So far would you consider the 8th generation the worst gen of gaming?

@redhotchilimist: Does it really count just because it has a last gen port? I might give you P5, since it was built for PS3 and ported to PS4 pretty late into development, but I feel like if a game comes well into this generation and is not exclusive to last gen consoles then it is part of this generation.

I forgot what the game was called that did it, but there was that game that released a legitimate Sega Genesis port of their game within the last couple years. Does that make it a "5th gen" game?

I mean the "first" generation of home gaming gave us Space Invaders....and Pitfall...and not much else. I think it's kinda redundant to say 'such and such period is the worst in gaming history'. We already had a gaming crash in the 80s, so I guess you can consider that the worst generation until Nintendo came in.

I've been primarily a PC gamer for most of my life. Disregarding nostalgia, games are pretty damn amazing right now. I can go "I feel like *this* kind of game right now," and something will have been produced recently that scratches that itch.

Probably not but if you believe this I can see where you're coming from. This gen was incredibly slow at the start, and the original PS4 and XONE hardware didn't seem like much of an upgrade to last gen. I feel like the tech behind the Xbox One X is like the baseline for what this gen's hardware should've been from the start.

Nope. I have experienced each generation as it happened. For me, the order from worst to best would be: 2, 1, 6, 5, 8, 7, 3, 4. This doesn't mean that the 6th generation was terrible, but relatively speaking, I'd rank it below the rest for various reasons.

God no!

I think it's hard to know without inside info what's a last gen port and what's a current gen port with these crossgen games. Life is Strange ran terribly on the 360, so I sort of assumed that it was PS4 first. MGS V and GTA V can't possibly have been though meant for ps4 first though, they started development so long ago. Looking it up, the PS4 port of GTA V was a whole year later, so that's definitely not a current gen game primarily. But was Tales of Borderlands? I dunno. It's certainly not exclusive to the current gen either.

I don't think novelty ports count, though. But I'd say Star Fox 2 is a game from the Super Nintendo generation even though it releases this generation.

Arcade games were way more greedy than microtransactions and such are.

One of the best in my opinion.

Well for starters the best part of each generation is that all the previous generations still exist and you can go back and play them anytime (outside of online modes that shut down.) This generation definitely started out slow but this year has been pretty great so far. One of the reasons that the other generations seem so good is because they are over and you have their entire library to look over. By the end of the generation I don't have any reason to believe it won't be great.

Also I wouldn't say it's greed from the publishers that are driving the push towards microtransactions but rather the cost of game development constantly rising. Game prices have not risen in line with the cost of triple AAA development. So while small indie games can have small teams and achieve success with modest sales on small budgets, bigger games have giant budgets and need massive sales in order to make a profit. Microtransactions can give a game leeway and lower the sales needed for profit. If there is no profit, then there is no industry. That said, it's up to developers and publishers to balance microtransactions so that they don't detract too much from the game.

No the lack of new AAA IP'S this generation is bad I am old and grumpy though. :)

I'm not playing much of anything new because I feel they are shit so it leaves me reverting to mostly older games that have better gameplay. I still play some new AAA games I'm looking forward to the Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein 2, Red Dead 2 next year but this gen is still lacking from new innovation.

Max Payne 3 is amazing. I also hate this whole upgrade system and health regen in shooters these days I'll take a health pack anyday then taking cover and waiting for my health to regenerate.

Couldn't agree more Crysis doesn't get enough credit for it's great gameplay.

Yeah this is a good point but still with the tech we have today and resources I expect more quailty titles then rushed out broken games.

I see your point but I disagree remember this.

@jec03: Yeah, some games are nasty. But I did spent 100 bucks on arcade games in one day when I was a teen. Man, that was a bad choice.

Nope. This generation took a long time to get going for me, I've only had my systems for two years and didn't start using them on a daily basis until last year but I have fun every time I use them.

I just wish I had the free time I had 15 years ago with what is available today.

