Great Games...That Did Not Age Well (For You).

[Starbird]

Title.

You know, the games you absolutely used to love, but upon revising wished you hadn't?

For me:

Warcraft 3. Story is still good but wow, the visuals have not aged well at all, the world feels empty, the units and pathing feel wonky and the voice acting is *horrible*. So many good memories, wish I had let this one lie.

Streets Of Rage 2. One of my favorite games from my childhood. Now feels repetitive and pointless. At least the soundtrack still rocks!

Quake 2. Oh man this used to be the best thing ever (ditto Unreal). Played it endlessly...before I got a graphics card. Once I did the visuals just blew my mind. Now...ugh. Bland, repetitive, ugly.

Far Cry. Again, a game that blew me away graphically, but every time I try to replay it the bizarre difficulty makes me want to eat a kitten and repetitive as hell. The main character is also one of the most obnoxious main characters in a game that wasn't trying to be funny.

Final Fantasy 7 and 8. Both childhood favorites. Graphics aren't actually horrible, even now for some reason. But man, precanned animations make up 90% of this game's combat and everything feels like such a grind.

Resident Evil 1. 2 still holds up okay, oddly enough but the first game...blah. This game was the shizzle pop when I first played it but now it just feels awful.

Earthworm Jim 1 and 2. Another game that I adored as a child, but tried replaying it...still pretty, but far too much of both games feel like 30% excellent platformer and 70% annoying minigames. The controls are also way worse than I remember them.

How about you?

 

[thetoddo]

I'm with ya on FF 7 and 8, though RE2 doesn't hold up for me. Storywise it's still my favorite of the series, but I had forgotten how terrible the controls were.

On those same lines, and this is painful... TIE fighter.

 

[Starbird]

Mm. I refuse to revisit a lot of old space games since I don't have a joystick and those would probably be hell on a mouse/keyboard.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The Jak and Daxter games.

Now I wouldn't say they ever great, but they were fun enough. The controls have aged horrendously though. Again, it's not like the controls were ever fantastic, but this was in a time where we were more willing to put up with stiff controls. Controls today however are so buttery smooth it's almost impossible for me to return to games like J&D.

 

[Wasted]

Final Fantasy 8 was my introduction to the series, so I was never attached to 7 (I found the story to be a mess and the characters unlikable, never felt the need to replay it since my first and only playthrough).

Final Fantasy 8 blew my mind as a kid. The incredible graphics, amazing soundtrack, and flashy combat system (never played a turned based RPG before this game so it introduced me to that style of fighting) kept me hooked even though I got stuck repeatedly. Also those summon animations, damn!

Replayed it recently as an adult due to the PC re-release and wow, this game is severely flawed. The biggest being the story, especially Squall. I can generally overlook the graphical and mechanical limitations as a product of their time, but Squall must be the most dislikable protagonist in the history of gaming. He is such an annoying emo twit, I can't stand his characterization.

Another game that has aged terribly is Gex 3: Enter the Gecko. I used to love it so much that I saw it on par to Super Mario 64. Rebought it recently and damn. Incredibly stiff controls, poor level design, terrible view distance, and the most annoying voice work. I had to mute Gex 10 minutes into playing and forced myself to complete the game.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

goldeneye 007

trying to go back and play multiplayer on this game is a fucking challenge, I had friends who probably could've gone pro in this damn game they played it so much and were disgustingly good with the c-pad controls, but now a days oddjob is nigh invincible because we have such trouble running around and switching to aiming on that bloody trident controller.

but really...fuck oddjob.

 

[Rayce Archer]

Starcraft. I get that it spawned a legion of descendant games that owe their gameplay and features to it, but the source game just feels weak. Scant resources, cramped maps, tons and tons of units that only exist to cast abilities that empower other units to do something, and a "right way" to play that steals away all the fun of building and exploring and reacting as you go. Not to mention a ludicrously small selection cap, dullardly pathfinding, and a hard/soft/nonexistent counter model that just makes no sense. Starcraft may have invented a lot of the good stuff in the modern RTS, but it also seems to have invented most of the bad things too.

