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Remeber when games used to be more fun?

Started by richerthanyou, 26 January, 2016, 12:50:41 PM

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richerthanyou

Perhaps I'm just getting old but I remember I used to get a real kick out of playing video games back in the day. The idea of racing for what felt like hours only to be knocked off the track on the final corner, spinning into the grass and losing the race followed by throwing the controller on the floor outraged. And all this with 8 bit graphics! Skip forward 20 something years and while my Forza Motorsport has hours of customization options and a shed load of tracks and variations of tracks, they seem to have missed out on adding the magic to the game.

The idea of being able to rewind a race if you make a mistake is outrageous. Yes I know it can be turned off but having it there in the first place is robbing so many people of the emotions you used to feel playing racing games.

Playing through a few hours of Alien Syndicate knowing that if you die, there is no save game. It really is game over man. It added intensity and the game really did feel like it was life or death.

Maybe I'm just being nostalgic but when I see kids playing Fruit Ninjas or Clash Of Clans or whatever I shed a tear for the most of them that will grow up having a completely different notion to what video games are.

In my day you won a game with hard work and learning the damn thing. Now you just pay real money to buy some virtual gems to upgrade your whatever. Games have lots their magic. Thanks for reading my rant :D 
(  ゚,_ゝ゚)   

I, Cosh

You clearly haven't played Dark Souls or Super Meat Boy.
We never really die.

Hawkmumbler

Quote from: The Cosh on 26 January, 2016, 12:56:25 PM
You clearly haven't played Dark Souls or Super Meat Boy.
Or Just Cause, or Undertale, or Super Mario Maker, or Smash Bros. or etcetcetc

IndigoPrime

I'm not sure games have lost their magic entirely, more that you've grown up and games have—for better or worse—become more sophisticated. As a kid, whatever generation of consoles/computers they begin with, the games are like magic. Something infuses itself in you at that point. But go back now and play many of those titles and they are awful. Racers especially have dated very badly for me, and I'll only go near a scant few, such as the still excellent Stunt Car Racer.

That all said, mainstream gaming appears increasingly devoid of innovation, and too hellbent on movie-style production models that forces budgets that make risks a very bad thing. To some extent, that's what drew me to mobile around the time of the GBA. The console's underpowered nature forced developers to be more innovative, and you got that spark of the best bits of the 1980s combined with a modern gaming system. That kind of thinking kept me engaged with the DS and then the iPhone.

I still think there's a lot of great stuff out there, but you just have to hunt around a bit for it. On iOS alone, I've hugely enjoyed Device 6, Year Walk, Forget Me Not, Hitman GO, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, Threes!, Osmos, Prune, Her Story, World of Goo, Drop Wizard, ALONE..., Blek, and dozens of other titles that have kept the fires of fun burning. Similar gems are peppered about Android and Steam/PC indie.

Hawkmumbler

Papers, Please is a IOS title i'm currently enjoying but it's also on steam for those who are interested. Excellent cold war thriller with a very simple premise.

I, Cosh

My initial response was specifically about games not being hard enough any more rather than less fun. Although the ones I cited are both.

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 26 January, 2016, 01:05:04 PM
I still think there's a lot of great stuff out there, but you just have to hunt around a bit for it. On iOS alone, I've hugely enjoyed Device 6, Year Walk, Forget Me Not, Hitman GO, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, Threes!, Osmos, Prune, Her Story, World of Goo, Drop Wizard, ALONE..., Blek, and dozens of other titles that have kept the fires of fun burning. Similar gems are peppered about Android and Steam/PC indie.
Yeah, it definitely seems to be the case that iOS and XBLA are the place to find interesting games these days. I've played a few of those and will have a look at some of the others.
We never really die.

IndigoPrime

Ah, the 'not hard enough' thing. I suspect a lot of confusion there from people who argue that is in games offering many more—often limitless—chances to continue. But with the way mobile in particular works, I don't mind that. Imagine Badland or its sequel, or Limbo, with three lives. Those games would be hell. Instead, they become memory-test puzzlers, enabling you to chip away at them until you're done. It's an interesting twist on Rick Dangerous level design. I abhorred that game back in 1989, but it suddenly made sense when you had an infinite lives cheat.

Then on top of that, you have the Super Meat Boys, Super Hexagons and Alones of this world, which are anything but easy in any sense of the word!

radiator

I used to think this too, but have come around on it.

