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What games can you not get into because they feel too outdated?

Are there games that you tried but just couldn’t get into because they feel outdated? Games that, in theory, you would enjoy, but don’t because the controls, graphics, writing, or mechanics just don’t feel good anymore. Games that, compared to today, just don’t hold up to your standards.

I recently tried playing Heroes of Might and Magic III, and I realized that a lot of the invisible language used through game design from that era, I do not understand. There are many things that the game didn’t explain, and I assume they were just understood by players. Not only that, but I imagine there was a lot of crossover between video games and board games back then, so maybe that language was used as well. I ended up downloading a manual and putting it on my second screen and I get it and played it, but it just wasn’t for me.

I also dropped Mirror’s Edge, but this time it was because of the graphics. It looks and feels great, but the graphics give me a headache. There is way too much bloom, and for some reason, there are some parts that look like the imaginary lens has been covered in Vaseline. This didn’t bother me before, but my eyes are not used to it anymore.

There are also games like the first two Tony Hawk Pro Skater games that I can’t fully get into because they’re missing mechanics from the later games. The levels and controls feel great, but they don’t feel complete without those mechanics. It keeps me from enjoying the games as much as the others.

Please share yours!

LZamperini ,

Knights of the old republic 1 and 2. First my old PC couldn't run it and my new one it just feels too jank and ugly. I love star wars games and am sad if the remake stays dead.

limeaide OP ,

Personally I love that era of graphics tbh. I bought Valheim on the Steam sale just for the jank graphics lol

canis_majoris ,
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

KOTOR is jank, but I would say it’s entirely due to the controls. It acts like point-and-click even on controllers, where you have to use the D-pad to select the element and interact with it using the face buttons.

Also, the semi-pseudo-turn-based combat system doesn’t really totally hold up, I wish there was a way of smoothing it out.

There are higher resolution texture projects for both KOTOR 1 and 2, I think KOTOR 2 has it available natively with the Steam Workshop.

all-knight-party ,
@all-knight-party@kbin.run avatar

Funnily enough I've played KoTOR so much that I can still go back and play those, and aside from the camera control it's totally comfy for me.

Zeke ,

Baldur's Gate 3 was good, but I can't play 1 or 2. They definitely don't feel the same.

For newer games, I can actually play the older Zelda games, but I can't stand the latest games. Not a big fan of the gameplay with weapons breaking and how much they pushed the open world thing. I very much prefer smaller maps with more story.

limeaide OP ,

What’s so different about the first two Baldur’s Gate games? I was thinking about getting the first one on my phone

TheEntity ,

I tried playing Icewind Dale on my phone after enjoying Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 on my PC. Don't bother. The touch UI just cannot keep up in any remotely tactical situation, at least not for my tactics-heavy wizard playstyle with milking every turn as much as I could.

Paranomaly ,
@Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works avatar

To add to what everyone else is saying, the combat isn’t the same in that it’s not turn based like you’re thinking. Fights involve everyone getting into a fracas at once and swinging, the game expecting the player to regularly pause to give specific commands. Also, in BG1 you start at level one which feels reeeeeally weak so fights will be quite difficult until you’re about level 3-4.

That said, I had a lot of fun with the game after I got used to it. Writing is the main star of the show and it’s quite good.

AlolanYoda ,

Oh! I tried playing Neverwinter Nights recently and… I bounced. I want to try again soon because people really love that game (and its modding scene!), and I love D&D (having only played 5e, however), but it’s not appealing to me as much as I wish it did.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

I played the crap out of Neverwinter Nights back in the day, but I picked up the remastered or whatever version on steam and just can't handle the controls anymore. Hooray for BG3 to scratch the same itch with improved controls!

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I really enjoyed the original Neverwinter Nights, went back and played it relatively-recently (despite the fact that the main storyline, pre-DLC, is pretty bland).

But I tried playing the newer Neverwinter Nights 2 and it just did not draw me in at all.

Still haven’t tried BG3.

