Hello all,
I've recently been playing Hitman: Blood Money as well as some older games such as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and while doing so the enormity of some of the changes gaming has gone through really struck me. Obviously the graphics and overall visual fidelity have improved, although I still really enjoy some of the older game's graphics (Blood Money still looks pretty good in my opinion). More notable however is the level design of such games as Hitman or Splinter Cell. Blood Money has fairly massive and intricate levels with a myriad of ways to go about assassinating your targets. You select and customize your weapons before entering each level and what results is an initially daunting experience. You are thrown in the deep end and pretty much have to use trial and error initially to accomplish anything. Overcoming the moderate learning curve is very rewarding however, and the game offers some truly brilliant moments when it comes to engineering assassination schemes. On the other hand the gunplay in Blood Money is pretty clunky and hard to get used to.
This leads to what I see as one of greatest differences between older games (around 8 years ago, going off Blood Money's release date of 2006) and newer ones. While Blood Money was initially clunky and unintuitive in part due to its complexity, Hitman: Absolution (the newest in the franchise) is pretty easy to get into and the combat is incredibly smooth and viscerally satisfying. There seems to be a trade off however. Absolution simply lacks the depth that Blood Money possessed, and Blood Money lacks the satisfying combat that Absolution possesses. In essence Blood Money was a slow burn leading to a deep gameplay experience while Absolution offers more instant gratification at the cost of being less intricate.
I know that this particular shift in gaming has been talked about ad nauseam and these above observations are nothing new, I just wished to share a specific example of said shift.
This leads to the point of the thread. What are the things that really differentiate older games (let's say around early to mid 2000s in this context) from their newer, shinier counterparts, and what are some specific examples?
tldr: One could say that older games generally have more depth but have some clunky gameplay and are less intuitive while newer games control nicely and have exciting, visceral gameplay at the cost of the aforementioned depth. What are your examples of the differences between old and new games?
I've recently been playing Hitman: Blood Money as well as some older games such as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and while doing so the enormity of some of the changes gaming has gone through really struck me. Obviously the graphics and overall visual fidelity have improved, although I still really enjoy some of the older game's graphics (Blood Money still looks pretty good in my opinion). More notable however is the level design of such games as Hitman or Splinter Cell. Blood Money has fairly massive and intricate levels with a myriad of ways to go about assassinating your targets. You select and customize your weapons before entering each level and what results is an initially daunting experience. You are thrown in the deep end and pretty much have to use trial and error initially to accomplish anything. Overcoming the moderate learning curve is very rewarding however, and the game offers some truly brilliant moments when it comes to engineering assassination schemes. On the other hand the gunplay in Blood Money is pretty clunky and hard to get used to.
This leads to what I see as one of greatest differences between older games (around 8 years ago, going off Blood Money's release date of 2006) and newer ones. While Blood Money was initially clunky and unintuitive in part due to its complexity, Hitman: Absolution (the newest in the franchise) is pretty easy to get into and the combat is incredibly smooth and viscerally satisfying. There seems to be a trade off however. Absolution simply lacks the depth that Blood Money possessed, and Blood Money lacks the satisfying combat that Absolution possesses. In essence Blood Money was a slow burn leading to a deep gameplay experience while Absolution offers more instant gratification at the cost of being less intricate.
I know that this particular shift in gaming has been talked about ad nauseam and these above observations are nothing new, I just wished to share a specific example of said shift.
This leads to the point of the thread. What are the things that really differentiate older games (let's say around early to mid 2000s in this context) from their newer, shinier counterparts, and what are some specific examples?
tldr: One could say that older games generally have more depth but have some clunky gameplay and are less intuitive while newer games control nicely and have exciting, visceral gameplay at the cost of the aforementioned depth. What are your examples of the differences between old and new games?
