Games that aged badly.

[pippin]

I had Settlers 3's demo as a kid. I loved it. For me it was like making my plasticine soldiers fight against each other.

 

[Beastro]

Such a disappointment.

For me the graphics weren't an issue. Being able to play C&C Red Alert maps First Person made up for them.

 

[Snufkin]

Baldurs gate 1. It was not very good back then and now it's just bad. It does not have icy grip of Icewind dale, Torment writing, IWD2 balanced difficulty or Baldur's Gate 2 epic battles. It have nothing to back it self up.

 

[FeelTheRads]

This guy is a riot.

At least not as bad as this:

Running around in Unrealshit, Shitlife and Desu Shit is not entertaining.

 

[BLOBERT]

LOLLOLLOL BROS DONT SHIT ON GOLDENEYE YUOUL HURT MY IN THE NOSTALGIA!!!!>>?><>?!!

BROS AS AN ASIDE I BOUGHT PERFECT DARK FOR THGE FAGBOX 360 AND IT TOOK A WHILE TO GET THE CONTROLS TO FEEL RIGHT

I THINK THOSE GAMES WERE AMOING THE FIRST TO HABE LOVATIONAL DAMAGE ESPECIALLY AMONG CONSOLE FPS WHEN THE GAME CAME OUT I GOT A TOTAL BONER OVER THE SNIPER RIFLE
AND AK ZOOMIONG IN AND SHOOTING THEM STRAINTG TO THE BALLS

 

[tormund]

GoldenEye.

I think that has to be the steepest decline from playing it at the time and being completely amazed to playing it recently and wondering how the fuck I ever even used an N64 controller.

Yeah, I tried to play it few years ago for the first time since I never owned N64 back in the day, and it was borderline painful. I can see why it impressed back then on a console, but as far as playability goes even compared to console first or even console exclusive shooters from that era (like Turok or Disruptor) it is p bad.

 

[Perkel]

almost all jrpgs because most of them were just graphical showcases with nothing under it.

 

[Kz3r0]

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

Utter shit basically.

 

[DraQ]

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.

Or give them Razorjack and they will behead themselves.

(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)

 

[Doktor Best]

Ultima Underworld. The graphics all in all and the atmosphere are still top notch, but those combat animations...

 

[octavius]

Baldurs gate 1. It was not very good back then and now it's just bad. It does not have icy grip of Icewind dale, Torment writing, IWD2 balanced difficulty or Baldur's Gate 2 epic battles. It have nothing to back it self up.

It has moddability.
That's a big plus in my book.
But yes, vanilla BG1 has aged badly, but IMO mainly because reverting to 640x480 is such a decline when being used to the modded versions.

 

[BobtheTree]

System Shock 2

*runs*

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Yeah, so this thread...I've used the term "aged badly" for a number of games (not that I can remember them) so while there's a case to be made here, the OP completely fucked it up with his original listing of "aged badly" games.

In general, the biggest reasons games "age badly" is because the controls, interface or UI - they become redundant. The gameplay - rarely, if ever - is the cause...but it still happens.

As much as I would like to contribute a serious thread about this, it's just not gonna happen at this point.

 

[Daemongar]

Eh, I still love it, but the original Tales of the Unknown: The Bard's Tale seemed to get the domnatio memoriae from all official lists of great rpgs and such. To say it has a lot of combat is an understatement, and nobody wants to map shit anymore. You'll just have to trust that at some point in time it was good.

Also, while the original Lands of Lore has aged remarkably well, Lands of Lore 2 has aged very poorly due to how crappy the sprites look on large lcd screens. Kind of like the comment on Betrayal at Krondor. Still love the game, but hard to make out what the hell is on the screen on a 23" lcd monitor. It looked a lot better on a tube monitor, but unfortunately for me it's almost unplayable.

 

[groke]

RPGCodex aged badly.

 

[Viata]

Lands of Lore 2 has aged very poorly due to how crappy the sprites look on large lcd screens. Kind of like the comment on Betrayal at Krondor

Those are playable on a notebook, though. The small screen may help in this case.

