How did your favorite genre change?

So for me it was like:

-puzzle-platform-fighting-racing-adventure-jrpgs---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------suddenly a mix of different genres

In other words, I used to switch genres very quickly and played a mix of whatever. When discovering JRPGs, I loved them so much that I only played jrpgs for years. And when I say years, there were many long periods in between that I did not game at all apart from some mobile games.
Lately, I am rediscovering the joy of playing all kinds of genres. It's like a world is reopening to me.

What about you guys? Did/do you mix lots of genres like I used to do as a kid, or do you stick to just one or two?

I tend to switch genres pretty actively. I used to be a super big character action games and games with melee brawling kind of guy but then I played Doom 1993 one summer of 2016 and I became a massive FPS fan due to Doom's on the spot decision making, and great level design and I like how FPS and shooters just give you immediate options as opposed to a lot of combos and abilities I just won't use. I also used to be quite the stealth game player all though that genre never really had the chance to be anything big but I often played games stealth whenever given the option, now I just play which ever the game feels the most biased towards even if most games with stealth options tend to be barebones mechanically.

Now, I tend to change genres up pretty often and also make sure all the platforms I use get one game played per month. So one PC, one Switch and one PS3 game while I mostly play on PS5. I don't always play FPS game all the time because I would get annoyed from playing the same kind of game all the time so I shove in some platformers, brawlers, exploration games or anything that requires some degree effort on my part to get further into the game. I stopped playing artsy indie games and puzzle games because it felt like I only played them for completion's sake. Some genre like horror games I will play from time to time even if I don't have an obessesion with it like many others do. I play racers from time to time but without a geniune sense of story or stakes, I play them until I get bored.

Arcade style genres are my favorite- Fighting, Shoot'em up, Puzzle for example I typically stick to them. But the last year I gave Tactical-RPG, Strategy-RPG, and Simulation a chance completing several games- truly enjoyed what I've played.

so me always loved puzzle games and horror games and action adventure in tomb raider likes... and first person shooters too and usually more dark themed and atmospheric kinds games

and it hasnt changed that much. fps AAA scale kinda died off abit think...
think metroidvanias is one genre which came later and still do like.
boomer shooters appeared and now it seems alil too many and more selective will be with em.
horror still love, but just play more significant ones and that genre really needs somekinda gameplay mechanics. i do enjoy hide and seek stealth like Outlast too. i feel it has enough gameplay mechanics to make it work and distinct feel. on other hand walking sim like layers of fear with random scares just bore me now.

I started off with platformers on the Nintendo and Vic20 and then moved to strategy games with Elite and Football Manager type games on the Commodore 128.

Then I got a Playstation and it was all fight and racing.

For the last 25 years I've been on PC and play a whole range of games but seem to like the FPS/RPG stuff the most. With the odd something else thrown in occasionally - GRIS, NUTS, Skull: The Hero Slayer, Sunblaze.

In 2009 I played Half-Life for the first time. I was 12 Years Old back then and it made such a huge impression on me that I instantly fell in love with the FPS genre. I started playing any FPS game I could get my hands on, whether it be Call of Duty, Halo, Doom, Serious Sam, Team Fortress 2, Wolfenstein, Left 4 Dead 2. In fact, for the past 12 or so years I've been mostly playing FPS Games, but unfortunately I've begun to notice similar flaws in these games. Not just FPS Games but Shooters in general. These were usually: A Lack of Story/Bad Storytelling, Uncompelling Characters, Unoriginality from Game to Game, similar aesthetics that feel like lazy copy and paste jobs, games that don't have proper difficulty balancing for difficulty options or making the game hard because Doom Eternal was hard for no reason other than that, etc, etc.

In general I've grown extremely tired of FPS Games because in general they're not giving me what I'm looking for in a game. I'm looking for better stories, memorable characters, games that do interesting things with their mechanics! So after playing Lil Gator Game last year (which I've talked about so much so I'll not repeat myself here) I made it clear to myself that I want to commit to games that will be interesting to me in general. I don't have a particular favorite genre anymore because I want to try anything I can that interests me. I still play Cooperative/Multiplayer FPS Games. On weekends I play the latest COD, Fortnite or Deep Rock Galactic with my friend PhatPotato mainly because I can get a lot of value from not just playing with friends but playing games that make you feel like your achieving something while progressing in a long term game. I haven't bought the Season 1 Battle Pass for MWIII yet mainly because I'm not playing much COD these days and wanting to try different mutliplayer/coop games out. LEGO Fortnite will probably be the newest thing we play every week besides DRG.

