• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.

Retro The PS360 are perhaps the least talked about retro consoles, so let’s change that for a while.

Irene

Irene

Soar long!
Pronouns
She/Her
This is admittedly a bit of a “feel old yet” thread but yes, we are approaching almost two decades since the unveiling and launch of the Xbox 360, which preceded the PlayStation 3.

These were some pretty interesting and I dare say important years on the tech front. This was the advent of HD gaming. Gone were the pixels and jags, and made way for what felt like the future, the graphical shock factor of powerhouses like Motorstorm, Gears of War and later, the first Assassin’s Creed.

But it wasn’t all about pushing graphics, of course. This was also the advent of what I think is perhaps one of the most important happenings in gaming: the indie boom. Thanks to digital platforms like Xbox Live Arcade and games like Braid, Super Meat Boy and Limbo, it was being proven that you don’t have to be big and expensive to produce great games and critical darlings.

(It was also the age of trilogies. So many trilogies. Resistance 1-3, Uncharted 1-3, Mass Effect 1-3, Crysis 1-3 and so on)

While the generation wasn’t really the groundbreaking years of 1996-1999, or the hailed industry high points of 2015-2017, some really well-known and well-regarded games dropped on these two platforms during their prime. The generation kickstarted with the comparatively rather forgotten Perfect Dark Zero but ended with the in my opinion really impressive double-whammy of The Last of Us and Grand Theft Auto V.

And in between, on the bigger scale, you had the previous game in that series, Grand Theft Auto IV, the aforementioned Uncharted and Mass Effect trilogies, as well as Assassin’s Creed II, Bioshock, Halo 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 and of course Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, The Orange Box as well as Portal 2.

On the smaller end of the spectrum, aside from the aforementioned indie titles, you had Flower, Journey and Terraria as well as Fez, and towards the end of the cycle, the critically lauded The Walking Dead Season 1.

Then there were games that are lost to most memory, of course, both due to infamy (DmC and Too Human) and just forgetfulness. (Haze and Brink)

And aside from all of this, let’s not forget the PSP, who lived a simultaneous life aside the big ones. It had its own slew of cool curiosities like LocoRoco and Patapon.

Some of my PS360 favourites include Final Fantasy XIII, Mirror’s Edge, Bayonetta, LittleBigPlanet and an indie game called The Unfinished Swan.

I get why the PS360 attracts criticism, and I wholly agree. This was when games sort of tried to “grow up”, and the result was a lot of trends like the brown and grey shooters that became common. The character galleries were so homogenous that we laugh at them today, and boy’s club and “dudebro” behaviour was perhaps way more common back then, something that bled into online play as well.

It’s just that, on a personal note, I have a degree of fondness for the PS360 era from a pure gaming and hardware perspective, so I wanted to make this thread about a less talked about aspect of retro gaming. Aside from its shortcomings, there’s a lot of pearls and gems here. What do you think? Was this generation part of your formative gaming years? Was it good, or does it belong in the trash? Are there any games from this era you have good memories about? Any favourites?
 
I have extreme fondness for this era of games. I like to tether Wii with it as well, as it was part of the trifecta in my eyes.

But yeah, going from Original Xbox to Xbox 360 felt like such a premium jump. All of the sudden I could just, go to a digital store and download profile picture icons and demos, I didn’t have to wait for OXM demo discs anymore. Party Chat changed the game - all of the sudden, the entire system was “The Halo 2 Pre Game Chat Lobby” - chatting to multiple friends while we all played different games at the same time felt insane for a time - and between all that and Rare, my favorite game developer of the time, launching with TWO games? And a follow up to Morrowind soon after from Bethesda? Upgrading to 360 felt every bit essential as it really was.

And yes, who can forget The Killers performing for Elijah Wood to reveal the dang thing. I still haven’t forgotten this. I watched it when it happened!

 
PS3 and X360 ... retro ...

Why is this board so keen to make mee feel old. ;_;

J/K

or not.

On topic, i wonder ... i still have a perfectly working OG launch PS3 at home, yes the one with PS2 BC. How much ìs that thing worth today?
 
