Poll: Is Old Better?

[Continuity]

Are older video games better than the current, or is it just nostalgia and fanboyism that blinds us?

Well the thing is, old games are often something quite different to the new games. I.e. modern games are not trying to compete with the old games... and old game was great for X Y & z reasons, the developer thinks, ok, well we dont care about X Y or Z anymore, they are outdated paradigms... lets make a version that fits with the modern paradigms.
So the question really comes down to weather old paradigms are better then the new paradigms, and the answer to that is firmly based on what you're looking for in a game.

Lets take one of your examples, Call of duty vs modern warfare. When you actually look at the differences these are in fact very different games. Modern warfare (series) has very short fictional single player campaigns, and CoD has long historically based SP campaigns. Multiplayer in CoD is more or less an after thought add-on, multiplayer in MW is pretty much the entire point of the game. These are just the most stark and obvious differences but its easy to see how some people who loved the CoD games can hate the MW games without age even being a factor.

I think this extends to more than just CoD too, pretty much any long running series will have design changes over the years that some will like and others wont; and on the whole those design changes will be focused on selling the game to the changing wider demographic. Gamers aren't just nerds with 11" monochrome crt monitors anymore, they're everyone and their mom.

 

[james0192]

As far as I see it there are as many good games now as always.
The reason why there's a view of 'old games are better' is because the population of older games is only made up of the older games which were good as everyone forgets the bad ones. whereas the population of new games people use to compare includes both good and bad games.

However if you only talk about a franchise then i can sort of see the view the first few entries are better than the new ones. There is only so far developers can take a franchise without repeating the same thing over or over or moving it too far away from the original premise and both of these will make the game seem bad to fans of the franchise.

 

[weker]

A good game is good regardless of how old it is.

Couldn't put it better myself, after all games that are designed to near perfections such as pac man, people fail to pick any major faults with. The same can go for games like Bioshock and others.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

No, because there are crap old games, and crap new games...
Just as there are Good games old and new.

The year it comes out doesn't define whats good about it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Yes and no.

Yes, obviously the tech and design concepts used today are more refined than they were 20 years ago, but the drive to take risks, innovate, or do something primarily for fun has been lost as the business side of gaming has taken top priority.

Eventually, something has to give and break this disastrous cycle of recycling old material.

EDIT: Before someone chimes in about "Well, there were great/shit games in the past", I know. There are great/shit games in every generation, but today's "great" games are becoming increasingly cannibalistic upon their source material.

The best selling games for the last 5 years have all been sequels; that wasn't always the norm.

 

[Bostur]

Are apples better than oranges?

Well it depends.

10-20 years ago game companies were much more productive probably because development time were much shorter. A lot of the games were lousy, but it meant that there were much more variety.

Old games experimented more and made more inventions. One could get some genuinely nice or nasty surprises, it was always interesting to see what new stuff they would come up with.

Old games had more focus on gameplay, while new games focus a lot more on fidelity. As someone who care much more about the gameplay than the quality of wall textures I truly miss this aspect of old games.

New games have a much greater focus on story, and that is one of the great developments that have happened. It's one of the few cases were games take advantage of the better tech we have available.

 

[FalloutJack]

I require an option for "It depends.". There are too many variables in this general question.

For instance, The remake of the MediEvil game - MediEvil Resurrection - is better than the first. However, I don't like the nature of recent Phantasy Star games over the originals. Not because of graphics, but because it's not really Phantasy Star. Not in the same sense. Strange changes, perhaps not as well-written. There was potential to be had with the story if used right. An imaginative mind could've done wonders.

You see what I mean, though.

 

[Zeema]

no

i alot of newer game i found to be alot funnier then the older games.

 

[likalaruku]

Games & comic books are the only media that hasn't worsened each decade.

 

[Amberella]

I do prefer my old games to my current ones. Maybe I'll just always be old school? I still play my sega genesis from time to time and I barely have been playing my PS3. Who knows, maybe all these awesome games coming out this fall will change my mind, but as of right now I prefer old games.

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

Some of the "old is better than new" stuff comes from nostalgia, however I can personally vouch for the Spyro argument. The original games were action/adventure 3D platformers. You ran around and gathered stuff, solving puzzles and using your powers to get stuff out of your way. Boss battles did come around every now and then, but they were more or less fought like puzzles, too. Just faster-paced puzzles. They were simple and elegant in performance.

And the characters matched the world they were in. The whole idea of a miniature purple dragon running around solving puzzles is quite absurd and campy, and they play the part.

The new Spyro series, on the other hand, (New Beginning, Eternal Night, and Dawn of the Dragon) is more of a fighting game with a story. Sure there's still puzzles, but the focus is less on that and more on fighting the enemies. They have HP bars, something which no other Spyro game has included (to my knowledge).

