Less DRM, smaller filesizes, no stupid anticheat, and no always online bs. Anyone agree with me?
Often, it’s not really the “old games” but the “not the marketed shit”. One of my favourite gems is Outward. It looks and feels a bit clunky, but you breathe love and passion for making games on every corner.
I’d say that in my experience, retro games or games with a retro design philosophy tend to be more enjoyable and replayable. The nostalgia helps with that, but I think a big part of it is never having to tinker with graphics settings or anything technical. You just boot it up and play.
I’d personally consider anything older than 2005 to be a retro game (or at least retro-adjacent) in my library. It feels like around that time there was a major shift in how games were made; some really benefiting from the new design philosophies but many falling very short of their hype and ultimate goals.
For me the biggest problem with modern games is the obsession with high fidelity graphics. The dev teams that create games without a focus on photo-realism or jaw dropping visuals are often the teams creating the best games in my eyes. See Heart Machine, ConcernedApe, Polytron, Ludeon Studios, Maddy Makes Games, etc…
Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good modern games. The retro design philosophy just resonates much stronger with me when I just wanna sit down and enjoy something. Shoutout to Maxis for making SimCity 4, that game is sucking up the hours lately. lol
For me the biggest problem with modern games is the obsession with high fidelity graphics. The dev teams that create games without a focus on photo-realism or jaw dropping visuals are often the teams creating the best games in my eyes.
I think this is very much down to personal taste. While I don’t think a great game needs photo-realistic graphics, for me a game’s graphics do factor into my enjoyment of it, so it should at least feel like the devs put some effort into making the game visually appealing. That could be focusing on making the graphics beautiful, or stylised and quirky, or just incredibly cute. But if I’m gonna spend hours looking at something, I want it to look nice.
Maybe it’s me being old, but I’ve been hearing “the problem with modern games is they put graphics over gameplay” since 1991.
I’d say that in my experience, retro games or games with a retro design philosophy tend to be more enjoyable and replayable.
I don’t like chiptune music, where music is designed to sound like it’s being played on an old console’s frequency synthesizer.
I think that there are some good arguments for low-resolution pixel art in terms of reducing asset cost while still having a playable game – the brain is good at filling details in. But I don’t think that that applies to music, don’t think that there are good cost trade-offs.
And while I don’t have a problem with low-resolution pixel art graphics, I do have to say that for some of the successful games that I’ve played with it, I’d really like to be able to buy an HD graphics pack. I’m kind of surprised by how infrequently it is that I’ve seen game devs do that. Cave Story did it. I’d like to see some games like Caves of Qud have HD DLC.
See Hyper Light Drifter for a retro-style game with an unbelievably deep soundtrack. Fez also has an amazing soundtrack. Both are nods to chiptune but with incredibly modern production techniques.
I think nostalgia plays a pretty big factor in retro games. Like, yes, I agree that enshittification marches onwards and the state of the industry today is pretty lame.
Every time I’ve gone back to a retro game I find myself vaguely disappointed. Quality of life has come a long way, and development is iterative so it makes sense that games made twenty years ago are lacking some features that make life easier for the player. Things like fast travel in metroidvanias, or inventory and quest management, or just trying to remember what it was I was supposed to do next in an RPG are often quite lacking. Or at the least, they’re not up to today’s standards.
Survivorship bias plays a pretty big role here too. We remember the good games that stand out from the rest of them, and we forget about the crap. There was shovelware back then too, maybe not to the degree of the modern app stores with F2P games loaded with microtransactions and dark patterns, but they were there too.
Anyway, long story long, the trick in whatever generation you play seems to be to find games that respect your time as a player. I’d also recommend checking out indie games, they’re made with love, and you can find all kinds of retro-styled where you can tell the devs were passionate about games of the era.
Here’s a short list of games I’ve enjoyed that give me that retro SNES feeling:
- Bzzzzzt - Just delightful
- Gravity Circuit - Megaman, but the platforming actually feels good and fast
- Nuclear Blaze - This one has a unique offering where have to put out fires while platforming
- Skull Girls - okay, this one’s a bit older too, but in another comment you said you like Street Fighter so this might be up your alley
I’d say there is a larger number of quality games in the retro section
Nah. I mean, I like old games quite a lot, but for all the gems, there’s a litany of duds. I do agree that anti-cheat and online multiplayer have hurt innovation, but the indie scene is where it’s at, if you want innovation or a focus on storytelling. Still, some of my best memories are with modern online games like Shadowbane, WoW, Warframe, Deep Rock Galactic, etc., and yet no game has yet replaced my experiences with the older Myst series.
