What do you think of people calling a game "outdated"?

The word "outdated" gets thrown around alot now. Games that once where the cutting edge of tech are now questioned to as if they are still worth it or not?

Games such as

Tomb Raider and Resident Evil are easy targets do to tank like controls.

I think its stupid personally. Who is to say that playing Zelda Ocarina of Time is dumb simply because the game hasn't aged well? Its so weird now for me to hear that. That games once in their where impossible to top. That you couldn't even talk garbage of are now a second thought to if people should still play them.

Can a game still be fun despite it's age? I think so.

I think most games these days suffer from garish loading screens, easy difficulty, graphics and story over gameplay, ect.

When I play a game like Devil May Cry its so obviously outdated. Its has ever everything I loathe about the Hack and Slash genre.

-Floaty controls

-invisible walls

- Bad animation

-repetitive combat

-Magic barriers

-Fixed camera that is too far from Dante

- stiff movement

-Inconsistent pacing and bad music (it thinks its a survival horror game still)

But no matter what. I still keep coming back for more! I still keep coming back to kill the demons that infest Malay Island.

There are games that have aged gracefully and are still good

-Most super Nintendo platformers and Sega Genesis games

-Banjo Kazooie

-Crysis 1

-Disney games

-Arcade games from the early 80's

-Metal Gear Solid

There are games that have aged well but I don't think are the best . Not bad just not for me.

Halo ( I still like Halo its just not too special to me)

Ratchet and Clank

Jak 2 and 3

GTA games.

There are games that get outdated

Final Fantasy 7 and 8

Madden and sports games

I think games can age like cheese. Like they benefit from being old. The older they get the better!

Any survival horror game with an atmosphere that doesn't have straight up boring graphics. You know they seem to have a mood, art, tech detail. All age well to me. I just love those grainy worlds. They send me to not only another world but another time. A simpler time, I time of wonder and knowledge. Games like Bioforge. I mean when I became 14 it became more evident these games seem to be on a budget but still.

So what do you guys think. Is it valid?

Re-edit. the music in DMC isn't bad. The delivery and timing is.

No, youre right. Music in DMC is bad.

Invisible barriers are still there, even in Fallout 4. Very outdated system when you run into a invisible wall at the edge of the game map. Devs should design maps so that there are natural boundaries that restrict your movement out of map not put invisible walls around!

@henrythefifth: Fallout 4 is pretty outdated. It feels like a Windows 95 game. This is no surprise. The Creation engine is coupled with a weather engine that was made in 1997.

Which was something I thought was charming in the previous Fallouts but then got old.

The only plus I found was the combat and movement wasn't as bad.

I hate the collision detection issues that invisible walls give.You walk into something and it doesn't feel organic. It feels wrong fake and rigid.

In GTA games, the game turns you around when you reach the edge of map by boat. Its not as bad as wall, but still feels kinda off.

Saints row games, at least some of them, just had you appear on the other side of the map if you sailed your boat far enough to the sea. That was more clever approach.

Modern games feel outdated if the character cannot climb over low walls. I'm replaying Mad Max now, and its really embarrassing that the hero can only climb clearly marked areas. Too many modern games have that fault, no climbing.

And dont get me started on the no rope issue. Adventure game like Uncharted, and the hero does not carry a rope for climbing down!

Rage 2 did something similar to this. I tried driving over the mountains to get to the next area faster and when you reach the top it reloads your last checkpoint.

People tend to mix "outdated" with "not fun", and that's just not true. A game can be outdated but still be a lot of fun, like the games you've mentioned above.

I make graphical mods for an old game so I can relate to that!

@henrythefifth: I don't expect these game designers to give me bigger worlds by creating Invisible walls. So if I take hours or minutes to reach to the end of the game. I really don't know what else to expect. They could put borders.

In my opinion when a game is fun or a masterpiece, doesn't matter how old is, they are always good to play, simply as that.

It irritates me when I share my games to my friends and they will say it is too outdated because it is not popular in this day of age so I would often do the same to them whenever they say something.... they just don't understand opinion I guess...

