Do you value 'old' games?

Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
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15,077
I might be biased because the last two consoles I've owned are the PS2 then Wii, and have stuck with PC gaming since, but I think you're nuts to say there was a bigger jump from the PS2 to the PS3 than thePS1 to the PS2. PS1 was the primitive stages of 3D gaming, and the standard controller didn't even have analogue sticks - those came later to the system. The way I've always looked at it is the PS3 was basically PS2 games but now rendered in HD.

Anyways no problem for me in playing older games, actually a couple months ago I went through Doom 2 playing some extreme mod. But while I missed a ton of PC gaming up until 2000 I find a lot of the 'recommended' games don't really cut it for me, like I couldn't really get into System Shock 2. That's more a case of not being my type of game than dated technology though.
That's fair, I'm probably basing that on stuff from the end of the PS1 like Rayman 2, not counting development over the course of the console's life. Then from PS3 to 4 you have a lot of remasters and remakes and stuff like GTA V just coming out again.

Love the ignorance.

You're bagging on people for not appreciating your game, yet do the same thing by reducing Mass Effect to a "alien ****ing simulator" and assuming Super Mario Galaxy is the same game as the ones that came before it (only the NSMB games can really be nailed for that)

Not even gonna bother reading past that given the hipocracy.
I thought it was obvious I was exaggerating for effect. As for hypocrisy, I haven't played either of those because RPGs aren't my thing (three of them about the same thing especially, also when I played the demo of the first I couldn't turn it off fast enough) and because I've only ever owned a SNES and Game Boys (and because I legitimately don't see the value in playing one of dozens of Mario platformers, regardless of what word they end up throwing on the end of it).

Not especially. Again, the number of people who would be willing to sit through [old, classic movie] is probably just as low as the number of people who would be willing to play through [old, classic video game], so I think the comparison here is a bit of a fallacy. Kind of like how we're sitting here talking about BioShock as opposed to the objectively better/more important System Shock 2.

The marketplace and its desire for violence is the primary thing that undermines video games' ability to create legitimate works of art, but this is only a problem that profit-driven, main stream gaming has to deal with. This isn't to say that you can't have a legitimate work of art that's violent, just that that violence necessarily limits what kind of story you can tell, and that the element of player agency that video games necessarily have can absolutely serve to undermine the legitimacy of a story (see: most things by Ken Levine, absolutely everything by David Cage, and most things by Naughty Dog.)
I suppose in this instance something I should be more aggrieved at something like Spec Ops: The Line being lost to the mists of time, since it's of a similar worthwhile quality to BioShock and subverts established notions of objectives and violence that are usually found in games in a similar way.

There's obviously a limit to the sort of content you can have in a video game because of the notion of objectives, which is something few games have or can balance very well. How many great games have there been that you would hold as being story-driven that still require you to kill something, or multiple things? I don't know how to balance a story in a game with a gameplay mechanic which doesn't have defeating enemies at its heart, so I think you have to consider games with that in mind if you want to view them critically as some sort of artistic achievement.
 
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NyQuil

Big F$&*in Q
Jan 5, 2005
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Ottawa, ON
The real question isn't whether you go back and play old games that you enjoyed but whether you play older games than the ones you played first.

I'll admit to going back and playing games from my youth (and still enjoying them) but there aren't too many games that are older that I will play.

Then again, I'm pretty old, you're basically looking at Pong.
 

Aladyyn

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I've played HL2 and both KotORs for the first time around a decade after they released and they're among my all-time favorites so yeah, I don't mind.
 

Shareefruck

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Apr 2, 2005
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The real question isn't whether you go back and play old games that you enjoyed but whether you play older games than the ones you played first.

I'll admit to going back and playing games from my youth (and still enjoying them) but there aren't too many games that are older that I will play.

Then again, I'm pretty old, you're basically looking at Pong.
I agree to a degree, but I don't think it's necessarily the case that games were ALWAYS consistently great since their conception, and that anything that suggests otherwise is evidence of nostalgia and bias. When a medium is conceived, it takes a bit of time to round into form. Just like how rock music really took off around the 60s, there are bound to be peaks and valleys somewhere, and it's entirely possible to have grown up at around that time. If it's not the case that your favorite things from EVERY medium happen to be the era that you grew up with, I don't know why one would be skeptical of nostalgia and bias.

