"This game is worse than I remember"

[Elvis Starburst]

I'm sure you've said the phrase yourself at some point. Be it a game from childhood, something you forgot about and came back to... or a game you dropped for "some reason" but in the back of your mind you knew there was reason behind it. "But what?" you ask yourself. That is, until you pick up the game again, and...

"This game is worse than I remember"

I had this experience with God Eater 2 recently. After thoroughly enjoying the first game in the series many times and never finishing the sequel just shy of the ending by maybe an hour, I wondered why this was the case recently and booted it up. I knew to a degree what I disliked about it, but it'd been many years since I played it, so I thought maybe it wasn't that bad. ... It was that bad. The characters, story, tone, pacing, all of it just feels completely out of whack compared to the first. It doesn't help I didn't like the music as much, and the in-game cutscenes got their audio compressed to crackly and awful levels on the PS Vita version. And now I remember exactly why I dropped it. This time though, I'm dropping it a lot sooner.

And as with most personal experience, it makes me curious if other users had this similar experience. So, let's hear it!

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Okay so this isn't a 'worse than i remember' rather than a 'worse than everyone told me it was'

Halo.

I never played the first one. I played 2, ODST and Reach. Halo 2 was okay, ODST was great, Reach was perfect. And I have the Master Chief collection on the Steams and Halo 1 just came out, so fuck it lets see what the deal is.

Halo 1 sucks. The level design is just open. Not like open ended, just open. Huge sprawling levels with minutes worth of driving and no enemies, and God help you if the puma was destroyed and you have to hoof it through the huge empty levels. Also I vaguely remember the other games have the NPC allies do shit, but in Halo? They can't drive, can't shoot, can't fight. They do nothing.
Also Cortana is annoying a fuck, and the Master Chief just being perfect is dumb. He's a literal God, can't be killed, can't be stopped.

I dunno. Maybe Bungie is like From Software in that their games got better as they got more experience.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Enter The Matrix

Now, I was in middle school and really into edgy shit. So when I heard the existence of a game based on the Matrix trilogy, I knew I had to get it. I played it back in 2008, a few years after its initial release. I thought the combat, the gun play, and the ability to go into slow-mo and do some cool shit was amazing. Even as I moved on with my life, I was convinced it was a good game

I recently dug up my old GameCube and played various games, including ETM. I realize i didn't know what I was talking about and the game was really bad. The 3d models look like shit, the story is one giant preview for the third film, and the combat is really wonky.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Jak 3

Jak 2 was infamously hard and punishing, and I had always found Jak 3 a lot more comfortable and fun to play. But the last time I returned to it a few years back I was hit by how fucking terrible it was to control. The smoothness of modern controls have ruined a lot of older games I used to like.

 

[Trunkage]

System Shock 2

This was just irritating to replay. Everything feels really jank and the only good part of the story is the twist. The rest is fetch em quests that I just stopped caring about.

Baulder's Gate 1 and to a lesser extent 2

BG1 would only be a single mission into today's RPG landscape. I doesn't really bother having anything story related until you reach BG, which you are blocked from unless you somehow won the lotto. I remember slight adventures in other parts of the land but nothing that sticks.

BG2 is way better, and the side mission are far more memorable. By Throne of Baal, you are god tier and its ridiculous and finally makes BG combat fun.

 

[Zeraki]

Advent Rising

First time I played the game back in 2005 I thought it was incredible, nowadays I see how rushed and broken it is.

In hindsight I think the thing that really drew me in was the amazing soundtrack and the fact that you basically had Jedi powers.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

DragonAge: Origins.

Aside from a deathly dull title, BioWare?s first outing in the Thedas setting has got to be one of the most dour, sluggish and overall aggravating to play RPGs.

Also, fuck Morrigan, the snooty fucking cow.

 

[Worgen]

That one game that meant so much to you as a kid and you feel still holds up. It doesn't and you thinking it does just proves you have horrible taste.

 

[Dalisclock]

Okay so this isn't a 'worse than i remember' rather than a 'worse than everyone told me it was'

Halo.

I never played the first one. I played 2, ODST and Reach. Halo 2 was okay, ODST was great, Reach was perfect. And I have the Master Chief collection on the Steams and Halo 1 just came out, so fuck it lets see what the deal is.

Halo 1 sucks. The level design is just open. Not like open ended, just open. Huge sprawling levels with minutes worth of driving and no enemies, and God help you if the puma was destroyed and you have to hoof it through the huge empty levels. Also I vaguely remember the other games have the NPC allies do shit, but in Halo? They can't drive, can't shoot, can't fight. They do nothing.
Also Cortana is annoying a fuck, and the Master Chief just being perfect is dumb. He's a literal God, can't be killed, can't be stopped.

I dunno. Maybe Bungie is like From Software in that their games got better as they got more experience.

I played Halo CE on PC back in like 2008 after hearing so much praise for the game and after completing it I couldn't tell what the fuss is about. To be fair, I didn't play the MP because I don't normally play MP so based on the campaign my verdict was "It's okay/fine/average".

I never did bother with any of the others. A guy I knew telling me "There's a good story if you read the books" didn't help matters much.

 

[meiam]

Most of JRPG sadly, combat is just boring and there's a lot of it. I freaking adored xenogears back in the days, but last I tried playing it I barely made it trough a quarter of the game before I stopped since most of it is just boring combat that never evolve.

It's not that turn based combat can't work, there's plenty of example where it can work, either trough interesting combat mechanic or interesting way to build your character/party mixed with challenging dungeon where recovering health/mana isn't easy.

