What’s the last game you really felt like from the next generation?
Leaving this open as much as possible in terms of our individual definitions of “next generation,” what gaming experience changed your sense of what was possible – technically or otherwise?
What’s the last game you really felt like from the next generation?
These are our answers, plus some of the Our forum.
Evan Lahti: Arma has underwhelming AI, performance, and voice acting, and her campaign isn’t exactly Hollywood stuff. It is a military shooter, and the guns are kinda boring. But the size of the game is unmatched, and it is one of the advantages of being based on an original engine.
In my 13 years at PC Gamer, I think Arma 2 is probably the game that made the most of the hype I had before release. It’s not just about the technical side of the game, the fact that the bullet fired will have a calculated trajectory and act consistently, but what this fidelity actually facilitates. Ultimately, Arma is a pretty huge military sandbox that I can get into with 63 friends (or more, on modified servers), and it’s a huge, satellite-style slab of Earth that feels authentic for us to walk around and blow things up. No other game it felt like a framework I could safely get to and mess around with.
Rainbow Six Siege is with it, though: Destructible Surface technology remains impressive, and it has changed my sense of what is possible in tactical shooting games.
Wes Fenlon: Several seemingly-the same games come to mind Going To feel the next generation, an amazing leap forward in scope or technology. BioShock Infinite does just that, with sky bars and dimensional cracks. Destiny, with the original Bungie ambitious plans. But these expectations have almost always been a setting for disappointment, for games that are overly promising and unpromising. But with each year the distance I get from The Witcher 3 in 2015, the more impressed I am with what I have to offer. I’m annoyed, too late, by this shit that a lot of people have thrown in by comparing the launch drawings and lighting to what was seen in the trailers. Over time, it only became clear what an incredible success that game was. Yes, there was low-res rock texture here and there. But Novigrad! There was never a fantasy RPG with a city that realized its affluence.
The motion capture engine and conversation engine make the little side characters feel alive and part of the world, even when their face and haircut look familiar. The Witcher 3 was a demanding game, teeming on a balance of decent performance and open-world ambition. But the important thing is that she managed to find that balance, something that appears to be failing at the moment, Cyberpunk 2077. This is the most impressive thing about The Witcher 3, too late – he had a great storytelling in his presentation, but he didn’t You don’t need high-end hardware to remove it. When your game It could still look like this after five years It also has the best side missions in RPG history, you did a really good job.
Chris Livingston: Parts of the games have felt like the next generation. The water effects of Sea of Thieves are still pretty impressive after dozens of hours spent gazing at them, and the spreading Far Cry 2 fires are still one of my favorite systems. For the entire game, I might have to go back to Half-Life 2. The Gravity Pistol has hit my ass as both a weapon and a tool, especially when it’s heavily polished near the end. I remember just throwing things in the water and watching them wobble and float, as if I were from an alien planet and had never seen water before. HDR (which I think came after a year or so?) Did all kinds of interesting things with the lighting and the reflections. The game seemed to be a huge leap forward in many different ways.
I spent a large portion of the closure doing this important work. Buzzy liquid shade, now available in Half-Life’s latest update: Alyx pic.twitter.com/Iw9h98pmEgMay 28, 2020
Tyler Wilde: I’m still not sure if VR is any good. I mean, I know it probably isn’t Hassan On a metaphysical level – our society is very sick and everything – but I’m just talking about whether or not it’s a fun and exciting way to experience video games. I recently reviewed Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond and parts of it were so boring that I was begging to return to normal reality, which was just my bedroom. This is not fun. However, I can go Half-Life: Alyx and do nothing but pick up a bottle of wine and watch the liquid flowing around, and I’m dumbfounded. I just wanna keep looking at him. I could go to my kitchen and look at an actual bottle of wine, sure, but the point is the likelihood that Alex’s bottle of wine suggests. It is the possibility of having some kind of fun, or escape, or Something Not available in any video game we have right now. This is the “next generation” experience for me. She casts a glimpse into a future not yet fully realized, and Alex bottles of wine do it for me.
Andy Chalk: Wes defeated me with this but I don’t care, it’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
I quit playing The Witcher 3 until two months ago for a variety of reasons, but even after five years of being late to the gig, I’m totally amazed at how far she has passed. The game world is open, varied, and “live”, and perhaps the most impressive thing ever, after a few hundred hours of gameplay you don’t start to feel small. This is one of my biggest lasting complaints about Elder Scrolls games – they allegedly are big fantasy worlds, but everything seems small and squeezed: I can run from side to country in 15 minutes and its big cities are barely small villages. (I adore Morrowind but let’s be honest, Vivec City is basically a low-rise apartment building.) On the other hand, Witcher 3 maintains its sense of scale without sacrificing the feel of custom top-down design. It’s the most awesome, and most comprehensible (and possibly the most beautiful) game world I’ve enjoyed playing in.
Judy MacGregor: I think I have to be the guy who says that. Console generations are a legend! All this is just meaningless marketing garbage.
Having said that, I thought Death Stranding’s mocap was impressive. Sure, the faces at LA Noire looked elegant but only until I noticed everyone’s hats were just too big for their heads. The folks at Death Stranding have ever-changing and believable expressions and can wear hats without looking like the five-year-old playing clothes. I could have looked into Mads Mikkelsen’s eyes for a long time.
Ur dad: Half Life Alex. I remember this moment too lol. I was looking through the boxes on the shelves with index consoles and suddenly I realized I was in the middle of my room looking through the virtual racks for ammunition and I felt like the “next generation” to me.
DXCHASE: Most recently it will be Destiny 2 when it launched for PC. At the time, I had just got an ultra HD screen and wanted to pair it with my new 1080ti too, and I hadn’t personally used it before that either. I had no plans to play D2 and I missed D1 but a friend gave me the game after his brother didn’t want the version he made for him. It just astounded me with its design, from planets to enemies to guns, the music was great and the play with guns was perfect for me, I was really a fan of the aura and lost the D1 because it was an exclusive console. Seeing all of this on a new ultra-fast 100+ fps display was the cherry on top.
Kaamos_Llama: It’s a long time for me. I feel the improvements in graphics and gameplay have been incremental for a long time rather than the massive leap I would describe as the next generation.
Fallout 3 in 2008. I didn’t particularly enjoy the game at the end but the sheer size and detail of the world was amazing. I played a game I really didn’t like for dozens of hours because the world was so huge. Same thing with Skyrim except that it was more beautiful.
Warhammer 40K Dawn of War in 2004 was amazed at the animation of the unit, in part, Dreadnought spins and picks up smaller models and smashes them. That was a huge leap from the basic animation of Warcaft and C&C games.
In Deadspace when they integrated elements of the user interface into an in-game augmented reality overlay ….
So, 10 to 15 years ago 🙂 I don’t have VR yet, and there’s no time in my life to play it all up so maybe I missed too much.