I ask this because the culture seems to have changed since the days of C64 and co. For example today you spend a wad of cash on a game like Gears of War 3 or Killzone 3 and once you are stuck that's it your game becomes an expensive coaster!

In the old days games had cheats, and cracks too but that's disappeared more because of consoles being locked down to only run original DVDs or delivered through secure bespoke portals. But today, unlike the early days of gaming there is just no way to see ALL of the game. Many magazines had listings or just POKES+SYS for people with reset switches etc to bypass difficult parts of games.

It seems to me that today it is all about the freaking story and not just whiling away the hours enjoying a good game engine. Do I need to prove I am watching a film in enough detail with a test every chapter to decide if I am to be allowed to watch the next chapter?

It just seems wrong that with all the 1000s more megahertz of CPU speed nobody stopped to think that maybe the sophisticated 3D game engine and sprawling huge game world need a little bit of AI to recognise that I am getting f^&£ing bored on level 4 stage 2 after the 15th attempt and perhaps when restarting at the 16th attempt the option to skip this stupid level should appear. A couple of pokes out of ZZAP!64 and you're good to go with invincibility/infinite lives to see all the graphics you paid for

Then again I was watching 5 inch floppy TV show which was reviewing the 360 XBLA game Trials Evolution and yeh ummm me and my friend watching it shouted out simultaneously "Kickstart!" as soon as we saw the first bit of footage of this game being played. So I guess some gameplay will still be recognisable no matter how many gigatexels are phong shaded and mipmapped on your TV screen eh?

Trials HD is awesome, really addictive although the Extreme courses are hard as nails. Trials Evolution looks even better even if I just have the demo ATM. But yeah ofcourse, Kikstart/ATV Simulator immediately came to mind it's just an updated version, the gameplay is just as simple (accelerate, brake, lean forward and back) but difficult to master. A real throwback to 8-bit gaming.

There are quite a few games like that on XBLA as DL. It's just when you buy games on disc developers tend to be less experimental and just go for the usual FPS type game for some reason.

Now-adays games seem more like work than games to me. I like simplistic games like Gyruss, X-Out, Skyshark and so on.. Something I can just pick up and blast the sh*t out of things, at any time along with the excellent sidmusic of the games.

There are tons of games out like that. They are now called "casual" games and are written in Flash.

J

I played Trials HD last summer and had lots of fun with it to the point that I consider it one of the greatest Xbox games released so far...I still agree that it's basically an updated version of Kikstart but I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing.

Another notable XBLA game is Geometry Wars,an excellent Robotron clone.

Although the mainstream commercial side of game developement seems to be stuck in a rut with the majority of titles being formulaic FPS or updates of existing franchises, the indie market has kind of come full circle. Small groups of PC programmers and artists (and occasionally even individuals) working out of their home studios/office/bedroom are managing to achieve some success in the industry, self-publishing and selling their wares via their own websites very much in a similar way to how small lables started out by advertising in 8-Bit magazines. Notable successes include VVVVVV by Terry Cavanagh (which has gone on to be ported to the 3DS), Super Meat Boy (available on the PC, Mac & XBLA), Super Crate Box by Vlambeer (also on iOS), Spelunky by Mossmouth (PC and XBLA), and many others.

The reason for this is simple; the big industry players cannot risk funding AAA titles based on new concepts that might flop, so they tend to stick to what they know.

Small groups of developers however, can afford to experiment with new ideas, as most of these projects are created initially just for fun and without a commercial focus.


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Oh! And I forgot to mention Canabalt - a simple flash game that was developed by two guys over a few evenings and has since gone on to become a financial success story. The official C64 cartridge conversion was also (quite possibly) the largest(?) or at least one of the best selling games that the Commodore has seen for some time, with 200 or so copies shifted to date - and the game continues to sell even now...

But how many games today let you do a complete run through via cheats? See I like Resident Evil games but I got stuck on this stupid bit in RE 5 and got fed up after a day of this one level.

In the good old days there was always "invincibility" etc but today because games are so different/long/complex they need to notice you are stuck and offer you the chance to skip a section to see the whole game you paid for IMO

It's really lucky that I have terrabytes of stuff sitting here so I will always find something to play on some system from 1976 onwards. I seem to find new games every day for various systems so it's no big deal, I could live the rest of my life playing only 70s/80s games quite easily

Walkthroughs are what Youtube is there for if you get stuck. But I see what you mean about inputting cheatcodes/ pokes. Red Dead Redemption gave you the option of skipping parts if you failed so many times, I guess it depends on the game.

Very few commercial games grab my full attention nowadays..

World Of Goo ih highly recommended though. I'd say that's more an indie commercial release though.