And a lot of the characters lost their charm. See, the ones in the original game had genuine charm, which came from the subtle quirks in their personality. They were likeable. In the new series, they're just dry of cardboard cutouts of adventure game tropes. Spyro used to be sarcastic yet friendly and approachable, helping out the people he came across (usually because they asked, but also helping them out would always help his quest as well. Sort of an "I'll help you if you help me" deal). Sparx communicated through buzzing noises that were translated in the subtitles, and he was Spyro's more or less SILENT sidekick who would hang with him, show his health, and go into places Spyro couldn't reach.

In the new games, Spyro became the stalwart hero willing to run off and do anything to fulfill the destiny he's just found out about. Really, really dry. It's like he had no ambitions or plans for his life until he found out he was a dragon. Sparx got a real voice and became the insufferable, wise-cracking sidekick who doesn't know when to shut up (which should be all the time). And then there's this old dragon who tells Spyro about his destiny and shows him the ropes. Everything he says is like an 80 year old who has never smiled before reading the Lord of the Rings and trying to sound really, REALLY dramatic. He has no personality at all. His only purpose is to be an information dispenser. Every line of dialog he has is either exposition or a tutorial.

All this comes from replaying these games in the last couple of years. I think the main problem with things like this comes from the studio trying to refresh the concept and make things new and different, but completely forgetting what made the games good in the first place. I have no problem with change. What I do have a problem with is change that doesn't improve on what came before. I mean really, when your starting material is so great, what you should and shouldn't keep should be fairly obvious.

 

[ChickenZombie]

Depends on what you mean better. Graphics, storytelling, immersiveness, then yes. As in fun... yes. You look back at old games and remember how much fun you had playing them, Ocarina of time, Golden Eye, but you don't realize there were SO many bad games as well. It was a lot easier to please an audience back then because there werent many options. Now we have seen it all before, so it's difficult to impress. Years from now you might look back and say "Rememer COD? Those games were so much fun!" Even though they might look like crap compared to newer games. Games are always getting better, but they are also changing. Nostalgia sets in and you feel like older games are better, but they are just different.

 

[LookingGlass]

I like to think that there was a golden age of gaming, around 1997-2003, where games were at their best. Games like Thief 1/2, Starcraft, Fallout 1/2, Deus Ex, Half-Life, Silent Hill 2, Morrowind, Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto 3, and Final Fantasy VII (if that's your thing), were all at the top of their respective genres and in my opinion they all hold up very well today, to the point where I still have most of them at the top of their genres.

It's not so much that today's games aren't good, but I don't see the same level of innovation and creativity that came out of that period.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Well...not really. Super Mario Bros doesn't compare to amazing Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 are. The first and second Zeldas are no match for some of the more recent titles. Assassins Creed 1 doesn't hold a candle to AC2 and Brotherhood. That said, though...there are a few titles where the older titles are better. Spyro, as you said, and Sonic as well, have extraordinary early titles but lackluster and phoned-in variants in the modern generation. Duke Nukem 3D absolutely makes this new one it's *****. But this also doesn't address the problem where titles in the middle of the series are the best--think Starfox, Grand Theft Auto, and Guitar Hero.

The difference is that there are great games of their time, and then there are just plain old great games. Some games from back then, played now, do not stand up as well as you remember them. They were great at the time, but they were stepping stones, and it's so much more amazing where we are today (see Goldeneye/Perfect Dark versus Call of Duty/Battlefield/Killzone). Other games are timeless--play Chrono Trigger, Earthbound/Mother 3, Super Mario Brothers 3/World, Shadow of the Colossus, Final Fantasy VII, Street Fighter II, or Starcraft now, and they are still amazing. Some games are timeless--great anytime you play them. Others are for the histories, of things that were great, but aren't so much anymore. The problem with some of the above examples, of course, is that they're so recent it's hard to see if they will age well or not. As much as I love God of War, I have no idea how the series will feel half a decade from now, or a decade from now, or a decade from then. But there will be games that have continued to stand out all that time, no matter what graphical quality they were made in, or whether they were beaten to death as a series by a profit hungry CEO at some point in their time. Those games are great. They'll be the games that we use as standards for other games of their genres, as they have been so far.

 

[fletch_talon]

or "Spyro 1,2,3 are better than the current ones"

I just wanted to point out that this is a flawed example. The issue I (and I assume most) Original Spyro fans have with the new games is not a question of quality.
The problem is that spyro games were excellent platformer games with a cute, quirky personality. The new games have disposed of all of that, rebooted the series and turned it into an attempted "dark" fantasy epic. Spyro is suddenly "the chosen one" instead of being in the right place at the right time (or being too short to be turned into a statue).

