Simple games, difficult games, old games.

[Rob]

Does anyone have the feeling that the voragine around newer and newer games makes us forget some basics?

1. Do we need to upgrade our PC every half year to stay up to date and play recent games?

2. Do we miss fancy games just because we are ''astonished'' with uber realistic graphics? (answer: a lot)

3. Are we aware of how much awesomeness is inside old games? (answer: THOSE were games).

4. Where is the challenge in recent games? The last game that was hard for me was.... (put name I don't know here).

There are more points to be discussed, but you can post them too.

I had this on my mind for a loooong time.

[kleptophobia]

My favorite older games: Europa Universalis II, and Crusader Kings. Classics, but I only think they're ~8 years old. Perhaps Civilization II? ... Other than strategy I really liked certain shooting plat formers like Worms, and Liero and Abuse. Last fun game I played was Colonization (Civ4), and Europa Universalis: In Nominee.

Some of these games didn't even have good graphics for their time, I'm more into game depth and fun.

[Zaotsu]

4. Where is the challenge in recent games? The last game that was hard for me was.... (put name I don't know here).


See romhacking.

Or, I Want to be the Guy.

Quite frankly, there are things which made old games difficult games that I really don't like. SMB3 on the NES was more difficult, yes, but only because you were unable to save your progress in any way, shape, or form. I think that's where most of the perceived "difficulty" of older games lies in.

[Dusk]

Or, I Want to be the Guy.


But that game is a parody of older games. Of course it's ridiculous.

I don't find older games on the PC to be generally more difficult or original than newer games. It's a different story on consoles, though.

[Rob]

IWBTG is freaking ridiculous but I love it. It's old-school. And I romhacked games myself. But the point here is: games nowadays focus in graphics, ''story'', gore in some cases and spectacular scenes to make you feel intrigued.

Some years ago (hell I still play abandonware in my DosBOX emulator) games couldn't afford evolving the graphics as they do today, so they could focus in difficulty, a great lifespan and awesome playability.

I remember a genre I loved and disappeared these days. The graphic adventures. Where have any of you played recently a Full Throttle? A Grim Fandango? A Little Big Adventure? The Ultima series? The King's Quests series?

As for now, I can tell the last games I beat were 'An Untitled Story', 'Cave Story' and Final Fantasy 6,7,8 and 9.

See what I mean? The last new game I bought was Spore. And I was kinda satisfied with it. But before that I hadn't bought a game since... GTA Vice City?

Newer games don't help. I played Gears Of War and I felt very disappointed. A friend and I finished it in 2 days!

Sucked.

[Zaotsu]

Adventure quests simply merged with the other games of the time. Quite honestly, they basicially were stories where you just mashed various objects together and hoped that they would create something useful to get through the stage.


A great lifespan


Which games? Most older console games are fairly quick to beat, the only difficulty is in continually having to replay them if you lose enough lives. Gears of War is just one of many games, and besides, the FPS Genre is generally more geared towards multiplayer - not long, epic, quests.

I don't get what you mean by awesome playability either.

[Raven]

There are some modern FPS games that are rather difficult, but as far as other genres go... well, RPGs are not very much tied to skill by their very nature. Maybe you are just getting older and more skilled. I'd be interested if you'd give me a list of old games you consider difficult :)

[ChickenSkins]

As for now, I can tell the last games I beat were 'An Untitled Story', 'Cave Story'

Excellent taste in games, good sir. Since you seem to favor gameplay over fancy shiny graphics, I'd recommend you give Final Fantasy V a look. This one didn't make it stateside in the first release on the snes, but it boasts my favorite game mechanics of all the FFs I've played. And it has super enemies like Gogo and Shinryu, to give you a little more to strive for after beating the last plot related boss.



Adventure quests simply merged with the other games of the time. Quite honestly, they basicially were stories where you just mashed various objects together and hoped that they would create something useful to get through the stage.



Which games? Most older console games are fairly quick to beat, the only difficulty is in continually having to replay them if you lose enough lives. Gears of War is just one of many games, and besides, the FPS Genre is generally more geared towards multiplayer - not long, epic, quests.

I don't get what you mean by awesome playability either.

Ummm... isn't that the definition of a difficult game? Kicking your ass repeatedly until you've mastered it? Dying with no penalty is just bullpomegranate, plain and simple. How can you have challenge with no penalties being handed out? I'd consider that a much more real difficulty than spending 8 hours watching FMVs. Wait... Actually, I think it might be harder to watch the FMVs now that I think about it.

And Contra games pretty much fit the bill for short but difficult, incredibly easy to pick up and play, will likely be replayed many times, and good for their multiplayer options too.

[Rob]

Finally I get to answer my own thread >.>

Raven:

FPS difficulty died after Quake II.

Zaotsu:

A great lifespan is what replaying and long games offered in the past.
A nice example for this is a game called Laser Lights, which I haven't managed to finish yet. There are few replayable games I recall now, like the graphic adventures that you could finish in different ways, platform games such as Biomenace and Prehistorik and Duke Nukem and so on.

