Use code ERUPTION60 to get 60% off your first Factor box at bit.ly/3CLJyfa! HOWDY. This here's a pilot to see if the concept is something y'all are into. I haven't really gone into modern or at this point "Retro" AAA games yet, and you know this channels old and crusty now so I wanna see what works! Lemme know if you want to see me do more deep dives into bigger AAA games and also any specific ones you think I should highlight. Also try Bionic Commando. It's like 2 dollars on steam during sales, it's better than you've been told! A perfect 6.5. Just like Sonic Frontiers.
Good luck with Sonic Unleashed HD. Great game and pretty tough n fun to 100%. Wish there was a PC port cus some parts of the game goes into low FPS City. Also X360 version i feel runs faster than PS3 but with the cost of aliasing shadows. Also X360 version has transformation loading screens which is nice.
True story- I almost choked and died while playing Bionic Commando alone in my basement. I had to squeeze my throat and crush a thick corn chip, it was horribly painful.. but I knew that if I died playing the gritty reboot of Bionic Commando nobody would remember me for anything other than that! xD
This kind of video is EXACTLY my kind of jam. I love seeing retrospectives on niche games from my teenage years. The 360/ps3/wii generation is such a fascinatingly awkward transition generation. It’s long lifecycle saw such a drastic shift in game design from the previous generation to what is now essentially a universal blueprint for gameplay. I think you should absolutely do more like this!
couldn't agree more. for me the 360/ps3 generation is the birth of "modern" gaming as we know it today. It is why i feel that generation will never carryover to 'retro' - the entire game design philosophy and game development culture saw a massive shift with the explosion of the video game industry as a whole. "modern" gaming will turn to retro when we see another massive shift - something like ubiquitous VR where that is how most games are experienced.
There was a lot of massive “hype” titles in the early 00s. GTA 3, Zelda the wind Waker, Metroid, Resident Evil 4, the original Halo. Truly was an awesome time for gaming,
This. Triple A games used to innovate and I miss these times so much. Now triple A studios mostly recycle the same formula to make as much money as possible, and add predatory extras like microtransactions, lootboxes, and locked parts of the game behind paid DLC.
All I remember from back then was that every AAA title had that overused green or brown, dark and grim filter on screen; and now almost every game wants to look like Fortnite. Don't know which is worse.
They were more experimental. When consoles weren't powerful to have super real graphics and they could focus more on gameplay. With dlc and patches to fix a games was a rarity. So games had to be good on release to succeed. Also with no proven formula to success, so experimenting was very common. Cause so many AAA games feel so similar to each other that they really start to blend together
binary domain was SICK, i lowkey loved that if you badmouthed your ai teammates, they could ACTUALLY hear you, understand you, remember it, and hold a grudge, i even had the robot throw my own words back at me once.....ive never played a game like it since, BUT I WANT TO! maybe combine it with the "nemisis system" and iunno, actually allow you to talk to the npc's at critical story junctures, instead of just picking from a dialog tree, that would make for one hell of an immersive RPG!
I’m glad to see Binary Domain get a mention. It was one of my favorite games from the 360, and I still play through it every year. It has a great pace, awesome shooting and the destruction was satisfying, such an underrated gem.
It's a fantastic game. I never could get the voice commands to work properly, but the gameplay is great. It's the best non terminator, terminator game.
Fun fact: just like Yakuza, Binary Domain is not a AAA game but a AA game, as the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is still a fully AA studio just like every other studio at SEGA. In fact the only AAA game made by SEGA since Virtua Fighter 5 in 2007(not counting its re-releases) was Alien Isolation.
I LOVED this vid! Made me very nostalgic for the years when I was young and would see all these games on the shelves of our local rental store. Great to see what they were all about having never played a lot of them, and would love to see more!
Ha! I just bought a Shenmue 1&2 bundle a few days ago. It was on sale for like $8 in the MS store. Shenmue was definitely a triple A game that I couldn't wait to show my family and friends way back when.
This video was wonderful. It went in directions and mentioned games I totally didn't expect. I love how he can talk about games I have already played and still shine an entirely new light on it.