Sometimes the problem isn't that the old games are better "quality". The problem is that some new games are targetting new audiences and leaving the old audiences with nothing but memories and a sense of betrayal.

Which is why Nintendo is popular with many people (and unpopular with others) they stick to the formulas that made their games great.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I wrote this up hours ago, but was unable to post due to internet issues.

Sorry I forgot to say this, but I was thinking about the original games that is part of a series or a franchise.

If that's what you're thinking of, then it's largely true. As a good example, Oblivion is much worse than either Daggerfall or Morrowind. I haven't played enough of Morrowind yet to say whether it or Daggerfall was the best in the series, but I will say that, in terms of the sheer amount of content, Daggerfall has yet to be topped within the series. I'm leaving Arena out of this discussion because it's so much simpler than the rest of the series, and I'm leaving the spinoffs out because A, they're spinoffs, and B, I haven't played any of them. Another example: Sonic the Hedgehog. That series peaked somewhere around the second game, and these days it's pretty much just a shambling corpse.

It's not guaranteed that later installments in a series will be worse than earlier installments, but I'll be darned if I can think of a series that I've played both old and new installments of and not found the older ones to be better. I think there's two things to blame here: mass market appeal, and the original creators moving on. Basically, modern games have to appeal to a broader market than older games did, because gaming has gone from a niche business to a mass market industry. This leads to a homogenization of genres, and leads to things like once hardcore RPG series turning into first person versions of Secret of Mana. The other problem, series creators moving on, is just that; the people who made the original games so good are no longer working on the series. That more than anything else is why we're never going to get an Elder Scrolls game that feels like Daggerfall again, and it's why Fallout 3 feels so different from the first two games. (Incidentally, the reason Fallout New Vegas feels more like the older games is because a lot of the original team worked on it; Obsidian was founded by a bunch of former Black Isle guys.) It's also why, as someone pointed out above, Spyro the Dragon is nothing like it used to be; the first three games were a labor of love from a single team. The rest of them were committee driven work for hire.

Basically, these are the same reasons why long running film series tend to suck. I can only think of two series that did a good job of making more than four movies: Star Trek and Harry Potter. Most other series that long are things like The Land Before Time, The Fast and the Furious, and various horror series, which started out with a single film that was at least decent and also highly popular, which the studio decided to make tons of sequels to, whether the original creative team was onboard or not. I think we can all see why this is a bad thing.

 

[Laser Priest]

Nope.

Some games were better before. Some are better now. How old a game is has nothing to do with its quality.

For example (although the age difference may not be significant), Assassin's Creed 2 was infinitely better than the first.

 

[LordRoyal]

rebooted the series and turned it into an attempted "dark" fantasy epic.

Someone hasn't watched the Skylanders trailer. They've done another reboot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmzuKL1li0w&feature=relmfu

"Spyro 1,2,3 are better than the current ones"

Sequels tend to suck, it's been the way of the world forever. Spyro 1, 2 and 3 were developed by Insomniac and were masterfully well done. The current gen ones were developed by developers who aren't as talented as they were.

Then this came out, making bad sequels is one thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmzuKL1li0w&feature=relmfu

Neutering Spyro and making a bad game that is only there for merchandising is quite another.

OT: A lot of sequels are better then the originals. Saints Row 2, Dark Forces 2, etc. The big thing is that a lot of sequels today are just excuses for the publisher to pump more money out of the consumer.

I wouldn't say that today's era is any different then the previous gen of games. Just that I've noticed a lot more sequels, and that tends to bring out the nostalgia goggles.

 

[Veylon]

Older games, at least the good older games, tended to be more tightly focused. A part of that was due to the limitations of the time: few cutscenes, no voiceovers, limited graphics. Another part was the lack of a need to appeal to more than a dedicated pool of gamers. Nobunaga's Ambition or Battletoads certainly weren't going to attract a wide audience. That also allowed a wider range of experimentation.

Newer games suffer from one basic problem: they cost too much to make. More graphics requires more graphics artists. Ditto for modelers and voice actors and area planners. As the budget goes up, so too does the need for a wider appeal in order to get the sales to make it profitable. Companies can't afford to take chances with so much at stake. This is why exploration went by the wayside for quite a while: it's no longer trivial to set up an optional encounter the player can only find by wandering into a forest. The game's assets need to up front and center to earn their keep.

That's why modern games tend towards the uncreative. It's also why games made by a small team - or an individual - are going to be remembered better. Portal and Team Fortress were pushed out on a low budget. Minecraft is made by one guy, as is Dwarf Fortress. All these games focus on a handful of core mechanics and gameplay.

 

[jamesworkshop]

No I think gaming has only gotten better, I still love golden eye but damn is it dated and horrible to control.