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A lot of the PSWii60 gen games actually kinda suck...?

A

arkhamguy123

Banned
So I was revisiting some of my favorites on my xbox series x and came to a very sad epiphany. Uhhh guys am I tripping or do a lot of these last-last gen games suck? And im talking some of the 90+ on Metacritic ones too. (Also disclaimer, I'm not at all opposed to the rebuttal that I'm just older and more snoody/have higher standards on what's stimulating.)

First of all good lord someone SAVE me from this gray/brown environment induced malaise. I of course expect that some of the graphics will look dated but goddamn the art styles makes shit look extra ugly. The gameplay is also usually very braindead and monotonous. The biggest offenders of these are your typical unreal engine 3 *insert 3rd person shooter here* PS360 shooters that we used to always get. For example, LOVED gears as a kid. I'd preorder them at GameStop and spend a simply embarrassing amount of hours in the story and multiplayer. Same for mass effect, good god did I adore mass effect as a kid and in college when I replayed them. I mean just obsessed. And both of these are just terrible to me now (your writing is still great though mass effect). I was really trying to enjoy them like I used to but I couldn't stomach anymore claustrophobic little environments and I literally would just walk forward, press R2/RT, and vanquish basically every enemy type. Occasionally taking cover when my health was low. It was like a mobile game from back in the day.

Some other of my favorite games from childhood I tried to get into that I thought were just atrocious experiences were fallout 3, twilight princess, Witcher 2, resistance trilogy, dead space trilogy, oblivion, and the original COD run from MW1-BO2 which was especially simplistic and mind numbing. Additionally the writing/characters/stories on some of these games are generally extremely sub standard. As a kid I used to defend the writing of these big blockbuster games to my dad who looked down on gaming in favor of literature/film/television but holy hell what was I thinking? A lot of it is very poor I'll just say.

Made me appreciate the PSWII60 games I was trying lately that do hold up well in my opinion, the following off the top of my head hold up very well from a stand point of pure fun factor/visuals/writing and story/replayability. Or all 4.

Halo 3-Reach
Batman Arkham Asylum-Origins
Portal 2
GTA4/GTA5/RDR1
Mario Galaxy 1&2
TLOU1
Uncharted 2&3
 
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bender

bender

What time is it?
64bitmodels said:
dead space is awesome, your opinion sucks
Click to expand...
so-so-of-dominic-west-njx4oe8gqmvbrm3e.gif
 
TheAtomicPile

TheAtomicPile

Member
Games that sucked:

Infamous, LittleBigPlanet, God of War 3, MGS 4, Street Fighter 4, RE 5, Assassins Creed (Ezio games), Borderlands, Fallout 3/ NV, Rayman Legends....

Real talk: IDK man, the list of exceptions is pretty long. I actually think gaming might have peaked in this era considering the GaaS / MTX era that gained steam right after.
 
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Danny Dudekisser

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
It was a terrible era for gaming, as far as I'm concerned. There were some rare bright spots, of course, but it's a gen that was way too ambitious for the hardware, and the games have generally aged very poorly. I think the Wii fared much better since it went in a totally different direction, but the open world and calladuty wannabe malaise that was the PS3/360 was a drag.
 
NeoIkaruGAF

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Nah. There was a lot of variety and experimentation going on still. New frontiers of gaming would be explored, development times were still contained, and not everything was homogenized and sanitized for maximum profit. Sure, most devs and pubs were convinced that most gamers were dudebros, but they were also mostly right (see the scorn against the Wii, which had an impressive library if you can be bothered to stop parroting “waggle waggle waggle” for a minute). Games had reached a kind of balance between the overly simplistic stuff of the previous gens, and the absolute bloat of those that would follow (even if so many PS2 games already taught so many things about bloat to the world). That gen still had 10/12-hour AAA games.

If 7th gen games could be played with today’s loading times (on consoles, of course), more people would still appreciate them. Playing Wii games from an external HDD already made a tremendous difference in loading times. Sure, the grey/ brown aesthetics of many dudebro shooters was already jarring back then, that’s true.
 
existensmaximum

existensmaximum

Member
Every generation and console have a majority of games that suck, always. I think that generation however, definitely had the best games overall since entering the polygon era and that games have been declining since then.

(I don't play first person shooters though so I'm not going to comment on them).
 
SkylineRKR

SkylineRKR

Member
Performance is generally not great but there are many excellent games and a ton of variety. Try to find something like Motorstorm, Tokyo Jungle, MGS4, Resistance 3, Chromehounds, PGR, Ninja Gaiden 2, God of War 3, Lost Odyssey, Condemned, Ridge Racer 7, Blur on PS5 and XS.

Some of them, are playable on current systems and upgraded with quite little effort (just an FPS and resolution boost) and they look amazing still. Original NG2 on XS is probably one of my most played games in recent years.
 
cireza

cireza

Member
Generic said:
I re-played Dragon's Crown a while back and didn't like it. Too repetitive and grindy.
Click to expand...
Vanillaware is super overrated anyway.

We got FF XIII trilogy, Catherine, Sonic Unleashed and Bayonetta so at least it saves the gen.

