[Eagle of Fire]

Wow... So many things you just said are wrong to many levels.

One thing I don't understand. You guys are serious when you compare a game like Civilization to Civilization IV for example? I personally played both of them. The first Civ is a sad piece of work by today's standards (boring, unrewarding etc), while Civ IV is everything that I wanted at the time I played it. Of course I now speak objectively - I can still easily get in the right mood and enjoy the first Civilization as well.

I don't know who compared Civilization to Civilization IV, but anyways I'll bite... I played Civ, Civ II, Civ III and Colonization IV which is a sad excuse for its name as it is only a Civilization IV mod... And the best feature of Civilization IV is the graphics.

Yes, you heard me... The most prized upgrade in a strategy game is its graphics upgrade???

There is different genres in the industry. Those different genres have different needs... But the craze right now is only focused on better and better and better and better and better and better graphics. All the time... But let me tell you: some genre actually suffer from "upgraded" graphics. This is the case in strategy games in which the best use of graphics is to give you the broadest idea of what is happening on your whole map instead of focusing on how you can zoom in and literally see the little dudes in your cities.

In a real strategy game, you don't want graphics to intrude in the gameplay. Because a strategy game is all about thinking your next move to perfection. Not how your artillery piece make such a beautiful explosion when you use them. And it is sadly not really surprising that the industry can't be arsed to make a good score of strategy games nowaday... They simply are not equipped well enough to understand how it works in the first place since it is not directly related to graphics.

I have to admit that I didn't even bother trying to play Civ IV and Civ V though. There has come a point in the gaming industry history that I simply stopped caring about what they could get out because everything they did get out was really trashy. Graphics does not make a game, and they forgot that. So I just strolled along, hoping someday to find a real game which could raise my spirit back enough to I'd actually care to waste money on trying new games I might actually like... Sadly, this didn't happen yet.

I also heard a myth here which says that devs nowadays give less attention to detail. Compare the walls of Doom to the walls of Doom 3, compare Half-Life's world to the one in Half-Life 2, Legend of Kyrandia to The Whispered World and Syberia, the random dungeons of Diablo to the finely crafted mythical world of Titan Quest etc etc. There is a tremendous amount of detail going on in today's games, not to mention they have an entire army of artists. Yes, even such games as Call of Duty: Black Ops have plenty of art in them. Who else would make the artwork, art concepts, models, level design, cutscenes, script writing etc?

Comparing the walls of Doom versus Doom 3 is stupid. Not only the walls of Doom were OK, if not beautiful by themselves, you are comparing games so far apart in term of age that you don't take into consideration that the makers of Doom could not have make those walls much better without drastically reducing the speed of the game. Doom was meant to be ran on 486 PCs for God sake! Comparing that to the computers which are about a thousand fold faster nowaday is mind numbing.

Also, you probably don't know how brilliant the roguelike random system of Diablo and Diablo II is. Even though, again, those games are way older than the comparison, they really shine in both their simplicity and their complexity. Which come out from every good game, dare I say.

I also dare say that those so called details you are talking about are probably only in the graphics themselves. The templates. Etc. Which is exactly why we are sick of them because, again, graphics does not make a game!

In fact there's so much detail, it spawned an entire genre that makes you dig through crap minutiae - its name is Hidden Object games.

No idea what that is... Moving on...

You guys also failed to notice that genres such as FPSs have long since attained perfection in terms of gameplay. You really want another raw Doom in 2011? How would a developer make its product stand out from the mass of generic FPSs, without shifting the focus on graphics (Crysis), atmosphere (Bioshock), presentation (Call of Duty franchise), gadgets (Crysis again, Singularity, Half-Life 2) or cross-genre-ing (Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Portal, Zeno Clash, Sanctum).

Well, that is the whole point. We don't want another frigging FPS! Period! Just look at the image on the last page... I though it said it all.