Like you alluded to, I don't think anything around the Pong era turned out to be lastingly brilliant in any way, besides maybe Tetris, which many people who did not grow up around that time still appreciate. Personally, I never gave the NES a second thought when I was younger (or even early NES looking SNES games like Final Fantasy IV), but I have an appreciation for them now (probably more than I do for the PSX era, which is closer to when I grew up with videogames). My videogame playing era was around 1995-2000, and I think the most condensed golden age of videogames was the five years or so before that, whereas with movies, music, and literature, it's in a completely different era well before my time.

I really don't think the whole "nonstalgia explains why old games are still revered" thing holds up at all, personally.
 

Osprey

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Feb 18, 2005
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It's often presented as though there's being nostalgic and there's being unbiased, but I think that there's another force that is opposite and equal to nostalgia (or an over-appreciation based on fond memories), and that's an over-appreciation based on what's new and cutting edge. We've all been guilty of that at one point or another, either appreciating a game for its graphics and other technical advancements to the point that we overlook that the gameplay isn't that good or overlooking a game entirely because its graphics aren't up to par.

I suspect that a lot of people who consider others to be slaves to nostalgia are just as much slaves, themselves, to what's new. If you have difficulty getting into older games, it's probably easier to excuse it by saying, "you revere them only because of nostalgia," than to consider "maybe my own infatuation with what's new is getting in my way of appreciating them."

I'm not saying that one is better or worse than the other. I think that we've all been guilty of both to varying degrees. I know that I've been. For example, I was particularly a graphics snob back in the late 90s, when 3D engines were rapidly evolving, and I greatly looked forward to games with revolutionary graphics and criticized any that weren't up to par. For example, I didn't give the excellent PC shooter Outlaws a fair chance at the time because I was somewhat disgusted by its use of 2D sprites almost a year after Quake introduced a completely 3D (sprite-less) engine. There were lots of games back then (not Quake, but others) that had great graphics, but only so-so gameplay. For the most part, those aren't the games that I'm nostalgic for, nowadays. I'm nostalgic for the games that maybe didn't have the best graphics at the time, but had the best gameplay. In those cases, I'm not fond of them simply because of nostalgia, but also because they were great games. The amount of nostalgia that I have for the cutting edge games of their time that didn't have much else going for them besides impressive technical aspects is relatively low and I've probably even forgotten many of them.

Anyways, my point is that I see it as a balance. You don't want to overly praise older games simply because you're nostalgic and you don't want to overly praise newer games simply because they're more modern. Somewhere in the middle, where you can appreciate both older and newer games for the right reasons (mainly gameplay) and recognize that just being older or newer doesn't necessarily make a game better or worse, is healthiest, IMO.
 

Shareefruck

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Another bias that perhaps has an even greater effect is familiarity. I don't know about you guys, but when I was younger, anything that didn't sound like dull conventional pop music felt jarring, foreign, alienating, easy to dismiss, and lacking to me, and classical acting or camera techniques just felt awkward and off to me, entirely because it's not what you'd expect from the norm and isn't instantly gratifying. It's not until you take the time to warm up to something and get over those meaningless accessibility hurdles that you start to go "Oh, that thing that I cared about and thought was essential before doesn't actually matter, and that thing that initially put me off didn't turn out to be a real flaw after all."

I actually kind of feel that all forms of bias stem from that, and that nostalgia/hype are just things that result from familiarity and unfamiliarity. It's best to see past both of those things and disregard them as unimportant factors that only get in the way of the truth.
 
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RandV

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Another bias that perhaps has an even greater effect is familiarity. I don't know about you guys, but when I was younger, anything that didn't sound like dull conventional pop music felt jarring, foreign, alienating, easy to dismiss, and lacking to me, and classical acting or camera techniques just felt awkward and off to me, entirely because it's not what you'd expect from the norm and isn't instantly gratifying. It's not until you take the time to warm up to something and get over those meaningless accessibility hurdles that you start to go "Oh, that thing that I cared about and thought was essential before doesn't actually matter, and that thing that initially put me off didn't turn out to be a real flaw after all."

I actually kind of feel that all forms of bias stem from that, and that nostalgia/hype are just things that result from familiarity and unfamiliarity. It's best to see past both of those things and disregard them as unimportant factors that only get in the way of the truth.

That makes sense to me. Personally I grew up playing the earliest JRPG's, but the earliest CRPG's I played were Balders Gate and Daggerfall. So while I can go back and enjoy playing FFI for the first time on a PSP (in my youth I got in the first Dragon Quest and Phantasy Star games but missed FF) I'd have a hard time getting older CRPG games like the Bard's Tale or Wizardry series.

