Random Gaming Thoughts

Hypothetical scenario

You get a complete remake of the original Shenmue games. The graphics will be the best the industry has to offer, runs at 4k and 60fps. It will have a familiar but well refined combat system, additional side quest, character development quest and will be filled with easter eggs and ridiculous details.

You will also get the remaining Shenmue installments, no cuts, and the experience is guaranteed to be at least as magical as the first time you played Shenmue.

The games will be released over a 10 year period. The only catch is you won't be able play ANY other video game during that time. Would you take up the offer?
 
Hypothetical scenario

You get a complete remake of the original Shenmue games. The graphics will be the best the industry has to offer, runs at 4k and 60fps. It will have a familiar but well refined combat system, additional side quest, character development quest and will be filled with easter eggs and ridiculous details.

You will also get the remaining Shenmue installments, no cuts, and the experience is guaranteed to be at least as magical as the first time you played Shenmue.

The games will be released over a 10 year period. The only catch is you won't be able play ANY other video game during that time. Would you take up the offer?

Once upon a time I would have said no to such an offer simply because you would be limiting yourself from other great gaming experiences that weren't Shenmue...

But these days? With how "samey" everything is becoming? I might be willing to take that offer.
 
I'm with Dan.

Literally, every game I've ever played, has been years after the fact, save for the RGG series, 5 and beyond (where I pre-ordered every game). Actually, 6 is the only one I didn't, but that was solely because I didn't own a PS4, so when I finally got one, I got the game immediately.

So yes, of the 320+ games I own, 9 were day 1 buys and everything else, was purchased years later.

I can live with waiting :D
 
I just recently had an epiphany over how fucking cool the Game Gear really is and am now having to fight back the urge to spend an irresponsible amount of money on one + a bunch of games.
Unless you're thinking about doing one with a modded modern LED screen...I really wouldn't bother with original hardware or one with an original screen to be more exact. The old screens on those things are prone to busting and just look terrible nowadays even if they do work. There are some decent screen mods and replacement screens that make a world of difference...so if you do pull the trigger, I would suggest going for a modded Game Gear over original hardware.

I had a Game Gear when I was a kid. I loved it at the time. Eventually the screen did give out on it though :( It was a massive problem with them. The screens were prone to failure.
I have 2 and both are working well-enough, for now ;) (OG Hardware).

I just beat OutRun Europa 2 weekends ago; VERY middling title lol.

I try to take it with me on vacations or the like and I really do enjoy many of the titles; the Ninkus are phenomenal (but I always get stuck 'cause of no guide {at least, there never used to be guides}, save for the Gaiden game) and easily among the best games on the console.

My sister took one and a bunch of other hardware (TV Tuner, Radio Tuner, battery pack, hence why I have 2 lol) from a prick she did a commercial for (back when she attempted modelling) and it came with like, 8 games as well, so I still have a few in the backlog to run through, but it is definitely an underrated piece of gaming hardware.
 
Unless you're thinking about doing one with a modded modern LED screen...I really wouldn't bother with original hardware or one with an original screen to be more exact. The old screens on those things are prone to busting and just look terrible nowadays even if they do work. There are some decent screen mods and replacement screens that make a world of difference...so if you do pull the trigger, I would suggest going for a modded Game Gear over original hardware.

I had a Game Gear when I was a kid. I loved it at the time. Eventually the screen did give out on it though :( It was a massive problem with them. The screens were prone to failure.
Yeah, I was actually thinking of doing one of those screen mods. I actually got a second-hand Game Gear from a friend when I was a kid back around the year 2000 or so, but it had a giant vertical line running down the middle when powered on making games unplayable. It's a shame, he gave me Ristar and Ecco with it. I'm sure I would've become absolutely obsessed with Ristar back then if I could've actually played it.

Of course, if I get one with a properly working original screen, I'll play around with it for a while before deciding on doing the mod or not.

I have 2 and both are working well-enough, for now ;) (OG Hardware).

I just beat OutRun Europa 2 weekends ago; VERY middling title lol.

I try to take it with me on vacations or the like and I really do enjoy many of the titles; the Ninkus are phenomenal (but I always get stuck 'cause of no guide {at least, there never used to be guides}, save for the Gaiden game) and easily among the best games on the console.

My sister took one and a bunch of other hardware (TV Tuner, Radio Tuner, battery pack, hence why I have 2 lol) from a prick she did a commercial for (back when she attempted modelling) and it came with like, 8 games as well, so I still have a few in the backlog to run through, but it is definitely an underrated piece of gaming hardware.
I spent like 10 minutes trying to find "OutRun Europa 2" because of my terrible reading comprehension. 🙈 The game is pretty hilarious though: apparently you can pick up bullets and kill anyone in your way!? I don't think this is quite the relaxing "driving game" Yu originally had in mind lmao. These Ninku games look pretty impressive too, I'm glad the GG appears to be region free (correct me if I'm wrong on that).
 
