Games that haven't aged well.

BrawlMan

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thenewguy512739 said:
Is it me or has Quake 1 aged better than Quake 2?

Also, I feel Crackdown would be ageless (or at least aged better) if they only used a better font for the GUI.
What probably doesn't help is that Quake II has standard sci-fi brown/gunmetal grey gamers came to hate during the 7th generation of consoles, while the latter also has several shades brown; yet features castles, demons, and medival creatures territory. I can see why you would think that.
 

Redlin5_v1legacy

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I loved Timesplitters 2 when it came out but I didn't own a copy so I could never play it.

Years later, I got it for myself. I just can't get into it.
 

Magmarock

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This is a really subjective thing to ask and not one of my favorites. Not because I don't think there's no merit to it but because it's not well thought out. People will say something hasn't aged well with no rhyme or reason to that statement other then because they feel it hasn't. I think that's BS.

distortedreality said:
Deus Ex springs immediately to mind.

From graphics to gameplay, I imagine it would be tough to get into for those who didn't play it a decade or so ago.
Deus Ex never looked good even for it's time and the combat was always rough like an elder scrolls game. But combat and graphics were not the reason people played it

B-Cell said:
Goldeneye but it was not a good game when it was released.

Half life 1 still play like a game that is recently released.
Try playing Goldeneye at 60fps with a mouse a keyboard. There are mods and emulators that can help you do that. I tried it and found that the game held up a lot better without the restrain of the N64 holding it back. Half Life on the other hand I'll pass. That game is just too slow for me.

CaitSeith said:
Ezekiel said:
Nothing. Games don't "age". What was good then will always be good and what was bad then will always be bad.

N64 and PS1 games don't magically look worse over time. I always knew their graphics were simple.

If I can no longer appreciate a game, it's because my standards were lower back then. Everything or Nothing was never good. I just didn't know better.
I call that BS. What would have you played if you had better standards back then?
No, he's right. The quality of the games doesn't change over time. You could make the argument that the industry standards have changed, but games are digital therefore they don't decay. Not everything is better though. Newer games might look better and even play better. They sure don't sound better though. Sound design has taken a huge step backwards in my opinion.

Drejer43 said:
Ocarina of time I'll even add that people who claim it is superior to twilight princess have nostalgia glasses glued to their retinas
So people who don't agree with you have something wrong with their brains? Aside from framerate (of which OOT can be set to run at 60 while TP is locked at 30) there are a number of reasons why OOT outclasses TP. It's got way better music and sound design leading to a more immersive experience. The pacing is top notch as the player finds out more and more about hyrule. Speaking of OOT version of Hyrule is just more interesting with more to do and more varied locations. To me TP was about as generic as they came.

Nazulu said:
Drejer43 said:
Ocarina of time I'll even add that people who claim it is superior to twilight princess have nostalgia glasses glued to their retinas
You can have that opinion, but we who prefer OoT assume you stared at shiny things so often that you've burnt your retinas beyond repair :)
Oh let me get some ice for that burn
 

kenu12345

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Half Life 2. Heard it praised to hell and back before I played it back in the day and since I absolutely loved Half Life 1 (still do actually) I was excited but... God did it push shit alot to point where it dragged the game down after playing it when playing other games. Sure, it didn't have cutscenes but that game locked me in a room to listen to dialogue so bloody much that it wore on me and god the 'look we got a physics engine' was heavy in that game. Yes valve, we understand. Please stop littering the map with see saw puzzles. So yeah, there's that and don't get me started at all the in jokes that grate after a while . Honestly prefer the original and its expansions over it
 

Nazulu

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Ezekiel said:
Nazulu said:
Drejer43 said:
Ocarina of time I'll even add that people who claim it is superior to twilight princess have nostalgia glasses glued to their retinas
You can have that opinion, but we who prefer OoT assume you stared at shiny things so often that you've burnt your retinas beyond repair :)
Ocarina indeed had a lot more going for it.

