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"The industry has never been so fantastic..."
"The PlayStation 2 is finally showing us what it can really do"
"There's a familiar buzz of excitement, we're all getting ready for some top games this summer"
The above is clearly a load of rubbish, all made up to try and uplift the situation that gaming is now in, to try and trick us into believing that playing games has never been more fun - that the titles released today are of such a high standard that we really should be enjoying the supposed 'atmosphere' surroundung us.
Right now I cannot see anything arriving within the next few months of any real significance other than Virtua Tennis 2 on the Dreamcast, but it'll no doubt be much the same as Crazy Taxi 2 - i.e. selling 10% the amount the original did, and being touted by the few that own it as an add on, with women.
GT3 was recently released, I've played it, so what? Hardly mind blowing, hardly the epitome of sensational gaming, it's not THAT great is it! In my opinion, and that's what counts when I'm writing, not yours, not theirs, just mine - I feel the best time for gaming was when the Saturn and PlayStation were both selling well, although the PlayStation decided to attach rocket boosters while the Sega console slept in a lay-by, and why are my thoughts this? Who knows, something must have happened. This year has been so boring, my GBA is hidden in sea of socks, I have no idea where my Dreamcast has gotten too, and the only reason for getting a PlayStation 2 at the moment is because I have nothing else to spend money on.
When the Saturn and PlayStation were in their youth, the PlayStation had really amazing, original titles, games that like Resident Evil - what a revelation, games like Destruction Derby - you know they HAVE to make a new 4 player Destruction Derby game, and games on the Saturn - Virtua Fighter 2, NIGHTS blew me away, and Panzer Dragoon? Such quality, such bravery, and what have we now?
Ok, so I'm being unfair to today's gaming, but I remember playing Street Racer - that was a fun game, that had so much life - today, gaming life is being taken away but why?
Are games so real now, that we're becoming the emotionless ones? Has the emotion engine stolen our fun, and put it into silicon? Why am I writing all this? I'm looking into the future - I see an X Box, with people running from it as the black DVD sized chunk of plastic morphs into a bionic creature, but where are the games? I don't really want to be playing 'Nascar 2002', in fact the thought sends my fingers to sleep, I'd rather be racing streamlined sports cars, with seductive women in the passenger seats - I want to be racing Ferrari F60's, McLaren F1s and Maserati's in the streets of Milan, not round and round a badly formed oval circuit - where has the fun gone!!?
This year has been sparce - name one other superb racing game to GT3 that's been released since January 1st! Well? Name an original racing game that's been released this year!!!!
Have there been any decent fighting games? Any really like 'wow I must own that' RPGs? What about Sports titles? WHAT'S GOING ON!! It's AUGUST!?
Where have Eidos drifted off to? Still milking out the WWTBAM? game? What's next after Junior edition in Mcdonald's - Senior Citizen version from local coffee shops?
Argh!!!
It's not just the gaming 'industry' that's lost a few cogs, have you seen the prices of widescreen televisions? Have you seen what they look like? Ugly, ugly and ugly. Doesn't anyone care about aesthetics anymore? Will GameCube games come in polythene sandwich bags? Where's all the glamour, surely Japan can't be the only place on earth for decent gaming!? Why does the X Box look so ugly? Couldn't they have made it visually reasonable?
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Rant Over.
Dan2K1: Shut down.
Never mind...
b) GT3 is fantastic, you obviously haven't played it enough. All the races are interesting, even the endurances and THAT MOTHER'S HUUUUGE! Have you seen the size of it? It's going to take me months to finish it.
c) SSX could be compared to Destruction Derby. Both but new spins on rising genres.
d) This year has been much more exciting for me than last. even at the peak of the PlayStation's prime, there were sometimes when I thought "Shall I go on my PS? Nah" but at the moment I spend 3+ hours a day on my PS2 and I've still got looooaads of games to play.
OK, so the industry will be much hotter next year with the launch of the GameCube, but it's still great now. Let me try and explain this: 2 years ago the industry was running at 100% excitement. Now, it's running at maybe 70% but the overall excitement of the industry has grown to such that 70% now is more than 100% then. Do you understand?