I'm not a big believer in the term honestly. There's good and bad in everything though.

The only games I played which I felt were outdated were:

1.Alone In The Dark 1-3 : Because RE improved the gameplay a lot that makes AIOTD games on DOS feel outdated.(In these games, you have to press forward twice to run, throw every item that you don't want on ground(You can't even completely get rid of useless key items) , no aiming , having to go into menus to choose between examining,pushing and fighting)

2.DUNE 2 : Because you can only select one unit at the time.(Also UI hasn't aged that well due to this that you have to go into a different screen to select a building/unit to construct)

3.Maniac Mansion : Feels too outdated compare to Monkey Island.

On the other hand I never consider PS1 Tomb Raider and RE games as outdated.(Even in some ways these games are better than their today's titles.)

I consider Atari outdated but anything playable today is all that matters to me. I never got into the earlier Atari systems so I've always considered them outdated.

If you can add graphical mods to a game and the gameplay still holds up I don't think it's outdated.

Games that don't to feel outdated for me

• Crysis
• F.E.A.R.
• Max Payne 2
• Resident Evil 4
• Condemned Criminal Origins
• Half Life 2
• GTA 4
• Mirror's Edge

Games that do feel outdated but keep in mind that doesn't always make them unplayable

• Max Payne
• GTA 3D era of games pre HD
• Resident Evil PSX era of games
• Mafia
• Doom 3
• Dead Rising
• Far Cry 2004

I think you answered the question yourself some games are outdated.

Would you play Street Fighter instead of Street Fighter 5? Or Far Cry instead of Far Cry 5. How about Metal Gear Solid on the NES rather than the recent ones?

@Alexander2cents:

Outdated is a term used to combat people with nostalgia goggles because that game is being seen from a fresh outside perspective. In which case, it's relevant and should still be regarded as an opinion like any other.

Like Halo. Halo 1-3 have extremely slow and outdated gameplay. The only thing that aged well was the story and music.

Halo 4 and 5 play much more fluidly and are superior to their predecessors in gameplay. But the story has suffered quite a bit.

@nepu7supastar7:

You know you're old when people say Halo 1 2 and 3 are outdated. (Despite being polished and tailor made for consoles)

Another thing about old games. They despite having rickity gameplay have very good stories at times. Like old Adventure games.

But finding good story in a game is hard anyway

@kadin_kai: I'd rather play Ye Ar Kung than SF1 lol. That game can go to Heaven.

Far Cry 1 is good. But the controls are not as good as 3.

MG on the nes is terrible I played it. But the msx version is much nicer yet I rather play the new ones since its rigid.

I feel like they pump out new far cry games too much.

"outdated" in gaming is best described by the Inigo Montoya meme "you keep using that word..."

pretty robust market for NES/SNES and late 90s style games, these days. Just glance at steam and see all the upcoming Metroidvanias, the isometric RPGS (1999 was their golden age), etc.

I think it really comes back to if your game design is too new to be retro but too old to be current, you're outdated.

What do you think of people calling a game "outdated"?

To me it depends on what's being talked about and the argument for the suggestion.

tank controls

Tank controls themselves are built and was used because of hardware limitations to the games mentioned. So yes, outdated is simply factual, in most cases.

While I love Resident Evil Remake and consider it one of the best games I've ever played. Will never call aiming and shooting fun in that game, it's more of the excellent level design, resource management and choices that make that game exceedingly fun.

Resident Evil 4 however seemed built around tank controls in interesting ways that I cannot help think work. It's a rare case, but when you click with Resi4 controls I do not think they come across as "outdated".

Who is to say that playing Zelda Ocarina of Time is dumb simply because the game hasn't aged well

Well, by technical limitations the game is outdated. That's why it had a mostly purely visual remake on 3DS. Should that be a crutch against the original? no, but it's still a factor. Gameplay should always come first at anycase. And if a kid can play Minecraft? OoT honestly looks better visually. Depends if the kid is some graphic snob I suppose.

Can a game still be fun despite it's age?

To me it depends what the game was trying to achieve.

