I too like
@uber like GTA Vice City a lot and think it is the best in the series. Not from a technical stand point and this thread was never about games becoming technically regressive but about the practices adopted by game developers.
Let me quickly say why I like GTA Vice City the best. A fantastic balls to walls character but at the same time not crazy like Trevor. The setting in the 80s, the radio content (seriously no other GTA game has talk shows as good as this or music). This was a time when Rockstar was not trying to be super realistic in car, combat physics or character emotions. Things started to change since SA when they started to make the character more relatable and tried to paint the character as a goody 2 shoes. GTA Vice City simply was a fun game to boot and play for hours. GTA V is far superior in the amount of details it has, the stuff that you can do etc but it I don't know why but just doesn't feel like the old laid back GTA. It is hard to describe why. This is all personal preference though. I pre-ordered GTA V for the PS3 and again bought it on Steam. I like GTA V but I love GTA Vice City. Post writing this and mentioning my thoughts on the race today I think I will drive around Vice City and listen to Fernando and the music on his radio station.
Back to topic -
I bought a copy of Final Fantasy 4 : The Complete Collection for my PSP. You get a bunch of stuff with it a cleaning cloth for your PSP, a few cards with character artwork and a cardboard case with a pouch for it all. Similarly I have KOF 13 Deluxe Edition for PS3 which includes an extra CD containing Art work for the game and a 2 sided cover for the box.
What you do get in this case is the complete game. If you buy a regular edition you don't get the artwork or cleaning cloth but you get the same content on disc.
This is why I hate the day one edition or special edition or season pass etc. They are selling content not included in the main game but charging you for the whole game plus more for some of these extras. Want to buy Watch Dogs 2... there are 6 different versions. Battlefield or CoD they are no exceptions to this confusing bundle choices. You want to buy Mafia 3, do you buy the season pass with it? Oh wait the game runs like crap out of the box and you need to download a bunch of patches.
Today if I buy a disc of a recent game then not the entire content is on it and you need to download a bunch of it from steam, uplay whatever... The codes once activated remain locked to one account. So tomorrow if I give my kid a game I bought I will have to give him access to my account so that he can play the game. But what if the server has disappeared? What happens then?
Example -
Motorstorm Arctic Edge allows you to download a free DLC car for your PSP. Guess what Sony withdrew support for PSP and you can't download it anymore. The only way to do it now is if you have a PS3 if you already have it in your download list. Then download it to PS3 and transfer it to PSP. Wipeout Pulse... There's no way to get it now.
So today you buy a non regular version of a console game. It comes with a bunch of codes. You activate them and then when you try to sell that game it isn't special no more.
So today you see all the day one goodies and buy the game. The game comes out half a$$ed and you need to wait for a bunch of patches to fix it. Tomorrow you try to sell it and the servers with patches don't exist anymore... How does the buyer play a broken game. Of course on PC you might find ways of doing it unofficially but how do you do that on a console?
Basically what I was trying to say is today a lot of games that come out, come out in a form that are more focused on helping the developers make as much money as possible but at the same time not give the customer the joy of simply popping in the disc of popping in the disc and playing. In that sense the last gen of consoles started out well but ended with this trend and now this is the trend.
What is scary is that this trend is deemed acceptable by many.
