It seems like many of the things people don’t like about older games are exactly the things I love about them.

I love UIs that fit the tone or personality of the game. I prefer it to the standardized, minimalist UI that it seems like every modern game uses.

UI really depends on the game. In games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Metro 2033 and Fallout New Vegas I want a minimalist UI. In Doom I only need ammo, HP and cooldowns. I really like it when games like Dead Space uses "in world" UI. like the healthbar on the spine. It's a lot more atmospheric that way.

In games like Isometric games i don't mind a cool UI that looks like it could belong in the game world. Knobs and stuff for switching between single shot and full auto or a book showing you spells.

I agree, to an extent. There's something charming about how games used to be more daring and experimental. But there are certainly elements about older games that make it harder to go back to them.

Like, save points are fine. It's a valid design decision that can be used to build the tension. But being booted unceremoniously back to the title screen when you die, and having to wait for the game to load again? That's annoying.

Weird convoluted secrets that you tell your friends about? Fun. Obtuse things blocking progression until you look up a guide and see that you had to talk to this one specific NPC twice and you only talked to him once? Annoying.

The standardization of control schemes can lead to many games feeling samey, but some things were standardized for the better. Going back to a game where the right stick moves the camera in the opposite direction I expect is really annoying. Or even things like menu navigation. Play a game today, you know which button is Accept and which button is Back. Play a game on the PS1 or PS2 and it's basically roulette. Not just in that it's sometimes X and O and other times O and X, but sometimes it's X and Triangle, sometimes it's O and Square, sometimes it changes its mind between different menus in the same game.

When I think about older games, I remember things that I wish modern games did. But when I actually go back and play them, I often wind up just wishing they'd get a remaster that fixes a handful of little issues.

Regarding saving: I disagree but the interesting thing is I am primarily a PC gamer and for me 'limited/designated saves' is actually a modern thing. You could basically save anywhere in most games that came out in the 90s and later devs started copying the checkpoint/level/bonfire/etc saves from console games. Wolfenstein 3D allowed you to save anywhere and Doom Eternal does not!

Regarding control schemes: One thing I hate in modern games is the almost-automated climbing. Assasin's Creed started the trend and now every game with any verticality does it. Sure, the original Tomb Raider games were clunky but that was easily solved by the second generation of TR games (Legends, Anniversary, Underworld) that had responsive and intuitive controls without auto-adjusting animations.

A lot of this is down to taste which I can respect, but I 100% disagree about the saving thing, and it’s entirely down to convenience. I have had so many experiences playing older games where I need to stop playing thanks to something time sensitive, but I’m nowhere near a save point (the Metroid Prime games come to mind), and it’s incredibly infuriating. I’d rather be able to save on a dime (even in the middle of a conversation, like in a lot of visual novels) and stop playing immediately than have to trudge all the way to a specific point just so I can get on with my day.

My favorite thing about old games is that they feel self-contained.

You can get the entire playing experience without needing to utilize outside methods, and they understand that it's over when you're finished.

No bonus EXP weekends, or events calling you back after you've finished, no following Twitter for game boosts. No ads for or in-game popups to spend real money. Typically they don't even have achievement systems, which always feels a little distracting in the way that ads do.

All of the info you need is contained within the game itself, and games just feel more focused because of it.

Wow i feel you. One thing i also love about older games is that sometimes mechanics dont make sense so u have to figure out how to do a mission/question by trial and error, which is a fun process itself. Modern games are too straightforward most of the time. I realized this lately by watching someone being critic about morrowind. I realized its actually something i love.

for example in skyrim u cannot fail at anything really, while in morrowind u still had to use paper and pen at your desk to make notes. and really try to approach in different ways. all while working with very complex menus and stuff.

So I am one of those who wants games to respect my time, mostly because my time is very limited and I want to feel like I'm making progress. I also need to be able to stop at the drop of a hat, so that's why I need the good save systems. However, I totally understand your view, and dont want games to lose the sprawl, or convoluted stories, if people still want them. I'm ok with those games not being for me. There are more than i can ever play, I'm not hurting for choice.

Actually, I love games with different endings that ask for replay to see everything. And even long games, with winding complex stories. I love the crpg style, and those things are long and convoluted with missables up the wazoo. The difference between a good one, and one that feels like it wastes my time is hard to explain for me. Probably more of a game feel than anything. I think the difference is one of design. If the game is complex, convoluted, or difficult because that's the design and the game was supposed to be this way, it's generally feels pretty good. If it's complex, convoluted, or difficult in order to artificially pad the length, that's when I feel my time isn't being respected.

I do agree that some games lose a unique identity on the alter of marketability. The big AAA are most at risk to this, I feel, because of executive meddling and design by committee. The smaller studios though, and the indie scene, are chock full of unique, interesting, soulful games.

I disagree that modern games respect our time. Ubisoft collectathons, gacha RNG, RPG grinds, Roguelite grinds, "games as a service", time-gated content, Early Access, meaningless achievements for nothing but time spent playing.

A recent game that comes to mind was Gears Tactics. I really enjoyed the core gameplay but between each story mission you were forced to play the same few side missions over and over until you could continue the story. It was obviously just to pad the game out and make it longer.

A lot of developers out there want you to be playing their games and only their games. Especially the multiplayer ones. Thankfully the trend of tacking multiplayer onto every singleplayer game has seemed to stop.

I think I somewhat agree. Stagnation is bad but that also includes hompgenization.

I love the game mechanics in Dark Souls games. But I wouldn't call them old school. In a way I think they actually are quite modern.

The takeaway from this is probably that game devs should be bold enough to make unique design decisions that fit their game specifically rather than copying every modern trend. Not every single player game has to be Assassins Creed and not every multiplayer game has to be Fortnite

I like some old things and I like some new things. Whenever someone dismisses a design merely because it's old or they're modern sensibilities aren't used to it I groan a little. Older gamers are going to feel this more, what with more experience having played those games nearer their release. I'm open to new positive trends too. I like some unique control schemes, but they should be re-configurable for example, which is more common these days.

