Things we DON'T miss from old games

[Pink Gregory]

-Games that had ridiculously bad graphics,that made you say,holy mother of Cthulu,that used to be hight tech.
Remember San Andreas?

I've been playing San Andreas recently. Lordy. Much as the design is scintillating and the sun glare that actually hurts your eyes if you look directly at it is a nice touch, the character models...

Well, not so much the character models, but the animations. Half of the gun battles are literally guys standing casually with an arm outstretched with a gun in it.

It's a petty complaint, but it's there.

 

[Raggedstar]

I was waiting for a thread like this.

Unskippable Cutscenes: Total agreement and one of those things that keep old JRPGs (well, ANY game if I'm honest) replayable for me.

Lives/Continues: Again, I agree. I love platformers, but I HATE it when they include lives and continues. It's a vestigial feature from arcade games that needed to cap a player's playtime so they can toss in more quarters. It makes no sense to keep it in Mario or Sonic, and it's ESPECIALLY worse when you consider some of these games (such as Mario Galaxy) go as far as to kick you out of a game at a game over. That's pretty much the game telling you "fuck off" as opposed to even a harder platformer like Super Meat Boy where they quickly get you back in to try again. Last game I played with lives (non-Mario/Sonic) was Sly Cooper, and it didn't take them too long to kick out the lives system.

FPS Platforming: Haven't played many of them, but I hated the platforming in Half Life.

Passwords: Yyyyyep, glad we ditched those. I guess it was only a matter of time.

Lack of Autosaving/Checkpoints: When I have to quit, I need to quit NOW. Not to mention I hate dying (or in a blackout) and being placed to my last checkpoint about 30 minutes back.

Obtuse Controls: Just a general misplacement of controls (like using Select as a jump). I guess mostly a feature of old BAD games, but didn't Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee have the attack button by clicking the analog stick?

The Awkward Transition to 3D: Some really good games out there, but man did it have an ugly time. Mostly technology concerns I guess.

 

[scorptatious]

*ahem*...
'Miguel'

Him and Dario. I was oddly enough, able to beat Miguel on my first try, but that was mostly because I remember the tactic HCBailly used to beat him.

Dario on the other hand... UGH.

Kingdom Hearts 1 also had an issue with this. Particularly when you face Riku for the last time. Thankfully though, the Final Mix version gave you the option to skip cutscenes, so that's no longer an issue for me.

 

[McMarbles]

Having to carry around tons of quarters.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

When you couldn't save in games, or you have to rely on a password system to do so. Seriously, I don't know how I ever got through the first two Sonic the Hedgehog games without the saving benefit of Mega Collection.

Also, those blocky, polygonal 3D graphics of the character models in those PS1/N64-era games, and even some PS2 games.

 

[teebeeohh]

Well, on the PC at least, the sound assets for the guns were absolutely phenomenal, making even the pathetic little starting pistols feel like they had a hell of an impact to them. Compare to the first Bioshock or many other pseudo-realistic shooters, where the guns feel like they might as well be shooting wads of paper. I also loved the skyhook, and the larger areas that had you jumping to and from the skylines to various different sections of the arena for better vantage points or to escape Handymen.

Really, apart from level design, I can't think of a single technical aspect of Infinite that was worse than Bioshock. The first Bioshock has the worst gameplay in the franchise so far.

true, the guns sounded great but i usually don't count this as a gameplay aspect and more as part of the "look" of the game. What bugged me later on so much was that normal enemies soak up so much gunfire unless you go for headshots that the guns felt too weak. And yes, the skyhooks were great and fighting the handymen was fun because they were the only enemies that posed an actual threat but they were few and far between.
while this is a total nitpick i hated that upgrades don't show up visually on the guns.
I guess my main problem is that i didn't compare it as much to Bioshock(which was a huge disappointment because the gameplay was kinda weak as well AND i had the story spoilered for me and thus wasn't able to fully enjoy it) but rather to system shock2, which did everything better.

and didn't it bother you that scavenging for resources and murdering everybody you meet make no sense if the game world is in ruins and/or overrun by zombie monsters? or that the tonics don't make a lot of sense except that it's what people expected from a Bioshock game.

