Also I'm generally dissapointed in games that are gyped up because of, most recently, Spore. That was kind of sad to play when I got it. It's like someone offered you luxury sports car but then stripped out all of the luxury because they thought it might confuse learner drivers. And yes that was their justification for at least only having one kind of sight mode (as opposed to heat-vision, echolocation etc), because people might "think their graphics card was damaged". Seriously.
As much as I agree with what you said here, my biggest problem is that Spore also failed to deliver on its most basic promise. I didn't really feel like I had shaped anything about my species beyond its appearance. Sure, I got to make it a meat eater, I got to make it aggressive, but these are the thinnest shell of what I had created. I gave my species wings it didn't use, I gave it poison spitters it didn't use. Why didn't I have the tribe of ultra-violent flying poison spitting bad-asses I had imagined?
Its not that the older games were
better, its just that they didn't have all the glitz that you can have with the modern systems, so they had to be more creative. There are some exceptions, for example, I fully think that Civ 4 is far superior to Civ 2. Civ 3 was crap, but that was mainly growing pains as they introduced resources and territory. Plus the golden ages in 3 weren't very good. I think 4 is better than 5, but that's just because of all the stuff in the expansion packs. I like the changes they introduced in 5, and feel that it will be better than 4 when it gets all its expansion packs. Its a game that's evolving and figuring out what are the best parts to add, and what needs to be changed.
Then you have stuff like Fallout 3. They took the most superficial parts of Fallout, the visual aspects of it, and shoved it into the same engine that Oblivion ran on. Oblivion felt like nothing more than a prettier version of Morrowind to me. Sure, there were some small changes, but overall, it felt like Morrowind. Skyrim has the same feel, like a prettier Oblivion. Sure, they've fixed some parts, but it feels really minor. Well, the loss of attributes and move to nothing but skills is a big change, but I feel its a step backwards. One of the core parts of RPGs, IMO, is the separation of character and player. Not only are there things the character can do that the player can't, the character might be smarter or dumber, the character might be stronger or weaker. However, back to Fallout, that respect of the character's attributes is lost. One of the things that annoyed me was having to squint to see tripwires when my character has a high perception, and therefore should be able to see them, and I, as the player, should have them highlighted for me. And on the subject of intelligence, well, compare these videos.
Stupid in Fallout 1Stupid in New VegasOnce again, its the most superficial overlay. In Fallout 1, all you could do is grunt, and the Overseer is speaking slowly and getting frustrated when you don't understand. In New Vegas, you can respond with speech that makes you look stupid, yes, but the scientist doesn't react like he's talking to a moron. He reacts like he's talking to a person of normal intelligence. To me, that's the problem with modern games. They don't put the attention to detail. And its the many small things that will eventually chip away at your suspension of disbelief until you lose it. Or at least its that way for me.