Don't see how you would and I agree.

I play new and old games.

I'm not sure if I'd call modern games terrible, but they just generally don't appeal to me. Take FPS games for example. I'm actually still fond of the classic "maze with keys, switches and secret areas" level design of old FPS games, and they simply don't make FPS titles like that anymore. You just seem to be funneled, in linear fashion, from one area to the next. The sense of exploration is completely missing in most modern FPS games.

Furthermore, many of them are featuring less and less involved single-player campaigns, as so many FPS fans simply play FPS games for the multiplayer. I still have yet to find an online shooter that I enjoy, so this change in focus leaves me out in the cold.

Then there's action games. I enjoy simple action titles: kill the bad guys, try not to get beat up too bad, pick up some weapons and items along the way, maybe make some platform jumps. They don't make these kinds of games anymore either. Thanks to stuff like Devil May Cry and the new Castlevania titles, now there are always RPG elements--having to build up experience points and money to unlock new skills and weapons--and often complicated combat systems, too, where you have to memorize a bunch of combos. Just give me a jump button and an attack button and let's get to it.

And then modern RPG's are just unplayable. Who has time for these 100-hour grindfests, anyway?

This is why I spend most of my time just playing mods for games I already own. Buying new games is generally a waste of money, since game developers no longer have any interest in appealing to me. I am no longer the target audience.

Someone probably pointed this out already but today's high-priced, buggy, hardware-taxing game will be on GOG or elsewhere in 5 years for $5-15. So I'll play today's new stuff then. : ) Same fun, just several years later, right?

How dare you be that sensible. YOU'RE MISSING OUT IF YOU DON'T PLAY THE GAME RIGHT NOW (even though you'll get it at a much better price if you wait, and possibly with update patches).

I don't necessarily hate new games. There are some things I dislike a lot, but the same thing would be true if I saw them in old games:

1. DRM
2. Released in beta state
3. No printed manual and even the PDF manual is often complete junk, which just screams CHEAP-OUT and NO, WE DON'T WANT TO PAY A TINY AMOUNT EXTRA TO DO IT RIGHT
4. Little to no extra things like posters and cards with commands and build-orders, or "atmospherics" like the diaries of the characters involved, etc.
5. Released without promised features, especially networking and online
6. Everything has to always be FPS now
7. Short (sometimes VERY short) play-through time
8. Limited strategic options (compare the original Everquest to WOW, for example)
9. Small scale and general "you gotta fiddle a lot to do anything" nature of RTS's -- You control a squad rather than an army, and when you want them to fight, you have to click back and forth on single characters in the squad to select their weapons and actions so much that you lose the sense of being a general rather than a typist. When I played Total Annihilation and Age of Empires and Command and Conquer, by contrast, I felt like I was leading armies, not digging through a soldier's pocket sorting shells.
10. Interfaces frozen in time -- Limited number of commands, especially that control movement and organize groups, in RTS's

Well... no.

http://www.slate.com/id/2252141/pagenum/all/#p2

From that link: "If you simply look at broadband "penetration"—a measure of broadband subscribers relative to the population—the U.S. is ranked 15th by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, with 27 broadband subscribers per 100 people."

The article goes on to make more distinctions about the numbers and to look at international pricing models.

The point is, however, that many people do not have broadband access and that the access we do have is subpar compared to many European and Pacific Rim standards.

Further, while you are very correct that multiplayer gaming is a big focus (and that doesn't just mean Team Fortress and Call of Duty... but also casual games like Farmville and newer Sims titles). In fact, it should be. Social interaction is a very important part of most of our lives and I know that I enjoy multiplayer gaming far more than hiding away in my office for days on end in a lonely quest for treasure.

But, even when you look at single player games, I think Fallout 3 and New Vegas stand out in particular as games where no shortcuts were taken in the single player focus, and their sales support the notion that many gamers agree. And while you can point to many titles, especially RPGs, that fall short of past standards (and I say Dragon Age is one such title, but I'm sure many disagree), they have no multiplayer component so you can't really argue that a multiplayer focus deluded the single player quality.

I hate to boil it down so simply but some games are great, some are just okay, and some suck (Kane and Lynch?)

Story driven games are pretty rare even among story driven games... and if you think about, aside from totally abstract games like Tetris or Pac-Man, almost every game is story driven. Serious Sam is story driven. It's driven by a really loose and uninteresting story that defies all logic and reason and has no interesting dramatic elements, but you get to kill a shitload of stuff so maybe that's okay.

But frankly, I think a lot of (many, not all... maybe not most, sometimes most, but you know, not always) gamers are really forgiving of the B-movie quality stories that form the foundations of most games because they A) aren't really applying thoughtful critical analysis (and usually, I don't blame them), B) don't have the same expectations of a game that they do from a book or movie, C) often don't really have a solid understanding of story structure in the first place (many people liked the Transformers movies, after all), and D) are happy to be a character and do things (which is a good reason, really).

Gaming's true virtue isn't storytelling. It is its ability to create a setting and provide a platform through which you define your own story and build your own character.

I do agree that many titles are too short. But many genres died out because they failed to remain relevant as the capabilities evolved. I hated Myst. I'm happy to never see a game like that again. I'm sure some folks loved it, and honestly, there are still a few titles available... though I can't rightly name one :-)

Still... to recall Fallout again... seems like those titles are plenty filled with content. I know I get a lot of hours from GTA and RDR. And Civ 5 (or Civ 4, or Civ 3, or Civ 2, or SMAC) still gets a lot of play on my PC. I've only played 125 hours of Civ 5, and that is three to six times longer than most games are realistically good for (on average, at least).

I think many of your points do apply to some games, though. I'm looking at you Starcraft 2.

I really don't know what you mean. There was never really a lot of imagination to be used in Doom or Wolfenstein (by the way, when you spell check Wolfenstein it wants to replace it with Riefenstahl or Frankenstein, depending on whether or not you mix up the ie or ei). In fact, the last part of your point just sounds like the argument bibliophiles make when they want to sound superior to people who love movies.

But to the first point... graphics are amazing, and should be... and now that hardware is so advanced, maybe developers can take a break from pushing the eye candy limits and start experimenting with new game mechanics.

Crysis 2 (no matter what you think of the game itself) got it right by focusing on the PC platform, but ensuring the engine be flexible and above all, highly scalable, so they could present the best possible presentation regardless of platform.

And frankly, when I look at games like (third reference) Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I actually would enjoy better graphics. The environs are fine, generally, and the characters look... okay... but I always have the feeling that there aren't a single pair of feet on any NPC that actually touch the ground.

It will get uncanny when I look at a game and not realize its a game.

By the way... I stumbled over Yatzee's 2009 review of Wolfenstein... It is in limerick form :-)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/916-Wolfenstein