games™ Forum

For me, the golden age of gaming was PS1/N64 going into Dreamcast. Everything after that was a downhill. Not that games aren't fun for me anymore, but games like Banjo-Kazooie, Kloana and Tomba are far more fun than anything I have played recently.

you like banjo kazooie a lot.

I remember back in the days of the mega drive, snes, etc. I could just pick up a cartridge and no matter which game it was, I would have fun. Nowadays I often have to sit and think about what I want to play. I blame it on the game industry wanting to be the movie industry.

I think today's games are as good as they've ever been (and probably a lot better too). The problem is that the old 8/16/32bit games that many of us hold in such high esteem came at a time that a) we were younger and b) we hadn't played too many games before. Now that most of us have played so many games over so many years we've, more or less, seen it all before and it's more difficult to get excited about games. Also, when we were younger, games were a very big part of our everyday lives, now it's one of many things vying for our time and in many cases we don't give games the time they need to grow on us.

pull yourself together, games are still great of course.

Sounds like you need something captivating and epic.
Get World of Warcraft! But don't say I didn't warn you about its addictive nature.

I went through the occasional non-gaming spell but they're usually at game droughts or when there isn't enough decent games out.

I honestly don't think that the 'Goldern Era' has passed us yet.

I think sometimes you need to take a break (as somebody rightly pointed out). I yo-yo between a couple of months reading books obsessively and a couple of month playing games obsessively.

Yes, in many way gaming has become more complicated in that it's no longer a console and TV affair - you now have to worry about getting a HDTV, then you have to think about how much you can afford (will you really settle for 720p?), plus you have different versions of the same console (see Core and Premium pack debacle, plus drive add-ons), plus there are firmware upgrades and so on.

Plus, there is the worry about increasing production costs of video game development and how that will impact upon creativity, risk-taking and innovation etc.

All in all, it's probably just growing pains for the medium.

Some times you can find that a lot of games start looking homogenous, but then...BANG!...something will come along and remind you of why you play games in the first place.

With publishers/developers like Square Enix, Konami, Capcom, Mistwalker, Level 5, Quantic Dream in the mix for the coming generation, I think we have a lot to looking forward to.

Yeah, I genuinely think if you want a Golden Era for gaming, we're pretty much living through it right now. Certainly I'm far less disappointed in games I buy than when I was growing up. But then I grew up playing games on an Acorn Electron...

you gotta remember one thing man,when we were younger,we hadnt remotely as much money to buy games as now,so we had little choice but to play the games we had to death.Now were grown up,we can afford as many games as we like so if a game doesnt completey inspire us we just put it down and buy a new game.Time constraints also,now we have to dedicate time to our jobs,etc.But i get your point,i think i completed every megadrive game i had back in the day,now i cant remember the last game i played til completion

Tyler's got it spot-on,growing up definetly has an effect on your game-playing.Days you used to spend on all-day gaming sessions cease to exsist.You don't look forward to games as much as when you were younger,as you can buy as many as you can afford instead of having to wait for xmas/birthdays etc.
Having said that i'm totally enjoying my next-gen experiences on 360,and when i finish my degree in summer i might try to get in a few all-day sessions to celebrate

sure you can talk about the legendary consoles, but i bet more legends will be made as we travel through this era!

I agree with Tyler (you are not a unique snow flake) Durden and lagunaloire77 - when I was a kid I could afford a small ammount of games and you can bet I played them to death. Hell, I could probably have written my own guides on them.
Now, apart from a few, I could barely tell you what they're like 50% of the way through.

yeah exactly,you'd feel well happy to have a game to play,whereas now you can just buy them the day it comes out.Took me a while to get through Saints Row+Splinter Cell because i have a habit of buying a game,then taking a while to actually get through it.Ah the fun of growing old

Yeah i think nostalgia has a lot to do with it. I'm only 15 (16 Christmas Day! ) but already my 'innocent' (call it whatever) years of gaming are behind me. I'm probably never going to fall in love with a game like i did with the PSX FFs back in the day. The time isn't really there anymore, plus there's the small matter of girls...

Alot of it though, is when games made the transition from carts to disc. Carts could only be copied and distributed by rich and fucking lucky people. But the beauty about it to us was our games were thoroughly played through. Every coin and token was collected. Every easter egg was found. Then comes the compact disc revolution (after sega cd) put to the table in mass effect by Sony. Piracy in full swing (don't fucking deny you ever took part in this, GTM forum users) and also the costs of the release were brought right down because, well, a disc is one little bit of plastic compared to the manufacture and materials that went into carts. WE COULD/CAN AFFORD MORE GAMES EVEN IF WE PAID FULL PRICE IN A SHOP AND NOT IN THE PUB AT £5 EACH. Before we know it we have more games to get through than a developer play tester and **** all time to get through them!

But it's like I said before, just the experience of alot of todays games pleased me rather than getting to the end. Which is a good thing to be honest.

I'm still quite young and I hadn't played Banjo-Kazooie (since my dog chewed it) for about 5 or 6 years (I thought it was a meh game at the time). When my friend sold it to me I was blown away. When I was younger I didn't appreciate it really, and when played it recently I thought it was better than most of the stuff being made today. Hence my name and avatar.
Also, I don't see many games nowadays that can beat Mario 64 or Banjo in terms of gameplay.