CGA/EGA (or even text) is certainly technically challanged to provide anything that 'looks' stunning but that's not to say there aren't still some damn impressive examples out there - Commander Keen 4 onwards is a wonderful example of excellent EGA graphics. A lot Sierra's EGA graphics with their use of dithered patterns are also remarkable to see. VGA graphics are [usually] another level up.

One of the underlying issues is that we're now at game genre saturation. In the past it was the case were an independant game store had a few dozen titles all offerring something different to the player. Nowadays games fall largely in the FPS, driving and [the old] RTS categories. Nothing else gets a lot of exposure from the publisher or media. Take the adevnture genre - this has been butchered to fit todays apparent market with more direct control, 3D and action orientated bells and whistles added. Some call it progress, some hark back to the days of old when an adventure was an adventure. In much the same way there are no 2D platform games released any more. Why does the market think these games are not viable? Well perhaps they do but any new title is only available for a modern phone!

Games that do well are typically sequels to franchises that have existed for a while. Publishers sink money into stuff that looks better and *not* necessairly stuff that is too different from what came before. So this is perhaps a major cause of why people perhaps percieve there are no decent games any more. To me a sequel is not a new game, it's an evolution of an existing idea and simply adding reflections/bloom/other tech does *not* consititue anything 'new' at all if it's still the same game underneath! In the background there are always tweaks to gameplay etc. but fundamentally the game remains the same or worse is actually worse for it (UT->UT 2003... for example!).

Although lots of people love consoles and the current generation have certainly brought games to the masses. This looks to be at the expense of the games themselves (though this may be viewed from the perspective of an avid PC games player). A publisher will [rightly] insist it works on all possible platforms and that as we all know typically means that it's dumbed down to the lowest common denominator - be it tech, interface or gameplay. It remains to be seen whether the next gen consoles will simply concentrate on 'improved' visuals but I can't really see anything different happening!

Myself, I think there are still good games released but simply that there are less 'stand-out' games per year (released on a PC). It wasn't unusual for me to buy a game a month back 10 years ago but these days I *might* get 1 game/quarter. My tastes have changed, my gaming time reduced, my patience less and even though I earn more than 10 years back, I weigh up purchases more carefully.

If developers would use new tech in subtle ways then I'd much prefer it. HDR implemented in Far Cry is way OTT, HL2 - not so much but still both try to scream out that HDR is in the game. Before that ragdoll was crammed into everything and to be honest once I'd seen a dozen 'amusing' slides down walls, stairs, etc. it wasn't funny anymore but bloody stupid. I've not yet seen a ragdoll implementation that is subtle and 'realistic' and really *adds* to the game.

Commander Keen 4 onwards is a wonderful example of excellent EGA graphics.

This of course is absolutely true. I played all Commander Keens and I may say I did not notice the lack of colours. Back then I may even have been ignorant about the fact that Keen 4&5 were not VGA. Still, I was astonished by photo realism at that time (Monkey Island scanned portraits) and games like Monkey Island or King's Quest V defined good graphics for me.

My tastes have changed, my gaming time reduced, my patience less and even though I earn more than 10 years back, I weigh up purchases more carefully.

That's certainly a fact most older gamers tend to forget. For a child, games are more mysterious, especially if you don't understand English properly. A mature gamer analyzes games, compares them and tries to identify the game mechanics or is more interested in the technical aspects of a game. This of course reduces immersion and especially patience with flawed games. My game purchases have dropped to almost zero because of being over-critical. Now there is perhaps one title in two years I'd really buy.

I think it's a mix of factors, as Reckless mentioned. When we were kids, video gaming was still in its "wild west" era, with a high level of originality. Now, gaming is mainstream and big business, and companieis make whatever games they think will make the most money instead of making original games.

The current generation of gamers - who missed out on our games - aren't as aware of what's going on because they don't have the same experiences as us to draw on. Most also have no interest in old games with their ancient graphics, as it would be like us watching black and white movies. When they get older and realize that their tastes are going out of style, they may get tired of new games, and they'll probably go back to playing the few games from this era that they remember liking the most.

