Great Old Games you want to play but feels too dated?

aozgolo

New member
Mar 15, 2011
1,033
0
0
So I'm sure I'm not the only person with this problem. You hear these rave reviews by tons of people about this classic game that is a masterpiece, and they give a "must play" recommendation, but once you finally go for it, a good 5, 10, 15, even 20 years after it's original release you find that the game is just... not enjoyable to you who is used to something much newer.


What old classic games have you really wanted to play and get into but just can't because they feel so... old? Why?


Here's my picks:


The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - Many TES fans will say Daggerfall has a lot going for it, a much larger world, more skills, more roleplay potential, but every time I try to play it, the very old-school controls, lackluster repeated graphics for dungeons, towns, and NPCs, and the narrative simplicity in conversations drives me away so very fast!

Starcraft - I blame this one on being cheap, I always knew what a monumentally huge and popular game this was, but I was a cheap-o so I waited and waited and waited and finally snagged the Battle Chest for about $15 and... was so underwhelmed by how old and basic it felt, this may be partly because I was never a huge RTS fan in the first place but I couldn't figure out what the hype was about. I played one mission, then another, and by the third one I had to admit I just wasn't having fun, everything I'd seen so far I had seen elsewhere done better.

Any Text Parser Adventure Game - My first adventure game was a port of King's Quest V on the NES, even with it's 24 color limit, this game still had a full point-and-click interface translated to be perfectly usable with a NES Controller. The concept of anything more archaic than that is very foreign to me. When I finally tried King's Quest later on the PC I was unable to enjoy the older titles due to the annoyance of the terrible text parser systems and the horribly banal 16 color palette, thankfully those games got Point & Click remakes done later, except for King's Quest IV, which to this day is the only one in the series I've not played.


What are your "great games too dated to play"?
 

SoreWristed

New member
Dec 26, 2014
233
0
0
I got the original Deus Ex when steam was selling the entire Deus Ex franchise. I installed it, fiddled around for three hours to get it to actually run and uninstalled it about 10 minutes after that. I simply cannot look at those graphics for a while without getting a headache. That along with the archaic pc controls.

King's Quest 8 or alternatively called King's quest : The mask of eternity.
This game took a wild leap from the point&click interface and instead used a 3d world, letting you roam around semi-freely. Think of games like Morrowind, except pretty linear and with puzzles. Besides the horrible graphics, even for the time, the control scheme is horrid. Arrow keys to move, but no strafing, so don't get any ideas about using bow and arrow or the like. Your view of the world was limited to about 20 meters in front of you, so enemies would often surprise you by popping in view. And since the game world was open, but any enemies who are outside of your very narrow allowed roaming space can and will tear you a new one, you'd often get instakilled by a bowman standing 21 meters away from you.
I loved this game to death when i was a kid, but nowadays it's simply unplayable.
 

Danbo Jambo

New member
Sep 26, 2014
585
0
0
Risen. I loved Risen 2 and would love to see how events shaped the hero from the first game, but - whereas the issues with Risen 2 weren't annoying enough to stop me playing, as they only intruded here and there - the issues with Risen, and whole dated feel, were just too much to bare with.
 

Riotguards

New member
Feb 1, 2013
219
0
0
any game which has very dated graphics unless they've got something special in the arts department i generally dislike the blocky or ugly graphics
 

raeior

New member
Oct 18, 2013
214
0
0
Quite a few. Mostly because the interface is just too archaic.
System Shock 1 would probably my prime candidate. The controls...the interface..I love SShock 2 and I always wanted to get into SShock 1 but...just can't.

Little Big Adventure: Played through LBA 2 two times or so and maybe through 2/3 of LBA 1. I always wanted to play them again but the controls are pretty horrible, targeting is horrible, the maps are huge and it takes forever to get from one end of the world to the other (in LBA 1 at least).

Alpha Centauri: I still love the game but I'm having so much trouble getting back into it. Recently tried to play it but I had huge problems with the interface. The graphics are okay but not really...functional? I find it kinda hard to see some things on first glance. This hurts me quite a bit because I still think this is one of the best Civ games of all times.

Syndicate: Only played this a few times with a friend when we were kids. Tried to play it a year ago or so and got completely overwhelmed by having to control 4 agents in parallel. Having to change their "chemicals", watching out that they don't get run over etc. Guess I'll have to try it again but this was kinda stressful.

Constructor: Similar to Syndicate. I love the game but I would like a pause function. Everyone is always complaining about stuff (their fence, their neighbours, that 1,80m cockroach walking around the house), the AI cheats like crazy, a larger amount of houses means that you are constantly replacing tenants for the ones that died. Without any ways to slow it down or pause it and no automation whatsoever I found this pretty annoying to play. The difficulty is all over the place because of this.

