Well put. When I was young and couldn’t afford games I had all the time in the world. As an adult with money and a sometimes job as game reviewer so I sometimes even get free games, I don’t have the time to finish but a few…
First world problem indeed.
The downside to reviewing games is that you sometimes have to spend time playing crap while good stuff is coming out.
I more or less just gave up tv except for a few movies and series. Unfortunately the genres I really love are the big timesinks like Civ (500+ hours played in Civ V) giving me little time to other stuff. I still have to finish any of the great RPGs… I think the last one I played to the end was Planescape: Torment.
I’m also trying to improve my poker game which is best done by spending time at the tables.
Dude, I-War 2 came out in 2001. Even if it’s not your favorite game ever, I can’t imagine anyone not considering it a quality space combat game. So the death of the genre was two years later :p
On topic: Yes, so many good games, so many cheap good games, it’s nuts. Just this weekend I bought Swat 4 Gold, Supreme Commander Gold, and C&C3 for 5 bucks each. That’s a crazy amount of gaming awesome.
Speaking of Space Combat games, what I’d give for a new Colony Wars game. I LOVED those games, especially the first one. G-Police was pretty sweet too - man, what happened to Psygnosis? Are there any games like these out now?
Feh, I-War 2 was basically the release of the bowels after the body had died with Freespace 2. :P
It’s funny, I actually own the CW games for my PS3, but haven’t played 'em yet. G-Police was indeed awesome though. Sadly there aren’t really any games out like that currently.
Was the first Red Orchestra good? I never played it. Skyrim and Rage both look good to me. Both will be available for consoles as well though, which is great, since people can then pick their platform. I’m not sure about RO2.
I’m a bit excited for HOMM6, actually, too. And I’m sure another King’s Bounty game will be on the way soon enough. Plus, Risen 2 (is that this year or next?) looks awesome to me.
I see people say that about Red Orchestra, but damn trying to even experience some of that magic today isn’t possible.
I downloaded and installed the game, and its just horrible, and it probably has a lot to do with the fact my 1080p monitor rez isn’t an option, everything looks super blurry. :(
I have had RO2 in my steam cart for 2 days, and I am just not sure about it :(
Whether gaming is good or bad is whether you’ve played a lot of games or not and whether your favorite genre is getting enough money $$ and talent to develop and finish a proper game!
Tonnes of pseudo-good games come out which get rave reviews but were unfinished on release (I’m looking at you Assassins creed 1) and fanboys with no gaming experience eat it up. Too many games are coming out that are shallow experiences with no long-term value.
Take civilization, a game which most people come back to time and time again when they can to get “just one more turn”. There are fewer and fewer games that have replayability these days. Most game developers are trying to movie-fy the game to get sales (cinematics, voice overs, action cinema, etc) but if you look at the actual game mechanics they’ve been pretty stagnant.
Many so-called “new” games are just updated rehashes of old games with fancier graphics and more movie-fication. See below:
Some may call this “a great age” to be a gamer. I think for mainstream genre’s it’s true, but for others not so much.
For first person shooters? Yes if you are an FPS fan then you’ve had little to complain about over the past 10 years but for other genre’s? Not so much.
Many genre’s were dumbed down, simplified and simply disappeared off the map. Supreme commander 2 and Civ 5 were huge let-downs for the series. Space sims like Freespace 1 and 2 are gone replaced by MMO garbage like Eve and Black prophecy.
It is a golden age because of what is coming out of indies not because of the same old shit produced by AAA developers. It’s now possible for one guy to make a niche game and have enough exposure to survive.
The golden age way predates six months ago. Not many games really have come out in the last six months anyway, certainly not enough to define a ‘golden age’. The golden age is more associated with a rise in the number of indie games made easily available as well as gog’s excellent efforts in getting the oldies back into the flow. Three years ago a ton of the indie developers that are now on Steam would not have been able to find an audience for their mostly excellent games. With Steam and Impulse providing them a marketing platform, many more people are enjoying and playing their games.
I don’t like the label ‘Golden Age’, but there are plenty of great games right now, just as there always have been. I don’t know that it’s any better than any other time, but it’s not worse either. And yeah, the indie scene really makes it better. I also LOVE that we can now get games from other countries so easily. Eastern European games are keeping a lot of my favorite styles of games alive.
Wow , 3 great indie pc games this week, and the flood of AAA titles in the next 3 weeks, this is just crazy, why couldn’t they have spread this out better over the summer months? :(
17 hours of Rift among my 11 new Summer Sale games the first weekend. Since then…66 hours of Dragon Age: Origins and 10 hours of Dredmor.
I still have 9 more games, but I cannot NOT play DA:O. I played my seven trial days of Rift and I think I have missed out on 3 if not 4 weeks of my free month. Crap…I need to get back to that.
Which great indie PC games are you talking about, lordkosc? And which AAA titles? I need to make sure I don’t miss anything. I assume you’re referring at least to SPAZ on Steam…
