Gen 9: 3 Years In - Dr. Dray

gen 9 is three years old or maybe it has been for a few weeks look I don't know when this video is coming out it's hard to believe that these systems are already a fifth of the way to being able to take Driver's Ed especially since most of us didn't get our systems until at least a year after launch but hey 3 years is enough time for prices to have come down allowances to have been saved and games to have been released so most people who needed one of these consoles have had the chance to purchase one and play something they've been anticipating I'm certainly the same way and after almost 2 and a half years with my PS5 allow me to be the first to say something feels off I've had this feeling building in my gut for the past couple months and I'm 99% sure it's not a kidney stone I feel like something is missing from these consoles something that as far as I can tell most other consoles have by this point in their life cycle and it was only by reviewing the lives of these consoles thus far that I think I've figured out what that something is I'm not saying you have to agree with me but let's quickly recap the generation so far and see if if you notice it too keep in mind that I haven't had the chance to play a lot of the games I'm about to mention I'll comment when I can but these are just my opinions and perceptions on how these games were received so I suppose I'll allow you to take them with a grain of salt the PlayStation 5 and Xbox series X launched in November of 2020 and the world took notice I mean what else was there to do in 2020 other than be depressed wait for the PS5 to come out realize you couldn't afford a PS5 and then be depressed again price gouging is the name of the game G and while the practice has been around for a while I don't think I ever recall it being as bad as long as it was for this generation even a year after release these things were consistently being sold for well over 700 bucks on stock X that's just how tricky it was to get your hands on them there were several factors contributing to The Craze but the biggest was likely the lack of production caused by some pandemic that was going on at the time I don't know like ca or something whatever the case it kept the prices exorbitantly high for months after release and although production has more or less met demand in the last year so these prices are what I associate most strongly with the first few years of these consoles lives for the few who did manage to get their hands on a new console at launch there were some games to play the big third party releases at launch were ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Valhalla and watchdog's Legion yeah that looks about right Call of Duty dirt 5 bug snacks and yagao like a dragon were also available at or near launch and these yako was really the only one that got consistently good review scores everything else warrants little more than a yawn on the more exclusive side of things the PlayStation 5 also launched with godfall Sack Boy demon souls and Spider-Man Miles Morales I've dabbled a bit in Demon Souls and it seems like a solid enough remaster but of all these launch titles Spider-Man was definitely the one I was most looking forward to and man what a disappointment shorter buggier more poorly written and with a recycled map to boot it was definitely a step backward when compared to its predecessor few games deserve to be called $70 DLC more than this so not the greatest launch for these new consoles but at least there were games to play and variety at that beyond that first week though little of note released in the remainder of 2020 unless you count janky breath of the wild clones as things of note 2021 also had a slow start as far as game releases are concerned Hitman 3 seemed like a solid way to cap off the Hitman Trilogy and destruction Allstar was just as underwhelming as everyone expected it to be things did pick up a bit more in March though with ports of control crash 4 Tony Hawks Pro Skater and the release of it takes two this was the surprise hit of the year a super Charming looking Co-op Adventure game developed by hazelight the same guys behind a way out I haven't played it yet but I'm sure I can convince at least one of the boys to give it a try with me it looks like a lovely time and a great way to distract everyone from This Disaster class releasing on the same day April was another slow month with some mixed bag releases out Riders Warframe and Oddworld Soul storm were some of the bigger names but overall weren't anything crazy genin impact also at least and has a massive following but I'll die before I call a gotcha infested mobile game good May was big solely for the release of Resident Evil Village and the internet's favorite dammy mommy vampire lady holy [ __ ] those words really just came out of my mouth it was one of the main Game of the Year contenders and its reviews put it nearly on par with resi 7 it's not really my thing because that but I will give credit where credit is due if you're looking for a good survival horror game it's probably hard to go wrong with either of these titles June saw the release of quite a few more ports and remasters most of which are fine enough as well as death's door and the ps5s first fully exclusive title Ratchet and Clank Rift apart this is one of the first titles I played on my new system and I had a blast the 2016 game was good but this felt like a step up in nearly every way I think my biggest problem with it is that despite being very visually and technically impressive there's not much about this game that feels like it just couldn't have been done on PS4 a great title No Doubt though I'm not entirely sure it's the system seller that it was marketed as and one month later we got