Took me a few days to get to listen to this one with the holidays and everything, but I just got through it, so I figure I'll throw my 2 cents in (in other words, grind my axe).
I'd say overall I'm pretty unhappy with the current state of the generation (well, to be more accurate, gaming in general). Might be because I'm getting older, might be because gaming doesn't have the same magic it once had for me, might be any number of other things that traces back to something about me in particular, but I feel more disconnected now then I ever have before with gaming.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still playing stuff on the regular, but so much of what comes out feels so... disposable. Most games have a distinct, been there done that vibe to them, others feel polished to such a sheen that there's no personality left. Hell, it even feels like indie games are starting to hit a very predictable stride where everything is a damn roguelike.
While I don't have an Xbox One, it seems plagued by the same issues I have with the PS4. Some of those issues were definitely touched on by Julian and Angelo (the death of true physical media, the commonality of the day 1 patch, the storage issues). But releases on the whole feel pretty thin across both and I haven't had much of a reason to play much PS4 since I got it earlier this year. Outside of Bloodborne, I'd say the machine has nothing of real interest to me. Many of its prime releases can be had on a past generation console at almost the same level of fidelity, other releases that don't fall into that category seem to be no noticeably different from our last generation of games.
Incredibly, I've played more Wii U than any other system, but again, many of those games are just prettier incarnations of things I've played before. A few games this year like Mario Maker and Splatoon really stand out, but other than that the Wii U is basically limping along with only Nintendo's support to prop it up.
My 3DS and Vita unquestionably get more play time than my home consoles and the game quality there definitely trumps most of what I've played elsewhere. But at the same time, 3DS support appears to be waning, Vita support pretty much instantly disappeared and has been relegated as a machine for playing PS1 games and top tier indies (which is fine).
The part which probably baffles me the most is that at this current juncture, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that gaming is bigger than it's ever been before. Is it just a glut of CoD/Madden gamers? Are the attach rates substantial? I just don't know what the heck people are playing.
In a lot of ways it seems like the big gaming giants (Activision, EA, Ubisoft, etc) have totally figured out how to deliver exactly what this group desires and have iterated on the products that they release on a yearly basis enough times that it's delivering exactly what the general crowd wants. From my perhaps completely elitist and pretentious standpoint, many of these games seem creatively bankrupt and utterly lacking in personality.
Compare that to the SNES/Genesis or PS1/N64 days. There were plenty of duds, for sure, but there was so much more risk taking and pursuit of creative endeavor than we see today. There's a certain amount of that in the indie games we see released today, no doubt, but even there I feel like the mark is being missed to an extent. The top tier of that market more closely resembles what I perceive to be the golden years of gaming, but even then, a lot of these games don't have the budget or resources to be as ambitious or polished as they could be.
Anyway, I'm just ranting at this point, but I've been a bit bummed about things in gaming for a while now and just needed to spit it out. I am glad that guys like Patrick are still enjoying things and it makes me think that I'm probably just a crotchety old man now and that's the extent of it. Regardless, good episode guys and I look forward to your next year of shows.
PS - Julian, I'm going to try to get Digital Mystery Tour integrated into the podcast page for you so you can make some more of those if you'd like with a bit more visibility. Also, I might even give it a go if I get some time since I love me some good VGM.
