Gaming has become too casual

I remember that 1980-2000 games were dark, creepy and kinda like that. Then about 2002-2007 gaming changed, more focus on story, gameplay and look. Now i see that every new game tries to be like some big cinema movie "Call of Duty, Uncharted, Battlefield, Bioshock".

Back in 2002-2007 games had no cover system, no hp regain and stuff like that, but now we have cover system, unlimited heal and cinematic cut scenes. Casual gaming took a whole console gaming over? Looks like PC is the only platform where people play hardcore games meanwhile PS4, XONE and Wii U has become casual.

Worst of all is DLC rip off. Almost every new game has DLC and PRE-ORDER DLC. You have to pay extra if you want extra levels. Back in time there were "expansion pack".

Also now almost every review gives every new game 8-10 score out of 10. In old time it was rare to get good score which proves even reviewers are paid out or too causal.

this is news to you? you know something has gone wrong with the GAMING industry when a cinematic game that does not focus on gameplay becomes the poster child of gaming.

When CoD is the best selling game every year, yeah.

TC is probably a casual

System Wars has become too casual.

OP is a filthy casual

What are you? Casul?

Sort of wish you'd never made it past 500 posts.

Yeah, someone with a kinect rivals avatar probably shouldn't be criticizing the gaming industry for being casual

Haahaha casual noobs. You rather gave unlimited ammo, cut scenes, cover system, hp regain than having limited ammo, health, less cut scenes and no corridor shooter.

Oh yeah... autoaim too.

Looks like system wars members has become casual too, mostly PS4 and Xbox One owners. Like i see, last few posts proves my point.

says the guy who hyped Kinect Sports Rivals as "Amazing"

I know I'm probably in the minority here, but idc. I'm a little bit older and my patience for dying over and over until I get something right isn't fun anymore, it's frustrating. I don't have time to play games like I once did so I expect to see progress when I play nowadays. However, I do not like natural health regen. I prefer to walk around and find a health pack or something. Then again most gamers have shitty tastes. I've talked to a lot of people that said Dishonored is trash, but I'm enjoying it a lot right now.

It's ok bro.

It all changed when the peasant nation attacked.

Ok first: The term "casual" is fucking bullshit. don't use it if you have any respect for yourself.

Yes, high budget games are becoming too ambitious and take away the control from the player too much. But I think it's important to distinguish dissatisfaction from actual enjoyment. I enjoyed the Tomb Raider reboot A LOT. But I was bothered by the over use of QTEs. That doesn't mean I couldn't enjoy it.

It's important to have that kind of outlook, but without being cynical. You can still have fun, even though you hate some of the aspects of the game. Don't limit yourself to old, or obscure indie games just because you're dissatisfied. That's pointless.

My point is, don't make that distinction too often. Don't say that "this is casual" and "this is hardcore". Just enjoy both sides of the spectrum while keeping your opinion vocal (but sophisticated, don't fucking use the word "casual").

1st of all, Casual Gaming is not a bad thing... 2ndly, Call of Duty is not a casual game., not by a long shot !

And the games are better for having cover systems, what kind of class A moron doesn't want to get into cover ?

Apart from all the games that Don't and Are not.......

What a sweeping generalization.

Seriously,was there a pre-order DLC bonus with a game recently?

How does a cover system make a game casual? How does it make a game easier than strafing or crouching in and out of cover.

What games have autoaim? Very few.

Cinematic action games began on the pc. PC gamers dropped arena shooters in favor of MoH and CoD.

As much as I used to enjoy games which were really picky with how well you completed a task, e.g. Jak II, I don't have the time or patience to die over and over and over again. I have maybe 3 hours a week now to spend on gaming, and I want to actually get through a game.

I wouldn't call it casual, as casual games are something I would consider would be fun for a few minutes on a train ride on your iPhone.

