Mod-note: I replaced a few derogatory words in your post, no need to use that kind of language.

In my opinion, today's games are simple. And are getting simpler by the minute.
The word "difficulty" has lost it's meaning, the graphics are getting all the focus, gameplay is left behind and more and more youngsters are finding explosions and cinematics the only interesting things in games.

This video over here shows best what I mean.
I dunno who did it, but he deserves a medal !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU

Consoles and "casual gaming" happened.

it's really simple actually in my opinion.

Nowadays it's all about the graphics, a game isn't a game if it doesn't look good is the going standard.
The times of a game being good because it had a lot of replay value and addictiveness are past us.
If you have to think too much to get a game done, it's considered "not fun" anymore and people quit to soon because of it.

But still.....there is hope :) I have played numerous games over the last few years and found that some games are still worth playing, like:

Kingdoms of Amalur (huge game with good story)
Dragon Age 1 (2 was ok, but not as good as imo)
Skyrim
Diablo III (it's still fun for me :) )

And a few others, as well as the golden oldies I play on my Voodoo rig, like UT99, Carmageddon 1+2, Final Fantasy 7, X-Wing vs Tie-fighter etc etc.

No argument there.
I enjoy Skyrim on my PS3 and I must say that's probably the only RPG worth playing in the actual sphere. Arcania has thrown the Gothic series to the bin, Two Worlds lacks originality and Risen is a copyrighted Gothic 3.

Still. None of these can compare to the predecessors, the ones made in the Golden Era.
I'm sure noone can forget Gothic 2 (with NoTR) or Morrowind.

Given the fact that Quake is a well mentioned name around here, I consider purchasing Rage (the last idSoftware game); I hope it can raise the bar again, after it dropped with Wolfenstein II (the first was their last success in my opinion).

PS: I also play NFS 4, Carma 1 and GL Quake monthly on my 3dfx rig, with the same pleasure I did 10 years ago.  8-)

I think the real culprit that has changed gaming along with addition of consoles, is money. The companies like EA, Activision, and Ubisoft have killed the market with 60$ games with no substance and try to cross platform everything. They spend  3 million on making a game that they almost have to cross platform in order to get their production money back, it's crazy. Dragon Age had a 1 gig download upgrading the graphics if you were using a PC but there is only so much you can do on a console and they try to shove as much eye candy as you can into a quick satisfying moment. If anyone played the old Rainbow Six games up before Vegas hit the console shelves you know what I'm talking about, once you died you had to wait for the match to end to re-spawn. Now you die, and it's an instant re-spawn. Playing Ghost Recon with my kid on the PC is irritating as hell because he constantly runs in front of me thru a door, dies and runs back to do the same thing over and over again. I finally started shooting him in the back of the head and going "I don't know what happened man, something shot you." He's got no patients at all and there is no team strategy anymore and that's just the fps games now. The only one that comes to mind that was both current, fun and had some replay value was Portal and Portal 2. Both made you think a little bit, had some humor to the games and were pretty much worth what you paid for it.

Dexter, I don't know about getting Rage, even John Carmack has apologized for releasing it and I haven't heard many great things about it. If you can find it in the 10$ bin someplace it may be worth checking out just to see.

jandarsun8 wrote on 18.01.13 at 20:14:52:

Dexter, I don't know about getting Rage, even John Carmack has apologized for releasing it and I haven't heard many great things about it. If you can find it in the 10$ bin someplace it may be worth checking out just to see.

Gamespot gave it an average score of 8 on console platforms.  :-[