Are there games that you tried but just couldn’t get into because they feel outdated? Games that, in theory, you would enjoy, but don’t because the controls, graphics, writing, or mechanics just don’t feel good anymore. Games that, compared to today, just don’t hold up to your standards.
I recently tried playing Heroes of Might and Magic III, and I realized that a lot of the invisible language used through game design from that era, I do not understand. There are many things that the game didn’t explain, and I assume they were just understood by players. Not only that, but I imagine there was a lot of crossover between video games and board games back then, so maybe that language was used as well. I ended up downloading a manual and putting it on my second screen and I get it and played it, but it just wasn’t for me.
I also dropped Mirror’s Edge, but this time it was because of the graphics. It looks and feels great, but the graphics give me a headache. There is way too much bloom, and for some reason, there are some parts that look like the imaginary lens has been covered in Vaseline. This didn’t bother me before, but my eyes are not used to it anymore.
There are also games like the first two Tony Hawk Pro Skater games that I can’t fully get into because they’re missing mechanics from the later games. The levels and controls feel great, but they don’t feel complete without those mechanics. It keeps me from enjoying the games as much as the others.
Please share yours!
Yeah absolutely. I think with a lot of these older games that are considered to be the GOATs of their respective genres you’ll run into the same problem: They were so good, that the mechanics/ideas become the minimum requirement for all games thereafter. So, if you played the game on day 1, it was an innovative masterpiece the likes of which you’d never seen before. If you play it 10-15 years later after having played modern games in the same genre, it feels like the same old shit except without the 10-15 years of improvements.
For me personally, the game I’ll get crucified for not enjoying is Half Life 2. I played through the entire game. It was ok. I was pretty bored for most of it though. Shooters aren’t generally my thing for one, but even that aside the game was very milquetoast to me. I did a lot of reading up on the history of HL2 afterwards because I was astonished that I didn’t enjoy such a legendary game and I think I came to the conclusion that some new mechanics such as the cover system and story-driven nature of HL2 were what made it such a hit in 2004. But 15 years later those mechanics weren’t new and exciting to me and the story is decent but a far cry from amazing.
The other game that stands out to me is Assassin’s Creed 1. I couldn’t make it more than a few hours into that game. Just so boring and repetitive, the combat was boring, the collectables were boring, most mechanics didn’t actually seem to matter…I just hated the game lol. I do think it’s another example of later entries in the series/other games doing the same thing but better so going back to the OG just felt like a slog. But I really hated AC1 hahaha.
A big part of HL2 was also the physics. No game did that before to the same extent, so it was novel and cool. The gravity gun was super unique and all the physics puzzles were new and cool.
I tried replaying it a few years back and had the same experience as you. Every physics puzzle felt boring and just stopped the flow of the game. The gravity gun is still fairly unique, but it has lost a lot of its charm. It’s just not the same experience as it was around the time it released.
I liked that gravity gun was op but you need to find things to throw before you can use it
Half-Life 2 has suffered the fate of Seinfeld - the work was so monumental in its field that it revolutionized everything coming after it. Many of those iterations accomplished certain things better. Going back you think: what’s the big deal? Basically every game has physics, ragdoll enemies, novel gimmick weapons, and an action-packed cinematic feel.
Reminds of me of when I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and was confused because I had heard great things about the soundtrack, but it was just a bunch of songs I had heard before.
About halfway through the movie I realized that it was an original soundtrack and it was so influential that it became a cliche. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a cliche, not because it followed a saturated trend, but because it itself was copied by everyone else.
AC1’s concept and maybe even story has held up, but you’re right that the later entries feel miles better.
Reminds of me of when I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey
Exactly this. The same applies to many of the Great Films or the Great Games. They were amazing for their ground-breaking and their trend setting.
But now, decades later, everyone learned from it and improved on their work. We take the new things for granted, so the originals looks boring and dated.
Ezio or bust.
AC1 is the foundation of basically every ubisoft game since, but I can totally see how it’s unplayable if you didn’t play it first.
AC1 had those same criticisms back then too. I played it back then and hate finished it and wasn’t going to check out the rest of the series but then the ending reveal hooked me. And AC2 addressed lot of the complaints.
Half Life 2 was mostly noted for the extreme technical advancements. Take a look at what a gaming pc looked like when it came out. It shouldn’t have been allowed to be so advanced.
Half Life 1 was the one with the gameplay advancements. I played both on release, and both times felt like I’ve just entered another multi-verse.
Far Cry 1 managed that, too.
None of them hold up today. They are still as great as they were back then, but the feeling is all gone. I’ve recently finished all of them again, just to check.
Def agree on half-life 2. I even played HL1 before to prep, and weirdly enough enjoyed that more than I enjoyed HL2. Guess it’s hard to understand the hype when you weren’t there when it came out.
For half life, try playing it in VR. completely new experience
I second this!
Do you mean Alyx? I actually do own that, but haven’t got around playing it yet.
