Old timers : Do you REALLY enjoy the games today like past games?

ShuttleLuv

Supreme [H]ardness
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Apr 12, 2003
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Just curious. As we grow up and get older, I'm not sure we are enjoying the games today as much. Is it because we're old now? Busy? Trends past us? Quality? I'd like to hear more.

I think it's a little of everything with me now. I enjoy only two games lately that are even anywhere remotely the caliber of older games. Other than that, the rest are passe.
 
Yes. Games like:

-Factorio
-Planet Coaster
-ME Series
-Deus Ex MD
-Farming Simulator series
-Forza series

Are easily just as fun as the nes/genesis/dreamcast days.
 
Every once in a while I let myself get caught up in a good game and really enjoy it, but it's harder to do that now that I'm married with kids and have a steady day job with lots of hours and travel. So, it's hard to say. If I was still single and in school without a care in the world... I'd throw it out there that I would still like them, maybe one notch less, and in a different way. Old games really left a lot to the imagination with their lesser graphics, and that's something I miss. Gameplay was different too, requiring different skills. It's true they don't make 'em like they used to. But that's not to say that today's games are bad, per se. Plus there was the excitement every time about what they could and couldn't do with the tech they had available to them. Today everyone kind of expects realistic graphics and that's more or less what they get in every game it seems. Call it less innovation maybe.

Nothing will beat nostalgia though, for anyone ;)
 
I really only feel that way about one genre, MMOs.

Everything I feel is at least as good as the stuff I played 20 years ago.

For me, Dark Age of Camelot was my first MMO, and nothing in 20 years has come close to the excitement that game provided.
 
Nothing is as hard as old games. Other than that, there's a similar feel if you have the time to devote to the immersion the game intends. However the copy paste mentality of todays games is growing more tiresome. Best game I played in the last few years for me was Ori and the Blind Forest.
 
Get a smaller monitor 24" 1440P I went to a bigger monitor 27"+ and didn't play games as much I think it was the way your eyes and brain take in the screen. Lets say you have a 75" monitor you are going to be nausea from whatever game you are playing. Alot of what you pour into a game mentally and physically depends on you and not the game you are playing or hardware or game mechanics.

Lots of games today are shovelware and cash grabs you have like Green Man Gaming and Humble Bundle just packing games of 12 up just for sales not because the games are good.

Steam right now has so much shovelware it's hard to tell the good stuff from the bad lots of it's just game developers having the itch to create a videogame and don't care about the end user experience when a person trys to enjoy the game.
 
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The bar is a lot higher to impress. Recent stuff I've liked are Witcher3, Doom, Darkest Dungeon, they will all be on my 'best of' lists. But this week I've played Neverwinter nights 1, the NES Classic, and tabletop D&D. Go figure.
 
I'm great with it. Wish for more games like Wing Commander. Of course I wish for more time too. Time is the biggest thing but that's just part of getting old.
 
There are still a decent amount of recent SP games that have really grabbed me. Dark Souls 3, Dishonored 2, and Witcher 3 come to mind.
I do find myself dropping games half way through (Far Cry 4, Metal Gear V, Batman Arkham Knight being recent casualties), and that sure the hell never happened when I was younger.
Also sad to say, but I've all but completely lost interest in MP games.....
 
No, the majority of games today aren't as entertaining as old games but I think a lot of it is nostalgia. Just like TV today isn't what it used to be, so many people love older movies, old/classic cars are still a hit, etc. Humans are oddly sentimental, nostalgic creatures.
 
As someone who was amazed at Pong when it came out, a lot to be said for the nostalgia & youth factors. Good memories meeting friends at the local arcade with a pocket full of quarters.

In today's world the drive to impress is real. And that means eye popping graphics. Partly because it has all been done before, more that eye candy is what drives the market. Latest & greatest hardware etc.

That said ... I have recently built a Window 98 era gaming rig. Loaded up all the old games I had stored on floppy disks. Many of which are very simple old style scrolling shooters. Gameplay still means something, in my eyes at least. (pun intended)
 
I certainly complain more than I used to. I guess I'm a little pickier about what I play now, although I still enjoy the same types of games.
 
Also sad to say, but I've all but completely lost interest in MP games.....

I am pretty close to this as well with public MP. I play a few nights a week and find online gaming to just be a grind of dealing with asshats, P2W, and/or Modders. I spend the first 30 minutes in GTA online looking for an empty server. COOP is the one exception I still really enjoy.

Call it being old but I am sick of dealing with shitheads online. Miss the old BF42 days.

