Games that aged badly.

[A user named cat]

Alone in the Dark -- loved it when it came out, best game there was for Panasonic 3DO which was like throwing $350 down the toilet. Tried replaying a few months ago, mindblowingly clunky. Makes Resident Evil tank controls seem fluid.

Out of this World/Another World -- found it amazing back in the day mostly due to the visual style and cinematic feel, nothing else like it aside from Flashback. Playing it now, it's just a slog through trial and error hell.

Commandos series -- fuck off with memorizing a thousand hotkeys. Adolescent patience, it wasn't a big deal then. Adulthood, nothing but frustration. idonthavetimeforthiscrap.

tl;dr games don't age badly, we do.

 

[Snufkin]

I admit digging Commandos when it came out but eventualy got frustated in mayby 17 mission. Never finished 2. But i admit that both Robin Hood and Desperados who uses same idea were very good and still hold today.

Also when it comes to Doom :

It does look ugly and offputting. It's even worse on my 19' LCD.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Realms of Arkania HD.

 

[A horse of course]

Doom looks fine in sauce pawts with better lighting and stuff, but Doom was never, artistically, something to shout about outside monster design.

 

[A user named cat]

I admit digging Commandos when it came out but eventualy got frustated in mayby 17 mission. Never finished 2. But i admit that both Robin Hood and Desperados who uses same idea were very good and still hold today.

Agree about Robin Hood. It's a gem and often on sale on Steam for dirt cheap. Much easier to control than Commandos and it looks amazing, some of the best isometric graphics to date. Shame about the low resolution and game length though but otherwise great game. Desperados I barely remember except for the difficulty.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Pillars of Eternity.

Indeed: it got old after ten or so hours.

 

[Scroo]

I play crap from before my time, gfx rarely matters. Clumsy controls or horrible UIs on the other hand...

Then again I managed to beat Alone in the Dark 1 3 years ago so it's all just a matter of will

 

[Ulminati]

The games who aged badly are the ones from 10+ years ago who became popular mainly on merit of their "advanced 3D graphics" in lieu of good gameplay.

 

[tormund]

My morons.txt file growth is limited solely by the I/O rate bottleneck ITT.


Anyway, games age badly because they were either crap to begin with or pioneer works that were too primitive to not get superseded in all their aspects (so basically also crap, but for fully objective reasons and adored for providing a pair of shoulders for everyone to stand on).
In terms of graphics only games that make poor use of it and rely solely on fashionable gimmicks to look attractive age badly.

I'm beginning to sympathize with your comments about Win's accessibility ruining PC gaming....

 

[---]

I'd say Final Fantasy VII (if we consider also console games)

 

[Carrion]

Good games are good games regardless of their age. Some games do stand the test of time better than others, though, for various reasons. There may be individual parts of games that are later surpassed or even made obsolete by other games built upon the same foundation, there are games that used a control scheme that later became the standard whereas others went for a more unusual (and possibly more unintuitive) route, there are games that have simple but polished gameplay and others that took a more ambitious approach with lots of experimentation and a varying quality of execution. It's not surprising that so many people are interested in the System Shock remake whereas no one would give two shits if someone planned the same for Doom, even though they're both great shooters of about a similar age.

 

[Ulminati]

It's not surprising that so many people are interested in the System Shock remake whereas no one would give two shits if someone planned the same for Doom

But they rebooted DooM literally 2 months ago

Doom was released to very positive reviews regarding the fast-paced gameplay, single player campaign, and visuals, whereas criticism was predominantly toward the multiplayer mode. Many critics believed that Doom was a successful return to form for the series. Following the wide release, the game received scores of 85/100 for PCs [...] the final version of the game received very positive reviews from users on Steam. The game also received praise from other video game creators, including Greg Kasavin, who said that the game answers questions that other modern shooters do not answer, and Cliff Bleszinski.

 

[Snufkin]

Agree about Robin Hood. It's a gem and often on sale on Steam for dirt cheap. Much easier to control than Commandos and it looks amazing, some of the best isometric graphics to date. Shame about the low resolution and game length though but otherwise great game. Desperados I barely remember except for the difficulty.

