Most overrated "classic" games (anything before the PS2)

skykiii

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Jun 17, 2018
INB4 every response to this topic is Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Sonic. I don't mind people talking about those but be interesting by adding in something else as well.

There's lots of old game nostalgia, hell I even did a topic about it not too long ago... but its worth remembering that even the Good Old Days had games that aren't all they're talked up to be.

Just some of my picks:

X-Com UFO Defense = I just never understood this one. It's a game where you can seemingly get screwed over at any time through no fault of your own. Even if it is your own fault the game gives little indication of what you're doing wrong. I usually get frustrated once you start getting psychic aliens who successfully mind-control your entire team in one go.

Populous = a "Strategy game" where literally most of it is just raising and lowering terrain to make it all as level as possible, as well as manipulating your people to make as many settlements as possible. Then once its big enough you trigger an apocalypse and hope your tribe wins. This is fun?

System Shock 2 = Now, I really loved the FIRST System Shock, so much I immediately purchased the sequel online (this was before the days of digital distribution)... but SS2 plays like it was intentionally designed to lose everything great about the first one. Cool stimpatches with interesting effects? Replaced with needles that do really basic things. Getting items and implants that give you abilities? Replaced with a bad RPG mechanic system. Actual puzzles? Now every puzzle is a game of tic-tac-toe where the comp has already made moves you just aren't allowed to see (in other words its practically a coin flip).

Also.... here's what a good RPG mechanics system would look like: "You wanna move a box? You can, but since you don't have points in that, it takes more energy." Here's what System Shock 2 does: "Sorry, you can't move this one small parcel at all because you didn't put even a single point in 'move boxes'." You're also practically forced to play on easy mode because the game has a currency system, which is at times actually required to progress, but on normal or higher its actually possible to get softlocked because you ran out (one of the things that costs money is those RNG tic-tac-toe puzzles I just mentioned). On easy you're guaranteed to always get cash from enemies.

Just, the whole game feels like its designed by people who had a grand vision but no actual clue what they were doing.

It's also probably the game that's gonna get me the most downvotes because for some reason people are almost sycophantic about System Shock 2.

Legend of Zelda (most of the franchise) = yeah I know I said complaining about Zelda is lame, but I also said doing so is okay if you complain about other things too.

Zelda, like most Nintendo first-party franchises, is one of those things that is only good if you've never played its competitors. The NES games were good, but the minute other people started making these sorts of action/RPG/whatevers, they started doing more interesting things, and often just being straight-up better. I can't imagine why Ocarina of Time gets love in a world where Megaman Legends (which has more fun gameplay and a much more interesting storyline) exists.

Besides being so basic, a big problem with the Zelda franchise is a lot of its gameplay is just tedious. In any other game, finding a treasure chest fills you with wonder. In Zelda, you go in thinking "if this is just another bomb refill I don't need, I swear to god I'm gonna shiv Miyamoto..." Yeah seriously, this is a franchise so stupid that the same dungeon will waste a one-use treasure chest on bomb refills, in a room where you can also get an unlimited supply of bombs from a tuft of grass in the corner that is designed to always drop them. How are people okay with this shit?

Anyway, that's enough autism for the moment.

Your turn, KF!
 
I tried playing Mario 1 recently and holy fuck I have taken modern gaming controls and movement for granted because my god does this game handle like buttered shit. I don't know how to describe it but Mario controls and runs in such a weird fashion that I'm just left frustrated at this plumber's footsteps. Oh and the fact that I can't turn back left to correct certain platforming and movement doesn't help either.

Needless to say this game has aged like shit and some game design quirks have thankfully been improved upon in later entries of the series.
 
Mario 64 : Game is too outdated in many areas such as the camera and boss fights. It's far from a bad game but a update to it would be very beneficial.

Sonic Adventure: It looked great for 1998, but the game was never good. Level deisgn was poor, camera was shocking and it had so much filler. What kid wants to run away from a robot as Amy or find crystals as Knuckles or fish as Big, they want to go fast with platfroming.

FF8: Story and characters are just bad at best or nonsensical at worse. Not even a game you can laugh at as it drags on and on.

Zelda OoT: Mainly for one reason, it ran like shit on N64. It ran at 20fps max, even lower if you come from a pal area.

Banjo-Tooie: Big maps with little in it, seems you are mostly running from point a to point b rather than doing anything engaging such as platforming. Small and compact levels would have really improved this game.

Star Fox: It's a neat tec demo but game it's self is wouldn't call good due to very outdated graphics, piss poor frame rate and a d-pad not being the best movement for a game in a 3d space.
 
Tomb Raider - grid controls, absolute bullshit difficulty and combat where the most effective method is to stand in one place and tank hits. Although I will say the sound design and atmosphere are still very well done, but today you might as well just play Anniversary.

Guardian Heroes - lots of people seem to love this, I just find it an incoherent mess

Shadows of the Empire - yes the Hoth level looked incredible at the time, but there's a reason people only ever remember the Hoth level.

Contra Hard Corps - this is actually a very good game with one major problem: the difficulty is so insanely high, even by Contra standards, that you'll never get to see beyond the first few levels.
 