I agree with everything but the last point. Games nowadays DO NOT respect my time, while in the past, they did. A game could be huge and unfriendly but still offer meaningful content. That was respectful. Now having these laundry lists of copy-pasted tasks: climb 20 towers, collect 50 pelts etc, is the definition of not respecting my time. It went so far as to offer me PAID time savers.

Oh, and also - old visuals left something for imagination and thus were more immersive.

Having to work I have so little time for games now that I need them to respect my time - and I find that lots of modern games do not.
Assassins Creed scavenger hunts for a hundred feathers for nothing - no costume, no cut scene, nothing - does not respect my time at all and it's frustrating. In many ways its the same with some older JRPGs. I LOVED FFX, but there is a point between the end boss and the 2/3rd optional boss that you basically have to spend several days just grinding battles. It's not...'fun'.

Still did it tho....

I’ve had this discussion with my friends for a while now and I always use the old GTA games as an example. I feel like older games from the 2000’s feel like games whereas games now don’t feel like games cause they’re chasing realism.

I still enjoy games now obviously and it is probably nostalgia, but I just feel like PS2 games felt more like games.

I might be the exact opposite with everything you listed there. Maybe not the UI thing, I like it when games do their own thing with UI, and I don't mind lots of stuff on screen. I don't really notice it while playing either way.

I won't even play a game if I can't save frequently. That's not "good" tension for me. I am an adult with a family and responsibilities. When I play retro games, I always use save states (I try to limit myself to only the beginning of levels, checkpoints, and before bosses). I refuse to play a Souls game because I heard you can't pause.

I don't really have an opinion on convoluted or esoteric secrets because I ignore them. When I play a game, I typically plow through the critical path, occasionally dipping off to the side for an easily found secret here and there, but I have no patience for difficult or obscure puzzles. I have never 100%'ed a game nor have I ever tried.

I really hate it when controls are clunky or difficult. I want to play the game, not fight the controls. I will still give games a chance but if the controls can't be fixed I'm not going to force myself to play it.

In short... games must respect my time at all costs. That's like my most core philosophy of games that I enjoy.

This isn't to say you're wrong, because you obviously look for something very different in games than I do. Games, for me, are all about the experience, not challenge.

I get very strong "good old times" vibes from your post and I hate that stuff. How is any of what you mentioned specific to older titles? Maybe it's because I play more indie games than AAA stuff, but everything you mentioned is still present in games for me.

I also hate hand holding in modern games. In old games you figure out where to go and what to do. There are no objective markers or showing on minimap. Sure sometimes it is easy to get lost but still.

Wasteland 2 vs Wasteland 3

Wasteland 2 has such a pretty UI, because it's all worn out, janky looking tech that really fits the game thematically. Then we get Wasteland 3 where all of the personality was sacrificed at the altar of slickness.

Dragon Age series did the same thing and I'm still annoyed by it a decade later.

I love UIs that fit the tone or personality of the game. I prefer it to the standardized, minimalist UI that it seems like every modern game uses.

Not every modern game. There are some modern games that still fit the UI to the themes of the game. Bravely Default 2 comes to mind, as well as all the games in the Valkyria Chronicles series.

I love limited/designated saves. It creates a tension that being able to save anywhere at any time completely dissolves. Especially when it comes to horro

What if you have a cat, baby etc? Sometimes you need to leave the pc for hours when you look for them. Makes more sense to save the game and turn off the pc but you can't since you need to playthrough 30 minutes of battle before that. I hate limited saves. Make it like Dark Souls if you want tension. No backsies, every action is permanent.

I love wierd, missable, convoluted, esoteric secrets and endings. Things like these make games seem much larger and mysterious than they are on the surface. When you discuss a game with someone who found some optional area or scene that you missed it makes for a more interesting discussion than if you both had the same 1 to 1 experience. (This is why the souls series is one of my favorite modern game series). It can incentivize replays and really taking your time and exploring a game's world.

Everyone likes this though. And many games have many secret stuff. But I'm really happy we don't have "you can't open the 123th box from the beginning of the game or you won't get the ultimate weapon" kinda secrets anymore.

​

One thing I really miss is having more dialog options though. Since everything is Voice Acted now we don't get to have long answers :/

The thing about the “games should respect my time” mindset is that it’s not something I willingly chose to adopt. It’s quite literally a reality of my existence coming into adulthood, and it’s quite literally much harder for me to enjoy a game without convenient mechanics.

Like, yes, driving vintage cars or hand-writing letters is fun every once in a while, but the busier you get and more you’re forced to optimize your life, the more the inconvenience of the old-school stuff begins to outweigh the nostalgia.

Nothing makes me more excited: the view limitations of the old tomb raider games, hearing the enemies somewhere without seeing them, those weird, uncanny blocky graphics...

I loved Dragon Warrior 1 and the sense of dread that any new adventure unto uncharted territory would bring.
I would love to have the time to still play games like this today.
I and many others simply don’t though.
Perhaps when I retire I’ll get back into those types of games.
Until then I need checkpoints and save states.
Also, games like megaman had decidedly bad systems which required you to game e-tanks only to allow you one chance to beat a boss and then back to farming.
This is simply bad design.
I don’t think it is what you are referring directly to though.

I also like all the things you mentioned, what I don't like however is the convoluted maze-like design many 3d games in the 90s had. Getting lost in Thief 1 levels is not much fun when it happens for the 100th time. It's not that I don't mind getting lost from time to time or that the game is wasting my time, it's just that with my bad sense of direction I can't progress unless using a walkthrough (sometimes like with the thief's guild level 5 not even with that lol).

I was thinking about this exact same thing the other day. There's just something about the loud distinct sound effects when you dink around in your inventory menu like in the original Silent Hill or Resident Evil games that I absolutely love.

I think what I like most about old games is that they just start. It's a little hard to explain what I mean, but every time I go back and boot up a snes game in a emulator (replaying soul blazer right now) it's actually jarring at first at how little it wastes your time. There's no loading to speak of. There's no 10 minute opening cutscene. There's no tutorial. You start the game and you're just immediately there playing the game.

