Were the "good old days" of gaming really better?

[Kachal]

Why do games suck now? Publishers will not take risks with genres that dont sell in their millions.
Look at the COD series. Somewhere I read that it costs $50million each game, so the pressure to make it as 'safe' as possible is massive. As a publisher, you dont want to sink millions into a game and have it flop.

Now Im an 'old skool' gamer, being 29 years old. I been playing since games since I got my CPC464. Would I go back to playing the old '464 games? Dear god no! I kinda draw the line at Megadrive games. Even then, its 99% crap in the MD's catalog. Even worse was the x32 and MDCD line.
Nostalga blinds people to the amount of crap that we put up with back then. Back in the 90's games cost a fraction to make. If it flopped, it was a smaller loss. Now, the bank will come and take your house/wife/dog.

To me, the real problem is Realism. That costs too much in terms of artwork and money. We should slip back our expectations of graphics and hopefully the companies can concentrate on taking risks in terms of gameplay and storyline.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

No, games were not better in the old days. They weren't necessarily worse, but I would never say that they were, as a whole, better. That would be just nostalgia. People forget about the awful games of the past, and focus on the awful games of today. I can name a cluster of games I love that have come out this very year, and I would defend something like Red Dead Redemption over pretty much every game from the nineties.

I guess I never really found 2D platformers to be my cup of tea. The main problems with modern games come down to cost really; if games were cheaper to make then we would have games that are fucking awesome left, right and centre. So in the future the cost of making a game shoud (hopefully) go down and we'll be seeing such a shitload of awesome.

If I hear anyone who claims all modern games suck, I will attack them Shaun Of The Dead style with Bioshock, Portal, Total War, God Of War, Metal Gear Solid 4, Vanquish and Arkham Asylum.

Anyway, the games of the past and the games of today will all suck compared to the games of the future. /optimism

Let it also be said that the greatest game of all time is Conker's Bad Fur Day, 2001. Old enough. But a new one could easily be better.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I could go on about how System Shock 2 is superior to Bioshock, the Infinity Engine games put Dragon Age to shame, and that The Force Unleashed put so much emphasis on the overblown force powers to distract you from the fact that its gameplay paled in comparison to the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series, but I think I'll just cite Sturgeon's Revelation and tell you that you're trying to compare today's 10% to yesterday's 90%. There is nothing wrong with my nostalgia, I just focus on the classic games, not the crap ones.

 

[Bravo315]

Even though I was born in the early 90's, unlike my friends, I never had a SNES, MegaDrive, N64 or PSOne. My first gen was the PS2. When my friends ask me to play older games now, it's horrible. Clunky, glitchy, 2 main buttons, d-pad only and most importantly, not alot of motivation to progress in them.

To experience everything this generation has to offer, you need to:

*Play the best Flash games (Line Rider 2)
*Play the best Indie/Community games (Supercow)
*Play the best Online arcade games (Echorome)
*Play the best Mobile/Handheld phone games (Angry Birds)
*Play the best peripheral/motion control games (uDraw)
*Play the best full game releases (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves)

Shame people usually judge a generations content by the latter only. People always miss the near infinite amount of smaller titles. So yeah, I'd say the good days of gaming are now. There's never been more variety of free and paid-for titles available.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I don't know if games were better in the "good old days", but they did seem less saturated.

 

[Freeze_L]

the old games are like the indie games of today, carefully made and a project taken on out of love for the medium and not money. So many of them were made so very well that the carbon copies shooters could not hold a candle to them. They were also so hard! they did not hold back, if you could not beat the level you damned well better learn how to do so. I was a little one back in the 90's but my, well my brothers, SNES still works and the games are still just as fun as i remember. I am still amazed at how much more fun these old games are than the multi-million dollar blockbusters that are released.

 

[DolorousEdd]

Not necessarily better (sometimes) but more hopeful. In the past games were a kind of "super-medium" that showed signs to be one day superior to movies and books. However, innovation has led almost nowhere, really, games are more polished and more impressive, but the classics have not been surpassed. Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill 2, System Shock 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape Torment randomly come to my mind as games that still are in some way unsurpassed statements. If there's something better, it's probably just a better looking copy full of flaws of its own (although it may be fair to point out that Bioshock was more than a superficial overhaul (not commenting on gameplay)). Beyond that, there's just utopia, and movies and books still hover above games as more serious, relevant and perfect media.
Even the most impressive action game is in essence nothing more than the most basic action game, if it has nothing more to say save "I'm an action game, I'm fun!!"

