Games that were great, but now unplayable.

I loved Banjo Kazooie. It wasn't Mario 65"4, but it was a great game nonetheless.

I've been going back to replay some oldies through Rare Replay and wow. The camera is SO bad. It makes the game a lot less enjoyable for me. The 32/64 bit era aged very poorly due to the quick advances in 3D design.

Any others?

No such thing. Truly great games don't age, age is a bullshit concept. Chances are the game that became "unplayable" actually had those short comings, and we apologized for it because

A: Kids
B: it looked pretty

And the worst offender
C: hur durr the story was good, even though this is the worst story telling medium by a good margin.

For instance the original Mass Effect and Uncharted 1 didn't age, they just out right suck, and sucked day fucking 1. As for Banjo's camera issues, they were always there, the N64 controller is fucking awful. We didn't know any better because it was the opening round of 3d gaming, so a lot of gen 5 hasn't held up, because we actually had a ton of poorly designed games that got by on novelty factor. That said I'd still say Banjo is a playable, even enjoyable game, the camera is definitely a blemish, but one you can overcome and adjust too.

Soul Blade/Edge

Tekken 1/2

Civilization 1 (II and onward are still playable though)

TR Classic (Anniversary exists for a reason)

Metroid NES (Zero Mission exists for a reason)

Star Fox SNES (SF2 being cancelled ended up being better in the long run and, again, SF 64 exists for this reason)

Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Man, does a roll based combat system SUCK for an action game, and it's not just me playing Oblivion and Skyrim first, even Tabletop games help me understand why better)

Most N64 games.

I can't say I've ever played a game that "was great" and is now completely "unplayable".

Saints Row 2

I'm one of the few who really doesn't bitch about aging 3D games from N64 era, I just happen to go back to Retro playing games from time to time and I do own Rare Replay, it's my all time favorite Xbox One exclusive game of all time. I played Banjo/Kazooie as well, camera angles aren't much of a big deal, you just gotta learn to work with it and your all good. Been replaying few N64 games like Goldeneye and such, yeah they may not aged well but of you don't think about it graphics, N64 games can be a lot more fun to enjoy the worrying about graphics. People sure take for granted when it comes to N64 gaming.

@sHaDyCuBe321:

Ugh god, where to begin?

Sonic Adventure 1:

I loved this game as a kid but now, it feels soooo fucking glitchy!! Horrible clipping, Sonic sticks to walls all over the place, terrible mouth animations, terrible acting... It's hard to see how anyone else can enjoy it in this day and age.

Ps2 gen GTA games:

I never had issues with them before but the lack of a duck and cover system really cuts deep when you're trying to enjoy them again.

@jg4xchamp: I agree with you for the most part. But in that same vein you could consider something great at one point in time and it becomes unplayable with your passing age.

I'd argue that there is no truth (especially given the subjective nature of what one considers greatness) and that my perspective is the only truth for me.

For the sake of the thread though, what games did you enjoy when you were young that you can no longer enjoy now?

Coincidence, I've been playing Banjo Kazooie too lately, and indeed the camera is so bad, but the mechanics still hold up (at least for me). I'm going to try and finish it this time

@foxhound_fox: hyperbolic yeah, but I never said completely.

@jg4xchamp: I disagree.

Some games simply put dont age well because the concepts and solutions developed in the game were simply vastly superseded by later entries. Others technically age poorly because the developers mess things up with updates.

@jg4xchamp: I feel like you said "aging poorly isn't a thing" and then proceeded to describe what most people mean when they say something has aged poorly. Obviously the game doesn't literally get worse than it was to begin with - the discussion is always about how our skills/tastes/worldliness/technology

/knowbetter/etc have changed

I have a hard time replaying any of the 3D games on PS1. The heavy jaggy pixelation of the graphics of the PS1's 3D games are unbearable for me to look at nowadays.

On the other hand, I still love playing N64 games and I have no problem with the N64's graphics. The N64's graphics had somewhat blurry textures with a smeared look but at least the textures were much smoother so I find this much easier on my eyes than the jaggy pixelation of the PS1's graphics.

I'm in the same situation, No problem at all with N64 games/version, but when I start for say a port on the PS1 I just have to stop.

not sure I agree with this either. A game that popularizes a mechanic (eg. cover based shooting with Gears of War) might be great and novel at the time, but if a bunch of games copy it and make that once unique and exciting mechanic (ok maybe cover based shooting not a great example) commonplace, going back to the game that implemented it originally will make it seem a lot less impressive.

