Favourite recent AAA title

[Thiel]

AAA games have gotten a lot of grief the couple of years and while a lot of it is deserved it has gotten to the point where it seems that playing them are considered a sin and a surefire way to get your hardcore gamer status revoked.

I think that's a shame because the tripple A industry do infact make some truly great games.

So, what's yor favourite recent AAA title. For the sake of simplicity I define recent as anything released after 2010.

My favourites are Skyrim and The Last of Us

[pxi]

I'd have to say Skyrim, Deus Ex, Civ 5, and Mass Effect

Combined, they probably equal the amount of time I've spent on Kerbal Space Program

[KOCOUR]

Well Skyrim and Mass Effect probably, But if Fallout New Vegas counts as AAA, then Fallout New Vegas is my Favorite.

100th post.

[Moon Goddess]

I'd probably have to say Guild Wars 2 even though I don't play it anymore.

[SpaceHole]

I'd probably have to say Guild Wars 2 even though I don't play it anymore.

most AAA-Games are a disgrace

- all of them spend way more money on advertisment than on development

- good developers ware bought and destroyed

- everything is just stupidly expensive buying meh but well known voice actors etc.

Even wikipedia pretty much sums it up: "is a lingo for games with enormous magketing budget"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA#Games

Actually i consider AAA a bad thing which will actually make me more cautious. I only buy games after reading and watching a mixture of user and press reviews. The times where one could just buy a game in a shop without thinking are long gone.

The sadest part about AAA is that Quality does not represent the money that was spent. Not to mention that money invested is most of the time a joke compared to marketing just look at the COD franchise - they made so much money its ridiculous.

Yet they still have awful quality an engine that is alomst a decade - yet the only thign that stands out is their marketing-budget ...

To proof my point: "Witcher 2"

- great art

- great modeling

- great textures

- great animation

- great voiceacting

- amazingly long

and in the end it costed "only" about 15 million dollars.

Also i will never understand what is so great about Skyrim - without modding its probably the most boring game on earth and i cant figure out why they cant do good faces, aninmations and fighting mechanics after earnign so much money or at least hire someone who can.

It especially is rather sad if you look at all the mods that often show up within weeks and exceed what those "professionals" were able to create in years ...

AAA-Gaming in a Nutshell:

200 Million Budget and they cant even do decent animations ...

EDIT: I meesed up my informations - EA for example uses 3 times the money for marketing they use for development ...

(BTW this just shows how awful gaming has become these days - im not sure if going mainstream was a good thing for gaming - it even killed some genres like simulations) (Anyone remembers Falcon 4.0 ? )

http://www.gamersdailynews.com/story-13183-EA-Portable-Games-Hardware-Now-Outnumbers-Consoles-By-2to1.html

Edited August 28, 2013 by SpaceHole

[pxi]

I only buy games after reading and watching a mixture of user and press reviews. The times where one could just buy a game in a shop without thinking are long gone.

I'm not sure there was ever a time when I blindly bought games without seeing a review, or at least playing a demo.

The sadest part about AAA is that Quality does not represent the money that was spent. Not to mention that money invested is most of the time a joke compared to marketing just look at the COD franchise - they made so much money its ridiculous.

Yet they still have awful quality an engine that is alomst a decade - yet the only thign that stands out is their marketing-budget ...

Totally true, but gaming has gone mainstream in a way that it never was in the 80's or 90's. Now it's more comparable to the film industry in that sense - I've seen very few films recently that I genuinely would say I'd watch a second time round. CGI explosions trump plot almost every time. And don't get me started on the obsession with doing remakes...

The thing is, when the term 'hardcore gamer' gets thrown about, it seems to me it really refers to the kind of person that plays every variation of Operation Shootface that comes out, and often very little else. I'm sure they give the games industry a lot of money, but I wouldn't neccesarilly consider someone that listed the three matrix films as their favourite films as being a movie buff.

Also i will never understand what is so great about Skyrim - without modding its probably the most boring game on earth and i cant figure out why they cant do good faces, aninmations and fighting mechanics after earnign so much money or at least hire someone who can.

It especially is rather sad if you look at all the mods that often show up within weeks and exceed what those "professionals" were able to create in years ...

My major criticism of Skyrim was the rather heavy-handed way they dealt with the plot. Has nothing happened in the last few minutes? Here, have some dragons. Did you kill someone you're not supposed to? Don't worry, they'll be ok in a minute. I loved Morrowind for the fact that it looked utterly alien visually. You could spend hours wandering around gathering flowers or whatnot if you wanted to relax for a while, and if you really wanted to, you could kill every single person on the island. The game would just pop up a 'whoops that guy was important, maybe reload?' message, and let you carry on - it didn't try to make too many decisions about how you wanted to play the game for you.

My main criticism of larger budgets is that with a larger team you get more games-designed-by-committy that absolutely must have as broad appeal as possible, absolute lowest-common-denominator stuff to shift as many units as possible to make the budget back.

