what does it mean for a game to "age poorly"? and what are some objective examples of this?
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what does it mean for a game to "age poorly"? and what are some objective examples of this?
what does it mean for a game to "age poorly"? and what are some objective examples of this?
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Ape Out Shirt $21.68 |
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Someone born after a game released and they suck at it because they cant adapt to the mechanics implemented.
>Someone born after a game released and they suck at it because they cant adapt to the mechanics implemented
This or someone fell for a gimmick game when it was new and instead of admitting they got conned they say the game "aged poorly"
There are no objective examples because a game being poor is a subjective judgment. Also, the DS is a retro handheld.
Plenty of generic CGA DOS games fit that bill IMO.
Ok but that mindset doesn't encourage discussion and OP asks a reasonable question, at least on the surface.
So please hear me out: just being CGA isn't enough. A good and unique game stands on its own. Many of these got graphic upgrades though and can be seen as poorly aged for this reason. Some others weren't unique enough and a newer game could similarly render it obsolete, particularly if other incremental improvements happened. Finally, this is the most dubious reason and I don't personally hold it, changes in controls like FPS pre kbm can trigger some. Mostly for this I would think
Treating the DS as retro encourages a lot of discussion.
>Treating the DS as retro encourages a lot of discussion.
Yeah because that went so well after they allowed 6th gen here after that one spastic kept flooding the board with GBA threads.
A reasonable question got a reasonable answer. There is no debate to be had. Games dont age, if it was good at release it is good now. If zoomies cant play them because its missing some hand holding QOL that isnt a failing of the game but of the player.
This thread is far from showing concensus on this point. I respect your opinion, and the others in your camp, just don't agree with that pov.
That would require people to take responsibility for their own opinions. But no, it's easier to just say "it's the game that's wrong."
Test Drive III
It leans way too hard on the "you can make your computer a CAR, and you can drive ANYWHERE" gimmick. It runs way too fast if you run it on anything more powerful than a 286, and it's way too choppy to be enjoyable if you use period correct hardware or a CPU slowdown utility. There's no objective other than not getting pulled over by cops or running into an object, the multiplayer is some shitty hot seat mode, and it sounds like ass on any sound hardware you throw at it.
>Gee, I sure wish this game's visuals were limited to an eye-raping, vomit inducing combo of cyan, magenta, black, and light gray.
-no one, ever
no it encourages discussion that isn't about using video games to prove your intellectual superiority. i.e your a fricking pathetic nerd.
Sour grapes to a bitter child.
Take a break anon, you have major issues.
very convenient narrative
Most Adventure games on the 2600. Mechanics are just bad.
Any games that prioritized technology or presentation, as opposed to relying on an original well-designed gameplay loop. For example, sports games, point and click titles, and [your favorite retro game].
There were plenty of gameplay-focused sports games.
Yes, but were they original or just the same game with a different skin?
FIFA Street, Wave Race 64, Super Mario Strikers, Neo Turf Masters, Tony Hawk Pro Skate and Downhill Domination came through my mind.
This is pretty close but I don't even think it has to be a case of gameplay being a secondary priority. Sometimes games are just venturing into unknown territory and its hard to get it completely right the first time Then the later iterations come along and render the first versions completely obsolete.
Like I remember breaking out the original Battle Arena Toshinden some years after the fact and being shocked at how unbearably slow and clunky it was. I never thought of it as just some tech demo, it had good gameplay and was fun as frick at the time, but it was like a rough sketch that wasn't fully realized and now that we've seen the final draft its shortcomings are noticeable
That's what I think aging poorly is: a game that was not necessarily flawed in its original conception but just got supplanted so thoroughly by subsequent titles in the same series or genre that it basically has no further use because it does nothing better than the games that came after it.
As another example: Street Fighter II aged well because later games evolved and were different and maybe added more features but they weren't just 100% superior in every way. You can play vanilla SFII and not feel like it's broken or gimped compared to III or IV. In fact, depending on your tastes you may prefer it Whereas Street Fighter 1 aged poorly because the sequels do everything it does but better. There's no reason to play Street fighter 1 any more outside of historical curiosity. There's not a person in the world who could sincerely argue they like it better than any of the other games. It's just worse in every way. It was supplanted so effectively and thoroughly it might as well not exist anymore. That's aging poorly
>You can play vanilla SFII and not feel like it's broken or gimped compared to III or IV.
2CE however absolutely feels that way because it's SO DAMN SLOW. They reversed that decision with Hyper Fighting for a reason
SF1 to 2 really is the perfect example of an improvement over the original, but I'm not sure it's an example of a game aging badly because SF1 was always kinda bad, I'm kinda amazing Capcom has never tried to remake it.
SF1 is a wierd niche arcade game. SF2 fricking created a genre and is easily in the top 10 most influential games ever made.
? If anything SF1 created the genre? (it probably didn't, IKC or Yie Ar kung fu are both earlier). I played SF1 plenty as it was kinda better than these 2 games, until SF2 came along. Going back really is hard, I tried to play through about a week ago and gave up. But if no other fighting game had been developed since sf1 it would be seen differently, I'm sure, but still recognised as a game of its time.
Great example really.
SF1 didn't really DO anything of the things we associate with fighting games today. Combos, supers, the idea that this shit can have a competitive scene, all of this spawned out of SF2's various versions as it was refined. There would be no fighting games today as we know them without SF2 having existed, if they stopped at 1 then the genre would look completely different if it managed to come into existence at all.
Jank is a perfectly acceptable term used to describe any game that comes out of Eastern Europe, Eurojank is a thing for a reason.
I don't agree with a few points you have made on SF1, but really you build a case for it having aged poorly, without me needing to. Thanks anon.
Great post.
Graphic adventures/point-and-click games have some of the most hair-brained, schizophrenic puzzles that don't make any semblance of logical sense in an genre of video games. They genuinely age poorly because of that and they never in vogue wither. That's not to say some of them aren't fun because they have a genuine rhyme or reason to their puzzle solving (Blade Runner for the PC comes to mind), but don't pretend graphic adventure games didn't have a problem with bullshit puzzle logic.
I can't believe some of you are so contrarian that you would bat for graphic adventure logic and say it's a "puzzle".
They didn't, they absolutely had a problem with people who aren't good at puzzles whining that they aren't good at puzzles. Most of the popular examples are either complaints that they have to do a puzzle in a game centered around puzzles or the game doesn't guide you in a clever enough way. Most of the puzzles that actually are bullshit are from games no one has ever played outside of hardcore adventure fans.
>Most of the puzzles that actually are bullshit are from games no one has ever played outside of hardcore adventure fans.
Monkey Island 2 had one of the most bullshit puzzles ever. And no, it's not the monkey wrench, it's the fricking spitting contest. I'm just going to copy what someone said in the last MI2 thread because they sad it better than I can.
>Assume it has something to do with a combo of spit sounds (snort -> swish -> ptooie)
>Isn't working so I walk around a bit and try and look at other islands
>Check the library cause maybe there's a book about it there but isn't
>Go back to starting island and enter the bar, see spit on the boards and assume I need a drink
>Get a drink and go back, drink it, spit, fail
>Look up a guide
>"Yeah you gotta put the yellow and blue drink together to make a green drink and spit with that"
>Do the above
>STILL fail
>Check guide
>"Yeah and it's gotta be wind assisted"
>Watch the scarf and spit when the wind is blowing
>STILL FAIL
>Check guide
>"Yeah you gotta cheat by buying a horn from the antique shop and blowing it on the other screen to trick everyone including the judge into thinking the mail boat has come and when they're all off screen you can move the flags and win the contest that way"
>mfw
That's a "frick you, buy the guide" puzzle, let's not pretend it isn't
You proved my point exactly.
