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

[M3xus]

Played the original System Shock after only playing 2 years ago.

Yeah, it's a bit clunky, but the core game holds up, SHODAN's writing is fantastic, and you can game over by pressing a big red button that does exactly what she wants. Nightdive did a fantastic job with the remaster.

 

[Shovel Mech Pilot]

Last year I played System Shock 2 for the first time. My mind was blown. What an amazing game, even if the graphics were a little dated and some of the RPG choices were a little clunky.

 

[Wallace]

I've never played the original Souls series. If I were to dust off my PS3, which game is the best starting point for this genre/series?

 

[Judge Dredd]

Last year I played System Shock 2 for the first time. My mind was blown. What an amazing game, even if the graphics were a little dated and some of the RPG choices were a little clunky.

I made the mistake of playing a magic user. Had a miserable time and gave up. Supposedly magic and guns are for experts only, but the game doesn't tell you that.

I've never played the original Souls series. If I were to dust off my PS3, which game is the best starting point for this genre/series?

I don't think it matters. Before I played, the consensus was 1 is best, 2 is worst, 3 is the most consistent. But once I started playing, the "best one" switched constantly. When I gave up, it seemed that DS fans changed which game is "best" to try and get me to play the whole series.

There's also a lot of squabbling over builds. In short, only certain builds are viable for a beginner, but you're not supposed to use most of these builds for stupid reasons. eg. in 1, magic is OP, but I'm told if you use magic, you might have seen the credits but you didn't really beat the game. In 3, agility builds are OP, but starting with an agility class is for pros only. I'm told you're meant to play the knight and then spec into agility throughout the game.


If you want a good game in that genre, I'd say The Surge or The Surge 2 are better. That's an unpopular opinion though, and are PS4 games not PS3.

 

[TurdFondler]

Played Max Payne and Return to Wolfenstein finally. Neither aged well. Max Payne had waaay too much boring exposition on stillframe backgrounds and the mechanics were a one trick pony. Even moves in the specialists HL mod or action Quake felt more versatile than the two or three bullet time options in Max Payne.

Wolfenstein was good at first but the catacombs were hella boring. The enemies were all bullet sponges.

Both games lacked cover mechanics which I didn't even know I would miss.

 

[The Ugly One]

I've never played the original Souls series. If I were to dust off my PS3, which game is the best starting point for this genre/series?

They're all good. Dark Souls is a more elaborate game than Demon's Souls, so if you're only going to play one, that's the one. Don't worry about online spergouts. You can beat the game with any build as long as you don't do something obviously retarded. Just play as whatever you think is fun.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I play old games for more than new ones, nothing pre-NES though (although I rarely complete any of them, or even get very far).

One of the oldest console games I played that's still decent dates all the way back to '85, Wrecking Crew. It's obviously very simple and quite difficult, and since it released the same year as Super Mario Bros it was vastly overshadowed even then, but it's got charm and controls well. I played that for the first time around a year ago, I think.

I recently played through Virtua Fighter 2 (Genesis) out of curiosity. It controls like shit but so does regular Virtua Fighter 2, they're both stiffer than than a furry in a Build-a-Bear Workshop.

Just to see the ending I put it on easy and dropped the time to 10 seconds to cheese wins (still barely won each match). Unless there's true endings locked behind higher difficulties it goes straight to credits. Pretty boring, but since it's a demake it's still interesting to me.

Couple days ago I put Space Harrier (2?) (not sure which one just came to NSO) on for like 20 seconds, died, and turned it off. It's a slideshow and shooting/dodging feels really inaccurate. I can imagine being stuck with this as a kid and being forced to master it, probably appreciating it more, which is likely why it's fairly well regarded...but I'll never play it again.

I'll be posting in here with a lot of bad takes on beloved classics that I don't give a fair shot, so enjoy.

 

[Overcast]

Playing Roller Coaster Tycoon: Deluxe for the first time. (Although I have played a bit of Classic on the phone before)

Probably one of the most satisfying games I've played in a while. Something about methodically turning an empty plot of land into a thriving theme park and watching everything unfold from above is magical. Also having to micromanage your staff, adjust prices, borrow and pay off loans and routinely set up advertisement campaigns makes the experience that much more engaging.