Star Fox: It's a neat tec demo but game it's self is wouldn't call good due to very outdated graphics, piss poor frame rate and a d-pad not being the best movement for a game in a 3d space.
I'll add one thing... what always bugged me about the SNES Star Fox was that there's no aiming reticle or anything to give you an idea where your shots are gonna go, so the entire game you're firing blindly. This one thing was enough to make Starfox 64 (or even Sega's arcade game After Burner) much more playable.

As usual with Nintendo Exceptionalism though, apparently nobody but me was ever bothered by this.

(Admittedly last time I played Starfox the lack of a reticle wasn't THAT big a deal, but still)
 
Tomb Raider - grid controls, absolute bullshit difficulty and combat where the most effective method is to stand in one place and tank hits. Although I will say the sound design and atmosphere are still very well done, but today you might as well just play Anniversary.

Guardian Heroes - lots of people seem to love this, I just find it an incoherent mess

Shadows of the Empire - yes the Hoth level looked incredible at the time, but there's a reason people only ever remember the Hoth level.

Contra Hard Corps - this is actually a very good game with one major problem: the difficulty is so insanely high, even by Contra standards, that you'll never get to see beyond the first few levels.
Contra Hard Corps was made much harder in the west, in the Japanese version you take 3 hits before a death and have unlimited continues.
 
Earthbound is an okay game but the online community sucking it off is clearly made up of exceptional individuals.

Zelda OoT I think the majority of people love it because it was their foray into adventure games.

All of the Final Fantasy games

All of the Pokemon games

StarFox 64
the tank levels were gay.

Mario Kart 64 Diddy Kong Racing was better. Fight me.

Conker's Bad Fur Day has the worst controls of any of the Rare games on N64. I was not a fan of most of the humor. It was extremely repetitive with missions basically amounting to taking objects to locations three times. The final boss was a pain in the ass.

I would also say Mario Sunshine, but that's the same era as PS2.
 
Pokemon games - Imagine 30 y.o. people getting into this unironically.

JRPG games - stale and extremely mid dungeon crawler gameplay. Embarrasement magnified tenfold with wack ass anime plot and characters.

Every classic platformer - why won't these indie devs get over it already, cuz it sucks. This was a great format for ancient underpowered consoles, but still all jumping and no payoff. If it's NES, you also have total earrape in place of music and sound effects.

Every nintendo product - nostalgia bait.

Classic DOS games - rarely shine, usually just clunky and sound is also horrific.
On the contrary to OP, XCOM's actually very interesting and unique. Like, "they don't make'em like that anymore"-unique. Turn based combat with risk, logistics and stuff. It's precursor to Jagged Alliance 2 and arguably better than new xcom.
 
Pac-Man! That game sucks and will always suck. If I got stuck in an elevator for a whole weekend with a working Pac-Man cabinet I would only use it as a toilet(I wonder how much piss the coin slot can hold before it overflows) then stare at the ceiling because that is less boring.

Donkey Kong also sucks. I would go as far as saying that a lot of the classic arcade games blows. Except Dig-Dug, that game is awesome.
 
Pac-Man! That game sucks and will always suck. If I got stuck in an elevator for a whole weekend with a working Pac-Man cabinet I would only use it as a toilet(I wonder how much piss the coin slot can hold before it overflows) then stare at the ceiling because that is less boring.

Donkey Kong also sucks. I would go as far as saying that a lot of the classic arcade games blows. Except Dig-Dug, that game is awesome.
I actually never liked Dig Dug 1, but I love Dig Dug II.


You can still kill enemies with the air pump but its much more fun to FUCKING SINK THE LANDSCAPE INTO THE OCEAN just to watch these bastards drown.

EDIT RE: Half-Life 1. While I find it okay, one thing I remember being bothered by for fucking years was dumbass gamers with brainlet takes acting like Half-Life 1 and 2 proved something about video game storytelling and would go on about how any game that used cutscenes was bad or wrong because Half-Life proved you didn't need to. What they completely overlooked was that Half-Life's story is incredibly basic and involved few named characters and a situation that is very easy to explain. Something like--say--Final Fantasy VI would never work without cutscenes. Hell Half-Life itself had to cheat by having those slow segments where you have no choice but to stand there and listen to a character talk until the script tells them to open a door or get out of their way.
 
As expected, most of this thread is just “games I don’t like are bad, everyone is wrong except me”.

Speaking of which, Crash Bandicoot. I played the first few levels and it felt terrible, especially with the camera’s total lack of depth perception making normal jumps way harder than they should be. Even as a kid who liked any platformer I could get my hands on, Crash just felt like complete ass.
Mario 64 : Game is too outdated in many areas such as the camera and boss fights. It's far from a bad game but a update to it would be very beneficial.
Zelda OoT: Mainly for one reason, it ran like shit on N64. It ran at 20fps max, even lower if you come from a pal area.
You may be interested in the PC ports for these two. In particular, Super Mario 64 Plus adds more control/physics options, native widescreen, 60 FPS, optional movesets that add abilities from later games, alternate camera options, and so on. Ship of Harkinian adds native widescreen and a bunch of optional quality of life improvements to Ocarina along with not just 60FPS, but any framerate that’s a multiple of 20.
Donkey Kong also sucks.
 
As expected, most of this thread is just “games I don’t like are bad, everyone is wrong except me”.
That's not my take, I think some games suck for personal enjoyment reasons but all of them are not necessarily bad. I just hate them. It's like a game racism type of thing where I avoid certain types of games if I can.
 
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