And simple games like Fuzzy's Space Minigolf, Minesweeper and Pipelines have more playability than a few games I remember now... c'mon.

ChickenSkins:

I'm going to give FFV a try in short time.

And being repeatedly ass-kicked is difficulty, definitely. IWBTG has infernal difficulty and still a good game.

Contra series, on the other hand, are one of my favorites of all time in consoles along with Mario and Sonic series.

[Zaotsu]

Ummm... isn't that the definition of a difficult game? Kicking your ass repeatedly until you've mastered it? Dying with no penalty is just bullpomegranate, plain and simple. How can you have challenge with no penalties being handed out? I'd consider that a much more real difficulty than spending 8 hours watching FMVs. Wait... Actually, I think it might be harder to watch the FMVs now that I think about it.

And Contra games pretty much fit the bill for short but difficult, incredibly easy to pick up and play, will likely be replayed many times, and good for their multiplayer options too.


Sure there's a penalty when you die, you start over from the beginning of the stage. I'm not suggesting that you have no way to die, that's just retarded. I don't see how having a "Game Over" life system can be considered a challenge when all it does is make you play the levels that you have already done well on untill you get to the level you were stuck at and oh, pineapple up again, and go all the way through the game again. Replaying the levels you're already decent at doesn't sound like a challenge to me.

If they needed "punishment" for doing poorly to make a hard game, then how would ROM hacks in general ever survive? The original Kaizo Mario and Kaizo Mario 2 both had the "infinite life" cheat handed out in a text file with the patching file. Not to mention the abuse of savestating in most romhacks to even be able to beat them.

Obviously some games do need lives, when its competition or seeing how long one can survive in a casual game, such as Galaga or DigDug or any old arcade style game.


Zaotsu:

A great lifespan is what replaying and long games offered in the past.
A nice example for this is a game called Laser Lights, which I haven't managed to finish yet. There are few replayable games I recall now, like the graphic adventures that you could finish in different ways, platform games such as Biomenace and Prehistorik and Duke Nukem and so on.

And simple games like Fuzzy's Space Minigolf, Minesweeper and Pipelines have more playability than a few games I remember now... c'mon.



To compare Minesweeper and Pipelines to games that have story in terms of replayability? Of course they will win out, They're designed to NEVER be beaten, to be something you pick up for a bit, mess around, and then drop. It doesnt matter if you're the best Minesweeper person in the world, or the worst, neither person will ever "beat" the game.

I've never heard of Laser Lights, Biomenace, or Prehistorik, so it would be unfair for me to judge those, and I barely remember Duke Nukem.

I'll agree that there is often little replayability in some games, mainly because of how static they end up being. One decent one that has come out recently though is Left4Dead for the PC and 360, partially because of the added random Director factor. I can't say that most RPGs offer much replayability, and that includes old and new. Many are getting on the lengthy side, such as FFXII and FFTA2, both of which need obscene amounts of time if you want to fully beat the game, i.e. sidequests, dragons that take 2 hours at max level to beat, etc.

I've recently had my ass handed to me a lot by the Disgaea series, but that's probably because I'm a noob at the series overall, and the playstyle is so much different than most other SRPGs that I've played.

[Rob]

Well , I can excuse myself because I'm talking about DOS games or early win 3.1 games.
See, I realize now that is almost impossible to agree in some points when comparing games, since we like different genres (em, not that much really) and different eras...

[MaxHudson]

when it comes to the point that there is no more challange I agree there is not to much challange now days compared to older games. then again you can see some companys figuring that out, see Mega Man 9... That wilys fortress...

It also the fact that most games you don't "have to" upgrade your pc you can turn things on low and a advrage pc plays them fine now days.

[Lana♥]

Well , I can excuse myself because I'm talking about DOS games or early win 3.1 games.
See, I realize now that is almost impossible to agree in some points when comparing games, since we like different genres (em, not that much really) and different eras...

omg

DOS games were my life! my fave one ever was One Must Fall 2097, i think it was released in 1995 and its still one of my favorite games. such a pain in the ass 2 get it working though. i still have the original disc and manual for it...:f4:

what other DOS games do you like? i remember vinyl goddess from mars...not 100% sure if thats DOS though.

[Rob]

One must fall was one of the godliest games ever! I still play it too. I loved the prince of persia series, the duke nukem series, doom I and II, wolfenstein 3D, most id games actually. Also liked theme park and hospital (freaking difficult), descent, transport tycoon, and the dungeon master series. Damn, that's lot of games.
Now I remember I liked every pixel painters games, every westwood games (C&C and red alert) and the UFO series.

For win 3.1 there were lots of games such as the king's quest series, menzoberranzan, I have no mouth but I must scream, ultima series, day of the tentacle, monkey island, red big adventure, simon the sorcerer, Larry leisure suit series, Sim Tower, Sim ant, fatal racing, pc futbol series, phantasmagoria (a game that was too innovative for his time) the dig, worms 1 and 2...


Ah, good times.