>didn't pay any attention to the pirates in the bar spitting.
>nor did he try to mix the drinks together on the assumption that maybe he could.
>did not pay any attention to the background while there.
>didn't talk to anyone who mentioned the wind either.
>didn't know that the spitmaster was waiting for his mail.
>assumed he would do things entirely on the up and up in a pirate game.
I suggest you play something more suited for you intelligence level, like Mixed-up Mother Goose.
>you're dumb because you have issues with the single most complicated puzzle in the game that has multiple fail states and literally nothing else is even remotely as complex
Anon, please
You're dumb because you pay zero attention to events happening in the game world and do zero experimentation before throwing your hands up and calling it impossible.
The way you describe it, how did those thousands if not millions of people solve this without a guide? They can't all have been smarter than you, right? sorry this post just comes of whiny and poorly thought out. MI2 really isn't that hard
all adventure games are like that, they are designed to make morons think they are super clever because they cheat and read the steps online or hear it from a friend.
>do this ultra specific series of actions you'd never guess in a million years
do adventurelets really?
don't get me wrong i like adventure games, i appreciate them. I'm just not delusional enough to think solving a puzzle with a guide makes me clever.
I solved it without a guide when I was like 10. You just have low IQ.
ive never played the game moron, im commenting on how liars like you think you are smart for looking up the answer and claiming you did it
And how long did it take you?
A while. Few hours, days maybe. That's a good thing, games should not be possible to complete fast.
I'm pretty sure most adventure game fans have played the Discworld games which were the definition of Moon Logic.
>There's not a person in the world who could sincerely argue they like it better than any of the other games
Wrong. Bongs exist. Pic related
And that's why we don't take crazy people seriously, anon. I'm sure you would've agreed with him if he said that there's no SANE person who would argue it.
SF1 didn't "age poorly". It sucked even at the time it came out, and it would have been completely irrelevant and forgotten if it weren't for the sequels fixing everything that didn't work in it.
Sf1 was just bad though
It was designed to be played with gimmick carnival controls
Yes, but what aged in those examples? It's pretty subjective to say a point and ick has shit gameplay or story. I could see a text adventure or a proto 3d game being bad because the technology isn't there, but someone liked it, that's why they sold. This thread seems like a pointless bait question
>Yes, but what aged in those examples? It's pretty subjective to say a point and ick has shit gameplay or story.
It's not really subjective to say point and click games have shit gameplay, because it has barely any gameplay. Often times those games had impressive graphics because of static backgrounds or high-frame animations. That's why they were popular: The graphics looked good. Felt like controlling a movie or cartoon.
There's a reason why the genre died from the mainstream: Regardless of what you do, outside of maybe adding AI generated text and voice clips to NPCs, it's no longer impressive. Meanwhile you still get Donkey Kong / Pac-Man type games coming out and they're still fun.
With point and click games, the story IS the gameplay.
And that's precisely the problem.
If you say so, I actually enjoy that about point and click games. Guess it's not so objective after all?
It's objective in the sense that if you were to invest one million dollars into a point and click game you will never make back your money in 2024.
I love puzzle games, as long as it makes logical sense. Like Layton on the DS.
If you invested that kind of money into a point and click game today, you could make something really special, and if you succeeded, you would definitely make your money back.
Don't forget Broken Age and the King's Quest reboot. They did well enough and had budgets over a million. Sure they're not exactly recent examples, but they're recent enough to be after the point when you think the genre died.
You know what, you changed my mind, and might be right. But that game would certainly be an exception.
disco elysium is a point and click adventure game
You're not very good at puzzles, are you anon?
Shadow of the Beast is a perfect example. Huge back in the day, shown off as an example of a great platform leading game. Boring as frick today.
Most of those yuro action games were not that fun in the first place
>Boring as frick today
for you
>Huge back in the day
Because it's impressive visually but like 90% of Meeger games it's mostly a tech demo
It means the controls are clunky and the graphics are mid dogshit fr fr.
It's when a later game (often in the same series) does the same thing but better, making the original "obsolete" so to speak.
An easy example would be Super Mario Bros vs Super Mario World. Or OG Zelda vs A Link to the Past. Or OG Metroid vs Super Metroid, etc etc.
Then how do you explain games with no sequels or spiritual successors?
No games are 100% unique experiences, they're all a part of some genre conventions, and e.g. in the case of first-person shooters, there's a very clear split of before and after Half-Life. Before Half-Life story didn't matter, set pieces didn't matter, you were just shooting bad guys in maze like levels and collecting color coded keycards to open doors. Half-Life changed all that, so you could say that games like idk Kingpin aged poorly. Although they do have their audience and the "boomer shooter" subgenre is a thing nowadays, esp when it comes to indies.
>Before Half-Life story didn't matter, set pieces didn't matter,
Perhaps we have different standards, but I thought DOOM 1/2 did this as well as the technology allowed.
what? please elaborate because I don't think story was ever a paramount issue for the DOOM team outside of the DOOM bible which ended up being basically useless anyway.
I was thinking of setpieces, not story. DOOM didn't have much of the latter, no. It tried hard with the former, in spite of not having NPCs, extensive audio samples etc, at least I thought so.
Your point is fine. OTOH you're opening a few cans of worms with those comparisons that I don't want to touch.
>It's when a later game (often in the same series) does the same thing but better, making the original "obsolete" so to speak.
This. If a game ages well, it's generally because gameplay trends went downhill over the years making older entries more fun to play. Either that, or the game simply captures lightning in a bottle, in a way that newer games have failed, or in some cases not even tried to replicate.
An example of a poorly aged game for me is Goldeneye. It was revolutionary at the time with its use of AI, local damage animations and a bunch of other stuff. But pretty much every game since used these same mechanics, and in many cases improved on them, even by the end of its own generation. There's no reason besides nostalgia to play Goldeneye and not Perfect Dark or Timesplitters.
Another example is the first Hitman game. Hitman 2, Contracts and Blood Money straight up improve on the first in every conceivable way. It's just no worth playing anymore. An example of a game that has aged well in this sense would be Deus Ex. Its sequels make a lot of changes, some of which are improvements, others are not. Leaving you with plenty of good reason to go back and play the original. It's the only one of the series I still go back and play again, even though I liked them all.
Don't get me wrong, Goldeneye objectively worst than PD or Timesplitters, but I don't think that's a strike against the game. Those games are better specifically because they learned from the mistakes made in Goldeneye.
>An easy example would be Super Mario Bros vs Super Mario World. Or OG Zelda vs A Link to the Past.
This isn't actually true and is a good example why games aging poorly is rarer than we think.
In several ways, the design of the original Super Mario Bros on NES has yet to be surpassed. This is because SMB1 gives you huge freedom in jump control, it's the selling point of the game. Rather than innovating on SMB1's physics which is the genius of that game, all the SMB sequels just simplified the jump and filled the levels with gimmicks which are sometimes fun, but usually don't change the core gameplay.
If you want to talk about making SMB1 obsolete, the better answer would be I Wanna Be The Guy because it has the same selling point, which is high jump control, and gives you two jumps to work with. However, SMB1 still comes out on top in a way because Mario has a run button whereas IWBTG does not, so you have more degrees of speed control in Mario 1, which (unlike in the Mario sequels) actually matters a lot in how levels play. SMB1 is literally all about jumping whereas SMB3, World, Yoshi's Island etc. sacrifice pure jump quality and focus on enemy designs, visuals, autoscrollers, and all kinds of shit instead of pure platforming.
