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]

Serf City aka Settlers I

This is an early game in the "sim civilization" type genre. It's completely the opposite of Warcraft. Instead of building a fairly complex army off a simple economy and focusing on the combat tactics, there is a fairly complex economy upon which you have an almost brain-dead combat engine. The game revolves around building up a medieval economy of butchers, farmers, miners, fishermen, and craftsmen so that you can ultimately provision enough weapons and gold to outfit and train your army (which is just infantry) to go attack your rival's kingdom and take it over.

The interesting thing about the game is how dependent victory is on having a good road system. I found that, despite my army having very good morale, I wasn't able to build weapons fast enough to replace losses. The reason I wasn't getting weapons was my blacksmith was undersupplied with iron. He wasn't getting enough iron because there was far too much traffic between him and the foundry, so iron was just piling up and not getting to the smith. So I had to burn down a lumber mill to make room for a foundry closer to the smith, and my weapon production soared.

The sheer complexity of the system that emerges is pretty neat for a game that came out in 1994, but at the end of the day it's just...really, really boring. It's insanely slow. Once you have things set up, there's not really much to do but watch monitors and wait until you have enough resources to send your army off to defeat enemy huts. According to some guides, the easiest way to win the first dozen or so missions is to set up some gold foundries and then literally go to sleep with your computer on, and your army will be invincible after 8 hours.

Ultimately, this feels like somebody came up with a very clever sim engine and then patched in a game around it. Early games in this genre often suffer from the problem of you not having much to do but watch the game play itself, and this is no exception. It's not broken, but it doesn't really hold up.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Played a lot of the old Streets of Rage games for the Genesis, and for the life of me, I don’t know how they will be able to make a live action movie out of this.

It should be fairly obvious. The plot is a straight kung fu movie. Bunch of punks kidnap someone, turns out they're working for a crooked politician. The rest of the film is fight scenes in various locales with a 90s club soundtrack.

Though if they were to make it today, they'd fuck it up with current year bullshit.

I remember everyone talking about how awesome the story and decision stuff was, but I found it really hard to care about anything going on.

I got that feeling at the time too. There were some good moments, and firearms in a fantasy game was rare at the time, but I was never a fan of the game.

 

[Fishious Rend]

Suikoden 3
Boring start the ending is okay, the weirdest in the franchise to me.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Serf City aka Settlers I

Ultimately, this feels like somebody came up with a very clever sim engine and then patched in a game around it. Early games in this genre often suffer from the problem of you not having much to do but watch the game play itself, and this is no exception. It's not broken, but it doesn't really hold up.

It is not perfect but it is a very comfy game that looks/looked gorgeous and lush.

The "correct" way to play it in my opinion is singleplayer with a couple of friends. The game is slow so you can chit-chat, suggest improvements, drink some tea and swap who's currently controlling the game. If everything goes to shit, meh. So for me it was a very pleasant social game just like Civ1, Caesar 2, Transport Tycoon etc.

 

[The Ugly One]

Warcraft 2

That's right, fags, another mega-hit that I never played when it was on store shelves. I just finished the human campaign, and while it's a substantial improvement over WC1, I still didn't enjoy it as much as Total Annihilation: Kingdoms. There are a lot of QoL improvements that make it easier to play than WC1, but this ironically exposes that much more how stupid the AI is. In the WC2 campaign, there are a few missions where the AI has some initial trick that can force you to restart if you built the wrong units in the first 5-10 minutes (like how dragons attack you early on in the last mission), but since the AI isn't capable of building out its bases or spending resources smartly, it's pretty easy. It's not dumber than WC1, but in WC1, you couldn't assign hotkeys or select more than four units at a time, so it wasn't as easy to roflstomp the AI by just outplaying it.

The last human mission was especially lame. There's this massive central island that looks like it's going to be an absolute bear to conquer, but when you scout it, it turns out the AI is building ZERO infantry on it, just dragons and a couple wizards, and if you take too long to defeat the southern area, it will just run out of money on dragons.

 

[BrunoMattei]

TH Strikes Back.

Phone posting so I can't properly embed. Just discovered this one. It feels like a lost Genesis title. The game is drugs and I really enjoyed it.

 

[Calandrino]

TH Strikes Back.

https://youtu.be/sGZKq_4BVYc

Phone posting so I can't properly embed. Just discovered this one. It feels like a lost Genesis title. The game is drugs and I really enjoyed it.