Must watch, Sonic Team takes way too much shit for absurd reasons, they are top tier developers :
 
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H

HL3.exe

Banned
Is everyone forgetting Dishonored, Deus Ex Human Revolution, FO:New Vegas, L.A. Noire, Max Payne 3, The Darkness, Condemned. That gen had some of the nastiest grimey big budget games (which I kinda miss), and the revival of the modern Immersive Sim.

I liked the PS360 more than the current one. I played mostly on PC, and eventhough some ports where bad, it wasn't as atrocious as the performance on those consoles. But what they manage to achieve on 2004/2005 era hardware with only 512mb RAM is kinda incredible, and these are game-logic blueprints we still play today, with out much of a leap on current gen hardware, apart from visuals.

I agree with the writing standard though, but it can be still terrible and childish even now. Great writing, thematic cohesion, and character development is still rare in games (but more common and mature than in the past)

6th gen (especially on PC) is still my favorite generation.
 
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A

alphachino

Member
No shit games with remasters are considered crap. Most all games mentioned here like Bioshock, mass effect etc have remasters on modern platforms. Not saying remasters are always better, but that’s another story.

I only play older games on original platforms if there is no other version or the original is superior. Super mario galaxy was mentioned but i still play on original hardware cos Galaxy 2 might never be ported to switch so they come as a set for me.
 
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Power Pro

Power Pro

Gold Member
I have seen some shit takes, but this one is ridiculous. I can't believe anyone would even suggest this was a bad generation, when most games they're still making today are basically just building off of what games in this generation did. We haven't seen any real innovation since this generation. The most popular games now are still just iterative on what the PS360 did.
 
T

tomato shrub

Member
It was a very bad generation. Unless you're really, really into Western AAA and its limited selection of games. But AA and Japanese games in particular had a very bleak outlook. Mediocre junk like Ninokuni was praised as the next JRPG hailbringer because literally nothing else of that kind released on PS3. "HD towns are hard". Angry bald protags everywhere. Everybody chasing that calladooty money like they are now again doing with GAAS.

Man, the PS4 generation was such a massive step up. Brought back platformers, brought back JRPGs, brought back Japanese action games, brought back good survival horror, brought back 2D gaming outside of the indie space, etc.
 
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Diddy X

Diddy X

Member
The jump from 7th to 8th gen was a noticeable jump in terms of general quality of the games, sound, graphics, gameplay even menus everything looked better made to me.
 
M

MajinSweet4

Member
As someone that started gaming in the NES days, PS3/360/Wii era is clearly the weakest imo. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people say it's the best generation. Games ran like ass and the general design trends at the time was dumbing everything down and making bloated boring games. If it wasn't for fighting games, Nintendo and the Souls franchise it might have killed my passion for the hobby.
 
Guilty_AI

Guilty_AI

Member
I like how your complaints are the exact same complaints people had back then too.

Yeah, we see a lot of stuff from that era with rose-tinted glasses. Honestly the ps360 gen had tons of mind numbingly simple games, it was when many titles began trying to be movies and streamlining everything they could. Really small levels that were extremely linear and oversimplification of many mechanics like health.

Bioshock itself for example was a streamlinization of System Shock games. Mass Effect was also a really step backwards in terms of actual role playing compared to previous Bioware games. And that's not saying how absolutely every game was trying to be the new online competitive hit, really crazy when you consider many people nowadays complain about the exact same tendency as if its something that only began from 2020 onwards.

But not like that generation didn't had its gems.
 
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NeoIkaruGAF

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
tomato shrub said:
It was a very bad generation. Unless you're really, really into Western AAA and its limited selection of games. But AA and Japanese games in particular had a very bleak outlook. Mediocre junk like Ninokuni was praised as the next JRPG hailbringer because literally nothing else of that kind released on PS3. "HD towns are hard". Angry bald protags everywhere. Everybody chasing that calladooty money like they are now again doing with GAAS.

Man, the PS4 generation was such a massive step up. Brought back platformers, brought back JRPGs, brought back Japanese action games, brought back good survival horror, brought back 2D gaming outside of the indie space, etc.
Click to expand...
Just a reminder, Vanquish and Bayonetta are Gen 7 games. And Nintendo didn’t stop making good platformers. Then you had LBP and Puppeteer on PS3, to name a couple (which can’t hold a candle to Nintendo‘s games, but they had budgets and know-how behind them that Sony would hardly hazard these days). Rayman Origins too, a top-tier 2D platformer that also looks superb. Oh, and we got Dark fucking Souls, THE most influential game of the 2010s and anyone who questions that needs a brain check. An indie game worth a damn without some Souls mechanics is basically nonexistent these days.