[shoveycat]

Bioshock Infinite, hands down, for me

[air805ronin]

Complaints about AAA titles can be valid, but looking at a shelf right now I can say that I have enjoyed many AAA titles.

My most recent ones I played, not necessarily released recently?

• 
  
• *favorite recent* The Last of Us (only game I ever played on the Fiancee's PS3)
  
• FarCry 4
  
• Grand Theft Auto 4 (playing through right now in prep of 5 releasing soon)
  

This month, the AAA games I'm getting are:

• Total War: Rome 2
  
• Grand Theft Auto 5
  

Are there AAA games that suck? Of course. There are also tons of indie games that suck horribly. You may not like aspects of some of them, but to others they may be treasured games. All of us enjoy games, and on this thread we at least all enjoy KSP. That doesn't mean we're going to like other people's favorites.

Edited August 30, 2013 by air805ronin

[Tiberion]

Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, Batman Arkham City.

[Devo]

The last game that promised and delivered for me was Skyrim, but even that lacked the same feel as much older AAA games. But then again, we didn't call them AAA games in the 80's/90's , they were just games. Games companies used to rely on the gameplay.

A tonne of work colleagues of my told me to play Tomb Raider, "OMG it's so good!!!" They just wouldn't stop raving about it. Luckily with a new rig, I can run it on ultra settings and yes, the graphics are brilliant with great attention to detail - but the game for all intensive purposes is a train ride of cutscenes where as a character you do very little - and are supposed to become in engrossed in what I find to be a fairly boring story. This is what I find most games to be like these days. I don't know if I'm just getting old or games are getting worse, but it aint like it used to be.

[segaprophet]

I don't have a recent favorite. The last "AAA" game I played was Diablo III - that was over a year ago, and what a letdown that was. I had to play through Diablo II again afterwards just to remind myself of how much better mainstream PC gaming used to be.

These days it's mostly KSP and a bit of Minecraft and ARMA 2 multiplayer. Maybe a bit of Ghost Recon or Myth 2 Soulblighter as well. Also, when I get the urge, I give my old consoles (Genesis, SNES, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc) a spin.

I bought Skyrim, but for all its flashy graphics, it couldn't hold my interest. If I wanted an RPG, I'd be much more likely to jump into a old school style indie RPG like Avernum from Spiderweb Software.

Who needs bland mass market "AAA" games when you can choose from so many excellent classic and indie games?

Edited August 30, 2013 by segaprophet

[SpaceHole]

I don't have a recent favorite. The last "AAA" game I played was Diablo III - that was over a year ago, and what a letdown that was. I had to play through Diablo II again afterwards just to remind myself of how much better mainstream PC gaming used to be.

These days it's mostly KSP and a bit of Minecraft and ARMA 2 multiplayer. Maybe a bit of Ghost Recon or Myth 2 Soulblighter as well. Also, when I get the urge, I give my old consoles (Genesis, SNES, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc) a spin.

I bought Skyrim, but for all its flashy graphics, it couldn't hold my interest. If I wanted an RPG, I'd be much more likely to jump into a old school style indie RPG like Avernum from Spiderweb Software.

Who needs bland mass market "AAA" games when you can choose from so many excellent classic and indie games?

Yeah Diablo II was a letdown - a pretty big one

Skyrim - flashy graphics? - Are you for real?

If you want to play a good RPG play Witcher 2 - if you disliked the first one thats not bad - i also didnt like it the second one is completely differnt.

[air805ronin]

Yeah Diablo II was a letdown - a pretty big one

Skyrim - flashy graphics? - Are you for real?

If you want to play a good RPG play Witcher 2 - if you disliked the first one thats not bad - i also didnt like it the second one is completely differnt.

Diablo 3 did kind of suck, more for me because of the number of times I wanted to play but couldn't connect to the server. I was a big fan of the first two and their writers really "jumped the shark" in Diablo 3. Oh and the game was just kind of boring.

Skyrim - I thought it had pretty nice graphics. Especially comparing against Morrowwind and Oblivion. Admittedly graphics don't equal gameplay but they made some strides in making combat feel more and more like your actions mattered versus the obvious dice rolling of Morrowwind (hitting something with a sword 30 times to get a hit is not very fun). Was it perfect? No. Was it boring, probably to some people. I myself quite enjoyed it a lot and still do. i have friends who have put 300 hours into it. Clearing a bandit cave, walking down a road and stopping a wolf attacking someone on the road, followed by stealthing by a giant to steal his treasure. I remember doing all of that in one half hour.

Witcher 2 - While the writing was excellent and the world looked great, I didn't really care for the game at all. I played it about 5 hours and really didn't care what happened to him, to the world, to anyone he met. It just didn't catch my attention at all. see my previous note about some people loving games other people hate.

[Mr Shifty]

Dark. Souls. That is all.

[littlebattler]

Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate, because regular hack and slash action RPG is too easy. And dragons are awesome.

It's more like I haven't bought any AAA title since then than anything else, but I'm looking forward for Pokemon XY.