The lamest generation? [Archive] - Bordersdown (NTSC-uk)

Baroque

26-05-2003, 03:46 PM

The Dreamcast kicked off the current generation with a bang, but lately to me at least it feels like this generation is going to go out with a whimper.

Western Developers are out there hocking the same tired garbage and the Japanese appear to be either miss-firing with some of their big titles, or are in a complete state of internal turmoil which threatens the very existence of the companies themselves.

I'm looking at the release dates for the rest of the year and personally I find it rather lacking when it comes to quality. There are a handful of games I want, but the crap ratio looks to be orders of magnitude bigger.

So, how about you. Is all rosy in video game land or do you think we're sitting through a dip point in the games industry?

Is this the lamest generation?

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 03:50 PM

My view...
The true feeling of the Videogame is gone.
This generation of people grow up with games as standard.
To them, it's new, but always there.
To us, it was the anticiption of a revolution.
That feeling is all but nostalgia now.
No one these days feels the same about games like the old schoolers did back then.
There is nothing to looking forward too.

The old skool's mindset has matured and is but a memory, played back through the likes of Mame, but only played back.
We have witnessed a revolution, some felt it, but we will witness no more.

Sidez

26-05-2003, 03:53 PM

No, I could't be happier with it. 2D classics Rygar, Shinobi, Contra, Ninja Gaiden and Maximo have been given 3D updates that do the originals justice. Iif you love Japanese action games then this generation is perfect. We also have Devil May Cry, Gungrave and Gunvalkyrie as original quality games. First person shooter genre is really healthy with Doom, Halo and Half-Life sequels. Survival horror the awesome Silent Hill and Biohazard games. Shooter wise we have the rebirth of the horizontal shooter with R-Type Final and Gradius V. Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution is the best fighter ever.

I mean seriously, there's plenty.

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 03:59 PM

I'd debate Shinobi. Shinobi is an example of Sega at its worst (relatively speaking of course)
- the levels are bland and samey and it feels cheap. Its got some semi-decent play methods but Sega have got to get their act together.

Maximo is very nice, and true to Capcom, and the great arcade game.

Rygar is nice, Gradius V and R-type F. are looking okay, but whilst i'll enjoy them, i won't enjoy them like the orignals.

I've not seen Ninja Gaiden, but you forgot Outrunners, which SHOULD be good.

NeilMcRae

26-05-2003, 04:00 PM

I think its too early to tell but it does appear to me that some of the developers are finding it harder and harder to do something completely off the wall "new". But there are still alot of good games out there. E3 this year was the weakest for a long time esp if Sony had not announced PSP. I think most of the big 3 are looking to next gen already, which is a shame as I think the current gen of hardware really hasn't had a chance to shine. What is clear is that the Japanese have completely lost it in terms of the influence they once had on the market more and more games developed in Japan are no longer that special.

Regards,
Neil.

Sidez

26-05-2003, 04:01 PM

I'd debate Shinobi. Shinobe is an example of Sega at its worst - the levels are bland and samey and it feels cheap. Its got some semi-decent play methods but Sega have got to get their act together.
Maximo is very nice, and true to Capcom, and the great arcade game.

Rygar is nice, Gradius and R-type F. are looking okay, but whilst i'll enjoy them, i won't enjoy them like the orignals.
Don't let nostalgia blind you.

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 04:03 PM

I think its too early to tell but it does appear to me that some of the developers are finding it harder and harder to do something completely off the wall "new". But there are still alot of good games out there. E3 this year was the weakest for a long time esp if Sony had not announced PSP. I think most of the big 3 are looking to next gen already, which is a shame as I think the current gen of hardware really hasn't had a chance to shine.

You can't keep innovation up without improving tech.
When Atari did it during the eighties, every arcade had its own unique method of interactivity. All we get are Pads and wheels.
Sony's Eye-toy and Konami's Mats are taking it forward, but its not being done enough. Theres no catch, but the graphics.

NeilMcRae

26-05-2003, 04:05 PM

Max M

26-05-2003, 04:06 PM

I'm not too happy with this generation either. It also seems like it will be one of the shortest yet, with the next consoles coming as soon as 2005.

I really hope all three are closer to each other next generation. During the Snes/Mega Drive battle, you got the feeling that they were working seriously hard to beat each other out with tons of mindblowing games, but now I really get the feeling Microsoft and Nintendo have given up on reaching Sony and just aren't giving it their all anymore.

