Games That Aged Horribly

[Fat Hippo]

4. Planscape Torment (special game, but can require A LOT OF PATIENCE and you have to do a lot of reading.)

But hey, at least Planescape: Torment still looks as good es ever, thanks to it's superb 2D graphics and visual design.

And yep, lots of reading, but when you play this game, you just need a totally different mindset. You need to accept that you are not just playing a video game, but also reading an entire novel at the same time. Some people don't like game with lots of text, and they sure as hell won't like PS:T.

It's too bad the actual combat is crap, but it was crap when it was released too, so overall, I'd say it hasn't aged that badly.


Some others have mentioned Morrowind, and I have to agree. That game is...so...incredibly...slow. I'm a fairly patient gamer most of the time, but day-um, that game has you doing nothing but walking ever so slowly across large distances for most of the time. Great at the time, but I can't stand playing it anymore.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

Warcraft 1: Orcs and Humans.

Shows just how far the RTS genre has come. The controls and mechanics of the games were incredibly limiting. Ex. You can only select 4 units at a time, you have to build all buildings along a road, that sort of thing. I recently went back an tried to play, and it makes for an interesting challenge, less from the AI than from trying to play without many helpful features of today's games.

 

[masticina]

GTA III

Vice City and San Andreas had some improvements mostly in controls and targeting that made like a bit better.

GTA III I like you but yeah.. not a fan of the missions..that you fail because the targeting choses a taxi 200 miles away instead of your actual needed target.

In free roam it doesn't matters much that indeed the controls are off.. that the targeting is far from accurate. But it is when the game throws you a number of enemies and you desperately try to survive the terrible auto aim!

Yup trouble indeed!

 

[WoahDan]

Planescape has actually aged quite well imo, especially if you get the mod for wider resolution it actually looks pretty good, the story still holds up and the gameplay never bothered me. Fallout hasn't aged nearly as well however, the dialogue and levelling system is still as good as ever but the VATS system has aged horribly and is a complete chore to play with.

 

[Rattler5150]

The original Zork trilogy
To this day I have never complete these games, but I cannot bring myself to finish them , I just cannot get into a text game today.

 

[Netrigan]

Super Mario 64.

It revolutionized gaming... and then it should have been buried under about 100 feet of dirt.

With modern 2 analog stick control and accuracy available in any game now, try to play this gem. It is a control disaster.

I'd say that of most of the early 3D platformers. It's such a horrible perspective for jump puzzles that everything just ends up being a bazillion times easier than its 2D predecessors.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

To be fair, I played it on Xbox, which was never a good platform for that game in the first place. I imagine on PC it's quite a bit more playable.

The pc version controls are way better and you miss out some of the greatest mods. Same goes for MP2.
MP3 will be the first MP i`m playing on a console first (i`m to broke for a new pc atm). I fear i will have a similar feeling about MP3 then, on the other side it`s 2012, they should manage to get it right just like other tps.


Like some posters above already mentioned: PS1 games. The texture flickering and low resolutions kills it for me. The health warning at the beginning seem to be there for a reason after all, after a short time i start feeling epileptic. It was a long time before and i had really fun with a bunch of buddys and Crashs Mario cart clone.

As much as i loved many early console 3d games it`s hard to enjoy them anymore (this goes for most ps2 games too).

 

[Comma-Kazie]

Jade Empire. AMAZING world, but man the graphics just have not aged well.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Here it goes, but...

Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Yeah, I know. It was actually the third Zelda game I played, after respectively Wind Waker and Majora's Mask. They say the Zelda series is getting stale, but only after playing the humongous leap forward in the franchise that was OoT I recognize how every following iteration added to the Zelda series.

Relatively small things each time, yes, but they add up. And when you take them all out at once, OoT feels rather...empty of sorts. Still good, but so much simpler.

For me it has to be SimCity 3000. Loved it alot when I was a kid, got my hands on it a few days ago, and epic "meh"'s were had.

Yeah, the gameplay really is simple. I remember struggling to keep my city afloat as a kid, and making a big town felt really satisfying. But nowadays it's piss easy.

