Gaming Is UNRECOGNISABLE In 2024

The current generation of gaming has certainly delivered more than its fair share of extremely high quality releases so far, but there's also a sinking feeling that technical leaps from the prior gen have been pretty underwhelming on the whole.

PS5 games look great of course, but they also largely feel like "PS4 games, but shinier," and even the much-ballyhooed SSD tech doesn't seem like it's adding a whole lot to games structurally beyond decreased loading times.

This may in part be due to this generation's continued emphasis on producing cross-gen titles, ensuring that they need to be able to function on fast-aging legacy hardware as well as the current hotness, in turn holding back their true potential.

And yet, we're roughly halfway into the current-gen life cycle and it already feels like games have hit the hardware's roof in terms of graphical fidelity, which given that consoles typically come into their own at the end of the life cycle is pretty concerning.

Everything looks great, but does anything look amazing? 

This generation has been desperately lacking in wow factor, and the fact that mid-gen hardware refreshes are becoming the norm - with a PS5 Pro widely rumoured to release before year's end - only furthers the argument that the first iteration of current-gen consoles feel like a half-baked extension of the previous gen.