Nope.

I could leave it at that, but this is The Escapist, where apparently "ludonarrative dissonance" and the actual creator's vision for canon are cause for outrage among the consumers, so I'll attempt to clarify.

It's a game. Not only is it a game, it's a game that takes place in a city floating in the sky. I can suspend my disbelief about the introduction of tonics to said city when there was no reason for them to exist, or for running around collecting money and bits and bobs for health or ammo. Especially since they're usually the player's choice. And you don't murder everyone you meet, which in my mind was a marked improvement over the first Bioshock. I absolutely adored the juxtaposition between shoot-fests and suddenly being in a crowded market and arcade next to a pleasant beach. Or the bar where you can go downstairs to play the guitar while Elizabeth sings, where the people only become aggressive if you've been aggressive first, or 'trespass' on their little sections for the sake of item collection.

yeah ludocreative discodance is the flavor of the year. It never bugged me that you fight your way through the city, I just would have hoped for something more creative than shooting through hordes of enemies with a huge array of guns and superpowers. I always have to compare the game to system shock 2, where the gameplay worked so perfectly to enforce the atmosphere and setting. And yes, i am totally holding that game to a higher standard than i would other games.

I loved the non-violent parts so much and every time i had to go back to shooting people I was kinda annoyed and wanted to go back to just exploring the world again. Add to that the bullet-sponginess of enemies at later stages of the game and i really hated going back to shooting.

i get that the gameplay is enjoyable, i liked about the first half before it got tedious but i if you say you loved the gameplay i guess it must have had something special.

It had a freedom of movement that I don't generally find from "bunny-hopping" games or "brown is so real" games, combined with a regenerating shield that was a buffer between the need to gather health packs and a weapon and ammo limitation that often meant needing to race around the arenas in the middle of a firefight to find another weapon with ammo so you didn't die (or racing to a vendor if you had enough money). Mix in the gun + tonic dual-wield from Bioshock 2 for smoother combat with some truly wonderful tonics like Bucking Bronco, and yeah, to me it did feel like something fairly special.

I'll freely acknowledge that other people may not share the same opinions or have even gotten the same impression of the game as I did, but the Bioshock series has always felt like a great compromise between "old-school" and "new-school" shooter designs to me, and as such I enjoy it far more than the likes of Doom, Serious Sam, Quake, or Wolfenstein and the likes of Call of Duty, Killzone, Gears of War, or Crysis.

sure infinite allowed for more movement than your average shooter these days but i kinda grew up when rocket jumping was a legitimate form of movement and you were running at ridiculous speeds so that kinda doesn't do it for me.
Than again, i also don't really believe shooters work well as story driven games(with exceptions) and that infinite would have been better if they replaced the shooting with something else. puzzle solving with Elizabeths powers, tonics and a pistol maybe, i dunno.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Shitty beep-boop-beep music, awful writing (or none at all), bad graphics, annoying mechanics (like 'lives'), poor controls.

Well, basically everything is better now. I have no nostalgia when it comes to games whatsoever.

 

[Lightknight]

I was waiting for a thread like this.

Yeah, something about this thread is almost therapeutic. I love playing games back in the day but in hindsight I simply can't tolerate some of the shortcomings of gaming that I thought was fine back then.

I've been spoiled by modern gaming, and that's a good thing.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

There is not much I miss, aside from limited checkpoint/save options, the new stuff tends to be worse with hand holding, being to easy, having way to much time spent on story and glaring issues with game play ignored. Bad controls,unskippable cutscenes,ect,ect are all in new games so meh.

 

[Ml33tninja]

-Expansion packs (this is what we had to rely on before DLC).

