WTF is wrong with this generation?

[Philipp_Thomsen]

Man, I'm getting more and more pissed off and disappointed as the years go bye, waiting that someday SOMETHING will come out and save the day, but I just keep getting disappointed.

I'm talking about simulators vs action-games.

I hate action-games, I love simulators. Action-games are for kids.

I played TopGun - Fire at will in my pc with joystick back when I was 16, that was 1996 if Im not mistaken. That was a true simulator. I played and played for years till my joystick broke, and that was pure satisfaction.

Now, years later, I hear about a new release: TopGun - Hard Lock. I take a look at the trailer and the graphics are fantastic, and I can already feel my hand itching go buy a new joystick. But after watching another video with the preview of the game, I not only feel disappointed, frustrated, but ANGRY!

First off... there's no cockpit view. The plane defies the laws of physics and moves like it's on rails. Then the guy narrating the video says "... and players don't have to worry about running out of missiles, they are infinite. They recharge over-time and..." and that was then I closed the video without watching the rest.

Companies are making games for KIDS, and screw the adults who likes simulators. What a waste of programming.

The worst part came when I was surfing the net looking for people that agreed with my point of view. I found many, MANY, people saying "if it's an action-oriented-game, I'm buying it.... If it's a sim, I'll pass... "

It's utter infuriating!

Seems like I will never again have the pleasure of sweating my hands in miraculous maneuvers to avoid danger, never again having the pleasure of worrying about fuel consumption and missile loadout in a mission, never again go thru the pleasure of the difficulty of landing a F-14 in a aircraft-carrier, never again have the pleasure of the difficulty of flying-school and the hard missions, the pleasure of trying to land a damaged plane...

To read things like "The right analog control makes your plane go up and down, left or right, while the left analog control makes your plane do barrel rolls."

The programmers must be retarded... I'm not being rhetorical... I mean REALLY retarded, drooling on their keyboards while writing the code.

This is preposterous!

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Philipp_Thomsen

Seems like I will never again have the pleasure of sweating my hands in miraculous maneuvers to avoid danger, never again having the pleasure of worrying about fuel consumption and missile loadout in a mission, never again go thru the pleasure of the difficulty of landing a F-14 in a aircraft-carrier, never again have the pleasure of the difficulty of flying-school and the hard missions, the pleasure of trying to land a damaged plane...

Eh? Never heard of Falcon 4? FreeFalcon? Lock On:Modern Air Combat? Flaming Cliffs 2? Which ever fighter the next in the DCS series will be?

Plenty of good modern flightsims around.

So, here's my tip to you: Stop looking at the graphics and start looking at the gameplay.

[Philipp_Thomsen]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Eh? Never heard of Falcon 4? FreeFalcon? Lock On:Modern Air Combat? Flaming Cliffs 2? Which ever fighter the next in the DCS series will be?

Plenty of good modern flightsims around.

So, here's my tip to you: Stop looking at the graphics and start looking at the gameplay.

But Dowly, this is not a complaint about TopGun, this is about what it represents!

The amount of people worldwide saying sims are boring is huge... I feel like in the future people like us will be confined into forums like this trying to group and play a couple of sims still left on the planet, while the vast majority of people will be playing arcadish racing games that have impossible handling and machine-gun turrets on the hoods of the cars.

I will forever say that simulators separates the men from the boys.

But since we have much more boys than men, publishers are only interested in boy-like games.

Why can't we have the graphical richness of the arcadish garbage in a decent simulator? It's a dying market.

[Herr-Berbunch]

I really hate looking through a game sites 'simulation' section only to trawl through pages and pages of The Sims and all it's add-on balls!

DCS:FTW

[Arclight]

Originally Posted by Philipp_Thomsen

Why can't we have the graphical richness of the arcadish garbage in a decent simulator? It's a dying market.

Seen the flightsim section lately? Shots from Flight Simulator add-ons and DCS specifically: plenty pretty and it's doesn't get more "manly" than that.

Besides, why would we want them prettier? FSX and DCS are already fairly monstrous to run. Last thing we need is something even more demanding.


Dying? Hardly.

[Raptor1]

These complaints have been put forth about twelve trillion times. It is certainly true that the majority of mainstream games are made more 'accessible' (Which is the usual word for 'dumbed down') now, but there are still plenty of developers focusing on more complexity or realism.

For example, the DCS series (DCS: Black Shark released and DCS: A-10C Warthog, so far, with more being developed) are just about the most realistic commercial combat flight simulators ever made.

[Egan]

Originally Posted by Raptor1

These complaints have been put forth about twelve trillion times. It is certainly true that the majority of mainstream games are made more 'accessible' (Which is the usual word for 'dumbed down') now, but there are still plenty of developers focusing on more complexity or realism.

For example, the DCS series (DCS: Black Shark released and DCS: A-10C Warthog, so far, with more being developed) are just about the most realistic commercial combat flight simulators ever made.

Absolutely agree. The statement 'Sims are dying' seems to have become received wisdom over the last few years and it's simply not true. Air craft sims like the DCS titles, The various Strike Fighters titles, the IL2 follow up and (my personal favourite,) Rise of Flight, stuff like Steal Beasts, and tactical combat sims (Well, I think they are closer to sims than anything else available just now,) like the last two Combat Mission titles are not only beautiful but technically far more accomplished than the vast majority of sims released over the last couple of decades.

