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

[The Ugly One]

I had never played much of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter back when it came out, although I'd played all the way through the first one. I picked this up on GOG for a few bucks, because why not? The game looks fantastic, even over 20 years later, thanks to an engine that handles bright colors and wide-open spaces very well and an art team that knew how to use them effectively. Their skybox artist was easily one of the best around at the time. I didn't play this with any mods, although I did manually force the game into widescreen mode using the text config files.



Serious Sam was already a throwback of sorts. At the time, most games would throw 3-4 spongy enemies at you and split things up with boring, self-indulgent cutscenes. The nadir of this was Unreal II, which came out around the same time. Sam hearkens back to the hordes of enemies games like Rise of the Triad and Doom threw at the player, now in full 3D. Funny how a neo-retro game eventually becomes a retro game on its own...Doom was 7 years old when SS came out, and SS is now 24 years old.

Visuals aside, the game's a one-trick pony. There are three boss fights, and only the first is really visually engaging and fun to fight. Aside from that, you're just going from one arena to the next, fighting off waves and waves of enemies that spawn in. The only thing that really makes one arena different from another is how long the waves last and whether they're spawning enemies behind you. By mid-game, you know how to handle just about every combination of enemies, so it's just a matter of whether the game is throwing so many of them at you for so long that you make a couple mistakes and die. Now, I had resolved to beat the game without cheats, but by the last level, I was just tired of this game. It had completely worn out its welcome. Right before the final boss, you're thrown into a massive, open plane where enemies continuously spawn in for what felt like about 15-20 minutes. And before that, you are trudging through what is basically a massive hallway where each wave forces you back to the beginning. It feels endless, it's tiring and it's not fun. After the giant hallway, it was getting late, and I'm not 20 anymore, so I turned on god mode and just slogged through the end of the game.

Overall, the game was fine, I just feel like it should have been 25% shorter, and they should have come up with some better bosses.

 

[Achtung Bitter]

Serious Sam was decent, I enjoyed the original more than the Second Encounter though. I didn’t like jumping over pits in that game and generally the sequel was inferior.

It had some of the funniest enemies in the fps genre.

 

[There Is Light At The End]

Trying to play KOTOR 1 rn and it's IMPOSSIBLE. Keep getting immediate crashes and it refuses to even start on Windows 10. I use a Radeon RX 6750 XT. Tried running it in compatibility mode on for 7, XP and 98/ME with no luck. Is it just the fucking drivers that kicking my ass?
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Try it on mobile. Both games are on Android

 

[Calandrino]

Trying to play KOTOR 1 rn and it's IMPOSSIBLE.

lol git gud fagit

Keep getting immediate crashes and it refuses to even start on Windows 10.

Oh uh.. ok, I guess that's a valid complaint

 

[pyrinyx]

I got around to finally playing Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, the original PC-Engine version. Fuck, this is already to me one of the more definitive classic Castlevania experiences that there are. I already rank it within the Top 5 in my personal list of Castlevania games. My first introduction to Rondo of Blood was its awful watered-down counterpart that was Dracula X on the SNES. Things felt clunky, the animation and movement was stiff, you made a move and you're committed to it. And I was missing out on what was there that Rondo of Blood had from this version.

The remake to Rondo of Blood aka the Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP wasn't too bad itself, but it again had that stiff ass movement and animation that I felt from Dracula X. When I played the original version, everything was smooth, had nice fluidity, any mistake you made was your mistake and not because of the game. The boss fights were awesome and I can't get enough of Rondo of Blood now and once I eventually beat it because it is kind of difficult, I'll happily move on to its sequel Symphony of the Night.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

its awful watered-down counterpart that was Dracula X on the SNES.

As a Castlevania fan I really, really hate that game. 'It's Rondo on the SNES' - no it isn't. What makes me really salty is that when I originally played it I had heard a things about how great Rondo of Blood was and seen some Rondo screenshots in magazines and so on. So I was excited! Fuck you Dracula X!

 

[The Ugly One]

All this is true, but those fire effects sure looked cool in Dracula X.

 

[Calandrino]

Played Phantasy Star II. It's not a very long game, but it was rough getting through it. I've read it was rushed and the developers put the game together in only 3 months, and I believe it. It has the biggest "babby's first RPG Maker game" feel of any professional game I've played.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the dungeons were designed by the new guy and they knew he completely fucked it up but there was no time to fix it. The game actually came with a hint book filled with maps, and it more or less says that you should definitely use them because the game would be stupid hard otherwise. So much for "trying to sell guides": https://segaretro.org/images/a/a7/Phantasy_Star_II_Hint_Book_US_Book.pdf

 

[Retarded Weeb]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the dungeons were designed by the new guy and they knew he completely fucked it up but there was no time to fix it. The game actually came with a hint book filled with maps, and it more or less says that you should definitely use them because the game would be stupid hard otherwise. So much for "trying to sell guides": https://segaretro.org/images/a/a7/Phantasy_Star_II_Hint_Book_US_Book.pdf

Believable. And looking at the Sega Retro page for PS2, it has a excerpt about it.