While I'd argue that some games are 'too easy' these days (in my opinion the core Super Mario games definitely lose a certain something by not being as fiendishly tricky as they used to be), ultimately you have to accept that the world has changed. The audience has changed.

In the 80s and 90s, we were comparatively starved of entertainment. I remember all the godawful TV I used to watch simply because that was the only thing I had access to. A game could potentially have cost you six months worth of saved-up pocket money, so they had to last.

But have you actually tried to play an old school game recently? I bet you'd last for five minutes and give up. There are simply more distractions around these days, and a well-crafted game can still be challenging and engaging without being artificially lengthened by being unfair or frustratingly hard. I play a lot of retro games, but to be brutally honest, there's very little that holds up to extended play - even in the 8/16bit era - outside of 1st party Nintendo titles.

Personally, I don't like modern 'cinematic' narrative-driven games. I think games trying to emulate the storytelling conventions of cinema is an evolutionary dead end, and while games can do interesting things with visual storytelling, I'd happily never sit through another game 'cut-scene' or a QTE for the rest of my life. I also don't much care for competitive online gaming - never have, never will.

However, I also realise that we're living in a golden age of gaming. There are abundant alternatives to the mainstream. There has been a huge resurgence of indie gaming in the last ten years, small teams and bedroom coders crafting niche titles that offer 'pure' gaming thrills, experimental concepts and retro-tinged aesthetics. You want ultra-hard games? There are a ton out there to try. There are countless games out there to appeal to any skill-level or age. To say that 'it was better in my day' or write off all modern games as pay-to-win iPhone tat is totally ludicrous.

IndigoPrime

I see a lot of people writing off iOS as a gaming platform, but then that's happened since it first became popular. Personally, I find it as lazy as people writing off all music as being crap on the basis of the top 40, but understand why it happens — discoverability for games is poor.

As for retro, I've penned something like a hundred articles for various games magazines, and although I love the history of old games, it's quite clear when I have to take screen grabs that most really don't hold up at all. (There are exceptions, of course: Boulder Dash; Defender; Cannon Fodder; SWOS; Robotron; and so on.) Additionally, there's that rose-tinted aspect to some old classics. OutRun is a good example. Yes, it was revolutionary at the time. But it's a bloody awful game when played today. (It's 200x sequel, however, remains my favourite racing game of all time.)

Also, a great many old games were hard purely on the basis that only the people creating them ever tested them, and not always to completion. I interviewed the people behind Cauldron, who admitted they only ensured they could complete each section of the game. The problem is, it had half a dozen or so, all of which were brutally difficult. That just wouldn't fly today. There's too much competition, for a start, but also an understanding that games for the most part won't punch you in the face unless they warn you first.

ThryllSeekyr

As far a I'm concerned...games have never become less fun. Yet, right now, realism only highlights how 2 dimensional they still are. I didn't mean that literally, cause I'm about games like The Witcher Three is still pretty awesome on a lot of levels, but not really covering everything....I was still surprised to find that could ride his horse on and on towards the edge of the maps before being told that reached he's reached the absolute edge of the map and can go no further.

The isn't even clever excuse for this, your reminded this is only game and that's it!

Sure if such large game like this can be made this good, they can do this, but no....it's like they the development team take after they're own creation go no further either.

So, it's simpler games that (The ones that we started with rough 30 yrs ago and the ones that still work the same way today!) win in that respect, because they do what they say on they're blog or tin.


jacob g

I have the same fun with games now like almost 20 years ago when all I wanted to do is play Fallout, Earth 2140 or Star Wars: Dark Forces.
margaritas ante porcos

ThryllSeekyr

BTW I found piles of old gaming magazines (And other types of magazine9 ) under my desk while I clearing sorting out stuff for my big move.

Some of those magazines date back as early as 1985 have been discontinued not long before the end of that gaming era. Some of those are real treasures.  Is it me or were they just so much better back then with colourful full page are taken from the front covers of game titles back then that just look anything like their cover art, but I enjoyed reading through/looking at them all the same. Which is really contrary to what said earlier about theses particular games in my last comment above. In this respect, I was really referring to the games textual description.

I gonna love skimming and rereading through all of those after the move. 

I also found what seems to be a pile of books I thought were stolen or thrown out or given to the starving in troubled times. These include two out of three of the original Titan published Slaine graphic novels, some old, but well preserved progs, and a scifi special or two including other books as well. (Those must have been missing for over twenty years and the reason for my Ebay/Slaine shennigans back in 2008!) or two.

