Were old games really better or is it nostalgia fagging?

games were actually somewhat finished on release, so yes

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Old games are tetris and frogger

Older AAA games were/are better, and the fact AA games were even able to comfortably exist meant mainstream games as an industry were better. On the whole I think things are better now.

When was the last time you had fun playing a video game?

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Old games were only better visually and musically. Especially visually as they had to get creative with their limitations and it showed so each game stuck out in appearance. These days? It's either pixels,anime or grim dark.

New games are better in just about everything else. Particularly content. There is a shitload to explore and do in new games that you couldn't in old ones as things such as NPCs were just there to say a line then not matter. In new games? You can kill those NPCs and go on a quest that determines their fate and maybe even get them to have sex.

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each generation has tons of great games, saying that one is good and another is bad is just stupid and ignorant

just nostalgia.

They were better. Much much better. It's shocking how much game design philosophy has changed sense then.

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Companies back then actually tried to be creative in order to separate you from your money.
Now it’s just copy the popular thing until it grows stale and then repeat with the new thing that everyone is doing.
Optionally add daring political ideologies to cater to the single group of people that won’t actually buy your game to boost sales.

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>If a real engineering project regularly 'crunched' workers because they couldn't manage their timelines properly they'd be a laughing stock.
Probably because people don't simp for engineers and their project managers, with some weird delusion that they're friends with them. The game industry will never get better unless the majority of consumers knock that shit off and get some standards. Businesses will get away with as much as their customers will let them

>If a real engineering project regularly 'crunched' workers because they couldn't manage their timelines properly they'd be a laughing stock.
There's a reason the video game industry is still met with chuckles from virtually every other tech profession.

>If a real engineering project
That's not the relevant comparison. Film production/post-production is. There's plenty of crunch there, too. But there's "crunch" in a lot of forms in a lot of industries. Restaurants before opening day, even things like housing or commercial construction.

dag yo

I genuinely believe it's a debate of quality versus quantity.

Older games definitely had the quality side of things, where you have some of the biggest classics coming out of the late 90s back to back. Almost every series people are chomping at the bit for a sequel to started, in some form, during that time frame. But at the same time, jesus christ did you have an ocean of trash surrounding every hit. The amount of shovelware coming out during that time frame was insane, with every movie/television show getting some garbage game, outright broken games with no ability to be fixed, and tons of games coming out with horrific control schemes because devs still hadn't nailed down how everything should work. Some of the best games ever made came from that time period, but there was so much trash surrounding them it's hard to say whether it was better.

On the flipside, games these days aren't really as good as often. You have some notable modern classics that pop up every once in a while, but most of the time you get solid 7/10s across the board. On top of that, you also get some broken pieces of monetized shit every once in a while too. But the big difference is that most games that come out these days are at least decent, if not just good. Control schemes have been generally figured out, quality of life has become so much better, glitches/bugs can be actively fixed by devs, and genuinely bad games are thrashed on social media to the point they come out less/can be avoided easily. On top of that, the indie scene is fucking insane. You have classics coming out of one dev studios every other day, with crazy ideas that never would've been funded by major publishers. Hell, people are even going back to the things loved in older games, and bringing them into the modern age with modern quality of life.

I personally say newer games are better, but I can see the argument for some of the outright perfect games that carried the industry back then.

Video games in general were better back then because the people making them actually cared about what they were developing and catered to a specific audience. It was a lot easier to make video games in the sense that you knew who wanted what, but not any more. I remember a time when playing video games meant you were a loser and you'd get beat up for it by guys or spat on by girls, now those same types of people play video games daily even if it's just something light on their phones

The world has a new audience for video games but it's not just one group developers are trying to cater to, it's far too many for them to comprehend and someone is always offended to the point that a few people can snowball a games "offence" into completely ruining a video game and getting it censored or banned

Back in the day there was a lot more freedom to create what you want, look at Bully. An absolutely amazing game, even now. But imagine if it released today? Developers wouldn't even mention making it in fear of being fired or because of how people would receive it - especially "game journalists"

No they were

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Depends on the game.

