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

[Pissmaster]

I bought DOOM3 BFG Edition last summer, so i was able to play the original DOOM for the first time, it was... fine i guess, i didn't get lost too often i think it ok for what it was, i guess after trying Turok 2, DOOM feel like a bunch of linear corridors by comparison. You know what? fucking Turok series probably fits this thread the best, to me Turok was like "big fish in a small pond" kind of series and sometimes i think saying that is being extremely generous, games that were only fondly remembered for being on the N64 and nothing else.

I did play the first Turok on PC a couple years ago, i did get all achievements and all, but the game never "clicked" with me, the whole time i was like "this feels like Duke3D or Quake, but worse", and the same goes for Turok 2, i couldn't make it past the first map, it truly feels the map layout was made as confusing as posible for the sake of padding, no wonder why barely anybody talks about Turok nowadays, once those games were remastered and made available on new platforms, and having to compete against DOOM, Quake, Duke3D, Blood and the hundreds of boomer shooters that get released nowadays, Turok just doesn't stand out anymore.

Turok is definitely one of those games that was built around the N64, moreso than being built as its own thing and then adapted to work on the N64. I can't imagine anyone truly enjoyed the massive, empty environments and heavy heavy fog everywhere.

I had Turok as a child, and I never beat the second level until the PC rerelease. In fact, I gave it an honest shot as an adult, and I gave up around level 4. First person platforming, even with tight controls, is just not fun, and the levels just get bigger and more maze-like. I had to look up a guide and do some enormous amount of backtracking to recover a key just to unlock level 4, because keys for later levels are scattered across different levels (as in, not all keys to level 4 are in level 3). Still had fun with it as a kid, though, since it had an extensive suite of cheats that let you jump to any level and unlock every gun. Truthfully, Turok's a good game, it just has shitty level design with not nearly enough save points, and if it just had smaller, quicker levels, it'd be great. The gunplay feels good, the controls feel good, the enemies are solid, even the concept of a time traveling American Indian is fresh. They just shit it up by making the levels way too long and empty. I guess that was for the wow factor, since the game came out in '97 and I figure they must have looked awesome compared to its contemporaries, but if they just trimmed the fuckin' fat, they'd have a beloved game.

It's crazy to me that they ended up squeezing four Turok games out of the N64. I never even played the rest. I'm not even sure Turok 3 really exists. I think it's a conspiracy. I mean just look at the cartridge:


With a cover like that, you'd think some weirdo online somewhere would have duct taped that cartridge to a Yoda doll strapped to his bed where he then proceeded to fuck it and snap a picture to gross people out, but I've never seen one. Therefore, Turok 3 is a psyop and isn't real.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I'm not even sure Turok 3 really exis

I had it. It was ok, it was actually simpler than the first 2, less maze like and more linear from what i remember. Granted, i don't remember much.

 

[Caesare]

I had it. It was ok, it was actually simpler than the first 2, less maze like and more linear from what i remember. Granted, i don't remember much.

I didn't even know they made Turok games past part 2 for the n64 until just now lol.

I remember the first game being ok as a rental, to mess around with for a few hours. The cheat code to give you all the weapons was a must and I remember thinking at the time that it had a nice variety and a pretty big selection of weapons.

Part 2 I rented once and felt that it was worse than the first game. Idk if anyone remembers, but there was a lot of hype around Turok 2 before it came out in the game magazines of the time.

They made a big deal about it having 3d enemies and making use of the ram expansion for the n64.

There was also a lot of talk about the violence and gore, which wasn't really all that impressive even at the time. They made a big deal out of that weapon that shot metal balls that drilled into enemies heads, like those things in the Phantasm movie from the 80s.

I remember it taking a really long time to beat the first couple levels. Plus, they were stingy with the guns. If it wasn't for the cheat codes, I'd have never gotten far enough to get all the different guns they hyped up.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

They made a big deal about it having 3d enemies and making use of the ram expansion for the n64.

Such different times, if you were shooting jpegs before it felt like a real evolution. I remember in Doom 2 you could walk over a dead enemy and leave footsteps of blood and that was a big deal, like "woah, they thought of everything"

Turok 3 had characters move their mouths and eyes in cutscenes and that was amazing for N64, of course , the cutscenes are cringy and look terrible now, That game looked good graphically for a N64 title but is also probably why it was so short. Not worth it at all, make sense most people don't remember it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I also agree on Doom but beyond the game there's a cult that treats Carmack as a demigod. The greatest genius who has ever lived. You literally google his name and the first result is "is carmack a genius?" .

Carmack had made Doom and... Well... stuff

Carmack is great. He went from pioneering FPS games, to building space craft, to helping turn VR into something usable. He's certainly interesting if nothing else.