Most PC games are just bloatware.
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It's the indie scene for me too. There are some games(not just Trials) with close similarities to old classics, like the excellent dungeon crawler Legend of Grimrock. I don't know, if there are any cheats for it, but I don't know any cheats for Dungeon Master either.
Mainstream market is totally unattractive to me, nowadays. There is no major publisher with courage for new ideas.

The definition of indie in this context is 'independently released' or 'self-published' by the developer. It can be a free or commercial game.

This is what I was referring to by going full circle - a lot of classic C64 games could be classed as independently released and published.

The Angry Bird games are quite enjoyable and I tend to play them when my young son comes over. I got real addicted to AB for a while, odd as I'm pretty much a FPS fan.

For myself, I have more of an issue with how today's gaming systems work, than with the games themselves. Personally, I love FPS games. I loved games like Castle Master and Total Eclipse because they let you go in and explore the computer generated world. My love of being able to walk through a 3D rendered environment goes all the way back to Tunnel Runner on the Atari 2600. So today's FPS games are the kind of experience that I used to dream about having with games.

What I don't like is the way that all of today's consoles are tightly integrated with each company's online service. It almost seems like the games are an afterthought. Not to mention that when you buy some games today, you're only getting 50-75% of the game, with the rest being downloadable content that you have to buy. Or that you can only get if you buy a new copy of the game.

Then you have the computer versions of games which require an internet connection so that it can go an ask permission from the company's servers to let you play it. Or that restricts how many times you can install it without the company's permission. A decade from now, people will have to rely on cracks to be able to play their store-bought games because the protection will no longer work.

C64Knight wrote:

In the old days games had cheats, and cracks too but that's disappeared more because of consoles being locked down to only run original DVDs or delivered through secure bespoke portals. But today, unlike the early days of gaming there is just no way to see ALL of the game. Many magazines had listings or just POKES+SYS for people with reset switches etc to bypass difficult parts of games.

Virtually every computer game I've seen has had cheat codes to make you invincible, usually called "god" mode. Or they let you instantly get all weapons and ammo, walk through walls, etc.

The only game I ever truly got stuck on was the ending to the game Red Faction. After blasting your way through all the levels, the last thing you have to do in the game is solve a coded puzzle to disarm a bomb. You're not given enough time and you're not allowed to save during it. Unless you have a perfect memory and get VERY lucky, there's no way it can be done in the time you're given.

C64Knight wrote:

It just seems wrong that with all the 1000s more megahertz of CPU speed nobody stopped to think that maybe the sophisticated 3D game engine and sprawling huge game world need a little bit of AI to recognise that I am getting f^&£ing bored on level 4 stage 2 after the 15th attempt and perhaps when restarting at the 16th attempt the option to skip this stupid level should appear. A couple of pokes out of ZZAP!64 and you're good to go with invincibility/infinite lives to see all the graphics you paid for

Most computer games allow you to jump to whatever level you want, or skip the current level.

I agree that the internet has helped grow the indie community and I think that it's much more easier today to create a game and get it out there than it used to be. Web hosting is cheap and there are loads of avenues of development to explore, from browser games in Flash and HTML5 to iOS development. Of course, there's no rule to say that these games have to be particularly "casual"; the more experimental or traditional games just happen to be in a minority or harder to find.
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Some of the games series I've played on the Playstation series are as good as any of the C64's classics. Ratchet and Clank (apart from the last one), Crash Bandicoot are brilliant platform/adventure games.
I will confess that the new shooters these days are way over my head, by the time I figure out how to aim I'm dead. The look good and all, but the game play is just too intense for my liking.
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I'd have to say in my opinion that indie games have an obsession with 8-bit/16-bit style pixel artwork to a fault. Recently I played Lone Survivor on Steam, for example, and...well the game got old quickly, but that wasn't helped in the least by the fact that it had this painfully low resolution style of graphics, which was forced into full screen, and naturally enough had no colour restrictions to speak of. The art style didn't work at all, other than grabbing your attention long enough to buy it. Another guy I know found pretty much the same thing, I think. The game didn't really have much 8-bit spirit at all.

There aren't really many modern story-less games which I can think of which I'd actually want to part with my money to play...but some exceptions would include the Katamari Damacy series. They're great. Other than that, for me, it's sandbox games or nothing.

8 bit machines had restricted colour resolution, even the Atari with 256 colours struggles to get more than 5 colours on screen without use of raster bar type horizontal lines. And then there was the whole 160x200 resolution for multicolour mode generally.

I think there was an episode of Futurama that was meant to be 8 bit graphics but the only machine from the early/mid 80s that could have done those graphics would have been an Amiga in 64 colour mode.

Don't get me wrong I do like newer games, try Ghostbusters on 360/PS3 compared to what was possible in the old days. But my issue is @ £40-50 I expect to be able to see 100% of the game really.