Really - the idea of you sharing your experiences with these types of titles with epic levels of details would be cool - hope it happens. Great video :)
The concept of Triple A came into being during the 7th generation that is very true. I think the idea behind Triple A was when the video games industry tried to be just like the movie industry. A trend had developed that wanted to expand and increase marketing reach so they wanted to emulate the movie type of marketing. Instead of a term blockbuster the term triple AAA became the popular term. Before the 7th generation sure marketing was important to video games but the only difference is by the 7th generation it wanted to emulate the movie industry that's why this term was useful.
Pretty sure that the term only came up later, after it was "popularized" by the 2008 financial crisis ? (Also why it's unseemly, don't talk like a corporate lapdog, just say "big budget"...)
Great video Austin! I also appreciate the inclusion of that Tekken 4 beach song, and I have a similar thing that happened to your Shenmue story but I think it was from playing Heavy Rain when my mom got weirdly invested in a game which was very much unlike her, the only other time was when she had so much fun playing Wii Sports at a clients house, we got one to play with her lol
I liked the overview, you should do the deep dives or focus on singles on the ones you want, but I also enjoyed the grab bag approach & you could absolutely make that work as a semi-slack series if you grouped some into themes or trends, whether they died out or evolved into a current form. Like “AAAs & Product Placement” or “AAAs with Wrestlers but not about Wrestling” or “AAAs All Went Crazy For Bullet Time For 4 Long Years” or “AAAs Where You Play Sick For A Level” or “AAAs With Legit Soundtracks” etc etc. I really liked all the moments of remembering a game existed in this & I think it’s cool for you to leave yourself room to do both single dives & surveys in batches kinda stuff.
You talked about it in passing, but I would really want you to cover Dark Void. It has a lot in common with Bionic Commando and Binary Domain (fun gameplay gimmick + bonkers ideas thrown around for the story) but with this one you can really feel how the budget money shrinks as the game progresses. It just ends as the third act of the story is supposed to start, it's baffling.
I played the FF7 demo from the magazine at least 20 times. Super Maria 64 was a groundbreaking experience. I don't think I even imagined games could be 3d until that point.
I'm playing the first Assassin's Creed for the first time ever right now (I've finished all the other games in the franchise between AC2 and Origins), and, to me, it feels like I'm playing a tech demo that Ubisoft released before releasing the "real" game (AC2). It's so quaint going back to reviews at the time praising it as revolutionary. However, at the same time, it's also fascinating to play a AAA game that feels so much like "what you see is what you get". It's not bogged down by open-world bloat yet, and it's the purest distillation of what an Assassin's Creed game is "supposed" to be; you go collect evidence, and then you stab your target. Rinse, dry, and repeat nine times. It doesn't feel as directed at "all gamers" as future AC games seem to be, but a distinct target market looking for a mix of specific mechanics, and I appreciate that. Now, to release a AAA game, you basically have to make a game "for everyone" to justify the high production costs, and it has been so interesting to see AC evolve into that over the last decade-and-a-half
I feel bad for Prince of Persia 2008, I don't think I've ever seen someone mentioning it on youtube in the past 10 years or something lol. Great video!
Party Game proposal: take a shot every time Austin says “we’ll talk about this game some other day” and try not to pass out. All jokes aside I loved this video! Keep up the great work!
Love the video, love the format, love the inclusion of Lost Odyssey. Speaking of Odysseys, remember Enslaved: Odyssey to the West? That was AAA right? Always held out hope Andy Serkis would give us more of that.
I've got to give you props for very consistently coming out with fresh and unique video ideas, its quite refreshing as someone who's been watching gaming/retro related content on youtube for over a decade
The PS3 and Xbox 360 Era has a TON of great games that are still worth playing today. (With all the games out for PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, and Xbox One, I don't feel any need to upgrade)
I am not sure if you did more of these, but this was a great watch and I hope you do or did more. The ending, with Bionic Commando reminds me why seventh generation is my favorite. They tried new, and often wild things. You mentioned the season passes taking off and micro transactions. How about those online passes? That was.. something. Use a code with a new game to play online, or pay a fee, per game to play it online.
