Playing Old Games For the First Time - Give a Short Review of Some 10+ Year Old Game You Played For the First Time

[ColonelCadaver]

I've played Close Combat for the first time (CC5 Invasion Normandy) and learned alot about military tactics and how Fuhrer could have won the war.
All he needed to do is to dogpile americans into the map corner with MGs and reserve squads, big dumbass

 

[BrunoMattei]

I recently finished Unreal Tournament 1999. It's technically not the first time I played it, but I never played all the single-player missions before. Epic recently took all Unreal games off all storefronts, including the single-player games, with no real reason given. Fortunately, the GOG versions don't have DRM and are easy to pirate.

Arena shooters are a dead genre now, probably because the lack of custom loadouts makes them hard to monetize. But IMO, the gameplay has held up quite well, and the old UT graphics engine really handles light, darkness and color quite nicely, especially compared to the Quake II engine. Obviously, the graphics are extremely dated now, but there's something about them that just works for what they're trying to do. Most of the modes should feel familiar to anyone today, and the maps are largely well-executed. The one exception is Assault. As far as I know, this was a very, very early attempt at multiplayer objective-based maps, and the ones in UT are just garbage. The maps are either too big, or too full of choke points, and the objectives don't really take any time to take. But CTF, Domination, and TDM are all really fun.

I would say this is worth having a go if you've never played UT before and want a taste of the best of multiplayer gaming in the late 1990s.

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Fun game although I never played the other UT's. I always wondered why it didn't have any staying power in the E-sports scene but Quake 3 is still going on.

 

[User names must be unique]

Played final fantasy X-2 for the first time the other day holy hell the combat is AIDS I managed to complete X despite the cringe characters because the combat was at least engaging but X-2 has nothing redeaming.

 

[The Ugly One]

Fun game although I never played the other UT's. I always wondered why it didn't have any staying power in the E-sports scene but Quake 3 is still going on.

Probably a combination of UTIII being lackluster, UT4 getting canceled, and id giving away Quake III.

Played final fantasy X-2 for the first time the other day holy hell the combat is AIDS I managed to complete X despite the cringe characters because the combat was at least engaging but X-2 has nothing redeaming.

Don't waste time on XII. It's not even a game. It just plays itself while you tell it where to go.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Played final fantasy X-2 for the first time the other day holy hell the combat is AIDS I managed to complete X despite the cringe characters because the combat was at least engaging but X-2 has nothing redeaming.

X-2's combat is great, mechanically. That's the one thing people praise it for (I like everything about it except the popstar shit).

Don't waste time on XII. It's not even a game. It just plays itself while you tell it where to go.

True, but he's talking about the sequel to X, not XII.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

Piggybacking off the UT99 topic, I've been a huge fan of UT99 for more than 20 years but until a couple weeks ago I'd never played the original Unreal. I had it on steam and wanted to play an old classic so I decided to give it a shot. Currently a couple of hours deep into it.

It's a really interesting comparison with UT99. UT is like Unreal but more, yet restricted to the format of an arena shooter. The weapons in UT feel more satisfying to use, the models are slightly nicer, the entire game has an additional layer of polish. However Unreal takes all the great art, the amazing tracker music, the impressive lighting effects (by late 90s tech standards of course), the well designed enemy AI, and sends you off on an adventure with it.

The pacing is slower, there's a lot more opportunity to explore when you aren't being constantly hunted by your multiplayer peers. Unreal stakes a lot on atmosphere and executes the sci fi aesthetic rather well. Story-wise, you're a prisoner surviving a crash landing on an alien planet that's being attacked by other aliens. There aren't really any communicative NPCs to push the narrative along, all you get as far as I've played are tidbits of lore strewn throughout the world in the form of notes and writings. Level themes include spaceship interiors, wide valleys, temples and villages of the planet's native inhabitants, most of which are very recognizable if you've played UT before. The levels are pretty linear and focus more on combat and exploration rather than a tight cinematic story progression you'd find in something like HL, the game is much more similar to Quake in this regard.