This year alone puts this generation of gaming ahead of some previous generations.

As Vinny would have us know! And I also agree.

Going back to the OP; I can see why you're disappointed. In the Triple A world there's been a lot of messes, and microtransactions do suck balls, particularly when not done right.

I'd recommend trying to play more indie games, so many great new games coming out that are super niche, making it easier than ever to find your perfect game. Move to PC gaming if you haven't already, so much awesomeness going on. Look at games like PUBG, practically starting new genres, to me very exciting.

And there have been a handful of Triple A games recently that I love; Overwatch, Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3 about all I can think of that I've been playing lately and loved.

Maybe you'll find yourself revitalized delving into indie games, just be careful with early access games. My experiences have been mostly great, but make sure you're managing your expectations and truly understand that those games aren't finished. Otherwise it can soil the experience of the game for you, some times it's better to give it a break till it's more developed, or hold the purchase till then or release; just make sure you inform yourself on the states of the games.

Lol sorry about the tangent there. Hope you manage to find yourself less disillusioned, and revive your hope in the industry.

Keep it real. ;)

Just considering a raw count of great games, nope. It's been great.

@odinsmana: Correct.

It's close to the worst but not the bottom. You really have to have blinders on to what is "popular" in gaming now to really get any enjoyment. Because what is the most popular? Bad mobile games with big money in mts. It's completely avoidable but all the big aaa companies have a stake in these games. I think more and more they are largely uninterested in making great ips anymore. Almost every big hit game has a couple off mobile games associated with it now. This generation saw the big side of the gaming industry double down on letting the consumer know that they are in it FOR THE MONEY. The worst is Nintendo by far but I'm not going to rage here about it,

Two of my favorite games of all time came out this gen which I didn't think possible anymore as I've played heavily since 1988.

This is also the best generation for every console having solid lineups and libraries. All previous generations have leaned towards one console having the best but I think that's up for debate this time around.

PC gaming has a huge resurgence which is awesome and the pc space is cranking really innovative games as well. The selection and pricing of gaming in the PC Space is a wonderful thing. You can get almost any game you can think of from the past very easily and for cheap!

I'd put this gen probably at around #5 overall.

I know it's subjective, but people saying this is the worst gen and the people saying this is the best gen seem equally crazy to me. There are some good games so it's not awful, but no game this gen is on the level as Last of Us, Mass Effect trilogy, Red Dead, and so on, so I don't know how this would be the best gen. Both sides seem too hyperbolic and lack perspective.

Not really. We had some really weird titles make it to AAA just this year. Allowed for impossible projects like divinity 2. Made games that evoked all the older generations AND made some older games available with improvements. It is probably one of the best.

I avoid most of the "bad stuff" you mentioned and still have more options than time.

Actually last gen took me out of video games pretty hard at a point... this one is bringing me back in... but slowly.

One of the best so far, last gen was immensely worse though it got better towards the end. Worst is almost certainly from pre SNES days.

Most games from the first couple of generations are too primitive to have much appeal now, so no.

While I haven't had a lot that's wowed me this gen, the sheer amount of quality games being made puts it ahead of a decent amount of generations, regardless of trends in the AAA space.

I think there were illusions of grandeur at the beginning, but 2017 has stepped it up. With Zelda, Overwatch, and smaller games like Metroid coming out, the generation is starting to get better.

However, the start was pretty horrendous. Besides a few titles, remember 2014?

People tend to only remember the highlights, but there was a lot of crappy shovel-ware on older consoles, all the way back to the 2600. This might also seem counterintuitive, given all the microtransactions, seasonpasses and so on, but if you take average income and inflation into account, this is the cheapest time to buy games. Games for the NES were not cheap, costing between $50-80, maybe more, in the 80s. They did standardize prices later on, but $50 in 1997 had more purchasing power than $60 today, and I seem to remember a lot of games costing $60 in the 2000s.

