Great Games...That Did Not Age Well (For You).

[raeior]

It was even worse, the first game had a max select of 4. The sequel bumped it up to 9. Totally agree with the rest though.

Right you are, it has been quite a while

*Syndicate: After the FPS reboot came out, I decided to head back and re-experience the tactical magic, and it was a little bit of a let down.

I was surprised how hectic this was when I replayed it a year or so ago. Trying to manage your 4 guys all at once, sometimes at completely different places being attacked (or run over). Didn't get very far before I stopped playing.

*Deus Ex. Anyone who played this game knows what I mean.

Care to explain this? I played through it 5 times or so the last time maybe 2 years ago and I still enjoy it as much as I did the first time. Yahtzee mentioned something similar in his Deus Ex review where he said that most people know the first level inside out because they only play that one and then stop playing because the game didn't age well. For me this was always a bit confusing.

 

[Kyrian007]

I would love to say none. I can retrogame and almost always I experience the same joy as I did back when the game in question was the cutting edge and supercool (provided it's a good game.) Atari 2600... Yar's Revenge is still awesome. The vector graphics Star Wars game is still awesome. Old DOS PC favorites like X-Wing, Ultima 7, and Outlaws... all hold up as far as I'm concerned. 8 and 16 and 64 bit Nintendo stand-out titles... could play them all day.

Playstation 1...

Ouch, that's the almost. One of my all-time favorite games is still PS1 exclusive (Chrono-Cross) and that's the only reason I still have a PS1. There's a few other games I'll play on PS1 from time to time: Twisted Metal 2, Rogue Trip, Kagero: Deception 2, Parasite Eve... but they wouldn't be worth maintaining a working PS1 if it weren't for Chrono-Cross. Everything else in the PS1 library... either doesn't hold up or was done far better on other consoles or on PC. PS1 is the one console I ever had that only has one game protecting it from my trashbin.

So, everything exclusive to PS1 (other than Chrono Cross) I would say doesn't hold up well enough.

 

[Dizchu]

Many games from back when lives systems were commonplace just frustrate me these days. Back then it was just to be expected that certain games would only allow a certain number of attempts before forcing you to repeat long stretches all over again. For numerous reasons like tradition, extended longevity, "challenge"...

If Rayman Origins/Legends had the same lives system the original Rayman had... I'd probably have thrown my computer out of a window by now. So I suppose the original Rayman (which I loved) really does not hold up compared to the much superior Origins/Legends, games that improve upon the original in almost every way while still staying true to its general style.

 

[00slash00]

KOTOR. I didn't play this until around 2010 so I can't speak for what it was like as a new game, but I'll give it the benefit of a doubt and assume it was as amazing as everyone said. Playing it in 2010, however, things weren't quite so appealing. I actually thought the visuals still looked pretty decent. I mean, they weren't exactly pretty anymore, but they certainly didn't get in the way of my enjoyment or anything. For me what had really aged badly, was the gameplay and conversation system. The combat, at least playing as a guardian, was very repetitive. By the time I got advanced flurry, every battle amounted to nothing more than running up to the enemies and spamming flurry until everyone was dead. By the last level I was leveling up abilities I had absolutely no use for, just so I'd have a way to make the battles slightly more interesting.
The dialog was also a big letdown. From the very beginning, it seemed like conversations only had two or three paths and choosing two different options would result in the exact same response from the npc. The light and dark choices were also comically black and white (though that's kind of an issue with Bioware, in general). Oh and the space sections! Holy crap what a pain those were. By far the least responsive controls I've ever seen in a rail shooting section.

I know I just shit all over what many people consider one of the best RPGs ever made but I'm not saying it's a bad game, just that it's aged very poorly, from a gameplay standpoint. The things it did that were fresh and revolutionary have just been done so much better by so many games, that playing it for the first time now or even when I played 5 years ago, it becomes significantly harder to appreciate

 

[CrystalShadow]

Pretty much every 3d game made in the 90's...

The technology was so primitive, you look at it now and it's painful.

2d games didn't fare anywhere near as badly, but the 3d graphics really distract from like 95% of them...

