The Quality of Games Today.

Doesn't it seem like some of the higher rated game today aren't nearly as good as the ones in the past?

I've seen the RPGs rated a bit higher today, for example, Oblivion. Does Oblivion really rank up to the Baldur Gates, to the Fallouts, to Chrono Trigger, to Planescape Torment, hell, even to Morrowind itself.

It's not so much the quality of gaming as a whole that declined, but the focus of mainstream gamers that shifted from fairly deep, skill-based and sometimes purely cerebral types of games to completely mindless, dumbified and easy games. Oblivion gets AAA, GOTY, etc.; King's Bounty doesn't even get a Gamespot review. It's not that the quality games aren't there anymore; it's just that they're often disregarded by most people.

Just look at Gears of War. Remember left-leaning, right-leaning, crouching and sometimes proning? Well, this game offers automatic cover at the press of a button (as if I was some kind of AI and couldn't take cover myself). Oh, and it also offers recharging health so that you don't have to actually care about getting hurt in battle (and so that you don't have to learn the multiplayer maps). Let's not forget the uber-large character models to facilitate aiming, and the overall slow-pace of the game utterly limiting movement (to facilitate aiming). 10 years ago, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 were fighting for FPS of the year, multiplayer game of the year, etc. You know, games that actually involved skills, movement and memory. These days, Gears of War is what the mainstream gamer wants. I have no example on the multiplayer side of things because people don't make skill-based multiplayer FPS anymore, but just look at STALKER: Clear Sky single-player wise. "Too hard!", said the reviewers. Awesome, says I.

Doesn't it seem like some of the higher rated game today aren't nearly as good as the ones in the past?

I've seen the RPGs rated a bit higher today, for example, Oblivion. Does Oblivion really rank up to the Baldur Gates, to the Fallouts, to Chrono Trigger, to Planescape Torment, hell, even to Morrowind itself.

Taloskai

It's not so much the quality of gaming as a whole that declined, but the focus of mainstream gamers that shifted from fairly deep, skill-based and sometimes purely cerebral types of games to completely mindless, dumbified and easy games. Oblivion gets AAA, GOTY, etc.; King's Bounty doesn't even get a Gamespot review. It's not that the quality games aren't there anymore; it's just that they're often disregarded by most people.

Just look at Gears of War. Remember left-leaning, right-leaning, crouching and sometimes proning? Well, this game offers automatic cover at the press of a button (as if I was some kind of AI and couldn't take cover myself). Oh, and it also offers recharging health so that you don't have to actually care about getting hurt in battle (and so that you don't have to learn the multiplayer maps). Let's not forget the uber-large character models to facilitate aiming, and the overall slow-pace of the game utterly limiting movement (to facilitate aiming). 10 years ago, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 were fighting for FPS of the year, multiplayer game of the year, etc. You know, games that actually involved skills, movement and memory. These days, Gears of War is what the mainstream gamer wants. I have no example on the multiplayer side of things because people don't make skill-based multiplayer FPS anymore, but just look at STALKER: Clear Sky single-player wise. "Too hard!", said the reviewers. Awesome, says I.

ReddestSkies

I agree with you. Don't get me wrong, I love Oblivion, but it seems made for mainstream gamers as well.

And yes, I do remember playing Unreal Tournament Classic. A much better experence then I had with Halo 3. Hell, Halo 1 gave me a better experence than 3.

I've rated things overly high in the past and I apologize, but I experenced first hand how a persons standards can change with the games being released.

I think the test of trials for the games released today is if fans can still play the same game with older graphics. Then you can really compare how the game's gameplay is.