Love the format. And I agree that some deeper dives would be really nice. Lost Odyssey is the best final fantasy and it really needs to be said more lol
Imagine my joy when I saw it in HD and backwards compatible on the Xbox One. You better believe it was the ONLY game that remains perma-installed on my hard drive. Well, that and Nier...
The 2000s, AAA games were really special way back then, back then the games didn’t require you to pay for a Season Pass for the game to feel like a complete experience.
I forgot all about Lost Odyssey. I don't think I ever made it to the second disc, but really had a good time with it. The active ring thing during battles was super unique.
Hell yeah, Binary Domain! It was one of those games I found in a bargain bin at the video store in their final days of operation, and I was completely shocked by just how much I loved it. Going in I didn't even realize the game had different endings based on your crew's social links, and it damn near killed me inside when I got some of the worst outcomes due to how I'd spent the whole game calling my team useless over the headset for funnies. I bought the game on Steam again a few years ago, and it's one of those games I just keep going back to even now knowing all its secrets and the min/max best ways to play (Farming in the waste disposal, anyone?) My one regret is that I never got to play the wave defense co-op mode with people because let's be honest, who's gonna shell out the cash for Binary Domain when Halo's all the rage and firefight exists?
I've been gaming for over 40 years at this point. I've seen the graphics go from blocky, single pixels to its fully rendered, capture motioned glory. That line at the start about how FFVII looked AMAZING when it was released explains part of my long term fascination with the hobby. Going back further, I remember Christmas Day 1984 when I got Ghostbusters for the Commodore 64. Decent game, I played it again recently, but it's big thing was it used a few speech samples, which was rare for a home system in those days. Now we're up to VR and I'm wondering what's next?
Austin, I can tell you exactly why people hated Bionic Commando (but also I love this as a series idea, please go on) A LOT and I mean A LOT of these AAA titles that were multi-plat had a barely functioning, or super unstable PS3 version. You said the swinging on Bionic Commando was great, so I went back and tried it... No, it does not feel great. So I tried a friends 360 version. That game feels WAY better! I noticed this with other titles too, like Enslaved- Odyssey to the West, Brutal Legend, and El Shaddai to name a few more games. Most of the time, multi-plats just kinda struggled on the PS3
I rarely comment but I really love your videos, thanks for your hardwork Austin, greetings from Belgium in Europe. Now I watching your video. EDIT: thanks for the FFIX soundtracks in the video ^^
Where does that clip at 4:27 come from? The one with the guy in the suit with stacks of dreamcasts behind him. I've seen it in so many videos about the dreamcast
It's uncanny howany of these fall in to the category of games I was super interested in pre-release and then completely forgot about as soon as no one talked about them post-release. And then I'd go investigate them like a year later and be like "oh, it's crappy"
I’m happy to see you talk about bionic commando I played it a couple years ago for the first time and the swinging is crazy how good it was and it’s a fun game to spend a evening on I hope people would just give it a try now and please make more videos like this I realized the decline of triple a games and I want to see more people talk about them so we can get good triple a games again cause it can be done Spider-Man ps4 was a perfect example
Its always hilarious when the "special" education people continue constantly farting out something they heard on the internet, that has zero evidence besides they heard it from a usually youtube grifter looking for clicks.
The DOA (Dead or Alive) series were a t graphic trendsetter from 1999 to with DOA2 in Dreamcast to 2001’s DOA3 in Xbox. My body wasn’t ready the first time I encountered the arcade version when I was 11.
This barely covered AAA games, their development, and its influence on the medium as a whole. You more often than not went off topic, just to discuss an obscure video game you remembered.
What i really liked about FarCry2 was the true feeling of a sandbox during that time. sure it's not the easiest game but i loved the random encounters and say, the ways you could take out those convoys, the weapon shops etc. yeah, i might be a hipster but damn do i like that game.