Ah yes. The era of the mud-coloured cover shooters :LOL:
Where everyone wanted to be Call of Duty and everything had to have a tacked-on Co-Op or even full Multiplayer, where single-player gaming "was dead" and we made fun of Bethesda for selling horse armour. Good times.

It was a formative era for me, even though I mostly played on PC.. but I mostly look back on it mockingly, if I'm being honest 👀

Of course, it also gave us some gems. I still vividly remember the buzz around the first Assassin's Creed and the "huge twist" of it actually being a science fiction game and not just some weird historical setting! Also Dragon Age and Mass Effect launches with some fantastic first games (and then fizzled out into underwhelming trilogies). Also of course Indies on the rise.

Bonejack said:
On topic, i wonder ... i still have a perfectly working OG launch PS3 at home, yes the one with PS2 BC. How much ìs that thing worth today?
Click to expand...
Cursory search on ebay says around 150 Euro (plusminus 10)
 
Last edited:
The OP reminds me of how genuinely little appeal this generation had for me. The only really significant games of this era that interested me were Rockband and Bully. Definitely preferred the previous generation with GCN/PS2.
 
Lots of good indies hit console for the first time thanks to the XBLA. Sony used to fund those smaller indies as well back then like Irene said in The Unfinished Swan (now on steam and iPhone also). There were a few good RPGs but I enjoyed more on handhelds then.
 
The PS360 were terrible consoles with many boring games. I feel no nostalgia for them. On the business side, there is a direct line from MS and SIE ballooning development costs with the HD twins and Activision being bought by Microsoft and then dismantled. Nintendo was right to focus on entertainment gameplay experiences rather than cutscenes and graphics.

I was a Wii and DS only player that generation. It was the first time I went all Nintendo. I liked the Dreamcast and Cube and PS2 and like arcade style games or at least adventure games with arcade direct controls. I even have an Xbox to play Jet Set Radio Future.

I was already bored of FPS’s and the garbage pile known as Beyond Good and Evil soured me on both in-game narrative and stealth gameplay. (The stealth was very boring and forced and the ending just made no sense and was a random ass-pull that made me realize that most video game stories are lousy so I should just ignore them and play the game)

I was very uninterested in Gears of War as I had already played too many FPS’s on PC/Mac and needed a break from the genre. Table Tennis was cool but not enough to compel me to drop the $400 or whatever on an X360.

I looked at the PS3 and then my roommate bought one and started playing Madden and Heavy Rain. Madden was Madden and was fine. Same as the PS2/Cube/Xbox version with sharper graphics. Not for me but I don’t begrudge someone liking Madden. Then I saw Heavy Rain and was so turned off by it I decided not to buy a PS3 and to never bother to look at one ever again. That title is a lousy choose your own adventure book. Just terrible.

We are still feeling the after effects of the PS360 where development is too expensive and the third party publishers are fading away because of it. We get fewer AA and AAA games whereas the PS2 and Wii were flooded with them. Many remain good hidden gems like Stretch Panic and Madworld.

The PS360 should be remembered as the generation that started the industry crash that accelerated yesterday with Microsoft both ghoulishly laying off 1900 people and also destroying Activision’s ability to make video games.
 
Old Sorta Fan said:
The PS360 should be remembered as the generation that started the industry crash that accelerated yesterday with Microsoft both ghoulishly laying off 1900 people and also destroying Activision’s ability to make video games.
Click to expand...
Layoffs in the industry are normal right now as early-pandemic era investment and demand both shrink. Activision still has the ability to make video games. It feels weird to come into a thread about a retro console and air out grievances on something that happened literally yesterday.
 
I know it's hard to remember, but Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare was actually an incredible game that was easy to recommend even to people who weren't big into FPS titles. The flood of CoD4 clones including all the annual CoD's might muddy the waters, but the original CoD4 still holds up and is one of the best games from that generation.
 
ah yes, the disaster era of industrial design

if you're ever looking for a fun weekend project try opening the housing on a 360
 
It was definitely an important era for videogaming, for better and for worse, I suppose.
 
0
PS360 had perhaps the best character action game, MGRR.

Somehow this is always the first game that comes to mind when I think about that gen. Move aside, Skyrim, the true GotG is stuck on old hardware, Steam and Xbox aside.
 