On the other hand though some genres of games only need a certain amount of technology and the devs of 10-20+ years ago did a perfectly fine job already when they got it. Like say Metroid on the NES or Goldeneye on the N64 had hardware limitation flaws that will hurt the games if you played them today, but jumping to Super Metroid on the SNES or Halo:CE on the Xbox the games were perfected at the time and can still hold strong today.
 

Shareefruck

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True. In hindsight, it feels like a ton of those early Nintendo games were brilliant ambitious concepts that the developers had no business attempting to pull off with that hardware, because it just couldn't be done effectively, whereas the SNES iterations of some of them were perfect fully realized versions of the same ideas, that were done so well that you'd be hard pressed to ever improve on them (and few of the really good ones have, even after over a dozen years later).

The only games that become dated are the ones that either overshoot hardware limitations with ambitious concepts that the technology isn't ready for or that miss the mark entirely. Neither really have anything to do with being good at the time but bad now or vice versa-- that doesn't make much sense, IMO-- it's simply a case where it's easy to be blinded by that inspired ambition and boundary-pushing and mistake it for full out greatness when flaws that could have been identified at the time were wrongfully ignored as a result of those merits.
 
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Commander Clueless

Hiya, hiya. Pleased to meetcha.
Sep 10, 2008
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The real question isn't whether you go back and play old games that you enjoyed but whether you play older games than the ones you played first.

I'll admit to going back and playing games from my youth (and still enjoying them) but there aren't too many games that are older that I will play.

Then again, I'm pretty old, you're basically looking at Pong.

That's very true.

For me, I have trouble playing games from that same era that I didn't already play and love as a kid. Go back and play my favourites? All the time. Play a new one? It's tough for me. As an example, I tried playing the original Fallout while it was free on Steam and...I didn't get very far. :laugh:
 

Easy E

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Jun 9, 2015
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If I played the old games already, they do not get replayed especially if multiplayer is non existent. IE I am never going to go back and play the campaigns again on Gears of War, Resident Evil, etc.

Even though I think the game is nearly perfect, in a different timeline, Blizzard North still exists and they could build on to Diablo 2 LOD. I have come back and played it two different times in over a decade and it is still excellent. Only other game would be WoW that I have done that.

Diablo 3 (after fixing the mess at the beginning) wasn't bad but it just wasn't Diablo 2, it felt like an entirely different game.

I did go back and play Bioshock 1,2,Infinite (I was pretty far on Infinite) sometime last year. I was pretty entertained.
 

NyQuil

Big F$&*in Q
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As an example, I tried playing the original Fallout while it was free on Steam and...I didn't get very far. :laugh:

LOL, I remember playing that in my dorm in 1st year university.

The sequel was even better! ;)

But I'm not sure I could tolerate getting shot over and over again by my own NPCs anymore.
 

irunthepeg

Board man gets paid
May 20, 2010
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In a relational issue I am concerned about all these retro 8 bit games I see on sale on Steam. None of them look enticing. One of them is like Enter the Gungraon. Like what the ****? It looks awful. Where are the 3d graphics? Where are the GRAPHICS THAT WILL PUSH MY VIDEO CARD'S LIMIT??

SS_1.png


This looks awful!

You're an idiot.

Gungeon GOAT. And it's created in a 3D engine. The entire world IS 3D, they just fix the camera to top-down to create a retro feel because old games are awesome.
 
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Painful Quandary

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I bought the re masted (which really just means compatible with today's hardware and workable for PC) Turok 2 when it was on sale, and I have enjoyed playing it. I have also been meaning to get back to Fallout NV save or playing Fallout 3 to try out a mod, but I am not sure if they are considered "old."
 

X66

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Aug 18, 2008
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Some games age a lot better than others, but that shouldn't surprise anyone considering how many games follow the exact same formula they have for decades.

To me, gameplay will always be above all. Nostalgia does play a role, especially when I replay favourite like Outrun or Mega Man, but I have no problem going back and playing a game that I missed. For example, Hagane for SNES, never played it until a few years back. It was great, even all these years after.

There are some consoles however that I can avoid completely, like the N64. If I go the rest of my life having not played another N64 game, I'd be over the moon.
 

Shareefruck

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Honestly, I avoided the N64 even when it was originally released and active. I thought it was really clunky and ugly, even at the time.

