Games you love that haven't aged well

It can be anything - controls, story, animations etc.

For example, a game I played a tonne was the original Tomb Raiders (1, 2, 3 & Revelation). I've gone back to them and oh my. The controls haven't aged well in the slightest. Horrible turning, walking/running and all around frustrating.

Lost Odyssey. I thought it was great back then in 2008. It still is in some ways, sadly they went the budget route on the actual development of the game. It really shows through. That title is a visual eyesore, and it doesn't help that a few of the character designs themselves are not very good. (Jansen, Queen Mings massive boob veins, etc.)

@Randolph: With that said, Oblivion hasn't aged well. Facial animations seem rather rough, environments bland-ish with more noticeable pop-ins, copy & paste caves/dungeons. Still a classic in my eyes, though.

All these 'qualities' were apparent back then too.

Metal Gear Solid 2.

I still love the story and the visuals and the overall presentation is impressive for its age, but after MGS3 introduced things like OTS camera and CQC, playing the game with fixed camera angles and without close quarters combat kind of sucks.

I think FPS age worse than any other genre. GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark were games that provided some of the most fun that I've ever had back in the day, but are pretty much unplayable by today's standards.

I would say that most games from the early days of full 3D characters haven't aged particularly well, especially in terms of visual appeal. Games like the original Alone In The Dark, with their characters made of obvious triangles, come to mind. Even games of the late 1990s like Jedi Knight and Unreal are relatively ugly to look at, though the gameplay is still compelling.

Idk...was just playing Doom and having a lot more fun than playing like 90 something % of these modern FPS.

GTA San Andreas. By god what a difference of 4 years can make, comparing it to GTAIV. That said, I enjoyed San Andreas more than I ever did with GTA IV. However, I can't nearly emulate the amount of fun I had with it by playing it today. I'd much rather screw around on GTAIV than on San Andreas now since San Andreas is hard to play since almost everything about it is outdated.

Doom has aged fairly well.

Goldeneye and Perfect Dark have definitely not aged well. The controls are really, really clunky.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City

This, unfortunately. I'd love to see them return to Vice City in the next GTA game.

Panzer Dragoon Saga. In fact, pretty much any Saturn game is hard to stomach nowadays. I'd love to see a HD remaster.

The controls for Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are fine (they hold up well apart from some serious frame chugging when stuff explodes), it's the N64 controller you need to wrap your head around again.

I find a lot of PS1 and Saturn 3D games really suffer today, mostly when you're playing on actual hardware though, it doesn't really apply to emulators. The wavy textures and grainy dithering make it very hard to see properly and are very distracting. N64 titles don't really have same problem, but some games on the system have pretty serious frame rate issues and that mad controller takes a lot of getting used to

@MirkoS77:

I recently played it in higher resolution....it hasn't aged well.....

But it does look ok when you consider the hardware it is running on.

Classic Resident Evil games. They have horrible controls and voice acting. The door opening thing every time you enter a different room is annoying and ink ribbons. But I just love them. It's kind of hard to explain why.

Silent hill, RE and Dino Crisis spring to mind. They looked great at launch and played fantastically but haven't aged well at all. They now just control like tanks and visually are just a complete mess. Would love to play remakes of all 3 but that's just not gonna happen. RE-Make on the Gamecube was just brilliant.

.

Old school shooters, Fallout 1(still enjoyed it though but lost all my save files and don't want to get into it again.) and maybe planescape torment.

Sonic Adventure, Mario Kart 64, and Super Smash Bros. 64. I think Sonic Adventure's biggest problem is its lack of polish. It's still really fun, but it feels really rough around the edges. Sonic Adventure 2 feels much more polished. It's really hard to explain what makes Sonic Adventure feel so rough around the edges. As for MK65 and SSB64, they simply don't age well because their successors are so much better.

Duke Nukem: Time to Kill.

The game is still loads of fun but the controls can be very frustrating at times (similar to Tomb Raider).

Games don't change, if you couldn't see the faults in a game in the first place then it's just your fault. Either a game is good or bad to me, my views on a game don't change as time goes by.

There are some Sega Master System games I loved as a kid that I don't enjoy as much anymore, like Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Wonder Boy in Monster Land. On the other hand, Ninja Gaiden (the SMS game, not the NES one) is still a blast to play to this day.

Also, the first Resident Evil on the PS1. Ever since playing REmake on the GameCube, it's pretty hard going back to RE1 on the PS1. On the other hand, RE2 is still a blast to play to this day.

Sonic Adventure. I played it again recently and it has some of the worst collision detection, camera angles and level design I've ever seen in a 3D platformer. I loved it as a kid but I've made a note never to play a childhood game again. They're never as good as I remember them.

Any n64 game sans starfox 64, it aged pretty well

@Jag85: I know what you mean with RE1. But I go back to the PS1 version either on my PS1 or PS3 when I feel like I'm in the mood for some classic cheese. I do go back to the REmake every now and then, and I do find it great bar one thing. The movement is worse than the PS1 version. The GameCube d-pad is awful and using the analogue stick is horrible...I crash into walls more than the original. Haven't tried the REmake on the Wii, though.

