What sort of gaming products that are currently on it's dark age? (As of June 19th, 2022)

Dear gamers in the Giant Bomb forums

Well, not long ago, when I was browsing on Twitter, then I saw one of Gran Turismo's eSports players has posted about Gran Turismo 7's current state which appears to be incomplete and in the dark age, so for me, this game could have been released by fall 2022 and launched without online DRM and overpriced MTX to make it so much more enjoyable. Not to mention that in GT7, there are still quite a lot of toxic racers as they antagonize others by ramming into them during the online mode, players cannot sell their virtual cars, having unbalanced BOP during its early days and the A.I opponent-wise is still similar to Ridge Racer and Daytona USA series, well hopefully GT7 will get fixed by December 23rd, 2022.

Meanwhile, the Battlefield franchise is currently stuck in the dark age as DICE appears to be abandoning Battlefield 2042's future updates in favour to develop on their other projects, unfortunately.

So I would like to see you guys share your thoughts on this generation of the video game industry.

I'm not really a fan of the genre, but I never see anyone talk about modern RTSs anymore. Company of Heroes is getting a sequel sometime soon and Iron Harvest came and went a little while ago, but I can't really think of anything else? Total War: Warhammer III came out in early access and that Dune: Spice Wars thing is releasing, but if you're hankering for a new Command and Conquer/Starcraft/whatever type thing, there really doesn't seem to be much available for you right now. And Warhammer III/Dune: Spice Wars aren't really RTS games in the same sense.

Blobbers - as in, first person dungeon crawlers where your party moves along tiles like Eye of the Beholder - had a very brief renewal with Legend of Grimrock but the genre died again almost as soon as it got started. Despite being probably the best of its genre, Grimrock 2 didn't seem to sell anywhere near as well as its predecessor, nor did it generate much discussion at all (aside: Do you like exploration? Environmental puzzle solving? Colorful environments? Leveling up? Finding treasure? Go play Grimrock 2). Vaporum got a sequel but there doesn't seem to be much else of note happening in that genre these days.

Sadly, Soul Calibur abd Dead or Alive seem to be in a dark age. DoA kinda makes sense. The most recent one launched missing expected modes, and gotcha game levels of dlc. Soul Calibur though, is a more tragic story. SC6 is the best selling game in the series, but Namco has higher expectations these days, and it didn't live up to them.

Tekken seems to be the only 3D fighting game that is still active.

@judaspete: @justin258:

I feel very sorry for your beloved video game IPs/franchises that went into their dark ages but hopefully, they will get fixed by their respective developers about a couple of years later.

I was always into godgames. Populous, Black & White, GODUS.. hah, not that last one.

But yeah, would be cool to see something happen in that space again. I want to throw rocks at cities and terraform terrain!

I'm also down for a new historical citybuilder in the vein of Pharaoh, Zeus or Emperor. Nebuchadnezzar is exactly that, and i should check it out, but i would also like to see someone try to make a truly modern one of those instead of emulating the past.

@gtxforza I'm surprised you went straight for the throat with your GT pick when the Ridge Racer franchise has seen far less movement. Outside of racing, I am hopeful that the rumors of From working on a new Armored Core game are true. Speaking of mech games that I liked as a kid, while I appreciate Front Mission getting a remake, I would also take a proper modernized entry in the franchise in a heartbeat.

With only mild intent to be facetious, strand games sure have gone dark (Death Stranding re-release notwithstanding). Not sure that's taken off in the way Kojima hoped.

I'm fortunate in that all of my favourite genres see frequent support. Maybe metroidvanias will fall out of vogue again soon and then I'll understand the plight, but until then it's practically full rennaisance for me.

@onemanarmyy: It's a decade old now, but if you never played From Dust, it's worth a go!

Oops, I forgot to mention the Ridge Racer franchise, my bad, so I'm still waiting for a new installment to come out and the last one was Ridge Racer Draw & Drift for mobile phones, which feels more like playing with Magic Inductive Toy Cars and Slot Cars rather than the actual Ridge Racer's gameplay style.

For Ridge Racer on PS Vita, this is the installment that made this franchise go into the dark age, due to its bad developer (Cellius).

Oh if a new Armored Core gets announced, then I hope they won't ruin it.

Edit: On the other hand, Simbin/Sector3 Studios' GTR 3, still appears to be stuck in development hell while they keep focusing to add new content for RaceRoom Racing Experience instead.

I say railgun shooters are an example. The last good ones where the Panzer Dragoon games by Sega, but the genre as a whole used to be quite popular during the golden age of the arcades. And you even had decent console games like Elemental Gearbot as an example. I think you have some VR railgun shooters, but there bare bones and done as proof of the VR concept more than a serious gaming experience. A current gen Panzer Dragoon is well overdue.

Not to mention, the arcades appear to be less popular in Western countries compared to Asia.

@av_gamer: There are current gen remakes of the old Sega stuff in progress. So far PD and HOtD.

Dungeon keeper.

I know there's a spiritual successor in Dungeons, and a few others, but I havee found them mostly to be not great. I can still load up DK2 tho and have a good time. The original games just had something that the recent attempts can't capture, and I honestly don't know what that is.

Actually buying hardware.

Additional gaming products:

Forza Motorsport 7 was in the dark age for having several flaws which it had loot boxes, bugs on some 3D car models (During the early days of its lifespan), the storefront got ditched, car clubs disappeared, a poor lighting model, unbalanced BOP, and some cars don't have very accurate handling compared to their real-world counterparts plus having so many toxic racers appearing in online races as they love to ram onto others plus the driving model/handling was supposed to be overhauled, but cancelled in favor to develop Forza Motorsport Reboot instead, so hopefully it can save the franchise.