You may lament a certain lack of creativity in the big budget titles, but I can't think of a time with more diverse experiences than you find in the indie scene. And while the big budget games may not take many risks, at least there is a quality control far beyond what existed in previous generation, perhaps with exception of last gen.

You also have to keep in mind that we're in the middle of this generation. By this time in the previous generation, we had yet to receive Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, Dark Souls, Saints Row: The Third. Uncharted 2 would come next month and Batman last month. We still have a long way to go.

Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.

If I own 38 games on the Switch, a system which apparently has no games on it, then I guess the generation is doing something right.

Alos this generation killed the brown/grey colour pallett trend, that is something I can be eternally grateful for.

AAA is a budget thing not a quality thing, i think people should start venturing beyond that. That space is going to be filled with sequels and recycled mechanics because who is going to risk 100mil on a new idea?

I found out i really like strategy, 4x, and arpgs. Stuff i had barely dabbled in maybe 15 years ago. My fav games this gen probably haven't cost me over 60$ total, and probably dont even justify my 1080 system, or even my ps4 lol.

Since I think microtransactions and loot box style gambling-sold-to-all-ages sleaze might lead to the video game industry being given major regulatory oversight, I voted maybe.

The games are pretty good but I feel the business of games is in a bad place right now – though you can find examples in every generation that highlight various bad business practices and anti-consumer bullshit.

I'm happy to be the first person to take issue whenever someone says "This is the best time to play videogames, there's something for everyone!" because I feel like it ignores the weirder, more specific concoctions of games there are no replacement for today, and the people who loved those. It just smacks me of "What are you talking about - there's all kinds of shooters and cinematic story adventure games now, and they're not all brown! Something for everyone!" which just ignores the incredible broadness of the PS2-era. I really loved the early Sims console ports, there's nothing really like those since they stopped making them. I loved the specific kind of game that the Suikoden series was, and I've yet to find another game like it. I love the Front Mission games, and I've never found a suitable strategy game replacement for the kind of game it was. The kind of RTS I loved (Age of Empires - the slower more infrastructure-based gameplay) has completely evaporated, though there is some glimmer of hope with a new one in development now. There are a lot of other kind of games from that era that just never survived the transition to the much more expensive development cycles of this generation and the last. So someone telling me "everyone can be happy these days, there's games for everyone!" just hits a nerve.

However, even setting all that aside, I will always believe if you're not enjoying games these days, you're not trying hard enough. (Much more accurate pithy one-liner than "there's something for everyone!") There isn't every kind of game out there, but it is pretty close, and this year as well as last have been great years for games overall. This generation had a slow start, so if we were having this conversation in the middle of 2014 the tone of it might be totally different, but it really only had a slow start for two reasons.

1. The West has been kind of spoiled by roughly-simultaneously worldwide launches, because one of the irritating things people point to is usually those "Back of the PS2 system box showing all these amazing games from 2001" pictures, and one of the things that just makes that easier is that the damn thing came out more than 7 months prior to the American release in Japan, and another month on top of that for Europe. The original Playstation had nearly a full year between JP and NA launches. It wasn't until last generation that console launches closed those gaps pretty seriously. The consequence of this is that it takes a little longer, from the West's perspective, for the "big, new" games to come out once a new generation starts. The PS2 killed it early on in part because the developers on the JP side had most of a year's worth of a head start. This generation people got a roughly equal starting point, which was also slowed because:

2. For some reason some publishers legitimately thought consoles were dead and were scared off of investing in big development projects around the time the generational baton-pass happened. It's easy to laugh at now (and I was laughing at it then, slightly more angrily) but some people seriously thought dedicated games hardware was going away to be replaced by some sort of Apple dystopia where everyone just throws their controllers in the garbage and plays Dark Souls on their tablets or something. This is basically why 2014 was a weird dark year where not much actually happened, because it more or less represented the dry period in a lot of publisher funding cycles where games would've been coming out, but during the Wii-U launch period everyone thought because one console failed, literally every other one might as well, so they held back.