Is this about Gen 7 as a whole or the PS360 in particular? It seemed like the latter at first but then you mentioned the PSP.
 
man early 360 days was something else. the games might not have been that great, looking back, but the hype cycle was unlike anything we have now. and I do miss that

the future was pretty fucking bright

 
0
While I see eye-to-eye with the notion that one can consider this gen to be boring/bad because of the abundance of generic shooters, I do think that the significance of the indie boom kind of outweights that for me personally. Those first few indie games kind of paved the way for many games that are considered classics today.

John Omaha said:
Is this about Gen 7 as a whole or the PS360 in particular? It seemed like the latter at first but then you mentioned the PSP.
Click to expand...

PS360 in particular, but I feel PSP deserved a slight nod in the OP.

Though, I'm not quite sure about its lifespan years, so maybe it's technically not "part" of the gen.
 
PSWii360 was a renaissance of games, despite the prominence of Souls/GTA/COD.

RPGs made a huge comeback with such greats as Dragon's Dogma, Tales of Vesperia, Xenoblade, and Nier.

Platformers returned with DKC Returns. NSMB Wii, and Rayman Origins.

The indie scene boomed. Limbo, Fez, Braid, Meatboy, countless others.

Whole new ways of playing were born with Rock Band, Wii Sports, and Just Dance.

Big franchises were born and even had full trilogies: Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Batman Arkham, Mass Effect, Dragon Age.

We had new experimental AAA games and revivals of classics: Street Fighter IV, Deus Ex, Mirror's Edge, Fallout 3.

Amazing action games from Platinum: Bayonetta, MGR Revengeance, Vanquish.

Full-fledged online gaming.

And that's not even looking at handhelds or PC exclusives.
 
FutureFunkPepsi said:
I have extreme fondness for this era of games. I like to tether Wii with it as well, as it was part of the trifecta in my eyes.

But yeah, going from Original Xbox to Xbox 360 felt like such a premium jump. All of the sudden I could just, go to a digital store and download profile picture icons and demos, I didn’t have to wait for OXM demo discs anymore. Party Chat changed the game - all of the sudden, the entire system was “The Halo 2 Pre Game Chat Lobby” - chatting to multiple friends while we all played different games at the same time felt insane for a time - and between all that and Rare, my favorite game developer of the time, launching with TWO games? And a follow up to Morrowind soon after from Bethesda? Upgrading to 360 felt every bit essential as it really was.

And yes, who can forget The Killers performing for Elijah Wood to reveal the dang thing. I still haven’t forgotten this. I watched it when it happened!

Click to expand...

Oh my god same. I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about gaming as I was on the precipous of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 launch. I drank up every ounce of information on them that came out of e3 2005 and 2006, and every article and video on gamespot and ign. I was 100 percent convinced that Sony’s cg tech demos were representative of how games would look on the ps3.

I stayed up late on the night of the Xbox 360 launch watching g4 cover it. They had people talking to the line at the Best Buy in New York, and they also had footage from the event where Microsoft rented out an air plane hangar and let fans play early. I was glued to this thing. For the next year all I could think about was the Xbox 360, even while my ps2 and gamecube still got plenty of love. Every time I was brought to Target or Walmart I waited for my mom at the Xbox 360 demo station kiosk playing the call of duty 2 demo and the sonic 06 demo. My friend got one in early 2006, so I remember playing graw, kameo, and perfect dark zero at his house. I could not believe that games could look so good at the time!





Then one day in late 2006, I went to that same friends house….and he had just gotten the newly released gears of war. Now I had been paying close attention to gears for close to a year and a half at that point. As was the rest of the industry. It was an unreal engine 3 show piece that looked so much more advanced then anything else on the market at that time, a step up even from those early Xbox 360 launch window games. Seeing it in person was a revelation. I think that was the last time I really had my mind blown by video game graphics.

At this point I knew I had to have an Xbox 360. I had already spent the past year begging my parents for one. But I put the begging into overdrive and that Christmas 2006, I finally got an xbox 360 with a copy of gears of war. Later that day when we went to my cousins for Christmas night, I also got battlefield 2 and Tony Hawks Project 8. It was An amazing day. With my Christmas money in in January and February I also picked up the elder scrolls 4 oblivion, and marvel ultimate alliance, both titles I put a disgusting amount of time into.