Of course there are still old games that waste your time in other ways, especially if you play NES games. Games used to try to pad their length with "artificial" difficulty and grinding. This didn't really go away, it just evolved a bit. Now games pad their length with repetitive missions, collectables, and rarity based loot (oh GOD i hate rarity loot so much).

But there's this nice sweet spot in the SNES and N64 era where games were still on cartridges instead of disks and also weren't massive multi-gig install sizes, where there was no loading time but games still had enough storage space to be actually full length games without any need for padding. The RPG's especially just feel so densely packed with good content, and they ended where they needed to end. Chrono Trigger was like a 20 hour game, and it felt like there was no fat to trim at all. I feel like if Chrono Trigger was made today, it would have a bunch of garbage added to it for the sake of being able to claim it's a 40 hour game.

I think some of the issues come with the indie market too. Hear me out! Now because there are 10 times more games coming out almost daily (most of them retro-inspired) there are going to be people who don't want certain mechanics wasting their time so they'll move onto something that they know they aren't going to be frustrated with. It's only natural that people will find issues with old / new titles.

The things you describe, are present in modern games too. Maybe the issue is your choice of games?

I agree with you in everything except quality of life changes. I do not miss playing a JRPG, dying in battle, and losing two hours of progress. That's just plain annoying and I am happy when I see auto-saving in modern games.

Honestly thought..... If a game doesn't respect my time, I'm just not gonna play it.

Actually I find modern games to go overboard with UI/HUD. Too many hitmarkers, too many indicators and unnecessary information. Quite the opposite of minimalist.

I love limited/designated saves.

This is a lot easier on the programmer too. This way, the game can be designed in such a way that we don't have to save all the world state, by having a gate somewhere so that we only have to save data from areas you've recently been through, and the gate makes it so you can't get to prior areas, so no need to save that data. I like this method from a player perspective, since the gamedevs could adjust difficulty by spacing save points... and when I see a save point I'm thankful / proud to have made it past a significant enough section the devs were like, "Yeah, you're going to want a save after that."

​

"Games must respect my time at all costs"

My first games were text based games. It was easy to create tons of content, because there was no voice actor or 3D model & texture for the "greater chainsword (+3, holy)", you just describe the items and environment and let the imagination fill in the details. Good pixel art is supposed to do this too, just suggest details and effects that couldn't be displayed. Those old text games rewarded the more invested player who took the time to create maps of the world and dungeons, in order to find unexplored places, off the beaten path. It's easy to just go west until the junction then go north until you find some city, but to map all that land out you'd find tons of interesting things... including secret tunnels into the city -- and stuff like that is cut from games now.

With a text based game or cheaper to create "retro" graphics, the devs can make the world more rich and not worry about making a false choice story line to make sure they throw every single cool room and item in front of you. Modern games feel like they're trying to force every single asset in the game before your eyes, and anything that wouldn't be experienced by 80% of the playerbase is cut as nonessential / cruft.

One of the reasons I loved oblivion the first time I played it blind was because of how the UI really added to the overall feel of the game. For me at least.

Another aspect I don’t see mentioned anywhere in the thread is fast travel systems in rpg type games. Older games lacked this almost entirely and it made the game waaaay more real. Morrowind is my favorite example as had two different in-universe ways to fast travel that were not OP whatsoever and their limitations made sense: the silt striders which could only go to and from major cities, and the boots of blinding speed.

It was really disappointing to me in Oblivion and Skyrim that fast traveling was just part of the UI. From a design perspective it undermines all of the hard work of designing a world when you only need to visit parts of it once before being able to skip right to it.

A modern example of a good fast travel system would be Dark Souls as there isn’t one until a certain point in the game and even then it has an in-universe explanation on how it’s possible.

The lack of a fast travel system typically means there is a limit to the amount of the map you can explore in the early to mid-game and IMO it really makes a world feel alive when you have reasonable limitations like that. It also adds to the feeling of progression when you do finally feel strong enough to reach these areas.

I definitely agree with you on the old UI stuff. One thing I realized i have really missed from games is the charm and style that games used to have, especially stuff in the early 2000's. Everything nowadays feels like it has no style, it's just there, it's just a game, not really an experience.

I think Nintendo can do a good job of that stuff, with a great example being the Splatoon games. I would totally believe that Splatoon came out for the Wii or GameCube or PS2 by some third party dev that really cares.

I'm love both old and new games. The thing is new games sometimes just feel really long and have too many sidequests and I enjoy a more focused experience. I rarely want to jump in an open world game because they are usually really long. I also like some stuff that some people decided its outdated like backtracking. I never understood the hate for backtracking because its a part of exploration. In the end of Prey I felt like I knew Talos 1 with the palm of my hand, such a big intimidating place was now familiar and easy to travel. Resident Evil always does this really well that you see a locked door since the beggining of the game and when you are finally able to open it its a lot more rewarding.

For me it’s controls. Some work perfect but others are left behind by innovations. It’s not always an issue but when splinter cell pushed the stealth envelop forward it was hard to go back to games where you couldn’t climb a ledge.

I have a lot of trouble with PS1-2 era control schemes for games that I didn’t play way back when. If I’ve got the nostalgia going I seem to be able to overlook it, but the clunkiness can get rough without that crutch.

I’m running into this with the Mario 64 rerelease. I didn’t have an N64, so this is my first “real” experience with it. It’s miserable (for me, acknowledging that it’s a gem for many others).

Maybe I'm missing something but the respecting my time movement in games is a backlash against battle passes, and other incentives to get you to grind and always be playing?

I feel like modern games would be better focused on game fundamentals. The focus on hyper-amazing graphics just makes them take longer to release and require ever higher technical specs for increasingly diminishing returns. All while the games tend to release buggy as hell and aren't actually in a proper "release" state until some six months after launch.

It's okay if your game doesn't have 4k assets, perfect reflections in puddles, and billowing physics based smoke from every crater and cigarette.

It's not okay to have game breaking bugs many months after you've already launched, all while having portions cut out of the game and resold as DLC within the first few weeks.

I agree with a lot of this post except for limited save points. Sometimes it works, like in resident evil, but in random RPG games it’s just annoying having to wait to find a place to save.