That said, I was under the impression that the general consensus was Carmack was a technical genius, but it was Romero and others that were the creative spice. It's why most id games since the split after Quake were technically impressive but creatively bland.

 

[byuu]

They made a big deal about it having 3d enemies and making use of the ram expansion for the n64.

What N64 game didn't have 3d enemies?
Clay Fighter?

 

[Pissmaster]

What N64 game didn't have 3d enemies?
Clay Fighter?

Yeah, those look like 2D sprites. I guessed they were comparing Turok to Duke Nukem 3D at the time, but then I looked it up, and Turok 2 came out a few weeks after Half-Life. Man, imagine developing an entire game that you're so very proud of, only to get overshadowed a couple of weeks before release by the all-time king of first person shooters.

 

[Hammerstein]

Turok exists solely to make Goldeneye 64 look good.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

to building space craft, to helping turn VR into something usable.

His career past ID is a whole lot of vapor.

Romero's visionary mind is also a gigantic meme, Daikatana followed by 20 years of nothing is enough proof of that. These guys have coasted on over-inflated reputation from all the press they got after Doom's success.

 

[skykiii]

I dont care about the classic and X series of Megaman games. The Zero games perfected everything they were trying to do without overcomplicating the lore or forcing stupid story asspulls like the "zero hid to repair himself" meme.

They also knew when to quit after the third game but were forced to make Z4 to wrap it up. Unlike both of those series going up to 10 and 11 entries without innovating much to the point where even the most diehard fans recognize and acknowledge they were cashgrabs.

To be fair to "hid to repair himself" (not that this makes it much better admittedly).... that's apparently a translation error and the original text actually makes it clear that Zero was hidden and repaired by someone, but he doesn't know who (strongly implied to be Dr. Light since at this point in the canon the games were trying to pretend the holograms were actually alive).

Otherwise yeah, much as I love Megaman X the lore did get fucking ridiculous.

Agreed on all points. I downloaded the Arcade MK2 a few years back and immediately deleted it. I was just too young to play that in arcade and I didn't realize just how fucking cheap that AI was to the point you can't get to Shao Kahn without completely cheesing it.

MK3 is an unfinished roster mess. I'm not a Scorpion fanboy but not having him in the roster that game is outright retarded. My memory of it back then is fragmented but I didn't even remember that bit of info until I watched some gameplay of it years back.

UMK3 is the intended MK3 which a much more fleshed out roster. MKT to me is still the best attempt at a KOF level dream match game.

I for one don't mind the palette swap ninjas. I don't know why it causes people to tard rage in hindsight.



I didn't mind the idea of Stryker but his moveset is nonsense. I like the idea that a random human gets pulled into this and had nothing to do with the tournament originally.

I think it was MKT or maybe even UMK3 that gave his his machinegun move that's completely broken and you can coast all the way through the ladder with it.

A funny thing about the Mortal Kombat series is I recall even when they were new, most people realized they weren't exactly good games. They were just an exciting novelty--"Whoa! You can rip people's heads off!"

And people knew this was all the game had going for it. That's why the massively-censored SNES version wound up losing in sales so badly to the uncensored-with-a-code Sega Genesis version that it forced Nintendo into a panic mode to change their stance on family-friendliness. Fact is, if Mortal Kombat was actually a good game, the censorship would not have mattered--especially as the SNES version actually has slightly better gameplay than the Genesis one--but kids knew it was all about the gore.

Mortal Kombat II highlighted another weird thing.... a lot of people I know liked MK because it was the only fighting game with an actual story and lore. Seems autistic yeah, but there is something to that (SNK's games also had lots of lore, but nobody was willing to buy a thousand-dollar console and hundred-dollar cartridges to see it). Most MK fans I know in real life care more about the story than the gameplay.

Apparently Ultimate MK3 was the first one to be considered legitimately good, but my recollection is that by then, I and nobody else I knew even cared about MK anymore. And nobody else did once the series tried to go 3D. I mean, I assume SOMEBODY was buying all those sequels, but that somebody wasn't anyone I talked to. Then again maybe making tons of sequels nobody wanted is why Midway/Netherrealm Studios wound up needing to be sold to Time Warner.

 

[Local Degenerate]

Fallout 1 and 2. I'm not going to write up a whole spiel on mobile, especially with the site adding a small novel worth of spaces every ten seconds, but short version, they're good, but not as good as their contemporaries, and Avolonne is a pretentious faggot that doesn't know how to write

. Also, 2 is just fucking retarded.

 

[Book Thief]

@Lucas Silva #4903141 Reply bug.