Another issue was related to the dungeons, which were created by a new employee. Because he was new, he put a ton of effort into the maps and kind of overdid it... the game became more about the complex dungeons than anything else. I think you really see that on the Dezolis dungeons. They were really well done, and when Chieko Aoki saw them she didn't want all the new employee's work to be for naught, so we ended up using those maps... albeit with some mixed feelings. They contributed to the latter half of the game being unbalanced.

That hint book wasn't a thing in the Japanese release, so I guess if you played it over there you were just fucked. The Japanese manual does have some detailed descriptions of what spells actually do, which would've been nice to have. I noticed the English Hint Book switches Amy and Anna's names around on one page, which is stands out to me since the switched names would make more sense with their original Japanese names being Anne and Amira respectively. I wonder if this is some case where the localizers somehow switched a couple names around without noticing the mistake, like the Soul and Marsh Badges in the English version of Pokemon Red/Blue.

 

[Dysnomia]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing you're talking about the Sniperwilds.
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These aren't fodder enemies. They didn't exist in the original vanilla version of KH1 and are part of a group of enemies that were added to the Final Mix rerelease which the HD port is based on. Basically each world was given a new enemy type that's a recolor of a regular enemy that existed in the base game (the Bouncywilds in this case) that either rarely spawns or has some special spawn condition. Generally they don't appear at all until you finish the main plot in that world. They're all meant to be annoying shits with high stats and gimmicks to them that you're not supposed to fight until late-game, and they all drop rare crafting materials that you're supposed to farm off them if you want to craft everything.

Yeah these things. I thought "Oh that thing is so cute". Until her bitchy friends arrive en masse and never seem to stop coming and firing heat seeking projectiles. I was forced to run away into the Dalmatian house to escape the onslaught.

I did finish the game. The final battle has so many phases. With Ansem being his own midboss. I figured that couldn't be it because he was just too easy. Then he becomes some Lovecraftian horror and decides to take a nap halfway through. Why so many phases? Just make the main boss battle good. Every time I thought it was over it wasn't over. Also I laughed when he literally took a nap.

 

[The Ugly One]

I've been playing the MS-DOS version of Tomb Raider 1. While I had the demo at the time, I never really got to play the full game because by the time I had the kind of money where thirty dollars for a video game seemed insane, I'd lost interest.

It doesn't need a lot of introduction, of course. But how does it hold up? In my opinion, this is one of the best 1990s games I've played yet. An important thing is that it lives within its means. Sure, the controls are primitive, but the levels and challenges are structured so that it's easy to line up jumps properly given the controls. It doesn't control like Mario 64, and it doesn't need to.

The levels themselves should be studied by modern game designers. This was the mid-nineties, so most of the guys working on this game were working on their first-ever 3D game. You can feel throughout the missions that the designers are playing with new ideas and exploring the possibilities of 3D. The levels invite the player to explore, too. When you see a block or ridge that looks like you might be able to get to it, it often means there's a tricky sequence of jumps or a hidden switch leading to a secret cache of ammunition or health. You might not even find the shotgun or powerful magnum pistols until late game if you miss the secrets. Each level is big and expansive, and I seem to average about 1 hour per level, and the level designs are creative enough that the game doesn't get tiring.

Contrast this with the later Uncharted series. Uncharted is trying to be Tomb Raider, but I found U2 and U3 to be some of the most boring games I had ever played. The levels in Uncharted are mostly corridors, the challenges little more than pushing the joystick in the direcion of the next, obviously colored handhold, and weapons and ammunition fed to you liberally. Modern game design treats every second that the player isn't shooting a gun or jumping across platforms as a waste of time, leading to highly simplified level design, exploration blocked off via invisible walls, and secrets either nonexistent or useless. There are times in Tomb Raider where I spent quite a bit of time poking around a level before figuring out how exactly to make progress, which made progressing a rewarding experience. Uncharted simply paints the next place to go in bright colors, and of course never makes the player backtrack, or encounter a dead end to be explored later.