An old gaming system that I think has held up beautifully is the Neogeo system, which was active in the 90s. For my money, to this day, there still do not exist any modern games that look any more visually jaw-dropping in motion than games like Metal Slug 1, 2, & 3, The Last Blade 2, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. The sprite-work that those guys did was insane, and oozed talent and charm. Great and interesting animation is a lost art that seems to be sorely lacking these days.
 
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X66

114-110
Aug 18, 2008
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Honestly, I avoided the N64 even when it was originally released and active. I thought it was really clunky and ugly, even at the time.

An old gaming system that I think has held up beautifully is the Neogeo system, which was active in the 90s. For my money, to this day, there still do not exist any modern games that look any more visually jaw-dropping in motion as games like Metal Slug 1, 2, & 3, The Last Blade 2, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. The sprite-work that those guys did was insane, and oozed talent and charm. Great and interesting animation is a lost art that seems to be sorely lacking these days.

Yup, and those games were awesome to boot.

I'd throw in Samurai Showdown and the King of Fighters/Real Bout games in that list as well.
 

Shareefruck

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Yup, and those games were awesome to boot.

I'd throw in Samurai Showdown and the King of Fighters/Real Bout games in that list as well.
It's a shame they never branched out from Arcade style fighters and shooters, too. I'd love to see that level of animation applied to other 2D genres like RPGs and other more large-scale games.
 

Bjorn Le

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May 17, 2010
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For me, I have trouble playing games from that same era that I didn't already play and love as a kid. Go back and play my favourites? All the time. Play a new one? It's tough for me. As an example, I tried playing the original Fallout while it was free on Steam and...I didn't get very far. :laugh:

Don't know why. I think Fallout stands up very well. Not as good as Fallout 2, where they significantly improved the UI, but still. I just got done playing through them again a couple weeks ago.
 

Commander Clueless

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Sep 10, 2008
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Don't know why. I think Fallout stands up very well. Not as good as Fallout 2, where they significantly improved the UI, but still. I just got done playing through them again a couple weeks ago.

You nailed the answer.

The UI is terrible and I found the controls highly inconvenient. They also just sort of throw you in there, and I lost interest pretty quickly.

Going back and playing something you know how to use is, in my mind, easier than trying to learn and get over an inconvenient UI on a game that doesn't immediately draw you in. Maybe it's easier for others, but I'm not usually the type to stick with something that doesn't grip me early on.

I played Jade Empire for the first time not too long ago. The UI is also not great and the controls are pretty bad, but it probably helped that it was familiar because of KOTOR (although the action style holds up much worse compared to the quasi-turn based style IMO). I played that one all the way through and rather enjoyed it.
 

syz

[1, 5, 6, 14]
Jul 13, 2007
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There's plenty of good 2D and/or spritework animation in games these days but it's either being done at Arc System Works or at indie studios.

But also ASW kinda made 2D spritework irrelevant recently by figuring out how to imitate it in 3D, so...

 
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Shareefruck

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Apr 2, 2005
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I'm not as big of a fan of the way Arc System Works games look and feel, personally. The way they move always feels too abrupt and choppy to me or something. Cuphead's animation is brilliant, though. Forgot about that.
 
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AfroThunder396

[citation needed]
Jan 8, 2006
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I mostly play Nintendo games so it's kind of hard to be a graphics snob.

But look at something like Metroid Prime, which came out for GameCube in 2003. Something with comparable graphics could be released as an eShop game for Switch today by some studio with a $500k budget. And really, the game looks fine. We've kind of reached the peak graphics threshold, and honestly we reached it a while ago. It's just a matter of cost and ease now.

Honestly, frame rate is a bigger deal to me than resolution. If it runs smooth I don't really care how many pixels they jam in there. Something like Breath of the Wild looks better to me than some grimdark hyper realistic dual-core engine bullshit that keeps getting pumped out by third parties.

And tbh, BioShock was very good but it got REALLY overhyped. It was kind of a more mainstream version of some serious mid-90's shooters like System Shock, Deus Ex, and Half-Life. A bit more challenging, atmospheric, cinematic, and a good old fashioned twist. In 2006 that was a big deal, because there was really nothing like that from mainstream big budget studios. And it was a very good game, I enjoyed it a lot. But I see these lists calling it a game that defined a decade, or the most influential game ever, or a top-5 games of all time, and I just have to shake my head. BioShock was a very cool shooter but it was hardly the first or best game to do what it did. No offense and I don't mean to sound like an elitist, but it's very easy to tell who had experience with "real" FPS games prior to BioShock, and who had only played mainstream matchmaking games like Halo or Counter-strike.
 

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