So yeah, I'm gone from FPS Games and now trying to play other types of genres in general. Hopefully this year I will find great story driven games.

I've always loved strategy games. The very first game that I've played was Heroes of Might & Magic III, as it was shown to me by my parents. Since then, I've played many strategy games - turn-based, real-time, 4X - you name it. However, in 2017 I saw a gaming magazine that featured an article about Tales of Berseria. I bought it on a whim, and since then I play almost nothing but JRPGs. I still play other genres, but they're a minority, even if combined. JRPG is my favorite genre, and I don't expect it to change any time soon.

i was that kid whose parents would buy them only super-safe E rated games based on cartoons and stuff, so a lot of my childhood was just playing tie-in games like that. those kinds of games spanned a lot of genres so i kinda just played whatever i had, i think most of the ones i had were puzzle-platformer type games. it wasn't until i became a teenager with some autonomy that i really started to branch out and experiment with different genres, though i still always preferred 3D platformers, sly cooper and spyro were my favorites.

i don't really know what happened along the line, but i somehow stumbled onto persona 5 when that came out and INSTANTLY fell in love with jrpgs. by far my favorite genre now. and i find that for some reason i don't have the patience for platformers anymore, maybe i just haven't found any modern ones i like but i always get bored with them after playing for like an hour. my brain just got totally rewired lol.

The major case in change in genre. I would say is the m mass effect series. Because it started like an rpg then in less than five years became a third person shooter thing.

I don't feel like my interests have changed a lot, so much as their frequency.

I've loved jrpgs for a long time and all that's changed is going from not having many to... to having too many (young self in awe).

Monkey Island was a series I loved but I hadn't played much of anything in the genre outside of it for a long time. As I got more, I learned point and click really is a genre I enjoy a lot. And relatedly narrative adventure or puzzle games in general.

Whereas, while I still enjoy more action heavy games from time to time, my stamina for them is a lot lower these days and I really have to be in the right mood.

My favorite genre didn't necessarily switch, but I have moved more into playing some slower-paced games. I have ADHD, and my brain used to not be able to handle playing games without non-stop action (Think Super Smash Bros, Call of Duty, etc.). After being on medications for a while, my brain has begun to not need a constant feed of dopamine, and I have been thoroughly enjoying games like Animal Crossing, No Mans Sky, various RPGs, and most recently, the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy.

In 2009 I played Half-Life for the first time. I was 12 Years Old back then and it made such a huge impression on me that I instantly fell in love with the FPS genre. I started playing any FPS game I could get my hands on, whether it be Call of Duty, Halo, Doom, Serious Sam, Team Fortress 2, Wolfenstein, Left 4 Dead 2. In fact, for the past 12 or so years I've been mostly playing FPS Games, but unfortunately I've begun to notice similar flaws in these games. Not just FPS Games but Shooters in general. These were usually: A Lack of Story/Bad Storytelling, Uncompelling Characters, Unoriginality from Game to Game, similar aesthetics that feel like lazy copy and paste jobs, games that don't have proper difficulty balancing for difficulty options or making the game hard because Doom Eternal was hard for no reason other than that, etc, etc.

In general I've grown extremely tired of FPS Games because in general they're not giving me what I'm looking for in a game. I'm looking for better stories, memorable characters, games that do interesting things with their mechanics! So after playing Lil Gator Game last year (which I've talked about so much so I'll not repeat myself here) I made it clear to myself that I want to commit to games that will be interesting to me in general. I don't have a particular favorite genre anymore because I want to try anything I can that interests me. I still play Cooperative/Multiplayer FPS Games. On weekends I play the latest COD, Fortnite or Deep Rock Galactic with my friend PhatPotato mainly because I can get a lot of value from not just playing with friends but playing games that make you feel like your achieving something while progressing in a long term game. I haven't bought the Season 1 Battle Pass for MWIII yet mainly because I'm not playing much COD these days and wanting to try different mutliplayer/coop games out. LEGO Fortnite will probably be the newest thing we play every week besides DRG.

So yeah, I'm gone from FPS Games and now trying to play other types of genres in general. Hopefully this year I will find great story driven games.

Why exactly do you care about storytelling in shooters so much? The whole point of the genre is the empowerment fantasy of killing hordes of enemies. It doesn't really lend itself well to deep and meaningful story and characters. When shooters do that you get crap like modern military shooters like CoD, the Battlefield campaigns and the modern Medal of Honor games which think they are trying to tell deep stories when they would just be laughed at if they were faithfully recreated into TV shows or movies. You also get pretentious stuff like the modern Wolfensteins. Also, Doom Eternal was challenging but fair, playing on consoles probably adds more to the difficulty but at least it made you actively weapon switch and made you use it's mechanics as opposed to character action games.