I wish Nintendo still made games as melancholic and creepy as Ocarina and Majora's Mask.
As well as Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, I KNOW!!! I miss the old Nintendo so much. We all knew they would become focus group safe one day but I was hoping they would last a little longer :p
 

Potjeslatinist

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Of all the games I've loved, I feel Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines is the one that has stood the test of time the least. The story and atmosphere are still fantastic, but its technical issues make it really hard to get into it. I'm not just talking about bugs or performance issues - they've been mostly ironed out nicely throughout the years - but everything feels like it's been stitched together wrong.
 

Silvershock

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Johnny Novgorod said:
Everything from the N64/PS1 era.
Might I add "almost everything on the NES" to that? Much as the ideas from the N64/PS1 were refined into excellent games on the PS2 and its compatriots, the early "wild west" development on the NES led to an awful lot of utter garbage, whereas by the SNES we had a much better idea of how to make a good game, and better tech to do it with.

I'm going to be lynched by some for this, but a game I'm replaying right now that doesn't hold up well is Mario 64. The controls suck, the camera sucks, Mario handles like a greased-up hog, levels are tiny (and obnoxiously surrounded by The Void), there's more backtracking than a Metroid game, the music is repetitive and not very good, and did I mention that the controls SUCK? There's barely any enemies in the levels and I think that's because they knew the player would be having a hard enough time getting used to 3D platforming. I've suffered death-by-controls far too many times in this replay.

Before the Nintendo Defenders come to kill me, I know it was an important game. That doesn't make it a good game.

Also, while I'm stabbing sacred cows, Ico is fucking shit. Ico has always been fucking shit. "Oooh, it's artsy" doesn't get around the problem that it's fucking shit. Camera-relative controls with a camera you don't control means that some jumps are rendered far too difficult, the controls are stiffer than a teenager at Hooters, the single-button combat is complete arse, the attempt to over-compensate for its PS1 graphics by slapping bloom on everything scarred my eyeballs, and Yorda is the worst female character in any video game ever. Utterly dreadful game lauded by people who want to look clever.

For that matter, Beyond Good and Evil is also crap, though it's not quite as insufferable as Ico. It was just boring to me. When the camera wasn't trying desperately to hurt me, the dull and predictable story, the irritating side characters and the monotonous combat were piss-weak.

Edit - oh, apparently I skipped a page and missed the Mario 64 discussion. It's still shit though. The N64 was generally a big bag of wank, TBH. It was my experience owning the let-down that was the N64 that made me later buy a PS2. And yes, before you all scream it at me, the Zelda games were good. Well done. The console was still garbage.
 

Poetic Nova

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Ezekiel said:
Nothing. Games don't "age". What was good then will always be good and what was bad then will always be bad.

N64 and PS1 games don't magically look worse over time. I always knew their graphics were simple.

If I can no longer appreciate a game, it's because my standards were lower back then. Everything or Nothing was never good. I just didn't know better.
This basically. And alot tend to stil be better than modern games. Simply because they tend to be dumbed down.
 

Silvershock

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BreakfastMan said:
I hear System Shock was quite incredible when it came out 20+ years ago, but it definitely isn't anymore. I just tried playing it for the the first time a couple days ago, and whoo-boy. After 20 years, those controls have aged about as well as milk from the same year.
Oh gods, you were playing the original, not the Enhanced Edition? Why would you do something like that to yourself. Even in Enhanced that game's controls are still clunky, but mouse-look does make the affair much more bearable.

I still love the game, though. There's just something about it that grabs me every time.
 

Specter Von Baren

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Silvershock said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
Everything from the N64/PS1 era.
Might I add "almost everything on the NES" to that? Much as the ideas from the N64/PS1 were refined into excellent games on the PS2 and its compatriots, the early "wild west" development on the NES led to an awful lot of utter garbage, whereas by the SNES we had a much better idea of how to make a good game, and better tech to do it with.