My mind was wandering there for sure. If the fireball button combo is "hard" or "mystical" to you, that's a YOU problem. Even as a child, I was able to pull off combos, and that was without a strategy guide - shit, when I started, I thought the motion for the hadouken was a full circle forward, so I was actually making things harder on myself without knowing. Still had a blast with Street Fighter II, funny how that works.

I toy around with MUGEN, so it's not so much that I can't do a Fireball or DP motion, it's just that, in my opinion, they're an artifact of a bygone era, and that results in some fighting games including them without really thinking about why they existed in the first place. Arcade games got a lot of their player retention by including a lot of secrets, which got kids on the playground passing around these secrets, whether true or not, and got them to keep pumping quarters in to see if those rumors were true. That's essentially the mentality behind the Fatalities and other features in the Mortal Kombat games. However, having secret moves that can only be done via specific button combos so that they can be "discovered" by spastics flailing randomly at the controls makes less sense in an era where metagamers will datamine the game for frame data approximately 0.2 femtoseconds after the game's release.

Second, while you may have played Street Fighter and other fighting games as a kid, I did not. So while these may be second nature to you, they aren't to me. I played SF2 for the first time a few years back, and I remember being unable to do anything if I were playing as any character whose moves weren't mapped to said Fireball or DP motions. In fact, in the post you're replying to, I had no idea that Zangief had a move like that until I read it in this very moment. So, in an artificial information bubble where I don't look this information up (say, for example, I'm at a friend's house and he insists we play SF2), those moves may as well not even exist, which makes it more frustrating to play.

This is why I compared it to the Super Smash Bros. games. In those games, it doesn't matter which character I play as, since every character uses the exact same motion template (barring certain exceptions in Ultimate). If I main Marth, but I want to play Yoshi on a whim, I don't have completely relearn the game, retrain my muscle memory, look up input combos on the internet, or pause the game to stare at the Great Wall of Button Combos. Instead, I push a direction on the analog stick, and then I push a button, and the character does a move based on that. That makes it far, far easier to "Pick up and play," since I don't have to learn how to perform the moves, I only have to learn how to use that character's moveset. They aren't the only fighting games that do this, but they are the most famous examples I can think of.

Of course, this is all just personal opinion and preference based on my experiences with the genre, so take that as you will.

 

[ComStar]

Its because IS fights dirty and while Clanner have superior tech they do go all in on that "honor" bit. It actually comes up in MechWarrior 2 Mercs at some point between missions were simple deception moves (the line is something like pranks people pulled as kids) worked against the Clans since they had no concept of lying on the battlefield . Stupid shit like getting a Clanner to chase a firefly and then lighting him up in a ambush.

As i recall, the Clanners caught up to this rather quickly.

The main reason the Clans lost is because the IS had a grasp of actual warfare and what it meant, while the Clans had settled all issues through dueling.

If it hadn't been for ComStar feeding them information and aiding in the administration of conquered worlds, the Clan invasion would most likely have bogged down long before Tukayyid.

 

[Poppavalyim Andropoff]

It's still a fun game for a few minutes in the same way any early arcade type game is but it's clear the only reason pong had any fame was because it was the only kind of product of its kind in existence at the time.

played the home version of it back in '76/77. Was just boring.Basically tennis.Tennis sucks

 

[skykiii]

As i recall, the Clanners caught up to this rather quickly.

The main reason the Clans lost is because the IS had a grasp of actual warfare and what it meant, while the Clans had settled all issues through dueling.

If it hadn't been for ComStar feeding them information and aiding in the administration of conquered worlds, the Clan invasion would most likely have bogged down long before Tukayyid.

God, all this Battletech stuff makes me remember the "badly produced anti-Clan propoganda," IE the Battletech cartoon. I actually liked it and it was my introduction to the universe (tho I didn't get seriously into it until I happened to find The Sword and the Dagger at a thrift store).

But okay, at the risk of turning this into a story sperg thread..... can you basically sum up the stuff after the Clan invasion? The second Star League, the Word of Blake etc? I hear those terms a lot but I have no fucking clue. I know Dark Age was some sort of attempt to jump into the future in a weird attempt to wipe the slate clean and it turned out it didn't work at all, but as for story deets.

And its more fun to hear it from a human being than some highly technical wiki where I would have to click five hundred hyperlinks to even get a basic idea.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Boomer shooters. Terrible mazey level design, weird faux 3D that looks and feels bad, shit story if any. Very few redeeming values. Duke Nukem gets a pass for being funny and cool, but Wolfenstein, Doom, etc? In the dumpster they go, but to be fair the dumpster is full of basically every early genre defining game like Zelda 1 and Street Fighter 1.