Fallout 4 is still my guilty pleasure, especially when you add all the modifications and texture packs. Not because of the main story but more because it is just fun and a ton to do.

It is almost like new AAA games ship without any souls. They look pretty but don't really have that immersive being part of the story feel. Almost disposable. I think Bioshock series and RDR was the last games I felt I had a vested interest in and had to complete. The rest like MGS, FC, ACIV, and all batman games I just didn't care after about half way through the story. MGS 5 really was a let down at the end.

I wish Roberts would make a new version of Strike Commander.
 
I don't know if I count as an Old timer, but I have been gaming since around Atari 2600 and Apple II.

I still find new games to enjoy everyday that are just as good if not better than the games of my youth with a few exceptions.

Is Dark Souls as good as something like Castlevania? hell yes easily. Have I found an equivalent to FFVI? No not really I think well-written JPGs are more or less dead, being replaced by good western RPGs that harken back to Wizardry and Baldurs gate. Im over it.

So it's sort of game to game. Survival horror has shifted a little bit, it was dead for a while but Outlast was straight up amazing. Games like that come out here and there.

Adventure games ARE SO HOT RIGHT NOW. Seriously good adventure and puzzle games are back with a passion Syberia 3 comes out in a couple months

I think the problem is finding the diamonds in the rough. These days we're so showered in shovelware both triple A garbage like endless Halo sequels and depthless Sandbox swill like Watchcreed 56 or whatever theyre on now and that dumpster fire The Division and indie trash jumped up flash games that its easy for Old Timers eyes to gloss over looking through the steam store and just think good games are dead.

Gaming for me, besides counter-strike has mostly had a goal of enriching my own life and creativity. People havent realized a lot of games that come out now are just fastfood time wasters. If you can avoid that trap gaming is just as good as it was when you were playing Radiant Silvergun in the 90s.


As far as MMOs go, naw it's Dead. It's funny StarWars galaxies moved the genre lightyears forward by giving you the ability to make an online life that didn't revolve are gear grinding and dungeun raids, but somehow studios making MMOs today have forgotten all about creative thinking and just hit checkboxes now. I havent enjoy an MMO since.
 
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Part of what makes me drop a game is that I've done the game's archetype / genre too much already. The worst offenders are Nintendo and Ubisoft games. But also sections/puzzles that are shared between many. They're like cliches in movies that simply don't surprise you anymore.
 
I still game a lot but in general I feel most games now days are a lower quality than past games. The new XCOM games for example. Good games, I'd rate them at a B+ maybe A-. But I feel the overall feel and game play of the originals is still better. I just finished xcom 2 a few weeks ago(enjoyed it) and I wanted to start another game....of XCOM:TFTD. MOO2 is another game that many people consider one of the best 4x turn based games ever. I consider it a standard by which I judge every 4x space game. Nothing has recaptured that feeling in that genre for me. Not to say there are no good 4x space games out there, but for me MOO2 still rules them all.

There are exceptions of course. I really like the new Fallout and Elder Scroll games, not perfect but they are high on my list. Grim Dawn is awesome.
 
It is almost like new AAA games ship without any souls. They look pretty but don't really have that immersive being part of the story feel. Almost disposable. I think Bioshock series and RDR was the last games I felt I had a vested interest in and had to complete. The rest like MGS, FC, ACIV, and all batman games I just didn't care after about half way through the story. MGS 5 really was a let down at the end.

So much this. I had games where there was a picture of the development team and a thank you for buying our game in the manual. (Yes, games actually had instruction 'books' at one time.) Feels like the older games had a lot of care and attention paid to them. They weren't all perfect of course but very much felt like a craft. I just don't feel the same way now.

But, this can also be due to the fact that it's much harder to impress these days. PC games could still blow us away with the likes of Quake or Unreal. Now, it's difficult, at best, to make an impression.
 
I enjoy some games of today as much as I love my classics.

But not near the same amount as I did when younger - I loved almost every game I owned - including some games that were absolutely hated by the majority of people at the time (Original War, looking at you - even though it isnt *that* old).

A large part of it is that I am no longer required to play something that isnt just right to me. As a kid, you got games from your parents, or worked many hours mowing lawns, painting, yard work, chores... to buy that ONE game. If it wasnt awesome, you still played it and found the best you could about it, because that was it until the next unpredictable time you could get a game. Now, as an adult with large amounts of disposable income (Shit, even unemployed, with steam and the price of games...), if something isnt just awesome enough, I dont play it, or look for the best in it - I can buy another game in seconds, and have it downloaded to play in minutes.