Desperados is amazing, even more so if you watch all couple of western movies and see all the influences that designers took from them. And difficulty is also perfect. I like it more then Robin hood.

 

[Carrion]

But they rebooted DooM literally 2 months ago

1) Technically it was not a reboot, and definitely not a remake
2) Its selling point was bringing back the original Doom gameplay, not changing it to make it more accessible to modern audiences (even though it obviously didn't do the former)
3) By "no one" I obviously mean the Codex and people with some actual taste, not gaming journalist shills or "modern gamers".

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

That thing is a remake?
Well it has perhaps got the faster pace of action down but that is pretty much it. I am not interested in the new Doom and I am someone who still plays old Doom wads

In general I feel that 2D/Sprite games that did not try to do any 3D stuff have aged better such as adventure games..
Games that have suffered include the early 3D stuff such as FPS and flight sims that show the passage in time, both in looks and often in gameplay.
Strategy games also often suffer in the gameplay element as improvement in the mechanics were introduced in new titles.

FPS is kind of a strange case, gameplay and design really improved for a long time but at some point then took a massive dive in quality again as suddenly the games had to be more cinematic and streamlined, not to mention more focused towards the console gamer.
I think the genre was the strongest around the last years of the 90s to the middle of the first 2000s decade (titles like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Half Life/Half Life 2, Elite Force, Unreal/Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex though technically this is not a FPS, Jedi Knight Outcast/Academy).

Then titles like Halo started to streamline the genre.

 

[octavius]

Quake. I enjoyed the Shareware version back in the days, but I had to force myself to finish it when playing the full version quite recently.

But overall I think computer games (I mainly play CRPGs, FPS and TBS) have aged surprisingly well for a medium that is dependent on technology far more than books and even movies. I even enjoyed Wizardry 1 (not the popamole Japanese version) thoroughly, despite never having played the wireframe Wizardries back in the days.

Also, if you are used to playing modern games with state of the art graphic, it can be a shock going back to a game like Ultima Underworld. About 10 years ago I tried to replay UU but felt it had aged badly. But 3 or so years ago, when UU was part of my chronological playthrough of games I thought it was great, and the graphics didn't feel nearly as dated.

 

[Snufkin]

Octavius you should try Quake Reborn.

Anyways i will add another game : Unreal. When it came up not many people had PC who could handle it well. And when you finally got your voodoo3 you realized this game is really boring and feels like tech demo. It still look quite good tho, with high res textures pack.

On the other hand UT 99 was brilliant and still is.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Oh just fuck off. Unreal remains great to this day. Its single player campaign is only matched by Half-Life in the fps world.

Please, tell us about how Fallout hasn't aged well next.

 

[Snufkin]

Well as much i like Fallout 1/2, I do have something to say since you brought this up. Fo1 is too short, and Fo2 is very lame until you reach Den at the very least. It's hard to deny this.

 

[Mark Richard]

Oh just fuck off. Unreal remains great to this day. Its single player campaign is only matched by Half-Life in the fps world.

Please, tell us about how Fallout hasn't aged well next.

Fallout lacks dynamic situational music which is considered a basic necessity today.

 

[Riskbreaker]

I really can't get enough of Quake and Unreal SP. Original Unreal campaign is indeed one the finest example of its genre.
Behead all those who dare belittle them, or write them off as mere tech demos.


(I also disagree about early-ish 3D being universally bad. I find visuals in some early fully textured 3D games such as Azrael's Tear or Quake to be genuinely appealing)

 

[skacky]

One of the very few games I believe has aged quite badly is Warcraft 1. Visuals are still good and all but the UI and the controls are absolutely abysmal in comparison to Warcraft 2, which is the superior game in pretty much every aspect anyway.

 

[tormund]

Lots of those earlier base building RTSs were legit improved by their successors in gameplay & playability department.

That is a genre I really can't enjoy anymore though. I spent hundreds of hours on RA2, AoE2, Generals... but I just can't stomach the genre at all nowadays.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Well as much i like Fallout 1/2, I do have something to say since you brought this up. Fo1 is too short, and Fo2 is very lame until you reach Den at the very least. It's hard to deny this.

Neither of which has anything to do with aging
Try again.

 

[Calleborg]

GTA 3 / Vice City / San Andreas