I'd forgotten the name of that. Most people wouldn't believe it exists, if you tried describing it. MAME = #1 reigning hidden gem champ.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

TH Strikes Back.

https://youtu.be/sGZKq_4BVYc

Phone posting so I can't properly embed. Just discovered this one. It feels like a lost Genesis title. The game is drugs and I really enjoyed it.

You should check out the rest of Gaelco's games, a lot of them are a bit weird(but only THSB have big titty latex women getting Dig-Dug inflated until they pop).

Gaelco was either Spain's first video game developer or Spain's first arcade game developer, I don't remember but they were the first at something in Spain, probably arcade. And like a lot of old arcade developers they put together their own hardware and machines which is always cool. Neat company.

 

[Professor G. Raff]

Dark Souls

Here's a truly big-time game I never played. When Elden Ring came out someone I know was playing it as well so we compared our experiences until the end. It was my first Fromsoft game so he was interested in watching me stream my first playthrough of Dark Souls since has played it for like 500 hours, and I liked the idea... then I forgot about it for like 5 months up until I ran it over the past 2 weeks.

One thing that really stood out vs. Elden Ring and a decade of meme hyping it up is... the game is really not that hard. The difference in boss design from Elden Ring is staggering and I see why some say Fromsoft has devolved into i-frame roll spam. With very few exceptions I almost never had to use rolling as a means of damage avoidance and typically just running away from attacks worked 95% of the time. No boss took me more than my 5th attempt, with 2nd attempt being the most common and 1st attempt probably being the second most common. I hilariously did Bed of Chaos on my 1st try to my friend's bemusement while his GF cursed at me in the background, but that was more luck I suppose. I probably spent more time on Margit in Elden Ring than I did every DS1 boss combined, probably double and maybe triple (thought I did rush him without leveling and bashed my head into the wall while learning how Souls combat even worked).

It may partially be that I played a really good build. I played a faith caster in Elden Ring so I wanted to do the opposite in DS1 and played colossal weapons. I quickly found the Zweihander and proceeded to never change my weapon the entire game. This allowed me to wear heavy armor with high poise and damage resistance while pumping vitality and endurance, and when I found that the lightning upgrade removed scaling I even stopped leveling strength. The fact smaller bosses could be staggered and big bosses cannot deal you with being close up was a powerful combo.

The world design is as good as everybody says with a few exceptions, and it was always neat to see the clever ways all the zones were interconnected into a 3D Metroidvania. It's probably easier to focus on the gripes rather than listing strengths since I mostly just have praise. New Londo Ruins and Catacombs being more apparent than Undeadburg is probably a really big issue that turns people away, I spent a good bit of time inching through both before even finding Undeadburg. Another thing is some required stuff is very cryptic. I beat Sif and got the Covenant of Artorias and read it, and remembered it when that NPC mentioned the abyss and Four Kings and knew I had to wear it to live there... the issue is where the Abyss is was not telegraphed well. My friend ended up telling me that big well thing was the Abyss when I jumped in it and died the first time not knowing why the fog gate led to nothing.

I ended up exploring everything and killing every boss with my friend only pointing out what I missed as I got to Gwyn's doorstep. All in all a really great game and I can see why it has the reputation it does. I still iked Elden Ring more as I am a sucker for open worlds with lots of (non-Ubisoft style) hidden things, but the absolute effeciancy Dark Soul's world was put together with is a masterwork in it's own right. There is one of gaming's biggest names scratched off my list.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

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.

 

[Shidoen]

Got and played Vampire The Masquerade. Cool ass shit where hopefully i didn't give aids for being a black guy or get aids from sucking the blood outta all those prostitutes. The ghost hotel did scare me a bit though.

 

[Gingervitis]

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.

You would've been better off with Metroid Zero Mission. It's a remake of the first game, and everyone considers it the better game. Even if you've played the original, you should play Zero Mission for reasons I dare not spoil.

 

[Dysnomia]

I recently downloaded Paladin's Quest for SNES, thinking I had already played it. Turns out I was thinking of Lagoon.

Neither game is that great. But not bad enough for me to hate.

Anyway, you're a 13 year old magic student named Chezni (seriously?) who entered a totally unguarded tower on school grounds on a dare from some fairy classmate. Said tower is guarded by no one and the door isn't even locked. At the top of the tower there's a hand shaped indentation that you stupidly press because you are 13. It unleashes a monster that obliterates the school and kills all your classmates.

