The Truth About Modern Gaming

The truth about modern gaming is that, at its heart, it is nothing more than a rehash of much older ideas. Some of the best games ever created are decades old in comparison, yet people still want to play them at times. If this were not the case ROMs and emulation would not be as popular. I sincerely doubt that people create ROMs and ISOs solely to back-up a game they own, even ancient games from the Atari and NES era.

The modern gamer's paradox is that older games often had more substance and much higher levels of difficulty compared to the current fare. However, their graphical capacities are sorely outdated when they are compared to modern design capacity. The older games seemed to take more chances and even utilized tongue-in-cheek stabs at political correctness that either amused or abhorred people. Who can forget the number of censored games that came to the United States and other western countries? Often the original versions had much more daring cover art and the games had darker, or more disturbing, elements.  Nintendo, for instance, was notorious for its censorship. One example was the decision to remove a gay bar from ENIX's 1992 release of Dragon Quest/Warrior III among other changes. The decision to remove ritual murders and the ability to choose a male or female bed mate in the Buccaneer Island area was also changed in Ultima VII.

While many of the modern games and game companies allow far more violence and disturbing imagery, most are not doing anything that can be considered new in the world of gaming. They simply have the option to showcase what many developers desired to do all along. The main difference for modern gamer's is that they have better game play experiences due to advanced consoles and computer systems. The graphics and sound for most games created currently are far superior to anything created even seven years ago.

However, despite how much the graphics and sound have improved, many current games do not have the overall depth that old school games portrayed. Developers cram so many bells and whistles into current games that they often lack logical consistency and even more frequently they release games that have exceptional glaring errors far in excess of most older games.

Therein lies the Paradox. Is it better to play an older game with dated, if occasionally beautiful, sprite based graphics and limited options, or a modern game with dozens, if not hundreds of options and a massive graphical and sound upgrade? Which is a better game, Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy XIII? I have my personal opinion, and I'd think that most who have played these two games will have a similar one.