Oh no the original half life 2. There is a VR mod for it that gives 6DOF with motion controls
Recently had this with PS1 Tomb Raider.
I can see the skeleton of an amazing game. For 1996 and no reference its absolutely amazing achievement. But the controls suck, gameplay is stiff and I hated climbing that damn waterfall and the combat was terrible.
I appreciate what’s there but I’d need to cheat, or use save states to play any further than the second cut scene.
When Witcher 3 was winning all those awards, I wanted to give the original game a go.
Don’t. I imagine it’s nothing like Witcher 3. It aged terribly poorly.
I bought a bundle with all the 3 witcher games and tried both 1 and 2. I could jot even get through the tutorial in 1 and could jot beat the first boss of 2. Each game controls completely differently from one another.
I really liked Witcher 2 though. It’s a good game.
Yea, I don’t know. I disagree with the others. They’re definitely not modern games, but I think they’re both still quite good games individually.
That Kayran fight is one of the most unfortunate things about Witcher 2. It’s far too difficult a fight for a first boss, and almost all of that chapter is a drag to boot. The game is so much better after that point.
My favorite moment in that game is a serious case of understatement in dialogue prompt. You have an option to help one of two diametrically opposed people and if you choose “Help person A” you draw your sword on person B. If you choose “Help person B” you immediately throat punch person A.
Similar to how “push dijkstra aside” leads to Geralt breaking his ankle in a really violent matter.
Yeah, Witcher 2 felt like something completely new when I started it up right after finishing the first game.
I imagine going from 2 to 3 will feel the same.
Not so much to be honest. The 3rd one is just way more open world and the combat is so much smoother and more responsive.
I remember playing the first game and getting stuck on the tutorial because I was mashing the left click button trying to swing my sword only to have Geralt hip thrust at the enemies.
But once you figure out how to swing the sword, the game’s actually pretty fun. One thing I particularly liked is that there’s an investigative storyline where you actually have to go and investigate and figure out the answer with the clues provided, and you can fail. I went into it thinking it would be like most modern games where you only get obviously correct or incorrect dialog options and angered everyone in the process.
It did have some positive traits, but the gameplay just didn’t do it for me at all.
I did make it through the whole game, so I feel like I can hold that opinion, haha
People didn’t like its mechanics even back when it launched. Personally, it’s still somehow my favorite even tho objectively it’s less fun to play and less polished than the other two. Something about its story and the atmosphere makes it more unique and genuine.
It does have a great story!
The typical advice for people looking to get into the Witcher games is to watch a cutscene compilation of the first game, then start with the second. Don’t bother with too many side quests in the second; Just make it through the story so you know the broad strokes and major decisions. Then take that save to the Witcher 3, and just play that one from now on.
Because going backwards is so incredibly difficult; Each game adds a ton of quality of life improvements, so going back to older games feels horribly sluggish and clunky.
Yeah, I actually enjoyed the plot. But the gameplay kept getting in the way of that…lol
Yeah, I don’t know how unpopular the opinion is, but the original Witcher didn’t strike me as a particularly good game. It was a… fine… I guess game, but with mature elements and tone that other games in the genre lacked. I slogged through it in preparation of playing Witcher 3.
Pokémon, actually. Just a month ago I wanted to play Soul Silver. But man, it is tedious. There’s so much slow dialog, long animations, and little inconveniences everywhere (even in the menus). And I feel like you also have to grind to progress, which I absolutely hate in games (but maybe I also just didn’t play well enough, whatever). So yeah, quite disappointed with it since I remember the 3DS games being quite fun.
I think this is a greater problem with games that are technically aimed at children. There is so little respect for your time generally, but I think it’s especially egregious when it comes to menus, dialog, and animations. Additionally, there are many things that are in sequence (with large unneeded gaps between) that could happen more or less simultaneously.
Conspiratorially, I think this is to pad play time, and for kids the animations and what not are jingling keys that keep then occupied enough they don’t care or notice.
I was just thinking this exact same thing… but about Red Dead Redemption 2. I had to stop playing it because it had no respect for my time.
I’m used to driving to places to start a mission like in all the other GTA games, but in RDR2, it would be about 10 minutes of riding a horse before the real mission started.
The animations take way too long sometimes, and cutscenes and a lot of dialogue are unnecessary and feel like padding. Those 1-2 second animations add up when it’s a 50+hr game
I really enjoyed those tbh. One of my favourite things to do in RDR2 is just riding around and enjoying the scenery, or chilling in Saint-Denis at night time. Gaming time is chill time. There’s no rush to finish a story.
Yeah, I was going to say the same. RDR2 is one of those weird games where I’m okay with wasting time. Because the entire game is so fucking scenic that I can just wander around doing whatever catches my eye. The mission pacing in the beginning of the game could benefit from some tweaking, (the snowy sections are just so slow,) but the rest of the game feels like a nice scenic drive; Even if you have an eventual destination, you’re just enjoying the journey.