Overall it's a really cool experience if you like UT, it's honestly sad the Unreal franchise seems to have been retired because I'd love to see more games like this.

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

Playing suikoden on ps1, it's okay. Think it's held up to be a masterpiece in gaming but seems like a generic rpg game ro me. Got the castle which I called cum Castle now I'm wa dering around lost not knowing what to do.

do u think that yoshi gets embarrassed when he poos out eggs in front of mario??? sorry if this ofends anyone but i thought it was a funny thing haha. and i would like to know if any of you have any pics of yoshi pooping an egg while he looks nervous or embarrassed i just want to see it for a few laughs haha. another thing i am wondering is what do you think the eggs smell like haha im just curious for laughs haha i would like to smell them

 

[The Ugly One]

Piggybacking off the UT99 topic, I've been a huge fan of UT99 for more than 20 years but until a couple weeks ago I'd never played the original Unreal. I had it on steam and wanted to play an old classic so I decided to give it a shot. Currently a couple of hours deep into it.

It's a really interesting comparison with UT99. UT is like Unreal but more, yet restricted to the format of an arena shooter. The weapons in UT feel more satisfying to use, the models are slightly nicer, the entire game has an additional layer of polish. However Unreal takes all the great art, the amazing tracker music, the impressive lighting effects (by late 90s tech standards of course), the well designed enemy AI, and sends you off on an adventure with it.

The pacing is slower, there's a lot more opportunity to explore when you aren't being constantly hunted by your multiplayer peers. Unreal stakes a lot on atmosphere and executes the sci fi aesthetic rather well. Story-wise, you're a prisoner surviving a crash landing on an alien planet that's being attacked by other aliens. There aren't really any communicative NPCs to push the narrative along, all you get as far as I've played are tidbits of lore strewn throughout the world in the form of notes and writings. Level themes include spaceship interiors, wide valleys, temples and villages of the planet's native inhabitants, most of which are very recognizable if you've played UT before. The levels are pretty linear and focus more on combat and exploration rather than a tight cinematic story progression you'd find in something like HL, the game is much more similar to Quake in this regard.

Overall it's a really cool experience if you like UT, it's honestly sad the Unreal franchise seems to have been retired because I'd love to see more games like this.

Unreal was amazing at the time. Neither Quake game could handle such large environments. I remember leaving the prison ship and having my brain explode because of how big the exterior was. Then you just add all the stuff it had that Quake didn't, like high-color textures, light coronas, skyboxes, etc, and it felt almost like a generational leap.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

Unreal was amazing at the time. Neither Quake game could handle such large environments. I remember leaving the prison ship and having my brain explode because of how big the exterior was. Then you just add all the stuff it had that Quake didn't, like high-color textures, light coronas, skyboxes, etc, and it felt almost like a generational leap.

Yeah I recall watching some kind of analysis video about the beginning of Unreal and then also experiencing it myself when I first played it. It was meticulously designed to achieve exactly this impression, first tease you with some well done lighting effects in the dark prison ship corridors and then blow your mind when you get out and see the outdoors.

 

[The Ugly One]

Time for an ancient game update. I was a big fan of Thief 1 & 2, but, due to not having a DX8-compatible GPU at the time, skipped Thief III: Deadly Shadows. I had an Xbox briefly, but this game ran like shit on it, so I didn't get very far before returning it. Seeing as we're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the much-reviled Thief reboot, I figured I should at least play it. Also, it was like $3 on GOG.


Fig 1: A computer that cannot play Thief III

Thief III came out 19 years ago, so it should be able to run on a potato. My overpriced glowing skull computer was entirely adequate. In fact, if you don't force Vsync in your video card, certain animations will glitch out, like lockpicking, due to the internal framerate going too high and causing multiply-by-zero errors. I also couldn't find a way to get EAX sound to work. That and 4:3 being the only option are probably the most glaring technological relics from the past.