On the other side, Sony knows that they're so far ahead that they're making little effort in the software side too. Sure, ICO and Amplitude are nice (Although I feel the latter is fairly over-rated), but I'm still pissed off how they've just let the Wipeout, Ape Escape and Parappa the Rapper franchsies dwindle in favour of generic American games.

Also, there's too much realism this generation. Not enough imagination. But then I expected this to happy when graphics reached this level.

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 04:10 PM

Don't let nostalgia blind you.

I'm not. I play newer games for longer, but it takes innovation to keep things fresh.
Online will improve things, and create communities i suppose, and prehaps thats the natural course, the destiny of the Videochip if you will, but its hardly exciting.
You have to remember too, that its not notstaliga, but age, the blinds us.
We grow bored.

Molloy

26-05-2003, 04:13 PM

I was getting a bad case of gaming boredom 6 months ago and have since repopulated my games collection with more immediate titles.

Rez, Ico, Virtua Fighter 4: Evo, Gitaroo Man, Frequency, Burnout 2.

Ikaruga, Daytona USA 2001, KotF 1999: Dream Match, Mars Matrix.

Next up is a Gamecube with Super Monkey Ball 1 or 2, Fzero, Viewtiful Joe, Unity.. ahh bliss.

I think this generation has been fantastic because I've finally started only buying arcadey games. All the story driven 60+ hour value for money shit was sapping all my enthusiasm. The games collection I've built now has plenty of potential for longevity but I could pick up any of those for half an hour and have lots of fun.

It's easy to look back through your collection of ROMs and think things were better once. The truth of the matter is the 16-bit generation was nice but I got deeply bored of it after mid-1993. There were so many liscenced platformers I couldn't find anything interesting in the shops.

Max M

26-05-2003, 04:15 PM

I think its too early to tell but it does appear to me that some of the developers are finding it harder and harder to do something completely off the wall "new".

It's not that they're finding it hard, it's that people constantly ignore interesting games like Rez and JSR in favourite of generic first person shooters and racing games. :pft:

The success of Monkey Ball and Animal Crossing has given me some faith though.

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 04:18 PM

thats not really true. Technology does not make good games! It may make things more possible but that doesn't lead to innovation. Foe me innovation in games means that the developer has a new angle on how a game is played - Mario 64 or Doom are good examples of this.

That was a important home based 2D to 3D jump. I enjoyed them years. It gave me zest in gaming. (i say home-based as 3D arcades have been around as long as 2D games - again, read Atari - 3D games were limited on the home formats - Rainbird produce aside).

As for realism, the thing is, NOT every aspect of the game has reached this level. Sure graphics are well on the way, as is sound but is irrelvent when the AI is bad or Physics are poor.
You disbelieve again and video games are supposed to draw you in.
Most games that feature cool realistic graphics (that partially draw you in), lose it on this Physics and AI front (and then its not real).
There are exceptions like the citied Doom (but there was also an excellent example of 3D tech).
Half life will do things on this front.

Baroque

26-05-2003, 04:25 PM

I'm not. I play newer games for longer, but it takes innovation to keep things fresh.
Online will improve things, and create communities i suppose, and prehaps thats the natural course, the destiny of the Videochip if you will, but its hardly exciting.

I don't believe that for a second.
Online has proven to be nothing more than developers "fools gold". It was a feature talked up by people who were devoid of new ideas and thought that by slapping online on everything they could touch that it would solve all their woes.

It hasn't.

At this stage in the western world almost anyone who is interested on being on the internet in some fashion is there, and anyone who would like to go gaming online right now can pay a couple of quid for an XBox + XBL or throw down a wedge of cash for the latest PC + GPU, and get in Broadband. It doesn’t cost a fortune to do this anymore, but people still don’t feel compelled to get online and game.

The fact remains that people don't, and it's because for the bulk of people games haven't killed TV.

Have you ever missed a program on TV because you got caught up in a game? I sure have, and most of the time it doesn't bother me, but for the market they are hoping to scoop up with online, you have to question if they are willing to miss out on their soaps & or Big Brother updates just to beat their score at PDO? The fact of the matter is that the bulk of people don't care about games enough to invest that amount of time, effort or money to the venture.

Online is and remains the domain for FPS's, MMORPG's and other such genres. All of which don’t attract mainstream gamers, as they require a significant investment in time to become good at them.