-In RTS games, putting limits on the number of units you could select at once. Also, not being able to queue units at a production facility.

-For some reason, in old school shooters, climbing down ladders was often incredibly difficult, and half the time when you tried to use them you'd just fall off.

Expansions Packs?! really that's one think I want to make a return. I who take them over microtransactions and costume DLC

 

[Ml33tninja]

@Shrekfan246
"But I still generally don't like it, because it actively impedes on my ability to play a game"

The things is SF that each way regenerating health also impedes your ability to play just like Health packs do. It seems more likely that lowering the difficulty would be the answer to your problem

 

[FoolKiller]

How about respawning enemies when you moved a bit backward. Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man were guilty of this. I would kill the guy, get ready for the jump and voila, respawn.

 

[Varitel]

The biggest thing that bothers me whenever I play an old game is the control scheme. Inevitably when I start a game, there's a good 5-10 minutes where I have to go in and change all of the controls to fit modern conventions. Sometimes, as is the case with Daggerfall, you have to try and figure out how their wacky terminology translates, e.g. view mode, I mean what the fuck? Once I get past that, even Daggerfall is playable. Yes, DAGGERFALL! That's how forgiving I am of things in old games.

Oh yeah, and ladders! I can't tell you the number of times I died in Deus Ex because of the ladders.

 

[Artina89]

This is highly specific but, the typewriter ribbons in the early Resident Evil games. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the games, especially Resident Evil 2, but trying to find the ribbons and deciding when to use them presented a major headache for me. I think it was meant to add to the suspense, but at times it just annoyed me.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

-Expansion packs (this is what we had to rely on before DLC).

-In RTS games, putting limits on the number of units you could select at once. Also, not being able to queue units at a production facility.

-For some reason, in old school shooters, climbing down ladders was often incredibly difficult, and half the time when you tried to use them you'd just fall off.

Expansions Packs?! really that's one think I want to make a return. I who take them over microtransactions and costume DLC

Well, what I meant is how you used to have to go out and actually buy the whole damn expansion pack on a separate disc, as opposed to now, where you can simply download it. And I like how DLC can either be something small (a new suit of armor, a few weapons) or huge (a whole new campaign).

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I started playing Threads of Fate on my ps vita recently, and holy shit. I have no idea how we played 3D, third person games without using the right stick to control the camera. It's just weird

 

[Lunar Templar]

lol

I'm like the only one here that doesn't mind old games they way they where apparently, well mostly.

things like the graphics, lack of skip-able cut scenes(not really an issue till the PS1/2 anyway), lack of VO work (lol, yeah ... we can get rid of that an I'd be ok with it) and auto saving (another thing we can kick to the curb) and difficulty(cept Battle Toads, fuck that game), didn't and largely still don't bother me. But then, I'll still go play some NES/SNES games, and largely over most modern titles so take that as you will.

what I don't miss is thus.

Elaborate passwords; games like Mega Man? that system was fine, was simple with only dots or number to write down, and kept the number of them need down to like 12-16, and they where quick to enter.

Games like Metriod with the 24 character long passwords, or Castlevania with the shapes. The shapes where a pain cause they used in game items like the Whip power ups and Axes, which meant it took a lot longer to 'jot it down' they really should have been needed, where as the long as passwords like in Metriod, also had that problem, as well as a slow cursor, so it took for ever to put back in.

 

[BitterLemon]

The crazy controls of early 3D games. The second analog didn't exist, there were no conventions, camera was a nightmare. I remember to think that most 3D games were complete clunky shit next to 2D games... Ocarina of Time was the first 3D game that I was able to properly control.

The performance of console games were pretty inconsistent until the end of PS2 era. It seems that it was OK to release a game running at 10fps... some games runs so bad that is laughable. Goldeneye had some absurd framerate drops at all times... even Shadow of the Colossus had some major slowdowns, specially when rendering particle effects. Nowadays, developers seems to have a extra care to not let games dip below 20fps with frequency.