IMO 6th and 7th console generations where the best in gaming! Technology kept maturing and the gaming industry followed suit. Things where jumping to 3D and it lead to some great experimental ideas and opportunities for growth. Most of the games mentioned in this video are a mixed bag but that what I love about them! So many different types of game’s trying out weird ideas. It a major contrast today where the companies are more that ever beholden to shareholder and the games the selves are stuck chasing the same 3 or 4 trends year after year! And they fall short from either heavy montization or big budget experiences too big and expensive to run properly at launch. Indi games are the very least are more accessible even though their success isn’t immune to chasing similar story/platform/rpg sim trends that plauge the market as well. I don’t see much of this creativity and variety coming back soon because the technology isn’t growing as fast anymore and game companies are still beholdent to keeping the growth going. It is just not there anymore
10:02 I think another factor here, beyond "the hype" is the fact that the PS2 became the best selling console of all time. It normalized gaming in many ways, which I believe was part of the reason why the market suddenly become as big as it did.
Oh yeah Austin you've earned a huge amount of respect for shouting out binary domain. I f*****g loved it . I was one of the few people who bought binary domain day one and never regretted it. Great game 8.5/10 for me (9/10 if I'm being generous)
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Use code ERUPTION60 to get 60% off your first Factor box at bit.ly/3CLJyfa!
HOWDY. This here's a pilot to see if the concept is something y'all are into. I haven't really gone into modern or at this point "Retro" AAA games yet, and you know this channels old and crusty now so I wanna see what works! Lemme know if you want to see me do more deep dives into bigger AAA games and also any specific ones you think I should highlight.
Also try Bionic Commando. It's like 2 dollars on steam during sales, it's better than you've been told! A perfect 6.5. Just like Sonic Frontiers.
Oh right, Bionic Commando. That's the game with the cat girl right
I like this. I'd definitely be okay with seeing more videos like this one.
Good luck with Sonic Unleashed HD. Great game and pretty tough n fun to 100%. Wish there was a PC port cus some parts of the game goes into low FPS City.
Also X360 version i feel runs faster than PS3 but with the cost of aliasing shadows.
Also X360 version has transformation loading screens which is nice.
I love you Austin, but Sonic Frontiers is DEFINITY better than a 6.5!
True story- I almost choked and died while playing Bionic Commando alone in my basement. I had to squeeze my throat and crush a thick corn chip, it was horribly painful.. but I knew that if I died playing the gritty reboot of Bionic Commando nobody would remember me for anything other than that! xD
This kind of video is EXACTLY my kind of jam. I love seeing retrospectives on niche games from my teenage years. The 360/ps3/wii generation is such a fascinatingly awkward transition generation. It’s long lifecycle saw such a drastic shift in game design from the previous generation to what is now essentially a universal blueprint for gameplay. I think you should absolutely do more like this!
Well said.
couldn't agree more. for me the 360/ps3 generation is the birth of "modern" gaming as we know it today. It is why i feel that generation will never carryover to 'retro' - the entire game design philosophy and game development culture saw a massive shift with the explosion of the video game industry as a whole. "modern" gaming will turn to retro when we see another massive shift - something like ubiquitous VR where that is how most games are experienced.
To be clear. These are not "niche games" These were prominent and loved games, with high budgets, and many with high sales.
Why that era is considered long when PS4/xbone lasted 7 years just like the previous generation ?
There was a lot of massive “hype” titles in the early 00s. GTA 3, Zelda the wind Waker, Metroid, Resident Evil 4, the original Halo. Truly was an awesome time for gaming,
Always fascinating to know what triple A games were like back then compared to now .
@@fritzthecat8158 it’s just been a good while to remember what it was like for me .
This. Triple A games used to innovate and I miss these times so much. Now triple A studios mostly recycle the same formula to make as much money as possible, and add predatory extras like microtransactions, lootboxes, and locked parts of the game behind paid DLC.
All I remember from back then was that every AAA title had that overused green or brown, dark and grim filter on screen; and now almost every game wants to look like Fortnite.
Don't know which is worse.
@@HanDaimond the "modern war" era of fps lol
They were more experimental. When consoles weren't powerful to have super real graphics and they could focus more on gameplay. With dlc and patches to fix a games was a rarity. So games had to be good on release to succeed.