Another fond memory of this era was playing the wii for the first time at gamestop, my friends mom had to give the clerk her license so me and my friend could try excite truck. Even though I didn’t get a Wii until 2011, I pined for super mario galaxy, galaxy 2, and smash brawl. I remember checking smash dojo every day after school, and ill never forget my reaction to seeing that Sonic was announced as a fighter.

The ps3 was the first game console I ever bought with my own cash. I spent a few months saving from my first job in 2009 and got the newly released ps3 slim and uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 was really the title that pushed me over the edge to getting one. Seeing the building collapse set piece at that years sony e3 conference really blew me away. Plus I really wanted to play the ratchet and clank future series. I loved the games on ps2 and I was so blown away by the graphics the first time I saw the trailers for tools of destruction and a crack In time, that I knew I had to play it. At the time, to my dumb brain, they looked close to animated movies (they weren’t at all, but it was definitely closer than the ps2 games were)

I just want to list some of my favorite games from those early days of the xbox 360 (2005-2008)

Full auto
Need for speed most wanted
Tony hawk project 8
Gears of war
Graw
Graw 2
Cod 4
Fear
Condemned
Lost odyssey
Blue dragon
N3 99 nights
Burnout revenge
Burnout paradise
Mass Effect
Assassins creed
Bioshock
Forza Motorsport 2
The simpsons game
Medal of Honor: airborne
Prince of Persia (2008)
Banjo nuts and bolts
Gears of war 2
Fable 2
Oblivion
Marvel ultimate alliance
spiderman web of shadows
Skate
Dead space
Mirrors edge
Fallout 3
Ridge Racer 6
Kameo elements of power
Viva pinata
Peter Jackson’s King Kong
Amped 3
GTA 4
 
Last edited:
Irene said:
PS360 in particular, but I feel PSP deserved a slight nod in the OP.

Though, I'm not quite sure about its lifespan years, so maybe it's technically not "part" of the gen.
Click to expand...
The PSP is part of it, but it occupied such a different space from the HD twins that it's weird to group them together IMO, unless we're talking about the generation as a whole. That's what makes Gen 7 so challenging to evaluate for me - there were at least three industry spaces evolving at once, each with their own set of trends.

If we're just talking the PS360, there's only three positives that I can attribute to those consoles: the rise of indies and of the FGC, as well as better online gaming on consoles. Aside from that, they're easily some of my least favorite consoles to date, and a lot of trends that are negatively affecting the industry today can be traced back to them.
 
0
Ahhh, the era where video games peaked.

Look, I’m not gonna beat around the bush: This is the generation that video games took their final form. The generation where video games stopped needing to look better. Yes, video games in the 20 years since have “looked better” than 360/PS3 era games, but only ever marginally so. Sure, you‘ve got fancy lighting, better rendering, etc. But I’ll say this: there are 360 games you can play on a Series X through back compat and they look as good as a modern video game needs to look. My buddy and I recently played through all the Gears of War games co-op and Gears 2 and 3, through Series X back compat, look better than a lot of modern games. We played Gears 4 and 5 and yeah, I can tell they look “better,” but at the cost of 25x the filesize, probably an exponential increase in crunched work-hours to make, and a ballooning budget that necessitates the game’s design being marred by being full of microtransactions and season passes to help justify that ballooning budget. Not saying Gears 2 or 3 weren’t “high budget” games, they absolutely were for their time, but playing through that series, you can absolutely see the writing on the proverbial wall.

Honestly it’s hard to look at the past 10-15 years of gaming and think it’s sustainable. But the 360/PS3 era, especially near the start, feels to me like the last time video games were what I want them to be: a game you buy once, maybe buy 1 or 2 DLC expansions for, maybe play some multiplayer solely for the fun of playing with others, etc. Truly a golden age of games that mostly still hold up today. Put a game from that era on a modern console (therefore cranking it’s resolution to 4K and framerate to 60 or higher) and that‘s all I ever want games to be. That’s all I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
 
Irene said:
PS360 in particular, but I feel PSP deserved a slight nod in the OP.

