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

[stringtheory]

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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...

Yeah, the having to stand still to aim properly mechanic hurt the in-level pacing for the first third for me because it forced you to stand still for 10+ seconds and the game can't afford to have the player slow down lest they get bored. The game picks up once you get a couple of augments and the dragon's tooth sword. I finally felt like the badass I was supposed to be when I was leaving the Cathedral when I fucked up the stealth, had six MJ-12 troopers and Commandos come after me, so half-blind I managed to take them all out with my Dragon's tooth sword while tanking the hits with dermal armor and regeneration. And to think I was considering quick-loading...

 

[xSerix]

The original Spellforce, I love that game when it first game out. Picked it up on steam a while back and realised how bad it was.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Bioware RPGs in general. I absolutely loved the Knights of the Old Republic games, Dragon Age Origins and, the Mass Effect trilogy the first time I played them but it was difficult to get back into them, especially after the newer ones came out. Trying to play Old Republic 1 after Mass Effect 2 is jarring, to say the least.

Other people mentioned the PSX Final Fantasy games and the original Resident Evil titles and I just can't get much farther than about 20 minutes into the Resis. I can get back into Final Fantasy if I have the time to dedicate to them but I have other games that I can play that don't have such extensive opening sequences, dialog sequences, etc...

 

[RavingSturm]

Bioware RPGs in general. I absolutely loved the Knights of the Old Republic games, Dragon Age Origins and, the Mass Effect trilogy the first time I played them but it was difficult to get back into them, especially after the newer ones came out. Trying to play Old Republic 1 after Mass Effect 2 is jarring, to say the least.

Other people mentioned the PSX Final Fantasy games and the original Resident Evil titles and I just can't get much farther than about 20 minutes into the Resis. I can get back into Final Fantasy if I have the time to dedicate to them but I have other games that I can play that don't have such extensive opening sequences, dialog sequences, etc...

I can relate to this, I'm at the point where I just want to dive into the game asap rather than waiting through exposition that sets up the premise.

 

[CommanderZx2]

I have a lot of fond memories of old school isometric turn based CRPGS, but if I try them now I just cannot get into them. Such as Fallout, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, Temple of elemental evil, etc. I just cannot seem to get into the slow paced gameplay any more.

 

[Slenn]

Starcraft. I get that it spawned a legion of descendant games that owe their gameplay and features to it, but the source game just feels weak. Scant resources, cramped maps, tons and tons of units that only exist to cast abilities that empower other units to do something, and a "right way" to play that steals away all the fun of building and exploring and reacting as you go. Not to mention a ludicrously small selection cap, dulardly pathfinding, and a hard/soft/nonexistent counter model that just makes no sense. Starcraft may have invented a lot of the good stuff in the modern RTS, but it also seems to have invented most of the bad things too.

The "right way" to play you're mentioning sounds like the community's metagame. LoL suffers from that as well. Online play for Starcraft kind of degenerated into maps that were completely blank with a truck load of resources plotted right next to the spawn point. I tend to avoid any sort of map like it and stuck to "Use Map Settings" maps like Evolves and Impossible Scenarios.

I'm not quite sure where most of your gameplay went into, but I usually played the campaigns. I remember it being pretty well managed in terms of how many resources you have. And the maps that were there could be quite large.

The few gripes I have about it, other than the multiplayer, was that unit movement was slightly buggy. Going up ramps with a cluster of units was a pain, because, more often than not, a few of the units in back would bump into the units in front and then hightail it back the way they came to find another path to take. It was a game that strictly enforced micromanagement, because it didn't automatically allocate your units into position (i.e. ranged in back, melee in front, etc).

You mentioned selection cap, which I have to agree made playing Zerg ludicrously hard. Zerg works in swarms, hence their title, and having only 12 units per hotkey is a mess. Playing Zerg is fast but it's super-squish with a bunch of their ground units being punked out by marines in bunkers or a squad of zealots. So you really needed the numbers in order to do anything.

 

[rgrekejin]

Morrowwind has been ruined for me by the shitty combat.

The shitty combat (and lack of a functional fast travel system) ruined Morrowind for me right out of the gate. It's not that it didn't age well - those things were game-breakers that made me not enjoy it in the first place.

The Zone of Enders games stand out to me as not having aged well. They seemed like the best thing ever at launch (buoyed by that MGS2 preview), but even by the end of the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation, the poor controls and questionable design choices had made them a pain to play.

 

[VincentX3]

Probably Resident Evil 4.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great game obviously. I remember getting the original PC version to work waaaaaaaaaaay back and I was blown away by it.

