By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming Discussion - Most old games are terrible by todays standards.

Profrektius on 23 February 2017
Podings said:
And most modern games are hardly even games by the old standards.

Go back in time to the 80s, give them Horizon Zero Dawn, or GTA V or anything really, and they will s**t their pants and be more amazed than seeing Jesus reincarnated before their own eyes.

specialk said:
Another thing to think about is what the "today's standard" really means. I suppose it means the standard set by today's biggest and best games.

But is the standard of Bloodborne a fully realized 1080p Gothic landscape or is it bad frame pacing and terrible load times?

Is the standard of Final Fantasy XV a beautiful open world full of life? Or is it a braindead combat system that revolves around holding down one button while managing a bad camera? 

Is the standard set by Madden 17 the fact that they accurately captured Odel Beckham Jr.'s spectacular fingertip catch? Or is it the maze of bloated menus you have to navigate in the game's franchise mode?

I was mostly just referring to picking up a game without any preconcieved notions, going into it and seeing how enjoyable it is today.

But I also realize that so many games of today are enjoyable for their presentation and how impressive they are more than anything else, and in a dozen years or so todays games won't be impressive anymore, so will face a similar situation.



Around the Network
Barozi on 23 February 2017

Agreed for the most part.
Even absolute classics have massive faults by today's standards.

Super Mario 64's camera is absolutely horrible.
Halo CE has copy and paste level design.
Resident Evil has terrible controls and a shitty static camera.
Ocarina of Time runs at 20FPS.
etc.

None of these games would get a Metascore above 90 nowadays with such big flaws.



Barozi on 23 February 2017
BraLoD said:
Barozi said:
Agreed for the most part.
Even absolute classics have massive faults by today's standards.

Super Mario 64's camera is absolutely horrible.
Halo CE has copy and paste level design.
Resident Evil has terrible controls and a shitty static camera.
Ocarina of Time runs at 20FPS.
etc.

None of these games would get a Metascore above 90 nowadays with such big flaws.

Pretty sure Zelda would

Why? Because the recent handheld remake that raised the framerate from 20 to 30 FPS made it over 90?



Helloplite on 23 February 2017

Nah, it is the exact opposite. Most of your standards are terrible, nothing to do with games.



archer9234 on 23 February 2017

If you can't watch a old show. Like Lost in space. And put yourself in the mindset of the the 60's. And expect to see CGI, and modern acting. You can't even go near a old video game, without bias. Because you'll be complaining about every little thing. From getting up, to change carts. Cleaning them. To hit reset. Remember when you had the headset port, on the model 1 Genesis.

If you can't get past basic things like that. Forget it. The only thing that's really valid is if the games controls where horrible. Like say Resident Evil 1 and Tomb Raider 1-2. Which had no real dual shock support. But, Re-make still shows that tank controls can work fine. As long as the control system uses joysticks. Even RE5's DLC. That did the static camera's was fine. The games just needs refinement,on how the camera switches trigger. The actual presentation, isn't the problem.

If you can place yourself, into 1998. You can play Zelda OO today. If you can't and expect XYZ, of now. Those people will give the game a 0. I can imagine how annoying Pokemon Red/Blue must be. To young people. Where you had to manually save for a box change. Or that you didn't know what Pokemon you captured, or not.



Around the Network
kljesta64 on 23 February 2017
BraLoD said:
Barozi said:

Why? Because the recent handheld remake that raised the framerate from 20 to 30 FPS made it over 90?

Nah, 'cause if it was a new Zelda, it would make it.
For example, make BotW, a nowdays Zelda, run at 20fps, and it'll still score above 90.

in the late 90s that was hardly an issue. i guess in 5-10 years from now people will talk about 30 fps like it was the worst thing ever..



Tsubasa Ozora

Keiner kann ihn bremsen, keiner macht ihm was vor. Immer der richtige Schuss, immer zur richtigen Zeit. Superfussball, Fairer Fussball. Er ist unser Torschützenkönig und Held.

pray4mojo on 23 February 2017
Profrektius said:

The title is somewhat "clickbait", but what I'm getting at is I hate going to threads of "what games still hold up today" and seeing so many rose tinted posts. While there are a few old games today that really do stand the test of time, most don't. Even the most critically acclaimed titles don't. At best they're playable and fun, and but do not fully hold up to games released today.

If you were to give a gamer who started gaming this generation different games to rate, most of those old games "that stand the test of time" would be consistently rated worse than the games of the last few years. They wouldn't have any expectations of games yet as they're a new gamer, yet they would rate the old games consistently worse, even on things like fun factor, and enjoyment, (not counting obvious ones, like graphics or quality).

For pretty much every old game, you can find a similar new game, that the modern gamer will have more fun and enjoyment with.

Imo, most new games are terrible by yesterday's standards. Seriously. Give me anything on NES,SNES and Genesis over even the best "games" these days and I'd be happy. 



archer9234 on 23 February 2017
kljesta64 said:
BraLoD said:

Nah, 'cause if it was a new Zelda, it would make it.
For example, make BotW, a nowdays Zelda, run at 20fps, and it'll still score above 90.

in the late 90s that was hardly an issue. i guess in 5-10 years from now people will talk about 30 fps like it was the worst thing ever..

Most likely. It's the same type of crap. When I hear people who can't look at SD content. After they watched HD, for a short time. So why wren't you going insane, back when that was the norm? Are you gonna keep doing that with 4K. And than denounce that. If 8K becomes a norm? I assume you denounced Netflix, or all the Bluray's you purchased, in the past 10 years.



crissindahouse on 23 February 2017

I prefer games like Secret of Mana above pretty much every similar game nowadays. I still love Age of Empires II and so on...

Like many already said, 3D games aged pretty bad most of the times but many 2d games aged awesome besides the resolution and stuff.



specialk on 23 February 2017

I think that fun games with good art direction will always hold up reasonable well. Even PSOne games which people always seem to be particularly hard on.

If you play them on an HD TV and plug in using composite video, it will look irredeemably bad of course. Don't do this.

The 5th gen Resident Evil games get a lot of flack for (among other things) how they look. If you play any of the 480p versions (such as the GameCube releases or the PC versions or an emulated version) they actually look quite nice. The character models look a little dated, but they're nice and clean. And the pre-rendered backgrounds show a level of care and attention to detail that you don't find in many modern, fully rendered environments.

You might say that playing uprezed versions makes them no longer "old games", but I just look at it like watching a blu ray of a 1990s movie instead of the VHS. The core experience is still the same.