This is the trouble with saying games age. You personally may find one game less enjoyable than another, but there is probably some good thing that old game does which never carried over into the newer games. It is never so simple as old good, new bad, or vice versa. Game design is a long series of tradeoffs.
>making the original "obsolete" so to speak.
>Super Mario Bros vs Super Mario World. >OG Zelda vs A Link to the Past
This is the worst example you could've possibly brought, because having played both, they're not even alike. For something to be obsolete, it must replace the other.
However, having played SMW, I also played a DX version of 1 for a different experience. While I perhaps prefer playing around with cape, it's nothing like dodging hammerbros and other stuff from 1. I'm not the only one, I saw lots of flash games and mods of 1 back then meaning others also found appeal in 1 that isn't in smw, at the same time world has a hack scene but I never looked into it. It's too far apart to compare.
>far from showing concensus
This just proves that, as anon said on the second post, it's a subjective judgement, so no idea why that isn't 'conductive to discussion'.
games that have awkward mechanics as the technology was still experimenting the best ways to do things.
goldeneye N64 is a good example, aiming in that game is just weird.
Does it have Limited Continues?
Yes? - Then it aged poorly.
t. shit at games
I don't like replaying an entire game just because the developer decide to pull some bullshit on the very last level.
Transgender opinion
The worst take. The absolute worst. If a game has unlimited continues it shouldn't have been made. Yes, RPG'S included.
In that case the entire arcade industry shouldn't exist because if you've got then you've got infinite continues.
Some arcade games actually have a hard limit on continues regardless of your number of credits, and some games will game over you regardless of credits at certain points, NAM-1975 will game over you if you run out of lives at the final boss.
Limited continues were never good to begin with.
Modern gaming has become very samey and streamlined, in that every game of the same genre will play more or less the same. Even 2D "retro" games made by indies. Sure, in one game the protag might have wall jump, while in another he will have double jump or something else; but the controls, physics, the structure of the game, the enemy patterns etc everything is more or less the same. If you look at the NES for instance, SMB1, SMB2, Metroid, Zelda 2, Castlevania, Mega Man, Contra, etc they all play completely differently with different physics and controls.
"Aging poorly" means that the old game does not ressemble modern gaming; and since modern gaming is all samey, it does not encourage learning, experiencing and enjoying a variety of things. So, Castlevania would have "aged poorly" because the jump has no momentum, Metroid would have "aged poorly" because the jump has too much momentum and the player has to hunt for secrets to progress (something which used to be a quality, but not anymore), SMB1 would haved "aged poorly" because it doesn't let the player control his jump enough and the speed momentum required for a good jump is nowhere to be found in modern gaming, etc etc
So in reality there is nothing objective about it and someone using those words in fact shows that he's looking in old games only what modern games offer; and is unable to enjoy things past that comfort zone.
Wrong. There was a time when if a game was deemed too easy to beat, it could influence its rating negatively.
Anon, the reason modern gaming has become streamlined and samey mechanically is because 20 years ago we more or less figured out what works better. No one is ever going to go back to a password system outside of intentionally making a throwback game. No one is ever going to make another RTS where you can only control 1 unit at a time like Dune 2.
Oh, another one. No one is ever going to make another fighting game where the devs don't want you to be able to use combos on your opponents because it's "unfair"
You mean For Honor?
Which is not a fighting game.
It is a fighting game. Got all the trappings of one.
The main reason why modern gaming has become streamlined and samey is because of the development cost. The high risk that come from it mean publishers are more likely to just want to copy the best sellers.
But that's not the only explanation because it also affects the world of indies, which got to the point they're not even afraid anymore to say "my game is a mix between Old Successful Game A and Old Successful Game B!!". The mentality is your marketing and your entire existence is based on the merits of other works.
>The main reason why modern gaming has become streamlined and samey is because of the development cost. The high risk that come from it mean publishers are more likely to just want to copy the best sellers.
Nta but that's selling things short, it's also because we genuinely DID start figuring out a lot mofre over time what is generally good design and what isn't, and just because they did something in the past doesn't automatically mean it's good, nor does doing something today mean it's bad. In hindsight, the creators of SF2 were wrong when they said being able to hit your opponent with more than one attack in a row was a form of cheating because combos opened up much deeper combat than previously possible, and they realized they were wrong.
Funny, I've been playing some SoulCalibur recently. Even though it has unlimited continues, if I have to use one in Arcade Mode I consider that run "failed" and try again from Stage 1. It feels too easy otherwise. The AI is quite dumb but it doesn't really have any advantages to make up for it. It's easy for them to KO me if I'm careless, but it's even easier for me to KO them and 2 out of 3 rounds needed to win means that even if I frick up a single round I can usually come out on top (I know that I can change it in the settings, but 1-round matches make the game feel too short). It feels like cheating to have unlimited continues that I don't have to pay for on top of that. This game really needs the threat of losing money or limited continues to be enjoyable in single player in my opinion.
The games with the mechanics that only made sense in the arcades are another example.
Lives, timers, high scores etc. Even 2D Mario got rid of the timer only the last year with the release of Super Mario Wonder. And it somehow just made sense. What was the point of the timer? It either didn't matter at all and you finished the level with minutes to spare, or it started ticking down and you were forced to rush the level.
> Lives, timers, high scores etc.
all of those makes sense in games that are designed around them
I agree. People get caught up on, 'well, in arcades, the central loop is around procuring loose change from players. Since I bought the game, I shouldn't be subjected to archaic demands via design philosophy'
Nevertheless constraining the gameplay under fail states (timeouts, lives) creates urgency and risk >>> urgency and risk incentivise skill increase on the players part. The pressure creates momentum by which the intrinsic gameplay is necessarily engaged with in order to drive progress. That's a fine premise around which to design a game.
It's like how if you are an illustrator, drawing in pen (as opposed to pencil with eraser) removes the possibility to correct your drawing. The fail state is clearer, and you move on to another drawing if you make a serious mistake. This way your skill increases faster.
Anon you just pointed out the exact reason almost no one ever drew in pen, not even the legendary Nine Old Men of Disney.
Different anon, and no. You never read comics, I take it?
There are plenty of people that skip the pencil stage and start with ink instead. This is not necessarily comic related.
it's also seen as a good exercise for people to ignore using an eraser as it forces you to become better instead of relying on an undo tool. This gets even worse for digital drawings where the undo step is far more powerful even.
I'm not saying people should stop using erasers, but there are valid reasons not to under specific circumstances.
I almost exclusively draw with a pen. I just prefer how it looks.
You aren't being asked to draw 24 frames per second of animation that have to be overlaid with each other.
If I was, and I was using traditional media, I'd still use a pen. But also why are you specifically focusing on animation anyway? You brought up Disney, nobody else. That's also ignoring that they do eventually ink the cels.
>That's also ignoring that they do eventually ink the cels.
Inking is done by a different department whose sole job is inking.
So there are people who draw in ink? Got it.
I mean if you consider the inkers artists then you're giving them more credit than the industry will. Regardless, drawing for fun and drawing as a full time job are 2 very different things, and you don't start completely over on a frickup with a full-time job. The comic artists who do so are fricking masochists.
they're tracing someone else's work. they're not going at it freeform
>what does it mean for a game to "age poorly"?