But now even with the HD remaster on PC and the 60FPS it feels... bland.
Graphically it's not impressive anymore, which I don't mind since it cant be helped (Not including HD texture mods)

Then the placement of enemies all feel.. slowish and repetitive in a strange way. Probably because I already know what's going to happen it loses all it's tension.

Then I remember Ashley....

:l


Yea I'll just keep this one in my memory.

 

[The Enquirer]

Then there was the Mako...

WE. DON'T. TALK. ABOUT. THE. MAKO.

Seriously though the thing controlled terribly. I did like the idea of it though. Made the galaxy feel tangible.

Games that have not aged well for me... probably KOTOR. I goddamn love the game, and I'm trying to get back into it but... it's just so darned difficult. Mostly a camera thing for me. I still think they're fantastic games though. Also split screen Star Wars Battlefront 2. There's just something about it that feels off for me. I can still play the first one despite some of the more exclusive issues in split screen mode for whatever reason.

 

[b.w.irenicus]

From a graphical standpoint almost everything 3D of the early N64 and PS1 games. Gameplaywise, hmmm, I still like FF VII and FF VIII, but man, the summons take so f*cking long, it almost takes away all the fun. And then there is Morrowind. Don't get me wrong, TES3 ist still vastly superior to Oblivion (which is unplayable to me without heavy modding), but there is one thing almost killing the game for me (no, not the combat, relying on stats to hit something is very RPGish to me): The walking speed from hell. You move soooooo slow in this game, it is almost unbearable. I can't play this game without cheating myself to 100 Speed, which in turn means I can't use speed-related abilitys or I'd be overpowered as hell.

 

[beastro]

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.

Took you this long? First time I played it I was appealed at the graphics, especially the way people jaws moved, or rather, kept almost falling off while not being able to fully.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

Warcraft 2. The pathfinding is terrible, the two factions are pretty much the same if you bar the two mage and archer units, the matches will still end up in Bloodlust vs Polymorph/Blizzard spam and the story amounted to little more than "evul orcs and noble humens". I guess the last point isn't really valid since they hadn't developed the lore quite yet.

The graphics are still good (being a cartoony, fantasy style), the voice acting is still gloriously hammy and the music gets the job done. I also think the game plays more smoothly than WC3 at times.

 

[Starbird]

Probably Resident Evil 4.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great game obviously. I remember getting the original PC version to work waaaaaaaaaaay back and I was blown away by it.

But now even with the HD remaster on PC and the 60FPS it feels... bland.
Graphically it's not impressive anymore, which I don't mind since it cant be helped (Not including HD texture mods)

Then the placement of enemies all feel.. slowish and repetitive in a strange way. Probably because I already know what's going to happen it loses all it's tension.

Then I remember Ashley....

:l


Yea I'll just keep this one in my memory.

Weird. I revisited RE4 recently with the new HD release and think it's aged pretty well. Good design over raw graphical power (also God Of War 2).

It's funny - a lot of games fall into this for me. Infinity Engine games for example still hold up well, as do most Build engine games. Quake 2 engine games on the other hand look *awful* now.

 

[VincentX3]

Probably Resident Evil 4.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great game obviously. I remember getting the original PC version to work waaaaaaaaaaay back and I was blown away by it.

But now even with the HD remaster on PC and the 60FPS it feels... bland.
Graphically it's not impressive anymore, which I don't mind since it cant be helped (Not including HD texture mods)

Then the placement of enemies all feel.. slowish and repetitive in a strange way. Probably because I already know what's going to happen it loses all it's tension.

Then I remember Ashley....

:l


Yea I'll just keep this one in my memory.

Weird. I revisited RE4 recently with the new HD release and think it's aged pretty well. Good design over raw graphical power (also God Of War 2).

It's funny - a lot of games fall into this for me. Infinity Engine games for example still hold up well, as do most Build engine games. Quake 2 engine games on the other hand look *awful* now.

Like I said, don't get me wrong, the game itself is great. Just that going back to it after playing on the hardest difficulty in coop RE6 it felt sorta.. off or bland now.

I guess between the enemies that feel sorta slowish and sluggish plus at least for me, the melee combat overall feels lacking now compared to RE6 sliding and doing all sorts of cool maneuvers.

Either way, the game holds pretty well, just in my opinion it was hard to go back into RE4 after playing coop RE6 with a friend and enjoying the game all the way.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Final Fantasy 7.

Those 3D graphics are just... So basic and terrible... I can't even. I would much rather they would have just gone with 2D graphics again for this one before they made the switch.