At the same time, the gaming industry has evolved considerably. Until mid-90s it was pretty niche. Now there are all kinds of gamers, from moms and grandpas to "hardcore" players that only played a single game in their entire life, and it has "craft" in its title. The industry went gargantuan, but you as the Old Guard kept your interests relatively the same, thus you have become niche. To find what you're looking for, you need to look harder, because no matter how many casual players there will be, there's always something to please you too. But are you? Many of you are fans of Panzer General, but how many of you do know of Panzer Corps? Many of you are fans of Jagged Alliance but how many of you heard of Team Assault: Baptism of Fire? It gets funnier, because they're both published by the same company, and relatively easy to find if you want to...

If by "evolved" you mean "took what was right and turned it wrong"... Then yes, the gaming industry really "evolved".

The only thing which really "evolved" in the gaming industry is the cash flow. Games in the '90s were not invested millions of dollars with the guaranteed return of ten time the investment. They were small companies with small budgets which somehow managed to get out great games gameplay wise. Not graphic wise.

Also, I know you already know that... But a gamer who play only one game is not an "hardcore gamer". An "hardcore gamer" is a gamer who play it all, all the time. If you play only one game then you are an "hardcore player of [insert title here]", and nothing more. Or, more to the point, called "a player who is utterly addicted to a game and might need to seek professional help". That's like a world of difference here.

Also... Grandma and grandpa gamers? Are you kidding me? You probably mean that the future of PC gaming rely into mindless flashgames you can get rid of in about 10 minutes in term of gameplay... Or games in which all you do is search for clues and go to the next screen. Because, short of boring Wii games which are pretty much built on the same idea, that's what "grandma" and "grandpa" PC users are playing. Oh, that and... Solitaire. That's a classic. You just can't go wrong with Solitaire. I'm sure Microsoft would lose so much users if they didn't include that game in every single OS they make! And that's not even sarcastical...

It's incredible that in this amazing ocean of both indie and mainstream titles you still can't find something that you'd like. I need to back up TC on this: you really do sound like deprecating geezers. I won't start listing all the worth-noting hardcore titles of 2011 as I usually would do, because it's your gaming life - you manage it.

Sorry to bring you to reality again... But "Indies games" were hot like several years ago. And after several years, most of them are either still in development without a sheer hint of when (or even if!) they'll ever be completed, or a very few of them simply turned mainstream. With all the problems that involve.

Like Mount & Blade. I jumped that bandwagon very late, and loved the version I tried. Then later on they released another version and suddently the whole game shifted to better graphics - and a huge FPS drop. I mean, I thought I had finally found a great game there, thought they had it right where I wanted. All what was left in my mind for them to do was to polish the gameplay aspect of the game - quests, NPCs interaction, army management, etc - but they wanted to go mainstream. So what did they do? Work on improving the graphics which were already really good... Really great... So this is what you tell me is the future? Get hooked on games which will not end up playing like you liked them in the first place?

Right...

As a conclusion I want to say something I've learned after playing quite a few games. When you start a new game, you need to have the right mindset. If you begin with "This game is new, therefore it is crap. I shall play it just to attest historically that all the latest games are crap." you already lost. You will never enjoy it the way you should be. And by the looks of this thread, this is exactly what happened here. Even worse - some of the major complainers have failed to even play the games they criticize so desperately...

I never start playing with such a ridiculous mindset. What I do keep as a mindset though, when I start a new game, is "did'nt I already played this like a hundred times before?". FPS: all the same. Run, aim shoot. Run aim shoot. Run aim shoot. (Supposedly) RPGs? Create char, which is often fixed anyways. Run aim slash. Run aim slash. Run aim slash. And again, simply changing or upgrading the graphics don't help a dime here.

Whatever the setting, it is always the same. I dare you to bring me a real game which is really different or original, and I'll call it a great game. I did it plenty of times in the past, for games genre I even hated (example: I hate adventure games. Quest for Glory is a great game. I hate MMORPG. WoW is a gem game, can't say otherwise) and I'll just do it again. But I so lost hope in "modern" gaming that for that the game would need to bump into me now rather than the opposite... Because I'm certainly not open to lose money to try new games which are rightly so crappy in comparison to the standards and quality I want to find and play.