The past forty years have brought massive and rapid improvements to video games. From drastically improved graphics and sound to far more advanced and engaging gameplay. However, every generation has bad habits, which often influence other companies to follow their lead.
There are things that annoy me about every generation of games, so lets go through the history of home game consoles and look at my biggest pet peeves of each era. I've excluded the first generation simply because those games were so basic and simple that its hard to legitimately criticize them.
Second Generation
Image source: Classic Game Room on YouTube
Half-assed games
The massively popular Atari 2600 ruled the second generation, but also nearly killed the industry it brought into so many homes. Their lack of experience and laissez faire attitude towards game development was the one-two punch that nearly destroyed video gaming. Atari's own low effort games like Baseball and the lack of quality control of terrible third-party games that flooded the market were massive problems that were thankfully rectified in the 8-bit era.
Third Generation
Image source: Giant Bomb
Licensed games
While quality control was drastically improved from the Atari 2600 days, we still weren't immune from terrible games. Creating a game based on a well-known property or movie was really popular on the NES, with seemingly every major action film getting a video game adaptation. Rambo, Predator, Total Recall, Die Hard. Name a popular action, sci-fi or horror film from the 80's and there's probably a version of it on the NES. Publisher LJN is famous for its low-effort ports like Karate Kid and Back to the Future, which are simply awful games that coasted on their name recognition alone.
Fourth Generation
Image source: GPuronen at DeviantArt
Sidescrolling mazes
As hardware became more capable, developers started to branch out and create bigger and better games. One of the annoying aspects of this is the rise of the "2D maze", as I like to call it. Through the NES days, we were conditioned to advance through stages from left to right. In the 16-bit era, stages started to sprawl in every direction and without identifying landmarks they became mazes you had to explore and memorize to get through. Even great games like Earthworm Jim and Sonic fell victim to this trend.
Fifth Generation
Image source: Krizalid99v2 on YouTube
3D games that have aged horribly
While it was exciting to get 3D games in the PS1/N64 generation, many of the games we loved back then have aged horribly due to the design choices of their developers. Titles that looked amazing at the time are eyesores in 2018. The games that have aged the best from this era are those that chose a hand-drawn 2D look (Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy Tactics, Heart of Darkness, etc.) rather than 3D models. GoldenEye is a beloved game, but its nearly unplayable for anyone accustomed to modern shooters.
Sixth Generation
Image source: Paste Magazine
Stealth missions
Ah yes, this gameplay mechanic plagued games from this generation, even working its way into games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. When done well, it was a fun gameplay concept. It was horribly overused though. Let games like Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu implement stealth and keep it out of games where it feels shoehorned in.
Seventh Generation
Image source: NerdSociety
Neglected single player campaigns
As we entered the first fully-online generation, gamers flocked to XBox Live and the Playstation Network to play online shooters and other competitive games with people from around the world. While the ability to play these games online is a great feature, the single player campaigns started to feel like an afterthought. Picking up games from last generation now, which focused on the online multiplayer features seem like hollow experiences without the online mechanic.
Eighth Generation
Image source: GameSpot
Dependence on patches
With digital distribution becoming more and more popular, developers are now shipping games to retail before they're done and you can expect to install a patch the day you bring the game home. While its annoying to have to update a game you just bought (DOOM on Switch took an hour to update before I could actually play it), once support for these games fades and the servers where these patches are hosted go offline, anyone picking them up after that point will have to live with buggy, broken or incomplete games without a way to patch them.
So what are your biggest pet peeves that plagued a particular console generation? Let's discuss!
Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!
Cover Image Source: Abera.net
agree with every rant to be honest lol. Well thought out article! Great job friend keep up the good work!
Thanks! I've had this list in my head for a long time and finally decided to do an article about it.
Damn it, there's nothing more simultaneously awesome and frustrating than to have an article idea kicking around in one's head only to see someone else beat you to the punch, and not just beat you to the punch, but so simply and completely unpack the topic that you're left with nothing else to say.
