zeppelin03

I was the right age for pokemon. Watched a ton of the cartoon, bought loads of pokemon cards, played red and yellow over and over. It was one of my favorite games. I didn't continue with gold. When the mood struck I just emulated yellow. I have played Heart Gold in the last few years and it was amazing. It seems safe to assume the series peaked on the DS. I enjoyed Sword & Shield but didn't go into it with high expectations after giving up on Sun/Moon. I didn't think Sword was bad just uninspired. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had large maps with big creatures and great detail for switch. How they could only make one zone walled in is beyond me. I would rather they had just skipped the wilds and done a normal Pokemon game. The story felt rushed for the last third or so as well. It seems like game freak is struggling with what to do now that their games are on a console and not just hand held. I hope they turn it around in a few years. Arceus seems interesting while ugly. If not pass that over to Monolift and give someone else the 2D RPGs to work on. Snap gave me hope they can still make a good game.

I have to agree with @Tanookiand @Shmup. These will likely be my last consoles excluding Nintendo. Xbox has autoHDR which is now coming to windows 11. PlayStation seems to be designing their games with PC in mind so the ports have improved very quickly. I just need studios like Atlus and Vanillaware to do consistent PC ports. My 9900k/2080ti system is as good if not better than the next gen offerings. Once the steam big picture update comes it's going to look like a console too. I get free or cheap games, wait a bit for enhanced ports, and play Breath of the Wild at 4k on Cemu. What's not to like? Edit: Nevermind. My wife said she likes consoles more.

When I got an SSD 10 years ago it changed gaming for me. I barely had time to spin the mace on the Skyrim loading screen.

I'm happy this is the shift we are seeing. 4k is plenty for a while. Let's get more detail in that time, maybe more npcs in a city, more enemies on screen at once, rays traced. 60 fps as standard would be great. There are much better uses of the power than trying to get to 8k or even native 4k for every title. I must have missed that R&C could have ran on a PS4. The only thing I've seen was a Digital Foundry interview with the devs where they explain why a PS5 made the game possible. Adding loading screens for the transitions in that game really would have broken the experience in my opinion.

I really like the new consoles. They address frustrations I had with the last gen. Mainly storage speeds. I was immediately impressed by ray tracing playing Call of Duty and Cyberpunk 2077 on PC. Now that consoles have it the technology can expand. Unfortunately the games aren't there yet. With how many millions it costs to develop I get why everything is cross gen. So far Ratchet & Clank is the only game that just wouldn't work on last gen. It's a fantastic and beautiful game by the way.

Battlefield 4 ran at 60fps on PS4 instead of 30fps on PS3. That was a big difference immediately. Games ran smoother on the new console. PS4 had HDR. Horizon Zero Dawn looked great with it enable. PS5 has ray tracing. PS4 cannot do that. Ratchet & Clank looks awesome with it enabled. The reflections on surfaces really stand out in levels with lots of metal and glass. Plus they stream in assets so fast on SSD you can do instant transitions between zones. Ratchet should have been the big launch game to show next gen. There is the resolution bump, texture detail, etc that goes up too. OLED is a tv panel technology. The LG TVs have variable refresh rate, 4k 120hz support, and other nice gaming features. 120hz let's you play the fidelity mode of Ratchet at 40fps instead of 30. That is far smoother than 10 fps would suggest while getting the improved detail. My wife just played Ori and the Will of the Wisps at 4k 120fps on Series X. It looked incredible and played really smoothly.

I get that the jump from an 8 to 16 bit game or N64 to GC might be big, but I haven't felt like those jumps have stopped. I remember being impressed by what my PS4 was doing at launch and again with the PS5 and Series X. I was frustrated with limitations of the last gen for years so its been nice to use these new consoles. The only frustrating part is needing to invest in a OLED or similar panel to get the most of all those features.

A number of Xbox One games were patched to run better on Series X. Forza Horizon 4 got a nice bump and runs even better. That has been a nice way to tide me over while waiting for some next gen games. It has been worth it for the SSD alone. I got sick of hard drives early last gen and ran external SSDs. Its really nice having games load in half the time or less. I've been tempted to pay the $20 to unlock developer mode. Then you can run a bunch of emulators too. I just was a video on Playstation running smoothly at 4k on them with Duckstation.

But I like my Xbox Series X.. It is great for backwards compatibility. I am playing many 360 enhanced at 4k with AutoHDR. Looks amazing. Sure it doesn't have all the exclusives Playstation has but I think most of those are overrated.

I do agree it is interesting how they made it work on older consoles. Fog, convenient cliffs and walls, etc. Current AAA tends to do well but when it breaks down you really notice. I'm still amazed by what Nintendo did with BOTW in the opening scenes. I think they pulled something special off with limited hardware.

I'm fine with the fog look of that after playing plenty of N64. I'm thinking of more current games where you have grass and trees out a hundred feet then it's barren. That line just moves as you do so you see objects and detail move in continually. Fallout 4 was good for it.

I am not a fan of short draw distances in games. Watching grass magically appear in front of me or vehicles pop in breaks the experience.

I got GTA III not long after it came out. I would have been 12 I think. Before that was GoldenEye and Perfect Dark when they both came out.

I have a new video to watch while cooking today. Something about grading and the price creep felt strange early on. It never made sense to me. Now I can see what's going on.

I don't understand why anyone would buy repros. You don't have money for the real thing but want it to look like it. It isn't somehow legal because someone else downloaded the rom for you. Just get an everdrive and play it all. I stopped collecting a few years ago and sold most of my stuff that isn't childhood stuff or current gen. Having to validate that something wasn't fake was a big part of what burnt me out. Now I have a MiSTer, everdrives, some retro stuff, and a mix of physical/digital for switch, PS4/5, and PC. Judging by the culture around collecting on places like reddit I will not be returning to it.