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]

Heroes of Might and Magic is one of those legendary series that I am the right age to have played when it was new, but never did. The whole HOMM series was dirt cheap on GOG, so I got HOMM IV. Let me tell you something, this game sucks.

The 1990s PC gaming scene is full of games where the developers were feeling out random ideas, in part because keyboards were clunky and it was difficult to get the kind of smooth graphics out of a VGA adapter that you saw on a Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo. HOMM is one of those titles where none of the concepts really seem to work together. It's sort of trying to be a little bit domain sim, a little bit RPG, and a little bit TBS, and manages to suck at all three without making them work together to do anything special. The Fire Emblem series executes on two of those three a thousand times better.

The basic idea is that you wander around the map, looking for stations where you can get resources, and you use the resources to build a bigger, better army, eventually conquering your enemies. Your armies can have, in addition to the usual mooks, fantasy heroes that are kind of like cut-down D&D characters that can level up and gain new powers, and you have bases that you upgrade.

The fundamental problem is it's kind of shit at everything it does. The base-building is pretty one-dimensional, and you can't affect the map at all. The turn-based combat is over in a couple rounds and is tactically shallow. Your heroes are mostly irrelevant, except the wizards, so the RPG aspect feels pointless. Really, all it comes down to is accumulating the most powerful units and curbstomping your rivals.

I found it pretty boring, don't recommend it, and certainly don't see any place for this game in the modern era.

 

[Chuck Chudjak]

I was playing Singularity. The story is nuts nigga! It gots time travel, E99, cool guns, monsters, russian niggas... list goes on.
I think it's on steam but i didn't pay for that shit but it's a fun game.

 

[Judge Dredd]

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I played a bit of TimeSplitters 2 on an emulator. It's not bad. I've always heard of it described as a cult classic from the makers of Goldeneye 007, and it certainly shows. The first level takes place in a dam, in Russia, and you start with a silenced pistol and a sniper rifle. That sure is Goldeneye, alright. It's not a bad game, but I don't think I would have gotten into it had I played it when it was new, I would have been a little too burned out after Perfect Dark.

Speaking of which, Perfect Dark and Timesplitters 1 were only released five months apart. How on Earth did that work?

Timesplitters 1 is incredibly basic. And Free Radical left during the development of Perfect Dark iirc.

I was playing Singularity. The story is nuts nigga! It gots time travel, E99, cool guns, monsters, russian niggas... list goes on.
I think it's on steam but i didn't pay for that shit but it's a fun game.

Yes. Singularity is good. It also sounds you're opening the door to the 2000-2014 era of FPSs that, while getting middling reviews, are actually really good. Pretty much anything by Raven from that time is gold. eg. If you don't know about Quake 4, the story is nuts, but spoiled on trailers and on the box. Wolfenstein (200 gets a lot of shit, but put it on easy and have a blast. Soldier of Fortune is a classic, and so is Star Trek Elite Force, but I've not played that one.

If you're into Singularity's time travel stuff, I recommend Timeshift. It's janky and not nearly as good, but it relies a lot on abilities like fast forward, pause, and rewind.

 

[Harold Godwinson]

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I played a bit of TimeSplitters 2 on an emulator. It's not bad. I've always heard of it described as a cult classic from the makers of Goldeneye 007, and it certainly shows. The first level takes place in a dam, in Russia, and you start with a silenced pistol and a sniper rifle. That sure is Goldeneye, alright. It's not a bad game, but I don't think I would have gotten into it had I played it when it was new, I would have been a little too burned out after Perfect Dark.

See, I never played TimeSplitters 2, but TimeSplitters: Future Perfect has a very special place in my heart. When I think of peak old games and how they just don’t make ’em like they used to, Future Perfect comes to mind.

I’ve got a lot of good memories of playing through the great main story on co-op with my sister, then unwinding with a bit of deathmatch both playing as Calamari or Monkey pelting the shit out of each other with bricks and rocket launchers, then making retarded custom levels and torturing each other in them.

I’m thinking about getting the rom for Timesplitters 2 at some point and seeing what I missed out on, even it is a little “of the era“ and more for idle playing on my steamdeck.

 

[The Ugly One]

Timesplitters 2 is a little rough, but still excellent given the time it was released. The experience is improved tremendously if you add a reticle to your TV with a dry-erase marker. You are playing on a CRT with a glass screen, right?

 

[Judge Dredd]

I’m thinking about getting the rom for Timesplitters 2 at some point and seeing what I missed out on, even it is a little “of the era“ and more for idle playing on my steamdeck.

If you can get past the reticle not being locked to the centre of the screen, and the lack of blood, I'd argue it's better.

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

playing as Calamari

King shit.

Someone's pinched me winkles!

 

[Lone MacReady II]

I shill it every time I can, play Chrono Trigger. It's a gem. The best sprite work from the twilight of the 16-bit era. A "dream team" of industry veterans at the height of their craft. Legends and Legends in the making creating an unforgettable OST. A story which combines both time travel and cosmic horror. NewGame+ before Dark Souls made it cool. Side quests which aren't mindless busy work but have tangible connections to members of the party and the story/theming. >>NO RANDOM BATTLES<<. No cringey modernity. No niggers. One Transvestite (that you kill). Classic.

