Often when I speak of gaming, I feel like I sound like an old man. I have tried avoiding being the man that said, “back in my day, thing were better.”

I think that statement holds through because history repeats itself. It is one big cycle. So things that people have seen now that they believe are mind-blowing or crazy are things that I have experienced in some shape or form in the past. This can also be applied to people that have come before me.

A good example is fashion. I believe that fashion is cyclical. Pointing towards the styles of the 40s and the 50s where rock involved tight, wet looking jeans and greased up hairdos, you had a period where it cycled from that into grunge and rebellious looks, to glam looks that was a spinoff, then back to punk, and then some of it blended with elements of hip hop ie. sagging skinny jeans.

Hip hop is an excellent example. It started from baggy jeans, windbreakers, and funky hairstyles, and now the youth of today have all sorts of flashy clothes reminiscient of the 80s such as bright colors, old school-looking jewelry, 80s and early 90s hairstyles, crazy looking shades, and etc.

When it comes to gaming, of course it is evolving, but in my mind it appears that it is flattening out and somewhat going backwards.

When I see something that I hold to be the pinnacle of my expectations or something that blows my mind away so much, I cannot help to keep referring back to it as a reference point. Sure I get ridiculed for claiming that my experiences are old, but I still believe that those experiences are worthwhile and more amazing than current experiences.

I loved Halo. Halo was one of the few games that blew my mind away from just looking at it. I was a man in the background at the time of its launch. I was in high school and the only system I owned was a PS2. When the XBox came out, my friends had it and played Halo all the time. Of course I was somewhat of a PS2 fanboy because I loved Tekken and also because the Xbox did not have a solid lineup back then. One day I decided to head over and check the game out. I think Halo was the first console FPS that I played. I think I played Counterstrike just before that, but I cannot recall.

All I played was the multiplayer, and that was all my friends did as well. There was so much hype around Halo at the time in my high school and all they did was talk about it. I was in awe when I played the game for the first time. The banshee airfights, the tanks, the large open fields, capture the flag, etc. Nothing that I ever played before felt this vast nor did it have that expansive gameplay. Needless to say, it led to countless hours of playing Halo 2 split-screen with friends in college.

I have held Halo in high regard ever since then. It was something that I picked up and played and it just amazed me. The same can be said for GTA San Andreas. Although I played the previous two and completed most of the game beyond the missions, GTA San Andreas took what I expected from a game to another level. There was so much to do, and there was so much left for the player to discover. Just the scope of the game had me locked in amazement. The campaign was long and I never wanted to finish the game. Even when I did finish it, I came back to do a bunch of other things or I started a new game just for the missions. It was that good.

Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy X did the same thing for me as well. The story was amazing and you felt immersed in the world that you were playing in.

There are quite a few other games that blew my mind away as well Virtua Fighter, Capcom’s crossover series, Ninja Gaiden, Vanquish, God of War, KOTOR, WWF Smackdown 2005 or whatever the one was with the crazy season mode, WWF No Mercy, WWF Wrestlemania, SOCOM 2, Tekken 3, Goldeneye, and many more.

The WWF wrestling games were amazing. Matches with friends in that game used to last for at least an hour.

I can go on a spiel about movies such as how I hold Forrest Gump, a lot of Korean films, Inception, Pulp Fiction, and many more in high regard compared to what is coming out now, but hopefully you catch my drift.

I used to blame my age as to why I feel detached from what the masses feel is great. I feel that people are too open to accepting something as “amazing” or “awesome.” There are less people being critical and more just accepting what is in front of them. Due to that, a lot of crap is coming out that is not even worthy of the price of a platinum hit let alone a full game price.

Same thing goes with movies.

I really want to know what people’s standards of excellence are because movie-wise, Transformers seems to be what people consider to be an excellent film.

That’s crazy.

Man…this post fell apart towards the end. I wanted to go on some more, but I lost my train of thought.

Oh well.