The most popular online games right now, are still chess, draughts and card games.
I don’t think that is going to change for a while to come.

wager

26-05-2003, 04:28 PM

but the crap ratio looks to be orders of magnitude bigger.

Not sure about that. I think its always been the case that crap games far outweigh the number of decent games.

I tend to agree with Sidez' comments, i certainly feel there are enough decent games being released.

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 04:41 PM

I don't believe that for a second.
Online has proven to be nothing more than developers "fools gold". It was a feature talked up by people who were devoid of new ideas and thought that by slapping online on everything they could touch that it would solve all their woes.

It hasn't.

At this stage in the western world almost anyone who is interested on being on the internet in some fashion is there, and anyone who would like to go gaming online right now can pay a couple of quid for an XBox + XBL or throw down a wedge of cash for the latest PC + GPU, and get in Broadband. It doesn’t cost a fortune to do this anymore, but people still don’t feel compelled to get online and game.

The fact remains that people don't, and it's because for the bulk of people games haven't killed TV.

Have you ever missed a program on TV because you got caught up in a game? I sure have, and most of the time it doesn't bother me, but for the market they are hoping to scoop up with online, you have to question if they are willing to miss out on their soaps & or Big Brother updates just to beat their score at PDO? The fact of the matter is that the bulk of people don't care about games enough to invest that amount of time, effort or money to the venture.

Online is and remains the domain for FPS's, MMORPG's and other such genres. All of which don’t attract mainstream gamers, as they require a significant investment in time to become good at them.

The most popular online games right now, are still chess, draughts and card games.
I don’t think that is going to change for a while to come

I do agree with your thinking, but don't agree that online won't be successful. The internet will grow and eventually online gaming will be cheaper.
There is of course, mobile gaming too, which i hate and don't think its at all innovative. I think mobile gaming ties up companies to produce retro games all over again. This is bad.

Molloy

26-05-2003, 04:51 PM

Online gaming won't take off properly for a long time yet. Even with PC games geared towards online play like NWN only get played online by 20% of the people who buy them and PC owners are far more used to internet connectivity than console users.

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 05:02 PM

I believe PC's are slowly infiltrating peoples homes, so people who want something to do with them may look online anyway.
I believe that Many peoples lives are changing by places like Forums and so forth and gaming is just another thing for them to do.
I don't want companies to concentrate on online games, or mobile gaming, but i just think they will. I hope i'm wrong.
Of course, as Miss Leia once said, the more you grasp something the more slips through your fingers.
This will open oppotunties for companies like Treasure, Sega, Konami, Capcom, Taito and so on to bring us more original titles.
But then, are we getting bored with their games too?

Baroque

26-05-2003, 05:16 PM

I do agree with your thinking, but don't agree that online won't be successful. The internet will grow and eventually online gaming will be cheaper.
There is of course, mobile gaming too, which i hate and don't think its at all innovative. I think mobile gaming ties up companies to produce retro games all over again. This is bad.

Okay, price does matter when you are getting who knows how many monthly charges tacked onto your credit card depending on how many games you play online. Lets say you sign up for XBox Live for their games, but then you have to pay Sega a monthly fee to play PSO, EA to play Madden, Ubi-Soft to play (let's say) Uru and so on. Those fees don't help, but to fund the games development those fees sure as heck are not going away.

Look at Sony, they promised the online world early on in the game, only Sega & Microsoft actually made a stab at making such a thing a reality. Sony have pretty much stepped away from online and told publishers to go do their own thing, and perhaps use Butterfly.net as their preferred provider.

Online has proven not to be as big a deal as say, the jump to 3D. People out there, and lots of them, just have no interest in gaming on the net.

Now mobile is a funny one, it's profitable but as we've seen developers just don't pay enough attention to it, and you'd expect that instead of people trying to raise four million or more to develop your average console/PC game, they'd spend a couple of hundred thousand working on a mobile game, which if it's any good and you can get the hype for it, will sell like hot cakes.

Mobile churns up some oddities every now and then, the GBA serves as SNES remake central, which isn't all that bad if you weren't around for SNES, but is damn awful if you are seeing SNES games and yet another update to the same Zelda game they've been flogging since the NES days.

On the other hand you then have Made in Wario, which I always dip into at the end of the day because it's just so addictive.

Mobile gaming right now isn't what it should be, I'm not sure if Sony, who have a weak first party presence can hope to transform it by wrapping movie & music playback around it with the PSP. I think it'll become PSX port central and the thing is that many people still remember the bulk of worthwhile PSX titles.