At any rate, I'm with you Alkarion - I probably only try 3-4 new games a year and only buy 1-2 of them. Currently I recommend Sid Meier's Pirates! and Civilization IV. I would also say to stay away from Quake IV unless you loved Doom 3 (*yawn*).

heh. I still watch black and white movies. In fact I love 'em.

For me it's all about the content, peoples. That's why HDTV/XBOX 360 don't really matter to me right now. Without the content they are just giant pieces of plastic going to waste. 😀

While having certainly a taste for quality games 😁, (e.g. Civilization series) I must admit I have also been a graphics fetishist at all times. I remember seeing Links on a friends PC. Though I never took any interest in sports games, especially not golf, I was mesmerized and needed to have the game simply to look at the beautiful graphics.

I remember having discussions with another friend about which game had the better VGA graphics, Wing Commander or Monkey Island. My friend argued for Wing Commander because it had not only beautiful still images but also animated faces (in fact, as I learned later, the lips of the speakers were synched to the text using a system of mouth images which are associated to syllables (yes, Wing Commander was that thoroughly designed)) and of course pseudo-3d space graphics. I argued for Monkey Island because I loved the scanned-in art (pirates in Scumm Bar, etc).

So, I must admit that the graphics fetishism still gets me now and then. Consequently, the next game I'm waiting for (in spite of the fact that I have no computer capable of running it) is Oblivion. (I speculate that it may be the first RPG superceding Ultima 7 in _every_ aspect). (Which, btw, opens room for another discussion. My hypothesis is that it took 13 years to implement in 3d what was possible in 2d in 1992 (richness of objects, size of gaming world, a large amount of diverse NPCs with 24h schedules, ...))

Another footnote, I have seen Civilization IV and have to say it seems to be a high-quality product as it is almost always the case with the things coming from Firaxis. Currently though, I do not dare to buy it since I have other things to do and this game might seriously reduce my productivity.

I'm interested in seeing Oblivion, but I know now that I will never ever get through an Elder Scrolls game without putting it down a quarter of the way through. They're just too big and detailed, and I turn over every rock looking for stuff.

I'm waiting for Fallout 3, which will use the same engine but be a post-apocalyptic game instead of boring medieval fantasy...

While I agree with almost everything said so far, the main problem I find nowadays in modern games is that they are very lacking as far as lasting time is concerned. Take Quake IV for example: You could easily beat it in 1 or 2 days. I think this isn't acceptable, given the fact that new games are almost pricey. Yes, I also bought a lot of games in the floppy era. Now my purchases has been reduced almost to zero.

That goes against the current policy of today's games. People are always complaining that they don't like long games because they never have enough time to play them..(or at least that's what I've heard, it's probably the corps spreading that rumor)...so they ask for shorter games that they still pay $50 a pop for.

I've never understood this myself. Why ask for shorter games? If you play a game for an hour a day anyway...... I guess I can understand if you say play a game for a weekend and couldn't beat it and then come back to it like a month or two later you may have forgotten some stuff but still.

With the release of Steam it looks like there is going to be alot more episodic gaming. I wonder how well that's going to go. Personally I don't like activation schemes and I don't want to wait around for a game to "finish". So with these episodic games I'll just wait 'till they hopefully compile them into an all-in-one package and then play that offline......if they offer such a capability.

As for Quake 4.....I don't know how long Doom 1 is but I'm sure it's a hell of a lot shorter than Quake 4. 😉

There are two targets most game developers are shooting for. One is low target of 20 hours of game time and the other is high target of 50 hours or more. The first is the most suitable for mass market, the second is for hardcore audience. That's the theory. In practice, it just does not work. Half-Life 2 was ~50 hours game for me, even with some cheating in the second half, and I've met people that had it finished in one weekend... BTW, Doom 1 had 27 levels with "par time" 2-5 minutes each. I don't think many people finished it in under two hours though.