I've only played the easier scenarios so far, but I can definitely see why people love this game.

I'll have to get Open RC2 one of these days. The fast forward option alone is tempting me to want to switch over.

 

[Korpon]

Wolfenstein was good at first but the catacombs were hella boring. The enemies were all bullet sponges.

I played this game as well for the first time last year, and these fucking bastards are easily one of the worst enemies I've fought in an FPS. Thankfully they were only in two missions iirc.

Catacombs went on for way too long as well and were hard as shit, too many undead/skeletons spawning out of nowhere with few and far between health pickups. X-2 Labs were AIDS because of the Lopers shown above, along with the super soldiers. Ironically the final boss was actually easy since you can just loop around him in a circle and whittle away at his health, he didn't hit me once during the entire fight.

 

[Mega Black]

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is NOT good, bros. That game ran out of money like halfway through the dev cycle and it shows

I'm actually working my way through this right now. It's pretty okay so far, but that sewer level holy fuck. The writing is entertaining, at least.

 

[Mooger Meng]

Recently I've played several iterations of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together; both the SNES fan translation, and the PSP remake.

The original is pretty damn clunky, with none of the kind of quality of life additions we're used to for a small-unit tactical game these days because it came out long before the genre refined those into standards. It's the kind of old and particular that I can't really wrap my brain around, but I'm sure it isn't so bad if you can get it figured out, you just have to live with the game not giving you information in an easily-available manner.
The remake fixes that and streamlines a lot of things, as well as having a different take on how your units progress compared to its peers: you level your classes, not your units, so rather than min-maxing an individual unit's stats by juggling them around in an optimal pattern, it's more important to dip them into certain classes to get skills for their final build. There's a fair amount of less-useful skills and builds that you don't know are mistakes until 4 hours after you've committed to them, but I've also tried the One Vision mod that touches on a lot of that for balance. I've gotten a lot further on the mod than the base game, but I consider that more of a comment on the mod hewing more to my own sensibilities rather than any slight against the game itself.
In either case, the story follows a bunch of brash young idiots that get caught up in an ethnic civil war, and never shies from showing you the worst parts of the conflict if you get wrapped up in them. The remake also uses a particular form of not-quite-antiquated English that sounds like something people would have spoken rather than faux-Shakespeareian nonsense you'd find in a bad drama class, which I'm a sucker for.

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.

That seems to be an issue with the PC port in general. I had to find a fix for the GOG version, but it should work with the Steam release as well.

 

[Calandrino]

I recently played through Virtua Fighter 2 (Genesis) out of curiosity. It controls like shit but so does regular Virtua Fighter 2, they're both stiffer than than a furry in a Build-a-Bear Workshop.

Just to see the ending I put it on easy and dropped the time to 10 seconds to cheese wins (still barely won each match). Unless there's true endings locked behind higher difficulties it goes straight to credits. Pretty boring, but since it's a demake it's still interesting to me.

Couple days ago I put Space Harrier (2?) (not sure which one just came to NSO) on for like 20 seconds, died, and turned it off. It's a slideshow and shooting/dodging feels really inaccurate. I can imagine being stuck with this as a kid and being forced to master it, probably appreciating it more, which is likely why it's fairly well regarded...but I'll never play it again.

A 3D polygonal fighting game (in 2D with sprites) and a sprite-scaling rail shooter (with no sprite scaling)... these games are mistakes

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

I'm actually working my way through this right now. It's pretty okay so far, but that sewer level holy fuck. The writing is entertaining, at least.

Did you get the patch. Because the patch let's you skip it.

OT: I've been playing Genealogy of the Holy War and SMT 1. So far, it's been great going. Sigurd is a Giga Chad and if what I hear about most Fire Emblem lords is true, he should have been in Smash instead of Marsh.

 

[Mega Black]

Did you get the patch. Because the patch let's you skip it.

OT: I've been playing Genealogy of the Holy War and SMT 1. So far, it's been great going. Sigurd is a Giga Chad and if what I hear about most Fire Emblem lords is true, he should have been in Smash instead of Marsh.