Fig 2: A computer that can play Thief III

This game picks up in the same world, where the Trickster is dead, the Hammerites and Pagans feud, and the Keepers watch over the city, writing their glyphs and interpreting their prophecies. I won't write a book about this, but this is really a perfectly done video game setting. Almost everything is implied. You don't waste your time reading walls of text or watching ponderous cutscenes. The world, for what it is, feels like there must be a deep, rich story behind it, but it's one only hinted at, as you're largely too busy robbing everyone blind.

The graphics are fantastic. The game came out at a time when normal mapping and stencil shadows allowed games to turn a corner in graphical realism. Almost 20 years later, they still look good. Unlike many games of the time, the normal mapping isn't combined with overdone specular for that ugly plastic look. Things just look good, and The City looks appropriately dark and foreboding.

It's not a perfect game, however. Hit detection with the environment is not done particularly well, and there are a few places where there's something that looks traversable, but you'll get stuck, fall off, or fail to climb up for no apparent reason other than, "the hitboxes here are bad." As a result, I ended up savescumming a lot because you never knew when you were going to get stuck on the scenery or fall off a ledge. It's not game-killing, but there are a few spots in the levels where it's pretty annoying.

Darkness, sound, hiding, all the elements of stealth work well. There's plenty of stuff to steal, and the hub world, a huge fad in the 00s, manages to not be a pain in the ass to traverse like it was in, say, Jak II. Various story events will change up the city as well. When assassins are on your tail, it really gets tense.

The maps are mostly a lot of fun to explore, and untangling the dark, gothic tale at the heart of this installment's conflict is suitably intriguing. Overall, I think this one rates as a classic that, if you enjoy stealth games at all, you really should find some time to play.

 

[StacticShock]

Don't waste time on XII. It's not even a game. It just plays itself while you tell it where to go.

this is the funniest cope i've seen around XII hate, nevermind the trash story and inconsistent characters or how some things are utterly retarded like the reason for venat to go rouge and that dumb city that was destroyed because of artificial magic testing being just there instead of being used for quests, fags hate the gambit system that squenix was testing instead.

back on topic, being a filthy pirate allowed me to play a ton of games so it's going to be a bit of a long list.

Spoiler: Games

i've played deus ex 1 and thought it was dumb considering i came from online action shooter games such as counter strike, America's Army3 and ava, then it started to grow on me as how my skill choices made me do stuff better and use less resources, the music and funny racist accents were great too, invisible war was a orchestra in tone down from the OG and the gameplay was more console centered which made it boring to play.

doom 1 and 2 were great, i couldn't give two shits about the secrets and enjoyed strafe shooting everything instead, i might pick doom3 in the future but it's said to be the more consolefied version of the doom family unlike 2016 and eternal which were top tier fun games.

went on system shock 2 and found them to be interesting on the same vein as deus ex 1, how i built my character mattered and to this day i have immense hatred for the fucking cyborg midwives as they take a billion years to fucking die, not health wise i mean you just two tap them with the assault rifle but their dying animation is the one that is long as fuck and when there is a rumbler charging at you... shooting the 0 health dying midwife is the rage inducing part.

system shock 1 was good because of the doom 2 comparison with more mouse fiddling thing until i noticed gog patch, made the game much better and the music was just damn fine, i've seen some people cry and moan about the remake being tore down in comparison to the OG one saying that the new music is atmospheric but that's a lie, OG music just fits with every floor, from reactor to executive.

thief was just gold (thief gold pun intended), i ended up enjoying stealth and how the game was built around it was good until the supernatural parts came where you need to blow up zombies with holy water and run the fuck away from that skeleton hammerite son of a bitch, thief 2 was a bitch on the karras parts mostly because of the confusing layout but it still held itself well because it did not screw up with the stealth as well as reminding you of moss arrows being a must on the late parts, deadly shadows was boring due to it being a console made game, waiting for garret to lift his blackjack in order to knock out attack was retarded but then again, consoles...

Xcom ufo defense was dumb at first because of how the aliens pull overwatch bullshit and how you are on constant need for tech, then you unlock plasma weapons and combat armor to make the game okay to play, instakilling a muton or a sectoid from a kilometer away because you were aiming on someone closer to your character is always funny.