Ladrius ,

For what it’s worth, the story to the main campaign of NWN2 is pretty tropey and bland. However, you should give Mask of the Betrayer a shot if you don’t mind main campaign spoilers and think story could keep you invested over gameplay. I never finished it, but the story was quite fresh and unique. It’s wildly well reviewed, to the point that while you have to deal with the Epic level rules, its still worth playing a bit just for the weirdness involved.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

BG3 is the best version of DnD on a computer in my opinion. Great characters including enemies, so much flavor, and it moves right along with tooltips galore to let you know aht is going on. While there is a lot of gratuitous romance available, you can easily turn everyone down if it isn't your jam. You can do pretty much anything and "screwing up" just tends to lead to more options!

I love talking to the goblins! Make friends before wiping them out!

Being DnD there is a lot of fiddly bits and the devs love exploding barrels, but to be honest they kind of add to the charm.

Argurotoxus ,
@Argurotoxus@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah absolutely. I think with a lot of these older games that are considered to be the GOATs of their respective genres you’ll run into the same problem: They were so good, that the mechanics/ideas become the minimum requirement for all games thereafter. So, if you played the game on day 1, it was an innovative masterpiece the likes of which you’d never seen before. If you play it 10-15 years later after having played modern games in the same genre, it feels like the same old shit except without the 10-15 years of improvements.

For me personally, the game I’ll get crucified for not enjoying is Half Life 2. I played through the entire game. It was ok. I was pretty bored for most of it though. Shooters aren’t generally my thing for one, but even that aside the game was very milquetoast to me. I did a lot of reading up on the history of HL2 afterwards because I was astonished that I didn’t enjoy such a legendary game and I think I came to the conclusion that some new mechanics such as the cover system and story-driven nature of HL2 were what made it such a hit in 2004. But 15 years later those mechanics weren’t new and exciting to me and the story is decent but a far cry from amazing.

The other game that stands out to me is Assassin’s Creed 1. I couldn’t make it more than a few hours into that game. Just so boring and repetitive, the combat was boring, the collectables were boring, most mechanics didn’t actually seem to matter…I just hated the game lol. I do think it’s another example of later entries in the series/other games doing the same thing but better so going back to the OG just felt like a slog. But I really hated AC1 hahaha.

Cethin ,

A big part of HL2 was also the physics. No game did that before to the same extent, so it was novel and cool. The gravity gun was super unique and all the physics puzzles were new and cool.

I tried replaying it a few years back and had the same experience as you. Every physics puzzle felt boring and just stopped the flow of the game. The gravity gun is still fairly unique, but it has lost a lot of its charm. It’s just not the same experience as it was around the time it released.

limeaide OP ,

Reminds of me of when I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and was confused because I had heard great things about the soundtrack, but it was just a bunch of songs I had heard before.

About halfway through the movie I realized that it was an original soundtrack and it was so influential that it became a cliche. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a cliche, not because it followed a saturated trend, but because it itself was copied by everyone else.

AC1’s concept and maybe even story has held up, but you’re right that the later entries feel miles better.

canis_majoris ,
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

Ezio or bust.

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

For half life, try playing it in VR. completely new experience

Argurotoxus ,
@Argurotoxus@lemmy.world avatar

Do you mean Alyx? I actually do own that, but haven’t got around playing it yet.

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

Oh no the original half life 2. There is a VR mod for it that gives 6DOF with motion controls

Zoomboingding ,
@Zoomboingding@lemmy.world avatar

Half-Life 2 has suffered the fate of Seinfeld - the work was so monumental in its field that it revolutionized everything coming after it. Many of those iterations accomplished certain things better. Going back you think: what’s the big deal? Basically every game has physics, ragdoll enemies, novel gimmick weapons, and an action-packed cinematic feel.

stardust ,

AC1 had those same criticisms back then too. I played it back then and hate finished it and wasn’t going to check out the rest of the series but then the ending reveal hooked me. And AC2 addressed lot of the complaints.

NotJustForMe ,

Half Life 2 was mostly noted for the extreme technical advancements. Take a look at what a gaming pc looked like when it came out. It shouldn’t have been allowed to be so advanced.

Half Life 1 was the one with the gameplay advancements. I played both on release, and both times felt like I’ve just entered another multi-verse.

Far Cry 1 managed that, too.