 

[Ampersand]

Of course they weren't, games have been getting steadily better over the last decade.

 

[Jonny49]

Until there is a 4th, the past will always be better.


Seriously though, I think it's more of a nostalgia thing. Games age over time, and while some will always be great, others will age. It's just the way it is.

Games today are better, but only until the next few generations come along.

 

[Jinjiro]

I think we've just learned how to spot BAD games since our youth. I remember playing anything and everything back when I was about 10 years old and going "wow, Ecco the Dolphin is kick-ass! Street Fighter is kick-ass! *insert game here* is kick-ass!"

Nowadays, I've realised what makes a bad/good game, I've acquired tastes for certain genres, and I can tell if I liked the story in a game, which is more important to me at my age than 'pewpewpew shoot the bad guy'.

That's a point, though... I wonder if in childhood with the games we had, we let our imagination fill in the blanks in the story, like a good horror film should do. Maybe that contributes to the sense of nostalgia too?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Having said that, I'm going to go out on a limb here with the following statement:

The assertion that games used to be better is rubbish.

I disagree. And the reason isn't nostalgia.

What I used to do, to load a game, is set up the computer, find the tape, insert the tape, watch it load for seven minutes - and if you'd managed to set it up correctly - and then attempt it with NO idea on how it would work, if it would work and what the bugs would be.

If I didn't like it, or there was a problem, I'd have to wait two months or so before I got a new game, and there was almost no information on whether I was doing something wrong, or what game was actually good.

The reason games "used to be better" is that we threw our lot into them. You had maybe one game that you could play well and that was "YOUR GAME". There wasn't cheat sheets, reviews, alt-Tabs, friends ideas, Twitter, Facebook, magazines (Spend a months pocket money on a magazine??) and the like.

Games were better because GODDAMIT YOU MADE THEM BETTER, and if you found a game you liked it was YOURS.

Take a look at Final Fight, for example. You had a choice of three characters, there was a simple sequence of approach vertically, punch, punch, and then throw - not letting the final kick unless there were two enemies. If you were grabbed, you were losing; and each boss had a very specific way of defeating it, usually enhanced by a credit or two.

That was all there was to it.

Defender, when it first came out, terrified me.

Up, Down, Fire, Reverse and Hyperspace? How can I use all these controls????? Space Invaders/Galaxians only had 3, Pacman only had 4. But the sheer joy of controlling the machine and the space around it was good, and when you got onto the high score table...WOW! Which three letters should you pick? SHould you try for "Poo" to see if it allowed such a rude word? (Only the hard kids tried FUK).

Games nowadays are slicker, more atmospheric, faster, clearer but they're more shallow. They "help" you. There are people you know that are better. There are cheats. It's not YOUR game anymore, it's just a diversion.

If I was to compare Elite against Tie Fighter, the latter would win on every conceivable option apart from ownership - against X3, it doesn't even compare, apart from one thing.

The amount of blood/sweat and tears I gave it.

That's why Castlevania, Sonic the Hedgehog, Wizard of Wor pwns something as sophisticated as Modern Warfare 2, because you fought the game - on your own - to master it.

And unless you've actually broken a game, you won't be as quick to title it a classic.

Halo / Halflife players will scoff at Black Ops in the same way that Ultima Online players scoff at World of Warcraft - despite them being obviously better in almost every detail.

There's that one detail that matters for deciding how GREAT a game is, to you.

How hard you played it.

It's not so much nostalgia, as remembering what you put into it. The only people who don't get nostalgia, are those too young to remember it. And they'll get it in 5 years time when Halo 12 comes out - or Half Life Episode 3.

On a side note: Look how many Browser based games are doing astoundingly well. Is Farmville really that different from M.U.L.E.?

 

[veloper]

The oldies were better gameplay wise and there was more originality.

UFO(XCOM) and JA2 still haven't been surpassed yet in the tactical department.
MOO2 and Master of magic are still the deepest strategy games yet.
The best adventure games are still Lucasarts classics like DoTT.
There's still nothing to beat BG2 for epic cheese RPG goodness.
Planescape Torment still holds the best computergame plot.
There are no space sims like TIE fighter or Elite anymore.
The west has completely dropped the ball on tactical RPGs.


RTSes and shooters have improved much since the early Dunes, C&Cs and dooms, but that's pretty much it.
For the rest the trend has been dumbing down and slap on better visuals.

 

[Irridium]

Nostalgia's a *****.

A good example is everyone getting pissy about X-COM. Sure this new one has nothing in common with the originals, but most, if not all of the originals except for the first one sucked ass.