I also found the latest reprint of Slaine - Lord of Beasts reprinted and collected into a graphic novel underneath a pile of books. I was so paranoid about those books going missing that I blue-tacked wanted posters of them to the door frame of my room. So, all three missing books have be returned or just found.

Sorry, for the thread deviation, but talk of old computer magazines took me there....

Speaking of old games and things I really like.... I still have the old C64 cassette version of the Martech/Slaine game. It's more of a collectors item that wasn't that expensive when I found it on Ebay. In near mint condition and never used by myself.

At the time there was a section of this website that allowed us to downloaded emulated versions of all the 2000AD related games that were made before Dredd Vs Death and Rogue Trooper that were released on all most popular gaming platforms.

Some of those games seem very unplayable by todays standard and I might even find them unplayable by the standard of games in a time closer to when they being coded in the garage or basements of a solitary  programmer. Even the [b[Slaine[/b] one with it's novel system for controlling his actions. I give up every time...it's like he was neither meant to be ever controlled or he ha serious problem with his motor functions.

Would be nice if they could remaster this game, and the other ones, maybe with better or the same graphics. Given that the graphics were based on the art of Glenn Fabry and the charming way it was all framed n comic book styles panels that would pop and disappear like a type of collage and the other games were just badly drawn sprites. Remembering early Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog games that sampled at that time. They could be re-released cheaply as 2D scrollers they were, but better graphics Yet that old Slaine could just about done the same way, with annoying Reflex (Star Wars may find a familiar name if they read the article I just linked!)

Really, playing this game is like being drunk, and I think that Reflex System should be restricted to combat only or when he's had a good dose of ale from the local tavern and rest plays like Zork. I think A person might only think that way in tense situation such as battle or not at all.

ThryllSeekyr

Some of those games seem very unplayable by todays standard and I might even find them unplayable by the standard of games in a time closer to when they were being coded in the garage or basements of a solitary programmers.

Would be nice if they could remaster this game, and the other ones, maybe with better or the same graphics. Given that the graphics were based on the art of Glenn Fabry and the charming way it was all framed In comic book styled panels that would pop-up and disappear like a type of collage and the other games were just badly drawn sprites. Remembering early Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog games that I sampled at that time. They could be re-released cheaply as the 2D scrollers they were, but with better graphics. Yet that old Slaine game could just about done the same way, with annoying Reflex (Star Wars fans may find a familiar name if they read the article I just linked!)

Really, playing this game is like being drunk, and I think that Reflex System should be restricted to combat only or when he's had a good dose of ale from the local tavern and rest plays like Zork. I think A person might only think that way in tense situation such as battle or not at all.


Corrections have been written in Italics, so it makes that much more sense!

The Enigmatic Dr X

Difficulty is a function of duration, I think.

Old games relied on rote and memory and trial and error, but once mastered they took no more than a few hours to finish. The fun was in the learning.

Modern games are simply too long and focus more on the story.

"Old games" per se are replicated in downloadable indie games now, and most retail releases are actually a form of interactive video.
Lock up your spoons!

JamesC

To be honest, I think that in some ways old games were more fun - at least more accessible.

For me it's all to do with how well the game suits the hardware. To say the majority of old games are now unplayable is bollocks.
Pong, with 2 players using paddle controllers is still great fun.
There are plenty of platformers, puzzle games and quirky oddities from the 8 bit era that are still fun to play (not just core Nintendo games).
The 16 bit era has loads to offer. Yes there are the Marios and Sonics but this was an era where the Shmup shone and there are still many examples that stand up perfectly well today (actually some of the simpler ones are far more fun, coming from an era when 'bullet hell' wasn't the obsession that it is today).
Once you get to the PS1/Saturn era I think more stuff stands up than doesn't. Old Tekken games are still an absolute blast, Colony Wars is still great and driving games were transformed. You can't expect the old 8/16bit racers, using scaleable sprites, to compete with polygon based racers but once you get to things like WipeOut, TOCA and Colin McCrae Rally I don't think there's anything to complain about. In fact I prefer these to many modern offerings as they get straight down to business and don't have all the online bollocks! Absolutely loads of innovation in the 32 Bit era too.
After that, I don't really consider games to be retro but there have always been the games that are timeless, games that were great for their time, games which were heroic failures (and may not stand the test of time) and games which were complete rubbish.