I can't play old games anymore

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Gambit37
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I can't play old games anymore

Post by Gambit37 »

I can't play old games anymore.

With such huge advances in technology, storytelling, visuals and sound, modern games are truly amazing. They offer experiences so immersive, so beautiful and compelling, that even the simplest of modern games far outshine anything that I grew up with. I tried playing the original Mirror's Edge last week in preparation for the new one. I'd not played the original before and I gave up after an hour. I found it clunky and unresponsive. And it's only 8 years old!

I'll always have a fondness for the games I grew up with -- DM in particular -- but I doubt I'll ever play them again.

How many of you have completely moved on from retro games... or is it just me?
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Saumun »

I'm ambivalent on this. On one hand, i recently played through Tower of Champions (years after everyone else... and i know it's not strictly a retro game, but obviously has a retro engine and graphics) and enjoyed it as much (if not more) than any recent game i have played (admittedly not many). I also played Deuteros to completion on the Amiga over twenty years since i last did it, and loved every minute. Likewise Another World and Elite for Amiga (admittedly on 800% drive emulation). I also ran through Civ 2, Total Annihilation, and Quake 2 on PC and thoroughly enjoyed them all.

On the other hand, there are certain games i've replayed and been sort of.... meh! Syndicate was one that i loved in the 90s, but wasn't too struck on when i replayed it. Same goes for many 8 bit games that i loved as a kid. Rose tinted specs i guess.

As for graphics, i personally don't like games that try too hard to make it totally realistic. Maybe it's just me, but graphically i find characters in the most modern games kind of creepy. Like they look almost real, but not quite. I guess i want that broad line of separation between fantasy and reality.

Oh... and if it's football, SWOS beats every version of FIFA hands down for sheer fun.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Ameena »

Generally, quite a lot of the games I play (or rather, replay ;)) are at least ten years old. Most of the modern games I play are Indy titles that are generally made by very small companies without an immense budget. I don't really care for the uber "triple-A" titles...I think the most recent "big release" I played was Skyrim...unless Diablo III came out after that - I can't remember (but there are several ARPGs I like more than Diablo III ;)).
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by oh_brother »

Some games age badly and now would be unplayable. Looking at the 'Guess the Game' thread, a lot of those games I loved but have no desire to replay. Platforms games and scrolling shooters especially (is this because they got old or I did? I'm not sure).

But there still are old games out there that I can play, even for the first time (i.e. unrelated to previous positive experiences playing them). I got Icewind Dale on the iOS which I enjoyed and I certainly can still play Dungeon Master. I played Dwelvers recently which reminded me how much I loved (and still love) Dungeon Keeper. Old fashioned graphics might hurt at the start, but I get used to it.

Sometimes I am more wary. I enjoyed Skyrim and I have been thinking about trying out the earlier ES games, but I worry that it will be a step backwards.

So, to sum up, many retro games no longer appeal to me, but a significant minority would draw me straight back in if I played them again.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Sophia »

I feel like a lot of the development of modern gaming has been three steps forward and two steps back. I have to admit that the graphical advancements made in the modern era are nice, but a nice looking 8 or 16-bit game is nice, to me, too. I recently replayed Mega Man 2 and had a lot of fun with that.

There were a lot of bad games released back in the old days that I'd never play again, and there were a lot of games that aged badly-- but there are still a lot of games coming out that I don't want to play, or won't want to play in a year, or whatever.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Saumun »

IMO a good game is good game regardless of era/graphics/etc...
I admit that some of the games i loved as a kid were simply "what was on offer" at the time. I've played so many games that i used to love under emulation, and thought... "How did i ever rate this?"
But similarly, there have been just as many that royally entertained me.

So.... Visuals and sound, granted! Not sure i'd agree on storytelling, but that's just me. I'll admit i haven't played enough modern games to make a fair assessment.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Gambit37 »

I'm certainly not saying that all modern games are better than all old/retro games. Nor am I saying that all old games are bad.

For me, it's more about how quickly/easily I can get immersed in a new game and believe in its world. I favour games that encourage exploration, or have a good story (or both), and very few old games did that in an effective way.

Realistic graphics and believable animation also sell the environment and characters in a way that could never be done in 16-bit or 8-bit games. I love just mooching around a detailed open world, and the better that world is realised, the more likely I'll enjoy my time there. DM had its own world and it was well realised at the time, but I simply can't connect with it in any meaningful way these days. It offers nothing compelling to me when compared to games such as Everybody's Gone to the Rapture or Alien Isolation.

