What's with games today?

[kohl]

When I started playing games everything seemed so open. On Xbox you had Morrowind. A vast world where you could do pretty much all you wanted. If I wanted a fire ball that could lock a door it can be made. GTA had a huge amount of side games to play around with. The new games look really nice but there just doesn't seem to have the essential factor that someone just wants to play a game and have fun. I'm mostly trying to aim my rant at Hitman: Absolution. What happened there? Where's the fun in being able to take over an entire map and just mess around to have fun.

Tips for developers:
The cover system worked good for Winback and Metal Gear Solid, but just adding a crouch button works way better.
Stop with the regenerating health and just add medkits to the game.
Headshots should be one hit kill.

[Alloud]

Games this generation are trying to be more cinematic and movie like, this in turn leads to highly linear gameplay i.e. Call of Duty, Final Fantasy XIII. While I still think it's a damn fun ride, sometimes it is nice to do something other than a roller coaster every now and then.

Games like Dead Rising and Saints Row still have a sandbox feel, and most WRPG's are based around open-world exploration (Mass Effect, Fallout, Borderlands, Oblivion).

[xeneros]

I disagree about them becoming more linear. This year especially has been, and will be very good for more open games. Deus Ex: Human Revolution, though it had a linear story to some extent was fairly open in a lot of it, Skyrim comes out this year, as does Skyward Sword. I hear RAGE was open... The Witcher 2 is really good. So yeah.. aside from like... duke nukem and other shooters this year I say is the exact opposite.

[Alloud]

Well, you say aside from other shooters, this generation has been saturated with shooters/action games. FPS'es are this generation's major gaming trend, just as platformers were for the NES, RPGs for the SNES and 3D adventure games on the N64.

Keep in mind I did point out Western RPGs are based around open world exploration d: (So Deus Ex, Witcher 2 and RAGE (sorta) would fall in there). I do agree that games like Mass Effect wouldn't have been plausible on older gen. hardware with its huge dialog trees, so WRPGs are the main driving force behind open-world games today and there seem to be quite a few good ones coming out.

Obviously I'm not saying every game this gen. is linear, it's just a trend based on the most popular console games: Gears of War, Halo, Uncharted, Call of Duty, Metal Gear Solid, God of War, Devil May Cry, Heavy Rain, Resident Evil and Final Fantasy (hopefully just XIII ;-; ), all of them are relying on scripted cut-scenes because they know where you're going to be at any given time.

[Arrea]

I'd have to agree~ 3:
But, IMO, FPS' are too numerous, and about 90% of them are just changing the storyline slightly. The action is essentially the same, and pretty much the same guns and the likes :/
There are a few good ones, such as a good portion of FPS-RPGs, like Mass Effect and Borderlands though~ :3

I miss the platforming era though. I think we have, what, one good platformer to every ten shooters? And even then, next to all platformers are 3-D, which is nice and all, but it's hard to make jumps and the like in 3D, unless you're there /in the game/. If it's first-person, then you can't judge where your feet are properly, and other brain functions similar to that. If it's third-person, you can't judge distances and where to jump at all! >.<
Though New SMB Wii did it right, in my opinion, besides the multiplayer X3 (I breezed through a good portion of the levels in SP, then with one friend....)

A fair amount of DS platformers are good as well, as it's just getting to the 3D point, so developers aren't as addicted to appearal, and tend to focus on the root gameplay. I mean, visuals are nice and all, but if the controls and gameplay suck, or is a ripoff what's the point?

Also, comparatively to SNES era, the RPGs. Right now we have awesome Action-RPGs such as Oblivion, Dragon Age, and the like (Soon to be Skyrim!<333), but back then, we had amazing storylines and gameplay, such as the Mother series (Earthbound), Final Fantasy, Ultima, and the likes. They may seem bad now in comparison, but with what they had to work with, it was absolutely amazing. People still are playing and replaying them, so that must mean something, if after ~10 or so years people are still playing a game. Another thing was that everything (Except the million Sh'mups @.@) was unique, as there wasn't much to base off of. There wasn't a million clones of the same thing (There were a few, though~ XP) and all the same genre. Dev's actually explored and experimented. I'm not saying they don't now, but it's exceedingly rare to find a console game that's truly unique. :/ (Indie dev's make a living off unique though X3)

I'm sorry for being complete off-topic on my rant, but this is my opinion~ ^_^
I know a lot of the stuff I said can be quite disagreeable, but this is my opinion~ :3