I like options though, a RE game with an easy mode where I can save as much as I want is cool. Really I just want to be able to save where I want in most games, some games again it works like RE but in a game like Pokémon colosseum it makes NO sense and just slows stuff down

I was with you until the "It feels like the "Games must respect my time at all costs" mentality that has become so pervasive recently comes at the cost of game design that gives a game a unique identity."

If anything I feel older games respect your time more as they didn't purposefully create grind for microtransactions.

Ubisoft, EA and more just make huge open world fetch quest games that are so dull.

I agree with what else you said though 🙂

I love unique controls schemes and game feel even if it means the game can feel a little clunky.

I can't enjoy modern Tomb Raider and Resident Evil games as much as the older ones because of this. No tank controls just feel wrong.

I love wierd, missable, convoluted, esoteric secrets and endings.

I have a problem with older games that hide secrets too much. Metroid's secret paths (that you have to find to finish the game) are completely blended with the floor and wall tiles, so you pretty much have to bomb everywhere.

It's one of the few games that I gave in and used a guide

It feels like the "Games must respect my time at all costs" mentality that has become so pervasive recently comes at the cost of game design that gives a game a unique identity.

Amen. Sometimes it seems gamers are only trying to flex about how they actually grew up against all odds and escaped nerd stereotypes to have a life. "I have a JOB and a SPOUSE and KIDS! I don't have time for video games like I used to!!!"

Yeah, me too, but I don't whine about it, I can enjoy picking at the same 100 hour game for 6 months.

I agree with a lot of this, especially the bit about controls, but I gotta disagree with the point about restricted saving.

When I was a kid and I could basically spend an entire afternoon or weekend playing it would be fine to just press on to the next save point when I wanted to quit, but now I either find myself cutting it short at an earlier point because I don't know how far away the next save point is, or when I run out of time to play I get stressed out and rush to the next save point or backtrack to the previous one. A few games manage to strike something of a balance between fixed save points and liberally saving literally anywhere, like Majora's Mask. You play the song of time and save your progress, and then you're back at the start of another 3 day cycle when you load. Any new information you gathered is still accessible, and anything you do that is persistent between cycles is still there, but you still spawn in clock town at the start of day 1, and you can still save at any time you like.

Old games are great, if they’re great.

People who dislike old games, even the good old games, are narrow-minded and don’t appreciate anything. Just like a person who only watches new movies but never an old movie, just like a moron who only listens to new music but never any old music. If they actually appreciated anything about the “new” games, other than being New, then they would also recognize qualities in old games. But they don’t.

My favorite thing about old games is:

Modern games have much more time wasting than old games. Old games had repetition due to difficulty, with fewer checkpoints. But modern games are crammed with chores, checklists, work, tasks, investments, multiple currencies, collectathons, chores, chores, rewards, unlock trees (have fun with cool stuff LATER! Not now!) It’s terrible.

It feels like the "Games must respect my time at all costs" mentality that has become so pervasive recently comes at the cost of game design that gives a game a unique identity.

You realize game can respect your time and still have a unique identity, right? People don't like the things that waste their time, when they feel their time is wasted, which speaks more about the quality of the game than the specific game mechanic.

I love UIs that fit the tone or personality of the game. I prefer it to the standardized, minimalist UI that it seems like every modern game uses.

Same here. The UI is a part of the game that can either enhance or break my immersion - I love the original PipBoy , but sleek HUDs do nothing for me (unless they do fit the setting, which most decidedly do not).

I love limited/designated saves.

I don't, and I never have. My first games (Doom, Duke3D etc.) had manual saves without restrictions, and they did not lack tension, or felt any less challenging than limited-save games. The only thing they lacked compared to other games with limited saves is frustration. That said: I can see the point of having some restrictions on saves, like limiting their number - but this is something that needs careful tuning. Too many save "objects", and you could have just used unrestricted saves anyhow. Too few, and it becomes frustrating again. The only game where I felt that limited saving worked for me was Alien: Isolation - and even there, it was a close call.

I do think that games should respect my time. Gaming is something I do when I have free time, and that means I decide on the schedule, not the game. If a game gives me the "option" of either leaving it running in pause mode for ten hours, or lose half an hour of progress, that's not something I will tolerate. There's dozens of things more important than gaming, and if a game doesn't have the grace to let me quit without losing significant progress, it can suck a fat one.

I love wierd, missable, convoluted, esoteric secrets and endings.

Depends. I love when a game has hidden stuff that people can find if they find and combine the right clues, or if the game rewards outside-the-box thinking (like how you can save a certain NPC in the original Deus Ex by doing the "decent" thing instead of what everyone, including your quest log iirc, tells you to do). I do not like secrets that are completely random or obtuse. There has to be hints and/or logic to them - otherwise it becomes mindlessly mashing the use key on every wall. Not my idea of a fun or engaging time.

I love unique controls schemes and game feel even if it means the game can feel a little clunky.

Again: It depends for me. I like when games find something mechanically new, and account for that through their controls. I do not like controls that are overly complicated "just because", or to purposely make actions clunky for the player. I should be fighting the enemies, not the controls. I should be challenged by the obstacles, not the controls.

That out of the way: A "cinematic experience" has become something to avoid for me. I play for immersion, to experience strange new worlds, to walk through history, to see ruins in their prime. I play to be active. If I wanted to watch a movie or read a book - i.e. have a linear, non-interactive experience - I would do that. But when I game, I want to game. As such, I much prefer games that have minimal cutscenes, that don't take control away from me - mostly, those are older titles, or retro games.

Totally me, and totally my similar thoughts while playing through the original dead rising recently. (Check it out if you haven't)

Your post reminded me of BioForge, where the cursor is a huge cyborg hand.

have you tried Nongünz?

Theres no readable letters. Every menu element is some kind of image, its not obvious what anything does. And i loved it.

Tip: To leave the dungeon without dying, look for your window of opportunity.

I agree with the spirit of this post, but I lay the blame for homogenization on publishers, not devs and certainly not the players. The traits you mention are often the most praised aspects of modern titles.

That said, there's certainly a character to the flawed masterpieces of old that can feel nonexistent nowadays. Gameplay problems that had wildly different approaches in the past, have largely been "solved". Control schemes, UI elements, etc. are slightly less part of design and more universal "game language" now.