I was very disappointed that one of the animations they didn’t bother with was shaving and hair cuts. I wanted to see that.
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I haven’t played since ORAS, but I think they’ll always have those tutorials cause they’re targeted at kids. Like I was playing the original at 10 and now my kids starting to get into Pokémon at 6.
I feel like they should allow an “adult” version though. Like no hand holding and harder.
It’s wild how little the most financially successful franchise of all time has innovated.
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I’ve always wanted there to be an option when you start a new Pokemon game that just lets you say “I’ve played Pokemon before let me get into it”, it really is a pain in the ass as an adult.
Ironically another draw y for emulators over the two thing. Just speed up the boring bits 8x
The games really need an option to just turn off tutorials. I imagine it’s a little bit trickier than that because they need to be designed in a way a small child won’t accidentally turn it on without realizing. But there must be a way to do it.
Civilization has settings buried in the menu like
New to Civilization (default)
New to Civilization VI
New to Civilization [Expansion 1]
New to Civilization [Expansion 2]
Disabled
Something like these options could go a long way -
New to Pokémon (all tutorials)
New to Pokémon on [Console] (tutorials specific to controls on that console)
New to Pokémon [Generation] (tutorials specific to new mechanics in that generation)
Disabled (no tutorials)
Pokemon is better with game shark style cheats. It’s way more fun to have the option to get 100x more xp, and force Pokemon to appear rather than grind a 1% appearance rate. Pokémon even made TMs reusable eventually, but you need cheats for that in the early games.
Or just a speedup button! Red and Blue are some of my favorite games ever, but I haven’t played them without a speedup button in like 20 years.
Hm I’ll think about it. Seems like this is really the way to go. I was playing on a modded DSi though, so I will probably have to switch to an emulator to use these kinds of cheats. Still, sounds like a good idea.
Check out the myriad of rom hacks out there. So many of them improve on the original games in virtually any way you can think of.
This is the way. I stopped playing the originals after X/Y, but some ROM hacks and fan games are so much fun.
I was thinking about that. Thank you for the suggestion and also the link :)
You can change options to remove animations and speed up dialogue.
Also, switch from “Shift” to “Set”.
Shift is little kids’ mode. Set is normal mode. Too bad it’s set to easy by default
Although the original commenter’s mileage may vary considering they complained about too much grinding, so I don’t think their issue is with the game being too easy.
Fair point, but this forces the player to get better! Haha
I always thought about the differences of these 2 modes, but never tried it out. What exactly does it change?
You know how in default when you are in a battle and knock out an opponent’s pokemon, it tells you what they’re going to put out next and asks you if you’d like to switch pokemon? That’s ‘switch’ mode, in ‘set’ mode you aren’t asked that and have to use a turn to switch pokemon if you’re at a type disadvantage, meaning they get a turn of damage or set up. Really makes you think about strategy a lot more, and is integral to challenge runs like nuzlockes.
Oh I see, thank you.
In “set” mode, the game doesn’t ask you if you want to switch every time an opposing trainer sends out a new pokemon.
Alright, thanks for the info.
Trust me, first things I do in Pokémon games. Didn’t help.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was good, but I can’t play 1 or 2. They definitely don’t feel the same.
For newer games, I can actually play the older Zelda games, but I can’t stand the latest games. Not a big fan of the gameplay with weapons breaking and how much they pushed the open world thing. I very much prefer smaller maps with more story.
Oh! I tried playing Neverwinter Nights recently and… I bounced. I want to try again soon because people really love that game (and its modding scene!), and I love D&D (having only played 5e, however), but it’s not appealing to me as much as I wish it did.
I played the crap out of Neverwinter Nights back in the day, but I picked up the remastered or whatever version on steam and just can’t handle the controls anymore. Hooray for BG3 to scratch the same itch with improved controls!
I really enjoyed the original Neverwinter Nights, went back and played it relatively-recently (despite the fact that the main storyline, pre-DLC, is pretty bland).
But I tried playing the newer Neverwinter Nights 2 and it just did not draw me in at all.
Still haven’t tried BG3.
BG3 is the best version of DnD on a computer in my opinion. Great characters including enemies, so much flavor, and it moves right along with tooltips galore to let you know aht is going on. While there is a lot of gratuitous romance available, you can easily turn everyone down if it isn’t your jam. You can do pretty much anything and “screwing up” just tends to lead to more options!
I love talking to the goblins! Make friends before wiping them out!
Being DnD there is a lot of fiddly bits and the devs love exploding barrels, but to be honest they kind of add to the charm.
For what it’s worth, the story to the main campaign of NWN2 is pretty tropey and bland. However, you should give Mask of the Betrayer a shot if you don’t mind main campaign spoilers and think story could keep you invested over gameplay. I never finished it, but the story was quite fresh and unique. It’s wildly well reviewed, to the point that while you have to deal with the Epic level rules, its still worth playing a bit just for the weirdness involved.