Let us all be honest with ourselves. Some games simply focused on a interesting concept for its time. . a shallow/ hollow gimmick, may have seem cool once, usually questioning the second time around, then finally you see it for what it always was. May that be the most up-to-date graphics engine, voice acting, or some other aspect that doesn't actually improve gameplay.

Some games people liked sold on these sole aspects. And was pretty awful at everything else.

A few of these games I'm well aware of.

@Alexander2cents: In that case I stand corrected.

You have convinced me. Yes we should stop saying games are outdated.

Now I think about it, I wouldn’t mind a go on Ye Ar Kung Fu!!

I think a game can be out dated or rather age poorly if future games improve on it to the point it's not worth playing but you dont need nostalgia goggles to say that Super Mario Bros 3 and Doom are still some of the best games in their retrospective genres. Some older game design philosophies hold up as refreshing.

About invisible walls.. In Oblivion and Skyrim, you can actually walk off the map at certain points, where they forgot to put up the invisible walls. Its very amusing, as you can wander thru low reso fields off the map for hours if you want.

One outdated feature I really, really hate is NPCs who just stand around doing nothing. Zombie NPCs, I calls them. Devs should look at Ubisoft and Rockstar games, where NPCs are lively and always doing something.

It's total bullcrap plebeians use to justify their awful taste in games. Flaws don't suddenly become apparent because of something more recent. I always knew GoldenEye looked simplistic, but I didn't care. Ocarina of Time's camera was always very limited compared to a second stick, but that hardly takes away from all the other positives of the game. Best not to pay attention to these people.

Games like Gothic 1 where W is both walk and attack, or MGS3 where you have to use the dpad to sneak and you have to hold four and a half buttons to aim your gun would benefit from a control overhaul, like Turok 1 on PC where arrows were walk and turn, comma and period were strafe and J was jump, and was recently remade by Nightdive Studios to be more accessible.

If a younger player were to play those games today, they would have serious trouble getting used to those controls that were designed when developers didn't know any better. In that sense they could be defined "outdated".

@ezekiel43: Goldeneye has amazing objectives I must admit. With freeroam levels

I hope that one day the linear campaign shooter of the late 2000's early 10's goes out of style.

Outdated doesn't mean "Not fun".
It simply means that it has some design features, in graphical sense, gameplay, world design and sound that we generally do not use any more as technology has improved over the years. Which again makes it harder for those who weren't playing the game upon it's release to enjoy.

Case in point, I find it enjoyable to play old NES and SEGA Genesis games because I was young when they came out, however I have a hard time enjoying the Atari games as it was before my time. Thus I view them as "outdated".

Technology evolving isn't the only reason certain design isn't used any more. Take objective/idiot markers that hold your hand and lead you around in the game. Or simplified/dumbed down RPG mechanics and systems, say.

This design is prevalent in modern AAA type games simply because it won't scare off casuals and will appeal more to the widest possible audience which doesn't want to have to put any effort in on their end or have to 'think too hard' about it.

Just jump in game, follow that quest compass and hit your awesome action buttons. Ratio fixed, job done, time to call it a day.

To me 'outdated' just means old. Doesn't make it any less fun. 80s music is outdated but I still love listening to it.

I think the term "outdated" is a totally legit word to use a lot of the time. Tech, games included, is constantly going through upgrades and iterations that make previous versions or things feel stale, outdated, or even obsolete.

Deus Ex is one of my favorite games of all time, but if a game came out today that was built upon it's gameplay mechanics--having to level up the pistol skill to get accuracy when you're a highly trained agent, dated visuals, old music, and so forth--I don't think I could play it.

However, the flipside to this is that some things are simply timeless and classic, the exact opposite of outdated. While the above examples of Deus Ex are outdated, at the same time the level design, art direction and overall style of the game, story, and writing are all timeless. I wish more games released now had those same timeless standards as found in Deus Ex.

Yeah, that was super freaking annoying, too. I wasn't even at the edge of the map, I was just on top of the mountain in the NE quarter of the map. Then it force-loaded my last checkpoint and I had to drive all the way back. GRRRRRRRRR!