 

[Wesker]

To be fair to "hid to repair himself" (not that this makes it much better admittedly).... that's apparently a translation error and the original text actually makes it clear that Zero was hidden and repaired by someone, but he doesn't know who (strongly implied to be Dr. Light since at this point in the canon the games were trying to pretend the holograms were actually alive).

Otherwise yeah, much as I love Megaman X the lore did get fucking ridiculous.


A funny thing about the Mortal Kombat series is I recall even when they were new, most people realized they weren't exactly good games. They were just an exciting novelty--"Whoa! You can rip people's heads off!"

And people knew this was all the game had going for it. That's why the massively-censored SNES version wound up losing in sales so badly to the uncensored-with-a-code Sega Genesis version that it forced Nintendo into a panic mode to change their stance on family-friendliness. Fact is, if Mortal Kombat was actually a good game, the censorship would not have mattered--especially as the SNES version actually has slightly better gameplay than the Genesis one--but kids knew it was all about the gore.

Mortal Kombat II highlighted another weird thing.... a lot of people I know liked MK because it was the only fighting game with an actual story and lore. Seems autistic yeah, but there is something to that (SNK's games also had lots of lore, but nobody was willing to buy a thousand-dollar console and hundred-dollar cartridges to see it). Most MK fans I know in real life care more about the story than the gameplay.

Apparently Ultimate MK3 was the first one to be considered legitimately good, but my recollection is that by then, I and nobody else I knew even cared about MK anymore. And nobody else did once the series tried to go 3D. I mean, I assume SOMEBODY was buying all those sequels, but that somebody wasn't anyone I talked to. Then again maybe making tons of sequels nobody wanted is why Midway/Netherrealm Studios wound up needing to be sold to Time Warner.

MK started to peter out by the time MKT came out but it was still gigantic compared to the competition.

I wouldn't say the old games are bad, but if I had to point finger it would be at MK1. It's aged really poorly. It's a slog to play. MK2 is better than it in every way, but it's still really slow and the AI is busted. It's presentation still holds up.

MK3 is an unfinished game and you know the rest.

 

[ComStar]

But okay, at the risk of turning this into a story sperg thread..... can you basically sum up the stuff after the Clan invasion?

Nope

First off, i'm not that well-informed about the post-invasion storylines, atleast not outside of very broad strokes. I know some stuff that interests me, but i'd have to read up on a whole bunch of lore and would basically be summing up the information available at the official and hyperlink-laden wiki.

Second, there's a whole lot of stuff to cover. Sarna's abbreviated history is a bit over 9000 words and the post-invasion shit makes up half of that.

I'd suggest you read the abbreviated history at your own pace (and read the Word Of Blake stuff too, so you know why they are the way they are).

Boomer shooters. Terrible mazey level design, weird faux 3D that looks and feels bad, shit story if any. Very few redeeming values. Duke Nukem gets a pass for being funny and cool, but Wolfenstein, Doom, etc? In the dumpster they go, but to be fair the dumpster is full of basically every early genre defining game like Zelda 1 and Street Fighter 1.

Blood is the best oldschool shooter anyway. flare guns and plenty of dynamite for everyone!

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Worms Armageddon.

Pretty much most of the weapons are either shit or broken, and it always had an online community of elitists who spent 3000h 'mastering' the ninja rope. It never did anything innovative, other than improving the destructible terrain. It has a lot of charm, that's true. But every sequel and new release made the game one notch dumber, instead of actually adding anything.

 

[RX-78]

6 was a strong template for 7, but it's still a really great game. Its strength is in its party - it's the rare case of not having a true main character and instead having an ensemble cast carry the work. There are some weak members, sure, but I find the overall package to be pretty likable. Segments where the party split up and have their own stories are way more interesting here because of it - Sabin would be an absolutely throw away character in most RPGs but his little segment is one of the best parts of the game. Oddly, FFXIII would be the next FF to pull this off.

Plus, stuff like the Opera Scene is incredible. It's lost to younger people, but the SNES producing something like that was like sorcery. Also things like attempted suicide and the bad guy actually winning were not common place for Super Nintendo games, at least in North America. I adore VI and actually think XII is the one journos pretend to like in order to appear savvy and knowledgeable. Because it 'changed the formula' and 'took risks.' Even though...Final Fantasy did a pretty good job of reinventing itself with each new entry.

I didn't say it was a bad game, I said it was overrated. Several characters are excellent even if gau is a boring retard, but what I do take umbrage with is the opera scene. It drags on, there is no emotional connection to anything happening because celes had less than 10 lines of dialogue prior to it, and to say that it is some how a technical achievement for the snes is a terrible disservice to the hardware.