Why exactly do you care about storytelling in shooters so much? The whole point of the genre is the empowerment fantasy of killing hordes of enemies. It doesn't really lend itself well to deep and meaningful story and characters. When shooters do that you get crap like modern military shooters like CoD, the Battlefield campaigns and the modern Medal of Honor games which think they are trying to tell deep stories when they would just be laughed at if they were faithfully recreated into TV shows or movies. You also get pretentious stuff like the modern Wolfensteins. Also, Doom Eternal was challenging but fair, playing on consoles probably adds more to the difficulty but at least it made you actively weapon switch and made you use it's mechanics as opposed to character action games.

Well if I think about halo the storytelling is why that series is one of my favorite of all time.

Well if I think about halo the storytelling is why that series is one of my favorite of all time.

Halo's story is nothing special. The cutscenes are well produced, acted and scored but the actual stories never go beyond being okay at best. The lore is interesting but there is a difference between interesting lore and story.

But look at Half life 2 or Bioshock. Top notch stories. And Gears of War has plenty of emotional moments. And the Halo games do have great stories.

But look at Half life 2 or Bioshock. Top notch stories. And Gears of War has plenty of emotional moments. And the Halo games do have great stories.

Half-Life 2's story comes from how it's told, not the story itself. Bioshock is much the same way except I think listening to audio logs while shooting enemies is just tedious. Just tell that to the developers of Gone Home who thought the enviromental storytelling and audiologs were the best part of Bioshock's gameplay. The only decent Gears of War story is 2, 1 and 3 aren't very good. What exactly is so special about Halo's story? Back in the days of the 00s almost everyone thought Halo's story was poorly written especially 2 and 3 but now they are suddenly great? I just think they are just okay carried by strong production values and the lore making the story seem better than it actually is.

Because my backlog is so huge, and I'm actively trying to clear it, I've found a LOT of variety. But funnily enough, the ones that tend to ALWAYS stick for me are the detective/investigative visual novels (Danganronpa, AI: The Somnium Files, Paranormasight to name a few). I also find myself loving JRPGs, though I often don't fully commit to them mostly due to their length. Platformers are another I buy a ton of, but it seems I need a good ass story to hold me through, so sometimes platformers can lose my interest, even if their gameplay is fun. I don't really think I'm trapped to one particular genre, though I clearly have ones I'm more inclined to lean to. It'll probably be easier to say once I clear even more of my backlog.

Half-Life 2's story comes from how it's told, not the story itself. Bioshock is much the same way except I think listening to audio logs while shooting enemies is just tedious. Just tell that to the developers of Gone Home who thought the enviromental storytelling and audiologs were the best part of Bioshock's gameplay. The only decent Gears of War story is 2, 1 and 3 aren't very good. What exactly is so special about Halo's story? Back in the days of the 00s almost everyone thought Halo's story was poorly written especially 2 and 3 but now they are suddenly great? I just think they are just okay carried by strong production values and the lore making the story seem better than it actually is.

I will say that Halo Reach and Halo 3 ODST have pretty great stories, but those are the games without Chief so that's not all too surprising. Then again, shooters CAN have great stories... But that's all subjective at the end of the day, so I hardly think it matters.

I will say that Halo Reach and Halo 3 ODST have pretty great stories, but those are the games without Chief so that's not all too surprising. Then again, shooters CAN have great stories... But that's all subjective at the end of the day, so I hardly think it matters.

Some shooter stories I like. Stuff like Timespiltters Future Perfect, No One Lives Forever, Call of Juarez and Bound in Blood, the Darkness 1 and 2. Of course it's all subjective but people who want plot out a genre like shooters and FPS games should look elsewhere. There's RPGs and point and click adventure games if you want story. Walking sims are in a sense FPS games minus the combat, it's why the devs of Bioshock 2 Minerva's Den made Gone Home. I also find it weird as all hell that Halo is being remembered for its amazing story when I recall the stories after CE especially to get shat on like no tomorrow.