I've been going through my backlog lately which consists mostly of pre-2010 games and yes, yes they are. I can see some aspects in which they can feel antiquated compared to newer games, namely when it comes to things like menu navigation or saving the game being kinda restrictive but I still find more enjoyment out of them than I get from newer games.
If I had to give a reason why, I'd say it's because old games did one thing but did it phenomenally while newer games just throw whatever they want and end up over complicating things. Compare House of the Dead to any modern shooter for example

there was a lot of unexplored territory so it was more about experimenting than refining everything and making them basiclally movie games, therefore i found it more fun because every game seemed like a completely different thing. nowadays everything just blends into each other and adds better graphics

if you don't feel anything while driving and listening to the music in vice city, you have no soul

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Some hold up and some don't.
Gen 5 is the weakest gen for games holding up, with only really a few games like SM64, Banjo, Resident Evil 1-3, etc. still being worth it
But Gens 3, 4, and 6 all have great games that shit on modern ones, especially if you count contemporaneous PC games

Love San Andreas
Hate Vice City
simple as

80s suck

Holy shit, I completely forgot about this game. Now I want to replay it

>need to pay to play games on top of buying them for $60/$70
>monetisation that should belong only on free to play mobile games slipped into retail games
>content = shitty filler or skins that contribute nothing
>every AAA game's presentation and aesthetic blends together into a bisexual mutt, trap brass, purple/blue flavouerd rainbow smoke soup that overloads the senses
>same games also have shitty minimalistic aesthetics that are allergic to standing out of the crowd
>devs and suits hate the audience they cater to
>AAA games with unfinished releases and sell you the patches with a few free ones inbetween or actually finish the game under the guise of "IT'S FREE CONTENT!!!"
I sure am glad the industry and the games it put out took a turn for the better, thanks devs.

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Peak soul

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90s is depressing compared to the 80s

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This just looks better than "realistic" graphics

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too bad in gta sa the cars looked like plastic compared to gta3 and VC

and now AAA games are the shovelware while indies are where the soul is at

It's pretty much a proven fact that boomers and gen X make much better games than millennials and zoomers

>tfw you'll never be a rich greasy Wop living large in Miami during the 80s

Why even fucking live.

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soul

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These

sounds like you intentionally play shitty games and then get mad that they're still shitty
we still get good games and bad games, like always. but the number of games in general has spiked a LOT so there will of course be more trash games out there
being exposed to a lot of games over time also molds your opinion because even if a game might be good, just because you have seen it 1000 times means you're less likely to be interested in it

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Hey, my Sims play this game.

I remember spending hours hitting that jump on a dirtbike as a kid

Iwill never touch the definitive editions for GTA, Unreal is so soulless compared to Renderware.

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>sounds like you intentionally play shitty games and then get mad that they're still shitty
Nice try, but the only game with these problems I listed that I played and actually looked forward to was Chocobo GP (and Fortnite, but I wouldn't say I looked forward to it)
>we still get good games
Name 5 since the start of 2019 that aren't remakes or rereleases (which even then miss the mark more often than they don't)

Tfw kid's first GTA being V means they will soon be legally allowed to post on here and be nostalgic for it

some undeniably were, however the older i get the more i realise that when you chase something that you used to enjoy, you aren't chasing the thing itself, but the feelings and emotions it gave you at the time.

People felt that at the time too, hence the cultural introduction of pop nihilism.

>unless the majority of consumers knock that shit off and get some standards
so never

>Name 5
why? everything I name you will call shit. this isn't my first day, son.
i had fun playing video games over the weekend, did you?

old games were better because poor graphics boosted your imagination and it made your brain have more fun

the games were also more fun.

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old games are just better in every aspect besides graphics. Developers wanted to make fun games instead of chasing dollar signs and designing it so it's playable for literal glue sniffing retards

Vice City was good, even great. I played it on PC multiple times way after it was released and I always enjoyed it. Same for San Andreas really. The answer to the question is that it's a case by case basis, some games were a nostalgia thing and some were good.

If you compare them to 2022 standards, sure. But i hope you're not that fucking stupid.

Yeah, Fire Emblem (nu) Mystery of the Emblem was pretty fun and I'll have even more fun playing Baroque closer to the way God intended on my Vita when that arrives compared to some dinky emulator like Duckstation or PCSX. What did you play on the weekend, user-kun?

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I liked how cops throw tire strips to fuck your tires up in VC when you are wanted, it made chases really frantic. The police escapes in IV and V and fucking boring

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LEAVEMEALONE

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Where's the chick gone to?