Graphics are, for the time, top notch. Tomb Raider's 3D engine is glitchier than Quake's, but Quake needed a much more powerful machine to run. Animations are excellent. You spend a lot of time looking at Lara, and so the devs spent a lot of time making sure she moves smoothly and realistically. Texture work is some of the best I've ever seen from the era. Every surface looks appropriate moldy, rusty, chipped, and decayed. Many games of the time, like Heretic and Hexen, used overly uniform textures that resulted in a very fake look. The places you explore in Tomb Raider look properly ruined and ancient in all their 256-color glory, and are about as realistic as a mid-1990s DOS PC could possibly render. Add to it the excellent active and ambient sound effects, and it really is about as good as it gets. I also tried the Glide version with nGlide, and it worked fine, but crashes if I alt-tab, so I mostly stuck with the software renderer.

If you are the type that doesn't mind the idiosyncracies of 1990s 3D gaming, this is a must-play.

 

[#1 Hot Sauce of Kiwi Farm]

deSPIRIA is a Japan exclusive game published by Atlas for the dreamcast. It does not have a translation as of yet and it does not pull any punches. This game was released before games got standardized rating and it would never be released today due to many of it's themes.

It's sort of like soul hacker... i guess and while my Japanese is not bad this game uses many words and phrases that are completely lost on me. Are the game mechanics good? No not really it's like a watered down SMT game though the setting and the story are what pull you in.

 

[One_True_Yuri]

I got into Last Bible 3 pretty recently, having some experiance with Persona 2 and SMT 1.

I have to say its hands down the best of the 3 main last bible games (which isnt a hard bar to cross over but they went above and beyond it)
The gameplay works like any SMT game but with the added twist that the demons you recruit can level up and have items, and fusing them you can have the fused monster inherit the spells that its progenitors had! Its so damn handy and I wish the other games had that. Not only this but negociation is way better than in most of the other Atlus games. Where you can get many different results depending on what replies you give to the demons. For example: pissing it off to the max will let you pick a debuff it gets, angering it might make it go away and end the fight, making it max happy will have it join you for free without requiring a cost of money.

The plot is the strongest out of the 3 last bibles and includes quite a few callbacks and with a much more serious tone than the previous two.
The gameplay loop itself will get really easy after awhile since you can quickly overlevel your demons and start steamrolling over lesser monsters but I noticed that while the random encounter difficulty never goes above challenging the bosses tend to be where the difficulty is with the final boss not holding back whatsoever and you need to be on your toes and very attentive to dealing with them.

The music is on point and shows soul, I think there were only a few tracks I didnt much care for but it never strayed into the "I dont like this at all"

The artstyle is a lot more cartoony than SMT or Persona but has this.... absolutely lovely charm I wish was in more of the games, a halfway between Fairytale Fantasy and Stretch 1930s cartoons. It might not be for everyone but I find the unique and less serious style to be endearing

Honestly, it is a very very good time SNES game. Just make sure you get the english patch, Atlus never released this outside of Japan and its a damn shame since its a exceptional SNES game

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Started screwing around with Marathon (1996) a bit. It really does come across as poor-mans DOOM but now it's a great boomer-shooter game if you haven't played it yet. The controls are a bit wonky if you're used to DOOM and the design philosophy it set (tab for map, ESC for options). I didn't like the lack of a jump button and the in-game map is necessary to avoid getting turned around in narrow corridors, but it is free and one of the great games in the Classic Mac OS canon that has been faithfully ported to modern systems.

 

[Battlefield42]

Trying to play KOTOR 1 rn and it's IMPOSSIBLE. Keep getting immediate crashes and it refuses to even start on Windows 10. I use a Radeon RX 6750 XT. Tried running it in compatibility mode on for 7, XP and 98/ME with no luck. Is it just the fucking drivers that kicking my ass?
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You have too new of a gpu to play then. I had issues with Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam with my RX 6600. I think RTX 2000 series and up have this issue too.
The fix for me was to use D8VK.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

I'd never actually played Gears of War before and it fucking sucks.

For a game that's so cartoonishly over the top in its attempt to be badass, the guns both sound and feel incredibly anemic. Every model has exactly the same beefy-dude-in-armor silhouette and every texture in the game is some shade of grimy brown, so distinguishing friend from foe or even just parsing what the hell is happening on-screen is an absolute nightmare. And the cover system simply doesn't work - I'll make a run for the next wall and my dude will routinely just stand there in front of it and take ten thousand bullets to the face. Or he'll come out of cover for no discernible reason. There's nothing the player can do when a context-based automatic action straight-up fails to trigger.

How did this garbage become a top-tier franchise?