I do have the patch but I felt like I should experience it in all its unfiltered glory at least once. I honestly don't hate the combat as a gun/blood magic vampire but it definitely wears out its welcome with how long that section was. Having finished the game now, I can say it was pretty alright. I definitely feel like RPG writing has only gotten worse over the years, not to say that Bloodlines is like some kind of holy monument to literature, but so many NPCs are packed with personality and quirks, every line of dialogue felt snappy and interesting, the world was cool and had a lot to say about typical vampire quirks and character archetypes. It was a lot of fun. Feels like you don't get any of that shit anymore, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, I dunno.

 

[Negotiator]

I played God Hand the other day. Tried not to have too high expectations for an experimental combat game from 2006 but everyone says good things about it so I figured it wouldn't be trash.

Combat is fun. Everything responds appropriately. Your basic combo string is entirely customizable, and when swapping out/purchasing different moves there's a model on the right side of the screen that demonstrates exactly what the move looks like which is nice. The game difficulty being based on how great or shit you're playing is alright, I don't particularly care for scaling difficulty but at least the game is open about it unlike RE4. Also not a big fan of the tank controls but it's not a deal breaker.

Story is goofy and over the top, music is good, and the difficulty pushes my shit in, so all in all, worth the time.

 

[The Ugly One]

I finished the Conduit. Overall, it's a pretty good game with a few frustrating difficulty spikes, but those keep it from being a boring trudge through paper doll enemies, like so many shooters are. It's not perfect. There occasionally AI and animation glitches, and I fell out of the map at least once. But it's not too stingy with checkpoints, so no big deal. The voice acting isn't bad, and the corny sci-fi-conspiracy story really works with the whole aesthetic of the game, which really goes over the top with the glowing techno-crap and bug-like alien designs. Probably the biggest flaw is that nearly every level is basically a trek through a winding corridor, with very few open areas. It's barely a step up from a rail shooter at times. Graphics, sound, and music are about as good as it gets for what is essentially 20-year-old compute hardware...which is pretty good! I give this a B+, and if you're the kind of person who enjoys checking out weird little artifacts of gaming history, the only 3rd-party attempt at a AAA FPS exclusive series on the Wii is fun enough to be worth a playthrough. I got it for $20 on eBay.

Played Max Payne and Return to Wolfenstein finally. Neither aged well. Max Payne had waaay too much boring exposition on stillframe backgrounds and the mechanics were a one trick pony. Even moves in the specialists HL mod or action Quake felt more versatile than the two or three bullet time options in Max Payne.

Wolfenstein was good at first but the catacombs were hella boring. The enemies were all bullet sponges.

IMO, it sounds like RTCW didn't age a bit, since this is exactly what I thought of it when it came out. Common conversation in the dorms:
"Wow, RTCW is amazing! Best game I've played in forever!"
"You haven't gotten to the catacombs yet, have you?"
"No, why?"
"Oh, just you wait."

Couple days ago I put Space Harrier (2?) (not sure which one just came to NSO) on for like 20 seconds, died, and turned it off. It's a slideshow and shooting/dodging feels really inaccurate. I can imagine being stuck with this as a kid and being forced to master it, probably appreciating it more, which is likely why it's fairly well regarded...but I'll never play it again.

If it's the Genesis version, the best you could ever say about it is that it was a passable port of the arcade game, which was buttery smooth and had analog controls. It's about on the same tier as the SNES port of Wolfenstein 3-D. That said, the arcade version is still one of those games whose main appeal was that it was the mid-80s, and anything even approximating 3D looked like a miracle of technology.

 

[Dysnomia]

I finally played Corpse Party. I played the PSP version. I totally forgot it existed until recently. I also played Book of Shadows. Not sure what I expected. But it was more depressing than I thought.

I was rather surprised by Kazami being a creepy pedo yandere. He seemed so nice. I should have known better. The foreshadowing, if you can call it that, is too confusing. I assumed the corpse you found was just calling for his friend. I failed to escape him the first time and just let the game progress to what I knew would be a bad ending. Yuka's chaper with him in Book of Shadows was extremely uncomfortable.