What’s so different about the first two Baldur’s Gate games? I was thinking about getting the first one on my phone
I tried playing Icewind Dale on my phone after enjoying Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 on my PC. Don’t bother. The touch UI just cannot keep up in any remotely tactical situation, at least not for my tactics-heavy wizard playstyle with milking every turn as much as I could.
There is a lot to read. And it is probably not appreciatable on a phone. (Tablet may be fine) They are a totally different ruleset and while it is 2d and all the story is definitely deep. Many hours…
They are a totally different ruleset
Specifically AD&D 2nd Edition. Back in the days of THAC0. To give an idea of how different it is from 3e and later editions, classes were restricted by race, there were two different ways to be multiclass (one for humans, one for everyone else and they work very differently), and lower AC is better - instead of rolling d20+attack bonus and comparing it to target AC you roll d20 - target AC and compare it to the attackers THAC0, which is the number they need to roll To Hit AC 0. AC could be negative as well, meaning that THAC0 wasn’t necessarily the highest number you might have to roll to hit. Thief skills use percentile rolls. Saving throws were weird, both in mechanics and categories.
So, for example, a second level fighter might have a THAC0 of 19 and +2 to hit from his high strength, and the thug he’s fighting might have an AC of 8 from his leather armor. So he has to roll 19-8=11 to hit, and would get a +2 on that roll, and so needs a 9 on the die.
To add to what everyone else is saying, the combat isn’t the same in that it’s not turn based like you’re thinking. Fights involve everyone getting into a fracas at once and swinging, the game expecting the player to regularly pause to give specific commands. Also, in BG1 you start at level one which feels reeeeeally weak so fights will be quite difficult until you’re about level 3-4.
That said, I had a lot of fun with the game after I got used to it. Writing is the main star of the show and it’s quite good.
Knights of the old republic 1 and 2. First my old PC couldn’t run it and my new one it just feels too jank and ugly. I love star wars games and am sad if the remake stays dead.
KOTOR is jank, but I would say it’s entirely due to the controls. It acts like point-and-click even on controllers, where you have to use the D-pad to select the element and interact with it using the face buttons.
Also, the semi-pseudo-turn-based combat system doesn’t really totally hold up, I wish there was a way of smoothing it out.
There are higher resolution texture projects for both KOTOR 1 and 2, I think KOTOR 2 has it available natively with the Steam Workshop.
Personally I love that era of graphics tbh. I bought Valheim on the Steam sale just for the jank graphics lol
Funnily enough I’ve played KoTOR so much that I can still go back and play those, and aside from the camera control it’s totally comfy for me.
I feel the same way. I wanted to love them, but I just don’t. They feel tedious to me.
Probably going to get some hate for these.
FFVII. The pc port was ass, controls were a pain on keyboard and there wasn’t great controller support. The graphics were really tough to ignore, and the combat felt like fighting the control scheme more than anything. I’ve played and liked many other titles in the series, but I couldn’t manage this one by the time I got to it. The experience was also so bad I have no interest in the remake/remaster.
Morrowind. Played it a ton on Xbox, but I can’t get back into it on pc anymore. Even with mods to alleviate the graphics and draw distance, the game is so dated. Building a character can be very punishing in the early game, and easily break able in the late game. Many weapon skills are garbage because they lack enough support in items. Movement speed was tied to a skill, jumping is significantly faster, but also a skill. The leveling process is arcane and not adequately explained in game. The journal is awful, so you better remember what quests you are doing. Item storage was a pain because crates had weight limits, and merchants had pitiful amounts of gold to sell items.
I get that. FF VII is probably my favourite game. But, I grew up with it. I think that plays a huge roll. If I discovered it for the first time now, I’d probably feel the same way you do.
Don’t skip the remake, though. I hate that there’s differences from the original, but I view it as a retelling from a different perspective regarding the story. The gameplay kicks ass. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes the style of game.
I’m actually playing FF7 for the first time on a handheld emulator. I’ve previously tried to play FF4 and FF6 (several times) but couldn’t really get too far in before giving up. I’m nearly 8 hours into FF7 now and, while it’s definitely a bit dated in terms of controls (and obviously graphics), I’m having a much better time with it and as it stands, can see finishing it if it keeps going like it is. I just made it to the open world.
It’s a classic for a reason. But I can absolutely see why someone would have a hard time playing it.
Morrowind. Played it a ton on Xbox, but I can’t get back into it on pc anymore. Even with mods to alleviate the graphics and draw distance, the game is so dated.
I played through it for the first time a few years ago, using the open-source OpenMW engine. It definitely isn’t graphically-competitive with modern games, but I was still able to enjoy it.
Here’s a current image:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQUYr7JhNXg
Building a character can be very punishing in the early game, and easily break able in the late game.
I feel like a lot of people enjoyed the game because they could break it in the late game.