the Xbox series X's first fully exclusive game Microsoft flight simulator and that's all I have to say about that Psychonauts 2 was the big title for August and I think I'd consider it my overall game of the year for 2021 Microsoft basically handed double fine a blank check and told them to take whatever time they needed for this game and it shows Psychonauts 2 is polished to an insane degree it excels at everything that the first game did well and improves upon all of its shortcomings it's slightly better than aliens fire Team Elite lastly we have death Loop released in September as a timed exclusive for PS5 and it's a pretty fun uh puzzle shooter I don't know it's far from perfect it's still got that thesda Funk to it but regardless I'd consider it a decent addition to your library and that was most of the major releases for year 1 there were some solid Indie releases in those last few months most notably Kaa Bridge of spirits as well as a few more ports and remasters and a pretty mixed reception to the few remaining AAA releases overall an okay first year with a few solid releases but nothing too wild year 2 started off with a bang Call of Duty Vanguard it wasn't good okay never mind that because one week later we got Grand Theft Auto the trilogy [ __ ] hey no worries because another week later we got Battlefield 2042 okay what the [ __ ] yeah 2021 didn't really end on a high note as far as third party releases are concern pretty much anything of note released to either mixed or negative reception owing to the fact that a lot of these games debuted in buggy or outright incomplete States it was however a big time for Xbox as we finally got some series X exclusiv with Mass Appeal starting with forts of horizon 5 this was my initial game of the year and I had a blast playing through it for a good month or so ultimately though I didn't get into this one as much as other entries in the series I didn't find the world quite as addictive to explore and the dialogue with its forced Spanglish got old really really quickly I still think it's a solid time though with the benefit of hindsight I can say it's one of the weaker entries in its series one month later Xbox fans finally got the game they'd all been waiting for Halo infinite the long awaited sixth main entry in the series infinite was truly the next evolution of the Halo franchise if you enjoy half-baked Halo okay to be fair Halo infinite brings a lot to the table a grappling hook an open world a grappling hook explosive barrels a grappling hook guys it has a grappling hook however a lot of these ideas feel only partially implemented or like they're at odds with one another the world and its missions are repetitive and the story is pretty lackluster Halo infinite has some great ideas and probably the best combat the series has ever seen but let's be honest it could have used some more time in the oven at least the multiplayer is pretty solid and it's free to boot which hey that's probably the main reason you'd want to get Halo anyways like the year prior 2022 had a slow start for game releases at least in January early February had a few solid titles seafu oi Oli World Dying Light 2 and Ron forbidden West however nothing was anticipated more highly than the release of Elden ring an open world souls game I'm not even a big Dark Souls fan and even I was intrigued Elden ring is phenomenal it's the challenging heavy-handed combat that you know and Love/Hate placed in a massive world with Limitless attention to detail there's so many things to discover so many incredible boss fights secret Areas within secret Areas this is it the reason to buy a nextg console it was released on last gen consoles damn it things definitely slowed down for the next couple of months we got Gran Turismo 7 Tiny Tina wonderlands stranger of paradise and Sniper Elite 5 all of which received plenty of praise and criticism alike Lego Star Wars the Skywalker Saga was a big Nostalgia trip for many and it seemed to be a solid return to form to the Lego Star Wars series of course plenty of ports and remakes I swear Rockstar will still be selling new copies of GTA 5 well my retirement even when spring turned to Summer there wasn't really anything that grabbed the attention of the masses with one exception stray was the Indie hit of 2022 people were going nuts over this thing a vast majority of Gamers left glowing reviews while a few were of the opinion that it's just okay I sit squarely in the okay Camp I think stray is far from a bad game it's got incredible visuals and sound design which act as the base for a beautiful world but it doesn't really do much with that that world the story is super undercooked and the more you play it the more obvious it becomes just how many corners were cut in regards to this game's physics and animations it was fun enough on the first playthrough but I can't see myself replaying this game anytime soon that was mostly it for year 2 most major releases afterwards ranged from somewhat underwhelming to yeah no [ __ ] and Last of Us Part One gave me a good chuckle until I realized how many people were going crazy for this thing I think Society may be doomed once again the time around this generation's anniversary was filled with major releases as developers attempted to get their titles published before news publication started their game of the year voting the biggest release was God of War Ragnarok sequel to what is arguably the best game on ps4 and it lived up to the hype I have some mixed opinions on it and would probably consider Elden ring to be my overall game of the year but Ragnarok is still an outstanding title that stands toe-to-toe with its predecessor and deserves every ounce of Praise it's received Sonic Frontiers released the day before Ragnarok and I've