Upon waking up after the giant monster of doom attacks you the headmaster finally comes back from wherever he was and tells you it's all your fault and you have to fix it. Because you are 13 and entered an unguarded tower with no adult supervision and now it's your responsibility to save the world. You know, instead of the adults who weren't watching you or bothering to lock up a tower with an apocalyptic monster sealed inside.

But this is an RPG and these things happen.

Anyway, you walk way too slow and it takes a lot of grinding just to kill pakrats, the first enemy you come across, in one hit without taking a ton of damage. Ah, remember those days? There's a lot of grinding to get enough equipment and levels not to die one bridge over from your starting point. Just like Dragon Warrior!

Game is frustrating and the menus are unnecessarily cumbersome. If you want to equip one item you have to go through the entire list of your equipment slots even if you didn't buy a new helmet or shield or whatever. There's no MP even though the main character is a magic user. You use HP to cast magic. But everything makes you die so easily unless you are grinded and geared up. Luckily inn visits and potions are dirt cheap. At least Copya Systems decided to not get too evil and unfair.

There's a sequel called Lennus II, Lennus being the game's Japanese name. I still have no idea why it was called Paladin's Quest in the west. Maybe the sequel is better? But if you play Paladin's Quest you'll see why we didn't get it. No one would have risked $70 on it after buying the first game.

Some people think the game is ugly. But it's actually very unique looking. Like a cross between Fantasy Zone and the first Phantasy Star.

The translation is bad though. You don't even have to know the Japanese script to see that. In part it's due to limited character capacity for English text. But in some cases there's no excuse, especially where equipment is concerned. It looks more like a beta translation that ended up as the final.



Look at Kn. That's Knife. It fits but they abbreviated it anyway I bought Lth not knowing what it was. It's armor. Why not just rename them with words that fit? Replacing the slot name with an icon would have also worked better than this.

Toe bt? I assume it's supposed to be steel toed boots. Steel bt or Stl Boot would look better. Lth h is a helmet. I carried it around it's predecessor Learn h for awhile not knowing what the hell it was. The prices are outrageous for the amount of gold you get in the beginning of the game.

When you check your status you see a portrait of your characters and some info about them. Chezni is a Lafury, which looks to be some humanoid with slightly pointed ears. Next to Lafury is "Mal" and it took me a bit to realise it's supposed to me "Male". Looks like it should fit given the big space between race and sex. But guess that text slow can't support four characters. So why not shorten it to "M"?

Anyway, I'll try to stick with it.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Anyway, you walk way too slow and it takes a lot of grinding just to kill pakrats, the first enemy you come across, in one hit without taking a ton of damage. Ah, remember those days? There's a lot of grinding to get enough equipment and levels not to die one bridge over from your starting point. Just like Dragon Warrior!

There's more horror in store for you.

Have fun in the Crystal World!

 

[Blue Miaplacidus]

BioShock collection was given away on epic not too long ago so I decided to try the first one. I knew nothing about this game besides it was supposed to be amazing. I always thought it was a platformer and you played as the big daddy character, who was a small robot.

It was okay, I'd say a 3/5. It was very short, I beat it in two afternoons. It started off kind of strong but went downhill fast. The story was extremely predictable and I think they missed a bunch of opportunities that could have made it a more memorable experience. Considering it came out the same year as portal, I think if I played it at release I would have completely forgotten about it. I don't understand why it has such a high critical rating, it's good but it's not ground breaking or amazing. I enjoyed it, but it's not a game I'd have been happy to purchase at full price at release. Also, I don't know if it was an issue with the remaster or playing on linux but my audio was kind of fucked, enemy footsteps and speech was very inaccurate. It was hard to judge their location from audio whereas in say HL2, I could pinpoint exactly where an enemy is just off a single footstep. It wasn't terrible, but it made it a little confusing at first when it sounded like an enemy was directly behind me despite being like 3 floors and 2 rooms away.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

You would've been better off with Metroid Zero Mission. It's a remake of the first game, and everyone considers it the better game. Even if you've played the original, you should play Zero Mission for reasons I dare not spoil.

Yeah, the original one is not really worth playing these days even though I still fondly remember it. Zero Mission is very nice and my only gripe is that it's too streamlined, they diluted the Metroid(vania) experience by telling you where to go all the time.

 

[Pissmaster]

I still haven't finished Banjo-Kazooie.

It turns into a serious slog near the end, and the final boss is very difficult and really not fun. I beat it, but I'll never complete it again. If I ever play it again, I'll just quit when I make it to Click Clock Wood.