The overall quality of games these days also seem to be a bit lower than the past - Even AAA titles. Or I just expect more than I used to - but that flies in the face of my general feeling of games being disposable with the rise in income as an adult - Why expect much when you can buy another game at any time that what you're currently playing fails to be awesome?
 
As someone who was amazed at Pong when it came out, a lot to be said for the nostalgia & youth factors. Good memories meeting friends at the local arcade with a pocket full of quarters.

Dude, as little as 6-8 years ago I booted up Pong with a friend of mine and we played for hours! It got pretty competitive, and downright hilarious when the ball got stuck behind the goal in the hockey version. Haven't picked it up again since, but something about simplicity has been lost.

Adventure games ARE SO HOT RIGHT NOW. Seriously good adventure and puzzle games are back with a passion Syberia 3 comes out in a couple months

My favorite genre... care to share any of your favorite titles? I'd be interested.
 
I think my education in game design has lifted the bar too high, for me. Most games I play these days seem to add complexity for no other reason than to pad play time. I still enjoy the 3 hours it takes me to play through Super Metroid these days more than the modern 5-10 hour FPS, 30 hour action-adventure, or 60 hour RPG games.
 
I definitely do. Some of my favorite games of all time (Witcher 3, Ninja Gaiden, Uncharted, Resident Evil 4, Ultra Street Fighter 4, Dark Souls, and many more) are recent games. At the very least they're within the modern 3D generations.
When I go back and play older games from the 80's and 90s, I see greatness but loads of flaws. Tons and tons of them. Stuff those systems just couldn't do. I think they had to try harder in the past to cover up technical limitations. Yet these days I think that when a developer is truly trying hard, those limitations aren't there. It gives them the power to create a world that just wasn't possible in the past. When games are no good these days, it feels more like a lack of effort or logistical (aka. "shareholders want this out in Q1!") problems.

If anything, I guess my one gripe about modern games is the lack of instruction manuals. Without that, games are forced to waste time/money/effort teaching us how to play on the fly. I wish the packaged games would go back to printed manuals in the cases and downloads would have an easily accessible in-game manual instead.
 
Dude, as little as 6-8 years ago I booted up Pong with a friend of mine and we played for hours! It got pretty competitive, and downright hilarious when the ball got stuck behind the goal in the hockey version. Haven't picked it up again since, but something about simplicity has been lost.



My favorite genre... care to share any of your favorite titles? I'd be interested.


Syberia is my all time favorite of what could be defined as an Adventure game. I cheated a little because most of the more popular titles are starting to toe the line between walking simulator and adventure game. If we're being nice and calling telltale games adventure games then my recent favorites are specifically Walking Dead Season 2, Fables: a Wolf Among us and Oxenfree. I actually did apparently fuck up on Oxenfree and got a bad ending.

To really sit down and call out my favorite Adventure games I'd need to dig through my completed backlog. "Cryostasis" I believe is generally considered an adventure game. Thats one of my all time favorites. "Still Life" is another one.

I'm alittle ashamed to admit I was one of the original backers for Tim Schafers "Doublefine adventure", but when I actually played the game it was kind of meh. I haven't finished it. To be honest it felt a little too kiddie.
 
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Games have only improved since I first got into gaming in the late 80s. I'm sure that any "games these days just ain't like they usedta be" attitude really stems more from a more jaded and cynical perspective that comes naturally as we get older and garner more and more experiences. When I look back on some of the greatest games of my youth, they honestly just pale in comparison to what we have now. That's not to say I don't hold those classic in high regard anymore, I just recognize that in many ways, each genre has had advancements in every area from technical to pure gameplay elements. Obviously *some* games give many of us pause and question if it's really better, but IMO those are definitely the exception to the rule.
 
I think part of my issue is that, since I don't game NEARLY as much having a career, being in a relationship, etc, that I no longer have an online community of gamer friends. And only 1 of my IRL friends games, and quite frankly is pretty bad so I dislike playing with him ;) . A lot of the fun I had in MP was in the Q1, Q2 RA:2, CS days where I had a dedicated server and was part of a community, or WOW in a guild. Not having that anymore, I find it less fun.
 
Games have evolved quite a bit from my youth. Although I didn't have a "first generation" console, I started at the NES when I was around 4-5.

So, I would say that at least to a certain degree games have kept up. But, at the same time, I would say that there are fewer games that hold my interest, and I'm only interested in playing the best of the best games. Everything else isn't worth my time.
I don't have nearly as much time anymore to game, so if I'm going to invest 20-40 hours into something it had better be a fantastic experience.