This is a zoomer exclusive thing pushed on them by Microsoft, no one prior to zoomers complained about things "aging poorly"
You have a point there. Even the most proto-edgelord kids I used to play Goldeneye, Quake or UT with were always up for a round of SMB3.
But it's not just Microsoft, it's also Apple and all the other gangsters, why do they always have to call every single dumb thing they come up with a "revolution"? Judging by this it's incredible how many "revolutions" the West has had in the last 30 years.
Its design principles (especially UI and controls) were, in hindsight, fricking moronic or ridiculously overcomplicated. See adventure games having a ton of individual verbs for interacting with objects but in practice only one or two did anything, and one of them is "examine".
Do you know why games had thick manuals back then? Because their interfaces were an absolute horrorshow, and technical limits of the era meant they couldn't explain things in the game either. It wasn't until the mid to late 90s they started to come up with control schemes and interfaces that didn't suck. Do you know why X-COM was so legendary for its time despite its unforgiving earlygame? Because it didn't control like shit. If you play a squad-based strategy game with a lot of depth and a good interface, you thank X-COM.
Shut the frick up
>no one prior to zoomers complained about things "aging poorly"
you are so fricking moronic holy shit
It did something that only seemed like a good idea at the time, then later on you looked back on it and thought, "wait, why the frick did they think it was a good idea to do X at the time when Y already existed and was better?"
“aged poorly” is what someone who was born after 1995 says when they play a game that isn’t just a content treadmill
The only thing that objectively, definitely ages poorly is when a game goes for more realistic graphics. Because the reality is, realism in grpahics is always set by the technology of the time and so what looks cutting-edge and hyperrealistic today and look comically outdated in the next generation.
>what does it mean for a game to "age poorly"?
It means the game isn't fun to play anymore today after many more games doing what it did a lot better.
Also there are some things that, even though we complained about it even at the time, the problem is much more noticable now. Like free camera in 3D games because the fact of the matter is, a lot of early to mid era 3D had no fricking clue what they were doing with the camera and it's why no one likes going back to say, the original version of Kingdom Hearts 1.
I'm a small brained PS+ Extra subscriber and I tried this game and I was amazed at how annoying it was to actually play.
Pretty sure you were playing the HD version, which actually has a better camera
metroid aged poorly (health grinds, repetitive screens, annoying damage during door transitions) whereas super metroid did not, largely because it fixed those annoyances.
the only people who argue that games "age" are idiots, trolls, and children. which one are you, OP?
I think the correct usage of the term would refer to something that has a very specific aesthetic to the era and that is bad.
For example, Tomb Raider's combat aged poorly because the controls sucks for action and it wasn't due the technical limits at the time because Ocarina of Time came out the following year and it was much better implemented. On the other hand, TR level design and graphics did not age poorly because they were properly done despite the technical limits of its time.
This is the same reason no one ever says that a painting about a saint's martyrdom from the 15th century or an opera from the 19th century about a failed marriage aged poorly, a quality work will always transcend its context and era.
>Ocarina of Time came out the following year
It came out 2 years and 1 month later.
.Hack//IMOQ
Tank controls and no ability to quicksave.
it just means "thing i dont like", the badness of a game has nothing to do with its age. if the game is bad now it was also bad when it came out. otherwise, how old does a game have to be before i can say it hasnt "aged well"? i think the ff7 remake is a shitty game, do i have to wait 10 years until i can say it hasnt aged well, even though my criticisms of it are going to be exactly the same as now?
having to individually select units in Dune 2 is an absolute pain in the ass, try playing that game after Command & Conquer
Dune 2 you are fighting the gui more than you are fighting your opponents
I mean there's a reason everyone just plays Dune 2000 instead
Half-Life 2 is a prime example of a game that has aged poorly
Shitty physics puzzles, vehicle sections that drag on for way too long and the totally-not-cutscenes. These were all amazing technological showcases when the game released but they weren't particularly good game design.
Now that the WOW-factor of being impressed by the tech is gone all that's left of them is a smoldering garbage fire which keeps constantly interrupting the remaining good parts of the game which is the core shooting mechanics.
People will call you a troll but I agree. The physics and graphics were cool in 2004, but it’s a pretty mediocre game mechanically. The best section of the game was using the gravity gun to pick up saw blades and kill zombies.
One thing that always bothered me was no hands on the turrets. Like you are boasting about the realism of its graphics, physics, facial animations and lighting…and you couldn’t bother to model and animate Gordon’s hands on the controls of anything? You’re just going to have it magically move around, really jittery at that? This is a petty criticism but that has bothered me since day one, same with the handles on the airboat, they just move on their own. It completely breaks the immersion of an otherwise impressive looking game.
The first 15 minutes of the game were goat.
Otherway around, Doom 3 is the shit one.
HL2 aged pretty well.
It means I won the argument and you are not allowed to argue.
Warcraft 1 -> 2: I find it really hard to think of any reason why 2's controls aren't objectively superior
The devil's advocate might say that the devs knew of the limitations with the controls, for example how many units you could pick at the same time, and the speed at which you could issue commands and move said units. Then they designed the game challenge/obstacles/difficulty around these limitations.
If you could go back to Warcraft 1 and add 24 unit selection, rally points, keyboard shortcuts for building, patroling, stand ground, etc. It would destroy the difficulty and whatever challenges they designed (at least on single player).
I do agree that the controls suck ass compared to modern RTS but the game works with those controls in mind.
Dynasty Warriors 3 improved so much on 2 that 2 feels like an unfinished rough draft that wasn't supposed to be released.
Something zoomers say when they don't have actual arguments or when they can't explain themselves why something supposedly is bad
HL2 aged extremely poorly. The graphics aren't really impressive from an artistic or technical standpoint.
Its a very basic game and has a lot wrong with it. Lack of weapon variety, enemy variety, no final boss, silly cutscenes.
Contrasted with Doom 3 that is still good of not better with age.
if not*
Hard disagree.
The graphics still hold up today and especially so far the perspective of a game from 2004, there are some genuinely awesome weapons, the magnum and shotgun both feel amazing, the crossbow and gravity gun are unique and interesting to play with, the laser guided rocket is still something that games don't often do, being able to combine the gravity gun and the grenades is really interesting, the combine assault rifle just feels and sounds great. Yeah, most of the weapon roster is straight from HL1, but you could make the same argument for Doom 3. Every chapter does something different but still is based on the core gameplay providing variety that doesn't feel cheap (as opposed to something like Sonic Adventure where it's a different poorly made game every level for example), the cutscenes are engaging and tell a story that is deeply hidden to most players who just don't give a shit since you have to actively engage with the story (stuff like how the combine are draining the worlds resources such as how the water level is really low, people aren't allowed to reproduce, every combine soldier that fails to kill you has their family executed, etc, I could easily write paragraphs on this subject alone) and they don't remove control from the player, and while there's no final boss, it's better than Nihilanth.
The only point you have is the enemy variety, it's just barnacles, headcrabs/zombies, combine and the occasional big enemy such as striders and helicopters. But the way the enemies are used is still good.
Doom 3 is also good. I don't know why you think it has to be one or the other, it's not 2004 anymore. They're no longer competing for game of the year.
>Doom 3 is also good. I don't know why you think it has to be one or the other, it's not 2004 anymore. They're no longer competing for game of the year.
Nta but it wasn't about goty, everyone knows why so many people didn't like Doom 3 when it came out, it's because it was NOTHING like Doom 1/2. That's why people say Doom 3 aged well because people who used to hate it came around to it over time.
because HL1 is good
Doom 3 is good
HL2 is not good. Why? it started some of the biggest cardinal mistakes in games design that has plagued games ever since.
