But the older games have a significant advantage: The memory of the good times we had with it.

You could have just put that as your first post instead of typing all that shit.
Some newer games are better than what? Older games? At the end of the day, that's your opinion, and you are welcome to it, other people are allowed to have different opinions (yes, even extreme ones like "All old games are great, all new games are shit.") and your opinion is not any more correct than theirs. You keep doing this, e.g.:
Superior to what? Or is there a mystical benchmark on your Objective Quality Calculator? Newer games take all their ideas (not some, ALL) from older games, yet newer games are better? So how are newer games better, when they have to steal all their ideas from games gone before and they bollocks up the execution most of the time into the bargain. I don't understand why these newer, 'superior' games are magically better than older games despite being completely derived from them.
So if something is passed on it's successsful? Hey, there's some disease called AIDS getting passed on these days, so it must be good! Ideas are passed on, regardless of whether they are good or bad. Myself, I think regenerating health is a sop to people who are rubbish at games.
No better? So, it's as good as Far Cry 2? Halo? Doom? Timesplitters? *add your own FPS here*? I don't understand this at all. "I bought a game from GOG which is just as good as any modern game in the genre." I thought newer games were better?
More gaping holes in your argument than in a Bangkok brothel.

Redneck Rampage would supposedly be an average shooter with a novel concept nicely executed, I guess, which would put it at the 4/5 rating of "above average".
Never looked into Shogo, so can't comment on that.
I don't think we've gotten anywhere near the theoretical upper limit yet, though. That still wouldn't stop me from being disappointed at the limit being so low, anyway.
Worst possible example. Fallout 3 is a first-person action-RPG, so say hello to Ultima Underworld from 1992.
So you're saying we should be seeing more and more varied genres appearing? I'm not seeing that, either. Quite the contrary.
The rare few are even rarer, then? I don't know. I did go back and check a list of game releases ordered by year, picking out those that I'd call interesting/good, and their number was decreasing over time.
Maybe the problem is that it' s the generic and uninteresting that gets hailed as the best thing ever nowadays. Most games getting GotY awards left and right in the last five years have been pretty mediocre, I'd say.

Sorry I was being so convoluted and wordy yesterday. I just felt like being thoughtful and expressive.
But why is everyone fighting me on this one? I'm not even saying that old games can't be better than new games. Some older games simply are perfect already. I'm just saying that everyone seems to have this crazy idea that the quality of new games are declining. It is simply NOT true!
If "better" is so subjective that there can never be any bad games but just different ones then... I'm right. Right? Newer games are not getting worse at all just differenter. Which has been my point all along.
At any rate, I love both old games and new games. I'm just getting tired of people moan and bitch about how things aren't as great as they used to be. It's true, but again it seems the loudest whiners are the ones who do the least in contributing to the creation process. People who make the games do so largely in part for themselves and the people who enjoy them. So they can well damn make whatever the hell they want.

Now that's a fantastic business model to ensure that games will never be writen again! Erm...NO they don't make whatever they want on a whim, the process is a lot more convoluted than that.
What people are saying is that there is a more than fair shar of shit around at the moment that you're just not seeing. Walk down a isle and look at the crap on the shelves, it's embarrasing and ludicrous at the amount of rubbish that's thrown at us and statistically the amount of them that ends up as best selers or classics are very very low.

Hahaha... Clagg, why do you have such a personal vendetta against everyone who expresses any opinion different from yours? Hypocrite a bit?
Also I don't think you actually read and understand anything that I say. You just want to attack my opinions for the hell of it.
I never said that they make the decision about what type of games to make on a whim. It's a very collaborative process, that's one of the big reasons why games are so diluted these days. But if you're the guy who's doing all the gritty work, I think you have a say of who you want to appeal to and how you go about doing it.
Also I'd very much like to discuss with you why you're so irrational and confrontational in the #gog IRC channel. You should drop in sometime.

I don't see why you find it inconceivable that some people might have an opinion different from yours.
Reducing things to the most extreme form of relativism is not helping much.
There are a fair few indie developers who became developers precisely because they felt the current game industry lacked something.

Nostalgia is interesting. A lot of games people poopoo'd back when are considered classics now ("Oh I can't believe I missed that one!" etc.) and are pined after now. I find it funny that you get these people that say they have played through a certain game when it came out...but they had to be a fetus when the game was released.
Also people talk about about how many crap games come out now, but I think there is a higher majority of really great games now then there use to be, percentage wise. Maybe people are not remembering the same universe I am, but there has always been a huge crap/shovelware market on the PC...and not just the 10 dollar bargain basement games either.
All I ask is that people need to be honest and not claim things for some invisible notion of what is 'geek cool' now.
Take Planescape: Torment for example. If this game was played by as many people that claim to have played it, it would have sold really really well when it came out. You might say pirating did it in, but I don't buy that idea. (GOG.com doesn't seem to buy it either, or else we'd have DRM on the games ;))
So I think the nostalgia factor is a mixture of people remembering things in a super sepia toned light and people claiming to have done/played/experianced things that they didn't actually try until much later or are lying out their buttholes about.
As for the star system on here? It seems to be pretty fair I think. I've seen several games with 3 stars. Then again, I rarely pay attention to things like that in the first place.

Exactly what I'm trying to say... guess I'm not being clear enough.

Yeah I figured ;) I find it funny the trends I see in gaming: Older games are better, the PC is always on the brink of dying, console gamers are stupid, etc etc etc.
I guess since I've been gaming since the early 80's, I just have seen a lot of this come and go.

Did you count more than 400,000 people claiming to have played it? :P

From what I've seen, half the gaming population in the USA has played it, heh.
Can't be seen to have not played such a classic, eh? That would tarnish the gaming cred ;)

A lot of it is people just looking back with rose coloured glasses. We all easily remember the great games of the past (Xcom, Fallout, etc.), but easily FORGET that there were unbelievably AWFUL titles out back then just as there are now.

Oh my good gosh, how quickly someone gets down to their real level when they don't agree huh?
Get off your high horse, and what's that about the IRC channel? Oh yes, so you can abuse me without recourse, grow up, it's a discussion and if this is how you treat people who don;t see your view then it's gonna be a lot of quotes from you on these forums.
It isn't a personal vendetta, it's a CHAT ! grow up and read what I wrote then read what yor response was. Not exactly in proportion was it?