Many weapon skills are garbage because they lack enough support in items.
Yeah, though I don’t think that any Elder Scrolls or Fallout game has really had a truly balanced skill tree, though.
The journal is awful, so you better remember what quests you are doing.
Yeah, I have to say that automated quest tracking and note-taking is definitely something that I like about modern RPGs. Sometimes it starts to feel too much like “go to waypoint, do thing, repeat”, but I remember manually mapping dungeons with teleporters on graph paper in the D&D Gold Box games, and it was just arduous.
Have you tried Tifa’s Bootleg? There are mods that can drastically improve the graphics
Modded FF7 on PC ruined PS1 FF7 for me. Wonderful stuff. 7th Heaven is such a joy.
I started a new play through of Morrowind after lasting playing it in the 2000s. I used OpenMW on my Steam Deck, it plays really well.
It was really refreshing how more immersive it is as you have to read the journal and use the map to figure out where to go for quests. I really enjoy not having a quest marker guiding you.
Starfield
Damn! Burn
Came here to say this. That’s and old game with lipstick. Poorly applied lipstick.
Personally, the earlier Witcher games. Great story, but it’s trapped in an old RPG missing all kinds of modern features and mechanics.
When the first Witcher came out, Yahtzee’s review was spot on. It’s a good game, it’s got a lot of depth, but a lot of the mechanics are arcane and just not fun.
Witcher 2 made big strides in this department, finally culminating in Witcher 3 - I am in a similar boat in terms of having serious issues trying to play the first two Witcher games.
I really enjoyed the branching paths in Witcher 2. They were two different games depending on what you chose with the different characters and areas you’d go through.
Oh man I hated the combat system in the first Witcher so much they I ended up doing it completely. I even looked to see if there were any mods that overhauled the combat but unfortunately never found any.
I think I used a mod to one hit kill everything and increased my movement speed to get though the story which I did enjoy.
The UI in the Witcher 2 is awful
I tried playing the original Deus Ex for the first time a couple of years ago and I sadly had to put it down before I escaped the tutorial. Early 3D graphics have not aged well, the controls were not very intuitive, and it just seemed like it wasn’t worth the effort. I then played and enjoyed Human Revolution though; I know, I’m an absolute peasant.
Give it a try again with GMDX. It’s a mod that modernizes Deus Ex mechanically and visually without losing the original vision like what “New Vision / Revision,” does
Thanks for the tip, I started a few weeks ago and barely made any progress. Maybe this will help.
Ooh interesting, how easy is it to set up mods for DX? Reckon it’ll work on a Steam Deck?
I didn’t do it on the Deck but on Linux, so steps should be something like:
- Switch to desktop mode
- Download GMDX and place it in the game folder
- Install “ProtonUp-QT” from Discover store
- In ProtonUp-QT install “SteamTinkerLaunch”
- Switch back to game mode
- Make sure to launch Deus Ex unmodded once before continuing
- Set the compatibility tool for Deus Ex to “SteamTinkerLaunch”
- Start Deus Ex
- Click “Main menu” in steamtinkerlaunch
- Click “One time run” in steamtinkerlaunch
- Choose the GMDX exe file in “One time command” and hit “Run command”
- Install normally
- After installation go back to the main menu and select “Game menu” in steamtinkerlaunch
- In “Custom command” select “Play_GMDX.lnk” in the “GMDXv9” folder
- Hit “Save and Play” and it should launch modded
Yeah most older 3D games I’ve tried I just can’t control that well.
A couple years ago I tried playing the original Tomb Raider and geez was that difficult to control. It really makes me appreciate how good the Mario 64 controls were
I can get past ugly early 3D, but bad controls are not something that I can stand. I didn’t like Tomb Raider back when it was new for that reason.
Similarly, I want to play Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, but the tank controls are just painful.
Tomb raider was essentially a 3d Prince of Persia. The level has tiles that dictate when jumps will actually trigger. Once you get the hang of this you can traverse quite smoothly around the level.
One thing that’s really interesting is once you get to the headquarters after the first level, the floors and things are super shiny and have actual reflections. Most modern games use screen space reflections now (although raytracing is fixing this), so things not on screen can’t be reflected. Deus Ex, and many games of the time, have better reflections than modern games. The graphics do look dated generally, but it’s funny how technology advancement can cause some things to be worse
Agreed. Can’t stand the outdated controls. Play Human Revolution instead.
I never did really beat morrowind or even finish any of the factions questlines, i was too young at the time to care about that i just did the infinite intelligence potion exploit to create an unbeatable god character slinging 50ft radius fireballs from level 1.
A part of me really wants to revisit it and and least complete the main quest, but damn does it feel dated.
Yeah, it was in a weird sort of Uncanny Valley for gameplay. It was a 3D game with real-time combat, but was still relying on the old school tabletop RPG mechanics that the series was built on. So when you attack, the game does some math to figure out if you actually hit. But that causes some cognitive dissonance because I just saw my character’s attack connect and yet it was labeled as a miss because the invisible d20 rolled too low.