Also with no proven formula to success, so experimenting was very common. Cause so many AAA games feel so similar to each other that they really start to blend together
binary domain was SICK, i lowkey loved that if you badmouthed your ai teammates, they could ACTUALLY hear you, understand you, remember it, and hold a grudge, i even had the robot throw my own words back at me once.....ive never played a game like it since, BUT I WANT TO! maybe combine it with the "nemisis system" and iunno, actually allow you to talk to the npc's at critical story junctures, instead of just picking from a dialog tree, that would make for one hell of an immersive RPG!
you could make an hour long video on the history of drying paint and id still watch it. yes pls keep this series going 🙏
Straight up. Hahaha
I’m glad to see Binary Domain get a mention. It was one of my favorite games from the 360, and I still play through it every year. It has a great pace, awesome shooting and the destruction was satisfying, such an underrated gem.
It's a fantastic game. I never could get the voice commands to work properly, but the gameplay is great. It's the best non terminator, terminator game.
one of the few games I loved on the 360
Fun fact: just like Yakuza, Binary Domain is not a AAA game but a AA game, as the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is still a fully AA studio just like every other studio at SEGA. In fact the only AAA game made by SEGA since Virtua Fighter 5 in 2007(not counting its re-releases) was Alien Isolation.
So bland though
I LOVED this vid! Made me very nostalgic for the years when I was young and would see all these games on the shelves of our local rental store. Great to see what they were all about having never played a lot of them, and would love to see more!
"The local rental store". Not only did that sentence take me back visually but I could even smell the place. Been awhile!
I love these deep dives into the 2004 to 2014ish games, there is a lot of forgotten gold there
always love when austin makes wrestling references. the "hollowed out ricky starks" with 2 seconds of his theme playing gave me a good laugh
I always remember Jade Empire as that game where if you save scummed while gambling it would kill the npc you were gambling against
That's hilarious
Binary domain and Bionic Commando went under the radar so hard man. Some of the best bargain bin purchases I’ve ever made.
Ha! I just bought a Shenmue 1&2 bundle a few days ago. It was on sale for like $8 in the MS store. Shenmue was definitely a triple A game that I couldn't wait to show my family and friends way back when.
So glad Boston Erection's videos seem to only increase in quality. You have earned one like and one comment.
This video was wonderful.
It went in directions and mentioned games I totally didn't expect. I love how he can talk about games I have already played and still shine an entirely new light on it.
I would 100% be interested in you doing a dedicated episode for Gun. To this day, it's still my favorite Western/Cowboy game
Yesterday’s $60 blockbuster is tomorrow’s bargain bin fodder
Exactly. They have no staying power, because they aren't actually good games. There's no quality.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a great example of this. Love this idea as a series
Really - the idea of you sharing your experiences with these types of titles with epic levels of details would be cool - hope it happens. Great video :)
Same here.
The concept of Triple A came into being during the 7th generation that is very true. I think the idea behind Triple A was when the video games industry tried to be just like the movie industry. A trend had developed that wanted to expand and increase marketing reach so they wanted to emulate the movie type of marketing. Instead of a term blockbuster the term triple AAA became the popular term. Before the 7th generation sure marketing was important to video games but the only difference is by the 7th generation it wanted to emulate the movie industry that's why this term was useful.
Pretty sure that the term only came up later, after it was "popularized" by the 2008 financial crisis ?
(Also why it's unseemly, don't talk like a corporate lapdog, just say "big budget"...)
One of my favorite trends of this era was "we hired a band!" Korn's theme for Haze... and Jon Davis's for one of the Silent Hill games, for example
Murdered is such a good game i played that back in the day along with inFamous Second Son.
Hell yeah, you mentioned the wife arm! That’s the only thing I know about Bionic Commando and I love it.
I really liked this! Hope you do more, there were a lot of weird AAA and AA games back in the day.