Gen 7 payed the biggest price for being a long, yet in-between gen. We had 3 very different main hardwares, with 3 very distinct userbases. This helped with variety, but it also meant heavy exclusivity and a good chunk of games that just weren’t the same on two different consoles (imagine if Bayonetta was a PS esclusive, we’d never have had a second game). The hardware could barely deliver true HD at the beginning, forget HD AND good fps. There was nothing to help with long loading times. Hardware was prone to failure like never before. Online was still in its infancy, and every platform was a walled garden. Japanese devs were struggling to make things bigger, while western devs were finally free to do what they had always dreamed of with hardware they knew, not with some exoteric Japanese tech that they didn’t even get full documentation for. And of course so many of them were 20-somethings who grew up during the rise of the FPS and the Marvel renaissance and wanted to leave their footprint in that genre’s history with the most ludicrous chara design and the worst writing ever.

We also realized that Japanese tropes are extremely cringey, especially when the English dub is professional enough that it turns out not so-bad-it’s-good anymore, but just plain terrible. So terrible, in fact, that even the most juvenile western shit would still look and sound like Hollywood in comparison. That’s one of the main reasons Japan struggled in that gen, not lack of innovation, HD towns or all those excuses we still seem to believe today. It’s just that all of a sudden, being a dudebro turned out to be better than being a weeb, if being a weeb meant being caught playing Star Ocean 4. And then Japan tried to catch up on what they believed was cool in the west and that’s how we got the Soul Calibur redesigns and all of that shite. But gameplay-wise, Japanese games were still very solid AND original. They simply had a very, very big image problem, which is also why something more western-looking like Souls had more of a chance to stand out.

Gen 7 had to work with many constraints. Of course it looks and feels like shit in the age of lightning-fast loading, almost-guaranteed 60fps, and stuttery giant 4K OLED screens. Take many of those games, make them run at 4K60 minimum, make them load everything in a second or two, and there’s some ridiculous fun to be had there. Just like adding some QoL features and better controls can make older games so much better to return to today. You can beat like 15 games from gen 7 before you can see everything a single modern Ubi game has to offer, and have a much better time too.
 
SportsFan581

SportsFan581

Member
^ The excessive brownness and bloom were signatures of the time.

There were a ton of bad games and many great ones. Sensibilities may have changed since, which could make replaying some of these a chore, even some of the great ones. I think the last 360 game I played was Blacklist, it held up well.
 
TintoConCasera

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
OP is mad. Those games were super cool and I'd rather play one from that gen that any modern western AAA game.

Only things I'd argue were bad were the paid online on consoles, the brown and bloom on many games and the simplification of game's mechanics in some games.

But the quality of the games was pretty high, and they still play perfectly fine. Game's don't age.
 
simpatico

simpatico

Member
arkhamguy123 said:
So I was revisiting some of my favorites on my xbox series x and came to a very sad epiphany. Uhhh guys am I tripping or do a lot of these last-last gen games suck? And im talking some of the 90+ on Metacritic ones too. (Also disclaimer, I'm not at all opposed to the rebuttal that I'm just older and more snoody/have higher standards on what's stimulating.)

First of all good lord someone SAVE me from this gray/brown environment induced malaise. I of course expect that some of the graphics will look dated but goddamn the art styles makes shit look extra ugly. The gameplay is also usually very braindead and monotonous. The biggest offenders of these are your typical unreal engine 3 *insert 3rd person shooter here* PS360 shooters that we used to always get. For example, LOVED gears as a kid. I'd preorder them at GameStop and spend a simply embarrassing amount of hours in the story and multiplayer. Same for mass effect, good god did I adore mass effect as a kid and in college when I replayed them. I mean just obsessed. And both of these are just terrible to me now (your writing is still great though mass effect). I was really trying to enjoy them like I used to but I couldn't stomach anymore claustrophobic little environments and I literally would just walk forward, press R2/RT, and vanquish basically every enemy type. Occasionally taking cover when my health was low. It was like a mobile game from back in the day.

Some other of my favorite games from childhood I tried to get into that I thought were just atrocious experiences were fallout 3, twilight princess, Witcher 2, resistance trilogy, dead space trilogy, oblivion, and the original COD run from MW1-BO2 which was especially simplistic and mind numbing. Additionally the writing/characters/stories on some of these games are generally extremely sub standard. As a kid I used to defend the writing of these big blockbuster games to my dad who looked down on gaming in favor of literature/film/television but holy hell what was I thinking? A lot of it is very poor I'll just say.

Made me appreciate the PSWII60 games I was trying lately that do hold up well in my opinion, the following off the top of my head hold up very well from a stand point of pure fun factor/visuals/writing and story/replayability. Or all 4.

Halo 3-Reach
Batman Arkham Asylum-Origins
Portal 2
GTA4/GTA5/RDR1
Mario Galaxy 1&2
TLOU1
Uncharted 2&3
Click to expand...
What about Half Life 2, FEAR, Left 4 Dead and New Vegas?
 
OuterLimits

OuterLimits

Member
Overall I still think the generation was great even if some of the games have aged more poorly than the PS2 generation.

The major exception was how dire the JRPG genre was that gen. Lost Odyssey, Valkyria Chronicles. and Xenoblade Chronicles being the rare exceptions. Plus it even took a ridiculous massive petition drive to even get Xenoblade to release in America.(Nintendo of America sucked so bad that gen)

I was never a fan of portable systems but started buying them since that was the only place the genre was still prevalent at the time.
 
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