And I bring Fallout to the table. Yes the games are great, but the gameplay is fucking horrid. Did we really think that was good back then? Give me Fallout 3/New Vegas's gameplay any day. But as RPG's, they are still truly fantastic.

Games these days are great, if a little bland. Games of the past were great, even though they were a ***** to play. Seriously, checkpoints are easily the greatest innovation ever.

 

[loc978]

All I've gotta say is this: games have gotten more immersive with the technological march forward. They've also become much harder to make. When a current-gen game is a "bad title that contains boring, uninspired graphics, hackneyed storylines, cut-and-paste characters, and copycat gameplay mechanics.", it's a much bigger deal... and here's where it gets bad: companies that make horrible games are still afloat. Those horrible games sell well. It's not games that have gotten worse... it's gamers.

 

[Yellowbeard]

So the old gameplay mechanics died out for a reason...that's why we still have unskippable cutscenes, quick-time events and such, eh?

I don't play a lot of modern games, but I do know that when I go back to Warcraft 2 from Warcraft 3 I start actually having fun. Rainbow Six 3's graphics and gunplay were a hell of a lot better than Rogue Spear's, but if I wanted to play the game properly I had to go back to the old one before they dumbed down the planning system. Innovations is story? None. Innovations in AI? Terrorists hear you through brick walls and blow themselves up with grenades. Ah, the march of progress.

Jedi Knight 2 had great lightsabering, but if I want an interesting experience I go back to the previous game, which actually cared about level design.

Bioshock can't hold a candle to System Shock 2. The latter game was unbalanced as hell, and yet in the intervening 8 years the great 'improvement' in game design brings us a totally broken hacking system, clumsy, awful combat, and at best exactly the same storytelling method as before.

I'd like to see a game built with this supposedly modern superiority that's as creative and unique as Shiny Entertainment's Sacrifice from 2000.

I know I'm a '98-2000 nostalgia whore, but I've yet to see a current game that was actually better because it was newer. Same crap design as always.

 

[CoL0sS]

Games may have lost "new" factor; that unique feeling to them. There's so many of them these days, and it turned into real business. Some of them lost the track of whats really important and some of them are half finished shit that never should have seen a light of day. But there are some real gems that can still offer you interesting story, immersive world, fun gameplay (or at least some of these things). You just need to look harder to find them. Older games made us love gaming, and they made games what they are today. I still miss some of the older titles, but often find myself wondering are they simply that good, or did they just leave strong impression on me because i was younger, and devs kept pushing the limits with every new title. Whatever the case I'll still keep playing them because they never fail to put a smile on my face.

 

[G-Force]

One of the main flaws in modern games is AI, or the lack thereof. AI has become badly sidelined. The PS3 and 360 are both engineered to generate amazing graphics, but that's where almost all the work went. Different kinds of computing require different kinds of computer, so while the games look great, the enemies in games are either cheating (on higher difficulties) or they're pants-on-head retarded (in lower difficulties), with difficulty levels in-between represented by differing amounts of hit points and enemies.

I'd be hard pressed to name a single game in which this wasn't the case. Unreal was considered a huge leap forward... by using pre-existing bot AI for the main bad guys, which meant they just moved and hopped around a lot when fighting you, not that they acted particularly intelligently. In Half-Life the marines used some good flanking maneuvers, but would run head-long into the most obvious of traps. Unreal Tournament cheated by giving the bots way-points (making some maps incredibly easy once you learned where the way-points were). Deus Ex featured a lot of pants-on-head retarded behavior, as did Thief. F.E.A.R. had accidental Artificial Brilliance in that they had the characters take cover laterally, which (even though they didn't program it) had them flanking the player.

And name a single game in which you have AI teammates in which they don't end up doing incredibly stupid things. Happens in Half-Life 2, where Alyx goes rushing into fights like every other braindead AI character does, but they gave her inflated hitpoints, so you don't think of her as useless like the non-enhanced teammates you got later in the same game.

AI is about as good as its ever been... which is freakin' awful. None of these characters have ever displayed the slightest bit of self-preservation and it doesn't take that long to figure out how an enemy is likely to react in virtually any situation. For the longest time, I used the charge-and-retreat tactic, because even if an enemy soldier had a great bit of cover, shaking your ass at them would cause them to give chase to an ambush point. HL2's enemy AI can be beaten by a can (seriously, pick up a can and block the enemy from your sight... you can advance toward them without them firing, because *you* can't see them). And I can't tell you how many games past and present where you can snipe at a distant enemy without anyone standing directly next to your victim noticing.

