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

[SailingtheSaltySeas]

Got the Castlevania advance collection on my switch mostly on a whim, started on Circle of the Moon and I’m baffled as to why running was an upgrade I needed to pick up but other than that it’s pretty good.

 

[tofudelivery]

You hit the nail on the head. Blue Shift is a nice side story, but Opposing Force, while it has some cool ideas, feels really bloated and padded, especially towards the end (fuck that munitions dump level).

Speaking of Half-Life, while Half-Life 2 was groundbreaking when it was first released, it hasn't aged terribly well in some respects. The vehicle sections go on for a little bit too long, especially that stupid dune buggy thing. Also, the enemy variety is basically nonexistent. For way too much of the game, you're just fighting the same Combine soldiers over and over, with the occasional diversion into headcrab land. My biggest issue, though, is that the weapons are terrible. The pistol and SMG are basically useless once you get the magnum and the pulse rifle, and there's no great long-range weapon except the crossbow, which is way too slow when you're in a firefight. I really wish the pulse rifle didn't have such insane spread.

I played and beat Half-Life: Blue Shift and Half-Life: Opposing Force back-to-back recently. Blue Shift is a great title and stands tall alongside the original Half-Life, crummy platforming sections and all. Playing as Barney with smaller munitions was a fun way to reuse the Black Mesa complex as an environment without it feeling like a cash-in. It's shorter than the original HL but I think it's just as long as it needs to be, fleshing out the world without retreading old ground.

Opposing Force on the other hand I did not like. The problem is the game is too long with too few interesting sections. I dug through some of the old promotional materials and one of them hailed "more weapons" as a selling point. I think that sums up Gearbox's take on Half-Life, because the glut of weapons in OF is ridiculous even in the middle of an alien invasion. You're going to need them though because many enemies can take multiple rockets to the face even on normal. Overall it feels poorly balanced. I've never liked any Gearbox game, they're just not that good, and even when they're taking 90% of their assets and gameplay from Valve they still manage to make something low quality.

So it wasn't just me that thought this? I played the expansions for the first time a few years ago and was really confused seeing how beloved Opposing Force is on the internet.

I think the military encounters in Blue Shift were tuned really well too. Overall it was a nice throwback to playing the original game.

Valve was too stingy with power weapon ammo in 2, and yeah, the pulse rifle felt like wasted potential.

 

[Radola Gajda]

I played lot of old adventure in last two years. So I will give review of them.
It will be long post probably. Also it will contain story spoilers.

Gameplay of old adventure games is pretty similar so if you played one you played them all . There is prerendered background and your character collects items and use them to advance story / unlock new locations. Problem is that not always are items visible. And some solutions are weird at best. (combine water and viagra and result use on flower so you get ladder, combine living rat with dynamite and throw her into hole in wall to open door )
Protagonists of these games are almost always cleptomaniacs, liars and psychopats.

Limbo of the Lost
Lets say this one is really bizzare. Pretty much everything in this one is stolen from internet. So game is weird mix of assets from all genres there generic fantasy next to scifi stuff. Also mix of ideas you have segment where you are detective investigating murder mystery. Next level you are repairing some sci-fi power station, and after that you fight fourt horsemen of appocalypse.
Story is about sea captain who was lost in bermuda triangle and is trapped in limbo. Your objective is to escape .

Mystery of the Druids
Story is about detective investigating series of murders in England. During investigation you learn that these murders were commited , by Je.... Druids who want to control world. Protagonists is Psycho even by Adventure game standards. When you end the game Detective Haligan is cannibal , murderer, thief, pyromaniac...

Messenger of the Gods/Nibiru Age of secrets
Imagine episode of Ancient alliens . But they are correct .
You start game by investigating Nazi bunker where you find that WW2 germany had allien technology. And game ends with finding Allien burried in Mayan Pyramid.
This game was made 3 times . There is first 1998 adventure. Then there is from (I think) 2005 remake with better story and after that there is from like 2014 anotherr version but made by completely different people.

Posel smrti /Black mirror
no it has nothing to do with TV show . And game is much older than said show.
It is really good game especially for halloween.
Protagonist is Samuel Gordon descendant of ancient noble family.After mysterious death of his grandfather he returns to his family castle Black Mirror. Where he investigates death of his Grandfather and other deaths that happen during his stay in Black mirror.
Really nice story and athmosfere. But I heard english voice acting is not great.