Also, I wanted to smack the red haired pretty boy in Book of Shadows for being such a dick. Yet I still felt bad for him.

 

[Mojo Thief]

Played the original Dead Rising recently. I played 2 and its expansions back in the day and thought they were a lot of fun, but for some reason I never picked up the original until it came out on Steam.
Keep in mind that my expectations for games have changed since 2010-2013, so there were quite a lot of 2006-isms that bugged me even if I found the game fun overall.
For starters, I really miss the combo weapon system in 2. Your success in Dead Rising 1 (short of grinding levels) feels really dependent on knowing where all of the powerful weapons are. Guns are actually useful against bosses, unlike 2, but you can't strafe while shooting.
Controls are kinda wonky. I don't like how dodge is by double-tapping the left stick, whereas in 2 it was by clicking the left stick.
Survivor AI is fucking suicidal on top of brain dead, making escort missions more frustrating than they need to be.
Otis can go fuck himself.
The time limit is more strict than I remember the one in 2 being, but that may just be because I maxed out my level in 2.
I can definitely see the more grounded story and setting appeal more to people than the over-the-top gameshow world of 2, but I personally prefer the ridiculous Vegas-type setting of 2. Frank is a more charismatic protagonist than Chuck, I'll admit that much.

I can definitely see why people prefer the original, and I still think it's worth playing, but I still think I had more fun in 2. Then again, before this one I hadn't touched a Dead Rising game since Off The Record in 2011.

 

[I am vomit]

Played the original Dead Rising recently. I played 2 and its expansions back in the day and thought they were a lot of fun, but for some reason I never picked up the original until it came out on Steam.
Keep in mind that my expectations for games have changed since 2010-2013, so there were quite a lot of 2006-isms that bugged me even if I found the game fun overall.
For starters, I really miss the combo weapon system in 2. Your success in Dead Rising 1 (short of grinding levels) feels really dependent on knowing where all of the powerful weapons are. Guns are actually useful against bosses, unlike 2, but you can't strafe while shooting.
Controls are kinda wonky. I don't like how dodge is by double-tapping the left stick, whereas in 2 it was by clicking the left stick.
Survivor AI is fucking suicidal on top of brain dead, making escort missions more frustrating than they need to be.
Otis can go fuck himself.
The time limit is more strict than I remember the one in 2 being, but that may just be because I maxed out my level in 2.
I can definitely see the more grounded story and setting appeal more to people than the over-the-top gameshow world of 2, but I personally prefer the ridiculous Vegas-type setting of 2. Frank is a more charismatic protagonist than Chuck, I'll admit that much.

I can definitely see why people prefer the original, and I still think it's worth playing, but I still think I had more fun in 2. Then again, before this one I hadn't touched a Dead Rising game since Off The Record in 2011.

Huge dead rising fan, I played the original and 2 when they were newer, I still play 1 and 2 once in a while. I'm going to have to agree with you pretty hardcore. 1 was really strict, the AI were suicidal, and to beat the game is actually extremely difficult because of how bad the AI can be, with the tight time restrictions. It was still tight in 2 but at least the AI wasn't so bad. The worst is the guys in the jeep. Because the AI is literally window licking retarded sometimes the survivors following you just stand there, or not get out of the way. I found the only solution is to mash the button to call the AI over to you as often as you can, and hug the corners so the jeep dudes don't find you as easily and their own AI fucks up about it. It's the only thing that keeps the AI somewhat on track and focused enough not to die some of the time, and forces them out of the way. As much as I hate the missions where you have to carry people, at LEAST they aren't running into a hoarde of zombies or a psychopath without a single hesitation. I actually usually won't play 1 over 2 unless I REALLY want to be specifically nostalgic about being a terrified 14 year old trying to play dead rising 1 with the lights off.

 

[Gingervitis]

I’ve been playing Kirby Super Star Ultra on MelonDS. I know the Meta Knight mode is gonna be a bitch once I get to it (durr hburr we gotta have touch contrurls), but other than that, it’s been a ton of fun. It just needs to be ported to a console (and thus have better multiplayer) multiplayer and it would completely supplant the original Super Star.