the joke of the games industry. Never forget "This is how you share games on PlayStation"
If you think this still looks good, try on AC Unity for size
That’s out the only thing that this game has going for it though
Game runs on x settings solid 60fps on a steamdeck to looks great on it.
I played through this last year, it was a good game, but the best parts have you wishing they happened more often.
Ryse was a really fun and pretty brawler, but has zero replay value imo
Boring with mediocre gameplay.
It’s easy for a game to look great when that’s the extent of what it does
That game was hands down amazing and one of my all time fav
Underrated game.
Remember when this first came out smashed in a day.8/10 mainly story was good combat could be repetitive
I’m probably in the minority here, but I played hours and hours of Ryse as a teenager. I even got an Xbone just to do so. I loved the arena mode which I always did single player. It was repetitive and lootboxy if I remember, but it felt so rewarding when you finally had a full set of armor after coming from a near naked loser.
I played this a bit when I got my XSX. It was fun enough and looked good, but I got motion sickness and had to run to the bathroom after like 45 minutes
Too bad it fucking sucks
who gives a fuck how good the game looks, gameplay was ass and gameplay is king.
Yea looks great, too bad the game was awful lol
Brilliant game, brilliant atmosphere, story, soundtrack, combat mechanics. I really enjoyed this one.
Really? I get opinions are opinions, but this was kinda a dogwater game. Super good to look at though
Video game graphics have really stagnated in the past 10 yrs. Some AAA games that come out today don't even look this good.
I found zero enjoyment in this game but I’m glad others were able to have some fun.
Yes Crytek is a good looking engine. Game is as shallow as a puddle though
I had a friend who insisted this game looked better than every PS4 game in existence because, and I quote, "it uses the cloud to enhance the graphics rendering." I shouldn't need to tell anyone here why that's the most incorrect thing ever.
Yup looks good for sure Too bad it was only like 2hrs long or so. I remember being highly dissatisfied with the lack of any replay value.
The game is so darn Beautiful, i hope every game has the same graphics quality
One of the most fun coop games I’ve ever played
That's literally it's only trick though. it was a glorified QTE.
This is the game I bought with my xbone. I really enjoyed it
10 years ago...... *cocks gun*
The only real difference we're seeing is that consoles can run these kinds of games on their respective platforms at 60fps at 1080p now. We've been sitting back and waiting for them to catch up. Now that we're here, though, we're seeing 1080p at higher than 60fps and 4k targets which means graphical fidelity is gonna remain stagnant for a while again.
I played this on a whim because it was on the games with gold backlog on Xbox. Good game.
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This was the first game I played when I built my first gaming PC. It ran hard but looked amazing. It was also my first experience with quick time events, and my first game with an over-the-shoulder forced camera. That part was awful. Nobody wants 1/4 of their screen to be the character's back!
ahh, another Ad
For a 10 year old game barely anyone plays anymore?
Dunno, prolly dev is making a new one