Though, I'm not quite sure about its lifespan years, so maybe it's technically not "part" of the gen.
Click to expand...
PSP/Vita aesthetic, I feel, hits that perfect middle ground of aesthetic and game scope

 
It's an interesting era, to say the least.

As much as the gaming press and a number of western gamers were very "weird" (you know what I mean) about Japan and Japanese games during this era, this was truly the last era where I feel like Japanese games were allowed to maintain a lot of those PS1/2 era design ethics, before the embracing of the HD era meant that a lot of them had to either change or die. And sadly, a number of smaller JP devs did end up shuttering. Or went through a bit of a weird era as they had to find their footing, like Capcom and Square Enix.

It's all the more reason I'm glad FROM, of all developers, went from being the nichest of niche making robot games that seemingly only I and a few others played, to (within the same generation, no less!) producing a true paradigm shift with Demon's Souls. The successor to King's Field, and laid the groundwork for a new style of action game, in a way that wasn't seen since Devil May Cry on PS2 inspired so many that would come after it.

It was the greatest sign that Japanese games weren't going anywhere and was a nice way to shut up those detractors. And as others JP devs started to come direct towards the end of that era, and into the PS4 era, that only became more so.
 
0
This started before gen 7, but I miss when lots of game release had a totally separate unique PSP, DS (and GBA in some cases) version of a game. and PS2/Xbox versions with vastly different builds compared to the PS3/360 versions.
 
0
I have so many fond memories of the 360 era, even with the two red rings of death consoles I had. Perfect Dark Zero, the COD series, the Halo series, Rock Band, etc.
 
It’s my personal favourite generation.Call of Duty and Halo were still good. Rock Band and all of the good Guitar Heroes existed. And games in general were better. There is a reason most of the games I play on my Switch are remakes from that generation.
 
I did not like this gen. There was so much brown and bloom and shooty mcgrunty.

And on the other hand you had Nintendo drunken sailing the blue ocean and leaving me waggling my arms around wishing for an option for standard controls

But of course every gen had great games, and this one was no exception. But I do feel fewer resonated with me than on average. That may be owing to HD development killing a lot of the weird wacky or niche b and c-tier stuff I liked from previous gens, with devs chasing trends I wasn't huge on. Especially Japanese devs trying and usually failing to be all cool and western when they hadn't yet realized people liked them for them
 
I think they aren't talked about as much because in a lot of ways, they just don't really feel retro, and not just in a "if those are old then I'm old, so obviously they can't be old" way. Like, numerically I agree that almost 20 years ago is clearly retro. But there isn't generally the same sense of "games from this era are archaic" that, say, NES games had acquired by the 2000s. Consider

- how many series/games from that generation are still major players today largely unchanged. This was the generation where things like Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty and also Naughty Dog's style of game really came to the forefront. And where forever games like Skyrim and GTA5 got their start. It's hard to be nostalgic for things that never really went away

- this was probably the last great graphical jump for home consoles. It's nothing compared to the jump from PS1/N64/Saturn to Gamecube/PS2/Xbox, but it's still a lot more noticeable than the later jump to PS4/Xbone or to PS5/Xbox Series. Most games from this era still look "good enough" I think (ignoring some artistic choices like everything being brown as heck) that they could generally pass as lower-budget modern titles without needing too much of a touch-up

- this is the generation where a lot of things sorta became standardized. Where games from the PS1/N64 or Gamecube/PS2 often had pretty bespoke control schemes that a modern player would need to readjust to, games from the PS360 gen kinda just control like modern games for the most part. Mission structures and general "best practices" of what AAA games look like also got more homogenized. And it's where the online experience and digital storefronts pretty much reached their modern iterations

It's definitely interesting to think about. When I look at it as a whole, this isn't exactly a generation I look back on that fondly; it's where Nintendo's lineup was maybe at its least-interesting for me (there are obviously some gems, but as a whole their DS/Wii output vacilated wildly between way too "wacky and different" and way too "safe and unambitious" imo), and while I enjoyed them enough at the time it's also where I sorta burned out for a long time on the "map game" and "stubbly white man 3rd person over the shoulder narrative" genres that dominated this era. But at the same time, if I think about what some of my favorite games are, a decent number of them were originally PS360 titles, and thinking about them does make me nostalgic for that period of time. Games like:

  • Red Dead Redemption
  • Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Black Flag
  • Portal 1/2
  • Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim
  • Mirror's Edge
  • Minecraft
  • the Batman Arkham games
  • Prototype
 
Last edited:
I was a kid and only had a Wii. Lately I've been looking at prices of PS3's online. I want to play Sonic 06 because I'm really curious what the deal with that game is.
 
