This generation has been underwhelming

[u/Asleep-Sprinkles-760]

I bought a Series X at launch, and can’t think of a single game that has impressed me this gen. I’m a big Halo fan, and Halo Infinite felt like a letdown. I’m a Forza fan, and Forza Motorsport felt like a massive disappointment. I was exited for Starfield, but was underwhelmed after playing it.

It just feels like we’ve had no heavy hitters this gen, even 3rd party AAA games have been average at best. I guess the only hope I have left is with Gears 6, but aside from that, Microsoft needs to get their act together and start releasing some new games. It feels like games are taking way too long to make these days, we used to get bangers every year in the 360 gen. Even the Xbox One had more compelling games than what we have now

[u/Onereadydriver]

Why did 360 had so many awesome games? But again I do remember a lot of frame rate issues.

[u/leidend22 → u/Onereadydriver]

Development time and costs were lower and corporations still believed that making good games made more profits than making addictive live service shit.

[u/MackZZilla → u/leidend22]

That, and you had an all time high in creativity. You had devs taking legit chances on games, and if it worked - great. If it didn't, they didn't scuttle the studio so the CEO could get an extra 0.25% on his stock bonus. They just didn't make a sequel to the game and moved on.

Hell, even COD during this time was S-Tier. World at War, MW1 and MW2, Black Ops - so many dope ass games that really pushed narrative boundaries.

Now it just feels like that creativity is gone, and all we are left with is the same old safe bullshit that studios know sells. No one's taking a chance anymore on new IPs, or when they do, you've got pseudo-review social media sites like IGN being overly critical and slanting public opinion on it but also turning around and praising the new COD for "really getting the gameplay right", but nevermind they've just copy pasted the same game from one template to another.

[u/TryhardBernard → u/MackZZilla]

I miss Battlefield being good. I felt like I was playing a war movie back then. The franchise is now a shell of itself.

[u/camsqualla → u/TryhardBernard]

2042 was the first Battlefield game I couldn’t bring myself to buy. I used to be a huge fan of the series. It’s depressing, honestly.

[u/Tenn_Tux → u/camsqualla]

It’s a good game now and it’s fun too. I’d suggest giving it a try. Still the worst battlefield though lol

[u/agonzale_08 → u/Tenn_Tux]

Just bought it used from gamestop for $5

[u/[deleted] → u/MackZZilla]

Agreed, and games industry has never been more profitable!

[u/Waterboarding_ur_mum → u/MackZZilla]

You had devs taking legit chances on games, and if it worked - great. If it didn't, they didn't scuttle the studio

Nostalgia glasses in full effect, remember dead space 3?

[u/JaydenP1211 → u/MackZZilla]

Devs taking chances on games very much did sink game studios. They didn’t just move on. Also, COD games still have impressive narratives occasionally, just not like the 9/10 games in their heyday. There is still creativity in the video game industry, and new IPs like Starfield and It Takes Two. IGN isn’t a pseudo-review social media site; they are actual journalists. Most of the time they aren’t actually overly critical. Gamers tend to skew the ratings for a game based on how they feel about a game rather than its value and rate games like Halo and COD overly negative compared to the reviews given by journalists.

Especially Forza Horizon 5, a game that’s arguably the best Forza Horizon yet with the amount of features added (and also Forza Motorsport’s improvement in gameplay and online racing) has very critical haters.

[u/Gammygoulds → u/MackZZilla]

I see your point but the current COD is pretty different than MW1&2. It does feel really good to play and feels completely different than the MWs the 2 years before. Movement and gunplay all feel drastically better imo. People hate on the movement for being too fast nowadays which id have to agree, but it feels smoother than Apex Legends even when going back to that briefly. I very much disliked MW2019 and MW2 after that. But MW3 actually feels great to play.

[u/leidend22 → u/Gammygoulds]

MW3 only has two ground war maps and that really turned me off as a BF fan that played a lot of ground war when 2042 sucked. Luckily 2042 is good now.

[u/Gammygoulds → u/leidend22]

I'm the opposite. I like the regular size respawn maps in COD for just getting back in the fight quickly. Never liked Battlefield really but I definitely see the appeal. Yeah, it was super rough on launch lol. Glad to know it's doing a lot better.

[u/ArmeniusLOD → u/leidend22]

Increasing development cost is a function of developers expanding beyond the resources needed to make a game. With the size of development teams in AAA exploding from 20 to 100 to 500 and beyond, creativity and attention to detail starts to suffer. Even just 15 years ago teams were typically closely-knit with a shared vision and the ability to make it happen. With teams so large these days everybody has different visions in what the product should be and have a harder time relating to each other. The more money involved also means being more risk-averse.

This is why I find the "AA" space exciting. There is absolutely no reason any game should cost more than $200 million to develop and bring to market.

[u/thegaminggopher → u/leidend22]

Live service games have been the worst thing to come from this generation (I know they existed in the last gen but still).