Massive Games, Minimal Impact

At this point, I feel like the game industry is almost falling—or in other ways, it’s failing. There are only one or two worthy games for each console generation. For Nintendo Switch, the peak game is Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. If you want to play another Zelda-like game, you have to wait for years. I mean, that’s acceptable—the same developer can’t make a game like that again so soon. But why can’t others? At least Nintendo has some other strong titles like Mario Odyssey or Bayonetta 3. For me, it feels like they are the only company giving good content to the end consumer (though, yeah, they don’t reduce first-party game prices—that’s another story).

For Sony, even God of War: Ragnarok didn’t have that many innovative ideas; it felt more like an expansion. And Spider-Man 2? Mmmm…… I don’t think so. For those saying I’m giving credit to Tears of the Kingdom but not Spider-Man 2, here’s the thing: Spider-Man 2 didn’t have much exploration or fresh ideas to discover. If a game is going to be that large, there needs to be a reason. Its story also wasn’t that engaging. Just think about their previous-generation game stories—they were so much better.

Xbox? Sure, they have Game Pass, but what about their first-party games? Where are all the announced titles? It’s just silence.

Even third-party games, despite all the hard work and time they take, don’t bring new ideas. They follow the same path—sometimes way too closely—so the end product feels almost identical.

We need to think about the older times, back when technology was not at its peak. Games like WWE used to release unique titles in a for each console, with innovative storylines and modes. Compare that to WWE 2K24—apart from smooth gameplay, the story mode and exhibition mode are useless. Still, I can replay WWF No Mercy—how many hours can you really spend on WWE 2K23 or 2K22 before it feels repetitive?

A lot of games release every year. But back then, even with so many releases, each game had a purpose—something new to tell or show. Every GTA was enjoyable. Even smaller-scale games had so much packed into them. Racing games were genuinely fun back then.

Nowadays, games are tooooooooooo large—bloated with gaming hours, massive file sizes, high prices, and, worst of all, the disappointment they bring.

What do you think about this?