I liked the Gears of War trilogy. They were great bonding experiences with my brother because homeboy had to save me from dying like all the time and watch me fail the active reload like 30% of the time. The Locust Horde absolutely would have won if more soldiers like me were in the COG ranks.

Personally, it’s a series better left to that generation as it doesn’t really speak to me or my gaming sensibilities anymore. While I’ll always have the co-op memories, I don’t miss the general lack of color or the hilarious proportions for the male characters.
 
0
I don’t understand why shooters are looked down upon generally. Some of my favorite games of all time are shooters, just like some are jrpg’s, and some are 3d and 2d platformers. And while yes, many games did have a brown and grey pallet, I don’t think that’s a bad thing because some games wanted to have a different atmosphere. Obviously it’s good we have more color variety now, but still I think the “muddy” colors of gears of war, and killzone 2 did a great job of highlighting the dire states of those worlds. Just as the bright vibrant colors or rayman origins does a great job of selling the tone of that world

It just bugs me in the way that people use sports ball or shooty mc bang bang. It’s okay to dislike a genre, but I think putting it down like that in a way that makes people who do enjoy them seem stupid, really sucks. I also dislike it when people just off handedly refer to jrpgs as “anime games”
 
Last edited:
Both were good since 360 gave us a lot of shmups and indie games, and PS3 was the second coming for the Atelier series
 
Derachi said:
Ahhh, the era where video games peaked.

Look, I’m not gonna beat around the bush: This is the generation that video games took their final form. The generation where video games stopped needing to look better. Yes, video games in the 20 years since have “looked better” than 360/PS3 era games, but only ever marginally so. Sure, you‘ve got fancy lighting, better rendering, etc. But I’ll say this: there are 360 games you can play on a Series X through back compat and they look as good as a modern video game needs to look. My buddy and I recently played through all the Gears of War games co-op and Gears 2 and 3, through Series X back compat, look better than a lot of modern games. We played Gears 4 and 5 and yeah, I can tell they look “better,” but at the cost of 25x the filesize, probably an exponential increase in crunched work-hours to make, and a ballooning budget that necessitates the game’s design being marred by being full of microtransactions and season passes to help justify that ballooning budget. Not saying Gears 2 or 3 weren’t “high budget” games, they absolutely were for their time, but playing through that series, you can absolutely see the writing on the proverbial wall.

Honestly it’s hard to look at the past 10-15 years of gaming and think it’s sustainable. But the 360/PS3 era, especially near the start, feels to me like the last time video games were what I want them to be: a game you buy once, maybe buy 1 or 2 DLC expansions for, maybe play some multiplayer solely for the fun of playing with others, etc. Truly a golden age of games that mostly still hold up today. Put a game from that era on a modern console (therefore cranking it’s resolution to 4K and framerate to 60 or higher) and that‘s all I ever want games to be. That’s all I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
Click to expand...

I agree with all of this.

Video games reached their peak between the sixth generation (DC, PS2, Cube, Xbox) and the seventh generation (360/PS3/Wii/DS).

Today, studios are struggling to release 1 game in 5 years. I am not that impressed with the games releasing this console generation.

Graphics might be getting better, but the games aren't.
 
I have little good to say about them in general outside of a few standout games, gen 7 was a wash for me. Ps3 is better than ps5 though.