If one wants to chase that again (as I often do), I strongly suggest avoiding the AAA market and diving into some indie stuff. The clunky-but-charming spirit of smaller teams and budgets is still very much alive there, without the part where you download an obscure patch, edit OS files, and roll back your graphics card drivers just to get to the title screen. ...Usually.

I agree on making the controls fit within the game’s theme, rather than everything being just a “It plays like Assassin’s Creed!”

Just my personal opinion though, mostly because I don’t have a lot of time for gaming and I’m getting older, is that I prefer intuitive controls to having to blunder around because yesterday I was playing a completely different game and I might switch back tomorrow. There’s gotta be a balance between a unique UI that fits a different story/gameplay and an intuitive approach that is easy to pick up, based on previous games’ control schemes that I’m already familiar with.

And saves — they are my lifeblood! Real life happens and if I can’t pause the game and set a save point whenever I need to, I’m gonna get frustrated with having to redo large parts of a level and I might just stop playing the game. It can definitely make a game much too easy, though, and I’d argue that being able to turn off auto-save can add to the game’s challenge much like selecting hard mode or doing a speed run.

The “games must respect my time at all costs” thing is huge... slight tangent, but related - I just got 40k Inquisitor: Martyr and was telling my friend who told me about it that I really like how the skill tree works. Basically, your selected char starts with certain trees unlocked, but then you unlock the rest by actually doing certain things in-game (destroy x# boxes, do/shoot something x# of times etc). The thing I like about this in particular is that it (intentionally or not) replaces the pointless “achievement” systems you increasingly see in-game now (not PSN trophies/xbox achievements). It’s cool because you don’t HAVE to get everything, but at the same time, you’re being rewarded in-game for things that normally don’t “do” anything other than be a counter. I’m sure it’s not the only game to do this, but I think we’ll see more like this - innovative ways to respect player time while still giving a sense of accomplishment beyond the gameplay/progression itself

One thing I like that isn't as common: games that are willing to risk the player missing a bunch of content.

I was watching a video discussing an older game (I can't remember which one) and how there are so many quests and locations and entire chunks of the game that a player is able to miss.

Games these days make sure the content is sign posted, but in RPGs especially it can be nice to slightly hide stuff so it's more rewarding to find

I like that older games would kind of leave you to your devices and let you figure shit out. They really let you soak in the atmosphere and take things at your own pace.

Nowadays games have voices chattering in your ear all the time. Tutorial popups. Intrusive UI elements and objective markers urging you forward and removing any need for exploration.

Agree 1000%. I'm not old enough to have played games from the 80s and early 90s when they released, but I still play them a lot because they do things that you just don't get from modern AAA games.

It feels like the "Games must respect my time at all costs" mentality that has become so pervasive recently comes at the cost of game design that gives a game a unique identity.

This I definitely can agree with. Long games are cool.

I love how 3D games from the late 90s and even the early 2000s look. The look of the monsters in Quake leaves a lot to the imagination, which is great. Blowing an enemy's arm off in Soldier of Fortune feels much more satisfying than in CoD:WaW.

Different things are better for different people. I can get behind really hard or cryptic games but only when I have a lot of time to throw at them. If I was one of those people who only has an hour per week for gaming then I never would've gotten over the initial difficulty hump to playing Bloodborne (my first Soulslike) for example.

About crypticness specifically, I'm all about that in side quests or missable stuff, but a lot of old games struggle with being too cryptic in their main quest. It's no fun to have your progress completely stopped because you can't figure out which specific NPC you need to talk to in order to continue the story.

I feel like you just described dishonored right there, if you didn’t try it yet: do so, even if you don’t really like stealth games (yet)

Dude. If you like Jrpgs with menu based combat at all, you should play Persona 3.
It admittedly doesn't have the multiple endings and secrets bit, but everything else fits. Characters are a tiny bit stale (they're very standard school anime fodder) but they do what they do well, and the plot is really good. Most of the combat parts occur in this massive tower that only has a save point every dozen floors or so - well actually you can get back to the save point at almost any time (so it's easy to quit the game), but you won't be able to start at the floor of the tower that you left, but on the nearest checkpoint floor that occurs once every dozen ish floors (so you still lose progress for failure).

When not fighting your way up the tower you are living a school life, and with your limited time each day you have to decide where to spend your time to increase your social links (which give you stronger personas to fight with) or your stats (because some social links are walled off by stat checks). But you also need to be a little careful because it's possible to tick off some characters by not seeing them enough and waste valuable time. While nothing is secret exactly, you're not going to get all the social links done in one playthrough without a guide.

But the primary reason I'm recommending this game to you is what you said about control schemes with game feel. Persona 3 is a menu based combat jrpg where you and a team of three others fight monsters. However unlike most jrpgs, you do not get direct control over the other three characters. It simply isn't an option to open their menues. Instead, you're given a 'tactics' menu, where you have to instruct them to play certain roles and then let them decide the exact move they'll make on their own. You can order things like "Be Heal/Support" or "Conserve SP" and there's an "act Freely" button if you need them to be more flexible than the other modes will allow. It's definitely clunky, but it also adds a lot of depth to the characters to see how they fight, not how you fight when controlling them. The community jokes about the character Mitsuru trying to cast the charm spell at every available opportunity and sure, it's annoying, but that says something about how she handles conflict. Later games in the Persona series still have these options, but they also added a 'Direct Commands' button so literally no one ever uses them. Anyway, I just thought you might think that was neat.

Thats one of the reasons i love Valheim, it feels so old school

I love UIs that fit the tone or personality of the game. I prefer it to the standardized, minimalist UI that it seems like every modern game uses.

I love limited/designated saves. It creates a tension that being able to save anywhere at any time completely dissolves. Especially when it comes to horro

I love wierd, missable, convoluted, esoteric secrets and endings.

All these exist in a lot of modern games.

​

It feels like the "Games must respect my time at all costs" mentality that has become so pervasive recently comes at the cost of game design that gives a game a unique identity.