I'm going to be lynched by some for this, but a game I'm replaying right now that doesn't hold up well is Mario 64. The controls suck, the camera sucks, Mario handles like a greased-up hog, levels are tiny (and obnoxiously surrounded by The Void), there's more backtracking than a Metroid game, the music is repetitive and not very good, and did I mention that the controls SUCK? There's barely any enemies in the levels and I think that's because they knew the player would be having a hard enough time getting used to 3D platforming. I've suffered death-by-controls far too many times in this replay.

Before the Nintendo Defenders come to kill me, I know it was an important game. That doesn't make it a good game.

Also, while I'm stabbing sacred cows, Ico is fucking shit. Ico has always been fucking shit. "Oooh, it's artsy" doesn't get around the problem that it's fucking shit. Camera-relative controls with a camera you don't control means that some jumps are rendered far too difficult, the controls are stiffer than a teenager at Hooters, the single-button combat is complete arse, the attempt to over-compensate for its PS1 graphics by slapping bloom on everything scarred my eyeballs, and Yorda is the worst female character in any video game ever. Utterly dreadful game lauded by people who want to look clever.

For that matter, Beyond Good and Evil is also crap, though it's not quite as insufferable as Ico. It was just boring to me. When the camera wasn't trying desperately to hurt me, the dull and predictable story, the irritating side characters and the monotonous combat were piss-weak.

Edit - oh, apparently I skipped a page and missed the Mario 64 discussion. It's still shit though. The N64 was generally a big bag of wank, TBH. It was my experience owning the let-down that was the N64 that made me later buy a PS2. And yes, before you all scream it at me, the Zelda games were good. Well done. The console was still garbage.
Such edginess, such rage against the machine.
 

Cowabungaa

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Ezekiel said:
I don't believe that. The cameras of the N64 games were always... limiting. They didn't become limiting by comparison. Black and white didn't become bad after filmmakers began using color. If a game looked good or played well twenty years ago, it still looks good or plays well.
Just because using the kind of camera controls made perfect sense for the time it doesn't mean that modern-day camera controls aren't pretty much fundamentally better in terms of functionality. It also doesn't mean that I still can't have fun with those old games. But try designing a game today with the kind of things they pulled for the N64. You wouldn't get away with it. That's the idea of not ageing well.

Sadly that doesn't stop developers from still screwing camera controls up though.
 

Headsprouter

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Johnny Novgorod said:
Everything from the N64/PS1 era.
I think Spyro 1, 2 and 3 and Crash 2 and 3 have aged pretty well, even visually in some aspects. If it'll convince you i'm not completely blinded by nostalgia goggles I think Goldeneye is a bit shit by today's shooter standards.

Evonisia said:
"Crash Bandicoot" didn't age well. It's a game that desperately needs thumbstick control
I remember Crash 1 lacking thumbstick control, and while Crash 2 and 3 had it (they definitely did, by the way) you were usually better off with the d pad.

As for my personal contributions, Street Fighter 2 and while I can still enjoy them, every Pokemon game before X and Y. Although it's still a little hard to look at X and Y's overworld and S/M is a little bit of a pain in the framerate...
 

Cowabungaa

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Ezekiel said:
The game is either good or it isn't. If it's not good now, it was never good.
This thread isn't about whether a game is good or not. This thread is about whether a game aged well. Ocarina Of Time was and still is a good game and a momentous achievement in gaming. Doesn't mean it aged well. Those two things are not the same thing.
 

JUMBO PALACE

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Johnny Novgorod said:
Everything from the N64/PS1 era.
In terms of the N64, I think a huge part of this is the controller. That horrible controller and primitive analog stick aren't doing those older games any favors. I think something like Super Mario 64 would feel a lot less dated with a decent controller in hand.
 

Specter Von Baren

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Nazulu said:
Specter Von Baren said:
Silvershock said:
Such edginess, such rage against the machine.
So your saying the machine is perfect? What are you saying exactly?
I'm saying he's trying too hard. I understand that those games can be seen as bad now, and maybe they are, but the sheer anger he put into his post makes it look like he's just someone that likes to be contrarian.