Every major gaming milestone in my youth has felt like the high water mark for gaming. When I turned in my Colec-O-Vision for an NES, my mind was blown. Suddenly, we had more than just one or two pixels. Not many more, mind you, but enough that we could finally tell what we were looking at. I thought that was it, I thought it would never get better.
Then the Genesis came along. I popped in Sonic, and was floored. That, to me, looked like perfect Saturday morning cartoon aesthetics, and I was convinced that was that. Gaming had maxed out. Hey, I never said I was a smart kid.
Anyways, I think you get the point. Regardless of what I thought, there was no high water mark. The water kept getting higher and higher. The thing is, for the first time in forever, I am just not that impressed with the evolution of console systems. You can look at Call of Duty: Ghosts to see why. I swear to you, you play PS3 and PS4 copies, side by side, and only the most fevered fan of gaming will notice the slight difference between the two.
Don’t get me wrong, by the end of this gaming generation I am sure games will be massive and super shiny and all that other impressive shit, but so far, I have seen nothing that beats any of the games I am about to mention.
I, of course, am a writer, so I actually have no money for an Xbox One/PS4. The truth is, for the first time in all the generations of new systems coming out, I really could care less. I just feel like the biggest leaps and bounds that have happened in console gaming have already happened. As stated earlier, I was AWED when games went from sprites to polygons. That, to me, was a huge leap. Hell, I can still remember my genuine and palpable awe when I first saw Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. But that awe is gone in me. Shiny and better-looking is too shallow a hook to draw me in, and even if that were it, the new systems have yet to draw me in on even those aspects.
Don’t get me wrong, I know I made a list about next gen games I want to play, but that doesn’t mean I will pay hundreds of dollars to feed that urge. On top of it, why do I need those consoles when I have these six amazing games from the current generation? Games that are still, pretty much, perfect. In my opinion, anyway.
I am sure you will all take to the comments and let me know my choices suck and I should be stabbed in the throat for them, but I stand by my picks.
So here you go, 6 games from the current generation of consoles that I’ll always remember, in no particular order.