Well I don't think that I'd necessarily say unplayable but generally the further that you go back the less likely that you'll find games to be as enjoyable as when they first came out. I have a fondness for many games from the NES era because I played them when they first came out but there are very few that I have any desire to play again. There is probably nothing that I wish to replay again from the Atari 2600 days.

Tried playing Sonic Adventure again, really bad game.

Camera all over the shit, almost no traditional sonic style game-play, terrible voice acting, cheesy J-Pop music rather than traditional bad ass techno music and far too easy. 96% of the time death is due to the camera.

I didn't play it when it was release and only played the Rare Replay version and it is pretty bad camera wise. With that said, most games from the past have some atrocious camera controls. Its only when they started implement more of a PCish third person controls did the camera improved or when they made the camera static.

Yup.

Case in point: The Ultima series.

Ultima 4, by the time it came out was the state of the art RPG. But nowadays? I can think of several NES and SNES jRPGs I would rather play than that. But back then? Ultima 4 all day. I would laugh and scoff at those primitive arse jRPGs on the NES.

What Ultima 4 made industrywide strides on have been heavily built upon by later games, across multiple genres. And there is little reason to go back to Ultima 4 now, when I could play one of the many games that did what Ultima 4 did, but much better. But those jRPGs, nothing ever really built on their foundations all that well, to the point of those games getting truly obsolete.

The metric I use for determining quality are generally how well a product fulfills its role compared to its competition.

I still play Dune 2 whether it's via DOSBox or an actual MS-DOS 6.22 image via VirtualBox.

It's the same thing with SSI's Steel Panthers and until it showed up in Origin, Crusader: No Remorse.

Oh. Wait. Unplayable...... He He.

European Air War. Can't play it if it doesn't run on today's PCs.

goldeneye is the classic example of a game that hasn't aged well.

older GTA games also age poorly.

Yeah the camera and controls are dated in Banjo & Kazooie. I think it still holds up pretty well though. It's better than most N64 games as played today.

Goldeneye 64 is absolutely unplayable now.

Frontlines Fuels of War. Miss that game.

And in the case of Gear of War

A: I think that game is still pretty good, and its imitators haven't all dramatically improved on it.
B: The lack of enemy variety and routine nature of the game was still a blemish on that game that day, and should have been held against the game.

Certain games only get by on novelty, Devil May Cry 1 is wildly outclassed by DMC3's combat engine, its level design while bitchin atmosphere has some noteworthy left overs of how action/adventure games were made at the time. And I would still argue those complaints should have been present day one, but this medium always had shit critics. That said, while the novelty is gone, the core of that game is still a solid game design. It didn't suddenly become bad, it highlights that it wasn't all the way great, because it had plenty of design ideas that didn't highlight the strenghts of the game.

Plenty of games have added stuff over Doom 1, doesn't change the part where Doom 1 is every bit a masterpiece of game design today, as it was in 1993. Which is my stance, beyond that there is a massive gap between "great" and really good. Gears of War is closer to good, and a 9.6 was a bit fucking much for that game. Resident Evil 4's had plenty of games copy its novelties, but the core of that game to this day remains excellent. Because the game is great. There was more to the game than just a novel idea, which is what a shit load of gen 5 is. A bunch of poorly designed video games that were more ideas, than well put together video games.

Most 3D polygon games on the PSOne.

Jade Empire (while not great, I still had fun with it back in 2005). Origin offered it for free a while back and when I tried it, controller or mouse, it was horrendous. Not to mention the combat wasn't even that fun when I got used to the controls, so incredibly simplistic.

But that says more about the player becoming less ignorant and less likely to be fooled by a parlor trick, less so about the game itself. For instance I think there is a fairly obvious reason that gen 5's 3d games get picked apart for aging, and not necessarily gen 6's best stuff. The quality of design was flat out better, because we had more rules for 3d gaming. Gen 5 was skating by on the "this is all brand spankin new" free pass.

Technical stuff sure, but game design, pure moment to moment play. It's well documented I will be a robot about this. I have no affinity towards a novelty, a story, or a time period, at the end of the day what is the core gameplay loop and how does the game consistently make good on it.