So, in the past 'few' years, the only things that have kept my interest are:

ME: series
DX:HR

And that's it. I still haven't found a game that even compares with Fallout 1/2. Or is a better adventure game than Mario 64. However I also haven't spent a lot of time on the PS3/PS4. Just hasn't been worth the investment for me.
 
I still replay my C64 games, because back then gameplay had to be good since they were so limited on visuals and you couldn't sell a game on how "pretty" it was with sprites. ;)

Activision made some killer games back then.

Nowadays they push how pretty games are and rarely touch on the gameplay... because it's usually less than ideal with a rare exception.
 
I find too many online AAA FPS games to be overpriced and short lived. At first servers are flat out and gameplay is great, then within about 3 months the number of people filling the servers starts to dwindle until you reach the 4 month mark and the game really isn't worth playing anymore as there's no one online.

These days I find myself playing one of the five thousand games I have on my Commodore 64 or one of the many games I have stored on my Amiga 1200. Although I do purchase games on Steam under Linux as many of them are quite good and i like supporting competition to Microsoft.
 
Not really - but mainly because I'm constantly getting owned by kids with more time than I have to play.. Haha!!
 
As others have mentioned, nostalgia. It's like anything else in pop culture, one develops a fondness for that which they grew up with. There are certainly a lot of golden oldies but there's plenty new that's great too. And like there are stinkers today, plenty of those back in the day, remember E.T?
 
Not really - but mainly because I'm constantly getting owned by kids with more time than I have to play.. Haha!!

Yeah, I'll never be any good at gaming, pretty much all I do is SP stuff. And that's fine by me. You don't have to be great at it to enjoy it. Kinda like sex.
 
Yeah, I'll never be any good at gaming, pretty much all I do is SP stuff. And that's fine by me. You don't have to be great at it to enjoy it. Kinda like sex.

Honestly though - despite being savaged in MP, I find it a bit repetitive. I really enjoy the whole story in a SP campaign and exploring what the designers left as little easter eggs...
 
Not enjoying multiplayer as much as I used to. Played EQ and WoW for years but MMOs have lost all the social aspects and just become solo online games nowadays, kinda ruins it for me. On top of that, all the games I've tried in the past 5-6 years hold your hand so much it's hard to go back to something "hardcore" because of how pussi-fied games have become and it's rubbed off on everyone who's been playing them.

Games used to be really hard. Now they are really easy. Millenials will never know what it's like to have to completely start over when they die in a game.
 
The only single player FPS type games I ever completed were the Half Life series, I really got into the whole environment.

I recently bought Black Mesa after playing the free beta, 'beta' on Windows and I have to say it's sucked me in again, when I somehow manage to get the time it's great to get lost in that massive complex.
 
It's just nostalgia. I built a DOS box a few years ago to play Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Syndicate, System Shock, The Ultimas, Wing Commander, etc in all their glory. Truth is they looked and sounded like crap now and I got bored fairly quick. For the same reason I ditched my C64 years ago, because all it really did is sit there and gather dust... and Jesus H was it really always THAT SLOW loading games?

I remember in the 80s and 90s struggling to find a game to play that didn't suck. There was just as much shit back then as now. I find that the modern gems shine just as brightly as the gems of 30 years ago.
 
In some instances yes, in others no. Good games come from any time period, along with a lot of poo...

I think what has gone down hill are the communities. Jerk off's being toxic for kicks is much more prevalent (always was there but not so much as it is now) and match making have killed that main driving force that kept a lot more games popular for so long.
 
In some instances yes, in others no. Good games come from any time period, along with a lot of poo...

I think what has gone down hill are the communities. Jerk off's being toxic for kicks is much more prevalent (always was there but not so much as it is now) and match making have killed that main driving force that kept a lot more games popular for so long.

Agreed, they are almost non existent and factor in matchmaking...
 
It's just nostalgia. I built a DOS box a few years ago to play Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Syndicate, System Shock, The Ultimas, Wing Commander, etc in all their glory. Truth is they looked and sounded like crap now and I got bored fairly quick. For the same reason I ditched my C64 years ago, because all it really did is sit there and gather dust... and Jesus H was it really always THAT SLOW loading games?

I remember in the 80s and 90s struggling to find a game to play that didn't suck. There was just as much shit back then as now. I find that the modern gems shine just as brightly as the gems of 30 years ago.

True...like the FMV Sega CD games of old....
 
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