SWAT4 is pain, that's all, RoN manages to do worse still by not being atmospheric on the missions you play or even snarky comments from your squadmates, it's clear multiplayer bullshit game (i just want to rant about ron by now and yes i refunded the fucking thing before someone says).

fallout 3 and 2 were interesting to play, especially if you play in a newer to older order, two allows for funny builds and three is more about the journey story rather than the gameplay, new vegas was the one that tipped the scale towards gameplay.

oblivion sucks ass if you level up.
morrowind sucks ass if you don't invest in agility.
daggerfall sucks ass if you don't enchant your weapons late game, even silver ones.

no one lives forever had funny dialogue and music, hitscan enemies were a bitch though and trying to stealth without the fucking slippers or camera highjack is pain.

titans quest felt horribly like a cheap D2 clone but themed around greek shit, i couldn't finish it due to it being extremely boring which is funny because i still have my l99 golem necro.

drakensang the river of time was funny because it showed me how morrowind could be good if it followed the same formula for mix of action gameplay and dice roll bullshit.

vampire the masquerade bloodlines was weird once i got to the china twins, died so many times i lost count then i managed to bug out in a unreachable spot, then again my vampire was more about dialogue than combat which is retarded because i've read that malkavians break everything lore wise, yes, i got a malk first time playthrough because i simply answered some dumb questions.

sims 1 and 2 simply drip charm, i can't for the life of me understand why fags even dare compare both when they aren't even the same, there is just so much details in animation that you can catch yourself laughing when a sim says he's hungry.

simcity 2000 has the best menu track, fight me. simcity 3000 had funny jokes, simcity 4 is okay game, it has more stuff than say 2000 but it should be like that however i found it boring due to the lack of quips and driving vehicles becomes old too quick.

gothic 1 and 2 felt like morrowind at first but then you start to get used to the janky combat and it becomes fun, gothic 3 was hated for a reason i forgot but i found it to be an okay game with dumb story about divinity shit.

X3 - Reunion and the expansions are draining my soul, it's not even because of the sandbox aspect, it's because of the story. i haven't met a space game that had actual lore and story mode, it was just space trucker simulator 9000 but X series manage to still use everything about it to show you a story, when duke's daughter gets the hots for JB the dialogue becomes incredibly funny, i'm still with the old X series on a to play list though and X4 retcons the other games it's not even funny, not to mention it being focused on space trucking rather than balancing space trucking and story time which makes it boring on the same tier as EVE and ED.

mass effect 1 felt streamlined and more focused on the lore, then i played ME2 and noticed how some of the characters grow on you, both tali and garrus to be precise and wrex seemed super chill with my shepard, maybe because i gave him his family armor, ME3 is just fanservice shit and devs own fart huffing, kai bitch leng is the biggest proof as he is a comic book character.

the other games i've played were mostly on Xbox1/PS2/N64/SNES and shit which means i was a dumb kid that couldn't pay attention to lore and just played whatever.

 

[ShitlordroltihS]

Fallout 1+2 is great, first played it back in 2020
Still in my top 10. Very refreshing compared to some of the bullshit that was coming out at the time.

 

[The Ugly One]

this is the funniest cope i've seen around XII hate, nevermind the trash story and inconsistent characters or how some things are utterly retarded like the reason for venat to go rouge and that dumb city that was destroyed because of artificial magic testing being just there instead of being used for quests, fags hate the gambit system that squenix was testing instead.

What exactly am I "coping" with by disliking a game that I found too boring to finish?

 

[Replacement Account]

Playing suikoden on ps1, it's okay. Think it's held up to be a masterpiece in gaming but seems like a generic rpg game ro me. Got the castle which I called cum Castle now I'm wa dering around lost not knowing what to do.

1 or 2?

2 is generally the one that's help up to be a masterpiece...and a lot of that's down to story or characters. Both of them are both good, though I'll argue 1 shows its age more.