Some people take video games waaaaaay too seriously

@verbtex: this, now that i'm older and have more responsibilities...this. Also I don't think games in general have gotten more casual, I think expectations have just changed and there is a disconnect in the gaming industry between newer/older gamer's. We have a newer generation of gamer's that favor graphics and cinematic over an older generation of gamer's where if the graphics are good, it's nice but not a priority and game play is the only thing that matter, cinematic or not.

cut-scenes and cover doesn't make a game casual TC. Go play The Last of Us in grounded mode and get fucked.

Man, Call of Duty is so damn good. So much better than that old crap, like Doom.

I take it you guys missed out on gaming in the 80's. Frankly I don't have the patience for that crap anymore. The early 3D games I'm positive is the reason why I have 20/40 vision now. To this day, games like flying car scenes in Mean Streets still makes my eyes twitch. Perhaps everyone forgot the horrible A.I. and bland box room maps of the 90's/00's, the poor camera angles of games like Gex 3 *shutters*

No offense OP but you sound like a spoiled brat. I think gaming has never been better and hopefully VR next year can make it even more immersive and take that to the next level. As far as reviewers go, nothing has changed. You may have missed out on the giant Nintendo flyer that was Nintendo Power or the constant 8,9/10 scores from Gamepro or EG or VG&CE or Sega Visions or....

The only reason games back then didn't have a story is due to hardware limitations.

How the **** is having a story in a game a bad thing?

I don't think games have become more casual....I think ppl have become more jaded. I've been gaming for a long time now....and I'm having the same amount of fun as I did when I was a kid. Things have been gonig this way since before 2002 or whatever.

Have you played Super Mario Bros 3 lately? A whistle to skip worlds....a mushroom hut to get extra lives....a box you hit at the end and after ever 3 you get at least 1 extra life.

B/c most ppl want to have fun with their games....not be bombarded with difficulty so that they rage....that shit ain't fun. Plus most ppl say they want things less casual and then a game like GTA IV comes out and everyone bitches about the driving. The Driving in GTA IV was great....it required experience and was a challenge....but everyone bitched. MAx Payne 3 comes out and everyone bithces about it being too hard.

I've never bitched about things being either way....I play games for what they are....but, not for a second, will I beleive anyone that says they want games to be more challenging....that ship has sailed....everytime something comes along that gives you a challenge that isn't trial and error like Dark Souls.....you guys bitch.

How is casual bad anyways ?not everyone likes punishing games. there's still a lot of really challenging games anyways and some have scale able difficulty. no one forcing you to buy them. Besides the industry needs casual users to buy consoles and make it profitable so they can make great games.

I think often people mistaken casual for games becoming increasingly accessible through enhancements in the conventions of control mechanics. Somehow people think the old Resident Evil games for instance are more hardcore because we just had 3D characters on a 2D backdrops and we had simple one analog or d-pad kind of controls for everything. Sure some of the control limitations made the game more difficult and therefor added to the sense of terror. So, as game controls enhanced with time the games themselves changed too. We now have the tried and true dual analog controls, over the shoulder camera, left/right trigger reflex aim and shooting, and this makes the games much easier to play by themselves, and increases the audience in response that can access the games. This I feel doesn't make the games more casual, it does make them a lot more accessible but that by itself doesn't make them more casual. It only makes sense that the improved ability to fight be matched with an increase in the action for games as well.

As for health regen, I find that more of a convenience thing than anything else. After all, it's not like health packs are any better in any way to handle the health situation. I kind of think in some sense both are ridiculous, kind of like health setups where the health bar is incremental and health regen is only good up to a certain point and one needs health packs or medkits to heal further. For instance, I liked Far Cry 2's setup, and when health was critically low he'd pull a bullet out himself and bandage himself up; nice tough. Still, I don't think health regen is any worse than needing health packs, and in many ways it's more convenient not to have to take away from the game to go hunt down health packs. I think this and checkpoints are a wasted argument, they keep the action flowing which I'm all for.

DLC, I think publishers push DLC to make more money on their games. I think the used game market is partially to blame for this. I mean DLC took off in part to needed expansions to popular multiplayer games but in time it later expanded to lock out used games, and that I don't so much mind. When it got to pre-order shit then it started to become a problem for me, LA Noire was the best example of this horrible situation, they had pre-order DLC that was specific to where you got it from, like GameSpot/EB-Games, Walmart, Target, Best Buy. And in the end, their bullshit season pass was only just a re-release of the different pre-order DLCs.