I believe a game should respect my time. And by that I don't mean everything should automatically play itself. But the content I get should be high quality content with zero bloat and artificial game lengtheners. Uncharted does what it heads out to do fantastically, while also respecting my time. Assassin's Creed doesn't. That's the difference.

Somebody who loves old games here (the games from the late 80s and early 90s are the best for me).

I agree with all of that.

I love wierd, missable, convoluted, esoteric secrets and endings.

We need more of this. I would go to the point of saying that making somewhat obscure how to advance in the main story would make for a good rpg/open world game.

And this is tied to a mechanic I miss about older rpgs. Games like Fallout 1 allowed you to ask a npc something about a topic that you wanted that was not in the dialog tree. You needed to know what it was, and you needed to know who to ask, sadly at the time they couldn't make a spell check or something similar, so if you wanted to ask about "sandy" and you wrote "sadny", and you didin't realize your mistake, you wouldn't be able to get an answer.

I love limited/designated saves. It creates a tension that being able to save anywhere at any time completely dissolves. Especially when it comes to horro

I hate quicksave and checkpoints that appear every 30 seconds for this reason, specially for horror games. If there is no penalty for dying, there is no tension, I actually like the ink ribbon in RE games because of this. You can't just save spam, even though you have more ink ribbons that you will ever need.

"Games must respect my time at all costs"

The weird thing about this is that its always used in a way that means "I want to progress every time I play" rather than "I want to be entertained every time I play". If the game pushes me to progress, giving me 0 chance of figuring things on my own, then I would say that its not respecting my time, because its using it in a really boring way.

It’s always ironic when I see gamers complain about even slightly “clunky” or unusual control schemes, and then complain about the homogeneous design in modern AAA games.

Not just gamers, but people in general simply lack patience today. Everyone wants instant gratification, but that usually comes at the expense of a deeper experience.

Not every retro game holds up to modern scrutiny, but I’m always amazed at how many do. The PC alone has a vast library of classic games that have never been easier to get ahold of than now.

I just finished my first playthrough of the original Dark Souls (co-oped it with my best friend), and even though it took me a while to get used to all the stats and parameters on-screen, I fell in love with the UI. It was extremely Dark Souls, with its rough texture and well, dark colors. It just looked very aged and dull. There was something I also liked about the tick marks on the health and stamina bars, not only because I could more easily get a feel for the strength of damage and healing, but because it again added a texture to those bars. I just started Dark Souls 2 and I'm really missing those ticks. And it's been a little while since I've touched the Demon's Souls remake so I don't remember all of the menus, but honestly I really don't like some of the UI, like the bars are so minimalistic and colorful, just doesn't fit the tone at all. Gorgeous game though, and fun so far!

>I love UIs that fit the tone or personality of the game. I prefer it to the standardized, minimalist UI that it seems like every modern game uses.

​

Now that I think about it, that's part of what I love about Cyberpunk 2077 so much, the UI fits the theme, it doesn't care about minimalism, and it's just different from what's typically seen in most games.

​

>I love wierd, missable, convoluted, esoteric secrets and endings.

​

This is something that keeps me going back to New Vegas, the fact I didn't even know about characters like Cannibal Johnson (and his relation to Ganon and the main story) or that I didn't know I can have 10 Of Spades and his sniper team help to take out Nehpi until deep into my third playthrough is what makes New Vegas such a great RPG. Unfortunately, not a lot of devs think it's worth putting in small secrets that most people will miss, which is a shame because it creates a feedback loop of 'bad RPG - people start to hate RPGs - devs put less effort into RPGs' which just ruins the genre as a whole.

I think that many people DO love those features even in games today. You basically explained the souls series.

Descent 2 and Myth 2 come to mind. Early 3D, controls took practice, great games...

Yeah I'll bite. The Shadow of the Colossus remake was really unnecessary in my opinion because I always felt that, due to the PS2's janky controls, rough edges and hard to decipher environments, it made the game a thousand times more atmospheric and mysterious. I feel like with the massive graphical overhaul of the remake it completely loses its mystery and aura. There's a reason why people like Nomad Colossus and Pikol only made videos showcasing the original, and thats because, while there may have been some secret content waiting to be found inside, it was all around a very cryptic and one of a kind game.

That's why I would say there isn't many games that have done remakes very well at all. I can't really think of any off the top of my head to be honest. Even the Spyro remake from a few years ago proved dissatisfactory! I think the original was just gorgeous and if you want proof just Google "spyro skyboxes" or look at the levels from an overhead view, its truly magical. The reignited trilogy just looks like a slightly better Unreal Engine demo for the most part. It does look good but I wouldn't say nearly as striking and soulful. Its all about the soul!

Games must respect my time at all costs

For me, it feels like the opposite has happened in recent times; either that, or I just don't have enough time on my hands.

It's gotten to the point where within the first hour of playing a game, I'm either firing up cheat engine or downloading a trainer from cheat happens- a site where I paid $100+ for lifetime acces.

Besides what someone said about the simplistic graphics letting your imagination do some work (and thus creating an elevated experience), I would say the difficulty / skills used were alot more involving in 2d games.

2d platforming is still a great test of reflexes and dexterity, where at its core the gamer is constantly reacting to the trajectory of a character, analyzing level layout, reacting to attack animations of enemies, reflexes, and looking out for hidden secrets. 2-4 buttons were used at most, and some had to be pressed at the same time, while also controlling the directional pad.

Compare that to the souls games or modern shooters. The former, at its core, is reflex based while memorizing attack animations, where parrying is literally a button press. Difficult? Yeah! But great test of dexterity? Nope, just one button press. Modern shooters are great, but I find that they feel the same because the controls and skillset they ask of you is the same - (on console) left thumb stick for movement, right thumbed for aim, right trigger for button press. Generally the amount of dexterity needed is limited, so the games feel the same to an extent, with the exemption of maybe the battle royales.

I find what games do well now (or new) is management of different systems/meters. Souls games have stamina. Modern shooters have ammos or inventory/backpacks.

Saves available at any time are more of a thing of the past so that point makes no sense to me.

On a certain note. Getting older made me enjoy grinding more.