Alone in the Dark: I only ever finished part 3. Never even got into the house in part 2. Part 1 I maybe got to the 50% mark or so. I liked the games but the controls were horrible when they came out and it didn't get any better. You're fighting with the camera as much as with the real enemies.
 

Kingjackl

New member
Nov 18, 2009
1,041
0
0
Too many to list. I couldn't finish System Shock 2, Knights of the Old Republic and the original Fallouts because I found them too dated. The same has kept me from Planescape Torment, which is another old classic I'd like to play.

Strangely enough, the one exception to this rule was the original Deus Ex.
 

Maximum Bert

New member
Feb 3, 2013
2,149
0
0
I dunno I dont think I have ever not been able to play a game because its too dated im pretty good at remembering games as they were think the only time my expectations were subverted was when I went back to play Bubble Bobble and found the controls a lot stiffer than I remembered.

Ive been around long enough to remember a lot of the classics when they first came out and a fair few of them I did not get the appeal back then and I still dont now. For one later example there was Doom when that first hit and tbh I thought it looked terrible and played pretty poorly it just looked like a load of cardboard cut outs coming at you but apparently the visuals were amazing and the gameplay was great I just did not see any of that when it was first released and I still dont now but the game hasnt aged it still looks exactly as I remember (havent played it since it was first released however).

So I suppose its not that I cant play them because they have aged its more that I wouldnt/ didnt like them on release and still dont now. Older Graphics dont put me off a game and I can generally place it as a product of its time.
 

josemlopes

New member
Jun 9, 2008
3,950
0
0
Gta 2, if it had controls like Hotline Miami, or any dual stick shooter actually, it would be great but as it is its painfull to do the shooting sections
 

aozgolo

New member
Mar 15, 2011
1,033
0
0
Maximum Bert said:
I dunno I dont think I have ever not been able to play a game because its too dated im pretty good at remembering games as they were think the only time my expectations were subverted was when I went back to play Bubble Bobble and found the controls a lot stiffer than I remembered.

Ive been around long enough to remember a lot of the classics when they first came out and a fair few of them I did not get the appeal back then and I still dont now. For one later example there was Doom when that first hit and tbh I thought it looked terrible and played pretty poorly it just looked like a load of cardboard cut outs coming at you but apparently the visuals were amazing and the gameplay was great I just did not see any of that when it was first released and I still dont now but the game hasnt aged it still looks exactly as I remember (havent played it since it was first released however).

So I suppose its not that I cant play them because they have aged its more that I wouldnt/ didnt like them on release and still dont now. Older Graphics dont put me off a game and I can generally place it as a product of its time.
I won't say graphics alone ever put me off a game, at least not exclusively, there's tons of old games from the early 90s on PC and old NES games I can still play and love, but I played them back in the day when they were new. It's the old games I never got to play when they were new, that going back I'm trying to play for the first time when they are like 20 years old that I find very difficult, and it's almost never just the graphics. A lot of times it's the pacing, control scheme, and general presentation that feels dated, yet usually this only seems to be an issue with games I didn't play back in the day.

I can still go back and play Ultima IV on the NES like it was yesterday but yet have trouble getting into Ultima V or VI. I can play Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Torment for days at a time, but because I never played Divine Divinity or Arcanum new I can't seem to get invested in them despite similarities.
 

nomotog_v1legacy

New member
Jun 21, 2013
909
0
0
Old Xcom. I blame new Xcom because the game actually held up rather well when I first played it (about a year before new xcom) ,but new Xcom basically ruined me for tactical turn based games.
 

Fox12

AccursedT- see you space cowboy
Jun 6, 2013
4,828
0
0
I can usually look past the graphics, but an archaic control scheme can kill a game for me.

I tried Deus Ex, but the gameplay was atrocious and didn't hold up so well, so I got bored and quit.

Fallout 1&2 had awful gameplay. It didn't help that it had the same engine as old school RTS games, so it felt like I was playing a strategy game with one unit. The writing didn't hold up well either. It may have been good for the time, but modern game stprytelling has easily surpassed it.

I'm tempted to play xenogears,, but I've heard mixed things about it.
 

Neonsilver

New member
Aug 11, 2009
289
0
0
It's rare that I played a game and stopped because it feels dated. I don't care that much about graphics, what really puts me off is when a game overwhelms the player.

raeior said:
Syndicate: Only played this a few times with a friend when we were kids. Tried to play it a year ago or so and got completely overwhelmed by having to control 4 agents in parallel. Having to change their "chemicals", watching out that they don't get run over etc. Guess I'll have to try it again but this was kinda stressful.
That is a good example. I remember vaguely that I played it once or twice on my uncles pc when I was little and I liked it back then, but I had trouble understanding what I had to do. I got it a while ago from gog, but I just couldn't play it very far.
 

