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Retrogaming - Do they hold up today?

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
The gameplay in modern games is introduced step by step over an annoying long time (1 to 2 hours) instead of letting me jump into the full game. That means I have to endure weaker gameplay for that time than the game could provide right from the start. And the worst is if it even doesn't feel like a natural progression in the game but instead of forced story elements just to provide you with a step by step tutorial.
Such long tutorials in action games like CoD is especially annoying and ridiculous. I have to admit there are more gameplay elements than in older games nowadays. Which is great one might think. Unfortunately all these additional gameplay elements (and even the original gameplay) are less meaningful because they rarely affect the game in the end. Everything just busywork and eyecandy without actual an actual effect on the core gameplay.

That's a top point about "natural progression". One of the reasons that the Souls games are so appealing is that, bar a few msgs, you're thrown pretty much straight into it and have to find most stuff out for yourself.

Busywork & eyecandy seem to be drowning games now. I don't mind some of that there to break things up, but it's sadly become the core of a lot of games.

I like to have a blast

Sounds too enthousastic to me. I do not "like to have a blast" about anything. I prefer to ruminate like a fucking cow and look down in anger at the world, myself, kids, whatever it is that reminds me that I exist. You might be here to have fun but some of us want to suffer the dark depths of our nothingness in peace :):):):)

Haha. Life's wank and we're all gunna die :)


Sunset Riders

Capcom do there usual thing

:what:

How old are you, OP?

38 chap. Sorry, meant Konami.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
So last night I had a whirl on the Megadrive platform-beat-emup Batman. It arrived on the Megadrive July 1990, following the release of the much hyped Batman reboot film the year before. Folk may remember that the film build up saw comedic actor Micheal Keaton slated as the choice to play Batman, only to go and completely nail the role and crush the whole camp vibe associated with batman in one single blow.

Incidently, I don't care what folk say, but Jack Niks Joker is also my fave film joker to date. Ledgers was good, but Nichlesons to me just felt crazier and more eccentric.

Batman nails a lot of key elements of the genre and creates a superb, albiet short-lived, experience. It has a great atmosphere and nice graphics certainly help with this. But what takes it to another level are the absolutely fant-fucking-tastic rock-synth tunes, which are blasting throughout and really get the juices flowing. Simply superb music.

There's also quite a few movie tie-ins, you get to fight the Joker of course, the dude with two swords, the henchman with the boombox etc. - you even get to "create" the Joker too. It actually reminded me how detatched some other games of the era could be from said movies they were supposidly representing.

Throw in smooth, responsive, fun and fast paced gameplay and I was loving it. The combat feels nice & chunky and, whilst the game is actually a tad easy, there's still plenty of tricky bits here and there. Clever, interesting level designs with constant introduction of things to keep you on your toes, and again odd driving/flying sections to break things up.

It definitely lacks depth, and isn't a game which holds any surprises once you finish it. You'll return to it, but not for a while until some unfamiliarity has been allowed to settle in again.

Definitely holds up. A very short-lived experience, but a great one.
 

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
4,318
Location
Hyperborea
A LOT of 8 and 16 bit games hold up. Japan was operating at peak capacity. I think moderns underestimate how good some of these games were and are

Of course old Mario games hold up
Sonic 1-3, simple but just fun to play and look at
Mega Man and Mega Man X
Pretty much any good shmup. Dozens of choices especially in arcades and 16 bit systems. Gradius games are dope.
Contra
Batman on NES
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Castlevania 1, 3, Rondo. I was never a big fan of Super 4
Demon's Crest
Blaster Master. Overhead parts are sketchy, but overall a gem.
LoZ 1-3, Link's Awakening.
Tetris.
Streets of Rages

Again, consoles peaked during this time. There were many great PSX and PS2 games, but the video game industry already began huffing its own farts by then. Also the forced jump to shitty 3D...

Computer games of the time I'm less familiar with, but I've been slowly getting through them over the last 10 years

Might and Magics
Doom
Hexen
Diablo 1
Beneath a Steel Sky
X fucking Com
Ultima 5
 
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
I don't like concept of games 'ageing well', 'holding up' etc. If something is bad now - it was like that in the past but optic wasn't fully developed enough to notice that fact.

If it's good it doesn't matter if you play it for the first time in 1995, 2005 or 2015.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,871
I generally agree with the sentiment that a good game has always been good and will always be good.

Old games (I hate the term "retrogames") often feel 'tighter' and better designed than modern ones because well, they were - and they had to be. We live in an age of very few technological limitations, and limitations breed creativity and ingenuous solutions.

Back in the day, game designers (which were very often engineers) had to solve difficult problems to achieve a very particular vision. It was a bottom-up process and game creators often had to develop the frameworks or technology as they went. Today's process is very different - the tools are all preexisting and you have a top-down trajectory, from the general to the specific. This often leads to meandering, diffuse, bloated tripe that feels entirely without purpose.

Truly timeless games, such as Pac-Man or Space Invaders, are great regardless of the technical quality of their presentation for today's standards; they're an an abstracted concept that is materialized in a very specific way. They have a sort of purity of purpose that completely escapes most games today. The closest I've felt to this sentiment in the past 15 or so years is a game that just came out called Nex Machina. Not coincidentally, it would work as a completely abstracted representation instead of the amazing voxel-based graphics that it has.