One thing I do know though, is that so far the strength of the GBA hasn't proven to be the life raft Nintendo thought it would be for the Cube. No matter how they try to tie the two of them together it doesn't appear to matter, the Cube still isn't selling the way they thought it would.

Perhaps Pokemon can fix that, but who knows.

Now if Nintendo, who control both the hardware and the software can't weld the two platforms together, I don't think Sony with the PSP or Microsoft (I'm sure they have something in development) will be able to link their devices back to the console any more effectively and as such they’ll probably suffer from the same port malaise which effects the GBA.

You'd think lower spec’d platforms like these would be where the bulk of game play innovation would be coming from. They being easier and cheaper to developer for, but as per usual that isn’t the case.

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 06:15 PM

Pokemon can fix that, but who knows.

Another genre (well namebrand) re-hyped?
You always face the commericalisation of profit making genres. Lets only hope theres support for the smaller companies.

Fuddle

26-05-2003, 06:18 PM

i dont see anything wrong with the current generation, or the state of games in general at this moment in time.
tbh it bugs me quite a lot that people can constantly find something to moan about when there is so much goodness around.

there has always been way more average/crap games than truly great and original titles.

i can easily pick 10 games i'm really looking forward to for the rest of this year, which is more than enough for 7 months time.
you just have to pick the cream of the crop....its not difficult.
:happy:

Afterbirth

26-05-2003, 06:45 PM

Fuddle

26-05-2003, 07:12 PM

But have you playing games for 21 years?
nope, only been playing for around 17 years :happy:

wager

26-05-2003, 07:43 PM

But have you playing games for 21 years?
I have. And i'm not aroused. My zest is fading by the commercialisation of shite games that do nothing to push the envelopes of gaming.

Just ignore the "shite games that do nothing to push the envelopes of gaming." Thats what i do. Pick and choose, its that simple.

Btw i've been playing games for 23 years, started when i was 6.

Prine

26-05-2003, 07:47 PM

Thanks to Halo, MGS2, Zelda and PDO this generation has been superb for me, honorable mention goes to XBL, RTCW is amazing.

acidforblood

26-05-2003, 08:11 PM

My zest is fading by the commercialisation of shite games that do nothing to push the envelopes of gaming.

And this is where the problem is i think. The onus is on the developer to create software the will ensnare a larger audience and also keep the hardcore gamer happy. But as gaming as a business grows the easy, safe cash cow franchise will be the preferred way of business for many developers.

Do company mergers bother anyone? I can see a time when there are just 4-5 developers left, all the small companies gone or else under one Corporate umbrella (EA World?) which in my opinion would strangle the shit out of creativity.

When buying nowadays as somebody said earlier you do have to be selective, there are gems around but how will you feel about playing Halo 4, Half Life 6 and Mario 500? Will you look back at this generation and long for games of old?

JU!

26-05-2003, 08:16 PM

My thoughts are now that games are so dependant on using graphics to impress. What ws the first thing thatt impressed u about anything it's the graphics. Maybe that's why Zelda ws done the way it was maybe Nintendo wanted people to focus more on game play. I do resent the fact that cel shading is used in far to many games nowadayz but i do think it looks good in certain instances, but is over used.

Hopefully the Japanese companies will sort themselves out + i'd hate to see just an XBox n PS3 in my front room come the next generation of consoles.

Jay

27-05-2003, 02:21 AM

But have you playing games for 21 years?
I have. And i'm not aroused. My zest is fading by the commercialisation of shite games that do nothing to push the envelopes of gaming.

Just to put things in perspective, an estimated 12,000 - 15,000 games were produced for the Commodore 64. All the rose-tinted specs in the world couldn't convince me that any more than a small percentage of these releases were quality games. Surely you haven't forgotten the piles of dross pushed out by the likes of Ocean on the back of the most tenuous of licences in the mid eighties? Wave upon wave of badly programmed platform games flooded the market in a period far worse than anything you've described.

The answer really is simple. By now, you should know your own tastes - just ignore the pap and snap up the quality titles.

Personally, I don't think the ratio of good/poor games has fluctuated that much over the years, with the exception of two consoles - the Colecovision and the Dreamcast both seemed to have played host to a significantly higher quality ratio than other platforms.