To me yeah Mario's jump has a bit too much of a slide going on in comparison to what the sequels did, they certainly improved upon the game. But that didn't make Mario Bros less of a great game in its simplicity, there are still inherent values to how its mechanics work, and how part of the love is actually how you can speed run it or go the long route for more points. In an era where you could add online leaderboards, and get a group of friends to play it with you, Mario Bros would still be ace. Yet no one would question the idea that Mario 3 n World are stronger games.

To me a game design that ages poorly, is a game that had a weak core to begin with. It's not a shocker a lot of the name drops in this thread happen to be from the early eras of a gaming generation, be it the first 2 gens of 2d gaming, or the first gen of 3d gaming. It'll be the same with the first era of VR gaming.

DKC isn't as good as I remember, but that game is also my first video game, so there.

Metal Gear Solid 1 is a lot sloppier and out right shitty in spots than I remember. As a kid, I was actually pro MGS over Ocarina of Time between my buddies. Nowadays? It's not the core stealth I have a problem with (in fact, that's fine), it's the fucking monotonous back tracking that pads the game out, the stupid towers you have to run through, the way some of the level design is with the jammed areas given how important the radar is, that fucking key, how dull that gray fox fight is (I have no idea why I ever thought it was epic). And yeah Psycho Mantis is a cool parlor trick, the actual fight isn't that interesting after the parlor trick.

Tough to say, most old games from my childhood I still enjoy. Recently I got all gold bananas in a dk64 file. What is usually tough for me is playing an old game that i didn't already play years ago, like recently I completed indigo prophecy for my first time and man, it just felt so dated most of the game being qte filled cut scenes.

I was gonna say GTA IV, but I guess champs points allready has that covered. It's not unplayable, but I just can't understand why anyone would sink the time needed to finish it into that steaming pile of clunkyness.

That game should have been fucking crucified the day it came out. I mean fucking look at this shit

"I now know how film critics felt after screening "The Godfather." It's been days since Grand Theft Auto IV's credits rolled, yet I can’t seem to construct a coherent thought without my mind wandering off into a daydream about the game. I just want to drop everything in my life so I can play it again. Experience it again. Live it again...Grand Theft Auto IV doesn't just raise the bar for the storied franchise; it completely changes the landscape of gaming."

Are you fucking kidding? What did it change? Reaffirm the notion that so long as Rockstar's logo is on it, the game will get away with being a poorly written poorly playing mess? Game was a shit barrel and a testament to the low ass bar for quality in stories that this medium has. I mean really, The Godfather? One of the best works, a fucking masterclass in character development, to some shitty ass irony nonsense about the american dream, where they lose the plot for about 10 hours during the middle? Get the **** out of here.

@jg4xchamp: Actually the first Mass Effect is the best of the three, I just played through trilogy again. Sooooooo opinion much?

Pretty much all the good stuff from the N64 era. Breaking through into 3D blew our minds back then, but developers have made massive strides since.

Oh and then that ass clown Adam Sessler said GTAV is reflective its era much like the work of Dickens, without once recognizing how Dickens is a horrible example of that, because the dude was like the least impartial when it came to his writing. If he had an opinion on anything political at the time, he not only shared it, he fucking pounded it down your throat over the course of at least 3 chapters that he pads the book with.

Dude name dropped Dickens without ever actually reading a Dickens, what a dick.

If you are arguing as a rpg, and because of the story n tone? I'm not actually gonna disagree with you, I would actually agree with all of that. Were those priorities for me, I would probably lean closer to ME1.

But they aren't my type of thing. To me I generally value the core mechanical loop of a game, and on that front you have to play a pretty sloppy action game to do the fun story stuff in Mass Effect. Be it the wonky action combat, the dull as **** Mako segments, to how utterly bland the combat encounters are from a level design standpoint. Doesn't help that the game is actually fairly unpolished, even on the PC.

So in terms of things I like about a game, it should have been ripped for those day one. Assuming you think the other stuff overrules that, fair enough, no harm no foul. But I'd argue the moment to moment play is definitely foul, and it's not something that was "oh after ME2, ME1 became a slog to play'...nah I felt that way before ME2 came out. And ME2's combat isn't even that good, it's just dramatically more engaging than the one in the original.