 

[Super Guido]

I played and finished Secret of Mana for the first time yesterday and it was very fun. I heard about how much was cut, and there are definitely some strange things in it, such as the jail in the water palace (which never comes up in-game until the part where the castle gets captured for the second time and filled with mooks, which iirc is when Luka gets thrown in there, and even then you don't need to visit the jail to progress in the game) and the island on the back of a giant turtle. Things like that seemed like they were meant to be part of something more, and I can only imagine how big it would have been if the SNES CD thing had been given the go-ahead.

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

1 or 2?

2 is generally the one that's help up to be a masterpiece...and a lot of that's down to story or characters. Both of them are both good, though I'll argue 1 shows its age more.

played the first one, started a game of the 2nd one and could instantly see the improvements over the first. Will get round to playing it and finishing it one day. I did enjoy the first one the more I played it and got deeper into the story

 

[Jason Wynn]

Started playing Vampire the Masquerade Redemption for the first time not too long ago.

It has its charms, but holy Christ the combat sucks and the AI for your teammates is retarded on a whole other level. You have to micromanage everything they do or they’ll charge headfirst into a mob and get massacred or they’ll burn out all their blood pool on their most powerful spells dealing with mooks. Got the game on GOG for about $3 so can’t complain too much. It’s no Bloodlines though

 

[StacticShock]

What exactly am I "coping" with by disliking a game that I found too boring to finish?

you didn't read the rest did you squidward?
the cope that some other fags use against gambit system is that it makes the game play itself HOWEVER the basic gambits you are given as default for all characters are shit level and you have to be a massive min max autist to fiddle with the gambit deck of each character based on the class you picked for it, it ends up revealing these players as complaining that the system they used is good and then complaining it actually fucking works to a point of draining their fun out of the game, which in turn prompts then to comment about why even add gambit system in the first place and goes around the ability of you turning gambits on or off, never about the disconnected story and how it makes no fucking sense to leave you hanging around for the collect a thon shit just so you can get small lore bits.

oh and i'd like to add how half life 1's pacing is fairly decent, the characters felt odd because they pretty much looked and sounded the same but they ended up falling in the background as basically temporary allies that will vanish offscreen or die in the most gibbing way.

counter strike condition zero gives a spin on the game if you come from the multiplayer version one.

kill switch is excellent because it doesn't make you feel forced to cover shoot in the same way as gears where if you don't cover you get melted.

saints row 2 was also incredibly fun for such a buggy mess, so much details and open world fucking around you can do it's one of the standing points of it, devs basically knew what you were going to do most of the time i mean water zones are meh tier but then again by that console generation water in games were still decoration rather than some enviroment.

and that psi ops need a pc port, as quickly as possible by an actual competent team.

 

[The Ugly One]

you didn't read the rest did you squidward?
the cope that some other fags use against gambit system is that it makes the game play itself HOWEVER the basic gambits you are given as default for all characters are shit level and you have to be a massive min max autist to fiddle with the gambit deck of each character based on the class you picked for it, it ends up revealing these players as complaining that the system they used is good and then complaining it actually fucking works to a point of draining their fun out of the game, which in turn prompts then to comment about why even add gambit system in the first place and goes around the ability of you turning gambits on or off, never about the disconnected story and how it makes no fucking sense to leave you hanging around for the collect a thon shit just so you can get small lore bits.

I read your post. It's just pretty obvious you don't know what "cope" means. Being bored is not "cope."

 

[BrunoMattei]

Played Metroid for the first time recently and I honestly kind of hated the whole experience.

Part of this is surely just me being bad at platformers. I understand. However it’s certainly more than that. It’s very repetitive, everything looks the same and it’s easy to get lost if you aren’t already pretty familiar with the game. Certainly not the worst game I ever played and beating it felt rewarding but at the end of the day I feel like I wasted my time on an experience I learned nothing from.

Haven't read through this whole thread but did you ever check out Metroid Zero Mission? You may like that more because it improves upon a lot of the flaws of the original.