 

[raeior]

Seeing as you mention Warcraft 3. Warcraft 1 for me. Awesome story, I still don't mind the graphics too much and generally a great game when it came out. But holy crap the controls of that game! You have to press M before you can click anywhere to move your unit, A before you click on an enemy unit to attack it etc. No select units with left and move with right click or anything like that. Add to that a maximum of 9 units that can be selected at a single time, no build queues for barracks etc.

Also System Shock 1. I love SShock 2 but I never could get into 1. I know that quite a few people consider it to be even better than 2 but..just no. The graphics and the interface (again) just totally disagree with me.

 

[Gladion]

It hasn't become bad by a long shot but I recently booted up Super Metroid again and... man, Guacamelee's controls really spoiled me.

Captcha, how would you describe them?
"finger lickin good"

Yeah...

 

[Neverhoodian]

The first few games of the Command and Conquer series. They were revolutionary for their time, but they're extremely clunky when compared to modern RTS titles. The sidebar is unwieldy, you can't queue up multiple units, pathfinding falls apart when crossing bridges or fielding large armies, units frequently get themselved killed chasing after enemies, and skirmish mode won't let you choose what faction your CPU opponent is.

Nowadays if I'm in the mood for some Tiberium Dawn or Red Alert action I fire up OpenRA [http://www.openra.net/] instead. It retains the good qualities of the games while greatly enhancing it with modern improvements.

 

[BadNewDingus]

I'm gonna probably get hate for it, but the first Fable is somewhat dull to me now.

 

[Shymer]

Wing Commander. I sunk hundreds of hours onto that at college - now it's not only unplayable, but the FMV is... excruciating. I can't play Elite anymore either. Docking at a rotating space station in 3D? No thanks. And... X-Com. You can never go back.

 

[ForumSafari]

you can't queue up multiple units

I'm pretty sure you can, at least on the PC version. It's been a while though.

 

[Veldel]

Am I the only one who isn't turned off by graphics?

Not to many games have aged to poorly it's only the rare few that have had there controls or gameplay ruined by modern things.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Almost anything in that early Playstation era doesn't hold up well any more. Even if it holds up design wise, the visuals and technical aspects just make many games from that era near unplayable. My personal selections would have to be the Jet Moto games and the early Twisted Metals. I spent so much time playing Jet Moto 1 and Twistted Metal 2 back then but now.. ouch.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Ocarina of Time = The poor aging on this one is at least partially my fault. I ADORED this game as a kid; to me, it was unreservedly and unironically the best game ever made. I played it over and over at least 7 times in just a couple years. I completed the challenge playthrough of avoiding all heart containers and heart pieces and not getting the damage-reduction upgrade and completing the game with zero deaths on my save file.

As a long term Zelda fan, I kept up with the series, and after playing Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword, Ocarina can't really compare for me. Majora's Mask was kinda short, yes, but it had so much more variety in gameplay (via time-manipulation and the transformation masks) and story (via strange unsettling atmosphere and interesting side stories/characters) that it, to me, still holds up quite well. Wind Waker has a timeless art design and the vast world to explore makes it true epic that holds up VERY well. Twilight Princess feels like Ocarina 2.0, but the angle of things like the Twilight Realm and sky city dungeon inject enough divergence into the mix to keep it from feeling stale. Skyward Sword had deluge of fetch-quests and hand-holding, but it was very innovative and the characters had more dramatic weight.

I don't think Ocarina is a bad game, and the "overrated!" rep it's developed is, in my opinion, overblown, but I don't think it's aged well at all. All the 3D Zelda games afterward took the Ocarina blueprint and took it in (IMO) more interesting directions. Ocarina is still perfectly playable, but it is the last Zelda game I'd ever want to re-visit, which is, to me, the true mark of poor aging.


Final Fantasy VIII = I was a FF die-hard for some time, and I really dug this game when I first played it. I racked up over 70 hours on my first playthrough, exhausting the side content. Now? I just can't get past the awfulness of the story. After studying literature and writing in college, FFVIII can't stand up to the even the most basic analysis. The writing is just terrible. The plot holes and deus ex machina are insufferable. Also, Squall didn't bother me back then because I was fairly angsty myself when I played it. But now? Now he's just a massive douche. There's only so much "emo-ness" that one can forgive teenage issues for in fiction, and Squall crosses that line and sprints out of sight...because, again, the writing is just terrible.


