The days of Quality gaming....

[Bunjiweb]

Well, i've been working in Gamestation since November and since then I would have to say my gaming knowledge has increased 10 fold. Before I was just a casual gamer but now I have formed some very thoroughly researched opinions of both the games industry and the beast which feeds it....the general public.

But what I wanted to talk about today is simply the quality of gaming. Over the last 6 months I can honestly say there has been literally a couple of games that have caught my fancy and made me gone wow.... One of these being Project Gotham 2 on the Xbox, and the other being Prince Of Persia - Sands Of Time (on all platforms). Besides this we have seen a truly mediocre selection of games fly through the pipeline with obviously rushed production and more interest in appealing to the masses rather than the games enthusiast. Take the influx of dance / karaoke type games that continue to dilute the industry with mainstream pap.

I could sit here and real off a massive list of complete let downs that we've seen but I really cant be bothered. Instead i'm going to tell you what i've done to fill the game drought that we've been experiencing.

First off...Retro. It doesnt matter how you do it, wether you dish out the cash and buy yourself a megadrive, a SNES or an N64....or perhaps just emulate the fun on your pc if you cant afford it. But theres no doubt about it, the ammount of quality games you can get for a fraction of the price of a new xbox or ps2 game is great.

For example, I picked up a Sega Saturn last week...."Ewwww" i hear you cry...ah but no, the Saturn is home to such classics as the Sega Ages vol1, Manx TT Superbike, Marvel Super Heroes, Clockwork Knights, Sega Rally...etc.
And so far i've spent under £30 on a mint condition console with 4 superb games. So it's deffinatly worth investigating retro stuff in either your local Gamestation ( ) or on ebay where a great deal can be had on every console you can think of if you play your cards right and look around enough before bidding.

Now, there is one other route that has been a great yet pleasant surprise. The Gameboy Advance (Sp). I bought one of these in mid November after being bowled over by the quality of the gaming that can be had on this little handheld. Harking back to the days of quality with such re-launched titles as Zelda: Link To The Past, Donkey Kong Country, The Lost Vikings, Mario Kart, Street Fighter....etc. The list goes on.

So i suppose after this lot of drivvle what I'm trying to say is if like me you are finding the current quality of gaming boring or just not good enough, go back to your routes, dig out the old console and fire up some classics, or invest your hard earned cash in a GBASP for muchos quality fun.

Hopefully this year will be better for gaming with the likes of Doom 3, HL-2, Stalker etc. on the PC and many other great titles coming to consoles.....we wait with bated breath.

Ben

[directhex]

you need Nights into Dreams for your saturn

or Radiant Silvergun

[Bunjiweb]

never played Radiant Silvergun but Nights was excellent....

[Lowe]

Yeah agreed, the industry is just churning out the same old tired games. Even tuff like Doom 3, HL2 etc.. same old thing. Nothing really groundbreaking about them from what I've seen. Ok so the AI is a bit more intelligent. Still aint gonna beat a real human or the experience of online play but that's another arguement altogether.

Lot of the older console games are just uber fun for the money. Can't go wrong with em.. and the beat em ups keep me amused for hours.

[BEANFro Elite]

goldeneye 007, perfect dark, mario kart 64, and mario tennis in my opinion were all time classics on the beloved n64

[Lee H]

hmmm speaking of games I like to play a few old classics on my xbox via the snes emu system.

Super ghouls and ghosts is totally addictive as is nearly 40% of the quality games that came out for the SNES.

At the moment I have been playing EVO ( a evolution style game ) for at least 3 days with breaks for sleep, food and work as it is totally awesome and no matter how many times you play it, your creature evolves into something different all the time.

2004 is the year thats going to put the PC onto the gaming scene front page. I mean GTA:VC on the PC is far superior than the PS2 and Xbox version and with games like doom 3, HL2, stalker, et al all upon the horizon, we can expect gamers of the world, to all put down their joypads and replace them with a keyboard and mouse ( imo - pads are s**t for FPS games on consoles )

Lee

[Bunjiweb]

im glad im not the only one who thinks this

[blockers]

You want to get an Dreamcast, they are really cheap. like £30 with 5 or so games. superb graphics, not sure abotu the games. i liked Shemue, and Sonic though

Hopefully this year will be far superior for games than any other

[directhex]

the dreamcast & n64 are host to some very good games, same goes for super nes

i never really considered the saturn for good games tho tbh

[Bunjiweb]

Why not jo? despite it's reputation it has some excellent games, and if you are into rpgs, the saturn has literally hundreds of them on import.

Ben

[directhex]

well at the time it had nothing in a genre of interest to me - plus i was poor, and was waiting for an n64

[quackers]

i have to agree that the new games arent upto much, i think its time for some retro goodness right now with my master system

[Stewart]

As you say, the 8bit and 16bit Sega \ Nintendo wars spawned all the best games, which is why a GBA is such a goos purchase now; not only do you get to play brand-new quality GBA games, such as Advance Wars, but you can play Zelda, Mario Series, Ghouls N' Ghosts, even the Mario. Bros arcade game.

I brought a decent gaming PC about 8 monhts back, 9800pro, the works. Since then, I've played C&C Generals, Call of Duty, and a bit of Vice City. Seem that everything I really want to play, like Half Life II, Doom III, are delayed or simply not out until some undefined date, later this year.

Sonic, Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Mario Kart... 8bit and 16bit era's churned out more quality almost by the month, than the 3 big consoles do now, by the year.

[Stewart]

same goes for super nes

No? Really?

Oh, and Bunji - if you don't want to dig out a copy of Radiant Silvergun, try to get a copy of Ikaruga.

Its the dogs blobs mate.

[blockers]

I remember i thought that the Sega Saturn was actually one of the huge cabinant things....with like Time Crisis on...those were the days

[BEANFro Elite]

speedball II on the amiga 500 was amazing!! it was funny, action packed and EVEN had managerial elements packed in the fray as well...