However, one thing of that game will never ever get old, and that's this:

Thanks Simcity 3000 (and Cowboy Bebop), thanks for introducing me to the wonderful world of jazz.

Orginal the sims compared to the additions in 2/3 that add more interactions and progression/aging options it's just boring living on forever and kids never growing up.

Though somehow, building stuff still feels less good in the new Sims games, which was the sole reason I used to play that game.

 

[Genericjim101]

Any PS2 GTA game, MGS1 on PSX the nodding head animations make me lol.3D Platformers that do not use two control sticks , one for moving one for camera are awful : S.

 

[Sixcess]

OT : Fear effect . God i loved that game back in the day . But the controls and the disk swapping in random orders make me cringe , add the trial and error and god it's terrible .

One of my favourite series of all time... but yeah, I can see that. That said, I love the story, characters and style of the series so much the gameplay would have to do me literal physical harm for me not to love it regardless.

Half Life for me. I only played it for the first time a year or two ago, and whilst the story telling is still very good, the actual gameplay has all the failings of bad 90s FPS design - insta-kill environmental hazards, hugely unpredictable incoming damage that encourages contant reloading of your last save point because that random guy just took 3/4 of your health in one burst of gunfire... and platforming... some of the worst. platforming. ever.

I never did finish Xen or whatever its called.

 

[Erttheking]

I played the first Halo game for the first time when I bought the anniversary edition...I like the newer ones better.

 

[Lunar Templar]

FF7 has aged horribly, in fact most early 3D games haven't aged well :/

nether have the NES games i loved, some still look and play good, but other, like Metriod 1, are just hard to look at.

a fair chunk of the 16 bit games have done remarkable well in terms of still looking good, not just talking SNES, talking Genesis and TG16 as well

 

[Johnny Impact]

Deus Ex, yes the original. Two words for the visuals: Ug. Lee. Gameplay isn't very good, either. Abysmal AI just runs in circles. And the firearms, good god the firearms...... The idea of being an absolutely terrible shot with all weapons might be realistic for vanilla humans -- I've often commented that Gordon Freeman obviously did not acquire a PhD in physics, but he seems to have two in Shootin' Dudes, seriously what's that about -- yet it simply isn't true for a man good enough to be recruited into an elite agency. I know you can improve Denton's skill with guns, but if he can't hit the broad side of a barn to begin with, what's he doing in covert ops? Maybe I would have understood this game back in the day. I just don't now.

Final Fantasy VII. Picked it up on PSN not that long ago. Doesn't take many years to turn state of the art visuals into pixelated garbage. It was so much cooler when I was twenty.

Max Payne. Picked it up in a Steam sale. I shouldn't have. Even when it was new I was never all that impressed with the shooting mechanics. The dialogue is still hilarious but the game plays like an absolute turd.

 

[The]

"Sid Meier's Pirates: Live The Life!". It didn't have as much to it as I thought. And it doesn't look that spectacular anymore either.

 

[edudewired]

The original sims is practically unplayable now. Lacking features, bad graphics, limited models. The later games are a vast improvement

 

[OrpheusTelos]

I'm playing Xenogears for the first time right now (gotta love Playstation classics). Good story, and I do love old-school RPGs, but even for the time the game wasn't that great looking (budget issues), but today it looks... odd. The 2D sprites are good, but they don't mesh with the muddy 3D backgrounds, the controls are terrible (which makes platforming in dungons a nightmare, combined with the awful camera). then it cant decide what type of cutscenes to use... Im twenty hours in, and so far there have been in-engine work, anime cutscenes, and one CG FMV. Weird. The dialogue is also very inconsistent- sometimes it's great, but then it seems like the translator fell asleep and they got some random dude from off the street to throw darts at a dictionary to fill in the next few lines of dialogue.

 

[Mustang678]

Master of Orion 1. Most older games I can still enjoy though.

You're breaking my heart, I love to plow through MOO1 every two months or so yet

As for me, Ultima Online isn't even a shadow of what it was when it was released.

 

[RedTNT]

This one has probably already been said, but for me Banjo Kazooie is definitely showing its age now. The gameplay is still good but some of the graphics are starting to look blocky - if that makes sense. It was great when it came out though.