Rolling for an attack is fine in a turn based game, or a 2D game where sprites are just bouncing around. But when I saw my sword phase through the enemy without hurting them, it made it hard to continue playing.
The game also requires a lot more focus and time than I have these days. As an adult, I typically only have a few hours a week to play. And that’s intermittent, while constantly getting pulled away for other things. And in a game like Morrowind, things like the quest notes just aren’t conducive to my lifestyle. No quest marker, because the game gives me a note with vague directions? That’s fine if I’m a kid who can spend 5+ hours wandering around looking for the right boulder to take a left at. But if I’m getting pulled away and distracted constantly, I won’t even be able to remember what the note said when I come back to my computer.
No quest marker, because the game gives me a note with vague directions? That’s fine if I’m a kid who can spend 5+ hours wandering around looking for the right boulder to take a left at. But if I’m getting pulled away and distracted constantly, I won’t even be able to remember what the note said when I come back to my computer.
I dont mind the no quest marker, as you can re-read your quest journal to get the directions again. The problem was that the quest journal was unsorted so if you happen to advance in multiple quests at a time or put off a quest and come back to it, then good luck paging through to find the relevant info.
Tribunal added the ability to see specific quest entries iirc
No quest marker, because the game gives me a note with vague directions?
It took me years to figure out, but the directions are actually absurdly precise once you understand how they were written. For instance, if they say to follow the road north out of Caldera until you get to a tree, then turn west and continue until you reach your destination, that tree will be literally encroaching onto the road rather than one of the couple dozen that you pass that are near the road. At that point, you use the minimap to orient yourself exactly dead west and proceed in a perfectly straight line, hopping over rocks if need be, and you’ll arrive at the destination, just like the directions said.
This is incredibly unintuitive, though, since absolutely nobody writes directions like that IRL. Not to mention the typos and sporadic instances of east and west being reversed.
There has to be a better option than a floating quest marker or written directions, but I’m not sure what. Maybe the breadcrumb trail from Fable?
As someone who didn’t even know it existed until like 2 years ago. It feels incredibly dated. I have 2 friends who love it and beg me to play with them with the multi-player mod but I just can’t get into it. Controls feel clunky, combat is janky and graphics are meh. I understand it probably has great systems and writing and for the time it was great but it just doesn’t hold up unless you have prior history with it. I’m not even hating on it, I understand it’s probably a great game. I also played Mario 64 and ocarina of time way after their release (grew up a poor kid in a tiny rural town with no internet and 1 TV that had like 3 channels) and both felt pretty decent and like they held up while also being older than morrowind.
I actually really enjoyed replaying it recently after many many years. Other than the dialog, what bugs you about it?
By the way, the engine replacement is really good.
What put me off of the game initially was that it had a nasty bug where the game would immediately crash and close to desktop after about 15 to 30 mins of play. So if you didn’t regularly save, you’d lose progress.
This happened to me on multiple OSes (Windows 98, XP, 7 & 8.1), across different copies of the game and after trying various community patches to fix the problem to no avail
Bought the GOTY edition with the Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansions on Steam when it was heavily discounted and it works just fine.
Unfortunately this is one of those many instances where a game is released absolutely fucking broken and you have to buy the expansion to fix it. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 is another such game where the base game has a game breaking bug can randomly plummet the stats of all your rides.
You should really wait for the Complete Edition and then grab the Unofficial Patch for every Bethesda game. They’re all varying degrees of broken on release and expansions may improve it or make it worse, or sometimes both at the same time. Best to wait.
As a once hardcore RCT fan, 3 was a huge let down anyways. Played for like 15 minutes before going back to 2.
I’m so glad I went back and finished it recently. The MQ story is really good. I put on a mod to make magicka regenerate like in later games and played a straight mage, eventually crafting rings to be able to jump around town super fast and another to cross the continent.
Probably controversial but half life 2 for me. I got it very cheap on a sale after years of hearing how good it was. Just couldn’t get into it. Even worse, every time I felt nauseated after a couple of minutes.
I guess this is just an example of a “you had to be there” scenarios. I was there as a gamer at the time but had no funds to play all the games. I skipped on HL 2 and can’t get into it 20 years later.
Motion blur. My friend couldn’t play HL2 or Portal until I suggested he turn it off - he was getting crazy motion sickness and headaches after just a few minutes before that
Motion blur: taking a performance hit to make your games look like fuzzy ass.
Lens flare is up next.
Can we bump “let’s make it look like shit on purpose” chromatic aberration above that?
Putting in a lot of effort to make games look like the protagonist has camera lenses for eyes.
Real life doesn’t have motion blur, or chromatic aberration, or lens flares. Real life does have depth of field, but it moves with my eyes, not my right hand on the mouse.