As for the high standard of today's production values, I really don't see anything wrong with it, except maybe people focusing too much on the superficial quality of the visuals and turn a blind eye to the gameplay.

+1

I remember playing shit like Super Ghouls N Ghosts, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, Battletoads, etc and going apeshit with rage. Games that make the "Souls" franchise look like a goddamn walk in the park.

Video games are a form of entertainment, not a way of life.

When I get home from working 8-10 hours a day, I don't need a ton of added stress from something that is supposed to be relaxing and fun.

You and Charizard having a competition to see who can have the most threads on the first page?

A lot of old games, probably 75% of them were total shit, you had the really bad movie games like robocop and terminator and indiana jones and batman probably some others... which were borderline unplayable.

Then games were they ramped up the difficulty once you got past the first 2 levels because they knew the game was too short so they just made it impossibly hard.

You know your threads are amazing when there's a spamming bot that targets your threads

I'd just like to direct this question towards the people who are disgusted by the trends of modern video games today: what games are you playing? If you are so against the trends why not just stop playing, at the very least, games released today?

I'm casual and I'm proud.

Now gimme more Uncharted, Halo, Bioshock, uh... Mario Kart... Smash Bros... Prince of Persia... Kingdom Hearts... yeah, I just want more games.

talks about casual and were hyping star wars kinect and kinect rivals rofl

when you're at 144 fps, even the sims is pretty hardcore.

Games used to be more broken, unintuitive, awkward, glitchy, unfair, padded or flawed on some other way. People back then took pride in overcoming that crap. And now they get pissed off that modern gamers actually get smooth, polished, sensible, logical games, designed purely for joy and pleasure, complete with tutorial systems to teach how to play, save systems to avoid losing progress, and without the old archaic bullshit. And those angry nerds go fucking ballistic about it!

Oh NES Zelda, where you have to burn 100's of bushes before you find the ONE RANDOM one that actually burns away and leads you somewhere! So hardcore!

Oh Super Mario Bros 3, where I can die on the final boss and have to repeat the entire game because I'm out of lives. How awesome!

Or third person shooters before cover systems, you have to awkwardly shuffle sideways out from and back behind walls/columns! So difficult to master!

Or action adventure games with random respawning foes. Where they could literally respawn beneath you as you fall from the sky. How fun!

Or JRPGs where have to grind for multiple hours between each dungeon or else get destroyed. What a great way to extend gameplay time!

This is not even to mention clunky controls, bad camera angles, long loading times, punishing lack of save systems/check points, and all the other baggage older games have. Not to dismiss them completely obviously, but take off the fucking nostalgia goggles.

Games are just more enjoyable these days for the vast majority of people. Including me. Older games could be great for their time but looking back at most NES, or PS1 games, how do they hold up to modern 2D and 3D games being released every day? I'll take the Last Of Us over any third person shooter or action adventure from the 90s. Why? Because in addition to it's great story, beautiful graphics, sweet online gameplay, extra extended DLC content, and fun as hell trophies, it's GAMEPLAY fucking trounces anything from back then. What PS1 game (for example) are you putting up against the Last Of Us, if it's so shit?

(Last Of Us just an example. Stick another highly acclaimed modern game in there and try stick a PS1 or N64 game against it, if that works for you better.

Thank the Wii for that.

Sly Cooper? Little Big Planet? Ratchet And Clank? Tearaway? Puppeteer?

Sony have a bunch of games like that for PS3. Not so much PS4 yet, but probably soon.

Its official... TC was just Baiting us.

@ominous_titan

I believe the term is "Dynamic Difficulty".

@MBirdy88: how dare you mock Uncharted!!!

I totally agree. Playing a great game with killer gameplay and going back to a cinema first game makes me flacid.

News flash: A large majority of people are casual. More people are getting in to gaming now than ever before.

I was going to casually reply to this with something witty and thought-provoking, but I'd rather smoke a bowl.