Final Fantasy V = This wasn't one that I played when I was younger and then revisited it to find it had aged poorly. This was one that I played as a full-grown married adult AFTER I played every other main game in the series (minus the MMOs). The gameplay was fun in an old-school JRPG sort of way, with the best job system I've encountered outside of FF Tactics, but the story was so derivative and silly that I couldn't bring myself to care. I had to push myself to finish it, and I only did so so that I could say that I'd played the whole series from start to finish. By the end, as the villian was getting ready to destroy the universe, I realized, "Huh. You know what? If the villain were to win in this story, and all of reality was sucked into the void, and this game world and all of its characters were eradicated from existence...I wouldn't even be bothered. Actually, I'd prefer that ending, because at least that would be interesting." Yeah...this one didn't age well for me at all.

 

[Neverhoodian]

you can't queue up multiple units

I'm pretty sure you can, at least on the PC version. It's been a while though.

Not for the first two games. Queuing only became a feature in Tiberian Sun.

 

[laggyteabag]

I find that Mass Effect 1 plays really badly now, even though it was made in 2007. My problem lies with the combat. When playing Mass Effect 2 and 3, they feel like essentially the same game, but the latter smoothed the game out a little and expanded the arsenal of weapons and abilities, whereas Mass Effect 1 plays like a completely different game. The combat is floaty, and the weapons feel like paintball guns and that are devoid of any individual personality or characteristics, instead opting for the traditional "this gun is stronger than that gun because stats" RPG mechanic (which I feel doesn't translate all that well to firearms). As much as I enjoy the Mass Effect games, ME1 just feels like a slog to play through, and I really don't enjoy my time in subsequent playthroughs, and it has gotten to the point where I often revert to just downloading a save file with my desired choices instead of going through the game again.

Then there was the Mako...

Also, the entirety of the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft. Love it or hate it, but Cataclysm did one hell of a number to the 1-60 questing experience in WoW, so when you go from playing the Cata 1-60 and then going into TBC 60-70, it feels like jumping straight into a relic. The questing just feels archaic, and the only way that I managed to get through it without practically falling asleep was to just grind my way through it by constantly running dungeons. Im sure that going from vanilla to TBC was like a breath of fresh air, but going from Cata 1-60 into TBC is just like breathing in an 8 year old fart. Through your nose.

 

[Maximum Bert]

The only one 1 can think of that was not as good as I remembered was Bubble Bobble on the C64 I frikkin loved that game and played it more than any other game I had for the system but I tried it for the first time in ages a couple of years ago and man the controls were bad but to be fair it was not the C64 version I played just the one on the Gameboy Advance luckily the updated version that came with it fixed the controls and the game was still awesome in everything else.

From SNES onwards especially everything is exactly as I remember although graphically a lot lack the impact they once had still I have had continuous fun with FFVII and Crash Team Racing especially throughout the years and I dont think that will change for me both games still feel as fin and fresh as when I first played them all those years ago along with a few other gems like Super Mario Bros or Punch Out on the NES for two other examples (although I dont play these as much).

Actually I have another one and it is a PSX game Tekken 1. 2 feels exactly as I remember (favourite Tekken) but 1 just seems to have lost its shine then again I did not play Tekken one much so it was not ingrained into me like 2 was.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The first Resident Evil and Silent Hill games have not aged well. I love the limited save system and all the perks of survival horror. I never minded the tank controls and fixed camera angles (I think they're an integral part of the experience). And I don't even mind the awful combat - for the most part. What really annoys me about them is the aiming mechanic. It feels like you're always fighting your own gun every time you fire it. And of course the graphics and the animation have aged very poorly, on top of the awful dialogue and voice acting. But whereas Resident Evil gets a pass for the camp value, Silent Hill feels irredeemably bad (to their sole credit, the FMVs are terrific; but the in-game animation is awful).

Both RE2 and SH2 continue to work like a charm though.