Great video Austin! I also appreciate the inclusion of that Tekken 4 beach song, and I have a similar thing that happened to your Shenmue story but I think it was from playing Heavy Rain when my mom got weirdly invested in a game which was very much unlike her, the only other time was when she had so much fun playing Wii Sports at a clients house, we got one to play with her lol
I liked the overview, you should do the deep dives or focus on singles on the ones you want, but I also enjoyed the grab bag approach & you could absolutely make that work as a semi-slack series if you grouped some into themes or trends, whether they died out or evolved into a current form. Like “AAAs & Product Placement” or “AAAs with Wrestlers but not about Wrestling” or “AAAs All Went Crazy For Bullet Time For 4 Long Years” or “AAAs Where You Play Sick For A Level” or “AAAs With Legit Soundtracks” etc etc. I really liked all the moments of remembering a game existed in this & I think it’s cool for you to leave yourself room to do both single dives & surveys in batches kinda stuff.
I actually really liked Black! Glad to see it get some love. I'm not really a huge fan of FPS games, but this one kinda stood out.
I’d love to see more videos like this, these are my favorite of yours. Seeing this pilot turn into a series of videos would be awesome
I appreciate the look back into the PS1 - PS3 generation of Games.
Love your content bro lowkey been binging this weekend, learn something each video
1:34 I come home after school and check your channel every day. I love you bro
You talked about it in passing, but I would really want you to cover Dark Void. It has a lot in common with Bionic Commando and Binary Domain (fun gameplay gimmick + bonkers ideas thrown around for the story) but with this one you can really feel how the budget money shrinks as the game progresses. It just ends as the third act of the story is supposed to start, it's baffling.
I played the FF7 demo from the magazine at least 20 times. Super Maria 64 was a groundbreaking experience. I don't think I even imagined games could be 3d until that point.
haha i had to go to.the mag store to buy it!
Nice! Keep up with that quality content :) really enjoying it
Would definitely enjoy seeing more of this. Lots of games I’m surprised I’ve never heard of.
I'd just like to see more people talk about Panzer Dragoon Saga, it even kinda fits under this topic (big money project, sold really poorly)
The reason it sold badly was because it was sold near the end of the Saturn and the Saturn sold poorly
1:50 yes Austin, I want this deep dive format so much
Did not expect a mention of Binary Domain, let alone a brief mention of "Absolute" Ricky Starks! Good to know Austin is All Elite Knowing too.
A great watch indeed and yeah Austin Eruption this little experiment was worth it, looking forward to whatever you make next dude. 👍
Zombies Revenge is such a good arcade style game.
you are the king Austin thank you for rocking and rolling these videos
I miss these days of wacky games. Devs used to take so many more risks, this is why games feel so stale nowadays.
I'm playing the first Assassin's Creed for the first time ever right now (I've finished all the other games in the franchise between AC2 and Origins), and, to me, it feels like I'm playing a tech demo that Ubisoft released before releasing the "real" game (AC2). It's so quaint going back to reviews at the time praising it as revolutionary.
However, at the same time, it's also fascinating to play a AAA game that feels so much like "what you see is what you get". It's not bogged down by open-world bloat yet, and it's the purest distillation of what an Assassin's Creed game is "supposed" to be; you go collect evidence, and then you stab your target. Rinse, dry, and repeat nine times. It doesn't feel as directed at "all gamers" as future AC games seem to be, but a distinct target market looking for a mix of specific mechanics, and I appreciate that. Now, to release a AAA game, you basically have to make a game "for everyone" to justify the high production costs, and it has been so interesting to see AC evolve into that over the last decade-and-a-half
I recall the reception to AC1 being fairly divided- at the time many people found it technologically impressive but repetitive and boring.
AC1 holds a special place in my heart. Altair holds a special lace lol.
I remember almost every game discussed here. Definitely worth expanding on them in future videos.
I feel bad for Prince of Persia 2008, I don't think I've ever seen someone mentioning it on youtube in the past 10 years or something lol.
Great video!
Party Game proposal: take a shot every time Austin says “we’ll talk about this game some other day” and try not to pass out.
All jokes aside I loved this video! Keep up the great work!
Playing Jade Empire after the KoTOR games, is like eating a stale cashew nut after eating a fruit and nut chocolate bar.
Really like this video, hope you make additional videos with deep dives into some of these.
I NEED to see you cover shadow of the colossus, voting for a PS2 AAA’s video!
PLEASE TALK ABOUT HERDY GERDY SOMEBODY NEEDS TO SHINE SOME LIGHT ON IT!!!