Replay value is another part of the story, it is almost impossible to predict beforehand. If you take such a retro gaming classic as River Raid and describe it on paper you will have something really boring and limited. But a lot of people played it for hundreds of hourse on Atari 800. For majority of players, adventure games have very little replay value and this was quoted as one of the reasons of the genre demise. Somehow, I have a feeling that local audience does not share that sentiment.

Yeah, I've never understood "replay" value. I never replay my games. Okay, I won't say never. I've been playing games so long that sometimes I go back and play a game from 15 years ago but really replay value has no effect on my purchases whatsoever. To me I've already completed the plot and know what's going to happen. So what's the point of replaying unless the game is TOTALLY different from the way it was before? Besides there are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many games out there to play to waste all of my time on any one games.....I'd get sick of the game way too fast.

Another thing that reallys ANNOYS me is that newer PC games tend to resemble consoles in the way savegames are concerned. I really HATE that a game do the savegames by itself and you cannot save whenever you want. I really hate consoles. This implies that you will end being frustrated many times, because you'll have to replay some section a lot of times because you got killed before reaching the next checkpoint. Annoying.

These are harsh times for console haters. I share your feelings about savegames though the issue extends to controls and game mechanics in general. PC gaming has, to some extent, been "serious" gaming for people willing to invest large amounts of time into a game. Maybe this time, the golden age of pc gaming, is really about to fade away.

If this is the case, we will be there to remember. Playing those old dos classics and reading Computer Gaming World issues from the time before Ziff-Davies took it over.

Btw, perhaps it is not sensible, but I seriously dislike most "casual games". Commanding over such vast amounts of CPU and graphics power as todays PCs do, I find it a big waste to let such machines run card games. "We create Worlds", that's what the PC is for!

Agreed. Maybe the golden age of PC gaming is fading away, as you said. 😵

Golden age: it is fading. Just look at your local games retailer and you will see the small to non-existant PC section. Most of those will be console ports, sequels, and cheesy mass-market games (Barbie games, game show games, TV show games, etc.). About the only thing left is first-person shooters (which have been overdone) and MMORPGs (...).

console saving: I HATE checkpoints and save points. PC games have allowed saving anywhere forever. I think it's a stubborn Japanese game design paradigm that is the problem here...

replay value: I have to agree that replay value is meaningless in most games (with the exception of roguelikes and similar games like Diablo). Unlockables can be fun, but they get boring after a while (especially after you've played a few too many unlockables games).

long games, short games: I think the corporations have taken advantage of kids' low attention spans and adults' lack of play time to make shorter games so that people will buy more games. As much as I like the idea of a gigantic RPG, I should also admit that I can't think of many games since Fallout 1&2, Starcraft, Deus Ex 1, Wizardry 8, and System Shock 2 that I was able to stay interested with all the way to the end. Can you?

Half-Life 2 is the only one I can think of off the top of my head. I put Doom 3 and Knights of the Old Republic down and expect to do the same with Quake 4.

Those "mass-market" games were always there. Treat them as "noise." I am still seeing fairly big selection of strategy games, currently dominated by Civ4 and Age of Empires III. There are a few new RPGs, although I don't remember anything really big in that section recently. The adventure gaming is completely in hands of one publisher -- The Adventure Company (former Dreamcatcher). They seem to publish just about everything. Many of those create the same "noise" but there are true gems there as well. Shooters are actually in decline -- there were more of them two years ago. MMORPG is a strange genre -- it seems to be able to support one game at any given time. So, overall it is not that bad. There is definitely less variety. As I remember, in late 90s there were about 1500-1800 games (all platforms) released and competing for shelves for Christmas. That was actually far from the record, in 80s there was time when that number was close to 5000 but that was also because of multitude of platforms. This year the number is probably much less than a thousand if not half of that.