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

*Syndicate: After the FPS reboot came out, I decided to head back and re-experience the tactical magic, and it was a little bit of a let down.

I was surprised how hectic this was when I replayed it a year or so ago. Trying to manage your 4 guys all at once, sometimes at completely different places being attacked (or run over). Didn't get very far before I stopped playing.

*Deus Ex. Anyone who played this game knows what I mean.

Care to explain this? I played through it 5 times or so the last time maybe 2 years ago and I still enjoy it as much as I did the first time. Yahtzee mentioned something similar in his Deus Ex review where he said that most people know the first level inside out because they only play that one and then stop playing because the game didn't age well. For me this was always a bit confusing.

Sorry, probably a bit hasty of me to say "anyone", I sometimes don't elaborate too much in fear of making posts too long-winded. But I think the general consensus is the graphics and awkwardness that are abound in the beginning. When I think back on it with fondness, I remember being the badass after the halfway point doing all the crazy hacking, stealth and low tech weapons, not being barely able to hold a pistol straight and walking around like a mech. Going back into it, it felt laggy and clunky. One of the greatest aspects of the game is it's replayability, doing multiple runs with different skills, so it's high points are still fresh. But picking it up after 10 or so years it lost it's gloss to me.

Very big difference to Human Revolution, which starts out awesome and stays that way (IMO). It's not really a game you have to tell people to "stick with it, it gets better" like the original one.

 

[raeior]

snip

Thanks for the explanation! Even though it was never a problem for me, probably because I know the game gets better later on, I can see how especially the weapon handling in the beginning is really weird in comparison to practically every other game. Seeing as how the character is supposed to be this nano-enhanced supersoldier that has been in training for UNATCO for quite some time it seems even weirder that he is unable to hold a pistol straight.
Funnily enough when I think of the game I mostly remember the music in the various areas Especially the Hong Kong market area...

 

[Inazuma1]

second edition D&D right between the eyes.

Everybody balks at having to remember the dreaded THAC0. That rule was so monumentally stupid I'm surprised it stayed in place until 3rd Edition.

Anyway, games that did not age well. Well, let's see here.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. Otherwise known as "Loading: The Game." I love this game because it has a ton of atmosphere and really interesting lore (Narration by Simon Templeman, the voice of Kain, helps,) but it is a chore to play because everything you do requires the game to pause and load the appropriate screen. It makes the game ungodly slow when all you want to do is switch weapons or spells because you have to go through two loading prompts in the process. And unfortunately the plot of the game itself is a mess. This game feels like it has two to three games worth of plot and a lot of cut corners jammed into a single disc. The game's first boss, Nupraptor, gets a ton of exposition and backstory and it makes him sound really interesting, but since he's the first boss he's killed early in the story despite being ostensibly the main cause of the corruption of the Circle of Nine thanks to his decent into madness. Everybody else gets less characterization until it all fizzles out with Vorador. Every character introduced after Vorador is an empty husk; most of whom you kill just because you have to. It stinks like a rush job along with the rest of the prematurely aborted plot arcs like the Dark Eden subplot which is dropped entirely after you finish that particular chapter; despite it being made out to be a world shaking event in the making. If the game had been chopped up into chapters, either across multiple discs or even multiple releases, and each chapter arc and characters therein given more development and fleshing out it could've made for an amazing story. But Silicon Knights weren't (and still aren't,) that smart or talented because Denis Dyack is an incompetent moron blinded by his own ego.

Road Rash. This game and series popularized the idea of fighting your opponents while you race, in this case with bare knuckles or assorted improvised weapons, and it was a smash hit on the Sega Mega Drive. It also turned out to be Sega's answer to Nintendo's Mario Kart. This game is very tough to play nowadays because the scenery is jerky thanks to the weird foreground scrolling used to simulate uneven roads. And since you're racing on open roads this jerkiness means it's very tough to react in time to hazards in your way; which are often civilian cars coming at you at high speeds. Going from first to last because a sedan sent you flying five miles ahead of your bike is painful. It's still fun, just not as fun as it felt back in 1991.