Black Mirror 2,3
Sequel to Black Mirror and it is basically one story split between two games.
Protagonist is Adrian Gordon son of Samuel . Who was retconed to existence. Invalidating ending of previous game.
Adrian was adopted and lives in USA so first two chapters (1/3 of the game) all you do is pointless BS like dealing with unpaid insurance. Doing chores for your shitty bosss...
When you get to third chapter and finally get to willow creak where first game took place entire location was turned to tourist trap thanks to actions of Samuel in last game.
This ruins the athmosfere of the place. Anyway story gets better once you are here , but once story starts to get interesting game ends on cliffhanger.
Third one is much better but it still pretty much repeat of Samuels story arc from first game.

Horké léto 1,2 (Hot Summer 1,2)
Game is non serious story about Honza Majer in first one he is with his family on Holiday on Pacific Island and story is how your family was abducted by cannibals and later by Mafia. And you try to rescue them.
Whole game is commedic.
Second one is set during Wild West period and Majer is tasked with recovery of some McGuffin by Shaman of indian tribe.

Polda 1-5 (Cop 1-5)
Protagonist is Cop Pankrác in later games Pankrác is Private Investigator.
Anyway outside of 4th game all other are comedic. Pankrác shares all bad traits of Adventure game protagonists , but they are turned up to 11.
In just first game Pankrác deals drugs, shoots and beats homeless, encourages guy to commit suicide twice. Fucks his boss wife.....

 

[RollerGator]

I tried playing Jade Empire on the PC, but the version on Steam was basically broken for me. I didn't have the crashes some other people had, but it was really choppy.

Should've went with GOG. It's cheaper too.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/jade_empire_special_edition

 

[The Ugly One]

I slogged through to the ending of The Conduit 2...that was pretty good. Too bad the series ends there.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

According to thread criteria Wii-U launch games currently qualifies and next year it's time for the PS4 and Xbone.

 

[ReasonablyRetarded]

Played battlefield Vietnam for the first time this weekend after having played BF 1942 & the expansions as a kid and BF2 as a teen, I never even knew about BF Vietnam's existence until semi-recently.

Downloaded it because I was itching for an oldschool shooter I could just turn my brain off for.
Does it hold up? No ofcourse not, it's very obvious that this was semi-rushed out after the success of 1942 & its expansions, however there are enough improvements over that game for it to feel fresh enough.
It really feels like it was a stop-gap production between 1942 & BF2. Some of the new mechanics as well as the further development of the helicopter (first tested in the "secret weapons of WW2" expansion of 1942), retrospectively seem quite ahead of their time, since the game was reliant on the multiplayer aspect.

Mechanics like lowering a rope from choppers to make embarking easier as well as homing MANPADS on the VC side (even though they are pretty much worthless against anything but helicopters) feel pretty immersive for something so dated.
Vehicle variety is great, with 2 different jets and 3 different helicopters for each side as well as new weapon mechanics such as deployable mortars. Flying still feels the same as 1942 which a lot of people didn't like, but for me it was always the best part.
It's pretty fun.

All in all, I can recommend if you're looking for something mindless to play away at while listening to an audiobook or something.

 

[MirrorNoir]

The dialogue in Clock Tower 2 (I'm sorry but the SNES Clock Tower has a special place in my heart and I can never refer to The Struggle Within as CT2 because I hate it) is Resident Evil levels of cheesy but once those segments are out of the way the game actually does a good job at being scary.

After being thoroughly disappointed by replaying Sonic Adventure 2 I decided to look into my library and play a Sonic game I'd yet to touch. Sonic 2 washed all the bitterness away and put a big smile on my face when I was done. I still prefer Sonic CD, but Sonic 2 is a damn fine followup!

I got my hands on the Sonic 1-4 DS compilation a couple of years back and was horribly disappointed as I had never played Sonic 1 and only played Sonic 4 (Sonic and Knuckles) once as a rental when I was growing up.

Sonic 1-4 are outright the same game but with only two differences: Sonic 1 doesn't have Tails or the spin dash.

It's literally the same game reskinned four different times and I'm shocked Nintendo didn't go hard in pointing that out when Sonic was challenging Mario as the chief video game franchise in the 90s.

All I know about The Conduit is that a post about it inspired this meme:
View attachment 3205878

So anyway, I was playing Final Fantasy V a bit earlier in the month. Made it to a part where the party gets thrown in the pokey and they meet Cid, who gets them out.

So far, it's okay. Kind of boring. The job system really ties the game together, though it's very simple so far. It's been fun to throttle through battles with everyone as unarmed berzerkers with Brawl. I don't know if I'll ever complete it.