 

[StacticShock]

And the cover system simply doesn't work - I'll make a run for the next wall and my dude will routinely just stand there in front of it and take ten thousand bullets to the face. Or he'll come out of cover for no discernible reason. There's nothing the player can do when a context-based automatic action straight-up fails to trigger.

seems to be issues with the controls, maybe frame faggotry where you have more than 45 frames and input/physics go all fucky wucky?

How did this garbage become a top-tier franchise?

X360 era where boxies had to use something against uncharted as "our platform isn't shit we have <this game> and it's good!"
reminder that X360/PS3 era was the piss filter galore so, yeah.

 

[Kharash]

Decided to give the Legacy of Kain series a go. Blood Omen was relatively fun. The voice acting and atmosphere were great, nice sprite work, fantastic soundtrack as well. The combat was extremely janky though, very amateurish. You can generally bypass it by using all the overpowered pickups you get which just blow up most enemies but that wasn't exactly fun after the novelty wore off. The mana system also kind of sucked. Despite getting like 3 upgrades to how fast it recovers over the game it was still painfully slow to the point where if you ran out you might as well AFK for 10 minutes. Your mana recovery item also would drain it back to zero after it expired so you're back to zero. Still I was glad to have experienced the game, worth it for sure.

Then I got to Soul Reaver, from what I heard this is the absolute classic you might as well skip Blood Omen for. Can't say I agree because the cool world was replaced with endless grey hallways because it's all the PS1 could handle I presume, the combat is just as bad just in another way, and it's so fucking SLOW. You're slowly walking everywhere and then you push blocks around for 15 minutes for a "puzzle" and then you do it another 10 times. It was maddening and I had to stop after giving it a chance for like 5 hours. Maybe I would have kept going a bit longer if the save system wasn't so atrocious. You can save at any time but you always spawn at the starting location when you load a save. You unlock shortcut portals throughout the game but you can go very long stretches without finding any so I ran into cases where I wanted to save and quit but couldn't because I'd have to slowly walk through this boring zone all over again next session.
Cool music though.

 

[One_True_Yuri]

Decided to give the Legacy of Kain series a go. Blood Omen was relatively fun. The voice acting and atmosphere were great, nice sprite work, fantastic soundtrack as well. The combat was extremely janky though, very amateurish. You can generally bypass it by using all the overpowered pickups you get which just blow up most enemies but that wasn't exactly fun after the novelty wore off. The mana system also kind of sucked. Despite getting like 3 upgrades to how fast it recovers over the game it was still painfully slow to the point where if you ran out you might as well AFK for 10 minutes. Your mana recovery item also would drain it back to zero after it expired so you're back to zero. Still I was glad to have experienced the game, worth it for sure.

Then I got to Soul Reaver, from what I heard this is the absolute classic you might as well skip Blood Omen for. Can't say I agree because the cool world was replaced with endless grey hallways because it's all the PS1 could handle I presume, the combat is just as bad just in another way, and it's so fucking SLOW. You're slowly walking everywhere and then you push blocks around for 15 minutes for a "puzzle" and then you do it another 10 times. It was maddening and I had to stop after giving it a chance for like 5 hours. Maybe I would have kept going a bit longer if the save system wasn't so atrocious. You can save at any time but you always spawn at the starting location when you load a save. You unlock shortcut portals throughout the game but you can go very long stretches without finding any so I ran into cases where I wanted to save and quit but couldn't because I'd have to slowly walk through this boring zone all over again next session.
Cool music though.

Its a real damn shame that Blood Omen 2 sucks balls and does little to resolve anything and we are forcibly left on a cliffhanger

 

[Nitro!]

Playing Mafia for the first time because I like a good mob story.



It sucks.

A few hours in and I realized I can't recall the names of any of the characters besides the boss and the protagonist. And I only got the name of the city because you can't miss it for the mission where you have to drive some car from point A in the country to point B in the city and back again in an aggressively short time limit. Lost Heaven? Is this one of my Japanese animes?

Which gets to the crux of the issue: driving in this game is bad. It's 1932 and all the cars look cool at an average of 15 MPH. The city is the same locked-in corridor with arbitrary streets blocked off everywhere and good luck actually finding the turnoff for the bridge the first time around where it pops in five feet from your face. Don't get me started on the controls. Numpad 0 to jump? L to reload? They got WASD right but that's about it.

Gunplay is clumsy. It's 1930 and guns are hard to use but I'm spoiled by GTA III and I want to run rampages with my rooty-tooty-point-and-shooty. I'm not sure if positional damage is in this game so you might as well fire wildly if it weren't for the aggressively scarce ammo you get.

2/5, should have ripped off the fun parts of Liberty City for your not-set-in-NYC gangster film.