Bear in mind that 'pushing the envelope' in gaming, as with any other medium, is a game of diminishing returns. Atari had an almost blank canvas to work with. This is no longer the case.

Point of order: 3D gaming *was* available in the home before Rainbird, thanks to the rubbered-keyed wonder known as the Sinclair Spectrum which excelled at producing not only fast wireframe (and later filled 3D) graphics but also solid isometrics.

I've been gaming for 25 years. I had a break during the Playstation/Saturn years and returned with the Dreamcast. I'm looking forward to this year's releases (especially on GC), am currently enjoying some absolutely fantastic games (both old and new), and love nothing better than settling down to some videogame fun with my two kids. Long drawn out RPGs and other 40+ hour games send me to sleep, but I know what I like and I stick with it.

I still love the old classics, and I play retro games as much as I play current games, but I have to be honest - if Ikaruga had been released in 1984, Jet Set Willy would have been ditched quicker than you can say 'attic bug'.

Jay

charlesr

27-05-2003, 07:36 AM

What a load of old rubbish. OK, I agree that online is currently a dead duck, but if you can't find a decent offline game to play, you have problems. And if you can't find anything quite to your liking, just rack out SNES Pilotwings or something until a game is released that you do want to play. There must be one a month that interests you at least. There are 3 consoles out there. This sensationalist stuff crops up quite regularly and it's the rose tints that make you forget how awful the majority of games have always been. But there's always a few games worth buying.

Brats

27-05-2003, 08:12 AM

Well, I'm very pleased, but them I always am :happy:. I get the feeling that I'm one of the few "glass half full" people who plays video games regularly :p :lol: .

In the last twelve months I've been playing Wind Waker, PDO, Taiko no Tatsujin, Metroid Prime, Metroid Fusion, Burnout 2, Animal Crossing, Pokemon Ruby, Vice City, SMS, Made in Wario, Ghost Recon, Psyvariar, Ikaruga, Moto GP, PSO, Mr Driller 2, Winning 11 6 FE, Splinter Cell and loads of others.

When I look at those games, I think "what an amazing selection". Don't even bother posting "but SMS wasn't that good, yadda, yadda, yadda", the key thing is I've enjoyed them all immensely. With Metroid Prime, Animal Crossing and Burnout 2 particularly, I've found games that are at the pinnacle of their genre. Online gaming is fantastic and the I've had a whale of a time meeting people playing Moto GP, Ghost Recon and PSO. A great laugh :lol:.

And I haven't even touched the latest generation of fighters. VF4Evo and SC2 are waiting in the wings for me now. Plus the outlook further on is rosy. More and more games are going online (Yay!) and there are plenty of original titles out there.

There's always tons of shite. It doesn't matter to me whether there are 10 bad games released a month, or 100, or even a 1,000,000. I'm not bothered about the dross, only the good stuff. And it keeps on coming. Sweet :).

Ady

27-05-2003, 09:08 AM

I find myself more interested in older games over a lot of the more recent generational offerings. Whilst good games are still coming out, they are getting fewer and further between.

The 'me too' mentality of many western codeshops is verging on self parody, and -as the first poster pointed out- many of the Japanese devcos are struggling to keep afloat - and it shows.

I think the main problem, though is that the notion of what a videogame is has changed. Today's gamers are too hung up on lengthy, story-driven epics and tired franchises and have little tolerance for anything else. :(

It's not all doom and gloom but it could be better - a lot better.

Popo

27-05-2003, 09:57 AM

I can't think of a time when I wanted more games.

Never going to be able to get half of them, either!

nips

27-05-2003, 10:07 AM

I can't think of a time when I wanted more games.

I know exactly what you mean. I can't wait, to get my hands on an X-Box so I can play on MAME!

As for new titles, there is a hellova lotta shittte out there, if you know where to look, this is easily one of the best generations!

badgerpie

27-05-2003, 10:24 AM

Ok, all those gamers who've been playing for years and are feeling jaded by the current games/release shedules ask yourselves this. Is it that games have decreased in quality or that your lifestyle has changed in ways so that you can't appreciate games as much as you did.
Firstly, you're not 6 anymore so that childlike joy has gone and you'll have become more cynical and harder to impress.
Secondly, your lifestyle will probably have changed because of other commitments.

I don't enjoy games as much, but I'm not sure how much of that is down to the games. I can normally only scrape about 5 hours of gaming together a week due to work commitments and a social life. I will purposefully avoid long rpgs like Final fantasy because there's no point. It'll never get finished.