Final Fantasy 5 suffers from the huge fucking hype it has as "The Lost Masterwork" of Final Fantasy games. In truth, it's obscenely silly, the final boss is a fucking TREE projecting a hologram of a scary knight, and quite frankly the only reason I can think of for it being treated as a "masterpiece" is the fact that it's infinitely easier than Final Fantasy 3, meaning you can mess around with the Job system without panicking about being killed by FF3's murderers row of monsters.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Final Fantasy 5 suffers from the huge fucking hype it has as "The Lost Masterwork" of Final Fantasy games. In truth, it's obscenely silly, the final boss is a fucking TREE projecting a hologram of a scary knight, and quite frankly the only reason I can think of for it being treated as a "masterpiece" is the fact that it's infinitely easier than Final Fantasy 3, meaning you can mess around with the Job system without panicking about being killed by FF3's murderers row of monsters.

When did the attitude change to it being a masterpiece? In the past it was seen more as a meh game.

It's odd/fun to see opinions change like that when a new generation picks up the game. Now people really like Luigi's Mansion on the gamecube, that wasn't true when it was released. It currently sits at 78/100 even though it had the console launch score booster.

 

[KatanaSenshi]

I don't remember that much about FF5's story but I definitely remember the soundtrack was quite memorable. At least I don't remember it as a bad game. I assume some people felt meh because they played 5 after 6 and/or 7 (which are both very highly rated entries), not to mention un-localized games tend to be overhyped to some extent.

 

[The Ugly One]

Played battlefield Vietnam for the first time this weekend after having played BF 1942 & the expansions as a kid and BF2 as a teen, I never even knew about BF Vietnam's existence until semi-recently.

Downloaded it because I was itching for an oldschool shooter I could just turn my brain off for.
Does it hold up? No ofcourse not, it's very obvious that this was semi-rushed out after the success of 1942 & its expansions, however there are enough improvements over that game for it to feel fresh enough.
It really feels like it was a stop-gap production between 1942 & BF2. Some of the new mechanics as well as the further development of the helicopter (first tested in the "secret weapons of WW2" expansion of 1942), retrospectively seem quite ahead of their time, since the game was reliant on the multiplayer aspect.

Mechanics like lowering a rope from choppers to make embarking easier as well as homing MANPADS on the VC side (even though they are pretty much worthless against anything but helicopters) feel pretty immersive for something so dated.
Vehicle variety is great, with 2 different jets and 3 different helicopters for each side as well as new weapon mechanics such as deployable mortars. Flying still feels the same as 1942 which a lot of people didn't like, but for me it was always the best part.
It's pretty fun.

All in all, I can recommend if you're looking for something mindless to play away at while listening to an audiobook or something.

Are there still people playing this online, or did you do all this against bots?

 

[ReasonablyRetarded]

Are there still people playing this online, or did you do all this against bots?

IIRC there's tiny communities still online, particularly for BF2 & BF2 mods such as project reality, but it's almost all organised via third party services such as teamspeak or discord if I remember right.
I personally didn't go through the trouble of doing that & just played against bots, but you could.

 

[Pissmaster]

Final Fantasy 5 suffers from the huge fucking hype it has as "The Lost Masterwork" of Final Fantasy games. In truth, it's obscenely silly, the final boss is a fucking TREE projecting a hologram of a scary knight, and quite frankly the only reason I can think of for it being treated as a "masterpiece" is the fact that it's infinitely easier than Final Fantasy 3, meaning you can mess around with the Job system without panicking about being killed by FF3's murderers row of monsters.

Its status as this legendary lost masterwork is sillier than ever when you consider it had that reputation from only having a seven year gap between its original release and the official translation. That‘s like if a game from 2015 got localized today. Then again, games are way different today than they were decades ago, and FF5's well known to be the first major fan translation out there that encompassed such a big game, and did it well.

I didn't complete FF5. I'm saved somewhere in Galuf's World. It's very good for 1992, but aged poorly, and the story feels more like a cartoon for kids.

 

[Sundae]

Finally got around to playing Burnout Paradise this year via the Switch port. Loving it so far, haven't completed too many of the races yet, I'm having fun just exploring the map and crashing into the other cars. It's a good way to unwind after a long day by just crashing into things. It has a great soundtrack too, I was surprised to see how many licensed songs it has.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

aged poorly, and the story feels more like a cartoon for kids.

