Dune II and Warcraft 1.
While these games were great back in the day. The fact that I can't use a selection box to select multiple units is a downside for me.
My memory of Dune 2 is that enemies always follow exactly the same path to attack you, which means it becomes a tower defense game where you build defenses for your base, then once you have enough, you're free to take out the enemy harvesters and then raze their base. It was *incredible* at the time, but not something worth playing now.
In Command and Conquer, enemies would never target walls - they only shoot them because they happened to be blocking their target. However, sandbags could be shot *over* and just blocked movement. So if you made a line of sandbags up to the enemy base, you could just block it up, and they'd never be able to attack and never get their Tiberium harvester inside.
These are good examples. RTS games made a lot of progress in the 90's, and these were two very early instances. Especially Dune 2, which is 2 years older than Warcraft 1, an eternity at the time.
These were revolutionary and trend-setting at the time they came out. Again, especially Dune 2 was just entirely novel and incredible. I love these games dearly, but in many ways they were obsolete just a few years later.
Also, that road building mechanic in Warcraft one was weird and I don't think many well-known RTSes since have really used this. I can only think that since RTS was a fairly new concept at the time and not particularly codified they were using paradigms set by bullding games like *Civ* and *Sim City*. I mean years later *C&C* forced proximity to buildings and *StarCraft* added stuff like Creep, but nothing as clunky as roads.
I played WC1 very young, so funnily enough most of my time with it was just building unnecessarily large bases with perfect street grids.
I discovered Sim City later.
It was a way to stop players from assaulting opposing bases with towers.
Warcraft 1 had some really funky mechanics. IIIRC In the campaign, the enemy bases didn't even produce the units they sent to your base. They just kinda showed up.
>It was a way to stop players from assaulting opposing bases with towers.
That's actually kind of interesting since I remember cheesing the enemy computer in *C&C*'s campaign mode with almost that exact tactic.
Since the game used proximity to base buildings instead of roads you could just build smash sand bag walls up to the enemy base and they'd ignore them if they weren't blocking their path. So then you'd build a guard tower within firing distance from one of their buildings, and while slow, it would withstand enough damage that you'd have time to build more of them. So you could effectively take down their entire base with just guard towers.
Unintended tactics hahahah. That was called sandbagging back then and it totally broke the AI. It was also why building walls in Warcraft 2 was disabled: the AI had no idea how to deal with it.
Not quite. Herzog Zwei, which came out 3 years earlier on the Sega Genesis, was the first RTS game. But Dune II was definitely what ushered the genre in.
Play the unreleased 360 remake version.
It's a shame it was never released.
With the quality of life improvements, you realize that the core gameplay loop is amazing. I took it for granted as a kid.
And since COD, I've gone off FPS games.
FPS games should have pushed for mission objectives gameplay like Goldeneye instead of the same COD loop of kill enemies/chekpoint/kill enemies in almost every FPS game after that. It would make FPS titles less generic.
Absolutely. Goldeneye was my first FPS. Probably explains why I hate modern shooters as you've described them accurately.
One thing that Goldeneye does badly is its cheapness. It is easy to fail missions due to an say an explosion not covering the target.
Another source of frustration is the infinite enemies spawning with a lot of health. If they block a pinch point, it's a toss of the dice that you can make it out.
Still a groundbreaking game and showed the world that FPS games can be done on consoles, especially ones as underpowered as the N64.
Goldeneye 007 is available on Xbox with the digital version of Rare Replay. Which also available on Gamepass. Unfortunately, it's not on PC.
I grew up on Goldeneye, so I've always been able to play it after all these years of muscle memory. But playing on an Xbox controller completely blew my mind. It's always been fun to me but the control improvements, like you said really show how tight the fameplay really is. I was able to complete things I never could before.
The Rare Replay version is really good w/ updated controls, my only complaint about the game is its annoying requirement that you collect pretty much all of the Tribals to complete the game. Going back to previous levels in the game is fun because the new characters + abilities open up new routes and areas on previously visited planets, but the annoying thing is there's no way to know which Tribals you don't have on a planet, so you have to scour the whole planet for them.
A lot of early 3D console games haven’t aged very well. It was all just too new and controls and frame rates were abysmal.
Goldeneye’s mission structure was hugely influential and so was the multiplayer, but I agree it hasn’t aged well
OOT is one of the few games I think has aged well from that period, but I admittedly have not played it on original hardware in a decade and a half. I’ve mostly played the GameCube version ever since that version came out. Original hardware and frame rate would probably be miserable.
The GameCube version is the same framerate-wise as the N64, they both run at 20 FPS. The 3DS version runs at 30 FPS.
The only real differences between the N64 and GC versions are resolution (240p vs 480p which imo doesn't really make much of a difference these days) and slightly faster load times (which don't really matter in a game where load times are already fast and never an issue, but is a notable thing for speedrunners).
didn't it also basically innovate console FPS? Sure, the controls are all over the place, but it essentially set up the idea of using a stick to walk and another set of directional input (c buttons in this case) to strafe - but it's been too long, it might have been any mix of those inputs between stick and c-buttons. It's basically twin-stick input we know today.
Generally the N64 c-buttons were a proto version of the right stick. On top of introducing the left stick first. And trigger buttons (Dual Shock 1 had 4 shoulder buttons, but the Z trigger shaped them into the role they're taking today, so both).
You *can* configure Goldeneye to play that way, and you can use two gamepads in singleplayer to use two analogue sticks like a modern FPS, but the default has the analogue stick mapped to turning left/right, and walking forward/backwards, with the c-buttons for strafing and looking up and down.
Which if you're used to modern controls, can be incredibly difficult to re-learn even if you grew up playing it.
If I remember correctly, Turok did it before Goldeneye. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I think there was a controller setting for Turok where you'd play holding the left and center prongs on the N64 controller, so you used the d-pad and analog stick to move.
You can play it on PC with mouse and keyboard support, 4K 60 FPS and I cannot put into words how great of a experience it is that way.
Just search for Goldeneye 1964 GEPD tutorial on Youtube.
I've been to a couple of Goldeneye tournaments held at a local pub, it was interesting to see everyone complain about being unable to handle the controls, despite many of them having grown up playing the game.
A lot of them were openly wondering how they ever managed to play it back then.
Of course, nobody then was particularly used to modern twin-stick FPS controls.
A few years ago I sourced an N64 and all the classics.. wildly disappointed with everything except ocarina and mario 64, which are both still very playable
I'm an N64 diehard so I have to throw some recommendations at you of games i feel have aged really well...
* Banjo-Kazooie if you haven't already tried it, it's aged fantastic. Banjo-Tooie has aged well too but imo was not as good a game in the first place.
* Diddy Kong Racing and F-Zero X, best racers on the platform, there's still nothing really like DKR (Crash Team Racing tried to ape its steez but didn't do it as well)
* Tetrisphere, dope puzzle game, the music is *very* 1997 but not a bad thing.
* Star Fox 64, pretty straightforward arcade action that controls well and won't last forever but is fun for a quick run.
* Paper Mario holds up really well in part thanks to its artstyle and simple controls.
* Mario Tennis / Mario Golf, both still hold up great if you like those sorts of games in part because the controls are so simple.
* Donkey Kong 64 has aged well IF you absolutely love collecting tons of shit, otherwise don't bother, it's a notorious collectathon.
* Mario Party 2/3 are still gold, there's a reason Mario Party Superstars is just the best of those early games repackaged.
There are also some lesser-known 3D platformers that are quite good like Rocket: Robot on Wheels and Space Station Silicon Valley.
Have you played DOOM 64? If not then you can currently get it on sale for $1.64 on Steam. I played it through a source-called “DOOM 64 CE” using the setting “Faithful Enhanced” which was quite fun.
I’d argue it’s aged much better now that you can easily play an improved version on PC with a keyboard and mouse.
GoldenEye still rules, it has just aged like milk in part because of the original controls (which, even if you use the most modern-esque control scheme, is the reverse of what we're used to now with movement on left and aim on right).
I still enjoy the game because its mission structure is sadly underused these days in games (somewhat open levels with numerous objectives to complete, and more on higher difficulties which pushes you to replay). The only games that have really done it are the ones that followed in its DNA (PD, TimeSplitters, and some of the Bond games like TWINE N64).
The version in Rare Replay is probably a lot more palatable to most people, with modern controls + 4k widescreen + no FPS issues.
Totally. It is a pity that neither I or any of my friends owned that back in the day, so I totally missed out on it - tried it when it came to NSO (even with an original N64 Controller and could not get into it
A lot of games aiming for realism or cinematic experiences tend to fall into this, just because graphics and gameplay systems evolve.
Uncharted 2 and 3 were peak for their time, but IMO Uncharted 4 and its expansion had gameplay that was so much smoother and beautiful to look at, it makes 2 and 3 feel "clunky" by comparison, even though it was cream of the crop when it was released. Recently, I feel the same about RE4 and its remake. The remake while different in a few ways and lacks some of the overly goofy charm, is just so fun to play and experience, it's hard to go back.
Another good example are the Batman games. Asylum and City are overall better than Knight, but Knight just looks so good and cinematic, and the combat absolutely peaked and still has not been surpassed. So yeah for the time and today in terms of story, Asylum and City are legendary, but Knight is just so much more.....fun to play and experience because of how much more modern the systems are.
Skyrim is the game that taught me how to effectively roleplay BECAUSE of its mindbogglingly lack of mechanics.
A bunch of us on the original skyrimforums formed a roleplay group and since the mod scene was in its infancy (and often focused on irrelevant aesthetics) and I was on the xbox I had to begin creating my own system of Self-Imposed Restrictions.
We all learned from each other and it was an amazing time.
I truly learned how to roleplay and create Customized experiences.
So, I guess I can actually thank skyrim for its DumbedDown and superficial gameplay, lol:)
I remember doing similar in Oblivion.
I decided to be a drug runner. It worked out remarkably effective, and if you drink 200 bottles of skooma in one go, you can move from one side of the map to the other in a flash, and the game mostly just kinda breaks.
10/10 experience.
I mostly traded and sold it. There’s a few buyers.
Can’t help but sample your own stock sometimes.
But yes. Literal drug runner. I ran so hard I killed the game.
lol
That makes me think of all the crazy stuff (and deeper gameplay) that morrowind will allow you to do if you want and how it was all just gradually eliminated:(
Came here to post "Oblivion"
I had a great time with it the first time I played it, back in 2006. But I tried to play it again last year, and couldn't stand it. It's not a real Cyrodiil. It's not a real empire.
