Feel free to also discuss games that have made a big impact on you throughout your game-playing history (the original topic of this thread). You know, the games that defined you and really stayed with you. Has this gen produced any titles that totally blew you away? That you will always fondly remember your experiences with?
I feel like, for all the piles and piles of solid, capable games that we've been getting, there have been far fewer that really, really connect with me. It's why I prefer the GBA library to the DSeseses. And why this generation has kind of underwhelmed me. The main exception that I can think of is Monster Hunter Tri. Even that might be kind of cheating, since the series began last gen, but, nevertheless, that is one of the only games that kept calling me back,
impelling me to keep playing, similar to Animal Crossing and Wario Ware last gen, Metroid and Mario and Bionic Commando (and so many more) in the NES era, Super Mario Kart in the SNES era, Perfect Dark and Mario Kart 64 on the N64, WipeOut on the PS1, Alpha Centauri and DOOM on PC, various C64 games that no one else will remember, tons of Arcade games, etc.
I guess I can also include Yoshi's Touch and Go on DS. Super-brilliant and innovative, super-addictive. Good things come in small, perfectly polished packages. I might even toss in Mr. Driller, since I got totally addicted to the DS game, but that core design has existed in pretty much unedited form for quite a while, and I already had the Gamecube game. But maybe I'll throw in Crackdown for the 360. Vertiginously platforming from skyscraper to skyscraper felt like something new. And something awesome. Flawed, but great. It was a key in my choice of the 360 over the PS3. That's it for this gen, though, barring any other missing memory cells. (EDIT: Holy shit, WII SPORTS! I can't believe I forgot that one. Wii Sports was a revelation to me. The first time I swung my arm and heard and felt the thwack of a tennis ball against a racquet, I was sold on motion control. Later games failed to fully capitalize on that promise, which perhaps makes Wii Sports an even more amazing accomplishment. The other incredible thing about the title is the way it facilitated fun multiplayer experiences among hugely disparate groups. Inclusion, rather than exclusion. That was a sea change.)
I won't dismiss the possibility that I'm just getting more and more jaded, playing increasing amounts of games on more systems, but appreciating each less, but I feel like the peaks in gaming just aren't as high anymore, and most developers are headed full-steam in a direction that I'm not particularly interested in. If Red Dead Redemption is supposed to be the future of gaming, count me the fuck out.
(I know, I know, downloadable games. I like them a lot, often better than retail games, but they still aren't completely doing it for me.)
EDIT: You know, after all of my edits and additions, this gen doesn't seem so bad. But it did have a pretty long, protracted stretch of meh for me, from Wii launch-ish to Monster Hunter Tri. And I have been quite disappointed in HD retail games, for the most part. Perhaps that's why I had such a poor impression of it.
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