Putting in a lot of effort to make games look like the protagonist has astigmatism.
I’m almost certain this is why so much blurring and flare was pushed as “realism” a couple generations ago. The devs and artists needed their eyes checked.
As someone that already has to deal with a somewhat blurry perception, I don’t want any more of that, ever.
I’ve heard it was to mimic films, which has actual lens flares. But I like this alternate “game devs had eye problems” narrative!
Real life absolutely has motion blur and flares. You’re just used to it
IS THAT WHAT IT WAS???
Dude I get SO SICK playing HL2. I played it with a puke bucket next to me so I could finish the game.
Nothing has fucked me up before or since as badly as HL2 did for motion sickness.
Could have been lol
Motion blur is disgusting in video games. It didn’t make me sick but I turned it off because…why would I want everything to look like musg
If you want to give it a go again, turn up the field of view and turn down head-bobbing if that’s an option (which I’m sure it is with the console at least). These are the things that give people motion sickness in FPSs usually.
Yeah maybe, thanks for the tip.
However, I do feel that, being the groundbreaking tech of that era from which all post games practically were derived, I won’t have the same “iconic” experience today as I would have had back then. I feel like I just have to live with the fact that I missed it.
That’s okay though. Maybe some games today will be the predecessors and iconic titles of times to come ;).
I posted on another comment about how HL2 just doesn’t stand up anymore because it was a game that’s at least 50% interesting because of the physics gimmicks, which we’ve seen thousands of times now, so I totally agree.
The more recent games iconic games that I don’t think have been surpassed yet are Dark Souls and Factorio. They’ve both spawned whole new genres, but I still think they’re the best examples of their genres.
Dark Souls combat has been done better since, but the total package I think is still better in that one. The world they created is nearly perfect, and no successor has even really attempted to recreate the experience of traveling through it.
Factorio copycats never try to do better than Factorio, just different. Satisfactory is cool, but being 3D significantly limits the factory building aspect, though it adds architecture design which is cool.
I’m sure there are others that I haven’t thought of or we don’t recognize yet.
I completely agree with Dark Souls! That was also the title I had in mind which did groundbreaking work and paved the way for so many games since.
Haven’t played Factorio so maybe that’s one I missed again lol.
I can relate
That era of PC gaming has a weird camera that takes a while for me to get used to. Not sure I can pinpoint what is different about it though
Thief.
But I HAVE to try again! I want to write my bachelors about game design of stealth games and not analyzing Thief would be a crime against humanity
I guess it’s the graphics and the weird keyboard combo? Because otherwise I don’t really see what’s the issue. It was so influential and good when it came out that you can get into actual arguments if any successor games are actually better than the original series (disregard the remake).
It’s basically still top tier stealth game, but the keyboard interface is weird as fuck initially. But you get used to it within hours, if you want to.
The graphics might be insurmountable for many people.
I let civvie11 play it and I lived thru him vicariously
Halo, even the remaster. The world’s feel empty and vehicles make me long for the Mako
I’ve since been told it’s just one of those “you had to be there” things. Was really hard to admit the hype cycle sometimes has value
Solo, absolutely agree. Coop over the internet, probably not worth it.
Hear me out, though…
A couple weeks ago an old highschool buddy and I ordered a pizza, and then played Halo coop on a bigscreen for 3 hours. It was the best night I’ve had in a while.
Halo and Halo 2 are all about the in-person coop experience.
I used to say at the time that Halo 1 was by far the most amazing shooter… on consoles.
The characters are slow and sluggish, the maps are mostly empty, the vehicles are cool but just as sluggish, the weapon selection is pretty lacking even compared to games a decade older.
But for consoles, it was amazing, because all they had were shooters made for PC, and that didn’t work at all for controllers, at least not for casual players. Halo was basically the first shooter seriously created to be played with a controller and still offer depth. It also launched basically completely unopposed.
It releases in the same year as Red Faction, Tribes 2, HalfLife blueshift, Ghost Recon and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Quake 3 Team Arena and Counterstrike came out the year before. The PC market was drowning in amazing FPS games. But on console, nah, it was just Halo.
Personally I kinda like that feeling of an empty world sometimes. One of my favorite places in any game is the mall in GTA Vice City.
I can’t explain why though lol
Halo 1 requires nostalgia now to really get through. 2 and 3 were vast improvements.
Disagree.
I would have to say the dual wielding introduced in Halo 2 in addition to streamlining of the controls made the sequels way better.
Halo 1 is a great game on its own but all the subsequent improvements made the later iterations just so much more playable.
At this stage, I am loath to go back to any game where the UI takes up half the screen. RTS games especially just used so much screen real estate back in the day, that couldn’t be scaled or hidden to get any back. Like playing your game through a letterbox surrounded by stickers.
I hate playing StarCraft because the UI is gigantic and you can’t zoom out far enough on the map. I’ve got massive, high-res monitors, but the game treats me like it’s still 640x480.
