Are Old Games Better?

Has gaming gone downhill, or are our expectations raised?

Common opinion dictates that games, especially those in large franchises like Halo and Call of Duty, are slowly declining in quality, due to stripping out beloved features or simply stagnating over time due to a lack of innovation. At the same time, these games continue to receive outstanding scores and critical acclaim, but what do they do in order to deserve it?

In comparison to another fairly new title, The Last of Us, it’s difficult to see why these predictable games achieved the scores that they did. While The Last of Us may have a fairly generic concept, that of a zombie-apocalypse based story and third-person shooting mechanics, it brings enough new features in order to stand out and appear like a desert island in an ocean of over-saturated and unoriginal ideas.

Despite its originality, compare The Last of Us to any game within the same genre and they could appear remarkably similar. Factually, it could be compared to a game such as Resident Evil, as they are both third-person, zombie orientated shooting games. One however is an original idea, whereas the other is long established franchise of action-horror games. The original Resident Evil averaged around 8/10 across the many platforms it was released, whereas the most recent edition, Resident Evil 6 which was released last year, averaged around 7/10. At first glance, it would therefore appear that older games seemed to receive better critique.

However, take a look at games which launched years ago with amazing reviews. The Half-Life series for example has remained a consistently strong franchise throughout its creation, with each game receiving high scores. The same can be said for the Far Cry series, along with Crysis, both of which have gained positive reviews throughout each iteration.

Maybe some modern games actually do deserve the acclaim they get, even those that are part of a long standing franchise. Grand Theft Auto 4, currently the latest game in the controversial series of games was received by essentially everyone and their uncle as being the greatest game of the current console generation. Yet when seen beside its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the latest game seems restricted in almost every aspect. The playable world is smaller, there are fewer weapons and vehicles, the character customisation is restricted, but the game received an array of perfect scores.

Bioshock: Infinite, another recent title was praised similarly, yet simply doused the game with a new coat of paint, using a different world and story with little to any new mechanics. The same system of using weaponry and powers was still in place, and the levels were just as linear as any other modern shooting game. Little innovation has occurred, but the game was still shrouded in critical acclaim.

If you look at the scores, it’s hard to deny that there are no great games out there. But if you look at the matter from an independent perspective, you could easily think otherwise. Personally, I think that some games that lack innovation are certainly overrated, but keep in mind that we do get brand new ground-breaking titles too, although it might seem that way, we are not in a gaming world of repetitive copy and paste franchises.

I don’t think gaming is going downhill, I just think that good games tend to be missed. To those who think that the world of video games is approaching an inevitable spiral of which it can’t escape, please, wake up. This isn’t 1995, and although game mechanics might have changed, quality certainly has not.