The answer to that question depends entirely on if you're a normie seeking a quick dopamine hit from your electronic thumb twiddling machine or a gayming enthusiast

Only devs doing more and better content have been AA and indie studios. Nearly all AAA games either have less content than their predecessors (CoD, Battlefield, Halo), are stagnated in content (sports games) or have more content but in a meaningless MMO-esque fashion like most open world games

I bounced around a bit. I'm between big games right now and having trouble settling in to one. I played some GTA5, some Monster Hunter Rise (finally hit 100 and downed Valstrax) then I played some A Link Between Worlds.
Out of curiosity, because I saw a leaked copy, I tried out the switch version of the Lego Star Wars Skywalker Saga. It's fun.....and I say that begrudgingly.

Some yes
Some no
I'd say GTA v is just an objective upgrade over vice city-4 since it's a sandbox game where you go around shooting people and driving fast cars. More cars and more shooting = better. Also there's a ton more content in 5
I do love vc/sa tho and still play them but I'd say this is one example of a series that just gets better over time

Both. Old games had this combination of uncaring ambition and clueless progression due to how we didn't know what the general landscape of games would look like, what is going to be the next big game? Even up to the mid 00s people thought arena shooters, CRPGs, turn based combat, and collectathons were basically dead until the indie scene blew up. With that mindset, triple A companies of the time would spend a lot of time and money on things modern day companies just won't pay attention to because those old games just didn't know what thing was going to make their game blow up. It gives a weird uniqueness to old games that make them stand out just enough for you to notice but maybe no enough to put your finger on.
On the other side of the coin is lack of tech to make large visible landscapes with a lot going on in them. A lack of innovation on many basic mechanics, which was fine for their day, a lot of basic mechanics were brand new to the market back on their release day, but leaves a lot of be desired to a person playing the game today (excluding those specific high polished areas and excluding huffing large quantities of nostalgia). A lack of manpower (not to say larger team always ensures a better product) to make the scope of the game larger, now an adventure game can have RPG elements in it for example. Finally a lack of refinement on what works, decades of feedback from players will give you a hint as to what works and what doesn't
Anyway, that's my school essay on nostalgia in a dead thread that no one will read.

I first played a lot of these classics during recent years and they do typically hold up and often are more fun

>ultra widescreen
teach me master

Depends on which ones. Some of them really didn't age well, but there are plenty which are still fun to go back to.

better, no
more original, yes
devs were trying more things and were less afraid of failure before

Nostalgiafagging in some cases but not always.
Aesthetics aside, Vice City is kinda shit if you try to play it nowadays.

Back then there were no templates, no how-to do things. Everyone did what they thought could be good or interesting in some way or another. Now it's formulas, what works, market research and how to appeal to the most consumers.

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this looks sick why haven't I heard of it?

this looks like a mobile game lol

the 90s legitimately made counter-culture mainstream. you had sparks and flashes before, but they weren't even close to the culture revolution of the 90s. television programs were night and day compared to the 80s

You haven't heard of outrun?

Not really, it has better missions than GTA 4, and the police chases are way more interesting in it. GTA 4 was quite the proof better technology/better graphics doesn't make a great game, as it was more of a tech demo than a good game.

not until now

you look like a mobile game

I wish rockstar would make a gritty cartoonish style open world with slower paced midnight club 2 driving and open ended missions with less hand holding. A 3d gta chinatown of sorts

i liked GTA 4 but the missions really were not as good as the PS2 era games. the DLCs did massively improve the mission quality though.

ye

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Is it weird that I kind of like these memes
It's like a reminder that im not a kid anymore and there are people still growing up with new experiences and stuff

HERE'S THE ANSWER
Old 3d games had *grid* mechanics based on 2d games for movement and animation in very specific frames for waking up, crouching.
etc
For example crouching needs to be less than 1 frame to be useful, so you can evade attacks instantly as if you were playing a 2d castlevania game.
Nowadays game feature LE REALISM, what? crouching takes more than 1 frame in real life, MUH ANIMATION!!!! Ask Jack mc Famous person to do the mo cap for us! our zoomer gay tranny programmers can't animate for shit

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OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH

If better means more soul, then yes

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literally installing Linux right now so that I can revel in the good old times forever. thank you, WINE

it's a bit of both but definitely nostalgia fagging to the brim. For example, take DMC1, a game that aged like dogshit but gets sucked off endlessly on here and it sickens me to the core.

You need more, zoomer?

>Vice City is kinda shit
always was, though. Reddit memed it into popularity, just like nuVegass.

Why do zoomers hate the 80s so much?

End yourself.