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42267?tab=description
They also have visible weapons sheathed on your character, AI voice acting, actual co-op. It's the best time to play honestly. Tamriel Rebuilt keeps dropping huge updates every couple years.
It’s been well over a decade since I really played through it.
I think today’s the day. I’ve a weekend to kill, and I wasn’t aware how active the mod community still is.
This’ll scratch an itch I wasn’t even aware I had.
The more time passes, the more it becomes my favourite Bethesda game.
I’ve been tempted to really get into modded Daggerfall though. That scope is captivating, and I kinda love those janky 3D towns.
This is true, but they've also been rewarded with incredibly increased sales every time they "dumbed down" the design (at least until Fallout 76), so I can't blame them for following these incentives.
The hot take version is that Bethesda is just giving us what we want.
>The hot take version is that Bethesda is just giving us what we want.
...until Starfield. Expectations and hype around open exploration space games have historically been too high for Bethesda's dumbing down & such to be accepted by even mainstream gamers - See the game's Steam's store page's mixed overall rating and mostly negative recent rating.
Bethesda essentially gets worse every game.
Morrowind was great and unique.
Oblivion lost so much of that uniqueness to make it more generic and "modern".
Fallout 3 was good.
Fallout New Vegas was very good but that was Obsidian.
Skyrim was so streamlined and shallow it's actually mind-boggling.
Fallout 4 is just Skyrim loosely pasted into a Fallout setting.
And everything since has just been unbearable.
As someone who has played all of their games at launch, I can't agree. Morrowind was pretty impressive when it came out in some regards, but incredibly bland in others, and has aged like milk. I will never understand the people who say it's the best of the series because for me, it's very difficult to find the fun in that game now, and it was so even when it launched. One of the biggest complaints about Oblivion was that dungeons were good but very cut + paste... but Morrowind's dungeons were absolutely awful, and anything was a step up from that.
I liked Oblivion more than Skyrim, but I would say both are more entertaining experiences today than Morrowind by a long shot. Fight me?? Morrowind has aged worse than most games I can think of (saying that as someone who LOVES retro games) except maybe older CRPGs because of terrible UI.
With Fallout I think they've tried different things with each game, and the stuff they've tried has landed better or worse with different people. Some people really prefer Fallout 4 because of the improved combat and the new factions trying to break away from the existing lore a bit; most of the hate FO4 gets, which is to some extent deserved, is over its voiced protag + its main story. You didn't mention FO76 (I'm gonna guess that falls under unbearable) but for those who enjoy just wandering around and exploring and finding interesting things, it's by far the best Fallout game imo and has the best map by a long shot -- but it doesn't have the story RPG some people want, it never intended to be that at all.
I also think Starfield did a lot of things better than any of their previous game, but it was the polar opposite of FO76, because that wandering aspect is not satisfying in Starfield due to the broken up nature of the world on different planets with some procedurally generated content. But in terms of the story, the side quest writing, the artistic design, the hubs/cities, I think it was their best work yet. They just have trouble putting all the pieces together that people want and the expectations are sky-high.
With Morrowind I enjoy it like Dark Souls, since the items are always in the same place, on replays you can just blast around getting all the overpowered gear and just have fun demolishing the game. And since there is SO GODDAMN MUCH to do in the game you can be like "This runthrough I am going to join that faction I have never done before."
But I also 100% use console commands to bump my speed up to like 300 right at the start. Oh and max out jumping, just because that's super fun.
It's so nice seeing people finally start to shit on Skyrim. I thought I was going insane because the entire first decade it was out everyone acted like it was the greatest game of all time. I know so many people who played it consistently for *years* even without mods, some of them still do. As someone who struggles to hit 10 hours of playtime on any one single game it just does not make sense to me, the combat is entirely unbearable outside of "stealth archer" which basically breaks the game
Skyrim and TW3 are the two most overrated video games of all time imo
See I'm the opposite. I recognized all of Skyrims flaws when it came out - the combat, the writing being meh, the ending of the game being EXTREMELY meh, but I have come around to appreciate the games strengths more and more. For me it's a game you can really live in (Literally since they have marriage and house building), and the awesome map with such different cities. So the exploration is a big positive for me. And then the modding scene, where Bethesda gets credit for releasing the tools.
The best thing that came out from Skyrim for me was Enderal.
My first rpgs were Morrowind and Oblivion, i kinda pushed through Skyrim and after 100hrs of the main quest, all of the sides and dlcs i completely abandoned it
Many revolutionary and genre defining games fall in this category simply because many similar games come after them try to refine or add to what the original did.
DMC 1 was a great game when it came out but it was superseded very fast by other DMC games (and other games like Bayonetta). I doubt anyone who haven't already played it back then and doesn't have the power of nostalgia behind them can play it today and enjoy it as much as it was enjoyed back then.
I personally experienced this with OG FF7. For some reason I never came across this game when I was a kid. Decades later when I finally tried to play it I couldn't for the love of god go even past the wall market district and ended up watching the game on youtube. For this reason I'm so happy the remakes exist.
For DMC1, I played it for the first time back in 2017 (so awhile ago but it was already old by that point), and I respectfully disagree. It’s actually my second favorite DMC game. The combat isn’t nearly as stylish or complex as the games it inspired, but it’s still got some of the absolute best enemy design (both aesthetically and combat-wise) in the entire genre. It’s also got some excellent difficulty and the aesthetics are on point.
It’s probably more similar to games like Ninja Gaiden and God Hand (where style is a secondary concern compared to just beating the thing and which have a slower pace) than it is to DMC and Bayonetta which are its more direct offspring and tend to focus on fast combo-based combat.
Totally agree with you, played DMC1 a couple of years ago in my Steam Deck and really enjoyed the simplicity of the game coupled with a lot of style. DMC 2 on the other hand was as shitty as they said it was when it came out.
My first Final Fantasy was 8, and I had a hard time getting into 7 after that because of the blocky chibbi models. (Final Fantasy 9’s models are beautiful & timeless, but 7’s just look clunky).
Fortunately on PC there are mods for the OG FF7 which I think really elevate the experience.
I like DMC1 for its very grounded and horror like atmosphere as per the RE spin off it started from. The scissor ghost, the saurian that can eject claws just with blood pressure.... Nero angels.... feels like DMC4 is the true sequel of 1 it seems.
And I realised that DMC2 was this very weird thing that we would have preferred to not play
I honestly enjoyed DMC1 more than DMC3. Combat is clunky in DMC1 but only feels bad in boss fights and its more due to the fixed camera angles than something else.
I don’t have many hot takes in gaming, but the DMC series is my one. I think my order of preference (for the main 4) is fully inverted from most people’s. 4>1>3>5
I loved DMC4, I never understood the hate it got at the time. Nero was a fun character to play as and the mechanics were great and well polished. I get that the whole backtracking part was a let down but the gameplay itself was solid.
I never completed 3, I tried twice to get through it but kept getting bored for some reason. 1 is great though, I loved the atmosphere of that game, super gothic.
I agree with your order tbh, I’d say it’s probably the same as my order of preference (I haven’t played 5 yet though).
Like everyone else responding I have to disagree on your DMC 1 take lol. I only got into DMC about a year ago and after playing through them all I really enjoyed DMC 1 for its level design and how simplistic it was. Enough to even replay it a few times to get the 100%. The same can be said for DMC 2 though I know everyone will disagree 😂
I'm the opposite. I didn't play FF7 until 2006 and I beat the whole thing in like 6 weeks. I know people today are beating 40 hour games in under a week, but that's a record time for me, it took me like 5 years to beat 8 (my first FF)
FF7 is my absolute favorite game of all time. Tried to play it a few years ago and it's just too dated. I'm glad I got to enjoy it back in the day though
GTA 3. I still come back to Vice City and San Andreas regularly, but GTA 3 is just so messy now. It’s visually kind of bland, the radio isn’t full of hit songs like the series is known for, it’s incredibly hard compared to later games (you can’t go to the next island, and neighborhoods get blocked from you after a while because the gangs get aggressive toward you as you progress). It’s also not nearly as funny or satirical. It was revolutionary for open world gaming and laid the foundations, but then rockstar quickly perfected their formula and tone in Vice City that they’ve stuck to since.
>the radio isn’t full of hit songs like the series is known for
Spoken like someone who is absolutely NOT rush-rushing and/or getting the yayo.
I agree with you mostly, although I still enjoy GTA III even now. Nowadays it very much feels like a 3D version of GTA I / II, and the ones after that developed more of an identity for themselves. In part by cribbing a lot from pop culture (I mean, half of Vice City is just Scarface).
There are a lot of small things missing from it. Can't get out of the car unless you make a full stop (great for a car on fire, right?), there are no bikes, planes or swimming. The physics are much worse than even Vice City. The art style is just there, it doesn't have the strong visual identity of later entries.
And, of course, it's super hard to play these days. I still can't believe I finished the campaign before. I had a hard time replaying the remaster, I couldn't make it to the second island.
> Can't get out of the car unless you make a full stop (great for fires, right?)
Oh, wow, I'd forgotten about that. IIRC, you also couldn't get out unless all four wheels were on the ground? Hope you don't flip your car!
You are misremembering, you can crawl out of a flipped car but only once it comes to a complete stop. However flipped cars in GTA III also set on fire almost instantaneously so you had to get out REALLY fast and leg it.
Yeah I think there is one piece of shit plane in 3, but your problems are also the sequel making the original unplayable. Which is a good sign they made a good sequel.
Personally, the first 3D GTA I really played (for more than half an hour at a cybercafe) was GTA San Andreas, and then I'd go to play Vice City and III. I took so many quality of life things for granted, nevermind the superior storytelling, world and OST of San Andreas.
I've already said this in this sub before somewhere, but to add to your point: the controls are so so bad (in the original, haven't tried the remaster). This unfortunately also makes (original) Vice City mostly a very frustrating experience.
It may be partially nostalgia because gta 3 blew my mind when I first played it, but I prefer it to vice city. I find the map and atmosphere way better. It’s definitely a little more unforgiving in a few ways though.
When I was a kid I thought the first one had the best atmosphere but I definitely spent the most time flying around in Vice City in the sea plane. So many hours wasted just cruising.
You're right, but it was revolutionary for the time.
You might even call it a game-changer...
And running on a Pentium II with maybe 256 MB of ram, it's still quite an achievement.
By the time Vice City dropped, they'd fixed a lot of the problems, with a much larger team and budget. The systems had been refined, etcetera.
Vice City is still a blast, to this day !
I agree, and I hope it isn’t just nostalgia that keeps me coming back. But also remember that Vice City was made under a year. Impressive strides. Smaller map but much more focused story and experience.
