[Artaud]

Referring to Atrocities' original post...

Yes, I've noticed that about games and system requirements. And, you know what? It does not bother me as much as it did a year ago, because there are not many new games I want to play.

There was a time when I'd buy a game every other week. No more. I don't need another first person shooter. I don't need another RTS. I don't need another racing game.

I have Starcraft (not sure if it will run on the Win XP system I bought last fall, though). I have C&C Tiberian Sun and C&C Red Alert 2 or whatever it was called. I have Age of Empire II. I have Mechwarrior 3.

Sometimes (not nearly as often as I used to) I buy computer game magazines. I read the reviews...more military shooters, more monster shooters, more RTS games. I load the demos and after a few minutes realize that I already have several games that play this way but load faster and look great.

I read a review or preview of a game in the new PC Gamer magazine and the writer was going on about how photorealistic the faces were.

Well, that's nice, but so what? What I'm concerned about is the game play. Given the choice between a game that is a system-hog and does basically the same thing as one of my older games, and my older games, I'll continue to play the older games.

I'm not impressed by 3-D engines. Far too many of the articles in the gaming mags blather endlessly about how a game looks, rather than how it plays.

Older games like Capitalism II, Patrician II, Europa Universalis II, the old Sierra city-builders, the old Talonsoft civil war games, and SE4 impress me more than any new game demo.

Anyway, I just don't have the money to upgrade my computer every year. Maybe the short-attention-span crowd needs more glitz and flash with every new game, and maybe they have the cash and have sorted their priorities in life so that high-end gaming is at the top of the list...me, I just want a little bit of relaxation.