Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

[MechDeus]

That's an interesting take. It seems as though the PC and consoles have become increasingly redundant as exclusives have dwindled, so are you more talking the 3DS/Vita/iOS devices?

Probably things like how decent JRPGs are spread as exclusives across 3DS, Vita, PS3, PC, and a couple on 360, while back in the day they would be on the SNES and Genesis and that was pretty much it.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

Well, 360 might as well not exist for me. I cant tell you the last time I turned it on to play a game. I want to say maybe Bulletstorm launch?
Ps3 is necessary for what few "hd" japan games there are and a few sony exclusives.
Wiiu is necessary for monhun done right.
Pc for all western stuff worth playing and indie games.
3/ds and psp/vita for the rest of japan's output.
I dont buy a lot of ios games anymore. I had a bunch before i even had an ios device, but touch controls can suck a dick 99% of the time. But i like quirk, and ios is the home of quirk.
My modest pc accounts for almost half of the cost, but counting only the stuff i use regularly, that's almost $2500 worth of hardware.
I am going to try like mad to limit myself this gen to what i currently own. It would take an Etrian Odyssey, Elminage, or Mega Man Legends 3 to get me to buy the new sony/microsoft systems.
There is no one system that I can own and feel like enough of my needs are being met. PS2 was the last one that did that. Of course, i owned cube and xbox, but only because i'm a nerd and not because i felt i must. Perhaps if the vita had more support and TV out...

[Glass Joe]

My problem with that argument is that the current generation just annihilates the 32-bit one, seemingly no matter what your tastes are.

In polish and horsepower alone. The 32-bit generation still had some of that magic from the 8 and 16-bit eras, not to mention the 3D gaming was fresh and new. It also had some pretty kick ass 2D games, something that doesn't exist these days. And save the 2.5D argument, they blow compared to true 2D.

[MechDeus]

It also had some pretty kick ass 2D games, something that doesn't exist these days.

Dustforce, Super Meat Boy, Giana Sisters, Super House of Dead Ninjas, Stealth Bastard, Monaco, Mark of the Ninja, They Bleed Pixels, La Mulana, Rayman Origins, etc.

There's at least as much quality material these days, it's just not what ends up on the covers of magazines.

[Korly]

There are more horror... genre games right now than maybe ever before at one time.

Uh, no.

Not more than the Xbox/PS2 era not no way, not no how.


There's Amnesia... and Slender... and...

You're not counting Dead Space are you?

[MechDeus]

There's Amnesia... and Slender... and...

Condemned 1&2, Home, Lone Survivor, Anna, Fibrillation, Alan Wake, Penumbra, Erie, etc. Upcoming includes DeadOut, Daylight, A Machine for Pigs, The Evil Within, Outlast, and that forest game that Yoshi was talking about a few days ago.

This reminded me I still haven't played Pathologic. I should rectify that.

[Finch]

You forgot The Witch's House and Yume Nikki.

Indie developers are fine, but it was nice when the big companies put some effort into the same games that it seems like only the indie developers care about these days. Sure, there's portable stuff, but that doesn't seem to be as strong as it once was. It's either Big Budget or Indie, and while there are surely some indie developers that work on more than a shoestring budget, it's not the same as say, Capcom releasing Breath of Fire IV, Square releasing Brave Fencer Musashi, or Namco releasing Katamari. Ubisoft has Rayman and sometimes they say they're working on Beyond Good and Evil 2, but those titles are few and far between. Those games that used to be big budget, but not big enough budget to destroy a company if they didn't sell 3 million copies in a month, seem to be getting rarer and rarer, and more confined to portables. And of course the portable market is often declared to be dying/dead. Bravely Default, a title that calls back to what Final Fantasy used to be, and Ace Attorney 5, a game in one of Capcom's most well-known series, are both risks because neither are going to sell the millions of copies that both companies want their games to sell in the US.
Of course there are good iOS games, and i'm all for touch-input games, but more often than not, iOS is the home of the quick buck, ESPECIALLY for the companies we used to expect such great material from. Maybe one day the current small developers will fill the role that the bigger developers filled before they all got too bloated for their britches, but we're not there yet.

[Korly]

Condemned 1&2, Home, Lone Survivor, Anna, Fibrillation, Alan Wake, Penumbra, Erie, etc. Upcoming includes DeadOut, Daylight, A Machine for Pigs, The Evil Within, Outlast, and that forest game that Yoshi was talking about a few days ago.

This reminded me I still haven't played Pathologic. I should rectify that.

I should play some of those.

Alan Wake was awesome, but I would call that an action game. I think it's a stretch to call Condemned a horror game also, but I liked both of those.

Is it too much to ask for a new, HD Fatal Frame?

As far as I'm concerned, the only scary game that came out on consoles this whole generation was Siren, and that was like 6 years ago.

[Glass Joe]

You forgot The Witch's House and Yume Nikki.

Indie developers are fine, but it was nice when the big companies put some effort into the same games that it seems like only the indie developers care about these days. Sure, there's portable stuff, but that doesn't seem to be as strong as it once was. It's either Big Budget or Indie, and while there are surely some indie developers that work on more than a shoestring budget, it's not the same as say, Capcom releasing Breath of Fire IV, Square releasing Brave Fencer Musashi, or Namco releasing Katamari. Ubisoft has Rayman and sometimes they say they're working on Beyond Good and Evil 2, but those titles are few and far between. Those games that used to be big budget, but not big enough budget to destroy a company if they didn't sell 3 million copies in a month, seem to be getting rarer and rarer, and more confined to portables. And of course the portable market is often declared to be dying/dead. Bravely Default, a title that calls back to what Final Fantasy used to be, and Ace Attorney 5, a game in one of Capcom's most well-known series, are both risks because neither are going to sell the millions of copies that both companies want their games to sell in the US.
Of course there are good iOS games, and i'm all for touch-input games, but more often than not, iOS is the home of the quick buck, ESPECIALLY for the companies we used to expect such great material from. Maybe one day the current small developers will fill the role that the bigger developers filled before they all got too bloated for their britches, but we're not there yet.

Exactly!

[Yoshi]

So if everything is big budget or indie...

• Binary Domain
• Bayonetta
• Catherine
• Demon's/Dark Souls
• Deadlight
• Hard Corps Uprising
• Mark of the Ninja
• PAYDAY
• Spec Ops: The Line
• Vanquish
• Ys x 3 and counting

...must not exist. And that's just from a very cursory look at non-portable games I own. Stop parroting the Mountain Dew and Doritos crowd and open your damn eyes.