This is surprising since I always hated it as a kid.

I think I agree with all of these besides the clunkier, older controls. I too love that Shadow of the Colossus has a limited grip for the same reasons you stated, but I don't like that it seems to respond to movement input in a really odd and clanky way, especially with the lack of control of camera movement added to that. It can turn a unique experience to a frustrating one very quickly. Sometimes older games just have badly designated controls and that's just a staple of how games have evolved over time.

I do love music from a lot of old games though. Music from new games is still good (and great in many cases) but how music for media is written has fundamentally changed over the years and there is something special in how a lot of music for older games was composed that made it really iconic and recognisable.

I think some old games saves are an intentional design choice (resident evil, the classic you can only save at an inn trope).

Unskippable dialog + no saving after is definitely infuriating

excuse me but wander was an excellent horse rider and archer

There are a lot of misconceptions here that modern design choices lose something when they respect your time. That is absolutely not true. It’s all in how they are crafted and games that incorporate this into the experience are infinitely better for it.

For instance, some games require you to obtain a collectible and then finish a level without dying. There is the challenge of obtaining the collectible and then another challenge of completing the level. Games often used to punish you by making you have to avoid dying in between collecting it and finishing the level, and sometimes you would die and be placed at a checkpoint further in the level without the collectible. You would either need to go back or replay the level to get this. That is bad design.

Some games chose to allow you to get that collectible and die without penalty whatsoever. If this results in the player just suiciding to get it before moving on, that trivializes the challenge and is also bad design.

There is a middle ground where the game can be designed with the game auto saving the collectible after completing the challenge and reaching a safe point. Ori and the Will of the Wisps does a fantastic job with this, as does Celeste. This is the way forward with challenges that are fulfilling but they don’t waste your time.

I've come to appreciate older looking games more recently. It seems that back then they had to put in more effort to a visual style than they do nowadays since they had such limited tech at the time. They had to make sure everything looked distinct from each other and it couldn't just come down to minor details.

I don't know if what I'm trying to say is coming across but just know that a game like X-wing Alliance looks just as appealing to me as Squadrons.

Have you tried kingdome come: deliverance? It has a ver unique UI with unique icons for all the elements and a very limiting save system. You need to drink a rare potion to save. It fells like a classic Bethesda game, and it looks really good too. You should give it a try!

Since when were bad saves an older games thing? Starcraft, Max Payne, Fallout 1 and 2, Half Life, Diablo 1 & 2, etc etc all let you save whenever you wanted in case you had to leave at any point. If anything, I find that more newer games are restrictive with their saves and the increasingly annoying checkpoint system (Dark Souls being an exception bc you can always quit and pick up where you left off anyway).

I'm also not counting games where the save system was to enter in passwords, etc. Memory cards/hard drive discussions only.

I've been replaying final fantasy ii/iv over and over since childhood. I saw i could get a new version on steam but was really disappointed it would have updated graphics. I'm not replaying a game from 1991 for modern graphics!

I have been wondering if this is the reason why games like Death Stranding, Nioh 2, Brigador and Valheim clicked with me recently more than most other modern games I've played. These titles give you something very close to true agency in emergent gameplay, which is often how you get memorable moments that makes you really appreciate this hobby.

A lot of people I know adore red Dead Redemption 2, but some refuse to play rdr 1 because they don’t like the graphics or the controls. What a shame. Rdr 1 is literally the ONLY reason you have the second one. It it was more because it was harder for them to acquire, that’s different

Same. One of the reasons Soulsborne is so good. Modern games but with an old school approach.

NPC quests in these games are so fucking cryptic it's ridiculous, lol. You can "marry" one of the NPCs in DS3 but like, Idk how anyone would figure it out on their own. I love that approach. Not everything needs to be perfectly explained to you.

Might and magic 6-7-8

Shadow Company: Left for dead

So many hours on those

So you love Vagrant Story?

It feels like the "Games must respect my time at all costs" mentality that has become so pervasive recently comes at the cost of game design that gives a game a unique identity.

Why does this bother you? Games should respect the players time. As we get older, we have less time to invest in gaming because of work/sleep/family/kids. I should be able to squeeze in 30-45 mins of free gaming time while the wife and kids are out shopping without having to either decide to not to play at all or wait to have a longer amount of time to play which might not happen for weeks.

> I love limited/designated saves.

Quicksaves/quickloads have been around since forever, unless you consider post 2000 games "old"

Totally relate. I appreciate and like games for their uniqueness. My steam library is around 200 but I have very few modern games, they just don't interest me as much. In fact, I even love old graphics. They make me nostalgic - when I play the Original Deus Ex I get totally lost and forget I'm playing it in 2021.

I love limited/designated saves. It creates a tension that being able to save anywhere at any time completely dissolves. Especially when it comes to horro

This isn't an "older games" thing, though. Sierra games basically required you to make backup saves every 10 seconds because you were going to softlock yourself otherwise. Games like Half-Life have no limit on saves and never have. Survival horror games are a very specific genre, and that's still something they do today, only, instead of forcing one specific playstyle on everyone, it's relegated to the modes meant to be "classic" and difficult. There's nothing stopping you from playing Resident Evil 7, 2, and 3 with limited saves, I'd bet Resident Evil 8's gonna have it too.

It's fun, but only when I'm in the mood for it. If Resident Evil started having forced limited saves again, I'd probably stop playing it. I prefer a more casual first playthrough.

I too dislike the ‘Games must respect my time’ mentality. Strikes me as selfish and disrespectful towards the gamedesigners.

Sometimes you need to meet a game halfway to fully appreciate it.

Which games are you talking about? Those that made you feel this

I'm probably late to the party, but I'd like to echo the sentiment expressed in this thread. I LOVE old UIs in games where they look like they were carved in stone or have some other feeling of "substance" to them, like the Starcraft 1 UIs. I also absolutely love old pre-rendered 3D graphics, I think they have lead to some of the most beautiful looking games ever made, and it's a shame that they've been discarded and almost entirely forgotten over the last 20 years, Desperados 1 is worth playing just for how nice it looks alone, but it also happens to be a great game on top of that. I think that the mid 90s to early 00s was a golden age for gaming in terms of mid-level studios experimenting with weird ideas and having the budget to pull them off, I think development has tended towards the 2 extremes between massive companies and 2-man studios over time. We still get great games coming from both "ends", but I'd like to see the balance get addressed a little bit, though I appreciate that we've probably had the filter of time to forget about all the crappy mediocre knockoffs in years gone by.