None of them hold up today. They are still as great as they were back then, but the feeling is all gone. I’ve recently finished all of them again, just to check.

InquisitiveApathy ,

I was always a console gamer in my childhood so I missed the boat on a lot of the most iconic PC games.

I feel like I might catch some heat for this one, but recently I tried Half Life 1 and I just couldn’t get into it. The game just feels so…lifeless. I got about 10 chapters in, which is like 60% or so of the way through, and every moment just feels like I’m playing House of the Dead in the arcade, walking down a hallway and shooting jumpscare enemies. I think the lack of any semblance of story or motivation for what I’m doing is especially egregious to me.

Cethin ,

We’re you playing Black Mesa, the fan remake, or the original? Black Mesa is the way to go now, although the original did get a patch recently.

InquisitiveApathy ,

I was playing through the patched version of the original. I picked up the entire Valve bundle for a few bucks on sale about a year or back.

As someone who is an outsider to the series, I was under the impression that Black Mesa was a unique game set in the same universe?

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I don’t think that I’d go back and play Half Life 1, but it introduced a lot of things that were, for the time, unusual for the genre, like an actual story (if you don’t like HL1, earlier FPSes were absymal), aircraft and vehicles, interesting weapons.

Someone above – talking about Half Life 2 – mentioned that there are games that are significant not so much because they stand up well today, but because they introduced improvements to a genre that became widespread.

InquisitiveApathy ,

Yeah, I think ultimately my expectations got the best of me for this one. I’d heard nothing but praise of the game for so long and wasn’t looking at the game through the lens of the development limitations of it’s time period. I’ll still probably finish the game, but I am a bit disappointed and probably won’t play the second.

ada , (edited )
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Pretty much all of the iconic games from my early teens. (I was a teen in the late 80s and 90s). The games that I grew up with, that I fell in love with, are unplayable now.

Dragonstrike, a flight sim where you fly a dragon in the D&D Dragonlance world was mind blowing when I first played it. Now, it’s so bad that replaying it spoiled my memory of the original experience!

limeaide OP ,

Yeah I get that. Sometimes I wish I didn’t revisit games and instead kept the nostalgia glasses on haha

ada ,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Exactly! I’m much more inclined to not revisit things these days. The original Fallout games fall in this category for me

TacticsConsort ,
@TacticsConsort@yiffit.net avatar

Damn, that game sounds amazing as a concept though. I’ve been really looking for something that’s a decent dragon-based game which doesn’t involve the dragons being relentlessly shat on by the story/all being dead or super rare.

How bad are we talking, exactly…?

Cethin ,

Like a scientifically accurate dragon MMO?

TacticsConsort ,
@TacticsConsort@yiffit.net avatar

I’m listening. What’ve you got?

otp ,

It’s a meme. A glorious one.

uriel238 ,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

There are a couple of dragon flight games out there, but the ones I’ve played take too many pages from flight sims, and not enough from riding horses. You can’t get a horse to try to jump the Grand Canyon, but in the sims I played, the dragons would let you fly them into a mountainside.

Someday, though.

DemBoSain ,
@DemBoSain@midwest.social avatar

It’s a flight combat sim. You’re on the back of a dragon instead of in a cockpit. You can either blast enemies with your breath, or get close and rake them with your claws. I was on PC at the time, and this runs on DOS, so don’t expect any marvel of technology.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Pretty much all of the iconic games from my early teens. (I was a teen in the late 80s and 90s). The games that I grew up with, that I fell in love with, are unplayable now.

I’m generally with you, but I’d go back and play some of them (and have).

Technology didn’t really permit for a lot of improvement on side-scrolling platform games after that era, and I don’t feel like gameplay advanced a lot either; I think that the Super Mario Brothers series is still playable. I like Super Metroid, would still say that it competes with modern Metroidvanias (though the limited screen size is a bit painful).

There are certainly more-realistic racing games, but games like Outrun are IMHO still playable.

Tetris has advanced from a visual and audio standpoint, but the game hasn’t really changed that much. I’d probably default to playing a modern variant, but the 1980s versions are fine, IMHO.

