My how games have changed since my heyday

[tony12]

I have been out of playing games for quite a while. Really havn't played much at all during the ps3 era and not really any rpg, adventure, type games for probably close to ten years now.

I however recently found out that they are coming out with really story driven games though where you can go through the game and let the story play out without having to worry much about gameplay (which is why I got out of games in the first place because I just really wasn't that into gameplay anymore).

So I went out and bought a couple games of that type and 'lo and behold they definitely are much like watching a television show or movie play out. What really shocked me though is that these games have blatent nudity in them as well and at least in Heavy Rain (the only one I played so far) even had a sex scene in it.

I'm still a little shocked about how much video games have changed since about the time of the early ps2 era when I was still real heavy into gaming.

[Pike]

I feel like games are better now than they have been in forever. First of all in technology:

When I was about four or five years old, games looked like this:



...that's not to say Impossible Mission wasn't great (it was), but it would have blown my little mind to think about how far we've come.

When I was about 14 years old, this came out:



I don't know if younger Pokéfans remember but we all longed to see our beloved creatures in 3D and when Pokémon Snap came out for N64 it was a huge, HUGE deal. Imagining a full-blown Pokémon game with graphics like that was a pipe dream.

And yet now we have this



And it's 3D, touch-screen, and has better graphics than the N64 could ever dream of while still being a handheld. If only I could go back and show 14 year old me!

Even outside of just technology, though, games have really gone through quite the renaissance. Thanks to the ease of things like indie publishing you've got games from just about every genre and style imaginable available on Steam, XBL, mobile, or pretty much anywhere else. It's rare a week goes by where I don't see some new game that I get excited about. We have so much choice now and it's wonderful!

[Dr Unne]

Games have matured as a medium. People who played Atari as kids in the 80's are 30+ or 40+ years old now. Games aren't only for kids any more. A lot of very popular games last year had you play the role of a father figure protecting a child for example.

If you like story-driven mature games, try The Walking Dead: Season One, or The Wolf Among Us, both by Telltale games. (There are other Walking Dead games, stay as far away from those as possible.)

[Iceglow]

I recently had the pleasure of being introduced to the PS3 game 'The Last Of Us' like Heavy Rain this was an adult, story driven game that frankly blew my mind a little. If I didn't think my housemate was a colossal dick I'd be finishing it for sure. (As it is, I may just ask my nephew/brother in law if I can borrow a friends ps3 for the game).

Also, games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, whilst sure Mass Effect 1 did involve a lot of gameplay, 2 and 3 became progressively more cinematic and less involved in the game play aspects. Certainly 3 even came out with a setting which was essentially "I want to be told an epic bloody space story and don't wanna die once"

[tony12]

Oh yeah 'The Last of Us' was my first experience on how some games these days have extremely mature and adult oriented storylines in them ( I never played it because it was still a shooter but watched the plot unfold off of a youtube playthrough). Back in the late '90's/early '00's if it was an rpg you were playing 9 times out of 10 you were playing with teenage characters. A character was considered an experienced wise to the world fighter by the time they were 18 or so and if you had a little kid in the group they were generally five or six. And the plotlines likewise tended to be just as much on the childish side. A character like Ellie probably would have been leading an army or something if she was put into the context of many of those late 90's style of video games.

Yet in the Last of Us Ellie is referred to in many cases as just a little girl and the real fighters of the game were legit adult ages. I never realized video game characters cussed that much until I heard Ellie's potty mouth, lol.

After watching the Last of Us playthrough I looked up The Walking Dead on youtube because I heard that story was supposed to be really good as well (plus I am a big fan of the show). I really liked TWD even better than Last of Us and that is when I decided to start paying attention to these very heavily story driven games. I plan on getting TWD the second season so I can play it for myself whenever it comes out on dvd.

As Unne said I think it in large part has to do with the fact that there are a lot more adult gamers now then there were before because a portion of the kids that grew up on the Atari and NES are still playing games and want stories that they can relate to instead of the standard teenagers save the world type games that they had for many many years.

Just out of curiosity do they still make a lot of teenagers go save the world type plotlines in video games where everything is pretty hokey or has that type of plotline kind of become a thing of the past?

[edczxcvbnm]

Don't watch The Walking Dead. You need to play that game because the character dynamics unfold based on your choices. Those choices will not be forgotten which helps to forge your relationships with the other characters. In this way the character you are playing is more your own rather than some other character who you happen to be controlling.

And they still have the teenagers save the world stuff with all of those tropes and bad writing. It is an easier story to write in terms of the Heroes Journey and said teenagers will need guidance and given they are just coming of age, lack the experiences of the world they are setting out into. This allows for the character to learn about these things with the player. I am glad games are getting more and more away from that but most seem to be sacrificing having the character you control be somewhat of an avatar for the player in favor of a true third person character you happen to be controlling and moving towards classic 3rd person narrative story telling where as gaming should be striving to be first person interactive as much as possible.