Seeing someone recognize Binary Domain makes me so happy that game is so cool and legitimately deep for a game that feels like an arcade shooter
12:14 you cannot leave us hanging there. we need a lost odyssey video from you my man. come on
This is probably my favourite video of yours. Definitely want to see more of it
Great video mate, had a blast watching it !
Thanks
7:20 And then Obsidian came in and pinpointed very single problem with Bioware's writing that would one day kill them.
You weren't kidding, AAA games are a huge time capsule. Some of these games were big guilty pleasures of mine. Bionic commando included
The amount of sound bites from Phantasy star online Ep 1 and 2 you use make me soooooooooooo happy
Love the video, love the format, love the inclusion of Lost Odyssey. Speaking of Odysseys, remember Enslaved: Odyssey to the West? That was AAA right? Always held out hope Andy Serkis would give us more of that.
I've got to give you props for very consistently coming out with fresh and unique video ideas, its quite refreshing as someone who's been watching gaming/retro related content on youtube for over a decade
The PS3 and Xbox 360 Era has a TON of great games that are still worth playing today. (With all the games out for PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, and Xbox One, I don't feel any need to upgrade)
I am not sure if you did more of these, but this was a great watch and I hope you do or did more. The ending, with Bionic Commando reminds me why seventh generation is my favorite. They tried new, and often wild things. You mentioned the season passes taking off and micro transactions. How about those online passes? That was.. something. Use a code with a new game to play online, or pay a fee, per game to play it online.
Love the format. And I agree that some deeper dives would be really nice. Lost Odyssey is the best final fantasy and it really needs to be said more lol
Imagine my joy when I saw it in HD and backwards compatible on the Xbox One. You better believe it was the ONLY game that remains perma-installed on my hard drive. Well, that and Nier...
The 2000s, AAA games were really special way back then, back then the games didn’t require you to pay for a Season Pass for the game to feel like a complete experience.
Exactly. Plus the entire game was included on a physical disc! No patches or updates or DLC. They also didn't take up hundreds of gigabytes.
What game is that at 0:18? Can someone tell me.
If you still havent found it its called sifu
I forgot all about Lost Odyssey. I don't think I ever made it to the second disc, but really had a good time with it. The active ring thing during battles was super unique.
I loved all the short stories
Always excited when you upload dude!
I'm super interested in seeing all the bad or weird "AAA" games i'm here for it all 😂
Austin, you're bumping UN Squadron music in this?! So many fantastic memories with that one
Hell yeah, Binary Domain! It was one of those games I found in a bargain bin at the video store in their final days of operation, and I was completely shocked by just how much I loved it. Going in I didn't even realize the game had different endings based on your crew's social links, and it damn near killed me inside when I got some of the worst outcomes due to how I'd spent the whole game calling my team useless over the headset for funnies. I bought the game on Steam again a few years ago, and it's one of those games I just keep going back to even now knowing all its secrets and the min/max best ways to play (Farming in the waste disposal, anyone?)
My one regret is that I never got to play the wave defense co-op mode with people because let's be honest, who's gonna shell out the cash for Binary Domain when Halo's all the rage and firefight exists?
definitely keep this series going my brotha
I've been gaming for over 40 years at this point. I've seen the graphics go from blocky, single pixels to its fully rendered, capture motioned glory. That line at the start about how FFVII looked AMAZING when it was released explains part of my long term fascination with the hobby. Going back further, I remember Christmas Day 1984 when I got Ghostbusters for the Commodore 64. Decent game, I played it again recently, but it's big thing was it used a few speech samples, which was rare for a home system in those days. Now we're up to VR and I'm wondering what's next?
Great pilot!!! I'm down with this series bro
Austin, I can tell you exactly why people hated Bionic Commando (but also I love this as a series idea, please go on)
A LOT and I mean A LOT of these AAA titles that were multi-plat had a barely functioning, or super unstable PS3 version.
You said the swinging on Bionic Commando was great, so I went back and tried it... No, it does not feel great.
So I tried a friends 360 version. That game feels WAY better!