Playing the Yakuza games and they have lots of minigames, so seems I am doing lots of genres in one game:

Beat em up,
Racing,
Puzzles,
Card games,
even dress up doll type of games (don't ask :D)

Why exactly do you care about storytelling in shooters so much? The whole point of the genre is the empowerment fantasy of killing hordes of enemies. It doesn't really lend itself well to deep and meaningful story and characters. When shooters do that you get crap like modern military shooters like CoD, the Battlefield campaigns and the modern Medal of Honor games which think they are trying to tell deep stories when they would just be laughed at if they were faithfully recreated into TV shows or movies. You also get pretentious stuff like the modern Wolfensteins. Also, Doom Eternal was challenging but fair, playing on consoles probably adds more to the difficulty but at least it made you actively weapon switch and made you use it's mechanics as opposed to character action games.

Bro, why can't shooters also have good story? I mean at least a good story for the genre? I've heard John Romero say that stories have minimal role in video games.

It's possible to like more than one thing at once? Like you can enjoy the gameplay of shooting tons of enemies Quake-style while also enjoying a story with more effort put into it than Doom's.

I personally don't like shooters having too many cutscenes (looking at you, Vanguard), but you can tell a relatively compelling story in a shooter with shorter cutscenes and story moments happening during gameplay, or even tell parts as a voiceover.

How does that completely counter the shooter aspect of the game?

Half-Life 2's story comes from how it's told, not the story itself. Bioshock is much the same way except I think listening to audio logs while shooting enemies is just tedious. Just tell that to the developers of Gone Home who thought the enviromental storytelling and audiologs were the best part of Bioshock's gameplay. The only decent Gears of War story is 2, 1 and 3 aren't very good. What exactly is so special about Halo's story? Back in the days of the 00s almost everyone thought Halo's story was poorly written especially 2 and 3 but now they are suddenly great? I just think they are just okay carried by strong production values and the lore making the story seem better than it actually is.

Gears' stories are so unmemorable. I mostly remember: break out of prison > sad wife cutscene > win the war. 2 is easily the best in terms of story in that series.

But Gears is also not a great example as a shooter either. Judgement and 3 were the only good ones and 2 was... better than 1.

Bro, why can't shooters also have good story? I mean at least a good story for the genre? I've heard John Romero say that stories have minimal role in video games.

It's possible to like more than one thing at once? Like you can enjoy the gameplay of shooting tons of enemies Quake-style while also enjoying a story with more effort put into it than Doom's.

I personally don't like shooters having too many cutscenes (looking at you, Vanguard), but you can tell a relatively compelling story in a shooter with shorter cutscenes and story moments happening during gameplay, or even tell parts as a voiceover.

How does that completely counter the shooter aspect of the game?

I just listed shooters with stories I liked. I'm not sure where you got this whole notion that I'm against stories in shooters from, just that they have a high chance of being messes when focusing on them.

90s shooters never really had much of a story, it's part of the appeal, their pick up and play nature without much story getting in the way.

And once again, I seem to be repeating myself here, but people who demand good stories in shooters might as well look elsewhere if they want that. It's already an uphill battle trying to tell a compelling story in a genre where your primary goal is to kill enemies and empowerment fantasy.

Gears' stories are so unmemorable. I mostly remember: break out of prison > sad wife cutscene > win the war. 2 is easily the best in terms of story in that series.

But Gears is also not a great example as a shooter either. Judgement and 3 were the only good ones and 2 was... better than 1.

2's story is decent but that's about it. Gears 1 is even more dull than the first Uncharted game yet the latter gets called "generic" while Gears 1 is fondly remembered for some reason. If the first Gears came out today, it'd be as lambasted as the Order 1886 was at launch.

I just listed shooters with stories I liked. I'm not sure where you got this whole notion that I'm against stories in shooters from, just that they have a high chance of being messes when focusing on them.

90s shooters never really had much of a story, it's part of the appeal, their pick up and play nature without much story getting in the way.

And once again, I seem to be repeating myself here, but people who demand good stories in shooters might as well look elsewhere if they want that. It's already an uphill battle trying to tell a compelling story in a genre where your primary goal is to kill enemies and empowerment fantasy.

I guess with shooters I'm not looking for "deep" stories, I want "fun" ones. Like Quake is great, I love Quake because my primary motivation is, yes, murder power fantasy, etc. And it's great at that. But I can't say I wouldn't have enjoyed the game more if its world of grenade ogres, tentacle gods and ghastly wizards had a bit more "character" to them.

I guess I just disagree that it's an uphill battle, though my standards of "good story for a shooter" are strictly my own.

Also all I remember from Uncharted 1 (and I played it fairly recently) was a guy named Sullivan flying a plane over an island with two map sets: green and rust. The Vita game was no better story-wise.