But most of them were shit. And I agree, the RTS is fading again, but in the 90s it was a fad just like Modern Warfare like shooters are today. People will probably complain in 10 years about missing those games ...

Nowadays, every Paradox developed (and many published) games are rock solid. All those genres that were overhyped in the past (adventures, shooters, RTS, RPGs) lost a lot of their "fat" after there 15 minutes in the sun where over.

I rather have 1 New Vegas, than 15 BG clones.

RTS is indeed a different story because they can hardly be made for consoles so they are a bigger financial gamble. Maybe it will change once again.
Funny, I always thought BG plays like UO lite. Gameplay was certainly one of the weakest points of BG, imo. Frantic clicking in cumbersome "pseudo RTS" isn't really my think. Dragon Age took a lot of the hectic and frantic out of it.

I don't really play MMO, so I can't judge whether Dragon Age plays like one. It just works very well, and that is all that counts in my book.

I'd rather want to have a wide choice than "Either New Vegas or no good RPG games at all" to buy.
But think about, so called Golden Age of gaming (late 90s, early 00s'), where many games were MILESTONES and defined the genres for a decade. I don't recall any real milestone games nowadays, maybe Mass Effect for storytelling, but that's it. But maybe it's just me.

Yes,precisely. With the next-gen consolle, I tought that now we can have games like Final Fantasy VII with a graphic improvement.But not.None "free-roaming" (I know that is not a true free-roaming,but you can trale around the world,searching for materia,complete side-quest like the Knight of the Rounds and Vincent ones and many other things,like the arena in Gold Soucer),only a "on rail-game" with a boring plot.
It's like as the only important thing is graphic,and go to hell gameplay!

By the late 90s, the technology has finally evolved to a point where most of the things you conceivably could want to do with the medium were already possible. Which results in said milestones. It's relatively easy to define a genre when there isn't anything to compare your game against.

You can hardly expect absolute game-changers these days. The first time someone carved a statue out of wood, that was a milestone. Which does not mean a wood sculpture still cannot be great art, even though superficially, there's little separating a contemporary from a thousand year old one.

It's a burn-out factor.
You don't realize it but all of the new games you're playing today share the same formulas as the games you burnt into the ground when you were young and it's understandable that after more than twenty years have passed for the NES that we'd finally be getting to the point where we've had our fill.

The good ol' days weren't always good. I don't think I could sit through Castlevania this day and age even though upon release I must've completed the game over thirty times.

Go play Saints Row: The Third. I mean it.

Lol,I HATE free-roaming title like Saint's Row and GTA.,
I like title with a "false" free-roaming,like Fable and Final Fantasy,but that genre is not the kind I like.

Well, there's certainly a moment where it is easier to innovate, in a new field. It's blank, you can explore, twist, and many things you try are still new. After a while, it's not about milestones anymore. It's more about postmodernism, re-using and subverting tropes, etc. The terra incognita has shrunk, it's about what you make with the explored lands.

Same with all medias, comics, movies, cartoons... or even science (you can't have "geniuses" anymore, because we refine more than we define, we are past the great sudden insights of ancient milestones). Still, for each milestone, how many derivates.

Maybe Mario and Space Invaders were milestones. But remember the tediousness of shooters or platformers. Hey I've got an idea, let's make an addams family game, it would be. like, gomez has to hop on platform, avoid monsters, and collect coins. Oh and we should have a blues brothers game, it could be about jake hopping on platforms, avoiding monsters, and collecting albums. Wow, i just watched lethal weapon, we could make a great game about it, let's see...

As a gamer who played through the nineties and today I find todays better than in the 90s.

The average quality of games has risen significantly since then. Even your average game is still at least playable and somewhat decent. In the nineties roughly 30% of the games were a downright waste of time and effort. Again, not counting shovelware, which has mostly disappeared today.

I can agree more ! Yet they still sell guides and walkthroughs with collector editions of the games, so you are tempted.. :/

Yes but for some old games the guide was a MUST to discover all the secrets: I think,for example, at the talking stones quest in Final Fantasy VIII.
For the modern games...do you really need a guide for Mass Effect?Or God of War?Really?
It's a waste of money

But you still played them without. Those "guide dang it moments" were for the second playthrough. (And bad game design).

The best example is probably Fallout 2. I was truly mystified by the possibility of a "Vault City" and I went directly there after I heard about it. Wandered the streets and talked to the people. Same when I first entered Broken Hills and I though "WTF ?!". All those would have been lost if I read a guide beforehand.

Or more recently, losing one of your teammates in ME was really a blow for me. I really wasn't expecting that. Usually you can get "best game scenarios" in games. But not here. Or the deaths of certain side characters in ME 3 for which I was responsible for trying to be a nice guy. Damn. I would never had it enjoyed it if I played the game next to a walk-through.

The standard quality is higher, because there are only few big companies now that create mainstream games.

And by the way, with 100 million dollars for GTA4 production - I am NOT impressed. (in many ways it's even inferior to GTA: San Andreas).

The shitload of money that is pumped into games - they better have AT LEAST medium quality.

It was easier back then to fall into a trap of crappy game - but mostly because internet wasn't common. You had to trust the ads and game reviews in magazines. On the other hand, game demos were released for almost every game and almost every time BEFORE game premiere.

I don't know, maybe I am stuck in the nineties, but still I play more old games, and I go back to old games more often than to new games. I couldn't finish Modern Warfare campaign more than once. But Unreal, Half-Life? Hell yeah!
That's a problem for Bioware games, really.

For example, in Dragon Age: Origins, I was standing between two choices - sacrifice the mother in blood magic ritual, or let the kid possesed by a demon to die.

What I found out in a game guide? That OF COURSE, you can save both. Total supsence breaker.

I don't know why they put such things in games, that you can ALWAYS save everybody. It sucks.

Marketing (ads) and decent engines with competitve graphics cost quite a bit for AAA industry, that's the problem. Marketing I can understand, they have to reach out but the problem is the current demographic can't enjoy simple graphics and doesn't even understand the words art design.