Size of games is certainly problematic if you have a slower internet connection, but even SSDs are quite economical at this point.
If retro games are your jam, then awesome! But I think they’re just a single facet of the broader hobby of gaming.
I mean, let’s not forget that the early consoles had their own pitfalls, a period of gaming that spawned tropes like ‘Nintendo Hard’ and ‘Guide Dang It’ in order to, among other things, pad out the length of what we would consider an otherwise barebones game, and to sell time on their hints and tips hotline. I do feel like there was less bullshit in the past, but it definitely still existed.
Hardly the only, but not always the case either. I’d put some of it down to rose-colored nostalgia, some to the given fact that so much today is buying a base framework game and then selling 276 ‘addons’ to make it complete, and part to that back when systems didn’t have the power they do now developers couldn’t rely so much on all the flashy imagery and effects so they put more effort into the story and unique gameplay. A lot of smaller studio games pull that latter part off today still, but they’re sometimes harder to find.
Do you have any examples of smaller studio made games with flashy imagery and effects to match the good story? Really I’m just looking for game recs and want to get away from the usual “big” names for a bit.
I guess it depends on what you’re looking for and what you consider flashy. I tend to do most of mine from GOG these days just out of a preference for avoiding DRM on principal. Found a few interesting ones just of the ‘cheap enough that it doesn’t matter if it’s not great’ types.
A major marker of quality for me tends to be if something just feels polished, like the menus make sense rather than looking like someone just stuck things where they could without though, but it could still run on a potato without making things melt.
while all of those qualities are great, they alone don’t make game great.
Yea, but the SNES in particular has an amazing library, I love super sf2
I haven’t played many SNES games, but the ones I have have been pretty good. Fairly sure there’s quite a bit of stinkers in there too.
But they are a requirement.
I just finished playing the original FF7 for the first time in like two decades. I always secretly dreaded trying to play it again, worried that it wouldn’t have aged that well as a game, or that my nostalgia was propping it up as a masterpiece when perhaps it wasn’t.
It sucked me in and I ended up doing a 100% completion playthrough. The experience has shifted my thinking and now I’m more willing to replay older games. Just last week I found my old CD Keys and started up Diablo 2, the original, not the remaster. Now I’ve been sucked into that.
I personally am finding that mechanically, these older games have systems with lots of depth and creativity. They give you so many options and choices, and they rarely explain all of it so your kind of left to just… experience it. I am sure this is not true for every retro game ( and ditto for some new games ) but it is something I have been feeling when playing older games.
Definitely try solo stuff with plugy. I installed D2 for a nice bnet session of baalruns but bnet was a bit riddled fuckhole. I tried plugy before uninstalling and it got me hooked on solo play for 3 more years.
I was going to try Plugy earlier this week but I just discovered Project Diablo 2 which comes with some of the QoL features from Plugy and more. It’s been phenomenal! Absolutely check it out if you haven’t.
How did you get Diablo 2 to run properly? I haven’t had much luck getting it to run in windows 10
I wish I could offer some advice, I’m on windows 11. I downloaded the game files from Blizzards website (had to google it, its kind of buried), and used my CD keys from my game cases. Honestly I was surprised I didn’t have to do much tinkering to make it work. I think all I did was make sure it launches with compatibility mode enabled in the properties of the .exe
Interesting! I might just have to try it again then. Perhaps I will have better luck this time
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Thank you!
I’d say that the Indie game experience can still match that. Doesn’t have to be old titles.
I like indies too :3
It’s not a controversial take, but survivorship bias is certainly strong with anything like this. People like classic rock because the bad songs from that era have faded into obscurity. The same goes for your favorite retro games; for every Ocarina of Time there was a Superman 64. For every Zelda there were 3 shitty LJN games.
The type of trash is just different. Instead of low-effort cash grab games, now we get high-effort overworked devs making a game that asks you to pay for it over and over again.
You even see this with games that were insanely cash grabby from ten or so years ago. Borderlands 2 made you pay for every level cap increase and tiny piece of updated content as it rolled out. The handsome collection fixed that, but it’s still true that it really tried to toll you at every corner. Game is still highly regarded though.
I dunno. I pulled Septera Core out of a bargain bin shoved together with some forgettable mech game for $10, and it was pretty great.
I don’t think effort is what makes the difference. Games now are designed increasingly in ways that are less ‘risky’ in terms of corporate measures of user satisfaction than they used to be. It’s the kind of measure of satisfaction that sees a quest marker constantly showing your destination as clearly preferable to having to actually look at the world and find your way around.
