Bad traits in Modern gaming that seem to be everywhere.
Anyone who follows me or reads my review's knows how critical I am of the modern gaming industry, however it's usually the outside of the gaming industry I have a problem with, things like micro transactions, terrible developer practices, loot boxes etc, but I never really delve into the actual game problems that plague the gaming industry at the moment, so I thought today i'd take some time out from my usual angry yelling about developers and actually critique the problems within the actual games.
Now this is a very subjective topic coupled with objectivity so it may piss a few people off so i'll do my best to write my article down the middle on both sides, but ultimately some of you will disagree with what the article entitles, but hopefully i can give you enough of an argument for or against the topics that we can have proper discussions about them in the future, so lets dive straight into bad traits games have developers in the current decade.
Open worlds that serve no purpose.
This is a big one for me, there is nothing more annoying for me than having something marketed as "Open World" only to find out there's nothing in it, some times "open world" games serve absolutely no purpose other than making the player feel like the game is a lot bigger than it is, and it usually just hinders the entire experience that would of been better served as a linear game.
Two big examples are Metal Gear Solid V and Mass Effect: Andromeda, now while Mass Effect Andromeda had it's purposes for open world, it was still largely empty it was kinda just there for the environment effect, while MGSV was sorta ruined by it being open world, what should of been a massively story driven linear game was instead gimmicked with the open world that wore off very very quickly.
I'm not saying i'm adverse to Open World, but it has to serve a purpose, Witcher 3 is a perfect example of that, where the open world serves as a massive game play factor and everywhere you go there is something to do, however a lot of developers will shoe horn this in to make their game seem a lot bigger than it actually is which ultimately ends up leaving people bored or wishing it was released in a linear level style format.
Artifical Difficulty.
This is a big one that annoys me, Dark Souls is guilty of doing this where the hardness of the game is more a gameplay device than it is actually warranted, it's also prevelant in a lot of FPS games that on the highest difficulties have the AI killing you with one to two shots, now considering the AI have aimbots, it's always going to end up badly.
To put it another way, it's sort of like making a 2 hour long horror move that's nothing but jump scares, while it effectively scares you, it's not scary, the same way that dark souls is good at killing you, but not a hard game to play, this is becomming increasingly apparent on PC where games are built around you actively failing the game just to make the game play, there's numerous streamers on twitch who take on these games that we all see in the rage compilations on YouTube.
I'm not saying these are neccesarily a bad thing, but they aren't a great thing, difficulty in game play should come from numerous things, not just one specific part of the game that becomes a distraction which we are seeing more and more of as time goes by, again this is a subjective viewpoint but i think a lot of people feel the same way in that it's distracting when a game has parts that are very easy to fail at, but touted as needing skill to beat.
This could be due to the fact that i'm an oldschol RTS/RPG gamer where the difficulty came from multiple sources and required you to have different skills you needed to bring to push forward in the game and succeed, it's pretty different having to outthink your opponent than it is getting surprise attacked by something you can't possible know about or adapt to on the spot.
Never Ending Quick Time Events.
This is a weird one, some games thrive on Quick Time Events, games like Heavy Rain needed to have them due to the narrative it was telling, but some games just don't need quick time events to be a part of the story, the biggest thing that comes to mind is the now infamous "Press F to pay respects" in Call of Duty, it was so hilarious it became a meme and got panned for it across the gaming world.
But memes aside, QTE's really can ruin your immersion, during boss battles that should be based on the players skill instead get replaced with pressing a certain button or recieving instant death, iv'e never really met anyone who has told me "yeah the quick time events on that boss was awesome! So glad i didn't have to do anything else but press one button" one of the worst things i remember is fighting that shark in Arkham City where you instinctually want to punch the shark but it's given to you in a quick time event for no apparent reason at all.
It also impacts the game by breaking your immersion like the god awful boulder punching in Resident evil 5(or running from a boulder in Resident evil 4, what is it with RE and rocks?) it's very very rarily that QTE's actually add anything to the game, usually it's immersion breaking and when it's done on bosses it's just lazy design by the developers who couldn't of been bothered to create a proper boss battle.
Lack of Originality.
This is a big one for me, as a "full time" gamer nothing pisses me off more than playing a clone of a great game, or a game that just isn't worth your money, I know i can't expect every title to be groundbreaking, but it has led to a dumbing down effect on the gaming world as a whole, going from intricate, involved storylines to tropes and cliche's even okay games get lauded as amazing story lines that belong in a museum, one of the biggest ones for me was The Last of us.
Now i'm not saying it's a bad game, but it wasn't anywhere as amazing as most people made it out to be, I can understand the connection people have to this game but some of the choices and things that happen in the game are either not based in it's own reality, or not really that amazing to begin with, I know this is subjective, but the way people carried on about The Last Of Us i went in with high hopes expecting some sort of deep dark drama with deeply involving story lines and human intricacies, instead i got your pretty standard zombie drama, with an ending that doesn't really make sense to me, but like i said, it is subjective.
