There are definitely game genres that are practically dead though. For example, I'm a huge fan of survival horror games. Classic survival horror (think the first 3 resident evil games, silent hill, etc) is basically dead and likely never going to return in favor of more action-oriented horror games.
Just curious, have you played the games on question on a CRT or on more modern screens? I think a lot of pre-rendered graphics just fall apart when not shown on their original resolution and display tech. You get issues with resolution mismatch, blurry scaling, seeing too much of the map at once etc.
Saying music in general is dead is obviously a more radical statement than that a specific genre is. But even if music is dead, my advice still stands: do something else then than listen to new mediocre music. Perhaps play video games instead? And if video games are dead too, maybe go outside the house?
I'm sure there can always be minor revivals of a genre, like someone making a great (but now retro) disco record, or a new great survival horror game. But such revival works will always be far apart, like echos of the original era, and they rarely add anything really new. Maybe a "genre" could be defined as the time period when imitators are imitating the innovators? If so, a genre "dies" once the imitator herd moves on to something else.
For me it starts around 1994; I still have trouble finding the appeal in a lot of 80s games. The amount of derivative stuff and cloned games was even worse than it was in the late 2000s, and especially in the mid-80s developers seemed to just rush broken copies of existing games out the door, especially on consoles - so much of the NES library is so bad that it's actually depressing. For DOS and Amiga I can only really think of about ten games from the entire 80s that I really enjoy.
Agreed on microtransactions and DLC, which are a scourge on modern gaming, but I don't know if I'd say a lot of 90s games were fully tested and polished. The best ones were, of course, but a ton of lower-budget games just got rushed to completion, often with devs not even bothering to release patches. I can think of a lot of games from that era that front-load all the best stuff at the start and then totally go to pieces toward the end as the devs ran out of time and didn't bother with any QA on the later sections.
The market nowadays is so diverse that I wonder if there even is a common denominator; the only games that really seem to have mass market appeal in that sense are Call of Duty games, which have remained pretty constant in their design since 2005, Fortnite (the appeal of which still eludes me), Nintendo shit like Zelda/Mario, and of course FIFA. But otherwise, I wonder how much an archetypal "common denominator" really exists in a way that can be catered to.
This is a good thing though, right? We're finally in an environment where smaller, more niche games can flourish without the need to cater for (what publishers assume to be) the tastes of the mass market. When I look over my list of favourite games from the past five years, there's a hugely varied amount of stuff on offer - roguelites like Slay the Spire and Fights in Tight Spaces, FPSes like Ion Fury and HROT, RPGs like BG3 and Wasteland 3, turn-based tactics games like Gears Tactics and Jagged Alliance 3, a couple of big blockbuster AAA games like AssCreed Odyssey, and then random shit like Huntdown and Dead in Vinland and Hades and Desperados 3.
Yes and yes. An exception might be melee fighting, where 3rd person gives you a better sense of depth and distance to the opponent.
This may depend on the kind of games you play. I'm considering getting a widescreen monitor, since it should give me both peripheral vision and a realistic FOV. On a non-wide screen I believe you have to choose between tunnel vision or a wideangle effect from the FOV setting.
First-person view is shit. Would NEVER make a game like that as a billionaire.
Ripley in Alien: Isolation can only run forward. She can't look to the side while running, as if her head and eyes are in a vise. If she is holding a weapon or the scanner, her whole upper body turns as she looks around. It's extremely robotic. Resident Evil 7 is bad.
Lol, how does the aspect ratio of your screen fix this issue? You still are aware of too little, no matter how you slice it, because the camera is so zoomed in and you can't feel your body/legs. Kind of important in an action-adventure game where you are jumping and climbing platforms and fighting people hand to hand, like Indiana Jones.
Third-person clearly has more visibility, even if I use a game where the character takes up significant space, like MGS5. Look at how much closer the fence becomes.
With shoulder swapping, the character will never be in the way. But there is no way to fix the small field of view in a first person game or remove the big tool/weapon on the screen.
I promise they are standing in the same spot, but how can you be sure if you CAN'T FEEL/SEE HIS FREAKING LEGS.
Interestingly, you've made me realize that writing actually is a part of a game's atmosphere. The soundtrack part is almost universally right even if people don't realize it. People can hear the silence of a game, it's something I've noticed whenever someone plays a game without music, and it usually shows up as a complaint unless said person just doesn't care for music to begin with. Although that said, while the soundtrack is a big part, it alone won't determine a game's atmosphere. This example is kind of cheating since it's reusing the soundtrack from a different game, but In the Pursuit of Greed is wildly considered to be a mediocre game with a flawless soundtrack, yet that soundtrack does absolutely nothing for the game's atmosphere.
Over the years genres have had ups and downs and it can be hard to tell if it'll ever improve, but sometimes trends reverse and we get marvelous things again. If you watched movies in the 1920s for the cinematography, you'd be absolutely pissed for a while, but things got better. On the other hand, you're probably not very happy if you want a new Arthurian romance. Over the years I've learned to accept that bad things can occasionally do things really well and good things can suck in some ways, and that's just life. If you liked art rock in the '70s, for instance, you'd be absolutely right that it was basically dead after the '70s. Bands seem unable to do the same kind of dynamism that they were capable of in the '70s, the modern need for everything to work in shitty phone speakers have absolutely screwed them over.
I had it pointed out to me I really value music in games. And many games like Jet Set Radio and Metal Gear Revengenace are heavily carried via their music. I would say music is number 2 behind gameplay in terms of what matters in games. Even if the music is mostly silent and sparing use of songs, it's still really important.
I was trying not to get into it with you again because you're such a faggot but you're just asking for this.
Modern games don't even let you veto maps any more. Fucking disgusting.
The big games are still charging for yearly releases but the battle royale genre is mostly free yea.
This is becoming a problem because we're human centipeding computer games. Eating the shit that's already been shit twice before isn't a good idea. We need creators with real world experiences not memories of pokemon and WOW.
You're in luck good sir! With the PSX revival we're seeing a lot of survival horror games in the old style come out. Hopefully it will replace the walking sim era (it won't..)
You should be going outside any way. Video games should be a hobby not a life style.
I really hate how easy it is to make 3d games now. They're so much harder to make then 2D games and indie devs making awful 3D games is so frustrating. Looking up a genre and finding unity asset garbage all over everything.
I agree. It's summer, go outside
Shithole. Shithole everywhere.
The suns good for you.
We know you live in a shithole. All third world posters are so obvious.
Live in United States. But you're right. It is a third world shithole.
Doesn't mean you're a white chad from European stock. US has a lot of smelly brown people pretending they're American too.
