Are games getting better, or reviewers getting more generous?

[AsparagusTrevor]

Well that's nothing new. Remember the "1000 games on one disk" you used to get in Currys?

Wow, it even included that rare and valuable item of the 90's, a free trial of AOL.

[Consignia]

I'm pretty sure all the "games" were just the shareware versions. You could probably get all you wanted from the front of PC gamer or off a group in CompuServe.

[bgmnts]

I have been trying to get back into Final Fantasy XV again and fucking hell its one of the most abysmally dire games I have ever played. And yet it got incredible reviews.

So I really dont know.

[Bhazor]

Yeah FF XV is good but in a very specific way. Its ass in most ways but if you want to spend 40+ hours baby sitting N-Sync then boy do I have the game for you.

[asids]

I think games are also becoming more homogeneous because of these advances. There's no real difference between Tomb Raider or Uncharted or AC or Batman or Mad Max or Shadow of Mordor or one of many 3rd person action games. The characters all control in the same sluggish 'realistic' way, like you've got concussion, as the camera lurches around a focal point and where animations are interrupted at the player's convenience. Objects all interact in the same way (everything is made of plastic) and combat is identical, devoid of skill but designed to make the player feel they're doing something impressive. The only difference is that Naughty Dog have better graphic designers and invest more into the characters and production values. The rest are landfill, flickbooks of the current technological standard but completely forgettable.

I agree with this, but I'd say homogenised copycat games that follow trends have always been about, but change throughout the years. For example, during the mid-to-late 2000s you couldn't get away from dull FPS games which tried to take cues from the likes of Call of Duty. Then we have the barrage of (typically non-linear or open-world) third-person action games as you mentioned. Now in 2018 it seems like everyone wants their go at "battle royale" games off the success of PUBG and Fortnite. I don't think it's the technology being used for the sake of it so much as focus group bullshit which plagues the industry because every publisher believes that they can just take whatever seems popular now and put their own spin on it and rake in the cash from it.

As far as the original question goes - I honestly don't keep up to date with every big modern release, I don't have the money for it and so am usually a year or two behind with this stuff, but I don't think games are getting better in any significant way than they were in the past. They're bigger and more expansive yes, but not necessarily better for that. One of my major peeves with mainstream AAA gaming of now is the amount of padding and other unnecessary bullshit you have to plough through just to get to the main meat of the gameplay. Everything needs to be these vast open-worlds that look shiny and nice but are actually quite thin and uninteresting, and the devs want to make sure you have to traverse all of it just so you can get to get to the interesting gameplay. Then cunts online will go "well I got 60 hours out of it, good value for money!" despite the fact half of that was travelling the map or doing some tedious unchallenging nonsense and the reviewers seemingly lap this logic up.

In their minds it seems to be an unambitious but competent game should deserve more praise than an ambitious but slightly messy game, whereas taking into consideration the way the game industry is in 2018, it should be the other way around. With the massive budgets they have these days, it's easier than it ever has been to make a game that is at least competent if you have a solid blueprint of other similar games which you can take from. It's a much more challenging process to make a competent game if the ideas you have are creative and untested, but reviewers would seemingly deride devs who try this for at least making a go of it.