And really, more strategy/sim games need to support multi-monitor setups. Supreme Commander spoiled me, and more games should follow their example.
Start craft specifically, but I believe most RTS games in general, limited the visible map area to make sure all players in a multiplayer games were on equall footing. They didn’t want people with larger monitors or more powerful computers to have an advantage by being able to see more terrain and units than those with lower resolutions. Lack of zoom is usually down to network optimization where bandwidth was significantly limited in the dial-up days.
On multiplayer - fine. I played single-player and it was annoying as hell.
Sup Com FA was a pretty elegant UI, yeah. Very unobtrusive but combined with the split screens, multi screens and all the hotkeys it was so versatile. Probably a bitch to create though and not used by most players at the time.
Unpopular opinion for sure, but Vampire: The Masquerade. I’ve started so many playthroughs over the years but just cannot fall into it like other RPGs on account of its dated mechanics and graphics.
I assume you’re talking about VTM Bloodlines, the video game RPG? If you’re not playing with the fan patch, you need to. The game was never totally finished and was rushed out the door by their publisher, so it’d got a lot of jank and missing content. It’s probably a hard game to love, but if you get into it then it does so much better than a lot of other games.
Yes, Bloodlines, should’ve clarified. I’ve never looked into the patch but I’ve heard of it.
The funny thing is how much I love Fallout New Vegas, a game that gets thrown around a lot in the same discussions. Currently have several hundred hours of playtime on FNV across like five consoles and PC, but I’ve never been able to get into VTMB the same way.
The patch is so important I’m pretty sure it’s bundled into the GoG version of the game. It’s essentially required at this point.
I’ll second that the fan patch for VtM:B is pretty much essential for enjoying it. FNV had its bugs, but it was at least polished into a solid experience before release. VtM:B…wasn’t, unfortunately, but the patch gets it there.
Fallout New Vegas
Even so, I’d rather play a forward-port of Fallout: New Vegas to a newer engine with updated graphics, but I doubt that it’ll happen. Retexturing might be doable with AI upscaling or something like that, but I can’t think of an inexpensive way to remodel everything. If they’re going to do the kind of asset work that I suspect would be required, they’d probably be better-off just doing Fallout 5.
There’s the Tale of Two Wastelands mod that put Fallout 3’s content into Fallout: New Vegas, but it could just use the content directly, as the two were pretty contemporaneous.
Starfield’s engine runs vastly more smoothly for me than even Fallout 76’s, does a better job of streaming content into memory.
Also, I liked Fallout: New Vegas – one could change the world in many interesting and interacting ways, it had great DLC, I liked the New Old West setting, finding unique items felt really neat. But it had a number of warts, a number related to the engine, and I feel that sometimes people look at it with the gilding of nostalgia:
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The game tended to load and save more-and-more slowly over the course of a game. Maybe with a present-day PC on solid-state storage, it’d be okay, but it got absolutely horrendous, especially on consoles.
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It also, in my experience, tended to get less-stable over the course of a game.
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Falling through terrain was an issue.
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Enemy AI was pretty bad. I mean, it was par for the course for the time, but Starfield’s human enemies have gotten more-interesting behavior.
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It wasn’t uncommon that I’d manage to break one quest or another on a given playthrough.
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Some people really like the “skill point” system in Fallout: New Vegas and earlier, and dislike the shift to just doing perks in Fallout 4, to the point that there have been mods to forward-port the skill system forward. I don’t. One thing I liked about the Fallout series was that the SPECIAL points were significant enough that you could feel each point make a difference; this was a shift from the Dungeons & Dragons convention, where a single stat point often didn’t make much change. The skill points, however, broke with that, and a given level up didn’t make a really noticeable change.
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The perks weren’t really balanced; some are clearly better than others. This isn’t to specifically criticize Fallout: New Vegas: that’s been true for the whole series. But it’s not on par with, say, a traditional roguelike, where there’s a very long, iterative development cycle where there are tweaks and rebalancing.
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Some of the compromises that had to be made to get performance reasonable are really visible, like the walls around New Vegas, or the limited number of characters running around.
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The view distance and weapon ranges were limited to the point that it was always kind of noticeable.
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There was a lot of polygons clipping through each other. Not the end of the world, but it did impact immersion for me.
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I played with the fan patch but still didn’t get very far. It feels very weird to play an RPG in an early version of the Source engine. Would be neat to see the game get a Source 2 port with upgraded graphics and modernized mechanics.
Bloodlines 2 is coming out sometime. It was in development hell for a while, but it’s a new team working on it now and they released something about it recently. It may actually come out eventually.
Good to know. I thought it was canceled years ago. Thanks.
It feels like trying to play a really old Half-Life 2 mod that was never updated after the initial release. Which makes sense since it was the first Source engine game to be produced by a 3rd party. Also doesn’t help that they tried to make an RPG in an engine designed for FPS.
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