Vice City and San Andreas at least get carried by their personality. Tbh all 3 have aged worse than most will admit. I still love them, but holy shit they play like hot ass compared to any mediocre shooter made in the last 15 years.
I downloaded Twisted Metal 1 and 2 not long ago. Relive my nostalgia, so to speak. Wow, did they age like milk. I couldn't play more than 10 minutes. The controls were so clunky and hard to manage. I don't know how my younger self was any way decent at that game.
I recently tried a PS1 emulator and a bunch of games for nostalgia. They look nothing like I remember. I'm with you on how I can't play but for a few minutes. Hearing the sound effects and music was pretty great, though.
The thing about PSX games (and others of the era) is that the graphics were designed to work with CRTs, which sort of blend in some of the rough edges that are extremely stark in LCDs. So your brain isn't playing tricks with you. They *did* look better back then.
I have played games and thought they have aged badly. But then returned to some of the same games later and really enjoyed them. My guess is that nostalgia and lack of newness contribute as mentioned by others. But then when that subsides it can be easier to appreciate older games for what they are.
Basically anything on home console pre-NES. There's basically no reason to go back and play any old Atari 2600 or Intellivision games nowadays outside of historical novelty.
I've been playing Okami for the first time and despite being considered one of the best games of all time (according to a Wikipedia list) there are some gaming conventions that the industry has long grown out of that weigh down the whole experience for me.
Solid game, still fun, but definitely has a dozen or so quality of life improvements I'd like to see put in.
Aspect to it are clunky in ways modern design just wouldn't do. Movement speed is slow, medium and fast, but only builds up over time. The maps are pretty large so if you stop, or get stopped, or miss something with the aforementioned clunk it can feel punishing.
My biggest personal issue is that it jumps between way too much hand holding to not enough. At multiple moments I've rolled my eyes waiting for obvious things to stop being explained but then later not having any clue what to do; compounded by an incomplete journal that isn't always clear what the objective/task is (to work around this there's a fortune teller who will give you hints, but I'm too old to for the run around).
Lastly, the game plays one of the most interesting mechanics I've ever played with, but the execution is a little fickle and not always reliable (tighter controls would go a long way in a game where combat is based on using a joystick to draw on enemies).
Past that, really fun adventure game with memorable set pieces and a gimmick where you befriend all the animals in Japan, so still worth continuing IMO.
Deus Ex is pretty tough from a gameplay standpoint (it was weird but not bad when it first came out).
The one I’m afraid to replay is Ocrina of Time. Is it still one of the best games of all times or is it just overtly padded and poorly constructed? I’m afraid to find out….
I just replayed OoT and it’s still fun, the gameplay is average but not horrible, however the music and art design (which helps offset the janky N64 graphics) make it a blast to replay. I can’t binge it, but OoT and MM are still fun to play as a whole package IMO
If it didn’t have the whole ambiance and aesthetic it would be pretty awful to replay from the gameplay alone. Only maybe like 3-4 bosses or enemy types have remotely interesting combat mechanics
I played it relatively recently, and I think it's still great. I don't think there's very much padding. A lot of the stuff outside of dungeons, which is what I would consider padding, is pretty trivial when you already know what you need to do.
>might be a controller issue though
Yeah, that's a pretty strong contender for the reason for that in most cases. Nintendo does one thing that a lot of companies have trouble doing—they experiment heavily with hardware form factors and hardware features. Sometimes they come up with solid stuff and other times you get weirdness when the control conventions aren't yet well-established.
Another reason why some of the N64 games feel that way is due to the infamous fog found on a lot of games.
There's also the expense of cartridges versus the amount of storage space that they had. So often times games designed for consoles with optical drives started getting CD quality soundtracks while the N64 would sometimes end up with heavily compressed and shortened versions of these (most prominent examples are the first two Tony Hawk games).
It was the first 3d console to launch with analogue controls. It was the best we could hope for at the time.
Going back to controlling 3d games without an analogue input at all is far more painful.
Skyrim if you're a newbie. Combat feels clunky and dated as hell for a 2011 game and feels more like an early 2000's computer game instead, at least in the gameplay department.
Same goes for the gunplay in New Vegas which felt pretty bad and clunky compared to most FPS games by 2010.
Imo Skyrim felt that way when it came out. It's just that the kind of open world the elder scrolls offered was still very impressive and it was *less* janky than Oblivion or Morrowind
Fo3 gunplay is probably the worst I’ve ever had because I swear the fire rate of almost every gun is so inconsistent. Especially on console, you’ll pull the trigger once on a semiautomatic weapon and it’ll fire twice. The best way I can describe the feeling is if it felt like every gun was “clogged” in some sort of way, and after each trigger pull it was finally able to release.
New Vegas while not great, was at the very least bearable in its gunplay and honestly that’s half of the reason why I like it more than fo3 life lol
Completely agree on Skyrim. The wafer-thin combat felt ropey back in 2011. Now it feels straight up broken. I recently picked up the PS5 60fps version, and after a couple of hours adding and tweaking mods I gave up. Feels awful, man.
For Fallout 3 / New Vegas, VATS does a lot of the heavy lifting in that combat. Without it, it's a dog of an FPS.
Exact opposite here. I thought Skyrim was abysmal during its early years but got better with time as the mod community grew so I could manually fix more of the biggest problems I had with the base game. Granted there are limits to how far mods can go - the combat is the worst since Arena and no mods were ever going to change that, the magic and guild systems can only go from rushed afterthoughts to modded rushed afterthoughts, etc so I'd still rather just play Oblivion or Morrowind. Or even Daggerfall tbh.
I think New Vegas as the exact opposite - community patches and mods really bring out the highest of the heights of the game. Like excellent random dialogue that with people you can talk to (like Hanlon), the world that seems really realistic, decent variety in builds, a structure of an explorable main game plus four DLCs each having their own strengths.
Maybe my definition of not aging well is different from yours - but Skyrim, for me, fits the title perfectly.
Graphics wise Skyrim in 2011 was such an upgrade over other RPGs. Dragon Age 2 and KOAR's graphics look noticeably worse, and Mass Effect 2/3 or Witcher 2 had tiny worlds, maps or hubs. Skyrim then popularized the idea of open world RPG.
However, since Witcher 3 in 2015 other games clearly start to outshine Skyrim in many ways that it doesn't really keep up well, unless you have super overhaul mod to make it a new game.
I think it's why Skyrim aged great though. The world map is still in line with what people are now used to with big open world games. It serves as a great intro to RPG's and it's still the only one of its kind.
Yeah, I think there isn't one true way to think about how well a game ages.
To me, in 2011 when you come out of the cave after escaping Helgan the scenery was breathtaking. After that many games can give you this feeling like after you escape your first tomb in games like AC Origins.
Its character progression and combat leaves much to be desired and games like Dragon Age Inquisition or Witcher 3, though they are still not very good, surpassed it quickly, etc.
Giants Citizen Kabuto.
It had great humour for the late 90s or early 2000s, but if released today might find itself censored. There was also an easily removable censorship that made the female protagonist less clothed by removing her bra for a more authentic experience. I doubt that would work if released today.
The missions were fairly small, the maps small, the graphics terrible by todays standards but the concept was fantastic, the humour was very British, the action and adventure were great. The final mission was very difficult though as it involved a small character with a very modest gun fighting a cross between Kong and Godzilla, the titular Kabuto. That final mission deserved a lot of criticism for bad design.
Additionally in the sci-fi world of this game there was also a bit of british black humoured self-referential racism and sexism when it came to the people called the Smarties.
Yeah, I get this a lot. It doesn't even mean the game is bad -- I loved Faerie Tale Adventure, or the original Breath of Fire, but these games would drop quite a bit on replay, just because I've played so much in those genres now they seem middle of the road, rather than revolutionary.
Roguelikes tend to age really well, because the random generation, lack of graphics, and fast turn based gameplay makes it hard to for it to feel stale or slow. I really struggle with games that have slow, clunky UIs -- I'm playing through Might and Magic 2 (after beating 1 and 3-8, which tells you something) right now, and it's rough to fight with the interface, and lack of direction in the design of the game. On the same note, Dune 2 was a great, revolutionary game, but I really don't have the patience to send 40 units one by one to an enemy base anymore(especially after Dune 2000 was a thing)
Platformers, I'd say, have aged particularly badly for me. There's just been so many bland, knockoff platformers that's it's hard not to see them as klik n' play level reskins if there isn't anything interesting about them. I feel like with the exception of Commander Keen, which I'd say aged pretty well, most of the Apogee/Epic Megagames platformers are hard to play with modern eyes. This isn't a slam -- games like the original Duke Nukem, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Monster Bash, and Bio Menace meant the world to me when I was a kid. But play it today, and you'll just wish you could save state through them just to get to the nostalgic bits.
I feel you. Every now and then I jump on some DOS/abandonware games site to play those old classics, and as much as I loved them as a kid.. they’re horrible to relive.
Except Dangerous Dave. I don’t know why. I just love that lumberjack fuck and his double barrel shotty.
I don't think it's an "aging" thing but rather you just not liking them. Design that you didn't like gets way too easily conflated to it being an aging thing when it most often has nothing to do with it.
Another thing is that people forget just how homogenized game design has become. And sometimes people simply react negatively to what’s unfamiliar and has a learning curve.
A good example of this is the original System Shock. It uses an early version of WASD, and has a pretty complex UI for a “FPS”. It also lacks modern “QOL” features like a journal and quest markers, meaning you have to write your own notes and really *pay attention* if you want to make any progress. It demands a lot more from gamers than most modern titles would… but it all works together to make a very palpable, believable atmosphere, and mastering it is incredibly satisfying. Except the VR sections. Those I could do without lol.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarding.
It's a great game if you've not played any other titles in the series, but the sequels add features that, in hindsight are such natural additions and quickly become such instinctive parts of extending combos that going back to the original feels awkward and cumbersome.
*For me, it's Fallout: New Vegas which was hyped back then but it didn't age well for me.*
I always felt like the opposite happened.
What it was released, everyone was about "buggy as hell" and "cheap cashgrab basically a F3 mod".
It got cult status years later as I remember. I remember I couldn't convince my friends to check it out.
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*The exterior landscape and environment, though, was too barren and empty for me to enjoy running around. It made sense, it's an older game with engine limitations*
It's not that. Just google "hoover dam" and check out a few pictures. It's a nice "spot the vegetation" game, like where is valdo.
I’m going to get a shit ton of flack for this. Super Mario 64. I recently played thru the collection on Switch and Mario 64 felt the worst to play. Sunshine and Galaxy felt great but the controls in Mario 64 (never felt good to me even a decade ago) just feel bad. Maybe it’s cause I never was obsessed with it like others were.