Since then though? This generation has been awesome, honestly, and with those caveats in mind I feel like it has done damn well. The success of the PS4 (and now, the success of the Switch) gave publishers and developers confidence in the dedicated-gaming market that they could take to their penny-pincher bosses and the ease of indie-devs to break into the scene with increasingly more substantial games that fill that big "middle-ground" place between Thomas Was Alone and Metal Gear Solid V has really made this generation so much more diverse and interesting than the last, for the most part. The crashing of some giants from the last gen (Bioware) stings, and I'd like more character-action games than we've gotten so far, but stepping back and looking at the whole picture, I'm really happy with the quality of games these days. Though the business itself leaves much to be desired.

Nothing but blind nostalgia could make someone think this was the WORST gen

Nah, its already better than last gen was imo. I do think theres some shitty trends going on atm with lootboxes, the need for compulsive progression\upgrade systems and stuff. BUT all concidered there are still multiple very enjoyable/interesting games coming out every goddamn week it seems. As someone with broad tastes (at least regarding videogames haha) Its just ridiculous.

I sometimes wonder if people who say this console generation is the worst are themselves (in life) in a worse place than last console generations. (even though I've read plenty of other reasonable reasons in here)

It's been great. Admittedly, I'm being more exposed to this generation than the previous ones. The last couple of years have been pretty strong, even if the industry is more buttoned down than it used to be.

Yeah, I mean...

Where are my beat 'em ups? (Streets of Rage 2. I want a 3D one.)

Where are my stylish third person shooters? (Max Payne)

Where are my time attack arcade games? (Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio)

Where are my linear third person stealth-action games? (Metal Gear Solid, I guess Splinter Cell)

Where are my 3D puzzle platformers? (Tomb Raider. The new games are shooters with some puzzles and simplistic, automated platforming axe climbing.)

Where are my 3D platformers?

Where are my hack and slash games? (Devil May Cry)

Something for everyone, my butt.

No, I wouldn't and I am definitely not with you on the greed aspect considering they used to charges upwards of 100 dollars for some broken ass 3 hour console games.

There are fantastic aspects of this generation, and there are awful aspects of it. The same is true for all previous generations.

From a personal perspective, eighth generation hasn't had as many standout hits as the seventh, which includes my golden age, and there are aspects of the industry and the culture that I hate. I'm also older and in a different place in my life than I was back then - I play way fewer action games and more strategy games, partly because I'm easily exhausted by action games which wasn't true when I was a teenager. All that aside, the negative stuff about this gen doesn't cancel out all the great things going on in games right now, and as I said, there was plenty wrong with gaming culture and the industry during seventh gen and earlier. I'm still having fun playing games, and although I'll sometimes spend more time playing older games than newer ones (not super old games, mostly 7th gen games), I'm still engaged with the medium, and don't regret buying my PS4 at all - Horizon: Zero Dawn was almost worth it by itself.

I disagree I would rather play Battlefield 2 a game that came out in 2005 compared to the new ones the gameplay to me is much more satisfy and tactical compared to BF1 arcadey style.

Not doubting that, I still play RDR about once a year and it is my all time favorite game. But saying my favorite game came out in a different gen isn't the same as saying that the current one is the WORST

I don't wanna play BF2 anymore. But I played BF2 and the demo for over a thousand hours. In comparison, I barely put any time into BF3 and 4. I don't like them.

I think it's a fine generation of games, but definitely the worst generation of gamers. It has been nonstop complaining.