Batman Forever. Yes I'm listing this one. As a kid I always tried to find the good in a game especially if I myself didn't own it. The things I liked about this game were the fluid animations, the Mortal Kombat fighting system, and Thug 1's special move of shoving a chainsaw into his opponents' dicks; which I always thought was hilarious. Nowadays though I know this game is a case study in developer incompetence. The special moves are all impossible to pull of, the odds are unfairly stacked against you, the fluid animations are also extremely limited, and the final bosses are damn near impossible to beat. This is one game that when I and my friends remember it, always ask each other "What the hell were we thinking?"

Shaq Fu. Same reason as above. A case study in developer incompetence as this fighting game even at the time was blatantly behind the curve in terms of fighting game mechanics and innovation. Character's hit boxes being located solely in the center of their sprite? Check. Weird special moves that are not only unbalanced but require obtuse inputs making them difficult to pull off? Check. A main character who is so bad his attacks are underpowered and useless? Check. A villain that makes no sense and has a very uninspired look? Check. The presence of blood being locked behind a cheat code in the 90s gory glory days of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat? Big Check. Also, between myself and my friend who owned this game, I as far as I know am the only one to successfully beat this game's story mode.

Final Fantasy 8. Plot holes, plot holes everywhere. This is the only 90s Final Fantasy that Sakaguchi didn't have a hand in writing, and it shows. There isn't an engaging, likable, or even intelligent character in this cast of idiots and pricks. The problems of FF8 are the same problems that plagued FF13. Apparently the writers that Squenix hires to write their game stories do not know how to write human characters, which makes one wonder how and why they even became writers to begin with. Looking at you Motomu Toriyama, and your waifu ***** Lightning.

Dino Crisis. I like this game a lot, but you really need to be in the right mood in order to play it, especially near the end when the techno-babble overflows and all semblance of sense goes out the window. Scientifically this game is dated too with it's Jurassic Park inspired reptilian dinos. The dinos are also really bullet spongy which makes avoiding them the order of the day unless you're doing New Game+ and have the shotgun or infinite ammo grenade launcher. Then things get fun. New Game+ has the added benefit of seemingly randomizing item placement because you already have all the weapons. In the first area I once found a box of S&W .40 rounds (for the upgraded handgun,) and a box of Slag rounds for the shotgun (I already had some in my inventory too,) which left me almost hilariously over-equipped because I also had the infinite ammo grenade launcher.

 

[HemalJB]

When I first began gaming I used to like the old original Doom. I would play for hours in the old days. These days I find myself preferring newer shooters, as Doom gives me a headache these days.
Also, I recently bought the old Saints Row 2 for PC cause I heard it was very fun, but it played really wonky on my pc, and I had to mod it a lot to make it playable. Even then I found myself not enjoying this.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I tried getting into Alpha Centauri but I just could not do it. Especially the UI has aged so damn poorly that I can't play it for more than 30 minutes without getting annoyed.

The first Deus Ex a little less so, but god that early 3D of the UT engine made for some terrible looking levels. Especially the hub areas, sheesh. Never finished it, sadly.

The combat of early CRPG's like Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, Planescape and Fallout has made playing those games quite a struggle for me too. For Baldur's Gate it was enough for me to not continue past the first hour, Fallout and Arcanum I managed a little better.

 

[Slenn]

Title.
Warcraft 3. Story is still good but wow, the visuals have not aged well at all, the world feels empty, the units and pathing feel wonky and the voice acting is *horrible*. So many good memories, wish I had let this one lie.

I find it enjoyable in terms of gameplay. The voice acting for me is meh. But as you said, the 3D models look choppy as this is Blizzard's first time incorporating 3D animated sprites instead of pre-rendered sprites for their games.

The Jak and Daxter games.
Now I wouldn't say they ever great, but they were fun enough. The controls have aged horrendously though. Again, it's not like the controls were ever fantastic, but this was in a time where we were more willing to put up with stiff controls. Controls today however are so buttery smooth it's almost impossible for me to return to games like J&D.

I tend to agree here. They're not bad games for the PS2, but the original JaD is certainly of an easier and shorter caste of games. It is much easier and shorter than I remember it being. Jak 2 had some unbelievably hard sections in it. Jak 3 could not make up its mind at all what kind of game it wanted to be. And its sense of humor I've outgrown a lot.