never really been a Sonic fan so it probably doesn't count for much when I say that this never looked all that appealing in any of the trailers or gameplay demos prior to release but now having played it eh it's at least better than I thought it was going to be but that's all I'll say for now we also got the Kalisto protocol Need for Speed Unbound and Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 reunion in the remaining weeks of 2022 with Final Fantasy being the only one even remotely close to having consistently positive reviews for once 2023 offered a nice change of pace by actually having significant releases within its first few months Dead Space one piece Odyssey atomic heart octopath traveler 2 and for spoken otherwise known as bad video game we also got ports of DBZ Kakarot Monster Hunter rise and like a dragon Ean but the big release of early 2023 was Hogwarts Legacy in more ways than one personally as a longtime Harry Potter fan I found a lot to love within Legacy especially the fan service and attention to detail within the castle itself however looking at it critically it's hard to deny this game's many shortcomings repetitive missions stiff animations poor writing and a multitude of bugs I think it's definitely more of a mixed bag than many of its review scores L on March and April each had a few more titles of notes such as Dead Island 2 which released after spending 8 years in development hell and it was just great to see this game finally come out Star Wars Jedi Survivor also dropped which I haven't played yet though based on what I've read it seems to mostly just be more of the first game same strength shortcomings and all of course the big one was the long awaited Resident Evil 4 remake and it really lived up to many fans expectations I think there was a pretty vocal minority of purists who were opposed to the game but by and large it received pretty positive reception and from what I've seen it looks like a pretty solid time May ended up being a pretty nothing month Company of Heroes 3 got mixed reviews and both redfall and Lord of the Rings Gollum flopped hard you know you've messed up when even IGN gives you a 4 out of 10 June more than made up for though Street Fighter 6 Diablo 4 and Final Fantasy 16 all of which received very favorable reviews the only one I have at this point is Final Fantasy though I plan on checking out all three eventually they all look really fun August brought us armored Core 6 the from software game that made everyone my age go wait from software actually makes other games with its over-the-top action sequence and extensive customization it looks like a good time though I have heard it's pretty repetitive at its core I'm looking forward to giving it a try though I'll probably wait for it to go on sale before I pick it up September was a huge month though cocoon lies of P payday 3 but bigger than all of that was the release of Starfield bethesda's most ambitious project ever it was okay Starfield seems like it has a pretty solid foundation for a space exploration game I mean the setting and art Direction look fantastic but both the story and exploration itself Drew plenty of criticism for many Starfield didn't quite feel like the Grand Adventure it was promised to be to be fair after 8 years of development and who knows how many trailers and gameplay demos Xbox had set some pretty high expectations going into release and having balers Gate 3 coming out the same day for PS5 probably didn't do it any favors the hype for balers gate was unbelievable and it was a huge success the sheer scale of it alone damn near broke the Internet it's pretty high my games to try list right now I'm just holding out hope that it'll get a physical release in North America rounding things out October was another solid month for releases Assassin's Creed Mirage seems decent enough at least for a Ubisoft game Forts and Motorsports seems like a good bit of fun and Allen wake 2 seems to have surpassed the original but the game I was most invested in was Spider-Man 2 I'm still making my way through it so I'll save most of my thoughts for the end ofe tier list but for now I'll say that it's a very fun game though I think I may prefer the original and that is a quick overview of the ninth generation of Home consoles from launch till now do you see what I'm talking about okay it was a lot to process at once so let's sharpen the focus of the PS5 games I currently own we have a live service game with an Infamous launch a racing game a port of a gen 7 game three ports of gen 8 games four sequels to gen 8 games three open world games of varying quality a switch timed exclusive some annual release garbage Final Fantasy 16 and whatever the hell this is is is that a bit reductive of course not it's way reductive but I think it says a lot that half of my physical library of PS5 games is taken up by ports of or sequels to gen 8 titles I don't mean to say that those sequels are bad games or anything just their identities are pretty heavily dependent on that which came before and I think that's the point I'm trying to make we're almost halfway through this generation's life cycle but so far gen n doesn't seem to have much of its own identity if you think about it almost every console generation has been defined more so by its games than the hardware itself some of those generation defining games were launch titles for their systems and some were at leased a bit later but regardless of the generation after 3 years it's usually pretty apparent what those consoles are capable of as well as what new styles of games are going to be popular there's always a good few titles that set their generation apart from those prior but gen 9 it doesn't really have that almost all of gen 9's biggest games are either