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Maybe controversial opinion: Video games have become exactly like blockbuster movies. The more budgets drive up, the less creative and more homogeneous the industry gets. And I’m kind of tired of it to be honest.

I watched that PlayStation conference today and not a single game stood out to me as being something new or different or even exciting.

God of War Ragnarok? -- Yay more annoying Boi! No thanks. I didn't like the last GOW and what I saw of Boi in this trailer, I know I'm not gonna like this one so it will be a hard pass for me, I think.

Spider-man 2; Wolverine; Guardians of the Galaxy? -- Yay, more superhero shit that I'm kind of already sick off because of Superhero overkill!

Deathloop? -- Still no fucking interest in that game even with the last footage I'll see before release!

Uncharted 4 and Uncharted Lost Legacy Remastered? -- Yay, the worst of the Uncharted franchise remastered! (not that they're terrible games, but 4 is my least favourite of the series and Lost Legacy was a little better than U4 but still nothing to write home about.)

GTA V PS5 Edition -- looks barely better than the PC version I already have...why are we still milking GTA V anyways?

Ghostwire Tokyo -- maybe the only game that had my interest, but even then, it being first person doesn't thrill me.

Gran Turismo 7 -- Yay! Another Gran Turismo I will ignore!

Project Eve -- Might be cool; but still, just another action game.

Am I just getting old or are games getting more and more stale by the day?
 
Holy shit. KOTOR remake!!!

I had zero desire to buy a PS5 (or new Xbox) but...I am going to perhaps change my mind if this is any good.

I hope that KOTOR 2 also gets remade, with the missing content included, and that we finally get to see a conclusion with KOTOR 3.
 
Alan Wake and Wolverine... very hyped!

PS4 now becoming my Team Ueda, Tim Schafer, Yakuza, Shenmue and now Remedy console. Finished playing Max Payne last week and Control on sale now... then in October the Alan Wake remaster....! Quite Hyped!
 
As someone who has always been in camp PlayStation, last nights presentation really didn't have much to offer me :/

The God of War game will be good I'm sure (I liked the last game up until the ending), but it's not something I'm crazy about. The protagonist of Forspoken just seems really obnoxious and here companion is a set of gold bangles... ... Ok? The Project Eve game looked like a decent action game. Then it was just all super hero games, I've never really cared for them so to get 3 Marvel headlines made me impatient.

I can see they offered some Triple-A standard games, just none of them appealed to me.
 
As someone who has always been in camp PlayStation, last nights presentation really didn't have much to offer me :/

The God of War game will be good I'm sure (I liked the last game up until the ending), but it's not something I'm crazy about. The protagonist of Forspoken just seems really obnoxious and here companion is a set of gold bangles... ... Ok? The Project Eve game looked like a decent action game. Then it was just all super hero games, I've never really cared for them so to get 3 Marvel headlines made me impatient.

I can see they offered some Triple-A standard games, just none of them appealed to me.

I think for me it boils down to the fact that I want something new and unexpected. And what I saw this morning (our time) was just more of the same old, same old.

Some people might argue “but Wolverine...” and that’s cool and all, but it’s not new. It’s not unexpected. I’m sure it will be a fine action game that will play in the mold of Arkham Asylum as every superhero game has become. But to me there was nothing new or fresh here that made me say “yo, that’s different!”...it just feels like the same shit shoveled out over again with no real new innovation.

I don’t know...maybe I’m just jaded. But I feel like I’m not gonna enjoy Jim Ryan’s time as head of Sony based on what’s coming up.

I think maybe I was spoiled to grow up in a time where gaming once felt fresh and exciting. Where as now it just feels like one reiteration of the same riff over and over again.
 
Yeah, I was actually thinking of doing one of those screen mods. I actually got a second-hand Game Gear from a friend when I was a kid back around the year 2000 or so, but it had a giant vertical line running down the middle when powered on making games unplayable. It's a shame, he gave me Ristar and Ecco with it. I'm sure I would've become absolutely obsessed with Ristar back then if I could've actually played it.

Of course, if I get one with a properly working original screen, I'll play around with it for a while before deciding on doing the mod or not.