I feel like it's rarer to get games that are just a weird idea some weird guys had and decided to let the player come to their own conclusions about it, instead we get games that are constantly trying to "impress" or "wow" the player through linear constructed sequences, or we get games that are always trying to be "ironic", so if you take them too seriously and think they are bad then you just didn't get it. I'm also constantly disappointed by how many indie games take place in boring generic fantasy locations, I get that nobody wants to alienate their audience, but I would have hoped that if you are making a game with a small studio, that it's your chance to set your game in some weird, interesting setting that bigger companies would "market focus" away from you, but I feel like this is a rant that's getting pretty off topic by now.

It’s you! You’re the one who sent threats to AMC to get them to release Cam’s game from Halt and Catch Fire!

Nier Replicant made me realize this with it's controls. I loved Nier Automata, so I decided to go back and play Replicant expecting to like the story but having to put up with its clunky controls. Instead, I ended up loving the control system, specially for boss fights. Turns out fighting giant monsters that can fill the screen with bullets using a not very polished control system and a 3D camera that makes judging the bullets position hard gives the boss fights a pretty enjoyable sense of challenge. The cubes boss was very memorable in this regard. This held up pretty well until I got too OP for most enemies in the game, but by then I was most of my way through the 2nd playthrough and the ease helped with the repetition when you want to see the rest of its amazing story. My last fight with Shadowlord brought it back due to what I think is a bug. For the final stage, you lose your powers and have to dodge bullet patterns using simple dodge and weapon attacks. It also resets your control scheme to the default. I switched dodge to the bumper to match my Automata scheme, and having it reset to the trigger broke my brain, and couldn't remember how to swap it back mid fight. So I kept getting beat back by bullets, almost died, but with the last bit of my health managed to land the final blow.

I do love the Automata control scheme and how polished and deep Platinum made it, but you feel so powerful so quickly, specially if you figure out the combo system, that most enemies can't even touch you. Hard and Very Hard do offer more of a challenge, but it mostly feels artificial because they just manipulate damage amount. Hard can be overcome by figuring out ways to quickly heal and dodge spam.

I'm very excited for the Replicant remake, but it's very likely that special sense of challenge will be lost with the new polished controls.

I'm definitely with you on the UI. Dragon Age 2 vs 1 is a crime against humanity.

If this game controlled like uncharted or assasins creed where you just hold forward as the game climbs for you it wouldn't be even half as interesting to play. Games feel a bit too homogenous nowadays for my taste.

It feels like the "Games must respect my time at all costs" mentality that has become so pervasive recently comes at the cost of game design that gives a game a unique identity.

I find it hilarious that you mention Assassin's Creed like it respects your time. Lately, AC games are a bunch of copy-pasta stuffs that you have to do to manage to unlock artificially locked content.

Relevant review #1. Relevant review #2.

I understand you point and it makes perfect sense. However sometimes control schemes can be improved and one example that springs to mind now is Factorio and Dyson Sphere Project, where DSP is much better imho than Factorio when it comes to keyboard shortcuts (not that you can't remap in Factorio, I mean what comes by default).

​

I feel that you need to look around and find the beauty in some current games as well. There is a lot of good good good content that is quite recent (the Ori games as an example for metroidvania style games is something that always springs too mind).

​

Painting all the current gamescape as uniform doesn't do it justice. I too love old games and how they played - please give me another Fallout 1 and another Fallout 2, I don't need the more recent ones, please - but as an example the Wasteland franchise is doing it right.

this is why i love bloodborne cuz it reminded me of these old school mechanics in a fully modern game

Idk, older games tend to lose me just because a lot of them have control setups that emphatically have not aged very well. Case in point: any Bioshock game, most survival horror games. I bought and replayed Manhunt (PS2, if you're not familiar, get familiar because it's truly transgressive and unsettling, an absolute masterpiece) and the "tank" controls were absolutely impossible. I have no clue how I played so many of those games when they were current.

The other thing that loses me, and this is necessarily true of almost any game on a long enough timeline, is lack of depth. A game can be appreciated for what it is but as time goes on and games get more complex it can be really difficult to stay engaged with a simple platformer, for example. It becomes apparent to me when I play most NES/SNES games that the value is almost entirely in nostalgia, because a lot of them are fundamentally very frustrating and limited in their scope. There's not much to do or see besides like, jump from place to place. Most of them are about timing and reflexes more or less and that's the sort of thing that can be mastered without adding much value to the game itself. Not to belabor the point but again the control schemes for older games (especially 8 to 16 bit games) can seem arbitrary and annoying. I don't know if that's a product of "nintendo logic" or just not being used to two button control schemes, but when you're playing Castlevania and you remember that you can't change direction midjump, or that physics just drops you like a rock once you reach the apex of your jump, it's like why am I playing this janky shit? Was it even any good when it came out? Were people this easily entertained thirty years ago?

And then I go play Cold War.

"I also only listen to gramophones and a make my own cheese." 😉

Meh, some old games have good points. They also have a lot of bad points. Rationalising away things like clunky controls because "it fits the theme" might be going too far, depending on the game. I can't recall Team Ico ever being praised for their controls or cameras . . . I think they were just shit.

Fetishising "the old" vs "the new" and rose coloured glasses have been around forever.

I love older games but for different rerason than you

I love limited/designated saves

Meanwhile I love emulator save states

I love wierd, missable, convoluted, esoteric secrets and endings

Thanks god gamefaq exist

“The Longing” totally goes against the “games must respect my time” mentality. In doing so, it really focuses on the feeling of accomplishment when doing a few tasks over a long period of time.

ITT: people who only play AAA games.

Seriously guys, everything I see people saying they miss so much has been present in relevant indie releases over the past 5 years. Branch out a little, don't just play the latest biggest release.