Pac-Man is still playable, IMHO. Not much that really superseded that.

Vertically-scrolling shmups like 1943 have seen more graphical glitz, but I don’t feel like the genre has really deeply benefited much from technical improvements.

smeg ,

I tried playing the original Deus Ex for the first time a couple of years ago and I sadly had to put it down before I escaped the tutorial. Early 3D graphics have not aged well, the controls were not very intuitive, and it just seemed like it wasn’t worth the effort. I then played and enjoyed Human Revolution though; I know, I’m an absolute peasant.

limeaide OP ,

Yeah most older 3D games I’ve tried I just can’t control that well.

A couple years ago I tried playing the original Tomb Raider and geez was that difficult to control. It really makes me appreciate how good the Mario 64 controls were

Cethin ,

One thing that’s really interesting is once you get to the headquarters after the first level, the floors and things are super shiny and have actual reflections. Most modern games use screen space reflections now (although raytracing is fixing this), so things not on screen can’t be reflected. Deus Ex, and many games of the time, have better reflections than modern games. The graphics do look dated generally, but it’s funny how technology advancement can cause some things to be worse

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

Give it a try again with GMDX. It’s a mod that modernizes Deus Ex mechanically and visually without losing the original vision like what “New Vision / Revision,” does

domi , (edited )
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

Thanks for the tip, I started a few weeks ago and barely made any progress. Maybe this will help.

smeg ,

Ooh interesting, how easy is it to set up mods for DX? Reckon it’ll work on a Steam Deck?

domi ,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

I didn’t do it on the Deck but on Linux, so steps should be something like:

  1. Switch to desktop mode
  2. Download GMDX and place it in the game folder
  3. Install “ProtonUp-QT” from Discover store
  4. In ProtonUp-QT install "SteamTinkerLaunch"
  5. Switch back to game mode
  6. Make sure to launch Deus Ex unmodded once before continuing
  7. Set the compatibility tool for Deus Ex to "SteamTinkerLaunch"
  8. Start Deus Ex
  9. Click “Main menu” in steamtinkerlaunch
  10. Click “One time run” in steamtinkerlaunch
  11. Choose the GMDX exe file in “One time command” and hit "Run command"
  12. Install normally
  13. After installation go back to the main menu and select “Game menu” in steamtinkerlaunch
  14. In “Custom command” select “Play_GMDX.lnk” in the “GMDXv9” folder
  15. Hit “Save and Play” and it should launch modded
OmegaMouse ,
@OmegaMouse@feddit.uk avatar

This is a weird one for me because it often depends on whether I paid for the game. I got the first Fallout game for free (from GOG or something), and when I inevitably became confused by the UI and objective I ended up giving up on it. If I’d bought the game (either today or back when it came out) I definitely would have invested a lot more time into it, and got past that initial hump. Back when PC games came on disc with an instruction guide, reading that was part of the experience. There’s definitely a awkward period around the early 2000s when games were becoming way more complex, but before in-game tutorials were regularly a thing. I find it hard to go back to a lot of those games.

Likewise I played the first hour of Resident Evil HD on my PS4 (free with PS+) and never had the motivation to get into it. After paying for it in a Humble Bundle, I played through the whole thing on Steam and loved it! The fact that I’d paid for it was able to outweigh the fact that the game was quite outdated. I guess I felt like I wanted to get my money’s worth.

Any game from 2005-ish onwards feels ‘modern’ enough that I don’t usually have this problem.

limeaide OP ,

That’s interesting. I either refund them if I struggle a little too much on tutorials, or just leave it in the backlog for later (aka most likely never).

I should try doing that more though because they’re classics for a reason and maybe there’s still fun I can get out of them.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

There are still games that require a lot of reading documentation to be playable. Come to think of it, some of my favorite games are like that, like Dwarf Fortress or the like.

OmegaMouse ,
@OmegaMouse@feddit.uk avatar

Yes that’s true! I find that games like that have their own sort of niche, in which players usually know quite a lot about the game (from watching others play it online) before jumping in. And there’s an expectation that they’ll refer to the wiki regularly. These kind of games can’t have a tutorial that covers everything, because there’s way too much to cover.

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