OT:
For me it has to be the original Myst. The game was great when I got it, as it started my interests in alien worlds and ambient music. But once you know the solutions to the puzzles, you can figure out the game in less than five minutes due to the other worlds being completely useless. So its replayability is astronomically low.

The Ratchet and Clank games for the same reasons of Jak and Daxter series. The games are either much easier or have a sense of humor that just doesn't click with me any more. Plus the graphics look really plastic at times. The 3D models for some of the details on the levels just seem like cardboard cutouts. Even on the 2nd title this was an issue, and this came out after Metroid Prime 1 on the Gamecube, which looked far more detailed in quality.

 

[sageoftruth]

Civilization I. Granted, I've never been great at those games, but the interface for that game was just terrible compared to the ones that came after it.

 

[sageoftruth]

I'd definitely say the early King's Quest games have not aged well. First of all, this was before "point-and-click" adventuring when, instead it was "walk up to something, type a command and hope you used the proper phrasing" adventuring. Considering how limited the options were, they would have done just as well if not better as point-and-click games if mouses were a thing yet.

Still, that's not the only gripe. There was also the fact that anything could kill you and not in the "Ooh challenging" sort of way but rather in the, "Uh oh! A spiral staircase. I'd better quicksave in case I accidentally walk off it to my death" way. There was no edge gravity, and because of the very poor portrayal of depth, it was very hard to tell when you were about to walk off a ledge. Even crossing a simple footbridge over a shallow river was tough.

Then there's the conditions that made the games unwinnable sometimes. Of course, you wouldn't know that until you read a guide and found out that you had done something wrong a few hours back.

Lastly, the stories were so bare bones. Story-wise they were probably miles ahead of the other genres of its time (uh oh! Time to save the princess again) but by today's standards, it's real hard to get invested in such a story when we've seen it several times before, with much better writing. Without the story, all that's left is the satisfaction of solving the puzzles, and there have already been plenty of articles about how hardly anyone plays these games to solve their puzzles, explaining Telltale's success with it's recent puzzle-free Point-and-Click games.

The early King's Quest may have played a giant role in the propagation of the Point and Click Adventure genre, but I'd be surprised if anyone still found those games to be worth investing any time in, in this day and age.

 

[stroopwafel]

Most PS1 games didn't age well(including some of my all-time favorites like FF7) and improvements in design also weren't very kind to most PS2 games, espescially in more traditional genres(the PS2's saving grace being that it has many 'unique' games like those of Team Ico).

If Atari 2600 ultimately led to the Super Nintendo than I feel PS1 ultimately led to what we have now. Just as before those games are interesting as a curiosity piece or a nostalgia trip but not really anymore for the quality of their gameplay and production values(let's be honest, games are a visual medium so graphics are, atleast to an extent, important).

Strangely enough I find many Super Nintendo games still very good. A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Super Metroid etc. all have a kind of retro-charm that indies now try to emulate which the PS1 era(early transition into 3D) just doesn't have. Maybe once current HD games reach the pinnacle of both graphics and gameplay systems they will have the same kind of timeless appeal. There are definitely some games in the pipeline I see having that potential.

 

[sageoftruth]

Most PS1 games didn't age well(including some of my all-time favorites like FF7) and improvements in design also weren't very kind to most PS2 games, espescially in more traditional genres(the PS2's saving grace being that it has many 'unique' games like those of Team Ico).

If Atari 2600 ultimately led to the Super Nintendo than I feel PS1 ultimately led to what we have now. Just as before those games are interesting as a curiosity piece or a nostalgia trip but not really anymore for the quality of their gameplay and production values(let's be honest, games are a visual medium so graphics are, atleast to an extent, important).

Strangely enough I find many Super Nintendo games still very good. A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Super Metroid etc. all have a kind of retro-charm that indies now try to emulate which the PS1 era(early transition into 3D) just doesn't have. Maybe once current HD games reach the pinnacle of both graphics and gameplay systems they will have the same kind of timeless appeal. There are definitely some games in the pipeline I see having that potential.