I spent like 10 minutes trying to find "OutRun Europa 2" because of my terrible reading comprehension. 🙈 The game is pretty hilarious though: apparently you can pick up bullets and kill anyone in your way!? I don't think this is quite the relaxing "driving game" Yu originally had in mind lmao. These Ninku games look pretty impressive too, I'm glad the GG appears to be region free (correct me if I'm wrong on that).

lol I didn't even think it could be read that way, until you wrote it above :LOL:. Yes, you can shoot people lol, but while the controls are responsive, they aren't implemented-well, mainly due to the GG's d-pad. I had a hard time at first.

Indeed, completely region-free ;)
 
You are just getting old @danielmann861 We all get. Games have always been that way. During the lock down phase in the pendamic I had plenty of time so I have read plenty of times reading old gaming magazines. The letters from the reader where especially interesting. there were lots of complains during the ps1 era how bland and boring the ps1 era is compared to the 16 bit era. But for me that era was the era of innovation . Really funny how different the opinions were. It just the old age. Whe you get older you see things different than you used to see when you were younger. Gaming will always be gaming. And in every era here are good games you can enjoy.

Gaming has always been rather bland. It only had few concepts that everybody copies to make other games. it just feelt different because gaming in general felt new and fresh when we were young. Until I read those letters I would have signed everything you sad but these ancient letters opened my eyes. The complains the verteran games had about the then brand new 32bit era miror my criticism totally. The only difference is timeframe. Things that other people said over 25 years are stil valid for me about the ps4 and ps5. that made realise gaming has always been that way. Just the personal perspective changes.

Real innovative games that changed everything like Shenmue for example were rare back then and are still are now.
 
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I'll definitely be picking up a PS5 now for that KOTOR Remake! Also, very hyped about Spidey 2.
 
I popped majorly when KOTOR was announced, especially first. Looking forward to that even if it is ages away.

Project Eve looks cool. Spiderman and Wolverine.... I'm in I loved Spiderman and Miles Morales.

Couple that with games like Kena: Bridge of Spirits and Sifu and there's a nice range of stuff coming out for me anyways.
 
I understand that it can be a be tiring to see the same AAA formula again and again
but at the same time i can totally understand why they are doing it.
Game development in this size gets more expensive with every console generation,
(AA games have a budget of 15-40 or 50 Mil, AAA games have a budget of 60-500 Mil)
so of course the studios are going to develop IPs that arent very risky.
Also with todays standards of crunch should not exist and people should be payed properly
and dont exploit your staff, its not the same workflow anymore.
Do you know why there were so many big game surprises back then?
Because people worked like 6 days a week 14, 15, 16 hours a day on a game.
Piranha Bytes created Gothic 2 in 9 months, they pretty much lived in their office
because there werent any regulations. Crunch wasnt a bad thing, crunch was just normal.

So nowadays with gaming being all serious, professional and one of the biggest markets,
of course they are going with things like Spider Man, God of War, Gran Turismo, things where they know
that they are going to get their investment money back 100%.
Sure, something like Tsushima is maybe a bit risky but not really
because lets be honest, its still just a Assassins Creed + Breath of the Wild mix.
And thats not bad, its just kind of calculated so that it can still be enjoyed by a lot of people.

Stuff like Shenmue was risky back in the day and it would be risky today.
The more expensive and big these games get, the more people have to buy it to make it work.
No studio is going to greenlight a Shenmue Remake for 60 Mil when 20 Mil was already risky.

And i'm pretty sure that there are going to be surprises in the future eventually,
just not right now. With i dont know lets say 10 new AAA announcements every year,
chances are pretty high that there simply isnt anything for you in there.
Eventually there will be stuff that is exactly your thing
and until then you have to keep your eyes open for smaller surprises and projects.
There are still publishers like THQ Nordic, Deep Silver, Koei Tecmo etc
who are going to greenlight like 'experimental' projects and things between AAA and indie
but there obviously will always be some kind of balancing problem because of the budget and team size.
You cant have both these days. Experimental + high quality
only works if the studio can somehow convince someone to greenlight it.
Like with Death Stranding. Thats works because of Kojima.

I dont think this will change anytime soon. The market is going with projects and directors
that clearly work as a whole. They arent going to rely on experiments.
 
Oh I know it’s not gonna change. That’s the problem, the budgets keep going up and it’s gonna result in more and more of the same old, same old.

Like I said, it’s just tiring. We have this amazing hardware advancement and the only thing we can seemingly do with it is to keep pushing graphics and the same old tired concepts over and over again. The same open worlds that I saw last gen will be repeated over and over again.

Even the indie scene isn’t much better to me. I see the same art styles regurgitated over and over showing the complete lack of individuality in artistic style because everyone is just trying to emulate something instead of finding their own style.