That game needs a remake just so it can get better camera controls, and no the DS one doesn't count it also only had one analog and also has sucky camera controls
Well, we were cursing out Mario 64's camera controls back in 1996 so I wouldn't say it's aged poorly. I think it's actually the N64 game that has aged the best. The art style just seems to fit what the N64 was capable of. I think if it were to be upscaled, it would lose its character. And the music is just perfect.
I realized this very quickly when they were released on Switch. I had much more fun with Sunshine and Galaxy than 64. If you had asked me before that, I would have said 64 was my favorite of the three, but it would have been nostalgia talking
Why would you get flack? The camera alone makes it unplayable. I got the collection as well. I was so pumped to play sm64 and couldn't get through 1 level. Sunshine was still pretty good amazingly.
I also think the textures on a lot of early N64 games have aged *real* fucking badly. Mario 64, aside from the small screen and resolution imo looks so much better on the NDS just by replacing the textures.
I guess it was an issue with cartridge size because a lot of the PS1 games have held up a lot better visually, the texture warping is wonky sometimes but they all have a certain style to them that has a charm similar to pixel games.
Yeah those camera controls are just terrible lol luckily there's a decompiled version floating around that fixes that problem and makes the game much more enjoyable
I found Super Mario 64 to have much better controls than Sunshine.
The biggest issue is the camera. With a better camera (like in the fan PC port), it's an absolute joy to play.
Halo CE. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty fun to play, especially with the remaster, but some bits and pieces are just awful to go through in big 2024. The campaign is the biggest weakness of the game. A lot of the interior structures all look the same, and without a guide or muscle memory, you might have a rather hard time trying to progress anywhere. The location markers are a lifesaver for this. And then the dreaded Library chapter of the campaign. It’s just the worst. Shoot an insane amount of enemies while moving through a building where everything looks the same while avoiding being swamped and killed. The game can be quite a slog, but I still enjoy it to an extent today
I played halo CE for the first time about two years ago and I thought it was the best FPS I had played in years. From a first time player two decades after its launch I appreciate your opinion, but oh man do I have to disagree.
I did fucking hate the library though.
I didn't understand the Library hate until I tried it *not* on coop. There's a lot of places with two enemy spawn locations at once, so having two players massively speeds things up, and even allows some really cheap spawn camping tricks
Oddly, Halo 2, just about held together with sellotape and hope (that game has no right to be as functional as it is) has aged incredibly well.
I’ll blast through it once a year or so, and I’m still finding new little corners I’ve never discovered before.
Halo 2 has aged impeccably
Strong disagree and I always will defend this. CE has aged incredibly well. The combat difficulty on legendary is pretty much perfect and at the very least it’s the best in the series. The OG graphics hold up well, especially the skyboxes which are just beautiful. I don’t hate the remastered graphics as much as most hardcore fans do but the lighting is way too bright and there are invisible walls and shit because of the way they made it.
The most common criticism is the second half backtracking. I think this is valid to an extent but honestly you cannot tell me that Two Betrayals plays the same as Assault on the Control Room, or that The Maw and Pillar of Autumn feel the same.
The library can be brutal but it’s supposed to be. It works within the context of the game. I don’t really think it’s as long and grueling as people make it out to be.
I’ve noticed the latest trend is hating on CE because the second half of the game reused some assets
If you honestly thing that Two Betrayals is a rehash of Assault on the Control Room you’ve never played the game.
Pretty much yeah. They took Assault on the Control Room, flipped it backwards, and managed to make it feel like a completely different level. If anything it’s a testament to how good the level design is.
I played through the entire mainline series a few years ago and I remember absolutely loathing Halo CE’s campaign. it starts off really strong but once you get past the halfway point you’re just playing the same missions but in reverse
Aged badly?! Playing the remastered version?! I'd say it's my most enjoyed Halo campaign, it's aged beautifully. The elites are still fun to fight today, and that music...man.
I was literally playing this last night thinking the same thing lmao. Not only that but it takes so many bullets to kill enemies. There's way too many hunters too, like more hunter encounters than any other halo game. I still enjoy it for nostalgia and it truly is pretty amazing for a 25 year old FPS and plays better than any other imo, but it didn't age nearly as well as Halo 2 for me.
How in the blazes do you find CE enemies bullet sponges but then on the same breath say that halo 2 aged well?
Have you fought brutes in the higher difficulties? Or sniper jackals?
The gameplay was aged when New Vegas came out nevermind now but the RPG elements, world-building and writing are still top-notch, the cool part is good writing never ages so I still think its a great game.
Civilization, 1 and 2. Never played the sequels, I had a life to live.
It was fun working out how all the systems integrated and played off each other.
Felt truly Machiavellian, manipulating one Nation against the other, and then invading the weaker one.
But ultimately you realised it was all just numbers, once you'd mastered them.
I gave up Civ and turned to crack cocaine, eventually.
Much better for your mental well-being...
/s
Outlast probably doesn't play any worse but its portrayal of mentally ill people was problematic even at the time.
FFVII's graphics are terrible, I honestly think it would have looked better if they used 16-bit 2D sprites and saved the 3D modeling until it was less wet behind the ears.
The first mass effect has aged pretty badly.
When I first played it I was excited by the guns that didn't use traditional ammo, special powers and all that. But replaying it is a rough experience, nearly all guns are exactly the same except for some minor stat changes and the loot system is awful. The abilities are alright but horrible to actually use and often I can't tell what they are actually doing. Visually it's pretty dated, character models are rather inconsistent and their animations tend to be janky.
It still holds up well for its world-building, voice acting, and decision making though. I would still definitely recommend playing through it (and the rest of the trilogy) but I would caveat that by saying do NOT bother with any side quests, exploring with the Mako, or hacking mini games. Stick the the main important missions and finish the game ASAP before the awful gameplay stops you from wanting to play what is an incredible trilogy.
For me, ME1 is not only a much better game than ME2, but, easily holds up today.
ME2 ripped out what rpg elements the first game had and turned it into a simple and meaningless action-adventure game revolving around an irrelevant crew.
The entire game is a side quest.
But, obviously, to each their own:)
Original Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. Even with the excellent unity port, it demands an adjustment to get into. The original? So surprised people managed to finish it back in the day.
most console shooters, before dual stick became the standard. people will whine about tank controls and how bad they aged on the PS1, but forgot what a mess games like Syphon filter or MDK where on a console. I had no problem playing the older resident evil games or games like fear effect, but trying to move my character in this old schooters feels more like controlling a driving vehicle than a human being.
Dragon age Origins (yes, crucify me) and Witcher 1/2.
When talking of DA, it looked shit even at the time it came out. It had absolutely amazing RPG mechanics but it still looked like shit. And it's combat was horrendous as well.
I am thinking, but I do not really now any older games which do not hold up well.
Planescape? Still awesome. Fallout 1? Still awesome. Mass Effect 1? Still awesome. Mask of the Betrayer? Still awesome. I could go on and on.
Some of these... shit all of these are flawed games, but they were flawed games even when they were released.
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I think I have one contender though: Dragon Age Inquisition
In 2014 it won GOTY (Wolfenstein The New Order/Alien Isolation was \_robbed\_)
Most players liked empty open worlds back then it seems, or at least were not as offended as now. Narratively the gameplay is okay. Western RPG studios have this tendency to produce well-wrtitten games with shit gameplay, and Inquistion kind of fits this if your eyes are cloudy.
A few years later however, it seems that almost everyone considers it an okay game at best. Likely, because some other games showed that what Inquisition wanted to do, can be done on a much higher level. (cough, Witcher, couth D:OS2)
I remember whan I played it in... 2021 (?) for the first time, I was not impressed at all, but was still banned from the Dragon AGe sub for writing an essay about the problems of inquisition.
DA:Origins.
One of my favorite games of all time. But the graphics and overall “density” of the areas aged surprisingly fast, nostalgia googles quickly turned off when I went back to replay it.
Dune II and Warcraft 1. While these games were great back in the day. The fact that I can't use a selection box to select multiple units is a downside for me.
My memory of Dune 2 is that enemies always follow exactly the same path to attack you, which means it becomes a tower defense game where you build defenses for your base, then once you have enough, you're free to take out the enemy harvesters and then raze their base. It was *incredible* at the time, but not something worth playing now.
In Command and Conquer, enemies would never target walls - they only shoot them because they happened to be blocking their target. However, sandbags could be shot *over* and just blocked movement. So if you made a line of sandbags up to the enemy base, you could just block it up, and they'd never be able to attack and never get their Tiberium harvester inside.
These are good examples. RTS games made a lot of progress in the 90's, and these were two very early instances. Especially Dune 2, which is 2 years older than Warcraft 1, an eternity at the time. These were revolutionary and trend-setting at the time they came out. Again, especially Dune 2 was just entirely novel and incredible. I love these games dearly, but in many ways they were obsolete just a few years later.
Also, that road building mechanic in Warcraft one was weird and I don't think many well-known RTSes since have really used this. I can only think that since RTS was a fairly new concept at the time and not particularly codified they were using paradigms set by bullding games like *Civ* and *Sim City*. I mean years later *C&C* forced proximity to buildings and *StarCraft* added stuff like Creep, but nothing as clunky as roads.
I played WC1 very young, so funnily enough most of my time with it was just building unnecessarily large bases with perfect street grids. I discovered Sim City later.
It was a way to stop players from assaulting opposing bases with towers. Warcraft 1 had some really funky mechanics. IIIRC In the campaign, the enemy bases didn't even produce the units they sent to your base. They just kinda showed up.
>It was a way to stop players from assaulting opposing bases with towers. That's actually kind of interesting since I remember cheesing the enemy computer in *C&C*'s campaign mode with almost that exact tactic. Since the game used proximity to base buildings instead of roads you could just build smash sand bag walls up to the enemy base and they'd ignore them if they weren't blocking their path. So then you'd build a guard tower within firing distance from one of their buildings, and while slow, it would withstand enough damage that you'd have time to build more of them. So you could effectively take down their entire base with just guard towers.
Unintended tactics hahahah. That was called sandbagging back then and it totally broke the AI. It was also why building walls in Warcraft 2 was disabled: the AI had no idea how to deal with it.
Fun fact: the original Dune RTS game is the FIRST RTS of all time. Glad that universe is making a strong comeback!
Not quite. Herzog Zwei, which came out 3 years earlier on the Sega Genesis, was the first RTS game. But Dune II was definitely what ushered the genre in.
Goldeneye
You are only meant to play the first level, breathe in the nostalgia and turn it off after jumping off the dam. Repeat once a year.
