A lot of the time people talk about gaming trends that bug the hell out of them. Not today. These are good ones. Eight new gaming trends that are actually awesome.
Starting off with number eight, the fact that you cannot tell the difference between cutscenes and gameplay in most modern game. Now this is partly because graphics have just become so good that games look a lot like a cutscene, but the way that these seamless transitions happen is we've moved into an era where all video game assets are loaded off of solid-state drives. On the PlayStation 5 and on the Xbox Series X, we have a totally different situation in terms of loading.
PlayStation 5, of course, having the advantage there. That's also been something that's been creeping into PC gaming, where it's easy to picture the norm being solid-state drives on everything. Like, of course it's a big thing that the graphics are a lot better, but all of that stuff can be loaded at any given time instantaneously. You can have the high-resolution models for the cutscene, dump that stuff, move into more system intensive, like physics models, these types of things, quickly and without any real cost to the machine. Obviously, it doesn't take a lot to go from FMV to polygons, but now that there's things like Nanite out there where extremely high polygon count models can be rendered with much less system intense resources. Being able to load those things quickly is a big element here as well. It's a really exciting time actually, because this is a trend that kind of happens because everything is just awesome. There's like a confluence of different technologies coming together to create the perfect situation.
At number seven is New Game Plus making a comeback, like, okay, New Game Plus is an old school game thing where really difficult games gave you a different kind of challenge by letting you restart the game with everything you had at the end, after you beat it. Now sometimes, New Game Plus meant some different content, something changes, sometimes the difficulty level would be higher, but generally, it meant you got to keep your stuff, which is bad. If you've ever spent a really long-time gaining stuff in a video game, like, an incredible loadout,
The thing is that New Game Plus went away for a while and I don't really understand that, it's just such a fun way to increase replay value and in certain games like, well, you've gotta call the "Nier" series a game that New Game Pluses its way through the story.
It may be partially responsible for bringing back the popularity of this. I mean, "Nier: Automata" certainly wasn't the first that toyed with this concept, but it did remind us that it was there and there were a growing number of games that were including it anyways.
At number six is cross-play. Now, this is something we all wanted since forever.
This is such an astounding bit of technology if you think about it. Because you need to create some way to mediate a bunch of different versions of a game and behave as though everybody's playing the same thing. Of course, it's not like that impressive anymore. Everybody's running x86 architecture, everybody's got AMD chips, everybody's using Unreal Engine. So, like to some extent, it's kind of a no brainer that it happens, but, considering how different every machine was 30 years ago from each other, thinking about exactly what had to be overcome for this to actually be a thing, it's kind of amazing. I mean, I don't really play Fortnite, but I could pick up a Nintendo Switch and play Fortnite against my friend on the computer. We would both die and somebody else would win, but it's possible and that's amazing.
At number five, cloud save and cross-account progression. So, let's say you're playing a really big game, a huge multiplayer game where tons and tons of different people are playing. While you might have to buy the game on another platform, it's absolutely phenomenal you have an account to that game that you can move everything over to that other platform should you want to. For instance, with "Destiny 2", if for some reason you've been playing it on Google Stadia, and you come to your senses, you can port all of that progress to any other actually functioning version of the game you want to play. But it's not just that, like, just the ability to cloud save at all is amazing.
Let's say you jumped from PS4 to PS5 and you port your game library,
all that stuff is not stuff you have to figure out some way to move between two machines, but you just have to log into your PSN account, and in some cases, not just download the saves, but just download the games.
They're there. Now, this has a lot of unsavory implications in terms of ownership. Like, I don't like the idea they could just shut a game off for you forever. "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" game. Although fortunately, one of those has made its way back to us. It has its downsides, but you cannot argue the upsides. I love just having access to my saves anywhere.
I love just having access to my games anywhere.
At number four, more and more accessibility options becoming common. And I know that that probably doesn't seem like a big deal to somebody like myself, who doesn't need a colorblind mode, or a hearing-impaired mode, or anything like that. But when I was little, I came from the perspective that more people enjoying video games is always a good thing. And it really sucks when people, because of some aspect that they have no control over, are not able to participate in such an awesome hobby. I like to think that video games have enriched my life very significantly. Like, there's been numerous studies that have shown that it helps with neurocognitive development, I think that growing up with that stuff, even at a time when we were being told, I knew it was still good for me. I think maybe sometimes I play it a little bit too much, but it all equals out in the end. I think more people should be able to experience that. I think more people should be able to boot up "Super Mario Odyssey" and actually hear it, you know? Or see it in a way that is actually visually distinct for them given the fact that their vision only displays, like, let's say yellow and green.
At number three is Photo Mode. Now, this might not sound like a big deal to certain PC gamers because Photo Mode has existed in a lot of games for a long time on that platform. But man, that has become a mainstream feature and I love it. First of all, we are living in an era, like I said, when we were talking about the transition between cutscenes and gameplay, where games look better than they ever have. And knowing that more likely than not the game has the ability to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, really get into the nitty-gritty of what's going on, detail in textures, detail in models, or just creating great vistas with sunsets and weather, and I mean, have you ever used Photo Mode in "Ghost of Tsushima"?
It is, without a doubt, one of the most glorious sights. And I'm talking about the PS4 version, it's amazing looking. You see a lot of big Sony games in fact feature this and it really does well, but you even see it down in like indie games, like "Chernobylite".
At number two are streaming options for games. Even if, I mean, if you detected a little bit earlier, when I dunked on Google Stadia, we're not super crazy about streaming. When it works, it's actually a really good feature. And I like the idea that you have ways to access your games from different places via different services, some better than others. Again, not a big Stadia fan. It's just great, like, I've seen this streaming version of "Assassin's Creed Odyssey" working on Switch.
And finally, at number one is Exploration Mode. A mode that is becoming more and more common in various open world games where you don't just get all of the way points right off, you actually have to figure out where you're going.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Exploration mode
It's certainly reminiscent of older games, except for game worlds were never as expansive as they are now. Hell, we could even bring up the History Learning Mode from "Assassin's Creed", where you actually have a guided tour around the environments, which are, as you know, based in real areas. Like, in "Assassin's Creed Origins", doing History Learning Mode, lets you see a ton of incredible things in Ancient Egypt and actually get information about it as we know it, in real life, not mystical. These kinds of modes add a different way to experience these massive worlds that were created in ways that don't restrict you to simply annihilating your own way through them. It's pretty great. Well, that's all for today.
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