I don’t know. I look at the past and I saw an explosion of creativity as people were constantly trying new styles. New looks. And new ideas. And now? Everything is just same old same old. And it’s not just gaming. I feel the same way about the film industry. We have almost too much content as everything is becoming quantity over quality. And it all just feels ever increasingly disposable.

But I’m aware I’m being an old man complaining about the kids on his lawn and this isn’t going to change :D

But yeah...I just looked at that event and thought “I don’t have a PS5...I have a souped up PS4 as we will get more of the same.”

I don’t know...maybe I’m just falling out of love with gaming in general.
 
Oh I know it’s not gonna change. That’s the problem, the budgets keep going up and it’s gonna result in more and more of the same old, same old.

Like I said, it’s just tiring. We have this amazing hardware advancement and the only thing we can seemingly do with it is to keep pushing graphics and the same old tired concepts over and over again. The same open worlds that I saw last gen will be repeated over and over again.

Even the indie scene isn’t much better to me. I see the same art styles regurgitated over and over showing the complete lack of individuality in artistic style because everyone is just trying to emulate something instead of finding their own style.

I don’t know. I look at the past and I saw an explosion of creativity as people were constantly trying new styles. New looks. And new ideas. And now? Everything is just same old same old.

But I’m aware I’m being an old man complaining about the kids on his lawn and this isn’t going to change :D

But yeah...I just looked at that event and thought “I don’t have a PS5...I have a souped up PS4 as we will get more of the same.”

I don’t know...maybe I’m just falling out of love with gaming in general.

I cant remember who exactly it was but i think it was one of the guys
from the studio that created the Syphon Filter games for PSX
and he said back then it was way easier to convince publisher etc
to greenlight a project because with like 500.000 - 2 Mil USD
you could already do a lot. And since everything was still new
and everyone wanted to get their foot in the door,
publisher were more open to more things. It was a bit more 'crazy'
and not that serious.

And this isnt going to work anymore today. Big publishers and big IPs are established,
everyone already has their fixed lineup and most game type formulas
have reached a point where everything works and there is no need for innovations
because people are buying this stuff. One new innovation is maybe VR
but people arent really into it. We reached a point after like 30 years of gaming
where its established what a racing game, a football game, a third person open world game,
a ego shooter game, a 2D scroller game should look like and i think we are basically
going to be stuck there for now.
 
Games did not look different back then because the creators were more creative. They looked different because they had to write their own code for each game. Make their own graphics engine. That was before Unreal, and the other custom engines were not a thing yet for many years. So each game had it's own visual identity. Such thing would be impossible today because it would cost a fortune. You cannot really blame the devs for that though. Game developing in 3d is very expensive so in order to reduce costs they have the cut the costs with using the same assets as other studios do.

it has nothing to with creativity though. Besides some exceptions like Yu-Suzuki, Miyamoto and so forth many devs were worse than the devs are now. Today people try to make the best out of every part of the game. Voice actors take their job seriously. Such atrocities like this one



wold never happen today. because today people now how to write dialogues in English. and so forth.

many things have become objectively way better. you have just changed @danielmann861 You are an adult with responsibilities and other aspects in your life are as important as gaming. You want the childlike excitement back you had when you were young. But that childlike excitement cannot come back as soon as you are grown up.

Gaming is different now but it is not worse.

Yes i was in the same camp but after dealing with some contemporary sources like gaming mags out of boredom has changed my perspective. Besides the gems we still love and today the average games were much worse. No saving function, controls right from hell and so one. Horrible dialogues due to bad writing, not very flashed out stories and so forth. And censorship everywhere. Ok last thing is just a problem when you grew up in the german speaking world
 
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Hypothetical scenario

You get a complete remake of the original Shenmue games. The graphics will be the best the industry has to offer, runs at 4k and 60fps. It will have a familiar but well-refined combat system, additional side quest, character development quest, and will be filled with easter eggs and ridiculous details.

You will also get the remaining Shenmue installments, no cuts, and the experience is guaranteed to be at least as magical as the first time you played Shenmue.

The games will be released over 10 years. The only catch is you won't be able to play ANY other video game during that time. Would you take up the offer?
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Quantic Dream has signed a deal with Disney. They're heavily rumored to be developing a Star Wars game. It's been in development for 18 months but apparently didn't go into full production till a few months ago. They also liked a tweet referencing them making one but removed the like.

I'm not liking this at all feels like a waste of QD's talents and not something I would be interested in. It's bizarre how they've made original IP in the past which I've loved. But now they will be going the license route for a project. Such a disappointment.
 
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