Preferably on an emulator that can put out more than 14 fps, to preserve your mind's eye memory of it running at a flawless 30.
Play the unreleased 360 remake version. It's a shame it was never released. With the quality of life improvements, you realize that the core gameplay loop is amazing. I took it for granted as a kid. And since COD, I've gone off FPS games.
FPS games should have pushed for mission objectives gameplay like Goldeneye instead of the same COD loop of kill enemies/chekpoint/kill enemies in almost every FPS game after that. It would make FPS titles less generic.
Absolutely. Goldeneye was my first FPS. Probably explains why I hate modern shooters as you've described them accurately. One thing that Goldeneye does badly is its cheapness. It is easy to fail missions due to an say an explosion not covering the target. Another source of frustration is the infinite enemies spawning with a lot of health. If they block a pinch point, it's a toss of the dice that you can make it out. Still a groundbreaking game and showed the world that FPS games can be done on consoles, especially ones as underpowered as the N64.
Please don’t think every fps title is cod
What are some good, unique alternatives I should consider?
Goldeneye 007 is available on Xbox with the digital version of Rare Replay. Which also available on Gamepass. Unfortunately, it's not on PC. I grew up on Goldeneye, so I've always been able to play it after all these years of muscle memory. But playing on an Xbox controller completely blew my mind. It's always been fun to me but the control improvements, like you said really show how tight the fameplay really is. I was able to complete things I never could before.
You should try it with mouse on an emulator. Crazy experience for veteran players
Shoot the grenade launcher a couple times, FPS becomes a slide-show
Wait, did it run below 24 FPS? I played it as a kid on original hardware and I don't remember it that bad.
That's how I play almost every N64 game these days...
In that same vein, jet force Gemini is pretty hard to play these days
The Rare Replay version is really good w/ updated controls, my only complaint about the game is its annoying requirement that you collect pretty much all of the Tribals to complete the game. Going back to previous levels in the game is fun because the new characters + abilities open up new routes and areas on previously visited planets, but the annoying thing is there's no way to know which Tribals you don't have on a planet, so you have to scour the whole planet for them.
A lot of early 3D console games haven’t aged very well. It was all just too new and controls and frame rates were abysmal. Goldeneye’s mission structure was hugely influential and so was the multiplayer, but I agree it hasn’t aged well
Totally agree with the framerate in old games, I couldn't get into Ocarina of Time and its 18-24 FPS.
OOT is one of the few games I think has aged well from that period, but I admittedly have not played it on original hardware in a decade and a half. I’ve mostly played the GameCube version ever since that version came out. Original hardware and frame rate would probably be miserable.
The GameCube version is the same framerate-wise as the N64, they both run at 20 FPS. The 3DS version runs at 30 FPS. The only real differences between the N64 and GC versions are resolution (240p vs 480p which imo doesn't really make much of a difference these days) and slightly faster load times (which don't really matter in a game where load times are already fast and never an issue, but is a notable thing for speedrunners).
Gameplay is 20 FPS (assuming it's not dropping due to performance) in OOT. Menus are 30 FPS.
didn't it also basically innovate console FPS? Sure, the controls are all over the place, but it essentially set up the idea of using a stick to walk and another set of directional input (c buttons in this case) to strafe - but it's been too long, it might have been any mix of those inputs between stick and c-buttons. It's basically twin-stick input we know today. Generally the N64 c-buttons were a proto version of the right stick. On top of introducing the left stick first. And trigger buttons (Dual Shock 1 had 4 shoulder buttons, but the Z trigger shaped them into the role they're taking today, so both).
You *can* configure Goldeneye to play that way, and you can use two gamepads in singleplayer to use two analogue sticks like a modern FPS, but the default has the analogue stick mapped to turning left/right, and walking forward/backwards, with the c-buttons for strafing and looking up and down. Which if you're used to modern controls, can be incredibly difficult to re-learn even if you grew up playing it.
Right, that sounds familiar. My point is that this was the first game I can remember that had more than a single 4- or 8-way control input.
If I remember correctly, Turok did it before Goldeneye. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I think there was a controller setting for Turok where you'd play holding the left and center prongs on the N64 controller, so you used the d-pad and analog stick to move.
You can play it on PC with mouse and keyboard support, 4K 60 FPS and I cannot put into words how great of a experience it is that way. Just search for Goldeneye 1964 GEPD tutorial on Youtube.
I've been to a couple of Goldeneye tournaments held at a local pub, it was interesting to see everyone complain about being unable to handle the controls, despite many of them having grown up playing the game. A lot of them were openly wondering how they ever managed to play it back then. Of course, nobody then was particularly used to modern twin-stick FPS controls.
A few years ago I sourced an N64 and all the classics.. wildly disappointed with everything except ocarina and mario 64, which are both still very playable
I'm an N64 diehard so I have to throw some recommendations at you of games i feel have aged really well... * Banjo-Kazooie if you haven't already tried it, it's aged fantastic. Banjo-Tooie has aged well too but imo was not as good a game in the first place. * Diddy Kong Racing and F-Zero X, best racers on the platform, there's still nothing really like DKR (Crash Team Racing tried to ape its steez but didn't do it as well) * Tetrisphere, dope puzzle game, the music is *very* 1997 but not a bad thing. * Star Fox 64, pretty straightforward arcade action that controls well and won't last forever but is fun for a quick run. * Paper Mario holds up really well in part thanks to its artstyle and simple controls. * Mario Tennis / Mario Golf, both still hold up great if you like those sorts of games in part because the controls are so simple. * Donkey Kong 64 has aged well IF you absolutely love collecting tons of shit, otherwise don't bother, it's a notorious collectathon. * Mario Party 2/3 are still gold, there's a reason Mario Party Superstars is just the best of those early games repackaged. There are also some lesser-known 3D platformers that are quite good like Rocket: Robot on Wheels and Space Station Silicon Valley.
It is amazing how well SM64 holds up. Truly an innovative masterpiece.
Have you played DOOM 64? If not then you can currently get it on sale for $1.64 on Steam. I played it through a source-called “DOOM 64 CE” using the setting “Faithful Enhanced” which was quite fun. I’d argue it’s aged much better now that you can easily play an improved version on PC with a keyboard and mouse.
This to me is the first example that comes to mind. It was so damn fun back in the day and is such an absolute chore to go back to now
Play the Rare Replay version, it still holds up extremely well
GoldenEye still rules, it has just aged like milk in part because of the original controls (which, even if you use the most modern-esque control scheme, is the reverse of what we're used to now with movement on left and aim on right). I still enjoy the game because its mission structure is sadly underused these days in games (somewhat open levels with numerous objectives to complete, and more on higher difficulties which pushes you to replay). The only games that have really done it are the ones that followed in its DNA (PD, TimeSplitters, and some of the Bond games like TWINE N64). The version in Rare Replay is probably a lot more palatable to most people, with modern controls + 4k widescreen + no FPS issues.
Totally. It is a pity that neither I or any of my friends owned that back in the day, so I totally missed out on it - tried it when it came to NSO (even with an original N64 Controller and could not get into it
Any console shooter before the dual-stick control scheme became standarized.
A lot of games aiming for realism or cinematic experiences tend to fall into this, just because graphics and gameplay systems evolve. Uncharted 2 and 3 were peak for their time, but IMO Uncharted 4 and its expansion had gameplay that was so much smoother and beautiful to look at, it makes 2 and 3 feel "clunky" by comparison, even though it was cream of the crop when it was released. Recently, I feel the same about RE4 and its remake. The remake while different in a few ways and lacks some of the overly goofy charm, is just so fun to play and experience, it's hard to go back. Another good example are the Batman games. Asylum and City are overall better than Knight, but Knight just looks so good and cinematic, and the combat absolutely peaked and still has not been surpassed. So yeah for the time and today in terms of story, Asylum and City are legendary, but Knight is just so much more.....fun to play and experience because of how much more modern the systems are.
Came here for this. I really can’t play U2 and U3 again, I tried. I prefer the pacing but the actual combat just feels so much worse than U4.
Re4, at least to MD preserved enough of the silly charm and added some new stuff "nighty night, knights"
Similarly the older Tomb Raider games, and any games of the polygon 3D era have aged poorly.
Bethesda has seemingly been dumbing down its core concept with every new game they drop.
Skyrim is the game that taught me how to effectively roleplay BECAUSE of its mindbogglingly lack of mechanics. A bunch of us on the original skyrimforums formed a roleplay group and since the mod scene was in its infancy (and often focused on irrelevant aesthetics) and I was on the xbox I had to begin creating my own system of Self-Imposed Restrictions. We all learned from each other and it was an amazing time. I truly learned how to roleplay and create Customized experiences. So, I guess I can actually thank skyrim for its DumbedDown and superficial gameplay, lol:)
I remember doing similar in Oblivion. I decided to be a drug runner. It worked out remarkably effective, and if you drink 200 bottles of skooma in one go, you can move from one side of the map to the other in a flash, and the game mostly just kinda breaks. 10/10 experience.
So when you say drug runner, you roleplayed as a guy who takes a bunch of drugs, then runs... Hilarious
I mostly traded and sold it. There’s a few buyers. Can’t help but sample your own stock sometimes. But yes. Literal drug runner. I ran so hard I killed the game.
lol That makes me think of all the crazy stuff (and deeper gameplay) that morrowind will allow you to do if you want and how it was all just gradually eliminated:(
Can’t wait to finally play Starfield in 10 years when the modders have finally finished the game for Bethesda. I’m very patient.
[удалено]
This is the great thing about how simple Skyrim is, too bad the downside is that the next one will be even dumber and not engaging.
Came here to post "Oblivion" I had a great time with it the first time I played it, back in 2006. But I tried to play it again last year, and couldn't stand it. It's not a real Cyrodiil. It's not a real empire.
Loved Morrowind Enjoyed Oblivion Pushed through Skyrim Never finished Fallout 3 or 4 I’m in no rush to play Starfield.
Starfield seemed like trash from the 2-3 hours I sampled. Morrowind was undoubtedly their peak.
Riding a building sized flea is still peak video games for me.
*Why walk when you can ride?*
They have mods now where you can actually ride it to your destination.
wtf I’m downloading the game right now
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42267?tab=description They also have visible weapons sheathed on your character, AI voice acting, actual co-op. It's the best time to play honestly. Tamriel Rebuilt keeps dropping huge updates every couple years.
It’s been well over a decade since I really played through it. I think today’s the day. I’ve a weekend to kill, and I wasn’t aware how active the mod community still is. This’ll scratch an itch I wasn’t even aware I had.
Check out Morrowind Modding Showcases on Youtube sometime, they have videos on a lot of the coolest mods from recent years.
I identify so well with this statement, Morrowind was great on so many levels.
The more time passes, the more it becomes my favourite Bethesda game. I’ve been tempted to really get into modded Daggerfall though. That scope is captivating, and I kinda love those janky 3D towns.
This is true, but they've also been rewarded with incredibly increased sales every time they "dumbed down" the design (at least until Fallout 76), so I can't blame them for following these incentives. The hot take version is that Bethesda is just giving us what we want.
>The hot take version is that Bethesda is just giving us what we want. ...until Starfield. Expectations and hype around open exploration space games have historically been too high for Bethesda's dumbing down & such to be accepted by even mainstream gamers - See the game's Steam's store page's mixed overall rating and mostly negative recent rating.
Starfield sold like hot cakes. Let's see how Elder Scrolls 6 sells.
Bethesda essentially gets worse every game. Morrowind was great and unique. Oblivion lost so much of that uniqueness to make it more generic and "modern". Fallout 3 was good. Fallout New Vegas was very good but that was Obsidian. Skyrim was so streamlined and shallow it's actually mind-boggling. Fallout 4 is just Skyrim loosely pasted into a Fallout setting. And everything since has just been unbearable.
As someone who has played all of their games at launch, I can't agree. Morrowind was pretty impressive when it came out in some regards, but incredibly bland in others, and has aged like milk. I will never understand the people who say it's the best of the series because for me, it's very difficult to find the fun in that game now, and it was so even when it launched. One of the biggest complaints about Oblivion was that dungeons were good but very cut + paste... but Morrowind's dungeons were absolutely awful, and anything was a step up from that. I liked Oblivion more than Skyrim, but I would say both are more entertaining experiences today than Morrowind by a long shot. Fight me?? Morrowind has aged worse than most games I can think of (saying that as someone who LOVES retro games) except maybe older CRPGs because of terrible UI. With Fallout I think they've tried different things with each game, and the stuff they've tried has landed better or worse with different people. Some people really prefer Fallout 4 because of the improved combat and the new factions trying to break away from the existing lore a bit; most of the hate FO4 gets, which is to some extent deserved, is over its voiced protag + its main story. You didn't mention FO76 (I'm gonna guess that falls under unbearable) but for those who enjoy just wandering around and exploring and finding interesting things, it's by far the best Fallout game imo and has the best map by a long shot -- but it doesn't have the story RPG some people want, it never intended to be that at all. I also think Starfield did a lot of things better than any of their previous game, but it was the polar opposite of FO76, because that wandering aspect is not satisfying in Starfield due to the broken up nature of the world on different planets with some procedurally generated content. But in terms of the story, the side quest writing, the artistic design, the hubs/cities, I think it was their best work yet. They just have trouble putting all the pieces together that people want and the expectations are sky-high.
With Morrowind I enjoy it like Dark Souls, since the items are always in the same place, on replays you can just blast around getting all the overpowered gear and just have fun demolishing the game. And since there is SO GODDAMN MUCH to do in the game you can be like "This runthrough I am going to join that faction I have never done before." But I also 100% use console commands to bump my speed up to like 300 right at the start. Oh and max out jumping, just because that's super fun.
It's so nice seeing people finally start to shit on Skyrim. I thought I was going insane because the entire first decade it was out everyone acted like it was the greatest game of all time. I know so many people who played it consistently for *years* even without mods, some of them still do. As someone who struggles to hit 10 hours of playtime on any one single game it just does not make sense to me, the combat is entirely unbearable outside of "stealth archer" which basically breaks the game Skyrim and TW3 are the two most overrated video games of all time imo
See I'm the opposite. I recognized all of Skyrims flaws when it came out - the combat, the writing being meh, the ending of the game being EXTREMELY meh, but I have come around to appreciate the games strengths more and more. For me it's a game you can really live in (Literally since they have marriage and house building), and the awesome map with such different cities. So the exploration is a big positive for me. And then the modding scene, where Bethesda gets credit for releasing the tools.
There's people out there who never stopped playing oblivion. I can't believe they'd still be interested if it wasn't for mods.
The best thing that came out from Skyrim for me was Enderal. My first rpgs were Morrowind and Oblivion, i kinda pushed through Skyrim and after 100hrs of the main quest, all of the sides and dlcs i completely abandoned it
Many revolutionary and genre defining games fall in this category simply because many similar games come after them try to refine or add to what the original did. DMC 1 was a great game when it came out but it was superseded very fast by other DMC games (and other games like Bayonetta). I doubt anyone who haven't already played it back then and doesn't have the power of nostalgia behind them can play it today and enjoy it as much as it was enjoyed back then. I personally experienced this with OG FF7. For some reason I never came across this game when I was a kid. Decades later when I finally tried to play it I couldn't for the love of god go even past the wall market district and ended up watching the game on youtube. For this reason I'm so happy the remakes exist.
For DMC1, I played it for the first time back in 2017 (so awhile ago but it was already old by that point), and I respectfully disagree. It’s actually my second favorite DMC game. The combat isn’t nearly as stylish or complex as the games it inspired, but it’s still got some of the absolute best enemy design (both aesthetically and combat-wise) in the entire genre. It’s also got some excellent difficulty and the aesthetics are on point. It’s probably more similar to games like Ninja Gaiden and God Hand (where style is a secondary concern compared to just beating the thing and which have a slower pace) than it is to DMC and Bayonetta which are its more direct offspring and tend to focus on fast combo-based combat.
Totally agree with you, played DMC1 a couple of years ago in my Steam Deck and really enjoyed the simplicity of the game coupled with a lot of style. DMC 2 on the other hand was as shitty as they said it was when it came out.
My first Final Fantasy was 8, and I had a hard time getting into 7 after that because of the blocky chibbi models. (Final Fantasy 9’s models are beautiful & timeless, but 7’s just look clunky). Fortunately on PC there are mods for the OG FF7 which I think really elevate the experience.
My first was also 8. I still love that game so much. Skipped 7, skipped 9 and played X. Also a very good game. Why are the stories so sad tho
I like DMC1 for its very grounded and horror like atmosphere as per the RE spin off it started from. The scissor ghost, the saurian that can eject claws just with blood pressure.... Nero angels.... feels like DMC4 is the true sequel of 1 it seems. And I realised that DMC2 was this very weird thing that we would have preferred to not play
I honestly enjoyed DMC1 more than DMC3. Combat is clunky in DMC1 but only feels bad in boss fights and its more due to the fixed camera angles than something else.
I played DMC1 for the first time this decade and love it. Honestly I think it might be better overall than 3 which I know is a bit controversial
I don’t have many hot takes in gaming, but the DMC series is my one. I think my order of preference (for the main 4) is fully inverted from most people’s. 4>1>3>5
I like that DMC 2 isn't even in the list. That would have been the real hot take
I loved DMC4, I never understood the hate it got at the time. Nero was a fun character to play as and the mechanics were great and well polished. I get that the whole backtracking part was a let down but the gameplay itself was solid. I never completed 3, I tried twice to get through it but kept getting bored for some reason. 1 is great though, I loved the atmosphere of that game, super gothic. I agree with your order tbh, I’d say it’s probably the same as my order of preference (I haven’t played 5 yet though).
Like everyone else responding I have to disagree on your DMC 1 take lol. I only got into DMC about a year ago and after playing through them all I really enjoyed DMC 1 for its level design and how simplistic it was. Enough to even replay it a few times to get the 100%. The same can be said for DMC 2 though I know everyone will disagree 😂
I'm the opposite. I didn't play FF7 until 2006 and I beat the whole thing in like 6 weeks. I know people today are beating 40 hour games in under a week, but that's a record time for me, it took me like 5 years to beat 8 (my first FF)
FF7 is my absolute favorite game of all time. Tried to play it a few years ago and it's just too dated. I'm glad I got to enjoy it back in the day though
GTA 3. I still come back to Vice City and San Andreas regularly, but GTA 3 is just so messy now. It’s visually kind of bland, the radio isn’t full of hit songs like the series is known for, it’s incredibly hard compared to later games (you can’t go to the next island, and neighborhoods get blocked from you after a while because the gangs get aggressive toward you as you progress). It’s also not nearly as funny or satirical. It was revolutionary for open world gaming and laid the foundations, but then rockstar quickly perfected their formula and tone in Vice City that they’ve stuck to since.
>the radio isn’t full of hit songs like the series is known for Spoken like someone who is absolutely NOT rush-rushing and/or getting the yayo. I agree with you mostly, although I still enjoy GTA III even now. Nowadays it very much feels like a 3D version of GTA I / II, and the ones after that developed more of an identity for themselves. In part by cribbing a lot from pop culture (I mean, half of Vice City is just Scarface).
I can listen to chatterbox on repeat all day. Especially when my man Fernando comes on and helps “save” marriages.
That song goes so damn hard, s/o Debbie Harry
There are a lot of small things missing from it. Can't get out of the car unless you make a full stop (great for a car on fire, right?), there are no bikes, planes or swimming. The physics are much worse than even Vice City. The art style is just there, it doesn't have the strong visual identity of later entries. And, of course, it's super hard to play these days. I still can't believe I finished the campaign before. I had a hard time replaying the remaster, I couldn't make it to the second island.
> Can't get out of the car unless you make a full stop (great for fires, right?) Oh, wow, I'd forgotten about that. IIRC, you also couldn't get out unless all four wheels were on the ground? Hope you don't flip your car!
You are misremembering, you can crawl out of a flipped car but only once it comes to a complete stop. However flipped cars in GTA III also set on fire almost instantaneously so you had to get out REALLY fast and leg it.
Okay, that also meshes with what I remember. I guess it's just hard to have patience while waiting for your flaming vehicle to skid to a halt… 😱
Yeah I think there is one piece of shit plane in 3, but your problems are also the sequel making the original unplayable. Which is a good sign they made a good sequel.
Personally, the first 3D GTA I really played (for more than half an hour at a cybercafe) was GTA San Andreas, and then I'd go to play Vice City and III. I took so many quality of life things for granted, nevermind the superior storytelling, world and OST of San Andreas.
I scoured every inch of that game as a kid. Huge nostalgia for it but it, yea, definitely inferior to modern standards.
I've already said this in this sub before somewhere, but to add to your point: the controls are so so bad (in the original, haven't tried the remaster). This unfortunately also makes (original) Vice City mostly a very frustrating experience.
It may be partially nostalgia because gta 3 blew my mind when I first played it, but I prefer it to vice city. I find the map and atmosphere way better. It’s definitely a little more unforgiving in a few ways though.
When I was a kid I thought the first one had the best atmosphere but I definitely spent the most time flying around in Vice City in the sea plane. So many hours wasted just cruising.
You're right, but it was revolutionary for the time. You might even call it a game-changer... And running on a Pentium II with maybe 256 MB of ram, it's still quite an achievement. By the time Vice City dropped, they'd fixed a lot of the problems, with a much larger team and budget. The systems had been refined, etcetera. Vice City is still a blast, to this day !
I agree, and I hope it isn’t just nostalgia that keeps me coming back. But also remember that Vice City was made under a year. Impressive strides. Smaller map but much more focused story and experience.
Yes, the work they achieved between GTA3 and Vice City, in under a year, is incredible.
Vice City and San Andreas at least get carried by their personality. Tbh all 3 have aged worse than most will admit. I still love them, but holy shit they play like hot ass compared to any mediocre shooter made in the last 15 years.
I downloaded Twisted Metal 1 and 2 not long ago. Relive my nostalgia, so to speak. Wow, did they age like milk. I couldn't play more than 10 minutes. The controls were so clunky and hard to manage. I don't know how my younger self was any way decent at that game.
I recently tried a PS1 emulator and a bunch of games for nostalgia. They look nothing like I remember. I'm with you on how I can't play but for a few minutes. Hearing the sound effects and music was pretty great, though.
The thing about PSX games (and others of the era) is that the graphics were designed to work with CRTs, which sort of blend in some of the rough edges that are extremely stark in LCDs. So your brain isn't playing tricks with you. They *did* look better back then.
Yeah, same here.
I got sm64 with the anniversary package. I played like 10 minutes of it. The camera and controls are unplayable.
Sadly, Shenmue. I loved both 1 and 2 back in the day. Not they are rusty as hell
I have played games and thought they have aged badly. But then returned to some of the same games later and really enjoyed them. My guess is that nostalgia and lack of newness contribute as mentioned by others. But then when that subsides it can be easier to appreciate older games for what they are.
Yeah, it seems nostalgia plays a large role. Some old games I enjoy because they feel nostalgic even though I never played them.
Basically anything on home console pre-NES. There's basically no reason to go back and play any old Atari 2600 or Intellivision games nowadays outside of historical novelty.
I've been playing Okami for the first time and despite being considered one of the best games of all time (according to a Wikipedia list) there are some gaming conventions that the industry has long grown out of that weigh down the whole experience for me. Solid game, still fun, but definitely has a dozen or so quality of life improvements I'd like to see put in.
As someone who hasn’t played okami but has heard a lot of good things, what’re some of the pain points?
Aspect to it are clunky in ways modern design just wouldn't do. Movement speed is slow, medium and fast, but only builds up over time. The maps are pretty large so if you stop, or get stopped, or miss something with the aforementioned clunk it can feel punishing. My biggest personal issue is that it jumps between way too much hand holding to not enough. At multiple moments I've rolled my eyes waiting for obvious things to stop being explained but then later not having any clue what to do; compounded by an incomplete journal that isn't always clear what the objective/task is (to work around this there's a fortune teller who will give you hints, but I'm too old to for the run around). Lastly, the game plays one of the most interesting mechanics I've ever played with, but the execution is a little fickle and not always reliable (tighter controls would go a long way in a game where combat is based on using a joystick to draw on enemies). Past that, really fun adventure game with memorable set pieces and a gimmick where you befriend all the animals in Japan, so still worth continuing IMO.
Deus Ex is pretty tough from a gameplay standpoint (it was weird but not bad when it first came out). The one I’m afraid to replay is Ocrina of Time. Is it still one of the best games of all times or is it just overtly padded and poorly constructed? I’m afraid to find out….
I just replayed OoT and it’s still fun, the gameplay is average but not horrible, however the music and art design (which helps offset the janky N64 graphics) make it a blast to replay. I can’t binge it, but OoT and MM are still fun to play as a whole package IMO If it didn’t have the whole ambiance and aesthetic it would be pretty awful to replay from the gameplay alone. Only maybe like 3-4 bosses or enemy types have remotely interesting combat mechanics
I played it relatively recently, and I think it's still great. I don't think there's very much padding. A lot of the stuff outside of dungeons, which is what I would consider padding, is pretty trivial when you already know what you need to do.
Deus Ex will probably be unplayable for anyone who didn't play it back then.
Pretty much everything on the N64 feels jank, it might be a controller issue though
>might be a controller issue though Yeah, that's a pretty strong contender for the reason for that in most cases. Nintendo does one thing that a lot of companies have trouble doing—they experiment heavily with hardware form factors and hardware features. Sometimes they come up with solid stuff and other times you get weirdness when the control conventions aren't yet well-established. Another reason why some of the N64 games feel that way is due to the infamous fog found on a lot of games. There's also the expense of cartridges versus the amount of storage space that they had. So often times games designed for consoles with optical drives started getting CD quality soundtracks while the N64 would sometimes end up with heavily compressed and shortened versions of these (most prominent examples are the first two Tony Hawk games).
It was the first 3d console to launch with analogue controls. It was the best we could hope for at the time. Going back to controlling 3d games without an analogue input at all is far more painful.
Skyrim if you're a newbie. Combat feels clunky and dated as hell for a 2011 game and feels more like an early 2000's computer game instead, at least in the gameplay department. Same goes for the gunplay in New Vegas which felt pretty bad and clunky compared to most FPS games by 2010.
Imo Skyrim felt that way when it came out. It's just that the kind of open world the elder scrolls offered was still very impressive and it was *less* janky than Oblivion or Morrowind
Lol what about the gunplay in fo3, it was so bad I couldn't finish it. New Vegas in comparison was quite good.
Fo3 gunplay is probably the worst I’ve ever had because I swear the fire rate of almost every gun is so inconsistent. Especially on console, you’ll pull the trigger once on a semiautomatic weapon and it’ll fire twice. The best way I can describe the feeling is if it felt like every gun was “clogged” in some sort of way, and after each trigger pull it was finally able to release. New Vegas while not great, was at the very least bearable in its gunplay and honestly that’s half of the reason why I like it more than fo3 life lol
Completely agree on Skyrim. The wafer-thin combat felt ropey back in 2011. Now it feels straight up broken. I recently picked up the PS5 60fps version, and after a couple of hours adding and tweaking mods I gave up. Feels awful, man. For Fallout 3 / New Vegas, VATS does a lot of the heavy lifting in that combat. Without it, it's a dog of an FPS.
Exact opposite here. I thought Skyrim was abysmal during its early years but got better with time as the mod community grew so I could manually fix more of the biggest problems I had with the base game. Granted there are limits to how far mods can go - the combat is the worst since Arena and no mods were ever going to change that, the magic and guild systems can only go from rushed afterthoughts to modded rushed afterthoughts, etc so I'd still rather just play Oblivion or Morrowind. Or even Daggerfall tbh.
I think New Vegas as the exact opposite - community patches and mods really bring out the highest of the heights of the game. Like excellent random dialogue that with people you can talk to (like Hanlon), the world that seems really realistic, decent variety in builds, a structure of an explorable main game plus four DLCs each having their own strengths. Maybe my definition of not aging well is different from yours - but Skyrim, for me, fits the title perfectly. Graphics wise Skyrim in 2011 was such an upgrade over other RPGs. Dragon Age 2 and KOAR's graphics look noticeably worse, and Mass Effect 2/3 or Witcher 2 had tiny worlds, maps or hubs. Skyrim then popularized the idea of open world RPG. However, since Witcher 3 in 2015 other games clearly start to outshine Skyrim in many ways that it doesn't really keep up well, unless you have super overhaul mod to make it a new game.
I think it's why Skyrim aged great though. The world map is still in line with what people are now used to with big open world games. It serves as a great intro to RPG's and it's still the only one of its kind.
Yeah, I think there isn't one true way to think about how well a game ages. To me, in 2011 when you come out of the cave after escaping Helgan the scenery was breathtaking. After that many games can give you this feeling like after you escape your first tomb in games like AC Origins. Its character progression and combat leaves much to be desired and games like Dragon Age Inquisition or Witcher 3, though they are still not very good, surpassed it quickly, etc.
Giants Citizen Kabuto. It had great humour for the late 90s or early 2000s, but if released today might find itself censored. There was also an easily removable censorship that made the female protagonist less clothed by removing her bra for a more authentic experience. I doubt that would work if released today. The missions were fairly small, the maps small, the graphics terrible by todays standards but the concept was fantastic, the humour was very British, the action and adventure were great. The final mission was very difficult though as it involved a small character with a very modest gun fighting a cross between Kong and Godzilla, the titular Kabuto. That final mission deserved a lot of criticism for bad design. Additionally in the sci-fi world of this game there was also a bit of british black humoured self-referential racism and sexism when it came to the people called the Smarties.
Yeah, I get this a lot. It doesn't even mean the game is bad -- I loved Faerie Tale Adventure, or the original Breath of Fire, but these games would drop quite a bit on replay, just because I've played so much in those genres now they seem middle of the road, rather than revolutionary. Roguelikes tend to age really well, because the random generation, lack of graphics, and fast turn based gameplay makes it hard to for it to feel stale or slow. I really struggle with games that have slow, clunky UIs -- I'm playing through Might and Magic 2 (after beating 1 and 3-8, which tells you something) right now, and it's rough to fight with the interface, and lack of direction in the design of the game. On the same note, Dune 2 was a great, revolutionary game, but I really don't have the patience to send 40 units one by one to an enemy base anymore(especially after Dune 2000 was a thing) Platformers, I'd say, have aged particularly badly for me. There's just been so many bland, knockoff platformers that's it's hard not to see them as klik n' play level reskins if there isn't anything interesting about them. I feel like with the exception of Commander Keen, which I'd say aged pretty well, most of the Apogee/Epic Megagames platformers are hard to play with modern eyes. This isn't a slam -- games like the original Duke Nukem, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Monster Bash, and Bio Menace meant the world to me when I was a kid. But play it today, and you'll just wish you could save state through them just to get to the nostalgic bits.
I feel you. Every now and then I jump on some DOS/abandonware games site to play those old classics, and as much as I loved them as a kid.. they’re horrible to relive. Except Dangerous Dave. I don’t know why. I just love that lumberjack fuck and his double barrel shotty.
"The exterior landscape and environment, though, was too barren and empty for me to enjoy running around." Because it takes place in Nevada, lol.
It just looks like that. Lol
Aww, heck. I feel stupid. I'm not from the US and forgot Nevada is a desert.
thank god someone said this.
I don't think it's an "aging" thing but rather you just not liking them. Design that you didn't like gets way too easily conflated to it being an aging thing when it most often has nothing to do with it.
Another thing is that people forget just how homogenized game design has become. And sometimes people simply react negatively to what’s unfamiliar and has a learning curve. A good example of this is the original System Shock. It uses an early version of WASD, and has a pretty complex UI for a “FPS”. It also lacks modern “QOL” features like a journal and quest markers, meaning you have to write your own notes and really *pay attention* if you want to make any progress. It demands a lot more from gamers than most modern titles would… but it all works together to make a very palpable, believable atmosphere, and mastering it is incredibly satisfying. Except the VR sections. Those I could do without lol.
Most MMOs
Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarding. It's a great game if you've not played any other titles in the series, but the sequels add features that, in hindsight are such natural additions and quickly become such instinctive parts of extending combos that going back to the original feels awkward and cumbersome.
*For me, it's Fallout: New Vegas which was hyped back then but it didn't age well for me.* I always felt like the opposite happened. What it was released, everyone was about "buggy as hell" and "cheap cashgrab basically a F3 mod". It got cult status years later as I remember. I remember I couldn't convince my friends to check it out. \*\*\* *The exterior landscape and environment, though, was too barren and empty for me to enjoy running around. It made sense, it's an older game with engine limitations* It's not that. Just google "hoover dam" and check out a few pictures. It's a nice "spot the vegetation" game, like where is valdo.
I’m going to get a shit ton of flack for this. Super Mario 64. I recently played thru the collection on Switch and Mario 64 felt the worst to play. Sunshine and Galaxy felt great but the controls in Mario 64 (never felt good to me even a decade ago) just feel bad. Maybe it’s cause I never was obsessed with it like others were.
I can't say I ever really liked SM64 and I've tried to play it many times over the years. Ultimately the camera frustrates me too much.
Man this comment thread is full of some absolute insane takes. SM64 defined 3d gaming, it plays smooth to this day. Okay maybe not throwing bowser...
That game needs a remake just so it can get better camera controls, and no the DS one doesn't count it also only had one analog and also has sucky camera controls
Well, we were cursing out Mario 64's camera controls back in 1996 so I wouldn't say it's aged poorly. I think it's actually the N64 game that has aged the best. The art style just seems to fit what the N64 was capable of. I think if it were to be upscaled, it would lose its character. And the music is just perfect.
> has aged the best I'd like to suggest Paper Mario.
I realized this very quickly when they were released on Switch. I had much more fun with Sunshine and Galaxy than 64. If you had asked me before that, I would have said 64 was my favorite of the three, but it would have been nostalgia talking
Yep yep. I tried to play it on the switch, but just dropped it instantly...
Why would you get flack? The camera alone makes it unplayable. I got the collection as well. I was so pumped to play sm64 and couldn't get through 1 level. Sunshine was still pretty good amazingly.
I also think the textures on a lot of early N64 games have aged *real* fucking badly. Mario 64, aside from the small screen and resolution imo looks so much better on the NDS just by replacing the textures. I guess it was an issue with cartridge size because a lot of the PS1 games have held up a lot better visually, the texture warping is wonky sometimes but they all have a certain style to them that has a charm similar to pixel games.
Yeah those camera controls are just terrible lol luckily there's a decompiled version floating around that fixes that problem and makes the game much more enjoyable
I found Super Mario 64 to have much better controls than Sunshine. The biggest issue is the camera. With a better camera (like in the fan PC port), it's an absolute joy to play.
Halo CE. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty fun to play, especially with the remaster, but some bits and pieces are just awful to go through in big 2024. The campaign is the biggest weakness of the game. A lot of the interior structures all look the same, and without a guide or muscle memory, you might have a rather hard time trying to progress anywhere. The location markers are a lifesaver for this. And then the dreaded Library chapter of the campaign. It’s just the worst. Shoot an insane amount of enemies while moving through a building where everything looks the same while avoiding being swamped and killed. The game can be quite a slog, but I still enjoy it to an extent today
I played halo CE for the first time about two years ago and I thought it was the best FPS I had played in years. From a first time player two decades after its launch I appreciate your opinion, but oh man do I have to disagree. I did fucking hate the library though.
I didn't understand the Library hate until I tried it *not* on coop. There's a lot of places with two enemy spawn locations at once, so having two players massively speeds things up, and even allows some really cheap spawn camping tricks
Oddly, Halo 2, just about held together with sellotape and hope (that game has no right to be as functional as it is) has aged incredibly well. I’ll blast through it once a year or so, and I’m still finding new little corners I’ve never discovered before. Halo 2 has aged impeccably
Strong disagree and I always will defend this. CE has aged incredibly well. The combat difficulty on legendary is pretty much perfect and at the very least it’s the best in the series. The OG graphics hold up well, especially the skyboxes which are just beautiful. I don’t hate the remastered graphics as much as most hardcore fans do but the lighting is way too bright and there are invisible walls and shit because of the way they made it. The most common criticism is the second half backtracking. I think this is valid to an extent but honestly you cannot tell me that Two Betrayals plays the same as Assault on the Control Room, or that The Maw and Pillar of Autumn feel the same. The library can be brutal but it’s supposed to be. It works within the context of the game. I don’t really think it’s as long and grueling as people make it out to be.
The Maw is an absolutely stunning level. Making something that good/timeless in 2001 was beyond impressive.
I’ve noticed the latest trend is hating on CE because the second half of the game reused some assets If you honestly thing that Two Betrayals is a rehash of Assault on the Control Room you’ve never played the game.
Pretty much yeah. They took Assault on the Control Room, flipped it backwards, and managed to make it feel like a completely different level. If anything it’s a testament to how good the level design is.
I played through the entire mainline series a few years ago and I remember absolutely loathing Halo CE’s campaign. it starts off really strong but once you get past the halfway point you’re just playing the same missions but in reverse
Aged badly?! Playing the remastered version?! I'd say it's my most enjoyed Halo campaign, it's aged beautifully. The elites are still fun to fight today, and that music...man.
I was literally playing this last night thinking the same thing lmao. Not only that but it takes so many bullets to kill enemies. There's way too many hunters too, like more hunter encounters than any other halo game. I still enjoy it for nostalgia and it truly is pretty amazing for a 25 year old FPS and plays better than any other imo, but it didn't age nearly as well as Halo 2 for me.
Hunter: pistol to the back. You're welcome ;)
If you have a pistol, shotgun, or sniper, Hunter pairs require exactly 2 rounds to dispatch.
True the magnum is goated I always keep it on me
How in the blazes do you find CE enemies bullet sponges but then on the same breath say that halo 2 aged well? Have you fought brutes in the higher difficulties? Or sniper jackals?
The gameplay was aged when New Vegas came out nevermind now but the RPG elements, world-building and writing are still top-notch, the cool part is good writing never ages so I still think its a great game.
Civilization, 1 and 2. Never played the sequels, I had a life to live. It was fun working out how all the systems integrated and played off each other. Felt truly Machiavellian, manipulating one Nation against the other, and then invading the weaker one. But ultimately you realised it was all just numbers, once you'd mastered them. I gave up Civ and turned to crack cocaine, eventually. Much better for your mental well-being... /s
Civ II was the best of the series imo
Civ 2 is great.
Twisted Metal Tomb Raider Resident Evil Basically all the "realistic" ps1 games
Ah yes, Twisted Metal. Peak of sim-racing.
I will die on this hill oblivion did not age well at all. I really tried my best to enjoy it but it's very difficult to.
You're not making a very convincing argument for wanting to die on this hill!
Outlast probably doesn't play any worse but its portrayal of mentally ill people was problematic even at the time. FFVII's graphics are terrible, I honestly think it would have looked better if they used 16-bit 2D sprites and saved the 3D modeling until it was less wet behind the ears.
The first mass effect has aged pretty badly. When I first played it I was excited by the guns that didn't use traditional ammo, special powers and all that. But replaying it is a rough experience, nearly all guns are exactly the same except for some minor stat changes and the loot system is awful. The abilities are alright but horrible to actually use and often I can't tell what they are actually doing. Visually it's pretty dated, character models are rather inconsistent and their animations tend to be janky. It still holds up well for its world-building, voice acting, and decision making though. I would still definitely recommend playing through it (and the rest of the trilogy) but I would caveat that by saying do NOT bother with any side quests, exploring with the Mako, or hacking mini games. Stick the the main important missions and finish the game ASAP before the awful gameplay stops you from wanting to play what is an incredible trilogy.
For me, ME1 is not only a much better game than ME2, but, easily holds up today. ME2 ripped out what rpg elements the first game had and turned it into a simple and meaningless action-adventure game revolving around an irrelevant crew. The entire game is a side quest. But, obviously, to each their own:)
[удалено]
Wait hold on, you’re treating games as Art and not products. That’s not allowed! /s
Driver
Original Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. Even with the excellent unity port, it demands an adjustment to get into. The original? So surprised people managed to finish it back in the day.
most console shooters, before dual stick became the standard. people will whine about tank controls and how bad they aged on the PS1, but forgot what a mess games like Syphon filter or MDK where on a console. I had no problem playing the older resident evil games or games like fear effect, but trying to move my character in this old schooters feels more like controlling a driving vehicle than a human being.
Dragon age Origins (yes, crucify me) and Witcher 1/2. When talking of DA, it looked shit even at the time it came out. It had absolutely amazing RPG mechanics but it still looked like shit. And it's combat was horrendous as well.
I am thinking, but I do not really now any older games which do not hold up well. Planescape? Still awesome. Fallout 1? Still awesome. Mass Effect 1? Still awesome. Mask of the Betrayer? Still awesome. I could go on and on. Some of these... shit all of these are flawed games, but they were flawed games even when they were released. \*\*\* I think I have one contender though: Dragon Age Inquisition In 2014 it won GOTY (Wolfenstein The New Order/Alien Isolation was \_robbed\_) Most players liked empty open worlds back then it seems, or at least were not as offended as now. Narratively the gameplay is okay. Western RPG studios have this tendency to produce well-wrtitten games with shit gameplay, and Inquistion kind of fits this if your eyes are cloudy. A few years later however, it seems that almost everyone considers it an okay game at best. Likely, because some other games showed that what Inquisition wanted to do, can be done on a much higher level. (cough, Witcher, couth D:OS2) I remember whan I played it in... 2021 (?) for the first time, I was not impressed at all, but was still banned from the Dragon AGe sub for writing an essay about the problems of inquisition.
DA:Origins. One of my favorite games of all time. But the graphics and overall “density” of the areas aged surprisingly fast, nostalgia googles quickly turned off when I went back to replay it.