I’ve run into this with friends of mine who are into modding before. When they see one mechanic that negates another mechanic, or that degrades the output quality of another mechanic, they see it as wasted code. To me, that’s the essence of the tension and release in a game. You create a state the player wants to get to, then you put shit in their way and provide them with various ways of solving your obstacles. That’s basically narrative driven gaming in a nutshell, an interaction between barriers and ways of negating those barriers.
But like, I think that may be part of what’s missing sometimes in pushing these more like real-world convenience-oriented features akin to a GPS app. If you’re making a GPS app, you want it to work perfectly, but in a game it’s kind of more fun if it’s got a little bit of jank in it. Not the actual code, obviously, but the player’s interaction with the mechanic in the game world. A straightforward trip from point A to point B isn’t much of a story.
Honestly, I think it’s just more of the kind of watering down that’s inevitable as you get too much money wrapped up in a project. Corporate infrastructures and IPOs aren’t conducive to art. Or quality in anything else, for that matter. It doesn’t just affect what decisions are made in a game’s development, either. It affects how people are educated, who gets hired, how labor is divided.
There’s definitely something to be said for the effects of nostalgia and survivorship bias on the appearance of retro gaming in a modern context, but there also have been major changes that aren’t just about the decisions of individual companies.
Honestly, my argument that new and old games are both good would be to point straight at the Ratchet & Clank series.
In my opinion, it’s only gotten better with time, and the latest entry in the Series from 2021 is genuinely one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. It’s modern, cutting-edge, requiring a PCIe Gen4 SSD and a DualSense controller for the best experience. It’s just fantastic. New games, even AAA games, can be great so long as the project is being led by people who know how to make good games.
Abandon AAA, buy more indie or AA games and you’ll find what you want
Actually haven’t bought any new games that recently, can you give any recommendations?
I can give so many but you’ll have to narrow down your preferences a bit ^^
I’ve recently been playing Remnant 2, Songs of Syx, Age of Darkness, dotAGE, Helldivers, Valheim, Against the Storm… all really impressive and amazing games made by (relatively) small studios or AA developers with a passion for games. If you’re completely new to the indie scene you probably can’t go wrong with Hades, Hollow Knight, Stardew Valley, Terraria
Ooh :3
I’ve played Terraria :3
Hero’s Hour is a pixel art game that’s about building an army. Really solid indie game! Also a fan of Revita, it’s a roguelike but done very well and is mostly unique.
You should try hollow knight, its a great metroidvania, and without saying too much the entire game is amazing, just the first zone is a bit boring
Yea :3 I’ll get the switch ROM.
BTW, not exactly a metroidvania but skul: the hero slayer is a nice platofrmer too
Why the switch ROM?
Not doing PC gaming anymore, and also I have a device that can emulate some switch
Out of curiosity, what device is that?
Retroid pocket 4 pro
Which device is that?
Rp4 pro
Try looking for a Steam curator with tastes similar to yours. I like SkillUp’s curator page, maybe try that as a jumping off point.
Could try that I guess, but I don’t really do PC gamjng anymore.
Well, same principle can be applied to other platforms. Find a streamer who plays a game you like you like and see what else they like.
Balatro, game of the year for me so far
Depends on the game. As great as retro games are, I could never give up newer indie titles like Baba Is You or Brok The Investigator, which would be much shorter games or have other problems if they were made for consoles pre-internet games download days.
Though I will say that retro games like Sonic 1 & 2 on Genesis or Ratchet and Clank on PS2 are pretty much infinitely better than the triple AAA slop they’re throwing at us today.
Especially when we have companies (like sweet baby inc.) forcing characters to be changed to Mary Sue’s all because we need inclusivity. I have no problems with inclusivity at all, but I have a major problem with poorly written characters in games that have absolutely nothing going for them besides being perfect.
The one time I’ve asked for a refund on steam was when I mistakenly bought the remastered instead of the original version of an old game I wanted, and found that it had been ruined by the addition of a (not easy to bypass and wouldn’t run under wine) “launcher” that was there for the sole purpose of getting you to register an account and log in so they could collect whatever data they wanted.
I’m with you. In fact I’ll say even retro operating systems were better (no bloat, no spyware, easy to understand/configure/mod/hack around), as well as retro Internet (no Javascript crap, no browser fingerprinting/tracking, simpler HTML, super easy webdev) and retro computing (no soldered-on components, PCs were more modular and easy to repair)… heck, planet earth in general was better back then. We’ve been on a downwards spiral since the 2000s. Everything sucks now.