Its a really lacklustre game that threw out what people liked about the first for a completely different setting, a slavpunk dr who/V story practically on rails.
Its a tech demo but even among tech demos its uninspiring and everything it did was done by other games.
>theres no final boss
>its better than hl1 having a boss
having no climatic ending in a game is the mist obnoxious anti-game trend ever. Appeals to no one but cynical game journos.
Other games copied this and got rightly panned like Rage.
Terrible bait
>opinions are bait
when certain mechanics and systems not really related to gameplay are too dated or slow
like long loading times or extremely slow menus, something like that... password saving maybe
aged as a concept aged poorly, it doesn't hold up
If you ever use:
[x] has aged
does it hold up/holds up
jank
clunky
in an argument, you should kys
what if its true though? some games have extremely quick remakes or improvements that make the original outdated and meaningless
for example pokemon re-releases like crystal or emerald... aren't they just better in every way than silver/gold or ruby/sapphire?
I can't speak for Pokemon, but I can't think of a single remake that improves over the original
these are "remakes" that came out one or two years later which just fixed some of the moronic jank and added content
think of them like patches or dlc but you gotta buy the entire full price game again
There is literally no reason to go back to the original Famicom version of Fire Emblem 1 when the Super Famicom remake packaged with FE3 exists. The remake is just better in every way.
The remake is a condensed version and is missing several maps. Also I'm pretty sure there are balance changes which make it play differently.
>The remake is a condensed version and is missing several maps.
Those maps also didn't actually contribute to the narrative and were filler.
>Also I'm pretty sure there are balance changes which make it play differently.
Yeah, because FE1 was balanced like shit and the devs had a better idea of what they were doing by this point.
Those are just improvements, they don't make the originals obsolete. Not retro but the example you're looking for is Platinum, that one took a generation was fricking SHIT (Diamond/Pearl) and made one of the best Pokemon games of all time out of it.
>for example pokemon
Fundamentally shit game will remain shit unless redo the game from scratch.
It means nothing. Games don't get worse because they get older. If a game was good in 1987 it's still the same game it was in 2027.
>What does it mean for a game to "age poorly"
For a game to "age poorly" means that it sucks now when compared to other games that have come out since it was released. Maybe it had an interesting or new concept, but it was ultimately a bad game that we tolerated back in the day because there wasn't anything that did that particular gimmick as well as it did. We have thousands of more games at our disposal now and we can be choosing beggars if we want.
>what are some objective examples
There are none, because this is purely subjective. However, pretty much every Atari game and most NES games are examples of this. I remember people praised "Fester's Quest" on the NES back in the day, but nowadays it is trash.
there are a lot of 40 year olds here that can't handle knowing that something they like might not be of optimal design anymore
some of the design choices in games were once made exclusively with technological limitations in mind
considering that your favourite game's designer made said design exclusively because of tech limitations, cursing their own time period throughout said development, makes you look foolish, and ironically - childish
Some examples could count with the following:
>FPS games that control with arrow keys
>console RTS games
>games that would be 2 hours long if it weren't for checkpoints every 45 minutes (this one's for the rentgays from devs)
there is a reason some game design implementations like precise platforming stayed in throwback indie games that are still genuinely difficult (Hollow Knight, Celeste), and some went, like being sent all the way back, being forced to go through levels you already cleared. The bang-for-buck is greater in games that implement punishing levels that still manage to raise the bar throughout the gameplay loop, without having to rely on making the player "perfect" previous levels and sending them at the start of the game, offering them overall less content
You might argue that said repeated content exposure to the player is overall superior to the constantly fresh new levels pumped out before the player, but that would be a deviation from the central argument because no matter how you look at it - a repeated joke eventually isn't funny anymore. You are not in any means the target demographic of the intended design if you don't ever get "bored"
Before you jump at my throat, I do not consider the above two flawless games by any means, one being way too fricking long, and the other simply not being part of my taste.
However, they fulfill their role in their present cultural significance, and the ripples they caused in videogame design philosophy, spawning numerous copies
own a ps4 wii ps3 PS2 snes 3ds all modded
IMO the more past-facing people can be the better they are. Only dumb people value stuff for no other reason than its new and fresh
If a game ages poorly is usually means that it features poor design choices that are only apparent in hindsight. An example would be most early 3D games having bad cameras - modern gaming has more or less solved 3d camera controls but it took years to get there, so when you played in 1998 you just expected a level of jank and inconsistency across camera controls in games.
Some of it's more subjective, like old games being difficult vs new ones being easy, or handholding vs. letting the player get lost and meander round for hours. It can get circular because an old game 'ages well' if it resembles a modern game regardless of quality.
>it's the game's fault technology improved!
It's not a case of "technology" in most cases, it's "knowledge".
not every game design decision stands the test of time. as someone already mentioned: password saving. completely obsolete just a couple years later once memory cards and batteries in cartridges started happening.
Did you remember your mantra, anon?
No negative thoughts here, Anon.
Sadly I had some. Mostly from misrecording a really good mantra.
Usually it's a buzzword that few people actually care to define, as evidenced by this thread. It gets moronic to discuss because people have a different definition in their own heads, or they just say that to complain about something they subjectively do not like.
But usually I see two general meanings.
>aging poorly means the game gets worse over time
This only makes sense when applied to MMOs, multiplayer games, or other games that got patches, updates, etc, and the original game is replaced and no longer exists in any official way. This is much like how you and I age, where our cells are replaced over time and the (You) that existed 10 years ago doesn't really exist anymore.
But a lot of retro games, especially single player ones, had their release and received no updates or expansions. So the quality of those games hasn't changed despite years going by. Either they were overall a good game back then or they weren't. There is no "aging"
>aging poorly meaning the general public's expectations have changed and the old game is no longer afforded the patience past gamers gave it
This is more reasonable, but treating the problem as some fault with the game is moronic. It also ignores niche interests, because I guarantee you, despite the stereotype, there will be zoomers and eventually Gen Alpha kids that develop a genuine interest in retro gaming. Frankly it's probably easier for them to complete an old game now than in the past, given easily accessible guides and communities. Past gamers didn't have that.
Sure, a game's qualities might be improved in a sequel, remake, or w/e, but that should be treated as a separate piece of media.
>TLDR; "aging poorly" is a dumb slang phrase that poorly conveys actual meaning and doesn't have an agreed definition anyway
>treating the problem as some fault with the game is moronic
I beg to differ. Generally, this comes up in the context of the question "Will I have fun playing Game X?" And the answer is all too often "If you have played Games Y and Z, playing Game X after will leave a poor impression." As a game ages, the improvements that diminish it become widespread. You would be hard pressed to find a gamer today who will enjoy a SNES game about skateboarding more than THPS2, partially because the entire SNES library is trash, and partially everything from campaign modes to level design standards to control schemes to 3D graphics has arrived since then and blown the original two-colour dog evasion simulator out of the water.
Fun is subjective, and honestly the question of "will I have fun playing X" is a dumb question to ask, unless the listener knows your taste intimately.
>partially because the entire SNES library is trash, and partially everything from campaign modes to level design standards to control schemes to 3D graphics has arrived since then and blown the original two-colour dog evasion simulator out of the water.
That is your opinion man. I wouldn't wrote off any systems entire library as trash but you do you.