Going to have to disagree here. I think FF5 has actually aged the best out of the SNES final fantasy games, or at least of the 3, it's the one I'm most likely to go back to. I admit I'm mostly just a sucker for the job system, but the only final fantasy game that did it better than 5 was 11. And yes, the story is silly, but I liked that the game wasn't trying to take itself too seriously. I also just find 4 and 6 to be pretty dull experiences. With 4, the fake-out deaths are annoying and the game is just way to easy. With 6, the ensemble cast doesn't give each character enough screentime, and I don't really care for Kefka as a villian.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Finally got around to playing Burnout Paradise this year via the Switch port. Loving it so far, haven't completed too many of the races yet, I'm having fun just exploring the map and crashing into the other cars. It's a good way to unwind after a long day by just crashing into things. It has a great soundtrack too, I was surprised to see how many licensed songs it has.

Fun fact: in the original release you couldn't quit a race and restart straight away. You had to finish a hopeless race, then drive all the way back to the start each time.

 

[MirrorNoir]

When did the attitude change to it being a masterpiece? In the past it was seen more as a meh game.

In the US, it was always considered a lost masterpiece in the 90s, amplified when major magazines started going into the lore of the Final Fantasy franchise and talking about how FF5 was a brilliant game and we got fucked over because Square thought Americans were morons that wouldn't be able to handle the Job system.

It's one of the reasons why Final Fantasy Tactics got a huge push (in part because it had the job system like FF5) and why for the first FF anthology release, Square SKIPPED FF4 and got off their butts to translate FF5 to go with FF6, in order to cash in on the hype train FF5 had.

 

[Illuminati Order Official]

Limbo of the Lost
Lets say this one is really bizzare. Pretty much everything in this one is stolen from internet. So game is weird mix of assets from all genres there generic fantasy next to scifi stuff. Also mix of ideas you have segment where you are detective investigating murder mystery. Next level you are repairing some sci-fi power station, and after that you fight fourt horsemen of appocalypse.
Story is about sea captain who was lost in bermuda triangle and is trapped in limbo. Your objective is to escape .

Omitting the ending in a review of this game should be a criminal offence. Allow me to fix it:

Spoiler: Most epic ending ever

(yes, all voices are done by the same person)

 

[Stasi]

Played through Samurai Western on the PS2 recently. Its a decent brawler but if I had to describe it in a few words it would be "wasted potential". I like the setting, the story and character are pretty cheesy in a good way and the combat is serviceable. Unfortunately its criminally short. The game is maybe 3-4 hours long but they re-use the same 3-4 levels over and over again so there is probably like 40 minutes of actual unique gameplay. It really could have used some more development time and would have been a pretty good game. I assume it was a quickly pushed out budget title at the time.

According to Wikipedia its part of the Way of the Samurai franchise? Can't say I'm super familiar with it. I had the original Way of the Samurai on PS2 but played a couple of hours of it and gave up because it was too clunky for my tastes.

Also reminds me of another game I had on the PS1 - Rising Zan. If Samurai Western is a little cheesy then Zan is a bucket of cheddar with a truckload of ham.

Anyway, Samurai Western is a decent game, worth messing around on an emulator if you've got a couple of hours to kill just because of the unique concept but I wouldn't go hunting down the game on ebay or anything.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Steins Gate was released in Japan over 10 years ago, but the English release isn't quite as old yet so I'm not sure it counts, but close enough I guess.

This is one of the best visual novels I've ever played. It's also shitty. Let me explain.

First, the main character is annoying and cringe. He gets better but most of the game he's like LARPing as a mad scientist, which wouldn't be as unbearable and stupid if it didn't extend into his literal thoughts. At one point he's getting threats from a group he knows is dangerous, and yet he actually still blends his dumb fantasy into his visceral fear. What the fuck kind of writing is this? He mostly drops this eventually but it detracts from the tone of the game.

Second, there's a significant amount of gay/tranny shit. The concept of changing gender through time travel could be neat, and it's handled better than if it was written today, but it's still disgusting and could have been improved. I hate when otherwise good games do this.

Finally, the method for attaining different endings is obtuse at best. In fact, at first I didn't even know that I was making decisions that impacted the actual game.

Anyway, it's still a pretty tense story despite starting off slow and having some shitty endings, plus the other issues. I'm a bit of a sucker for time travel though. There were more typos than I'd like, maybe the remake fixes them.

Also, while the art style isn't that good overall, it's okay. But the music is pretty incredible. It's good on its own but also great at establishing moods. I'd recommend the game.