Quote Originally Posted by Blodrast
I So now coming to the "was there ever a `good ole days` period ?", I'm not sure that's very easy to answer, but I'll tell you this: 90% of the games I keep replaying and re-replaying are more than 5-6 years old. I'll prove it: I keep replaying Heroes of Might and Magic (III, mostly, with its 3 expansions), UFO 1, UFO 2, Master of Orion, Panzer General I, even Castles 2, and the list could go on. I recently found a Windows version of the grandaddy of FPS games, Wolfenstein 3D ... and I started replaying it, of course.
When I finally switched from my beloved old Amiga to a PC in 2000, I was *so* looking forward to getting my hands on some of those wild, state of the art PC games I'd read so much about.

And man, have I been disappointed. I must have bought fifty PC games in the last five years and NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM provides a real, nailbiting challenge. Yet I've played dozens of terrific, simple little games on my Amiga that were really hard to beat. Like Cannon Fodder for example. I got hold of a little public domain game called Wizzy's Quest, and man, that game kept me going compulsively for weeks! Or brilliant puzzle games like Elvira Jaws of Cerberus. And it may have only been 2D, but I still count the graphics in that game as among the best I have seen on a computer game. You got your money's worth from adventure games like King's Quest and Temple of Doom too. And I had fantastic fun playing the PD games Hack and Larn, for months on end.

And the other thing you might notice about those games I mentioned, is the variety of format. Platformers, sprite based shoot-em-ups, puzzle and adventure games, etc etc. If I walk into a PC store practically all I can see are firstperson 3D'ers and massive multiplayers like Counterstrike. Battlefield '42 etc. PC game designers seem obsessed with creating these 3D worlds, and I don't find them all that compelling.

In fact I've pretty much given up hope of getting a really challenging game for the PC. I've become persuaded that the designers of PC games deliberately don't make them too hard so any schmuck can beat them. But I'm really tired of walking through games with minimal effort, it's such a bore.

So anyhow, I still have my Amiga 1200, and right now I'm shoehorning it into a tower case so I can go back and play some games with real challenge in them!

Quote Originally Posted by Blodrast
While I agree that building a decent AI takes a lot of time, I personally would be a lot happier if people took a chunk of the time they spent rendering all the nice buildings and coding the shaders or lighting or the engine to do all that, and put it into the AI and balance instead.
Yes, please.

Quote Originally Posted by Blodrast
I'm probably being bitter now, but anyway it is important to make a distinction here. It is most likely not the programmers who are to blame here. Most game companies are, firstly, companies. Which means a big fat hierarchy, with a whole lot of bureaucracy. The programmers are just a little part of that thing. And some of them do give their best and try to make a really cool game, and do care about what people think (CA programmers included, but they are not the only ones). Kudos to them.
I sometimes feel guilty about slagging off games like RTW. It's been four years in development and I spend most of the time picking holes in it.

I know programming is really tough because I've done a bit of it, I know what hard work it is so I hate to criticize the finished product. But I'm just so disappointed at the lack of game depth, particularly when the earlier games had more of it. You'd think that after four years they could have spent a bit more time on game balance and gameplay, but it appears almost as though those aspects have been attended to at the last minute as a sort of afterthought.

So on the one hand I want to praise them for all the hard work they've obviously put into the game, on the other hand I just feel so frustrated that the end result is yet another PC game that is lacking in challenge.