Games are boring
After being an avid gamer since I was around 8 years old, I am finally bored of gaming. Nerd rant alert!
I have no interest in any of the many games sitting on our shelves, no games that are out at the moment appeal, and no future games excite me. Nothing. Not the imminent arrival of Fable 2 and Fallout 3. Nor the announcement of Diablo 3 and a new Star Wars MMO based on Knights of the Old Republic. Not even Warhammer Online (which I had been playing rather a lot of), or Wrath of the Lich King for wow which is due out in a couple of weeks.
I can’t be arsed any more. Games aren’t what they used to be.
I don’t think I am alone in this - just the other day my sister messaged me as she just couldn’t find a game worth playing. Modern games suck.
Nothing can compare to the decade or so that produced masterpieces such as Unreal, Diablo 2, Deus Ex, Planescape Torment, Baldurs Gate 2, the Thief series, and many more. More recently, Divine Divinity and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic were absolute corkers. How can I forget true oldies such as Duke Nukem and Doom too, just awesome fun, and such replayability!
Innovation and originality is seriously lacking in games these days, and the sterility of the Xbox port doesn’t help matters. I was seriously pissed off and disappointed with the Deus Ex followup - what a joke that was. The storyline sucked, it was very linear, bugged to death, and you felt like you were playing in a cardboard box (thanks to the game being created for the Xbox). Thief 3 wasn’t much better. I did enjoy Mass Effect and Bioshock but I never did complete the latter.
I always completed my old faves. Many times over in some cases. I completed Deus Ex some 15+ times before it got a little tedious, and I have completed Thief 3 at least 10 times on Expert mode. Fabulous game! But then, I have just played it too many times now, I need something completely new.
I think partly it may be because games simply are too realistic, which leaves no scope for the imagination. I am a game nerd and freely admit it. Back when I was playing on the Acorn Electron and Spectrum, I would daydream about games of the future being more realistic. I never imagined it would happen for real. After we got our first P100 PC and discovered the joys of Doom and Heretic, I asked my Dad if one day processors would get faster and he said no, they could never possibly cool anything near a gigabyte. Now look what has happened!
When I played Elite, I would daydream about actually being in the game for real. The same with Unreal and Thief. They kickstarted my (often wild and frequently completely bizarre) imagination. Not one modern game has managed that. I know I am older now and have more to think about and I am more often than not simply too tired or harrassed to daydream, but my imagination remains unchanged!
Another gripe is that many of them look the same. The graphics are similar, because they are made for the same platform ( we all know which that is, grr), there are no large landscapes like in Deus Ex and true non-linear games are no longer in existence. I imagine Diablo 3 will be like living in a box/dungeon/sewer, with crappy console-ported controls, a linear storyline without much deviation, and it will look exactly the same as the dozens of other games that come out at the same time.
Finally, maybe - just maybe - it’s the fact that I can no longer sit gaming all night long whilst chain smoking and drinking huge amounts of alcohol! I have kids to care for and a man who won’t get up to them, I don’t smoke any more because I’m scared of cancer and smelling like an old dog-end, and I am drunk off 2 small glasses of wine these days! Hmm…
Anyway, rant over. Honest. I’m tired now and it’s not 9pm yet!
But PLEASE make some decent games, dammit!
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