Bad controls, lack of checkpoints, level design where obviously standards were just really low at the time. Games do age because believe it or not as much as games suck now there have been many major warranted progressions in game design
Any game on a console that can't run fortnite
You can safely ignore someone here whenever they say a game aged poorly because it outs them as an outsider zoomer that doesn't actually like retro games and should go back to Gankereddit.
>b-but I'm 30!
A 30 year old protozoomer that should go back. Why do you think we have so many mario/zelda/sonic threads? Because morons are only interested in playing the same games that "hold up" to modern standards and aren't actually interested in exploring the medium.
You can safely ignore someone here with absolutist and non negotiable view that wets their nappy and cries homosexual/moron etc. etc. When confronted by a coherent argument they cannot refute with logic and reason. Not someone that just disagrees with your opinion.
>You can safely ignore someone here with absolutist and non negotiable view that wets their nappy and cries homosexual/moron etc. etc. When confronted by a coherent argument they cannot refute with logic and reason. Not someone that just disagrees with your opinion.
FFVI, all of it's mechanics were improved in the direct sequel
Except characters and narrative but, sure
Half Life 1.
The jumping puzzles are garbage and I'm tired of pretending they're not.
Skill issue.
One that comes to mind is 007 for the N64
Back in the day there weren't as many shooters, and it was very good for the time. However controls have evolved so much, that the controls of that era feel stiff, unimpressive
Any game designed to be controlled with the arrow keys instead of WASD and you can't rebind it in-game has aged poorly because no one's brain is set to use that for movement anymore.
Literally doesn’t matter when you can use a zillion keymapping tools to get the layout you want.
If I have to use an outside tool to make it work, that's not a positive for the game.
I'm sorry, but I have my limits as to what I can go back to and what I can't.
Just because you're moronic and unable to adapt doesn't mean everyone else is
Virtua Racing is probably a good example. It was a revolutionary landmark title when it released, but there really isn't much of a reason to play it nowadays outside of historical curiosity. It's fine, but there are hundreds of games released since that have improved upon it.
Absolutely completely 100% wrong. Virtua Racing holds up extremely well and audiovisually is still unique and unmatched. You just don’t like arcade racers.
Games don't age, people do. What once filled you with thrill is bland or silly nowadays. It's a part of growing up.
No thats called growing out of something. Different phenomenon completely.
It's exactly the same phenomenon. Notice how art, music or movie enthusiasts rarely, if ever, talk about a work "aging badly"? The thing is, those have been established as "adult" hobbies for some time now, whereas old games were mostly played by children.
>Games don't age
Plenty of anons hold tightly to this truth (it is, of course true if you take it in the biological sense). However, I still accept "aging badly" as a thing, and it seems the main issue for those that don't is one of semantics. If I read you wrong, please politely correct me.
Even if I'm on the money, I don't expect to convince you, but reach an understanding that the expression is idiomatic, a convenient shorthand to express the concept that the world has moved on, creating a different perspective of and new context for that game. In doing so the game perhaps has been improved upon in ways that make playing that game redundant to some, even if it is your favourite game and you personally still enjoy playing it. I have some favourites like that too.
>(it is, of course true if you take it in the biological sense)
It's the opposite of true in that sense because disk rot, connectors on carts losing effectiveness over time, etc is a thing. Games definitely age physically because of the medium they were created on.
>in a biological sense
>ferric disk coatings, silicon and metal contacts
Nobody was arguing that. You are also self-defeated by attacking the media because anons of the alternative opinions to you will point to correct copying and maintenance of games preventing these being an issue. We have lost games for this reason, of course. The losses were just entirely preventable.
Virtua Fighter 1 with entire decades of far better 3D fighters available.
Many examples of games that were great when they came out, and technically still are "good" games but completely pointless when you could be playing better games, including their own sequels.
Standards and trends in modern games are different, and usually either easier or dumbed down to focus elsewhere. Anything that may have been considered acceptable or even good at one point is held to these modern standards, and sometimes it’s hard to adjust because of how spoiled we are now.
If you’re already used to it, then it’s just not going to bother you. But some people will not want to put forth the effort to get used to it when it’s something they don’t have to put any effort into in modern games.
Look at System Shock, there is a slider bar built into the UI that controls looking up or down. Even in games that came out a few years later you can simply use the mouse to look up and down. If you aren’t used to that, it’s going to be a frustrating experience.
Kids today have near infinite choice of games immediately available to them, why put up with a frustrating game? It’s not like it’s the game they got for their birthday and won’t get another new one for six more months.
It doesn't mean anything. It's a completely meaningless criticism. I truly believe that if you don't like something now, you wouldn't have liked it back then either.
I personally feel like if a game entertained you when you first played it, it's done its job and shouldn't need to be held to standards you now have umpteen years later. That's not to say an old game is above criticism simply because its clunkier elements were "the style at the time", b***hing about things that annoyed you even the first time around is fine.
>That's not to say an old game is above criticism simply because its clunkier elements were "the style at the time
I think a lot of /vr/ does actually hold that opinion though, it does sometimes feel like people are only allowed to criticize things like shit controls if they were shit even by the day's standards.
Games that were good for their time but have been surpassed.
007 Goldeneye (N64) is a great example. It was amazing for the time, being the first console FPS to have multiplayer, in addition to having a really fun and interesting single player campaign, but pretty much every aspect of the game has been surpassed and improved by other games after it. There's no real reason to play it anymore other than nostalgia or speedrun autism.
>There's no real reason to play it anymore other than nostalgia or speedrun autism.
That's like saying there's no reason to read a history book because modern society surpassed those times.
>that's like
no it's not
Yes it is
no but it is like saying there's no reason to read a old history book when an updated edition written by the same author was released
>Revisionism
Nah
Anon, all writing of history is revisionism. That original book you read, THAT is a newly revised look at history or they wouldn't have bothered writing it and just given you an older book written by someone else (which was itself revisionism over a previous work). History does not change but what facts we know about it do.
if you can even trust the facts, most things you’re taught are untrue. look a the news today and now imagine how fake history must be
Sure but that's why even Herodotus, the father of history, said you're supposed to get more than one person's perspective and triangulate that shit to HOPEFULLY get somewhere around the general region of truth. You can't just distrust everyone always, that just makes you a cynical butthole that'll be miserable for your entire life. Maybe it's because people aren't as religious as it used to be so this idea is lost on them, but there are some thing you just need to have faith in.
>put your faith in cnn and rockefeller institute history text books or you’ll be very sad, bro
You know there's more than one country in the world, right? Actually, I would argue that if you are genuinely passionate about history as a subject, then you NEED to learn French because all the most influential historians are French and refuse to translate their shit.
That is not revisionism. It's like you don't know what a dictionary is anon. Revisionism is about trying to alter the broadly accepted narrative. What you describe is perspective, which is a kind of bias everyone brings when they record history. A perspective has to gain traction before revisionism can occur, right? There's lots of revisionism on /vr with hot takes on actual facts, and lots of games even do it in-world as a plot twist.
Anon not all revisionism is "changing the past to suit the ideology of the present", that's just the colloquial usage of it in politics. What do you think revising something means?
>What do you think revising something means?
Something not synonymous with revision.
>not all revisionism is "changing the past
You are describing historical revisionism. Obvious to everyone else this was the use of the term because we understand context. Can anyone actually be this dumb and not trolling?
Maybe it's because my first language is Finnish but it seems like you're implying that in english, all revisionism is nefarious in nature.
Ok that makes sense. Sorry for being harsh if I was replying to you. Initially the term was a pejorative and is still often used that way. It can be used objectively, but is still often used as a personal value judgement with some motive for doing so.
it is nefarious, revisionism implies replacing facts with an alternate factually incorrect take.