I noticed this with other titles too, like Enslaved- Odyssey to the West, Brutal Legend, and El Shaddai to name a few more games. Most of the time, multi-plats just kinda struggled on the PS3
I rarely comment but I really love your videos, thanks for your hardwork Austin, greetings from Belgium in Europe.
Now I watching your video.
EDIT: thanks for the FFIX soundtracks in the video ^^
This has been a fun video to take a look back at some games I haven't thought of in years.
Where does that clip at 4:27 come from? The one with the guy in the suit with stacks of dreamcasts behind him. I've seen it in so many videos about the dreamcast
10:29 I love that this was included.
Wild to think back on how far these things have come, but also... can we really ignore Mortal Monday or more importantly, Sonic 2sday
It's uncanny howany of these fall in to the category of games I was super interested in pre-release and then completely forgot about as soon as no one talked about them post-release. And then I'd go investigate them like a year later and be like "oh, it's crappy"
I’m happy to see you talk about bionic commando I played it a couple years ago for the first time and the swinging is crazy how good it was and it’s a fun game to spend a evening on I hope people would just give it a try now and please make more videos like this I realized the decline of triple a games and I want to see more people talk about them so we can get good triple a games again cause it can be done Spider-Man ps4 was a perfect example
22:43 missed opportunity to say “you can walk through walls, disappear, and fly”
How did he guess that in 3 years there would be a TLOU 2 remake lol. There are rumors that they are working on it right now
Its always hilarious when the "special" education people continue constantly farting out something they heard on the internet, that has zero evidence besides they heard it from a usually youtube grifter looking for clicks.
The DOA (Dead or Alive) series were a t graphic trendsetter from 1999 to with DOA2 in Dreamcast to 2001’s DOA3 in Xbox.
My body wasn’t ready the first time I encountered the arcade version when I was 11.
This barely covered AAA games, their development, and its influence on the medium as a whole. You more often than not went off topic, just to discuss an obscure video game you remembered.
22:10 Is the best sort of random anime reference, and earns my like
Has Austin talked about Bullet witch yet?
MGS on PSX is my fav game of all time... When I played it in 1999, it was the most mind blowing thing.
Nice format! Keep going!
I am waiting with bated breath for the Neverdead video. This was great, keep it up Austin!
What i really liked about FarCry2 was the true feeling of a sandbox during that time. sure it's not the easiest game but i loved the random encounters and say, the ways you could take out those convoys, the weapon shops etc. yeah, i might be a hipster but damn do i like that game.
IMO 6th and 7th console generations where the best in gaming! Technology kept maturing and the gaming industry followed suit. Things where jumping to 3D and it lead to some great experimental ideas and opportunities for growth. Most of the games mentioned in this video are a mixed bag but that what I love about them! So many different types of game’s trying out weird ideas. It a major contrast today where the companies are more that ever beholden to shareholder and the games the selves are stuck chasing the same 3 or 4 trends year after year! And they fall short from either heavy montization or big budget experiences too big and expensive to run properly at launch. Indi games are the very least are more accessible even though their success isn’t immune to chasing similar story/platform/rpg sim trends that plauge the market as well. I don’t see much of this creativity and variety coming back soon because the technology isn’t growing as fast anymore and game companies are still beholdent to keeping the growth going. It is just not there anymore
Jade Empire's combat system was so fun to me at the time. Nothing else like it that era.
10:02 I think another factor here, beyond "the hype" is the fact that the PS2 became the best selling console of all time. It normalized gaming in many ways, which I believe was part of the reason why the market suddenly become as big as it did.
My breath is fine😤
Great video btw. I'm glad there's less AAA games nowadays tbh
Battlefield - Bad Company 1+2
Pretty Triple-A, pretty forgotten, pretty good
Jade Empire's soundtrack lives rent free in my head. Such a great game!
Oh yeah Austin you've earned a huge amount of respect for shouting out binary domain. I f*****g loved it . I was one of the few people who bought binary domain day one and never regretted it. Great game 8.5/10 for me (9/10 if I'm being generous)
Like the deeper look at games, please do more.
the complete LACK of a mention for Arkham Asylum during the AAA licensed section had me tearing my hair out
austin eruption I refuse to accept this