sequels to last gen titles remasters of older games or open World Games following in the footsteps of breath of the wild which the main reason I didn't talk about the switch is because frankly I have no clue what generation it belongs to yet but regardless that's a lot of games that derive a large part of their identity from titles released the last decade there's hardly any major hits that feel like they can't be run on last gen Hardware or like they break from last gen design Trends I'm not saying that's a bad thing but just look at the Xbox One and PS4 even though their biggest games were yet to come by their third anniversary we already had Battlefield 1 bloodborne Uncharted 4 Metal Gear Solid 5 forts of horizon 3 and The Last of Us remastered with near in Final Fantasy 15 just around the corner most of these titles are sequels sure but they all brought massive changes to their franchises and were a big step forward for each respective series with most of those now being considered one of if not their series's best entry it was already shaping up to be a generation of grand action adventure slopen World Games with an emphasis on story they were games the likes of which we hadn't really seen before and the further back in time you go the more obvious the shift in identities between each generation becomes meanwhile gen 9 has Elden ring God of War Ragnarok Spider-Man 2 rash and clink Rift apart balers Gate 3 and Final Fantasy 16 and is shaping up to be a generation of grand action adventure slopen World Games with an emphasis on story again as as time has progressed the graphical and Technical improvements from one generation to the next have become more and more subtle so it does make sense for newer titles to feel like they can be run on older Hardware but that doesn't really explain this again I'm not saying that these are bad games that this generation has no original titles but when you combine this with games that are released in increasingly incomplete States non-stop ports of older titles and remasters that are little more than poorly disguised cash grabs it all adds up to create a generation with a conflicted identity that feels like it's struggling to find ways to set itself apart from the past and it's giving me the distinct impression that many companies are trying to see just how lazy they can get away with being to me what gen n represents right now is a turning point within the game industry it's always been a business dependent on the balance of sales and Innovation but given the past few years I can see a few indicators that the scale has tipped a bit too far in One Direction and based on this year's balers gate discourse I don't think I'm the only one to notice it either while I don't agree with everything that was said I do think that this conversation showed that many are concerned for the future of gaming it's easy to point fingers and try to figure out one person or group to blame for this trend but that alone isn't going to change anything the reason games are being released like this is because a majority of the time it works it's profitable people buy these games regardless of whether it's a cheap C cash grab or riddled with microtransactions or in an outright incomplete State at launch money talks and right now it's not deterring many companies from going down this path you can't just rage to your friends or vent your frustrations online to your tent tens of followers these corporations they don't give a [ __ ] about that or you to me the obvious things to do may be the only things we can can do for one you have to vote with your money if you don't like cheap cash grabs if you don't like microtransactions and season passes if you don't like games that are incomplet at launch just to be fixed later through free updates you cannot I repeat cannot support these practices under any circumstances like MLK said a microtransaction anywhere is a threat to Gamers everywhere and more importantly educate yourself start asking the truly big questions how do you make a video game what's the process really like how are games financed how do you pay people for making a game before you've made the game why are these practices as effective as they are what's the psychology behind the advertising we're continuously exposed to and what do I really want out of the games I play why do I derive enjoyment from this medium it's only by knowing the answers to those questions as well as the countless others we fail to ask ourselves that I think we as individuals will be able to learn self-control to see past the curtain that these companies have put up and figure out what exactly the games we play mean to us if that seems like a lot to you I get it I struggle with it too I'm not saying it's easy it's just what it takes growth is a process it never happens instantly this lack of an identity that I've been feeling lately is the result of a change in the gaming industry and if we want to manipulate the market so that it benefits us then we as consumers have to grow too I would love just as much as anyone to see us take back the future of gaming to see that happen would be incredible an industry reclaimed from the clutches of corporate interests a win for us common Folk it'd be a societal achievement by any measure an accomplishment created by wise Minds unwavering values and a common love for one hobby then again these are Gamers we're talking about [Music] [Music] so

Channel: Dr. Dray

Views: 1,308

Keywords: dr, dray, dr., gaming, youtube, channel, essay, comedy, gen, overview, gen 9, ninth, generation, home consoles, consoles, home, ps5, xbox, series, series x, series s, review, recap, funny, random, guy, 66, randomguy, randomguy66

Id: 2e31FuowAeU

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2023