FIFA (EA Sports published series) received so many complaints about having overpriced MTX, the pro clubs didn't receive updates and various broken features.

@justin258:I'm just hoping that new game from the ex-Blizzard people will be good.

@onemanarmyy: Does Dwarf Fortress count as a god game? I've always counted it as one. Same for it sating my Dungeon Keeper hankering. The saddest thing is that seems like every month there's a new god game on Kickstarter and/or upcoming on Steam and none of them ever really end up being any good.

Having played them all, and then immediately followed them with Great Ace Chronicles, I kinda hope they remain unreleased on other platforms...

@retris: hmm.. i guess you could technically see management games like Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld or Prison Architect as god-games, but for me personally a game has to give you supernatural or elemental powers to play with for a game to truly feel like a God-game of yore.

Sports games, though you'd never know it based on release schedules and annual income. Most of these games' last major innovations came back in the PS3/360 generation (quiet as kept, even Ultimate Team modes in some form are nearing 20 years old this decade) and even longtime, trusted reporters like Owen S. Good at Polygon can be convinced to write a series of previews hinging on "innovations" like gang tackling that's "best illustrated when a lineman stands up a running back at the line of scrimmage and slows him long enough for a defensive back to swoop in finish him off from the side" that you can watch players share highlights from Madden NFL 16 (or 2010, for that matter) only to complain about the lack of them in Madden NFL 19. This is a classic canard for the Madden series in particular, of course, but the disease infects other franchises in other ways: NBA 2K has become so complicated and specific in its control schemes in the decade since 2K11 that it's practically a full time job just remembering how to dribble-drive, while MLB The Show has mostly looked and played exactly the same since the PS3 era (granted, how much can you really innovate upon a 200 year old sport that your game has already pretty well figured out how to represent?) and the hockey game, well, I'll let Bakalar handle that one.

And it might just be that these games really don't have anywhere to go but where they already are. I'm a self-confessed addict of one of their ultimate team modes, Diamond Dynasty, and in a world where 2K Sports had the same vision for player satisfaction that San Diego Studios does NBA 2K's MyTeam would be the only game mode, let alone game, I'd ever need in my life! There's plenty to complain about in terms of CPU logic, gameplay balance and whatnot when it comes to the various franchise modes, and probably plenty these companies could do to increase immersion (like when Madden 2005 had an actual, AI-assisted radio show that reacted to each week of the season, had call-in segments from players and coaches and could take four or five seasons to repeat...again, that was in 2004!) but why bother when the biggest, most complicated game mode this genre can offer is also by far the least played outside the true novelty sideshows?

Pile on top of all that that nearly every sports has been effectively if not actually monopolized - San Diego Studios makes baseball, Tiburon makes football, EA Vancouver makes soccer and hockey and Visual Concepts makes basketball - and it results in a genre that's irresistible to almost any passionate sports fan who also plays video games yet is more than content to be packaged as comfort food again and again rather than continue to innovate the way they did so exponentially through the 16-bit, 32-bit and HD eras. It's so sad.

You already mentioned it but it bears repeating that Battlefield is 100% lost in the woods. And based on the choices still being made by the devs it is feasting on poisonous mushrooms.

I know BFV underperformed and has it's detractors but the core of it was a very good game. Just with an anemeic live service and totally misguided attempt at a BR mode.

2042 is genuinely the worst Battlefield game I have ever played AND has an even more anaemic live service.

The devs keep posting about how they are working hard and even some interview with Eurogamer claimed it had a big team but I fully believe it's a weekend at Bernie's situation.

I can only hope that another developer has a crack at the formula in a way that succeeds because DICE has clearly lost it's way.

Yeah, I think soem developers and their publisher are stuck in teh mindset of "If we don't make as much monye as possible on this game we should not do it."

That just means a better, simpler, less nickel & dime way of making the same game is never considered. For Battlefiled I think they just need to get back to basics and keep their updates basic. I don't need 64 v 64 matches. I don't need flashy mechanics and choice overkill.

Choice Overkill is where nobody is one one class or even two classes...they are every class they are stealth rifleman using a sniper-rifle while parachuting out of a F35.....what? Bring back the five classes: Infantry: Scout, Assault, Anti-Tank, Medic, or Engineer. And the classes should have rock/paper/scissors abilities where the class has a good advantage offset but a disadvantage in abilities.

One of the reasons Chess works, is the United Chess Federation doesn't change the rules of what a "Bishop" can do every few weeks! The abilities and how they whole system works is made to be functional, fair and flexible. That maps, the routes and terrain on the map, and the available equipment should be what CHANGES and adds spice - not teh classes or their abilities.

It feels like third-person shooters are in a weird spot. I mean there's Fortnite which is kind of its own thing, Gears 5 and Control were neat...but what else is there? I kinda get that they were so the thing at the end of the 360 era/start of the last generation and it's to be expected that developers backed off from that high, but it's weird nonetheless.

To illustrate, there only 3rd person shooter in the steam player charts top 50 right now is Warframe (I think? Maybe I missed one) The first one I noticed on the steam top sellers list is Guardians of the Galaxy, and there isn't really much on the Xbox top played either (The first one other than Fortnite is...Sniper Elite 5, at the absolute last position on the page). My playstation isn't hooked up but I'm sure the picture is not too different there either. Maybe I missed one, but if you are a fan of the genre (I like the good ones, I guess?) you're basically waiting a year between releases.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of obvious ones, and maybe this is just a return to the norm. Conversely, the FPS genre might actually be the healthiest it's been in 20 years. There's a notable shooter coming out like every other week, and tons of classics are getting remasters.