Anyway, without going too far off on a tangent, a lot of 8 and 16-bit games hold up extremely well, especially arcade action games. They often have a hidden depth that's entirely ignored when people take them out of their context - which was arcades and limited lives/quarters.
 
Joined
Nov 6, 2009
Messages
1,494
Wasteland/Dragon Wars/Wizball/Landstalker/Questron/Ultimate Wizard/Bruce Lee/Ultima V/Veil of Darkness/World of Xeen/Fahrenheit 451/Below the Root/Below the Root/Defenders of the Crown/Below the Root (and Alice) (...) (...) are as good now as they were before.
 

circ

Arcane
Joined
Jun 4, 2009
Messages
11,470
Location
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
A game might be good but even good can't help when you get bored or something better comes along. Jagged Alliance 1 was great for its time, but after JA2, it just felt clunky and slow and I couldn't play through it again, just JA2 repeatedly. JA2 eventually got boring though, even with new mods probably available I haven't touched in 10 years or so.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,871
A good game that you can't play anymore because you've played it to death 100 times over is still a good game.
 
Unwanted

Janise

Unwanted
Joined
May 14, 2017
Messages
727
Desu Ex. Its shit. And it was shit when it was released. HORRIBLE combat. I mean, I havent seen worse before it was released. Atrocious.
Idiotic writing. Hilariously bad VO. Irrelevant RPG elements.
Its dreck.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
I guess I'm more asking "if I played this game for the first time today, would I thrive on it? And would I take time away from modern games to play it instead?"

A lot of the retro games which I'll be playing I won't have touched for years, so it'll hopefully give me that type of perspective on it. Certainly the ones I've posted so far - Sunset Riders & Batman - have kept my attention away from TW3's expansion packs.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,871
A good rule of thumb is, you're not losing anything by not playing modern games. Chances are, it's been done before and better.
 

bloodlover

Arcane
Joined
Sep 5, 2010
Messages
2,039
I guess the answer depends on the person and what games we are talking. Controls in many old games were very clunky so in that regard they don't hold well. Compatibility is not that big of an issue with GOG releases these days and the possibility of emulating console games.

I see people saying that shooters hold up. I'd argue that for the most part they were better then. Combat was more fun and less/non scripted. Sure, graphics are nice but I had more fun with Quake 2 than I had with Far Cry 2. I almost played just on consoles when I was a kid (I think I sill have my old Atari 2600 somewhere at my grandparents) and most platform games I'd say still hold up but if we measure the "hold up" by enjoyment level, I don't see how many would pick Duck Hunter over newer games.

I wonder if a similar thread will be made in 10 years, what will the answers be.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,089
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I actually own a physical copy of Mr. Robot, a rare thing indeed.

Lumo I have not played and hadn't even heard of it, I'll have to check that out later.
 

ore clover

Learned
Joined
Mar 25, 2017
Messages
171
Desu Ex. Its shit. And it was shit when it was released. HORRIBLE combat. I mean, I havent seen worse before it was released. Atrocious.
Idiotic writing. Hilariously bad VO. Irrelevant RPG elements.
Its dreck.
Why you fucking son of a

Oh it's you, Janise. nvm
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
I recently replayed Legend of Grimrock and then bought myself Lands of Lore from GOG for $1 something on sale. I remembered enjoying it when it was first released back in 1993.

The difference was night and day. The Lands of Lore gamescreen was stuck in one corner, the interface was horrible and the UI awful. Grimrock gameplay is full screen with modern resolutions, lighting effects and sound design.

Lands of Lore had a certain quirky charm to it but you couldn't beat playing something designed to work on modern hardware. Nostalgia is one thing but I'm happy to let it stay in the past.
 
Self-Ejected

Drog Black Tooth

Self-Ejected
Joined
Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,636
Quake 1 is still one of the games that I play every other week. So many great map packs to check out and the gameplay is solid af.

I think many here would agree with me that the graphics (as in tech advancement) are second to the art style, the extremely low res "pixel" graphics can still be very charming and there's sort of a renaissance of this kind of style these days anyway. I remember back in 2000's everyone was hell bent on using all kinds of bilinear, hq2x or something filters to make those games "palatable", but nowadays most people prefer unfiltered, perhaps for that extra nostalgia kick.

Of course, a lot of old games are just bad. Truth to be told most video games are bad and are made for a quick buck. Ain't nobody here going to play some no name late 90's/early 00's shooter or a shitty Diablo clone RPG like Kult: Heretic Kingdoms, but e.g. NOLF is still amazing, as are the IE games. And then some games were just outclassed by their successors, e.g. various RTS, simulation etc games. Newer games have way better controls, UI, progression etc. Sure, this might not always be the case and there's definitely some "decline" (dumbing down) going on, but you have to agree that a lot of things in the "comfort" department have improved since those days.

Another point I'd like to touch on is that some genres have simply gone mostly extinct. Say, you want to play a blobber, Grimoire will be out in a week you have to go retro. Same goes for the majority of point and click adventure games, 2D platformers or truly fast paced no bullshit shooters.
 

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