 

[MRY]

StarCraft plays better than Warcraft 2 but the latter is still very enjoyable to this day if you can cope with the occasional pathfinding issue like Wilian says and the 9-unit limit per selection (to be fair, StarCraft also has loads of pathfinding issues, most notably Dragoons).

Warcraft 2 has always suffered from having a single unit that is demonstrably better than everything else (ogre magi). Yes, there are tactical uses for catapults and death knights. But I won basically every game I ever played -- which, granted, was only at LAN parties and Internet cafes and stuff -- simply by being absurdly good at spamming ogre magi, blood lusting them, and sending them into battle. Starcraft is not without its flaws, but there's nothing comparably lopsided in the game, no ultra-simple strategy that is so mechanically executed.

Also, this thread is fairly ridiculous, but I would say that Ultima 4 has aged poorly. I played it for historical purposes, and while its historical significance is undeniable, it is abysmal as a game. It may have been deep and groundbreaking at the time, and the clue-gathering is still fun (I like taking paper notes in a game), but everything about the game is a boring grind and much of it encourages or even requires taking the most tedious approaches to gameplay.

 

[taxalot]

No game ages badly. But you do however.

 

[skacky]

MRY nobody plays Human in multiplayer because Ogre Magi are broken as hell, yeah.

 

[MRY]

But even orc vs. orc, there's still really no strategic variety -- no point to grunts, axe throwers, sappers, dragons. Even if someone goes pure air force, such that the ogres can't fight back, they can just rip the opposing town to pieces. Catapults and death knights played some role, IIRC, in getting past cannon towers blockaded by farms? But yeah, otherwise I just remember pumping peons, rushing to ogre magi, expanding, spamming. There was still a degree of micromanagement, tactics, and anticipating your opponent's movements, but meh.

 

[DraQ]

Baldurs gate 1. It was not very good back then and now it's just bad. It does not have icy grip of Icewind dale, Torment writing, IWD2 balanced difficulty or Baldur's Gate 2 epic battles. It have nothing to back it self up.

It has moddability.
That's a big plus in my book.

Even Oblibions is modable, not that it helps it any.

 

[miles teg]

My vote goes to Moonstone. What a shitty hack&slash experience today...

 

[Snufkin]

Black & White. I remember this game being "the shit" when it came out but got bored of it very fast, now after revisiting i have no desire to play it.

Titan quest / Torchlight - only fun when you are drunk. It gets boring really fast.

 

[Snorkack]

Lots of to be found here...


Here's my 'favs':
Age of Empires 1: Pathfinding, no queueing of production, farming mazes make the first one a chore to play.
Early Resident Evils: Getting back to them I realize the greatest horror wasn't nemesis or the wolf jumping through the window but the ridiculous controls and camera.
Dungeon Keeper: The presentation of this and its follow-up was (and is) so astonishing that it took a while to realize how shallow the gameplay in fact was.
Populous 1-3: Land up, land down, land up, land down, tiny viewport, scenario won... I just can't remember how this game was fun once. Actually it's hard to say P3 aged badly, because it was hardly good to begin with.
Bard's Tale: Huge empty maps of nothing but random encounters. Everytime I try to force me through I eventually quit and install a MM game.

Fight me!

 

[Trotsky]

Metal Gear Solid aged terribly the leap between fifth and sixth generation consoles was massive far bigger than anything we've seen recently. Kojima understood this hence his desire for a remake which would see the vision properly realized. Kojima wasn't the only one behind the success of the first three MGS games. His staff, lead writers like Tomokazu Fukushima, and publishers like Konami contributed as well. When Fukushima left the series after MGS3 and Konami stopped challenging Kojima it all went downhill. Nevertheless MGS1 atmosphere and story combined with MGS2 gameplay and graphics was a match made in heaven. Whatever flaws MGS Twin Snakes had the pros far outweighed the cons. A pity Nintendo holds the rights to the game and it wasn't included in the HD upgrades. As of now Dolphin emulator is the only way to play in HD and 4k.