I used to be a video game reviewer, and from my experience there are just as many awesome games being released year after year as there has ever been. The thing is, it's become so easy to release sheer and utter crap that it's padding the walls in every video game store.

This happened before the NES, which cause the video game industry to bubble and crash. I wouldn't be surprised if the market for video games bubbles and crashes again, because there's simply way too many games being released that the average person has no clue what's good and what's bad.

Then there's the problem that games that are utter crap and repetitive imitations are given absolutely massive advertising budgets, yet great games are given virtually no advertising. Then there's all the rush job releases that damage reputable games.

I understand why he believes video games have degraded in quality, however from my experience as a video game reviewer and personally having grown up with NES, video games are better today. There's a bigger genre selection, more replayability.

TES4: Oblivion was a piss poor sequel to Morrowind. Not only was the story atrocious, (for those who haven't played it) the story is announced in all of a 5 second speech during the tutorial. I'm not saying it's easily explained, the story is literally a straight line from the Emperor to the guys illegitimate son who has to kill the bad guy, there's no twists or turns along the way. In Morrowind it took like half the game before you found out where the story was going, but it involved twists regularly. This is not to mention that when Oblivion released, it was utterly impossible to play as any character type except a fighting one, as due to the bad guys levelling up with you the game became too hard unless you was wearing heavy armour with amazing skills. If you was a thief you could be easily killed by a rat when you hit level 15, where as the rat was easy pickings when you was level 1.

As a reviewer I got to play games that were sheer amazing, like Psychonauts, that didn't get picked up by the public. Then I got stuck with games like Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, which is basically ripping off Brothers in Arms, yet the squad AI is so appalling your team mates would run out in front of a tank. It wasn't original, it was an insult to the original FSW and it was an insult to the customers because it was hugely advertised in the gaming mags because it was the sequel to FSW.

There's been lots of great games in the past few years. GTA III->IV, Fable 1/2, Fallout 3 (although lacking the feel of Fallout 1/2), Mass Effect, The Movies, Black & White 1/2, Sims 1->3, the Total War franchise, Half-Life franchise including Team Fortress, Counter-Strike and Portal, Mario Galaxy, the X franchise.

I really don't see how you can think games haven't improved since the days of Megaman where there was absolutely no story, you just shot things and ran right.

I now find much less entertainment in video games than when I was a child, although this is the product of ageing and not of deteriorating video game quality. I'd rather do more productive things with my time and now I rarely play games even in my free time. However, I can still pick a game off the shelf that'll be great from any store just through instinct.