P.s. nothing released after the NES is retro to me
 
0
I have a link to the PS360 era in that one of my most played games is Skyrim, that I first played on PS3.

The other is me wondering why on earth Mass Effect Trilogy isn’t on Switch yet :D

I mostly remember PS360 for brown/grey games, all crumbling ruins due to a push for realism accompanied by convenient geometric rubble for the TPS games to play with in their whack-a-mole arenas you could see a mile off (Uncharted, Gears and Mass Effect included). But that’s an unfair generalisation on my part, there were still loads that I enjoyed, including those I listed above. Valkyria Chronicles is one I still return to a lot as I still like its watercolour aesthetic. Otherwise, Dead Space and Binary Domain I played a lot. Dragon Age was fun. Dragons Dogma felt heavily overlooked.

It had it’s trends in AAA game design just like today, but back then sequels were still coming out every few years so there was time for multiple entries to really play with what what the systems could do.
 
It's probably my favorite generation - and I think that it's also the last time that a new generation of consoles/games really felt "new" to me.

90% of what we are playing now feels like those 360/PS3 games, just prettier. It's the last time that I got a new console and was really wowed by the visuals and what the games felt like to play.
 
I honestly think the whole generation gets a bit of a bad rap due to how dominant certain kinds of games were during this period. If you know how to pick your games, and especially if you include the Wii in the conversation, it was definitely not a "brown and grey" generation, and it's not like those are the games people still really care about today.

I'm actually going through FFXIII right now on my 360 (never finished it back then), and it's been pretty great so far. Holds up immensely well, especially if you appreciate linear games. What's most noticeable however is the performance. It's bad, folks. Sub-720p, with very unstable framerate in certain areas. I've wondered how it would look on an widescreen CRT or a BVM that can do 720p, but they're too rare, expensive, and/or bulky to justify the investment.

And at least for me, this gen the perfect middle point between old and new, meaning the games still feel relatively modern and responsive by today's standards, while not being bloated with ancilliary modes, in-game stores, online checks and the like.

  • Alan Wake
  • Asura's Wrath
  • Bayonetta
  • Beautiful Katamari
  • The Darkness
  • Dead Rising
  • Dead Space
  • Dishonored
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution
  • Fallout New Vegas
  • Left 4 Dead
  • Lost Odyssey
  • Metal Gear Rising
  • NieR
  • Ninja Gaiden II
  • Portal 2
  • Rayman Origins
  • Sleeping Dogs
  • Street Fighter X Tekken
  • Tekken 6
  • Ultra Street Fighter 4
  • Vanquish

 
0
Between the Wii, DS, PS3, PSP, and 360 if you couldn't find a ton of great games in almost every genre I feel you weren't looking. Digital market places gave people a chance to relive classic games they had missed out on, while giving smaller/indie games a home and an opportunity to make money. Online multiplayer became a lot more common on consoles and allowed people to connect with friends all over the world. Gaming also broke barriers providing tons of new experiences with motion controls, touch screen games, dual screen games, and games that could be updated with new content or have critical bugs patched.

At the same time a lot of the current issues we're seeing in the industry can be dated back to the birth of HD. The ballooning cost to make AAA games, tons of studios/publishers going out of business after one expensive flop/several smaller flops. Games releasing in an unfinished state and being fixed with patches. The industry experimenting with how to nickel and dime players with micro transactions. The devaluing of certain games/genres along with laying the groundwork for the GAAS flood that would sweep over the industry.
 
BlackthornOrion said:
  • Mirror's Edge
Click to expand...
peak. even Catalyst is a mere imitator

vZQaeqn.jpeg
 
While it's not the best generation or anything, the 7th generation was really pretty good. It was the last time Microsoft consistently made good games with some amazing ones like Halo 3 or Gears 3, and their timed exclusives were fantastic like Dead Rising, Mass Effect, Tales of Vesperia etc. It's not surprising to me though that people who barely look to expand their horizons wouldn't find it to be a good generation. Really the biggest problem with it, I think, is how poorly a lot of the exclusives aged. A lot of Wii / DS era Nintendo games are arguably among the worst in their respective franchises, and I think the PS3 fairs arguably even worse with a lot of those exclusives being series that were only relevant for one generation and basically got greenlit just to cover a gap in their library to compete with a competitor (Killzone 2, Resistance series, Playstation All-Stars). And then of course the entire PSP library is basically untalked about and borderline irrelevant nowadays, because even the good games usually have a better console counterpart.

