The Hollow Generation

Man, I feel like I’ve done this sort of thing before. Getting into a new generation the complaining about the games there being less different than I expected. Maybe it’s because I’m too closed-minded. Maybe it’s because new games early in a console’s life are generally much more modest than what we’ll see later. And maybe it’s because an update in hardware is making less and less of a difference as the gaming medium progresses and matures and the natural course of diminishing returns sets in.

That can be left for the experts. Even though those last two are totally true. Either way, what we’re left with is a now familiar feeling of me stepping into a new generation of video games, and me wondering why they even bothered with the hardware separation.

Of course, this year, it’s a little different than it’s been in the past. Previous generation changeovers, it’s always been a game that lured me through. I picked up an N64 because of Super Mario and Mario Kartt 64ses. ‘Twas Smash Bros that lured me through to getting a Gamecube. Then the whole spat of releases for the Wii, followed by Dead Rising showing me the worth of an Xbox 360. And finally, Fallout 4 and Breath of the Wild brought me to the previous generation of consoles.

This time, though, it was simply the trials of time. Consoles tend to be hardy, but computers not so much. Since it released, I’ve been waiting for my opportunity to pick up a PS5, but that never came. Been sitting on enough credit card rewards to essentially get one for free at MSRP, but an opportunity to buy the console at MSRP is quite rare. Supply shortages, plus the shakeups to the market on both the supply and demand side due to the pandemic, ensures that only a lucky, privileged few who can wait for supplies to drop and be on top of them when they do are able to pick one up. For the rest of us, we have to wait. And so I did, until my hand was forced. My previous PC started showing wear and tear and indications that it wasn’t going to last much longer. So I needed a new one. And while I was doing that, I figured I’d pick up one capable of playing modern games.

So I did. And now I’m looking at the modern spate of games, and I’m not really interested in many of them that I couldn’t have gotten on my PS4 or my old PC already. Invested in a highly powered gaming laptop with all sorts of features and settings I don’t even understand to ensure it can get the best resolution and framerate possible, and most of my time spent on it so far has been in a ported PS1 game and a sprite based indie game that released like 5 years ago. And it’s not because new games aren’t new. I’ll definitely be getting to them eventually. But they don’t take full advantage of the new hardware. They don’t give me any new experiences. So many new hardware generations really expanded on what a game could do. Until last gen, where the updates were mostly graphical. And then comes this new one, where again, the only real update people are pointing to is that graphics are slightly better, loading somewhat smoother. Heck, most games I’m actually looking into next generation for, such as Lost Judgment, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the Final Fantasy VII Remake, and on, are still available on my Playstation 4 for basically no material difference from the PS5 versions.

Which does make me wonder what’s the point to the new hardware. I’m sure the fact that most new releases for modern consoles are also available on last gen’s machine owes something to the aforementioned inability for mass markets to equip themselves with the most modern gear, but even so. If I can get a game brand new game for my last gen consoles that’s almost exactly the same as those on the current gen, what’s the point? Maybe we moved on to a new hardware generation too quickly.

I’m sure eventually, a PS5 will wind it’s way onto my shelf. And I’m viewing my new laptop as an investment, enabling me to keep up with the new releases when inevitably they do move on from last gen’s hardware. But for now, we’re already a year into the next hardware generation, and as far as I can tell, it may as well have not happened at all.

Is it Next Gen yet?

One benefit of this big life shift I’m still finding myself digging through; I’ve jumped into the deep end of the new console generation.  Aside from the 3DS and a few select releases I could pick up on last gen’s consoles, I’ve been mostly ignoring the immediate past of video games, but I’ve had to adapt to life on the second floor by replacing my old, massive CRT TV with something I could actually lift up the stairs, and now that I had a tv that could accept the signal and enough credit card rewards to get a new console for virtually free, things just lined up.  It was like God had decided that he’d been putting me through some rough times, so he’d toss me a PS4 and call it even.

For the first time in a good long while, I’ve actually been looking at the games that’ve been coming out.  Playing newly released games.  I’m in the now of videogames.  Well, at least as far as Fallout 4 reaches.  Aside from that, don’t have much of a collection.  Anyways, I’m paying attention to new releases for the first time, and I’ve not really been finding what I expected.  I’ve been through a few generation handovers in my day.  I remember, how the games are, I remember the wonder and adjustment of actually being able to do new things in your games.  Sure, every console has made better looking games, and that’s been the big selling point, but visuals only take you so far.  Where the new console generations have truly excelled is by offering the power to create new types of games, new gaming experiences.

And they’ve all had games ready within the first couple months to really highlight that.  The 32/64 bit era had Mario 64 lead the charge by making the third dimension work, and work fluidly, for the first time in a long while, followed by Final Fantasy 7 demonstrate the cinematic and storytelling potential newly available to the medium. The PlayCubeBox era had a couple of games you could point to for this, but for me, it was Pikmin, which showcased the console’s ability to compute numerous actors in a wide area, keeping the span and amount of moving parts in its RAM going in a way that was not even thought of in the last generation.  Last gen brought us both the Wii, with Rayman Raving Rabids and WarioWare: Smooth Moves bringing to light all the potential uses of the Wiimote, and the PS360, where the Xbox’s Dead Rising demonstrated the new generation’s power in being able to process and compute so many independent parts of a game in much the same way Pikmin did a generation ago.

For this generation, even after two years, I’m not sure what games we have to lean on, that truly demonstrates the new consoles’ capabilities over the old.  WiiU aside.  There’s plenty I’ve seen that takes advantage of the WiiU’s capabilities, to the point that I was rather torn as to which console to pick up.  There’s a lot of games to show the new levels of detail available with the PS4 and Xbox One, which is nothing short of impressive, but as I said, visuals only go so far in creating an experience.  I haven’t seen a lot of the new generation’s games yet, and there’s still plenty for me to consider before making any sort of judgement, but still, I find myself wondering if we truly needed a new console generation.  Visuals aside, have the new machines really expanded the tools available for developers, or could these games just as easily have ended up on last gen’s consoles?