This game has DRM. This game is always online. This game isn't 60 FPS. This game isn't 1080p. This game's FOV isn't exactly to my personal preference. This game's campaign is too short. This game's campaign is too long. This game is multiplayer only. This game doesn't have multiplayer. This game is cheaper now than it was when I bought it. This game isn't dropping in price after release quickly enough. This shouldn't be a full-priced game. This game has DLC. This game has microtransactions. This game has preorder bonuses. This game I put 400 hours in is a bad value. These new games aren't as good as older classics. There are too many remasters of older classics. This game isn't inclusive enough. This game is too inclusive. This game is too easy. This game is too hard. These consoles don't have enough power. These consoles are too expensive. These consoles don't have enough exclusives. That exclusive isn't on my platform. I don't like games in that genre. I got overhyped for a game, so I want a refund. I didn't pay attention to the pricing structure, so I want a refund. This game doesn't run perfectly on my system, so I want a refund.

The entitled whining is insufferable. (FWIW, I'm guilty of a few myself.) I swear, half of gamers enjoy complaining about games more than they do playing games. All in all, there have been some utterly amazing games that have come out this generation, games look better than ever, and there is a wide array of platform options to serve virtually all types of gamers, and we're not even in year four of this generation yet. We're spoiled. We don't have to be bratty.

@ezekiel: Paprium is coming out for sega megadrive/genesis next year, theres your new Streets of Rage ;P (obviously not 3d haha)

@hermes:

Quantum Break sucked. It SUCKED. It was barely a game. I deleted it after chapter 2.

I want a 3D beat 'em up like Streets of Rage 2, but Fight'N Rage looks interesting. Thanks.

I played Grow Home and didn't really care for it. It's indie and doesn't have the intricacy of something like Tomb Raider: Anniversary. AAA publishers don't wanna touch this genre anymore.

Yooka-Laylee was made purely for nostalgia, and it's not as charming or fun as the game it tries to recreate. The story was a mess. I didn't make it far, because the power went out in my neighborhood and the game only has one constantly auto-saving save file that corrupted itself. If the cutscenes were skippable, I'd be willing to give it another go sooner rather than later. You can't even switch to another window while the cutscenes play; they'll pause like in pretty much all modern games.

Will check out Hob and ICEY. Thanks.

FWIW, I never took Vinny's "it's the best time to be playing videogames" as he literally believes that games have never been better. It's more that games are supposed to be fun so let's have fun and keep it positive kinda thing. I dunno, it was always very tongue in cheek to me.

There's no shortage of annoying trends this gen (many of which started last gen, to be fair), and it took a while to get going, but overall, it's been pretty damn great. I do wish we had more new IPs and bold design decisions, but given how wildly expensive and risky AAA game development is, I understand and accept the need for safe sequels.

Plus, this is the generation of VR, which I still say is one of the coolest things in the history of the medium. I just hope it gets a chance to evolve beyond its admittedly shaky start and prove itself as more than a pricey fad.

ICEY is no devil may cry replacement gosh darnit. There are genres that it's definitely not the best time to be playing.

I've always taken this to mean that games today reach a much more broad and varied audience. It's an unfortunate side-effect that happens because the video game audience/market is becoming much more diverse and far-reaching, and far less homogeneous and single-minded. It's actually a sign of evolution for the industry on the whole even though you may have to try to detune from some of the conversations surrounding it in order to protect your sanity.

The same thing happens to pretty much anything that starts to break through to a wider audience.

Gang Beasts

Redeemer

Double Dragon: Neon

Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX+

TrackMania: Turbo

Styx: Shards of Darkness

Aragami

Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power

Ty: The Tasmanian Tiger 2

Super Mario Odyssey

Yeah, learning that people get frustrated that he says that is... frustrating. It's not just about the games that are coming out, even though those are also great. It's also, like... I dunno. You can tell your coworkers that you bought a Switch and they'll not only know what you're talking about, they'll also think it's cool and not immediately think you're a weirdo. Nerd culture is the cool thing right now, so part of the reason it's the best time to be playing video games is because there's a lot less judgement directed towards it. The rise of nerd culture has obviously come with some pretty terrible stuff, too, but if you play games and are not an asshole, the world generally treats you better than it used to.

No the worst generation was last generation! This is the best time to be playing video games.