I will add one thing though: my first thought upon seeing you skip the first generation is that you missed an opportunity. The first generation of games was made by programmers for other programmers, and as such their cardinal sin tends to be extreme complexity. Spacewar!, for instance, was too complicated for those not versed in the operation of computers to enjoy, much less operate. Even Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney's arcade version, Computer Space, which stripped the game down even further and provided a custom control pad for each player that clearly showed the functions of each button, didn't perform well among the general populace. It's why so many people look at Pong as the 'first video game', even though it wasn't--it was just the first video game easy enough to understand and play that the average adult could jump in and have a good time.
Other than that, you nailed every generation's cardinal sin beautifully. I'd argue against using Manhunt as your example of stealth shoehorned in, since the game was built around being sneaky from the start (even if it does abandon that in later levels), and instead pick something like Beyond Good & Evil which did shoehorn stealth through the use of way too many missions where you had to remain undetected.
Otherwise, this is damn awesome and I have no complaints. Upvoted and resteemed! You rule, sir, and I bow to you. :)
Sorry about stealing your thunder, but thanks for the great comments! I know the feeling, not long ago I was ready to sit down and write a review a SNES game I just ran through, but after playing it I realized someone had recently reviewed the same relatively obscure game here on Steemit.
You raise some excellent points regarding the first generation. I personally don't have experience with any consoles older than Pong clones, so I chose to leave those truly old games alone.
That being said, you nailed it when it comes to the first gen. Those old games were really just technical demos of what was to come. The simple act of manipulating an image on a screen was a tremendous achievement, but like you said they were designed for people with a strong understanding of computing and not until something as simple as Pong came along, the masses didn't have access or the capabilities of playing those very first games.
Thanks for the great comments!
I've been playing games now for almost 30 years starting with the atari and nes. I played through all the different generations up till today and I find games are having diminishing returns on my own enjoyment. For the most part the average game that gets released now is 'better' in terms of experienced creators having played games their whole life too. But there were a lot of old games made by very dedicated programmers with a staff consisting of less than 10 people, who put they're whole heart into making the game. Now I see games made by hundreds of people (perhaps some have thousands), and while some are worth their merit, many are still disappointing unfinished heaps of trash.
I'm finding it hard to justify paying for the TripleA games ($40) when there are countless quality games being made for a fraction of that cost.
I tend to fall back on my old library of games rather than invest in newer things now, my favourite game Zelda 2 on the nes I still play and compete live on twitch regularly.
There are quality gem titles released for every generation... maybe except for cd-i that i still look for, but I have enough games to last me until the end of days.
Video games are following a similar model to films, with a focus on big budget, AAA spectacles that have very little originality. There's not many games on the PS4/XBox One that I'm disappointed that I'm missing out on because modern 'hardcore' games just don't appeal much to me anymore. As a lifelong Nintendo fan, I get my AAA fix from games like Zelda, Mario and whatever else they put out and as a parent of young children I honestly don't have time for any other modern consoles. The AAA games that have leaked onto the Switch are more than enough to keep me busy and satisfied.
As a collector, I will probably exit the modern game market once the industry shifts 100% to digital distribution, but I've got a huge number of games already and the thousands that have been released that I haven't played yet will keep me busy for decades.
Have to say, I agree.
That said, the low-poly PSX look (more akin to Resident Evil than Eyesore Fighters Eight [or whatever it was]) is apparently becoming a nostalgia of its own... here's an article from USGamer on the subject but if you don't read it all the way through (or don't read it at all) one pointed observation it makes runs along these lines:
But then again, towards the end of the PSX era SE really made the PSX look amazing - say, Final Fantasy IX. Those backgrounds were hand-drawn and still look gorgeous today. The only let-down now is the polygons, and even then SE put in as many as they could into characters. Upgrade the polygons, put the art in hi-res - you'd have a game that stands up visually to any of today's.