The biggest myth the "gaming press" creatyed this generation, among many, is that the west is "kicking Japan's ass". Some of the best games of the last years (Demon's/Dark Souls, Sin and Punishment 2, Muramasa, many handheld games) were made in Japan. Sales-wise japanese titles are also selling well. Interactive movies like the Uncharted games, or whatever generic FPS came out yesterday, are hardly an example of "kicking ass". Both sides of the ocean have made good and bad games, and both sides are resenting the insane inflation in budgets.

As for Phil Fish and his band of hipster hacks, indie games are right now the most worthless and useless thing in existance. Their non-gameplay "retro" pixel mess of flash games is going to be remember by nobody.

"I'm not a big fan of Japanese titles later than the PS1 era myself, they're too afraid to innovate"

What a strange thing to say.

Allow me to correct myself; JRPGs are starting to feel stale to me, maybe I've just played too many, maybe it's because I'm old now. I just haven't seen an RPG that's really wowed me the same way Chrono Trigger or Earthbound has in ages.

JRPG = US Generic Shooter/Sports title (Add number or year)

That aside, METAL WOLF!

Yeah, I find it amazing that someone would single out Japan for being "afraid to innovate" when American publishers are all about making yearly sequels, cranking out joyless, interchangeable first-person shooters with all the creativity of an assembly line, and shoehorning the words "open world" into every goddamn design document they come across.

Japan is no better, they're just stagnating in a different way.

I pretty much just play RPGs these days, so I was speaking on a pretty narrow scope. And yeah, all the cookie cutter cover shooters here got old ages ago.

It's pretty safe to ignore the opinion of anyone who says "Demon's/Dark Souls, Sin and Punishment 2, Muramasa, many handheld games" make up the "best games of the last few years".

Or anyone who plays JRPGs or PSP/DS games. What are you, in middle school? The only excuse for a handheld videogame is a road trip and not having music to listen to or people to talk to.

I need to hear what you think the "best games" of this generation are.

If you think Dark Souls is shitty and there's way better non-Japanese games that came out in the last few years, then I absolutely need to hear what you know that I don't. I'm really racking my brain trying to justify your insane comment.

I bet Gmork lost at the tutorial bosses of both Demon's and Dark souls and call it quits right away.

Whoa, weird that vid has been up for weeks. Here's a new link:

http://youtu.be/bzJK3LQ0bXY

How do I resubmit again?

The link underneath the video on the RHS that says 'Update Dead Link'

I went ahead and submitted your new link, it just needs to get voted out of the resubmit hopper.

You realize you just described the design philosophy behind every big budget studio, but only framed it as a bad thing when poor people do it.

It's a tricky beast, brand loyalty.

visual style and atmosphere are very important for a game, because it's an interactive medium.

Bastion doesn't have any kind of groundbreaking gameplay, but everything else about it makes it fucking amazing

"You realize you just described the design philosophy behind every big budget studio, but only framed it as a bad thing when poor people do it.

It's a tricky beast, brand loyalty."

Big budget studios are rehashing NES platformer mechanics with gimmicky visual styles? Do you even know what games I play?

I don't give a fuck if they're art or not. I just want them to be fun.

The sole purpose of modern video games is to make you cry. This is because crying--like, full-blown infantile bawling here, not just a little Last-Scene-Of-Schindler's-List-Tearing-Up bullshit--is the ultimate emotion and video games are engineered to produce ultra emotions. They will accomplish this by having lots of emotions, way more than movies and paintings. For example:

--Echoes of children laughing as you tour a demolished playground
--Heroes tormented by the murder of their family
--Echoes of children laughing tormenting the hero whose family was murdered
--Whatever other feelings people have

One makes a living that requires being a prick, the other is a prick trying to making a living that requires good PR.

If they devour themselves, the world wins.

But which prick is really more necessary? Does the world need another ANGRY VIDEO GAME GUY trying to make a name off of everyone's favorite indie punching bag? Or Fez? Okay, I've never played Fez, but plenty of people seemed to enjoy it.