More will come too. We have a Falklands war sim still out there in development land, 777 studios will probably do a WW2 title to the same level as Rise of Flight. More DCS titles will come along. Hell, we might even get a new Falcon at some point. And there will be others that we don't even know about yet.

Far from dying, i think the genre is actually pretty healthy for what is essentially a niche interest group.

As for graphics. Well, I don't know about you but I think Rise of Flight is actually one of the most gorgeous sims I've ever played. Of course, it helps that it also the most visceral prop sim I've ever played as well....

[Blacklight]

It seems that it's modern naval, especially submarine sims that are dying out.

[Oberon]

Hard copy PC games shops are indeed in decline, if not already almost extinct. However all of the custom has gone online, in fact I haven't brought a PC game from a shop since last year, primarily because a) I haven't been to my nearest games shop [which is about 20 miles away] in a while, and b) because the games shops are now composed primarily of console games. However I have brought several games online, including through Steam.

Now, how you view Steam and buying and downloading games is varied. I must admit, I do prefer to have a hard copy, but that usually costs more money these days, which is a bit daft but I guess it's all about shipping charges and so forth. However...and this is going to bite me on the arse now that I've said it, I have yet to have any problem with Steam, Gamersgate or Good Old Games. Obviously there will be people who do have problems with them, but they should still be able to get their hard-copy games from places like Amazon and perhaps even ebay if they are willing to take the gamble on the quality of the product when it arrives.

So, the PC gaming is doing just fine. Even the niche industry is doing nicely with the Flightsim section seeing things like Rise of Flight, MS Flight, DCS and so forth being released. Then there's Indie producers like Mojang with Minecraft, and you still have the big hitters with Mass Effect 3, Deus Ex: HR (Human Resources?) and the inevitable Sims series which continues to be a top seller. If anything the PC gaming industry is doing better now than it ever has, because of the internet developers no longer need to look around so hard and pay stupid prices to Publishing companies, when they can just release it on the internet. Sure it will get a bit further with a big name behind it...but it will still be out there for people to play, whereas before the internet it would just go as far as a few friends who you can copy the disk to, or perhaps a bit further if a PC gaming magazine picked up on it.

TLDR? Rumours of the death of PC gaming have been greatly exaggerated

[Philipp_Thomsen]

This was all I needed.

Thanks guys, I feel more optimistic now. And thanks for all the flight-sim names, I will check them one by one.

Its still a shame about TopGun... I loved that game back in 1996 more than anything, and I would have loved again, if it was a decent sim. Any of these names mentioned are similar to TopGun? Like F-14's and landing on carriers and stuff? I'm not a big fan of futuristic stuff, I rather play between WW2 and 1990 scenarios. Long recon missions and... well... LONG MISSIONS! I love flying for hours, instead of being thrown in the middle of the action right away. But I don't really like the commercial flight simulators tho... the famous MS FSX, I played, and looks awesome and all, but really it's all about take-off and landing, everything in between is autopilot, not really what I enjoy. I love the take-off and the landing, but I need some action in between, doesn't matter if I have to fly for 3 hours to get there.

I keep reading news that PC games are dying, and many new games I would like to play are not coming for the PC, only consoles. I hate consoles. Modding is why PC games will always beat the crap out of console games. I do own a PS3 and I do play Gran Turismo 5 a lot, but still, I would rather a lot more if GT5 was a PC game.

All in all, thanks a lot of the cheering up, I do feel better.

But still, this generation of action-packed-games-fanatics pisses me off. Simulation FTW!

Not only flight sims, ANY sim. I would love a new train simulator. Last one I played was the one from microsoft, but graphics are too ugly for nowdays. I wanna make a good use of my G73.

Tycoon games are my second favorite. Any recommendation?

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Philipp_Thomsen

Companies are making games for KIDS, and screw the adults who likes simulators. What a waste of programming.

It's funny you should mention this. Just recently when playing Witcher 2 (yes, I know, not a sim and not the point of the thread, but still), I was wondering how these days some games try to be so adult-like and how it doesn't work at all.

My pet peeve is the "deep and philosophical" approach. I admit it, I'm a heretic: I thought Planescape Torment had a crappy plot full of holes. I never understood the comments praising the "masterful writing", the "awesome epic story" or the "deep and thought provoking dialogues". A good game, but I always found Baldur's Gate series much better. The same with Witcher series that are according to some people the pinnacle of philosophy.

The deepest thoughts I have ever found from any game go along the lines: "Life can be bad. But life can be good too! Sometimes you don't know if life is good or bad or a chocolate cake", followed with lots of angst. I just don't get the appeal. I haven't ever learned a single new thought from a game, nothing that had made me think about anything. And resurfacing memories from the high school days don't count as thinking.

Point being, I actually wish they still made games for kids, not kids who think they are adults. In my day the very first Super Mario Bros was the idea of a game. Pure and undiluted fun that worked. I find myself having less and less time for playing, so I'm more and more hoping a game would simply let me have fun and not try to shove stuff down my throat. Sims are exception: if I buy a sim, I know that I'm going to invest a lot of time into it. But they are the only one.

Thanks for the soapbox, you can have it back now.