I think there are games that have come out in the last year that are as good if not better than we've ever seen.

There are games which have been innovative and fun to pick up like monkey ball, rez, frequency.

I guess there isn't that much on the immeadiate horizon that i'm desperate to get, but it gives me time to master all my previous games that i've only dipped into for a couple of hours each. By the time i've finished a couple of these I'm sure there'll be a couple of new games i'll be interested in getting. And it's good for the old bank balance

P.S. I'm also not trying to get at the older gamers, I've been playing games now for about 22 years (shit I'm getting old).

Ady

27-05-2003, 10:46 AM

Ok, all those gamers who've been playing for years and are feeling jaded by the current games/release shedules ask yourselves this. Is it that games have decreased in quality or that your lifestyle has changed in ways so that you can't appreciate games as much as you did.

It's not even a lifestyle issue; Personally, I just find it hard to be excited by the prospect of Franchise Update 87 (with slightly prettier graphics) and Generic FPS-With-Added-Stealth 50.

It also annoys me how the best ideas aren't left to stand on their own. Sequels are an inevitability. There's nothing wrong with sequels as such, but some games really don't need them - and devcos seem incapable of knowing when to stop wringing an idea.

I'm also confident I'd think the same way if I was a kid, too.

Firstly, you're not 6 anymore so that childlike joy has gone and you'll have become more cynical and harder to impress.

Not necessarily. As a kid, I was still able to spot samey dross. Neither was I infatuated with good graphics at the expense gameplay.

I also disagree that age has made me harder to impress; Mario 64 was one of the last games that truly impressed my adult self.

Tokuda

27-05-2003, 02:31 PM

I personally feel games have never been better.

We have the ultimate fighting game- VF4 Evo.

We have some amazing shooters- Psyvarier, Ketsui, Panzer Dragoon Orta

We have the best arcade racer since Daytona (I personally prefer it to Daytona)- Initial D

other arcadey style bliss- PN 03, Devil May Cry

I can imagine for people who mainly play games with large worlds and open ended gameplay- there hasn`t been that much to shout about this generation for people who mainly play these kinds of games. Off the top of my head, theres only Metroid Prime and Zelda that have really impressed.

badgerpie

27-05-2003, 03:01 PM

I reckon games are prob as good now as they've always been, there is still innovation if you know where to look.

However, one worrying thing is if you look at the titles which I think are novel and have suprised me the most over the past year (ICO, frequency, REZ, animal crossing), all these titles haven't done well at retail.

So if I put myself in a publishers or a developers point of view, I can make something truly great and innovative and then have the risk of it bombing and costing me vast amounts of money, or I can create 'Master chief Solid 2003'.

It might suck from an innovation point of view, but from a shirt-term business point of view you can see why they do it.

Ady

27-05-2003, 03:51 PM

So if I put myself in a publishers or a developers point of view, I can make something truly great and innovative and then have the risk of it bombing and costing me vast amounts of money, or I can create 'Master chief Solid 2003'.

It might suck from an innovation point of view, but from a shirt-term business point of view you can see why they do it.

Of course, but it's holding gaming back. It never used to be about bending to pusblisher's whims, it used to be about imagination. This is precicely why gaming (desptie obvious good points) ain't what it used to be.

Concept

28-05-2003, 04:19 AM

ICO
Rez
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 3
Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution
Pikmin
Final Fantasy X
Devil May Cry
Resident Evil Remake
Resident Evil Zero
Metal Gear Solid 2
Super Mario Sunshine
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Project Zero
Frequency
Halo
Psyvariar
Ridge racer V
Mark Of Kri
Zettai Zetsumei Toshi
Soul Calibur 2
Panzer Dragoon Orta
Super Monkey Ball
Burnout 2
Gran Turismo 3: A Spec
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Jak & Daxter
Ikaruga
Onimusha 2
Metroid Prime
Project Gotham Racing
Amped
Jet Set Radio Future
Moto GP
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
Eternal Darkness
Luigi's Mansion
Splinter Cell
Dead Or Alive 3
TimeSplitters 2
SSX
Pro Evolution Soccer
Tekki
Animal Crossing
P.N.03

To name but a few...

You (or I) might not like every game on that list. But I think it's unfair to call this generation a disappointment. There have been some truly great games, even in comparison to the so-called glory of yesteryear.