"age is a bullshit concept" - except it's not. When you watched an older horror movie (as a kid or adult; or reports from older people who saw them at the time), a lot of them scared you. But today, they're not as scary. How is it "bullshit" when it legitimately invoked fear? Yes, it got by on a novelty, by why write it off just because it is a novelty? It invoked fear, so it was successful in doing its job. "truly" great things don't age, so there are some "truly" great old horror films that are still scary today. But we're not talking about that. We're precisely talking about things that had a novelty that wore off (i.e great back then, not now). In the case of games, 3D cameras gave me a huge sense of exploration. But now, those cameras feel broken. Just because it was a novelty doesn't mean it wasn't successful in invoking the sense of adventure. And it was indeed great, maybe not "truly" great, but it was great that they managed invoke those emotions/senses regardless.

I put "truly" in quotes because everything is relative and subjective, and things "truly" being something is actually the bullshit concept here. In a thousand years time, things you consider great today will be lame/irrelevant/not great. And that's fine, we're ever evolving.

But game concepts and mechanics do age.

Dune II was amazing for it's time, yet it pales to current RTS.

Age of Empires 1 is one of my all time favourite games. My favourite one of the series. I just love its historical setting, making your way from simple tribesmen to civilisation.

And yet playing it now you notice how its gameplay is very scaled down compared to modern games. It only allowed for a population cap of 50.

Which is very small considering later games in the series allow for up to 200 (sometimes 300).

And yet somehow Age of Empires still worked. It aged, but at the time it worked. It worked because it got around technological shortcomings.

Is it unplayable ? I wouldn't say so. And as you said: Banjo Kazooie sure isn't unplayable for me either. But be it because of concepts or mechanics maturing, or games having to work around the tech available at the time... Games, or parts of it, can definitely age.

@jg4xchamp: I wouldn't say that games are the worst storytelling medium. It's just that most just try to use techniques from other media, mostly movies, and not play to the strengths of gaming. It reminds me of comics and how Alan Moore set out to tell a story that could only be told through a graphic novel, showing the unique strengths of the medium. Thus he made the Watchmen. The movie failed on so many levels but it wasn't for lack of trying. It's just that the watchmen plays to the unique strength of comics that can't be replicated. Same thing can apply to games.

gran turismo 4 till what ever we have now

Mario 64 has aged well imo.

But that's probably about the only N64 game that has aged well.

Gameplay and game design is limited by tech. And I am not only talking about hardware constraints. Gaps in our knowledge of Computer science too is a strong limiter as well.

Hell, most cRPGs would probably instantly get obsolete if IBM decided to make one :P

But the thing is. I dont know your metric for the quality of a game. But my metric is that of how well a game compares to its competitors. A lot of the early 2d games and 3d games aged poorly simply because later competitors were able to make them obsolete. The games that aged better, were the ones where people did NOT use as a basis to develop future games from.

Standing on the shoulders of giants and all.

Dwarf Fortress is one of the best games ever made. But if an AAA game dev studio, decided to clone it WITHOUT detracting from its depth. Instead just giving it a proper interface, graphics and that AAA polish. Dwarf Fortress would become obsolete crap really fast.

GoldenEye 007. Use to enjoy it as a kid but mad did it age horribly from the low fps, bad A.I even for its time, and finally the controls being awful.

@jg4xchamp:

Well said.

Haha don't remeber reading that, but it's classic stuff! But I will say the honeymoon phase can do weird things to the mind when it comes to gaming. Have experienced it myself some times too. Especially open world games have a tendency to just feel "real" until your brain decodes the structure and the entire illusion collapses. Happened with the Witcher 3 recently. But yeah, that Sandler piece is beyond silly lol. Reminds me of this jewel:

When I rant about why Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is better than just about anything on the market -- about why I think it's my new favorite game of all time -- I don't talk about the firefights, the new ability to throw grenades back at enemies or collecting the game's 101 well-hidden treasures. I talk about the heart-wrenching section where Drake is by himself and completely lost. He's on his last legs, he's desperate, and I'm right there with him. I'm pushing him through the journey at hand and it's clear that it's a game, but as he stumbles, seeks shelter and loses hope, my heart breaks.

The error you are making is that somehow Dune 2 and Age of Empires became unplayable (which is what the thread is asking, unplayable)), they absolutely didn't. What they lack in novelty or scale(complexity as well), they would still make up for in having a strong core. The games objectives, the games scenarios, even their mp (if you could get people to play with) were all built around that simple core.