But still it's hard to call a generation that had games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Fallout: New Vegas, Dark Souls, and the Mass Effect Trilogy "mid". Really it's the generation with the biggest identity crisis, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
 
FutureFunkPepsi said:
who can forget The Killers performing for Elijah Wood to reveal the dang thing. I still haven’t forgotten this. I watched it when it happened!

Click to expand...

this is so fucking wild y’all, what a time capsule

including those damn iPod ads!!
 
Derachi said:
The generation where video games stopped needing to look better. Yes, video games in the 20 years since have “looked better” than 360/PS3 era games, but only ever marginally so. Sure, you‘ve got fancy lighting, better rendering, etc. But I’ll say this: there are 360 games you can play on a Series X through back compat and they look as good as a modern video game needs to look
Click to expand...
Agree with pretty much everything you said, but especially this part

I still maintain no game has ever needed to look better than Portal 2 or Mirror's Edge look today
 
0
There are a lot of games I remember fondly from the PS360 era: Mass Effect, Rock Band, Final Fantasy 13, Tales of Xillia, 3D Dot Game Heroes, etc. Definitely not my favorite generation by any means, but at least it gave us Dark Souls and started the rise of From which has been one of the brightest spots in gaming for me ever since.
 
I’ve noticed that via back compat, Spec Ops: The Line is available on Series. I’ve always wanted to try it.


SammyJ9 said:
There are a lot of games I remember fondly from the PS360 era: Mass Effect, Rock Band, Final Fantasy 13, Tales of Xillia, 3D Dot Game Heroes, etc. Definitely not my favorite generation by any means, but at least it gave us Dark Souls and started the rise of From which has been one of the brightest spots in gaming for me ever since.
Click to expand...

Xillia is a great mention that I should’ve had in the OP. Awesome experience.
 
Irene said:
I’ve noticed that via back compat, Spec Ops: The Line is available on Series. I’ve always wanted to try it.




Xillia is a great mention that I should’ve had in the OP. Awesome experience.
Click to expand...
I really love Xillia! I think it's often forgotten as a more middle-of-the-road Tales game (plus it being stranded on the PS3 doesn't help), but it does a lot of really cool things with the setting and soundtrack. And I really liked the combat system.
 
Who needs to talk about them when the successful games they had are still sitting among us. Over there is Minecraft. GTAV is grabbing a hot dog. Skyrim lounging out on the deck.
 
I had both a 360 and a PS3 growing up, but really, this time period was around when I got reeeally into looking into retro games on the internet. I started trying out fan translations of old Fire Emblem games, found a treasure trove of amazing titles that came out before I was born, and I also got absurdly into Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst. I kept up with major Nintendo releases on DS and Wii, but I can count the number of PS3/360 games I played back then on two hands.

360 highlights-- Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon, Sonic 06 (yes, really)

Eternal Sonata is a game I really need to revisit and finish. It inspired what became a deep passion for Chopin's music and the romantic era in general. Blue Dragon I'd also like to revisit-- I got to the last disc as a kid and soft locked myself on a timed sequence that I was underleveled for. Really sad.

Sonic 06 came out during a period where I was absolutely obsessed and I overlooked a loooot of shit. I fully completed the game twice! Still think there's potential in it, but hahahahaha I was blinded by love.


PS3 highlights-- journey, Infamous 1 and Infamous 2

Journey speaks for itself... That game is magical. Infamous I'd LOVE to see a modern collection of. I found these games super fun back then (I got the first game as a freebie from Sony during the huuuge PSN outage period). This series is also a big reason I got a PS4, which I then went on to play waaay more than PS3.

One other thing I really enjoyed on PSN was the retro catalogue and PS1 backwards compatibility. I got a lot of mileage out of this-- it was my first time playing Xenogears and FF7.


Now, in the last five years or so I've spent time revisiting this era... There's a ton of great stuff I missed. I just started Metal Gear Rising a bit ago and am loving it. I view it as a cool thing that there's an amazing era of gaming that I have barely scratched the surface of, because I was so busy looking into the past during those years that I missed some of the great stuff.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom