Games That Aged Horribly

[Sixcess]

OT : Fear effect . God i loved that game back in the day . But the controls and the disk swapping in random orders make me cringe , add the trial and error and god it's terrible .

One of my favourite series of all time... but yeah, I can see that. That said, I love the story, characters and style of the series so much the gameplay would have to do me literal physical harm for me not to love it regardless.

Half Life for me. I only played it for the first time a year or two ago, and whilst the story telling is still very good, the actual gameplay has all the failings of bad 90s FPS design - insta-kill environmental hazards, hugely unpredictable incoming damage that encourages contant reloading of your last save point because that random guy just took 3/4 of your health in one burst of gunfire... and platforming... some of the worst. platforming. ever.

I never did finish Xen or whatever its called.

 

[Erttheking]

I played the first Halo game for the first time when I bought the anniversary edition...I like the newer ones better.

 

[Lunar Templar]

FF7 has aged horribly, in fact most early 3D games haven't aged well :/

nether have the NES games i loved, some still look and play good, but other, like Metriod 1, are just hard to look at.

a fair chunk of the 16 bit games have done remarkable well in terms of still looking good, not just talking SNES, talking Genesis and TG16 as well

 

[Johnny Impact]

Deus Ex, yes the original. Two words for the visuals: Ug. Lee. Gameplay isn't very good, either. Abysmal AI just runs in circles. And the firearms, good god the firearms...... The idea of being an absolutely terrible shot with all weapons might be realistic for vanilla humans -- I've often commented that Gordon Freeman obviously did not acquire a PhD in physics, but he seems to have two in Shootin' Dudes, seriously what's that about -- yet it simply isn't true for a man good enough to be recruited into an elite agency. I know you can improve Denton's skill with guns, but if he can't hit the broad side of a barn to begin with, what's he doing in covert ops? Maybe I would have understood this game back in the day. I just don't now.

Final Fantasy VII. Picked it up on PSN not that long ago. Doesn't take many years to turn state of the art visuals into pixelated garbage. It was so much cooler when I was twenty.

Max Payne. Picked it up in a Steam sale. I shouldn't have. Even when it was new I was never all that impressed with the shooting mechanics. The dialogue is still hilarious but the game plays like an absolute turd.

 

[The]

"Sid Meier's Pirates: Live The Life!". It didn't have as much to it as I thought. And it doesn't look that spectacular anymore either.

 

[edudewired]

The original sims is practically unplayable now. Lacking features, bad graphics, limited models. The later games are a vast improvement

 

[OrpheusTelos]

I'm playing Xenogears for the first time right now (gotta love Playstation classics). Good story, and I do love old-school RPGs, but even for the time the game wasn't that great looking (budget issues), but today it looks... odd. The 2D sprites are good, but they don't mesh with the muddy 3D backgrounds, the controls are terrible (which makes platforming in dungons a nightmare, combined with the awful camera). then it cant decide what type of cutscenes to use... Im twenty hours in, and so far there have been in-engine work, anime cutscenes, and one CG FMV. Weird. The dialogue is also very inconsistent- sometimes it's great, but then it seems like the translator fell asleep and they got some random dude from off the street to throw darts at a dictionary to fill in the next few lines of dialogue.

 

[Mustang678]

Master of Orion 1. Most older games I can still enjoy though.

You're breaking my heart, I love to plow through MOO1 every two months or so yet

As for me, Ultima Online isn't even a shadow of what it was when it was released.

 

[RedTNT]

This one has probably already been said, but for me Banjo Kazooie is definitely showing its age now. The gameplay is still good but some of the graphics are starting to look blocky - if that makes sense. It was great when it came out though.

 

[Bad Jim]

Any PC FPS made before the advent of mouse-look. I can't stand to play a keyboard-only FPS for more than about 30 minutes.

What FPS games? Wolfenstein 3D had mouselook. I'm struggling to think any further back. No, wait, I can remember an Amiga game called Trex Warrior. And that also had mouselook.


Yeah, early 3D has aged horribly hasn't it?

 

[Buccura]

Neverwinter Nights. I still hold a great fondness for the game and can still find enjoyment, but the way it controls, especially after playing so much Dragon Age just feels so awkward to me. The character appearance options have not aged well neither but they were kind of weak even back then.

Wizardry 8. I can't even get past the character creation before I lose interest. I've always wanted to finish it, but I can't even really bring myself to start it anymore.

Civilization II. Honestly, at this point at Civilization game without clearly defined borders for the nations just feels so, incomplete to me. I just always liked territory outlines for some reason. Although I do miss having Elvis as my cultural adviser.

Command & Conquer. The only reason for this really is because there is no move and attack command, something I've grown far too used to in RTSs.

X-COM. I have to admit I only recently started giving this game a try, but as much as I want to get into it, the high level of micromanagement just turns me off of it. I love games with depth, don't get me wrong, just with X-COM I can't seem to find the patience for it.

Thief I & II. This one is kind of more my fault, in a way. It's not the graphics or anything, but rather the fact that I've discovered several ways to exploit the AI that kind of removes the challenge unless I play it on expert, but even then I can still exploit the AI if needed. Well, any AI that can be knocked out with a Blackjack that is.

 

[Prosis]

Here it goes, but...

Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Yeah, I know. It was actually the third Zelda game I played, after respectively Wind Waker and Majora's Mask. They say the Zelda series is getting stale, but only after playing the humongous leap forward in the franchise that was OoT I recognize how every following iteration added to the Zelda series.

Relatively small things each time, yes, but they add up. And when you take them all out at once, OoT feels rather...empty of sorts. Still good, but so much simpler.

I agree with this. I'm not even trying to troll either.

Replaying it, I found that the dialog was painful. The dungeons are still good, but the rest of the game feels pretty dull now. Bosses in particular are a joke.
It was one of the greatest games of its time, but I feel that some of the more recent adventure games carry the torch better.

 

[JasonKaotic]

/double-flameshield

Half Life 1. I finally got it on PS2 a couple of weeks ago, I tried really hard to enjoy it and I really couldn't get into it. My friend tells me Half Life 2 meets today's standards more than 1, so I'll pick that up if I ever finish the first one.

 

[gorfias]

GTA III is pretty much unplayable for me because of its awful controls.

I started playing vice city to try to find out what I missed after enjoying saints row 2. I stand with you on this: the controls made the game unplayable.
EDIT: Then again, this is a nostalgia thread. I never got into GTA to begin with to feel disillusioned with its playability later.
I can't really answer this question. If I loved Zelda 2 on the NES then, I have to write, it is still very good now. Just, when I just spent $600 on a PC graphics card and have limited time, I should be using that on something current.

 

[rutcommapat]

I must be really fucking weird, because recently I bought a PS2 to play all the GTA games that I never got a chance to back in the day. And I thought they were fun. Well, not so much the missions themselves where you had to actually shoot things, but in GTA 3 I always had so much fucking money I could just buy rocket launcher ammo and just spend the missions shooting anything that moves.

I mean, yeah, the controls for GTA 3 and Vice City are terrible (Although I quite liked San Andreas's controls), it was the free-roam cities themselves that won me over. Even though they don't have as many pretty textures as modern games, to me Vice City and GTA 3's Liberty City have a lot more personality than any of the more recent free roam cities.

But yeah, in terms of actual story missions they haven't aged very well. Also, I literally can't play Goldeneye for N64.

 

[BushMonstar]

Secret of Mana. I'm a fan of a good amount of RPGs, but this one just, no. I've never really bothered to get that far into it because of how much I disliked it.

 

[legendp]

Anachronox :'(
It's a marvellous, wonderful game but it's graphics...
http://www.gram.pl/upl/artykul/20080926175249.jpg
Nooooooo. :\

well it may be hard to judge from a picture but those graphics don't look that bad, you can tell what is what (Although I usually draw the line at halo 1 original xbox graphics). PS1 games like crash bandicoot 3 and abes oddessay have barely aged at all while ironically some PS2 games like killzone have aged very poorly (its probably partly to do with the low resolution and bad frame rate), other FPS that came out in the same year like Farcry, halo 2, half life 2, doom 3, star wars republic comando. they have all aged rather well.

 

[zombones]

Mass Effect 1 is unplayable the combat is just so bad its painful

 

[Dfskelleton]

I can't bear to play the original Half Life. Oh, sure, it was an influential and important game that raised the bar for shooters in general, but it's just not that great. It's not so much that everything is dull and washed out ,but that it's not very fun either. A game's graphics are bound to age, and one must base their opinions on the content of the games, i.e. if they're still fun. This is why I enjoyed the old Deus Ex and the Doom games from a modern perspective, having never played either before. They look awful, but I was able to get past that because they were fun. Half Life, though...
Also, most games on the PS1.

 

[EnzoHonda]

The origional FEAR, it just looks bad. Bad bad bad bad bad.

Dated graphics repetitvive game play. Dull.

Yeah, the game was amazing when it came out and all the reviewers loved it. Now it looks terrible, and you get the joy of fighting in 40 different types of office buildings.