My Gaming Thoughts Right Now:

This is a post with some random bullet points where I speak my mind on stuff I've been thinking about, might be relevant to now, might be some random thoughts I've had about stuff, read on to find out!!!

• I think that its time to stop making games look realistic and start making them look realistic! Instead of making games look 'photo realistic' why cant we work on some of the smaller stuff that I feel really makes a video game look different. Like its been forever since we switched to 3D and we still have clothing/hair/hands that clip through stuff in the gaming world or on the characters and what not. More on to, how much longer are we to wait until clothes properly flow on characters body. Ill admit some poor's souls job for like 2 years was to model Batman's cape in Arkham Asylum, hopefully they used that throughout the series and he never had to waste years of probably his kids life on something like that again. But even then it still clips through stuff, and before you hang me out to dry for saying something like that. I just wanna know how long people didn't take for stuff Lara's hair in Rise of the Tomb Raider where I swear it has a mind of its own at points! Or the fact that some dude took years to make Batman's cape but people still cant make water and cups work together like peanut butter and jelly, Half Life Alyx where are you! I just think its wild that I used to wonder these questions as a kid playing old video games, and I'm still wondering as an adult. Another thing I wondered about that games have done as time went on but I wish more game would do. It is something I dunno if it has a name but I call Reactive Damage. Which sometimes literally works the way the name says, something like Expedition 33, or Mortal Kombat 9/X/11/1 or........... 3rd Birthday. Where you literally take noticeable damage on your character models when you get hurt. Or you get stuff like Uncharted or the Arkham games, or the first game I really noticed that did it was Resident Evil 2 with Leon getting shot then bandaged up. With those being games that you get physical damage as the game goes on, usually shown off in a cut scene. Games that do that are so cool, I mean just look how Batman looks from the beginning of Arkham Knight then look again by the end. Or his poor cape by the end of Origins!!!! I also wanna randomly mention a lot of the Dragon Ball Z games, there attention to random details like that, for sure in something like Budakai Tenkichi 3. Which not only has a long name but has a lot of versions of characters that look just like they did at the end of certain battles from the animes/movies. And all those games are old! Everyone now just wants to be able to wear some goofy clothes or something. And like those never 100% work with everything either, so its like we gave up realism for dress up, while trying to make everything real, but break that immersion by making the super high quality pony tail clip through the super high quality characters neck. Seems like something was lost to me I feel then

• If you want to make a Multiplayer mode, stop making Soulslike-of-duty-by-daylight-craft-nite-royale Jr. (he goes by Flynn) and make something new and unique. Like you guys remember the classic game Evolve? Its kinda like a different version of something like Dead By Daylight, but if the normal humans had guns. Or like the kinda random tacked on Multiplayer of Dead Space 2? I kinda liked it honestly, one group of people who was the Earth Gov Troopers or whatever, and the other team getting to choose a Necromoprh to play as. It's a super interesting concept, similar to what Arkham Origins did with some of their Multiplayer modes. Or how super fun Trident Evil 5's Co-Op mode was, but everyone knows that! But no one ever mentions the cool Online feature that RE6 had where someone could take over the body of a stronger than normal zombie and they have to try to take out the player, its a really cool concept, cept no one really ever took advantage of it. And I get that's really the problem with all these things, minus the likes of Evolve, as that WAS the game. But maybe if we just kept on keeping on, we might of gotten something interesting, I mean can one not say that it was during that time, that we got the wonders of Dark Souls (really Demon Souls, but you know!) Or even though I hate the concept now, how we got the wonders of the GTA 4 Free Roam mode, to bad it slowly morphed into GTA Online, which I personally don't like as much, but that's just me. I also cant tell if the Co-Op career modes are dead yet, but I wish that more games hard them. By the way, ever thought of you and your friend doing a run of DMC 3 using Doppleganger mode? I have! Or sadly maybe a Co-Op run of Shadow The Hedgehog cuz that was a thing back then. And as a one more random side note you know that San Andrea's had a Multiplayer mode? That was taken out in the HD version, so really me bringing that game up really does stick if I think about it! I would say I'm surprised that GTA doesn't have a Team Deathmatch mode, but even my beloved GTA 4 had one all the way back then! Its just not 'what people play' on there but there's still way more people playing that mode then people probably ever did in something like Dead Space 2. It also seems like developers are putting less modes/maps/all-that-stuff-and-the-bag-of-chips in these games and letting Yuu Da Player make them instead. Look at all the fan made game modes and maps in stuff like Roblox or Fortnite. Whatever Far Cry 2's map editor became in later games. Or all the very creative maps in the HD Doom Games, which we could really jump back to OG Doom to throw all this specific type of blame onto! But really I could go on more about that point in a different bullet point on a later post. And I'll also end this on a note for sure going to be on a later post which is: Local Multiplayer, all I'll say right now is, the fact that I cant sit down with friends and physically play something like Call Of Duty Split Screen on a lot of the newer games is just wild, like why is it so hard to do?

So comment below what your opinion was on whatever I was going about gaming clothing and hair! Or my thoughts of new Multiplayer stuff, or lack there of in recent time. I'd love to hear whatever you'd have to say!