The banjo comparison, that camera was always a problem (it isn't like the N64 controller being weird, is this new found theory), go look at late 90s, early 00s game reviews, think about how often controls n cameras are talked about( and the games were still batting 90s). It was the product of learning how to make 3d games, there is a sloppiness to that era that wasn't criticized enough, because the novelties were so brand spankin new.

Plenty of games have certainly borrowed from Ocarina. Dark Souls has a better combat, and it's the exact same shit more or less, but the core of Ocarina is still a very good game, and in theory you absolutely could still argue it as something great. People going deeper or even better, doesn't suddenly invalidate a good game. Otherwise there would be no point in ever playing through an entire series, why bother playing The Dark Project? Thief 2 outclasses it. You get what I'm saying?

Likewise Battlefield 2 does it have net code issues and balance issues? yeah since day 1 those jets were nuts, but you get a group of people to play that game again, and it would still be satisfying to play for a lot of the reasons it was satisfying to play the day it came out. And in many ways it would still hold up favorably even against a Battlefield 1 (fucking video game industry and its stupid naming principles). The sequel might be better in a lot of key ways, fundamental ways, it wouldn't suddenly mean a once truly great game is no longer great. That goes back to my stance, truly great, are truly great. Starcraft 2 didn't invalidate Starcraft. Metroid Fusion n Zero Mission don't invalidate Super Metroid.

The fact that people would argue Super Metroid invalidates Metroid 1, says more about the stuff we forgave about Metroid 1. Which is my stance.

I'd still go worst, something has to be.

Gaming's biggest obstacle is that it's not an organic story telling medium. A book can focus on the most logical direction of the story, ditto a movie, ditto theater, and to a lesser extent ditto TV, comics and what have you. A game can't always go with the most logical direction of the story, because at some point they have to bring up a game and let you play a game. Games being a set of rules n systems, aren't conducive to telling works of fiction. So yes on some level they tell their own stories, and those type of stories while fascinating, are by their nature going to lack in the thematic depth department.

Part of it is just the subject matters that they go about, but sure this mediums relentless desire to keep aping film doesn't help matters.

And I'd still argue, a bunch of flicks that lose their novelty, weren't necessarily all that great to begin with.

The Shining isn't just great because it scares people, it also happens to do an exceptional job at building suspense, its presentation, the music, the cinematography all absorb their audience in a way that a lot of horror flicks, simply don't. The other stuff is a flawed counter argument

Kids - you naturally don't know any better
Adults and reports of people from that time - goes back to a fallacy about popular opinion. Just because a bunch of people say thing is good, doesn't factually make it good.

If you people want to argue I'm not debating a fact, well okay, welcome to how forums work? It went without saying that I'm stressing an opinion, but so far nothing yah are saying would make me buy into the concept of a "great games age". Or are you really going to tell me with a straight face people would have been out of line at the time to think a lot of 3d cameras controlled poorly even at that time? Because I would argued that's being disingenuous.

I agree with this. :)

A game doesn't change overtime. It's a constant. The game is designed a certain way and time won't change that. What does change is how video games progress or alter both technically and mechanically (particularly in 3D games). Our tastes mature so when we look back on those games we played as a kid, if the nostalgia withers then it's easy to become disillusioned by what we once liked.

That being said, plenty of games that were once really great are still great and we can thank the game's design for that.

Well I guess we could go back n forth about how our metrics would handle the word "great". Part of this is I can't exactly go back in time and tell you with a straight face I would have called DMC1 really good, not great for instance.

That said, that Dwarf Fotress exampled, I would probably still argue while Dwarf Fotress has become a less interesting product, it didn't suddenly become crap as a game. One game doing what it does better, wouldn't change the part where it's still one of the deepest games on the market. Accessibility issues aside, the sheer depth of play would still be admirable.

Gauntlet: Legends, Rayman 2, F-Zero X, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Episode I Racer, Star Fox 64, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask all disagree.

Fair enough. I actually agree with the core of your argument. But I think where we differ is in what we determine as a great game.

But yes, the qualities sure as hell dont change. a poor quality is always a poor quality so to speak. A clunky game will always be a clunky game, Banjo Kazooie will always have a crap camera and so on. It had a crap camera back then and a crap camera now. Super Metroid will always be exceptionally paced.

Goldeneye for N64. One of the best games when it was released and a game I spent a mass amount of hours playing. I tried playing it again back in December when my cousin came to visit, and it is pretty much unplayable after playing modern shooters.