Nah, thought not ;-)
> TILTAWHIRL wrote:
> sorry that was ment to say this year
What
> was the rest of it meant to say?
Please endeavour to improve
> your spelling, punctuation and grammar. Thanks
Sorry just read what i wrote and realised it was a load of crap, it was late and im a newbie. But i will try to improve in the future okay.
I use to own street racer for the PS thats the 8 player compatible game with dumb karts which wasn't very good yeah?
Mario Kart Advanced, Metal Gear Solid 2, Eternal Darkness and so many more titles to smash it's way onto the gaming scene in some places this year!
How can you get bored? Is it the annoying wait for Spaceworld or anything big to happen. The GBA is about to bring it's best games to bear on the world.
2k1 is the best year for gaming but is it really as good as we hoped?
Of course it will be.
Dringo
The Crash series began to go this way on the PSone, but has had a very long period through the PS2's launch with no activity. When the next version is launched, it should at least add something new to the 3d platformer, something to make people notice, and prove that developers are capable of recreating the fun of the originals without making an exact copy of them and updating the levels and graphics.
I agree that we are currently experiencing a very slow period in the gaming industry, people will try to hype games up to convert these doubters, but I put a lot of it down to Sony being lazy. They currently have complete market dominance, there is no major competition in the way of consoles - especially with more people selling hteir Dreamcasts to convert to the PS2 - and there is no need for them to be releasing large numbers of high quality titles. I'd expect them to step up the pace a bit just before the GameCube launch, trying to sway people away from Nintendo's offering, and once there are some more consoles in the market competing for the punters' money, then I'd expect the number of worthwhile titles to increase.
Admittedly, a lot of these will still be dull rehashes offering nothing new but selling millions. This is possibly due to gaming becoming more "mainstream" - debate as to whether or not this is because of Sony in Meka's post - companies are in the industry to make money, and if the public buys each and every release of the most monotonous racing game ever, then they'll continue to be made. Some of my favourite games ever were on my 486 (before I had any consoles) - they had abysmal graphics, and were mostly free, but I could spend hours in the evening with my mates playing shareware titles (Avoid the Noid, Elevators from Hell..not exactly mainstream).
Of course, it's harder for developers to be so innovative in their game ideas now - not just because of what's already been done, but because publishers wont pick up on them unless they're like to be big sellers. Gone are the days of distributing games for free on floppies and hoping people donate money to you, if a game doesn't follow a basic "hit" formula now, it's not going to get released anyway. However, not having a new premise for a game is no excuse for making your attempt at the genre dull and monotonous.
I can see more and more emphasis over the next few years being placed on making games realistic, getting graphical detail to perfection and physics completely realistic, but then what?
"We've made the most realistic game ever, you can't tell the difference between a shot from our game and a photo. What do you do? Well, you drive around a circle, again and again...What do you mean no fun?"
Sooner or later, people will see through the games which survive on their graphics alone, and developers will be pressured in to putting some more thought in to making their games fun to play again. This doesn't get any easier with the next generation of consoles and graphics cards always around the corner, especially with a lot of "casual" gamers only influenced by looks, but I for one would much rather be playing a game that's fun, not one that can display however many million polygons at once and has realistic blood splatter noises.
As for your point about hardware aesthetics...as far as consoles go, I couldn't care less. If the games that go in it are good, then let them make it bright green with stickers plastered all over it advertising their upcoming products. My consoles tend to get hidden under a pile of wires within days anyway, as long as they do their job, that's fine by me.
TVs on the other hand, I actually have to look at. Admittedly, I focus on the screen itself most of the time, but it does have to sit in the room for the rest of the time I'm not using it, and if it looks pleasing, all the better. I can't really say that I think they've lost all sense of style - a quick trawl through my local TV/hifi specialists shows some quality models, depth always decreasing, but there's only so much you can do to the design before it starts becoming impractical or tacky.
My apologies if this post makes no sense or I've misinterpreted your point, it's 3:45ish and the screen seems to have gone a funny yellow colour..