Of course, I'm aware that the depth of gameplay in DM and many old games is far greater than many new games. I'm certainly not arguing that all modern games are deeper in that sense. Quite the opposite: I actually much prefer games now that have simpler mechanics and that are easier to play, but are deeper in their storytelling. Or perhaps a specific simple mechanic that's done extremely well, such as "scare you out of your pants". Alien Isolation was a simple game, and had some clunky gameplay, but I've never enjoyed being terrified in a game quite so much as I was while playing it.

Perhaps I'm just observing how my gaming tastes and expectations have changed in the last 30 years. I still respect old games, I just can't play them anymore.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Ameena »

Oh_Brother - Play Morrowind! It's my favourite of the series (Skyrim comes in second). The world is much bigger, there are a lot more skills and stuff you can learn (and exploit :twisted:), the UI is actually decent, and it doesn't have stupid quest markers all over the place telling you where you should go (you have a journal which auto-updates with dialogue from NPCs who actually give you directions to places!) :D. I've played it through maybe...I dunno, four times now, something like that? That's the Game of the Year Edition (base game plus both expansions - Tribunal and Bloodmoon).
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Bit »

...and I'm sure you'll play it again when Skywind is finished ;)

I reloaded a lot of games since the thread with the old games came up. But most need emulators and somehow the input-interfaces aren't satisfying, or my notebook will not do fullscreen or whatever. I haven't played anyone more than a couple of minutes. DM and CSB I played to the end when I came here :)
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Jan »

I absolutely adore old point-and-click adventures - Monkey Island 2 or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis have pixel but still wonderful graphics for instance. In my view, games like this just don't age.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by oh_brother »

@Ameena - I'll give it a shot. I looked at some videos and it seemed decent. And graphics not bad considering that it is a few years old at this stage.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Ameena »

Yeah it came out in about 2003 or so I think. Let me know how you get on - there's plenty of cool stuff you can do to become ridiculously uber :twisted:. Oh, one thing - if you plan on joining as many guilds as possible, make sure you do the Thieves Guild before the Fighters Guild, otherwise you'll cut yourself off from it...
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Gambit37 »

So anyway, getting back to the original topic...

I think the language I used was wrong. By saying "I can't play old games", I think it came across as "Old games suck." That's not what I meant at all. I should have said something more like "I choose not play old games because they no longer appeal to me."

For example, the other day I played a bit of Duke Nukem 3D so that I could get some screenshots of it for something I'm writing. While it was briefly fun to revisit that game, it felt clunky and odd by modern standards. I recognise the fun I had with it 20 years ago (!) but I no longer wish to spend any time there, because the world feels cartoon-like and unrealistic. Of course, many older games do still have great beauty and I still have a soft spot for pixel graphics. But that's not enough to make me replay them.

My tastes in games have changed significantly as games themselves have matured. And while many gamers play both modern AND older games, I'm content to leave old games in the past and focus my energy on newer games that interest me more. It's not to say that I'd NEVER again play an old game, but it's fairly unlikely when there's so many amazing new games to try.

Anyway, I was really more interested in seeing how the rest of you feel about older games. :)
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Jan »

Frankly, with some simplification, most modern games look all the same to me, like different levels of the same game. Also, I think they put too much emphasis on graphics, technology and being "realistic".

As I said, I love old pixel point-and-click adventures because they're funny and their hand-drawn graphics looks lovely (some was drawn by real artists). But I also play the old Rogue from time to time - a game with almost no graphics - or the Zork trilogy - a game with no graphics at all. And of course DM. That's because I prefer certain abstraction, free imagination, like when you read a book, or just listen to a recording of a theatre play but you don't watch it. Rogue is a brilliant example of a game that does not age, because it basically does not put any graphics between the player and the game and focuses purely on gameplay.

On the other hand, I don't know modern games too much, I usually only watch other people playing them, so I might be wrong.

PS And, yes, I put Duke Nukem 3D into the "modern games" category, so that might be the problem :wink: .
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Sophia »

Gambit37 wrote:I think the language I used was wrong. By saying "I can't play old games", I think it came across as "Old games suck." That's not what I meant at all. I should have said something more like "I choose not play old games because they no longer appeal to me."
The second way of stating it is more diplomatic, but honestly, the message isn't really all that different, and I think I basically got what you meant, to be honest.

Personally, I just don't agree with you at all. :mrgreen:
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Gambit37 »

Heh, well I've been playing the new Doom (4) this last week and after three levels I've deleted it. Utterly boring. What a waste of money!