Stupid esl chimp
I see a lot of people saying that qol updates have made previous renditions obsolete. I think that's short sighted as there is a lot to learn from doing things the "hard way", it also builds appreciation and possible contempt for modernity. This argument would also entail that there is no reason to play smb1 because smb3 is an overall improved version of the same game. Also dk '94 overshadowing og dk by a liberal mile, but the og arcade is still fun and lacks the precision control of dk '94, which creates a much stricter dynamic that I prefer over the upgraded mechanics, while playing the original levels. Why play pokemon RB when yellow exists, why play pokemon yellow when pokemon GS exist, why play pokemon GS when crystal exists, etc... people's preferences change, games dont. This argument is very disingenuous.
>Why play pokemon RB when yellow exists
Yellow has too many fundamental changes from Red and Blue, many of which not considered better, to be a replacment for them. It is not the same thing as Crystal for Gold and Silver and is ABSOLUTELY not the same thing as Platinum is for Diamon and Pearl.
most 2600 games.
the longer that time goes on, the more it's flaws stand out and detract from it. this becomes especially true/noticeable when there are newer games that do same/similar things but better.
it’s the exuse zoomers make so they can justify playing a remake instead of the original game, because they need everything to have shiny new graphics and modernized control schemes
revisionism is lying snd saying code veronica was poorly reviewed by critics upon release to support why you hate it now, when anyone can look up the near-perfect scores it got via wikipedia
I mean that's true, but it's also revisionism to say people always loved it back then and only hate it now. No, fans b***hed endlessly about Steve and the amount of backtracking back then, if anything they were more vocal about it than now.
you just converted what i said that was factual about critics into what you believe was all that fans had to say, trying to conflate the two. people lie about the old reviews, that was my point
Yeah but who fricking cares what critics think, they don't matter. I've only ever cared what people who actually like playing games think about games, and people DO have a revisionist view of what the fan consensus of CV was. And it's proven whenever people who haven't played it in 20 years and praise it now, go back and realize yeah it's kinda garbage.
i never said anyone should care what critics think, my entire point was that people felt the need to lie and say critics shit on the game as per further justification as it not being good; to say no one ever considered it good, which is factually false. that’s revisionism. you seem comfortable with lying to support a narrative that you like.
>my entire point was that people felt the need to lie and say critics shit on the game as per further justification as it not being good
Those are people who care what critics think.
>to say no one ever considered it good, which is factually false.
It is false, but I'll be that guy and say those people who liked it back then are fake fans with shit taste.
it’s factually false that the game was poorly reviewed upon release. you can’t argue with history. you can only lie as you’re doing now in an attempt to revise it according to your whim
Anon, at no point did I initially bring up what the critics said about the game, YOU said that. In fact I agreed with you that it's revisionism to say that critics hated it when that's untrue.
What *I* said, if you look back at my initial reply, was, "yeah critics liked it but at the same time, it's a bad game and you're bad for liking it and to claim that RE fans only recently started hating it is just as much of a lie as saying the critics did"
i only illustrated that fans today, on this board, lied about its reviews. it’s my opinion that they did so to add weight to their opinion, but that’s debatable. i see no other purpose in lying and trying to convince people that it was badly reviewed. i never said fans were wrong ir right. i said people lied about the game’s score.
I saw the thread and one, I'm not that person and two, the scores were posted in reponse to someone saying "not an argument" when their criticisms of the game's shit design were brushed off. It's the opposite of what you're saying, the review scores were posted specifically to say, "see it's a good game because it reviewed well" and the person countered with "yeah and those reviewers have shit taste, what else is new?"
i’m talking about a thread from two months ago, not today.
Then why say
>that fans today, on this board
If you don't mean today. I know you mean "today" as in "nowadays" but that falls apart when there's an example from literally today.
that isn’t an example of what i meant at all because that isn’t people specifially lying and stating that the critics reviewed it poorly upon release. requiring someone to fetch the old reviews to prove that to be false. then the goal post was moved to ‘well critics don’t know shit’ but prior to that they were bolstering their own opinion by saying critics agreed with them and gave the game horrible reviews, which wasn’t the case.
7
The "aged poorly" mentality that plagues vidya is the same mind virus tha compels morons to request remakes of old games. Get this: the only games that deserve remakes are shit games that need fixing but the only ones that do get requested and actually remaked are games that people care about=games that are at least somewhat good (just think about RE4). When actual bad games do get remaked we get picrel, an hd texture/model pack that fixes nothing of the original's problems and makes actual bugmen scream in joy when they finally get to play a PS2 game with a new coat of paint
The crew can be controlled by the player, that's an original problem fixed.
IMO, it's when a game uses mechanics/features that we've since found objectively better ways of handling.
Some broad examples are games that needed you to write down 20 digit codes to "save", early first person PC games that don't use mouselook (even though you use a mouse in-game), or games using a punishing lives system because we were still making games with an arcade mindset.
It's a cope 99.9% of the time to deal with the fact they have lost almost all their gaming ability (or never had it) after playing tons of streamlined modern slop designed for every non-gamer on the planet. You can say well who cares enjoy what you enjoy and that's fine I'm just talking about where the insecurity of "aged poorly" comes from. It's a excuse to dismiss something that is challenging them in some way and it's almost never the graphics.
The reason I say 99% and not 100% is because you could probably find some quirky examples of games that were pushing some new tech that came and went and no longer have that WOW factor of playing something cutting edge. Example would be sega cd fmv games but I'm not sure how successful these games were to begin with.
>game is made in an era where some mechanic featured therein is either accepted as a standard or brand new
>game is highly regarded and praised
>a later game is made that is similar to older game but does away with or changes the mechanic
>altering/removing the mechanic demonstrates that the older game would have been better if it had implemented the same changes the later game did or removed it entirely
That's pretty much it. It is especially true when the original game could have done what the later game did, but didn't.
>what does it mean for a game to "age poorly"? and what are some objective examples of this?
Virtua Fighter 1 is the perfect example. It was literally mindblowing when it came out, and comically shitty now. This is because it was basically a demo reel for Sega's new 3D chip. People play all sorts of old fighting games now but no one plays VF1.
Trying again with the Sega bait?
>it's just people whining about puzzles they were too dumb to solve, control schemes they weren't dexterous enough to adapt to, and whining about "muh gwafix!!!"
allowing anything past psx on /vr/ was a mistake
>unsolvable puzzles good!
>clunky controls good!
>shit graphics (even for the time) good!
>I SHOULD WIN NO MATTER WHAT
>GAMES SHOULD ALL CONTROL EXACTLY THE SAME
>OBJECTIVELY BAD GRAPHICS EXIST
you couldn't ever show me a game that looks bad enough that i wouldn't give it a try.
like look at this fricking guy. look at him posting this screenshot like it's some kind of example of "bad graphics"
are you out of your fricking mind???
>like look at this fricking guy. look at him posting this screenshot like it's some kind of example of "bad graphics"
You seem to entirely miss the point of what I was saying if you think I said the graphics look bad.
>you shouldn't be able to beat a game
did your fricking brain fall out kiddo
never met a game i couldn't beat, sorry about your skill issues sis
But what about the game of life?
you literally said you fricking moronic cuck that you think games should be unbeatable
no, sis, you're just esl and don't understand what the post i wrote meant. maybe run it through google translate into your own language and then try again?
how do you define beating an mmo?
>how do you define beating an mmo?