[Ayen]

I don't find your comparison all that well thought out because the Last of Us isn't a RPG from Japan. It's a Survivor Horror game and games of the genre always had more mature themes and grown up characters even in the nineties. Games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, etc. Japan just always tend to use much younger characters when it came to a lot of their RPGs with the exception of FFVII (most of them being at least in their early twenties) and I forget how old the cast of Legend of Dragoon were.

Yeah, games have evolved and will continue to evolve but they've been maturing a lot longer than you think. GTA goes back as far as the PS2 and it had you banging hookers, God of War turned sex into a mini-game, in the first SmackDown vs. RAW game you could hook up with Torrie Wilson in the shower and it would show her bra being thrown over the showers door and onto the floor. Command and Conquer originally came out in 1995 and it shows a guy being shot point blank in the head. Mortal Kombat was bringing us blood and guts since 1992.

[Botchmun]

Implying heavy rain is a game is like implying that a some 5 AM Grilled cheese sandwich is a masterpiece crafted by Gordon Ramsay and an army of magic Christmas Elves.

Though I will say that there has been a notable shift in how games are designed and treated as they steadily marched into the mainstream. The fallout games are actually a really good comparison from a then vs now standpoint. Original Fallout and Fallout 2 versus modern games, not counting Vaultblivion. Fallout was chalk full of mature themes, bleak survivalism, graphic violence (Take the "bloody mess" perk.) And strong sexual themes, though those were far more prevalent in the second game. Games with adult content were made, ranging from the crass debauchery of Custer's Revenge to the cinematic romance scene in Defenders of the Crown.

These things haven't truly changed, they're just made prettier and shoved in our faces more due to gaming shifting from the chaotic early days into structured corporate world we're stuck in today. The graphics and hardware have been on a steady rate of improvement as technology allows more polygons, higher quality sounds, and more soul-drained wageslaves adding more layers of bland grit to our CoDBlOps or whatever kids call them. Some games are getting bolder with how they present content, Bioware going the route of the late night cheesy smut movie with intimate makeout session and the likes of Heavy Rain and God of War reducing sex to awkward quick-time-events. Its interesting to observe how gaming has advanced through the ages, but how much of it has kinda stayed the same.

[tony12]

I would still consider FF7 a bit of a childish game with a bit of an immature plot. Yes it's a good game but when 35 year old Barrett played the old, worn down by life character, you know it wasn't very realistic either. I believe Aeris was 22, Cloud 21, and Tifa was 20. The only difference is that instead of having junior high or highschool kids save the world they decided to have college kids save the world.

[NeoExdeath]

I hate to be that guy. But I hate the way gaming has gone and seems to be going.

[Mirage]

Which way is that?

[Ayen]

I would still consider FF7 a bit of a childish game with a bit of an immature plot. Yes it's a good game but when 35 year old Barrett played the old, worn down by life character, you know it wasn't very realistic either. I believe Aeris was 22, Cloud 21, and Tifa was 20. The only difference is that instead of having junior high or highschool kids save the world they decided to have college kids save the world.

I'm failing to see what was immature about VII's plot, but it sounds like JRPGs aren't your forte and you need to expand and look into other genres if you're looking for more realistic games.

[Botchmun]

I would still consider FF7 a bit of a childish game with a bit of an immature plot. Yes it's a good game but when 35 year old Barrett played the old, worn down by life character, you know it wasn't very realistic either. I believe Aeris was 22, Cloud 21, and Tifa was 20. The only difference is that instead of having junior high or highschool kids save the world they decided to have college kids save the world.

Well yeah, FF7 is a horrible game.

I hate to be that guy. But I hate the way gaming has gone and seems to be going.

You just lookin' in the wrong places kiddo. A lot of high cost mainstream games and pretty much all the consoles are tunneling up their own arses head first that they'll vanish into a singularity within a few years... But check some pawn shops for older consoles and games and turn over some rocks on the internet. Gog.com, Vimm.com, we won't lose the classics and smaller games seem to come up as real gems compared to whatever EA belches out or whatever deals planet gaben puts on steam.

[Rostum]

I think a lot of people against games today just need to take off their rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and realise that there are not only a lot of really innovative titles from indie developers, but also that a lot of genres have developed and progressed into something much more comprehensive than previously imagined.

Great advances in technology in the past five or so years has allowed access for smaller (or indie) teams to produce and get their game out there for a wider audience; as if it's the early 90's happening all over again! So you just need to look past the big powerhouses like EA that keep shoving the same high-budget-low-substance game in your face every year, and find that there are a lot of great games still being made to this day.

[tony12]

I would still consider FF7 a bit of a childish game with a bit of an immature plot. Yes it's a good game but when 35 year old Barrett played the old, worn down by life character, you know it wasn't very realistic either. I believe Aeris was 22, Cloud 21, and Tifa was 20. The only difference is that instead of having junior high or highschool kids save the world they decided to have college kids save the world.

I'm failing to see what was immature about VII's plot, but it sounds like JRPGs aren't your forte and you need to expand and look into other genres if you're looking for more realistic games.

Though VII had some good character development its overall plot was pretty simplistic. Not a whole lot to it.

A bunch of kids were basically spending the majority of the game hunting down a character named Sephiroth. Why???? Because I guess they felt they needed to in order to save the world.