I know my tastes in games have changed significantly since 1993, but I at least expected to have some fun with it.

Nope.

Looks like I can't even play modern games either!
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Sophia »

What didn't you like about it, Gambit?

Does it have problems that seem to be endemic in modern gaming as a whole? Or do you just think it's not a very good game?

Personally, I wasn't terribly interested in it from the screenshots because it seemed to be very brown, like too many modern FPS games. It lacked all of the visual appeal and color of the original Doom.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

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Sophia wrote:Does it have problems that seem to be endemic in modern gaming as a whole?
Perhaps, although you and I might have different views of what that means. I don't play any of the big franchise shooters (Halo, CoD, etc.) so I don't know how Doom compares to those. But they seem to be the sort of shooters others are comparing Doom to and I don't think those gameplay styles match what Doom should be.

And it just feels slow and boring: there's only ever 4-5 creatures on screen at once, and I'm definitely not as accurate at shooting them as I used to be. And all the glory kill animations and special moves slow the action down even more. It's not fast like old Doom was, so I don't really understand why they have been saying it's a "return to its roots."

The whole powerup system also massively detracts from the pure gameplay I expect of Doom. Every gun has many upgrades, as does the armoured suit, and stopping to collect tokens to upgrade them and think about all that... again, that's not what Doom is about. It should be run fast, shoot fast, don't think too hard gameplay and it's lacking all that.

And this whole thing about glory-kills releasing health from the enemies, and chainsaw kills turning enemies into pinatas of bonuses: that is just downright silly in a game that's going for realism. Choose silly or serious, don't try and mix them both.
Sophia wrote:Personally, I wasn't terribly interested in it from the screenshots because it seemed to be very brown, like too many modern FPS games. It lacked all of the visual appeal and color of the original Doom.
The graphics are great, but it's all very dark and brooding, and I don't really want that in a Doom game. Scare me in a survival horror with scary things in dark shadows: yes please (like in Dying Light which I really enjoyed). But that's not Doom to me. So yeah, I agree that its graphical style has got too realistic which in many ways detracts from the fun of gaudy old Doom.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by zoinkers »

I can't play some old games, but it's not the graphics, it's the design decisions they chose which the people who made it popular by playing it (including myself), suffered through because all games had them. The bad controls, the extra loading to sit through because something was put in the middle of the flow of normal gameplay, and so on. They made decisions which were good at the time, yet now seen in the context of a higher standardised approach that has evolved over time, it is no longer normal to have to sit through them and it is extremely taxing to do so. But then I wonder, how much the good bits seemed for suffering through the painful frustrating arbitrary bits.

I like the stylisation of the older graphics. I went back and played Doom and Quake, compiled from source, and they were fine enjoyable experiences. That's not a problem for me.

I sometimes consider reverse engineering some of these old games, and modernising the play experience (but not the game content) to remove the tedium. But so many other things to do. There's a semi-active Bloodwyche porting effort over at the ultimateamiga forums, which if it ever eventuates with C/whatever source, would make this possible.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Gambit37 »

Actually now that I think about it a bit more, I think what zoinkers says is more the point. Playing old games through the lens of modern gaming expectations is why many old games seem bad. And it's not true for old all games, because some are classics regardless and still highly playable.

In fact I've just played a little of this modern Ghosts N Goblins clone and it's great fun: https://locomalito.com/maldita_castilla.php -- it's a modern game, with old school gameplay and pixel graphics and I love it (even if I'm not very good at these anymore).

I'm reconsidering my position after all: I can't play some old games anymore, and I also can't play some new games either. Which is probably the default position for most of us really!

So, um, yeah, as you were... ;-)
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Jan »

Gambit37 wrote:I'm reconsidering my position after all: I can't play some old games anymore, and I also can't play some new games either. Which is probably the default position for most of us really!
LOL, yeah, I think we can all agree on this. :wink:
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Saumun »

Pretty much.
I think it depends on the type of game. Certainly some arcade style games such as shooters have paled badly. I've played some old stuff and loved every minute, and found others where i thought "How the hell did i ever like this?".
Another thing is that i now find some of the loading times for 16bit stuff almost intolerable (if they're interrupting a sequence... and even at 800% emulation), but back then they felt like lightning compared to 8bit tapes. I guess you just get used to stuff being almost instantaneous.
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Re: I can't play old games anymore

Post by Sophia »

Saumun wrote:I guess you just get used to stuff being almost instantaneous.
Unless you have a modern game console and you're playing games off discs. Then you're used to long load times again. :mrgreen:
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