I'd love for remake of a lot of the older SNES/PS1 JRPG with more interesting takes on the turn based combat.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Most of JRPG sadly, combat is just boring and there's a lot of it. I freaking adored xenogears back in the days, but last I tried playing it I barely made it trough a quarter of the game before I stopped since most of it is just boring combat that never evolve.

It's not that turn based combat can't work, there's plenty of example where it can work, either trough interesting combat mechanic or interesting way to build your character/party mixed with challenging dungeon where recovering health/mana isn't easy.

I'd love for remake of a lot of the older SNES/PS1 JRPG with more interesting takes on the turn based combat.

Thank You!

The vast majority of JRPG combat is just bad, poorly designed turn-based combat.

 

[Squilookle]

As someone who almost never stops playing the games I like, I will never understand people who misremember games. If you don't enjoy a game you used to like, you've got nobody to blame but yourself.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

As someone who almost never stops playing the games I like, I will never understand people who misremember games. If you don't enjoy a game you used to like, you've got nobody to blame but yourself.

Or sometimes the passage of time allows us to experience the game with different, wiser eyes. Mass Effect is still a great game.....with a combat system that's kind of shit. Also none of the voice actors, aside from maybe Wrex and Garrus had settled into themselves. ME Tali and ME2 Tali are night and day, for example.

 

[sXeth]

Final Fantasy 7, which I'd gone back over in January before tackling any thoughts on the remake.


While I did recall how badly the pacing falls off after Midgar, I didn't quite recall just how insanely large the gaps of any meaningful progress in the narrative are, and the ludicrously flimsy reasons to push the player around on the "world tour" segment. Or how many times it tries to retwist its plots elements like Shyamalan on a coke bender.



20-30 year turn based ATB combat was never going to shine for depth from a modern lens of course. But I'd also forgotten all the weird janky nonsense with how your builds wre jammed into and limited up by the equipped gear. And the bland interchangeable characters from a tactical sense (a trait it would share with FF8).

 

[Hawki]

Okay so this isn't a 'worse than i remember' rather than a

'worse than everyone told me it was'

Maybe a different thread?

ODST was great,

Da fuq?

and God help you if the puma was destroyed and you have to hoof it through the huge empty levels.

Puma? Surely you mean Chupathingy.

Also, did they change something? Because on both the Xbox and original PC versions, vehicles couldn't be destroyed apart from the Banshee (and enemy vehicles).

and the Master Chief just being perfect is dumb. He's a literal God, can't be killed, can't be stopped.

Sorry, but I really disagree there. John is hardly unstoppable in the Halo games - certainly not in H1. Yes, he's a supersoldier, but whatever victories he gets against the Covenant, he's entirely on the defence against the Flood, in the sense that they can't be overcome through conventional means. He has to destroy Alpha Halo to destroy them, and even then fails to complete the job.

That one game that meant so much to you as a kid and you feel still holds up. It doesn't and you thinking it does just proves you have horrible taste.

How dare you say that about that game! That game is perfect! I love that game and it holds up perfectly! Never say anything about that game again!

 

[Trunkage]

DragonAge: Origins.

Aside from a deathly dull title, BioWare?s first outing in the Thedas setting has got to be one of the most dour, sluggish and overall aggravating to play RPGs.

Also, fuck Morrigan, the snooty fucking cow.

Is it better than Inquisition?

 

[Squilookle]

As someone who almost never stops playing the games I like, I will never understand people who misremember games. If you don't enjoy a game you used to like, you've got nobody to blame but yourself.

Or sometimes the passage of time allows us to experience the game with different, wiser eyes. Mass Effect is still a great game.....with a combat system that's kind of shit. Also none of the voice actors, aside from maybe Wrex and Garrus had settled into themselves. ME Tali and ME2 Tali are night and day, for example.

That's you changing, not the game. If the game played well on release, it does not become more or less so as other games come out. Your perception of it might, but the game itself is the same eternal. (Assuming it's not a live service or endlessly patched post launch game. For those all bets are off).

 

[Silvanus]

Donkey Kong 64. Remember loving it when I first played it and was excited about replaying it so many years later... but it's a mostly-empty world with fairly poor controls and unsatisfying gameplay.

That's you changing, not the game. If the game played well on release, it does not become more or less so as other games come out. Your perception of it might, but the game itself is the same eternal. (Assuming it's not a live service or endlessly patched post launch game. For those all bets are off).

Well, yeah, but that's all pretty obvious, isn't it? We all know its perception. Nobody is under the impression the games have magically transformed in the intervening years. The thread topic is about perception.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Doom and Doom2. Played those recently, and then again with Brutal Doom, and there's a lot to like, but there's some level designs that are just awful. Wandering round in circles having killed everything and trying to find a key or and exit or something, in a map that makes no sense.

Now, there's some nice maps, but they'd not quite gotten to the "this is a laboratory or other facility" rather than "this is a series of random rooms stuck together" back then.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

I guess they changed it 'cause my Puma got destroyed about half-way through the second level where you have to go around rescuing dudes. I had jumped out to kill some elites, and my gunner and sidekick got out to do some shooting, a grunt threw a grenade at them, it exploded, Puma is totaled, friends are dead and I have to walk the rest of the mission. And it was stupid.

And ODST was amazing. The soundtrack was neat, it was mostly nighttime fighting in the rain with a jazzy soundtrack, so it felt very noir. and then we had Malcolm Reynolds doing his best tough-guy impression.

and what I mean by Master Chief being invincible is that he's always the sole survivor of missions. He gets sent in with like a dozen mooks to do a thing, and all the mooks get killed by explosions and energy blades and Master Chief is just strutting around with plot armor, and gameplay wise the mooks are the worst. They cant hit anything, and I'm convinced their guns have been zeroed, and that they can't kill anything. That it was decided the player had to get all the kills, and the NPCs are just for show.