 

[TVStactic]

OG XCOMs - Holy fuck this shit is shit, any mod to unfuck this accuracy bullshit?
Morrowind/Fallout3(NV) - why there's dice rolls on my fucking action?
Drakensang the river of time - i wish morrowind was like this instead of action based...
Gothic 2 - I have no idea what i'm doing or why aren't me or my enemies dying even though we're beating the crap out of eachother.
Kill Switch - Cover based is coolish for 3rd person.
Dragon Age 2 - Why are enemies so fucking spongy?
Deus Ex OG - Training is your friend, it literally teaches you how to play the game well and it's your fucking fault for not playing it, not the game having "old-complicated controls", killer soundtrack.
Fullspectrum Warrior - Oh fuck someone downed my heavy gunner, time to reset the mission because i don't want to lose him in the next section, any team member is extremely useful.
System Shock 1 EE - Thank fuck for E, makes the game so sleek to play, fuck shodan and fuck cyberspace.
System Shock 2 - Gotta find the M22AR as quickly as possible to two shot anything in any difficulty.
SWAT4 - HANDS IN THE AIR MOTHERFUCKER, BLAM BLAM TZZ, TOC THIS IS ENTRY TEAM, SUSPECT ARRESTED AND READY FOR PICKUP.
NFSU Series - Skyline or bust.
NOLF - HOLD WALK BUTTON OR ELSE GET FUCKED, good soundtrack.
Sims - Heh, someone set something on fire.
Sim City - WHY THE FUCK IS MY WATER INSUFFICIENT?
Half Life - Gordon, get away from he beaaams!
Postal 2 - You gotta be fucking kidding.
Project Snowblind - basically a corridor shooter from the makers of fucking deus ex, cool futuretech a e s t h e t i c s.
Thief series exepct nu-thief - I love stealing.
Diablo 2/Titans Quest - Hold left mouse button and die of boredom.
Warcraft 3/Starcraft - Good shit until you meet the annoying MP faggots.
C&C Series - See above, good FMV's.
Far Cry 1 - why there is even foliage if enemies will accurately shoot at you anyway?
Vivisection - shoot and walk over the pickups, enjoy the gore if that's your thing.

That's the ones i can remember, i played many, many more way back especially the PS2/PS1/X64/SNES games but it's been so long i forgot most of them, i do remember PSI ops being a weird boxart game until i played it, and it was fucking awesome, then there's black which was basically tacticool CoD before CoD MW but without the tacticool faggotry, FF12 looked to me like a less gay version of FF while other people usually played 10 or 8 which was turn based, yuck.

I was never into MP crap so i skipped DooM and Unreal Tournament series and played mostly CS1.6 because you could play in LANs and make fun of eachother in a lighthearted way without some faggot trying to flex or anything (lest he be bullied by everyone else) and making fun of people looking at your screen.

Honestly i'm just tossing names i can remember in case other kiwis might have a "oh shit i played that too" moment and revisit these games and see if they can unbullshit a few ones.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Click Clock Wood

That's where I want to get to.

 

[The Ugly One]

Fallout: New Vegas

After 12 years, I have finally gotten around to this game. There is nothing I can say about the game that you don't already know, since it is still pretty famous, although these days it's because of the fanatical trannies running the mod scene. I played Fallout 3 not too long after it came out, so probably around ten years ago, so my recollection of it at this point is fuzzy. I tried to play NV around this time, but I didn't even make it through the first major quest, where you clear out the town with the roller coaster, because it was just too much more of the same thing.

Overall, this game is not bad for what is essentially an expansion pack for Fallout 3. Since it reuses so many assets, I guess your perception of these games is going to be heavily colored by which one you played first. The graphics weren't very good at the time, and consequently, they haven't held up. Butt-ugly character models jank around in a world made of barf and poop, and nobody lights the inside of their buildings. The world is mostly the same broken, burned-out junk heap of Fallout 3. I think it would have been more interesting if they'd tried to evolve things a little more. 200 years after the war, and still, nobody's building roads. Nobody's figured out light bulbs. Nobody's figured out paint.

The quest lines are all right. Talk to the dude, go to the place, kill the things, get the maguffin, rinse, repeat. There were a few times I enjoyed laying waste to some real rat bastards, but the brilliance of the writing and the story is vastly overblown. It's fine, but it's nothing to write home about. Finding Mr House was extremely anticlimactic. All this build-up, and he just says 2 or 3 lines? Okay.

If you like RPGs, this one is all right. If you don't, don't bother. People who act like there's a vast gulf in quality between this and FO3, like one is legendary and the other is trash, are lunatics. They're basically the same game.