Uncharted 2 had great AI. They contributed to the combat and stayed out of your way and never died in combat.

 

[Ultra_Caboose]

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a sucker for nostalgia. Hell, the fact that I have less than 15 current gen games and nearly 200 from earlier ones is evidence enough of that.
When I play an old game, I enjoy it for what it is. Outdated mechanics, old graphics, etc., etc. It's certainly old and technically obsolete, but they're still fun.

Whether or not the old days of gamind were better is very speculative. I don't think it was, but I still don't deny the fact that nearly all of my favorite games are at least 10 years old.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

It really depends. There are games that absolutely blow modern games out of the water. On the other hand, the absolutely insane budgets of these games as well as programming limitations that come with using top of the line graphics engines really limit modern games in ways that older ones could surpass them. Overall, they are better, but I hope we hit a rut in progression of technology soon, then games will advance based on innovation like before rather than who looks the best.

 

[Lunar Templar]

I know im gonna get alot of flak for this but I disagree with OP for a multitude of reasons
The main reason being something which has blighted the last few years of gaming at least----- Patches, Bugs, Glitches and a whole lot of unoriginality

Games back then didnt need to patched on release day due to something overlooked by the developer as they were alot easy to produce. I know thats not a very good argument but at least on the consumers side you didnt have to patch the game up before playing it. You could just jump right into the action.
Bugs, although present, were usually the result of a crappy game. Take the amount of bugs in Cheetahmen for instance. Games like Fallout: New Vegas should be relatively bug free due to the massive amounts of care and attenton supposedly put into this generation
Glitches back then were easily sorted by blowing into the cartridge. Now they need to be patched. Tough luck if you havent got an internet connection.
Lastly, older games could be about absolutely ANYTHING. As Yahtzee put it "you could have a game staring a chef with a gun that shoots Veloceraptors". That age of games has gone only to be replaced by "Gun-metal grey Space Marines Vs Aliens MW clones with a cover system"

This isnt just nostalgia speaking here. I play older games just as much as I play modern games. It just seems that there are alot more problems with todays generation of games that the past generations. Gone is the originality. Gone are the days of proper splitscreen multiplayer ala Goldeneye. Gone are the catchy little MIDI tunes

Someone above me said that old games had hackneyed stories. Old games didnt care about the story unless the gameplay was good. Yes, there were alot of platformers back then but they all played completely different and rarely outright copied each other. Take Mario and Sonic for example.
Now take MW/2 and Uncharted 2. Different gameplay styles in the multiplayer but both have a perks system
There is alot more copying going on nowadays than there was back then

Just my opinion though and I doubt anyone will agree with it but if anyone does then feel free to join me in hiding from the inevitable flaming im going to get

take comfort in knowing your (possible) flaming is the result of being right, mostly

i won't go so far as to say game where better back then, but i WILL say, things haven't really improved as much as the technology has, mechanics and graphics, with out question are better

story?
that's debatable, since many classic games didn't have one to speak of sides 'this dood is evil and YOU need to wreck his shit', like Castlevania 1, or Mega Man(any of em really) on the RPG front though i feel this area has TANKED, they're are to few Dragon Ages and to many FF13s if you know what i mean, or they go the 'White Knight Chronicles' route and use EVERY over issued theme in the book for the 'plot'

Creativity?
this is almost a lost art any more, while i understand studios want to make a profit, and go for the 'safe bet' its lead to a floor of crappy sports games, crappy shooters that are all pretty much clones of each other to some degree

i'd bring up bugs, but see the quote above for that

over all i'd say what we gain in technological advancement we lost in actual over all quality, with the truly great games, largely ignored, in favor of the only 'average', like god of war, or halo

also, in gaining the ability to play people from all over the country, and world for that matter, we've LOST our sense of tact, giving way to 'aninimity breeds assholes', before we could punish cheaters, and overly load trash talkers, but ether hitting them, or booting them out of the house, now, all we really have is mute, which doesn't really fix the problem, just sweeps it under the rug.

do i think gaming should revert back to how it was when i was little ? o.0 are you fucking insane? by the dark gods no, there are some truly wonderus worlds to behold now, stroy's that wouldn't come through as well with 8 or 16 bit graphics,

what i DO think we need a return of, THE PRACTICES THAT MADE THE CLASSICS THE KIND OF GAMES THAT ARE WHY THREAD LIKE THIS EXIST and this debate is even being discussed

>.> and there's my $1.50