@iamllamapie: The GameCube pad isn't a good match for the RE games, since they were originally designed around the D-pad. The Wii Classic controller is better for RE. Or if you have Dolphin on PC, then you can use the PS3 controller.

I have to put the Command and Conquer and Red Alert series on here. They were once games I'd list of favourites of all time, but everytime I go back to play them I just can't stand the bad controls, horrible pathfinding and AI and bad game mechanics for dealing with simple things like vehicle repairs. Also these games were made for low res screens and its frustrating to see such a tiny area of the map at a time... there is a C&C addon which does let you run at a higher res, but its fairly buggy... but does at least let you see more screen area.

But in fairness, this was like 1995-99 time, so this was some of the first rts games... unfortunately Starcraft had much better controls which C&C lacked... but it also had moronic AI.

The newer C&C 3 and Red Alert 3 did play a bit better but still are hard to get back into.

But damn.. even worse is trying to play Dune 2 in this day in age... the controls in that game are even worse and dated then the C&C series.

And also... for fps games... they just can't hold up, graphics and gameplay is all that makes them work... and all have improved a ton since Wolfenstein 3d. Best invention in the fps games was using the mouse as an aiming device and the keyboard as the movement, giving really accurate responsive controls. Probably can thank Quake and maybe Duke3d for that.. although Duke3d didn't fully have mouse aiming working as quake did.

-Super Mario 64

-The original Rayman

-Goldeneye

Had a lot of fun with these games, but their design doesn't hold up.

These games have actually held up very well, because they give you things you haven't been getting with modern RPGs.

GTA III, Vice City and the "Stories" spin-offs. No right stick camera control, no cover system, loading screens between islands, no moving + shooting...bleh.

Elder Scrolls Morrowind while still a classic there are clear flaws in the game

Runescape - did not age well because of Jagex changing the game to a embarrsing WoW clone these last couple of years. Long story

Yes they do. I have played them recently and I did enjoy fallout 1 as i said. Maybe i will play it again some other time. But I just could not get into planescape torment.

From a combat/gameplay perspective, I totally understand that, as Torment never really flourished in that area. But from a 'story elements'/narrative/setting perspective, it very well might be the best.

MGS1

Love the game but playing it now is hard especially with the graphics and hard controls and camera.

I kinda feel more like I grew up rather than the games aging poorly. I'm more able to see how these games are flawed.

That said, I use to love Sonic Adventure 2, now I almost despise it. I'm playing through Final Fantasy X again right now and the script and plot aren't nearly impressive to me now than they were back when I was like 14. And the combat simple pretty simple and the elemental system seems sorta stupid.

I feel about the same for Kingdom Hearts but maybe to a greater degree since I swore up and down when I was a kid that it was the best game ever, I think it's plot was a lot more simple making it more endearing today than FFX though, but KH2 is a completely different story.

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes cut scenes seem pretty crazy now, I took it seriously and enjoyed it. Now I see it as a little more goofy and campy, but that's enjoyable in it's own way. I don't enjoy the game as much now, Twin Snakes was the first one i beat(I was stuck in MGS2 at the time since my controller broke), now that I've played through the earlier entries I kinda place it a lot lower in the series.

Spyro blew my mind as a kid because of the freedom of moving in a 3d space, it was the first 3d game I ever played. I still think it's a good game but the the repetitive structure of the game kinda makes me burn out and rush through it about half way through.

Metal Gear Solid 1, San Andreas and System Shock come to mind. I would love to see a remake for Metal Gear Solid 1 and a new System Shock.

@downnice95:

if you're talking about console graphics in morrowind, fine. but, the game is one of the best games RIGHT NOW in existence. I only wish modern rpg's would do what morrowind does.

and, regardless, pc morrowind fixes any graphical issues you may have.

the gameplay of it and the first 2 fallouts is unmatched by modern games.

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins.

I recently acquired a copy and wanted to relive the epic ninja stealthy badassery of it, when I realized something- you just can't go home again. Not only is it abhorrently ugly to look at, but the draw distance is about 15 feet, it doesn't even support single analog control(much less dual analog), and the movement is damn near impossible to gain adequacy over- much less mastery- when you've been acclimated to common modern gaming conventions.

..................

Commit seppuku now!!!!!!!!!

For 2D games pretty much anything up to and including the 8-bit era and for 3D games pretty much anything up to and including the PS1/N64/Saturn gen. Mainly due to the graphics but sometimes the stiff controls or gameplay mechanics factor in as well.

I know what you mean 100%. Even turning and taking cover in that game is a mission of it's own nowadays. The draw distance makes it near impossible to look for enemies, too. Thank god it has cheats.

Hmm, Halflife 1-2 great games but they havent aged well at all.

And fallout 1-2

Even though I agree with you, many wouldn't. In fact, I think some of the Valve fanboys would cuss you out for saying that.

Mega Man Legends could use a fresh coat of paint, and maybe a few tweaks under the hood. Xenogears could do with a new treatment, too, maybe a fully orchestrated OST and HD sprites (as long as they don't make them look like the sprites in the iOS Final Fantasy V remake... Those sprites creep me out).

Duke Nukem Forever.

Edit: Didn't read the title properly, I hated this game.