There's a reason when amazing storied games come out they get such huge recognition, since we live in a flooded market where cliches are everywhere, for example "Dark brooding soldier has to save the world from certain destruction", which game am I thinking of? i bet most people reading this have 6 or 7 different guesses each that don't overlap, but we also have a problem of mediocre or o.k games getting massive recognition for story lines that just aren't original or as good as people make them out to be( see: Hype Train), again I could be wrong and just be a snob, but i think a lot of people feel this way.
Slowly Killing off the Horror genre.
This one gets to me the most, as a massive, massive fan of horror in all it's forms, nothing pisses me off more than a game that is just non stop jump scares designed to get recorded and thrown on YouTube, we see it more and more often as time goes by, the five nights at freddys franchise, and the never ending theme park/hospital/mansion/asylum/abandoned church games that seemingly get released every god damn day that are nothing more than a short story with 4 hours of jump scares that does nothing but piss you off 30 minutes into the game and eventually close it.
There are some good horror's still out there that don't rely on these terrible cliches, like the outlast series, but the market is largely flooded by peak a boo jump scares and dark corridors you have to go down while holding [Insert light object here] to find out that there's some zombie voodoo curse over the hospital, I don't know the story lines rarely make sense and are just there to get the jump scare reaction.
As you can probably guess i'm heavily invested in the horror genre, it's my favorite chosen genre for just about anything, movies,books, tv shows, games etc etc, so seeing this watering down effect happen pisses me off, but it also happens to other genre's as well, Call of Duty, for better or worse watered down the action genre a lot and you can see it's influence in numerous other titles that have sprung forth from it, but I feel this is the most felt in the horror genre as jump scare simulators get released nearly every day.
A long list with no end.
It's impossible to list everything wrong with modern gaming as the list just gets bigger and bigger the more you delve into it, and I am a bit of a purist when it comes to gaming that i make no apologies for, but a lot people feel the same way as me, there's more things I could list but i thought i'd list the ones that affect us the most(maybe not the horror genre, but shut up, i love it) and it just seems to continually get worse as time goes on.
There are still a lot of great titles out there being released by dedicated teams and studios that seek to raise the bar, but it seems that for every amazing title that gets published that the industry should take it's ques from, a hundred of the most cliched titles get released at the same time flooding the market.
Whatever the case is, it serves as a reminder to us gamers that we should actively push back against these types of practices and demand better games, whether it be story, game play, mechanics or just the overall package, the longer it continues like this, the quicker we reach a boring middle ground where no one is truly happy.
I wouldn't say Dark Souls is artificially difficult for the most part. Most deaths are caused by impatiently rushing through an area you don't know or being greedy to try and kill a boss faster. However there are a few encounters that actively punish you for taking your time like the Four Kings and the Bed of Chaos, which feel kind of out of place in my opinion.
I think there are much worse offenders when it comes to artifical difficulty, like permadeath game modes or even the original Doom's Nightmare! difficulty (even though this wasn't intended to be a serious game mode).
I think Doom's nightmare mode was the complete opposite of artificial difficulty, it required you to know absolutely everything about the game, right down to the spawns of enemies, how to move, where to move and where the health/armor powerups are.
I was more talking about boss battles where one missed step was insta death, i agree with you on some permadeath though, i fucking hate it.
And yeah Four kings can fuck off haha, that being said the actual game Dark Souls+Demon Souls isn't something i'd put in that category i was more talking about 2-3.
Triple-A gaming (for the most part) I think is devolving. The funds put into their development is just unsustainable and explodes with every new 'major title'. That's why more and more in-game payment systems are being added, they need it to cover development funds.
But it's not all doom and gloom, as more people become computer literate, more people learn how to code and develop their own games. Indie-developers have a huge chance to fill in the void, sure the graphics may not be 'the best' but the gameplay has more potential to be better (read potential, whether or not it will be is still down to the game itself) and more ethical with payments.
Whilst the definition of an 'indie-game' does vary from person to person, most people consider Rocket League and The Witcher games to be indie games and flagships of the indie scene.
The only problem i have with Indie games are the fact that it's completely flooded with bullshit at the moment, you can blame steam for that mostly haha.
Yeah, that's true. Indie developers are not immune to the greed that the larger publishers have.
The trick is finding the good games, and when you do, you're usually in for a treat!
My big one was a developer for EA, so was either Star Wars or Anthem that was being discussed, actually saying they were figuring out how much the player was going to need to sweat. The right level. This was in regards to GaaS lootbox mechanics. So basically how much the player was going to have to put in work wise to enjoy the game. Call me old fashioned but I kind of do a lot of grinding work in my job to even consider transferring that onto an entertainment medium. What are these guys thinking?
They're thinking about one thing, money, that's all they give a fuck about these days and it's really sad, i want games to last as long as possible, i have the money to pay for things but why bother, why would you pay $60 only to pay to finish the game for you?
Sadly the more people that buy into it, the bigger it's going to eventually get :(