Prime_Hunter_H01

New member
Dec 20, 2011
513
0
0
Its not totally off putting but the dated graphics of Strike Commander really up the difficulty of mission where you have to bomb ground targets, since they look like specs unless you are close enough to crash in to the ground. I'm stuck at the Andes Malorca mission because of it.
 

aozgolo

New member
Mar 15, 2011
1,033
0
0
UnReal World and Dwarf Fortress fall into this category for me as well, it's not the graphics, I can look past that, and Dwarf Fortress has some really nice looking tilesets you can get but the sheer complexity paired with very old-school "memorize your whole damn keyboard and might as well unplug your mouse you won't need it" control schemes just make me frustrated as all hell.

I really want to get into these games and enjoy them because they seem so much up my alley with the open world sandbox gameplay but I just can't dive in without immediately swimming to the shore and running away from the pool.
 

bottero

New member
Nov 18, 2014
2
0
0
i got into rpg's with dragon age origins. so, craving for more, i learned about the baldur's gate games being awesome. I played and enjoyed dune 1 which came out in '92
i played (the f*ck out of) gp 2 from '96 and quite a few other classic adventure games from the 90's But found baldurs gate unplayable. The graphics were shit and the isometric view is terrible. The combination of both was an impassable wall for me. Very surprised to see sequels to some of the classic crpg's being made with the same crap isometric view.I liked shadowrun dragonfall and x-com but they re more strategic games. rpg's are about exploring the world and interacting with characters. Fallout 3 and new vegas , mass effect and dragon age are my favourite games. i didnt play the latest divinity game for more than 1 hour. isometric view in rpg's is a huge obstacle in the way of immersion.
Having played the remastered version of baldur's gate 2 i feel like, if it had been completely remade with today's technology it would be the greatest game in human history. As it stands i find it an above average game but i did not think about the plot or the characters for a second outside of the game whereas the characters and lore of dragon age and mass effect for instance have made a deep impact
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

Alleged Feather-Rustler
Jun 5, 2013
6,760
0
0
Basically any MMORPG, specifically WOW. I guess I'm not the kid I was in 9th grade when I first started playing, but oh man is it boring as shit now. I forgot how horrific the grinding is. Just leveling up to like lvl 10 is too boring these days. Kill 10 blue aardvarks, then kill 10 red aardvarks, then collect ten berserker aardvark hearts, 10 aardvark shaman runes and 5 aardvark legionnaire scalps. Congrats! After two hours you are now level 7!

Yeah no thanks.
 

Rornicus

New member
Jan 26, 2010
16
0
0
I'm surprised to see so much hate for the original Fallouts. Admittedly, both F1 and F2 had some issues (especially the car in F2), but there are patches out there to be found and the depth of those games overcomes it's technical failures. I suppose too many people thought F3 was a good game. :/ New Vegas was much better than F3 and should have been the jump to 3D fans of the originals could have rallied around. I suppose most rallied around F3 too, but in the negative.

Anyway, my tangent aside I can't recall any old school game recommended by my friends (only games I'd reach way back in time to pick up and play) that I couldn't appreciate on some level. I lived through much of the old school days and can easily get into that mindset to play a great game for it's time.

Overall, I think this issue probably comes down when each person came into gaming more than anything. The earliest "level" of games played while your love for gaming was being developed is your "lowest common denominator," so to speak and anything earlier than that would likely be seen as ugly or having a bad interface or whatever. Games seen as archaic - even compared to the oldest game the person can relate to - would be hard to play through.
 

thoughtwrangler

New member
Sep 29, 2014
138
0
0
Ultima IV (PC version). It's described as a seminal RPG for its time, and it looks fun... but I just can't play it. I've tried, and it feels incredibly convoluted. The only thing I managed to do when I started out was accidentally attack the guards of the castle I was in. Rebooted, tried asking the guards about various things, got nowhere.

But I think Ultima IV serves as a good example of why there was such a push for reductive controls in RPG's in the last few generations.
 
Dec 10, 2012
867
0
0
I sure would love to play Deus Ex, but there is no way I could get past the fugly square graphics and what I'm sure is terribly clunky gameplay compared to the modern standard.

Wanna hear something weird? I am trying like hell to make it through Persona 4 and am having serious trouble because it just feels so old. And what makes it bizarre is that I played Persona 3 three times and loved it to death. It's not like P4 is unfamiliar or hard to figure out, I already know exactly how it works. But somehow this 8 year old game that is functionally identical to one of my favorite games feels outdated, uninspired, and boring. Everything about it is tired and samey. Maybe it's simply too similar to P3, but that shouldn't be a problem for a guy who loves all three Borderlands games.