Reaching the highest tier in all the major challenges offered by the game. In the case of WoW, pvp, raiding, and collectgayging.
i know what you meant, Yes a person should be able to beat a game no matter what you moronic c**t
sure, if you consider save states and cheat codes to be "beating the game" then knock yourself out
you have dunning kruger. Low iq.
>how do you define beating an mmo?
If it's EVE, join Goonswarm. There, you've won.
Did you beat world of warcraft?
yeah i did, i did everything i wanted to do in that game and quit when there was nothing left for me
So you didn’t beat the game.
>I fricking HATE retro video games!
>browses retro video game board
>and whining about "muh gwafix!!!"
Graphics are in fact the thing that can most easily show its age with a videogame, ESPECIALLY if they were going for realism. This is what Madden characters looked like on PS2, and at the time that was really fricking realistic outside of spending Silent Hill levels of money. Now it looks comical, it's practically a cartoon character, it now fails as its intended effect because technology in realism has advanced so much them.
I got two examples for pc
>Diablo 1
At the time this was considered 10/10 graphics not only because it looks good but it ran on shitty pcs. It's still good just because of the atmosphere and art.
>Deus Ex
For a very short period, maybe less than a year, this game was considered to have really good graphics. It was released however right when a new gen of graphics was coming out. No one after this period considers its graphics good.
However the games themes aesthetic and everything else are great and people still love it
Anon, Deus Ex didn't look anything CLOSE to cutting edge when it came out, people were calling it out for characters looking like action figures even at the time. Don't get me wrong, I actually love the action figure look and I think that if you want an example of a Deus Ex game whose visuals aged terribly, Invisible War is right there with the uncanny valley stare from all the characters. But DX was not cutting-edge even at the time.
thats wrong, and you don't understand my point, for a short window it was considered graphically very good. Your perspective is the post initial release perspective that online circlejerks accept as fact.
>for a short window it was considered graphically very good.
Which I disagree on. If you want a game that was head and shoulders above the standard at the time and made people say "that's a damn good-looking game" pre-PS2 release, DX is not the game I would point to, Soul Calibur 1 is.
Because you are wrong. The reviews at the time said the games AESTHETIC was bad, it was whiney game journos complaining about colours like too much grey.
The games graphical power was not in dispute and was lauded
I wasn't talking about reviews, to day it had really good graphics for its time ignores other games that came out at the time that fricking blew it out of the water like Skies of Arcadia.
>and furthermore that the characters are often equally good looking and made livelier because their mouths move when they speak
Really? That's what the journos said? I would've thought they'd say the opposite, that everyone's 3d model head is basically a square with the face texture badly stretched over it and thus when they are talking, it looks like it's movement independent of the rest of their skull. A similar problem I noticed a decade later with LA Noire, once someone points out to you that their face seems to animate independently of their head in that game you can never unsee it.
>to day
to say*, I meant
you are missing the point. The point is for a short time Deus Ex was considered good graphics. Then it aged in a short amount of time.
>Really
yes really, you see from this paragraph they thought the graphics were good
Which still surprises me because I think the game's visuals are presented very well but by themselves aren't much to write home about. Contrast that with Invisible War which was quite graphically impressive for 2003 but like I said, everyone's got an uncanny valley thing going on.
well thats exactly what happened Deus Ex came out in 2000 and then Halo 2001 set the bar higher.
Deus Ex overall hasn't aged poorly, the game itself is still good.
>Deus Ex overall hasn't aged poorly, the game itself is still good.
Sure but when people say that they generally mean the writing, the voiceacting (well...most of it), the gameplay, the music, etc.
this is the gamespot article
>Deus Ex's graphics aren't very good, either. Though the game uses Epic Games' Unreal engine, which was once lauded for its exceptional visual quality, Deus Ex is actually a fairly bland-looking game because of its incessantly dark industrial environments. It's true that some areas of the game look really good, like an underground Paris nightclub and futuristic Hong Kong, and furthermore that the characters are often equally good looking and made livelier because their mouths move when they speak. But in consequence of such detail, the game tends to run slowly even on high-end computer systems. Deus Ex also has a few other apparent technical issues, such as the positively huge save-game files that are created whenever you save your progress - these can be in excess of 20 megabytes - and also the occasional tendency to crash during scene transitions.
they are outright saying the graphics are bad for subjective reasons
this
how exactly the boards of Ganker attract an audience that hates its own board topic is beyond me.
when a game goes for realism and then realism the standards for realism changes
>hundreds of posts
>only 20 images
Frick off. You're on an IMAGE BOARD. Post some fricking IMAGES. Also, get the frick off your phone.
At lot of these posts are way too big for anyone to reasonably type up on a phone. Also, the thread is posing a question more than anything so of course the focus will be on what we're saying rather than anything in particular to look at.
>At lot
A* lot
Half Life 2 is the best example of a game aging poorly
Obsessed samecuck
They are just bad games but due to reasons like first or one of the few in it's genre, best thing at the time, they were lauded.
After years or decades of reflection they are just not good games, bad game design, bad concept, bad graphics etc.
>best thing at the time
A lot of the time they aren't even that.
I love Kingdom Hearts 1, but the game came out after DMC1, it is a worse action game than DMC1 is.
But I don't say KH1 aged badly. Its camera on the other hand definitely fricking did, and that's why no rerelease has the original godawful camera controls.
i mean a good example is Doom. On release was the best fps ever made. Undeniable. Is it the best fps now? hell no. The vibe is completely different it was an immersive fps adventure back then. Now Doom games feel like an arcade shooting parlour
>Is it the best fps now?
I mean it's up there.
my point is how it feels, back then if you wanted the latest coolest most advanced fps you got Doom. Then Quake, Then Unreal, Then Crysis, then CoD etc.
Now if you say i want the best adventure fps you don't say Doom, unless its Doom Eternal.
That wasn't my line of thought at all. Rather that Doom's controls are so tight and it was since day 1 so editable by fans to make their own creations that it's timeless, it'll never stop feeling good to play.
fan creations are not the game and besides Doom was superseded by Marathon a year after
Look I know you guys don't like hearing this but there were way less Macgays around back in the day than you think. Yes, Marathon is a good game, but barely anyone even played it compared to Doom thanks to being stuck on different hardware.
doesn't matter. Marathon objectively is superior to Doom
>bait
Take a game that was fun to play in the past. Is the game still fun to play today? No? Then it hasn’t aged well.
When we play retro games in current year, we don’t play them with the same mindset that people in the past played them with. We are burdened with the knowledge of the future.
When you boot up Goldeneye on the n64, you’re subconsciously comparing it to other, similar games. In 1997, that similar game might have been Doom or Wolfenstein. Today, that’s Halo or CoD. And compared to Halo, and every other console FPS since, Goldeneye feels fricking terrible. The controls, graphics, framerate, etc. just do not hold up in the slightest. They are shit and you realize how shit they really were now that you have something better.
Maybe the game is still fun for you. May e it’s not. That’s subjective.
This goes for any part of the game. Game design, controls, graphics, implementation of mechanics, movement, physics, literally anything. Even dated jokes and references.
In summary, Street Fighter 1 = aged like shit. Street Fighter 2 = aged well.
>[game] age poorly
only morons say that. a game released in 1993 is still the same game in 2024. games don't "age", unless we're talking about something like online games with constant updates.
Mario 64 to this day is a fun game, it doesn't matter how much 3D have evolved since then.
I'm gonna name some Atari games to shut you up.
The Atari 2600 and 800 (something you probably don't know exists) have pretty good libraries.