Makes sense. PS1 was where they started trying to make things 3D. The PS1 games that still hold up graphically tend to be the ones that continued to rely on sprites, like Final Fantasy Tactics, or Valkyrie Profile (minus the voice acting).

 

[NemotheElvenPanda]

Morrowind. The gameplay is awkward and anti-climatic, people walk (if they do at all) like they're constipated, the quest system is sometimes misleading and requires online guides to figure out, and you hear the same song being played over and over and over and over again. I don't deny it's a classic that started a great universe, but it's not something I'll ever be able to get into without mods or a serious update.

 

[babinro]

Diablo 2

This game topped my favorite game of all time list for several years but it's mechanics haven't aged well. I think the games art style holds up well enough but soo many of the design choices are questionable. No shared stash. Manual picking up of gold. The convoluted rune system. Charms that trade out limited inventory for power. A lot of these things are inventory management nightmares and suck the fun out of the experience.

KOTOR

I have a love/hate relationship with this game lately. I still love the gameplay, the characters and the story. But actually playing the game is a chore. It feels like you spend 90% of your time running around huge maps doing nothing interesting. The pacing absolutely kills this experience.

Mario Kart SNES

The one that started it all and ate up a ton of my childhood is now completely unplayable to me. This is one of the few cases where graphics are to blame. It almost makes me nauseous to watch the game in motion in these days...especially rainbow road. Soo many out of focus pixels just moving around quickly.

 

[CaitSeith]

"The Great Giana Sisters" for Commodore 64. It was just a Super Mario Bros. clone, but I put a lot of time playing that game. Now I look a it and say: how could I like that thing? (probably because of the music) They released a remake a few years ago (I'm not talking about "Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams", that's a different game), and it was as bad as the original.

 

[EvilRoy]

you can't queue up multiple units

I'm pretty sure you can, at least on the PC version. It's been a while though.

Well, the PC version is the only one, right? Or is there some browser version?

Command & Conquer and Red Alert had console releases on the N64 and Playstation 1... for some reason.

I believe the one I had was Tiberian Sun for PS1. That was around the time that I decided that some games belonged on console and some games belonged on PC. I have never had a more miserable horseshit time trying to use a controller instead of a mouse in an RTS.

The load times actually were fantastic though.

For my picks:

Civilisation III: Load/turn times late game were godawful (this didn't seem to change with better computer power, since it seemed to have to run through every single move in order with full animation before finishing an opponent turn), there were like two strategies that nearly guaranteed wins, trade routes were needlessly complex and so on. At the time it blew me away how much control you had, but in hindsight a lot of the stuff was just clunky extras that didn't really factor in to a winning strategy.

Allegance: An old first person space fighter game. Basically you either flew around in a spaceship or you managed everything as the commander - it was all multiplayer, so everyone more or less had a job you could pick based on what was around. At the time it was intense - you could pilot fighters and scouts in a cool first person space flight deal, or for a totally different experience you could pilot a frigate or flagship, or be a gunner on one, or pilot a destroyer, or be the commander.

Returning to it however, Jesus Christ. Even the simplest ships - fighters/scouts - were ridiculously complex to use competently. Most of the keyboard was mapped to something, and it only got worse with the bigger ships - you really have to question why flight sim in space needed to be so crazy hard when flight sim on earth was way more straightforward and the only difference is gravity. Add to that the fact that this is an MMO, and there was no real way to practice. Seriously, you had to learn command on the fly - even though the teams success hinged on a competent commander, and command was playing a semi-rts in an otherwise entirely FPS game.

 

[hermes]

About 90% of the PS1/N64 library.

There is a reason why most nostalgia driven games are sprite-based; but no one tries to induce nostalgia for the following generation. You can make something that is eye-pleasing and feels like part of a past era with pixel art; but the following generation was downright ugly for the most part. Not only was too early to take advantage of realistic 3D graphics, yet it was so enamored of them that many companies plainly refused to create anything that wasn't 3D, which led to horrible, clumsy adaptations like Earthworm Jim 64, Mortal Kombat 4 or Street Fighter EX...