I agree with a lot that you say as well, I just feel for the stuff that i said that is just stuff i felt we would of gotten by now, like the hair thing for real. Like why is it that we are so concerned about how great some character models look when their hairs can cause more havoc then the Havoc engine the game probably runs off of! Or like how rain looks great in some games while others still look like its from a PS1 game! Like why isn't there a standard for something like that. Like we know how to make them look nice, so make the smaller stuff look nice now as well i suppose. We just cared so much to get to a certain point in the gaming spectrum (like how different a NES game looks from a PS 4 game) but now we just have hit a plateau and we aren't working in that plateau to get anything. Everything just wants to look as good as Red Dead 2 or GTA 6 or something like that. Don't get me started on the lack of games with Shell Shading. We don't have to make things look realistic but we can still make stuff that looks fresh. But yeah ill never talk down on my hair! Like we went from stagnant plastic looking hair and now every hair in a game looks like its Doc Ock's metal tentacles! And its been like that since like the late PS3 early PS4 games, its just an oddity that pulls me out of games so its definitely a me thing probably! Ill just always remember playing Black Ops 2 back in the day thinking it looked awesome but wondered why clothes still looked so stiff and they still couldn't 100% figured out character models clipping when their arms cross or stuff like that. But don't even get me started on the monetization of video games! As for multiplayer I don't play very much myself but when I dabble into it with my kids or friends it just leaves me lacking as I feel like even those odd ball ones I played back in the day or even earlier that wasn't online. Was of higher quality and they wasn't even getting paid for it like they are now. So I don't get why they are so lack luster, I mean something like Elden Ring Nightreign, or Warzone, it just feels so uninspired and disengunine. I think we can all agree that some kind of old fashioned Co-Op should be in more games at least right! We all got friends we wanna play more video games with. I feel like I can go on random tangents about Multiplayer in general that I don't think would fit in here though. Like how I don't think that Cross Play is the future of Multiplayer, nor is it worth the time and effort developers are putting into it, but that is something! And I dunno what you play but if you can play some games online then you should as some of them are pretty fun as I myself don't play a lot online but even I found some I like. But I wouldn't waste a lot of time on some Multiplayer games I've played! They are also a time sensitive thing sadly as after a while a lot of Online games are dead and that's a sad but different conversation all together!

I must agree with the realistic themes of modern videogames. I mean, they're good when trying to represent real life like happens in sports games because we want them to resemble as close as possible to the athletes, but beyond that, what's the point of over-the-top realism you can't distinguish from reality?

The thing about videogames, and anything computer-generated, is precisely the fact it can appear so different between each piece, contrary to reality. The real world does have some unique things and what not, but overall everything is plain and simple. And now they want to turn videogames into that, simple and generic worlds which resemble reality.

Several years ago, the videogame industry in Japan crashed heavily because they drove away from their signature art and attempted to blend in with the occidental market. And the only way they rebounced was returning to what had made them unique in the first place: staying away from overly realistic graphics and focusing on JRPGs and their other classic genres. While I doubt we'll see the same process happen in the rest of local industries of the videogame world, and if it does it won't happen as quick as with Japan, it would be great if we took several steps back and learnt from what made the games of 15+ years ago so popular despite not being any kind of revolution.

The real problem behind these graphics is the need to ultra monetize games and a need to release their games whether or not they're complete. Most games at launch are full of bugs, and after they get released developers don't take time fixing them all because they're busy with season passes, paid DLC, microtransactions and loot boxes. Or directly with their next game, in some cases. All because loot boxes, microtransactions and paid DLCs are a massive chunk of the earnings of developers, beyond 75% in some cases. Why waste time in fixing a game if people spends awful amounts of money on it EITHER WAY? Exactly, no reason to spend time on it.

As for your opinion on multiplayer games, I don't play online so I can't say how things have been in the last three generations, but it does seem like online multiplayer has been standarized and made mandatory for any game even if it doesn't fit at all. To the point they focus entirely in online multiplayer and avoid local multiplayer or nerf it heavily to push you into online. Even in games which have a big social element like Project CARS or similar driving simulators the offline multiplayer is kind of basic almost as if it was a demo whereas online looks like a fully-fledged game with every possible setting you could choose. Why they ditched offline multiplayer escapes my knowledge, but once again society has not only accepted it but demanded it and a majority hasn't missed the sacrifice of local multiplayer.

I'd like to finish with a message of my own regarding these "unpopular opinions" gamers have regarding the comparison of then vs now. Many people would think this is a thing of nostalgia, that old games earned a special place in our hearts and we see anything built different from them as uninteresting and dismissable. And while I'm the first one to admit some people would be like this, because some people don't like any kind of change in their lives (the phylosophy of "if it works, why change it?"), a majority of us have a much different and solid opinion: games of old were launched complete on day one, even if not always exempt of bugs they were indeed complete, additional content was unlocked via hours of playing and not via credit card as developers release it in the coming months or years (with such additional content being previously cut from the standard game), they were meant to be enjoyed and not focused on changing the character's appearance or beating the s*** of random people online...

These changes are what has driven veteran gamers off the modern releases. Put in the rising costs of acquiring both consoles and games, and people want less and less to upgrade their hardware and software. Add the ever expanding worlds that need to be bigger after every released game without actually having such need, add the more and more complicated mechanics... The list is way too long and way too evident to simply ignore it. The industry itself has changed drastically, and a lot of people think this change has been for the (very) worse. Not because of nostalgia for 2D graphics or anything like that, nostalgia for the way games were crafted back then and how the current phylosophy has heavily corrupted the whole process. And here's your proof: Stardew Valley, an indie game developed by a single person built exclusively to be enjoyed with no microtransactions or enhanced versions or paid DLCs, has sold more copies than The Sims 4, a game from a megacorporation with tons of paid DLCs and released two years earlier.