Truly a JRPG ahead of its time.

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

Heroes of Might and Magic

More like Homos of Shite and Tragic, amirite, gamers?

I still haven't finished Banjo-Kazooie.

Wait 'til you play the sequel and meet this absolute shitcunt.



I wish I'd left her to die in that fucking mineshaft.

 

[Gingervitis]

I’ve played Sonic Adventure 1 to death on every console except Dreamcast (including with and without the dreamcast conversion mod), but this is my first time playing Sonic Adventure 2. I’ve gotten halfway through the Hero story, and while Sonic’s stages are great, Tails’ stages feel like a lesser version of Gamma’s stages (I still like them), and Knuckles’ stages are actively worse due to how they changed the macguffin radar. I like it so far, but I’ll still take SA1 over SA2 anyday.

 

[Metallic Blood]

Scribblenauts Unlimited

I have been wanting to play this game since I was a child when it came out (yes, Scribblenauts Unlimited is 12 years old now), but I never had the opportunity to get it until now.

Game is pretty fun, but it's sad to see that most of the puzzles got downgraded and are way simpler compared to the previous game (Super Scribblenauts), which funnily enough, would be awesome for a dumb 10 year old that had trouble with the previous game, but to a less dumb dude in his early 20's, it's kinda meh.

While the puzzles are a bit worse, I did however found the sandbox aspect to be immensely better. Half of my playtime was basically just messing around in the farm and creating a bunch of made up stories, like there was one time that I attacked an entire military base with a colossal robosaur, and in the end of taking down the government, I created a perfect robot utopia with me being as their omnipotent creator. Or that one time where I killed a Medusa, picked her head and used it to petrify a bunch of humans, animals and monsters, to create my own city of scared statues. All these and many other scenarios gave me so much childlike joy that I didn't know it still existed in me, so that was wonderful.

If you enjoyed the puzzles of the DS games, I'd say there's nothing really worthwhile besides a level or two, but if you're an autist like me who just likes to make their own fun, then Unlimited is pretty kino. Either way, just get it on sale if you can, I got the Steam version of the game on 85% discount, and I'm pretty happy with my purchase

 

[Dan of Steel]

Ascendancy - 1995 The Logic Factory
A really cool and underrated space 4X game similar to Master of Orion. The starmap has a pseudo-3D view where you can rotate both the X axis and Y axis to look at the map. But I think the coolest part of the game is all the different alien races you can play as and compete against. They are legitimately alien. They aren't blue humans with elf ears or something lame like that, no we're talking sentient treepeople, biological computers made of crystals, living liquid that's a hivemind, and all sorts of other weird shit. The game has a good sense of humor and an amazing soundtrack too. Once I started playing it, the hours flew by and it's how I've spent my Saturday evening. Give it a shot.
download link

 

[Lisa forgive me]

I picked up Black Ops I for my Xbox recently since I saw the disc on sale for not even $5. I'm not too interested in the multiplayer as I believe Black Ops II multiplayer was way better (I actually played II back in the day but never I) but the campaign seems pretty good so far and Zombies is really fun. I've played a lot of the WaW and BO1 zombies maps in BO3 but it just doesn't hit you the same way. There's something so horrific and gritty about the old games that you just don't get with the remakes.

 

[The Early 2000s]

I am playing Arx Fatalis for the first time. This shit is crazy! AAA studios should go back to toggleable cursor mode, it leads to much more immersion than what we got nowadays. Mixing bread dough, then placing it in-world next to a fire to bake it is so damn cool.

 

[marvlouslie]

Man. 2016 is considered old now. Holy shit.

Sometimes I legitimately forget how old I am with a lot of these older games I've bought over the last year and a half and realize that I haven't played any of them in ages. Like, I remember playing a little bit of the first Far Cry, but never finished it, and I recently bought that. I remember going through Half Life, but not Half Life 2. I loved playing through the Star Trek Armada games again, and I need to download Bridge Commander and boot that up again. There's still a lot of good content I haven't had a chance to go through.

 

[Paradox Mystic]

I played Golden Eye for the first time in a long while, the controls feel weird playing on a keyboard and the graphics make it difficult for long distance firefights. It was fun.

 

[StacticShock]

I shill it every time I can, play Chrono Trigger. It's a gem. The best sprite work from the twilight of the 16-bit era. A "dream team" of industry veterans at the height of their craft. Legends and Legends in the making creating an unforgettable OST. A story which combines both time travel and cosmic horror. NewGame+ before Dark Souls made it cool. Side quests which aren't mindless busy work but have tangible connections to members of the party and the story/theming. >>NO RANDOM BATTLES<<. No cringey modernity. No niggers. One Transvestite (that you kill). Classic.

grinding enemies like any JRPG was cancer but yeah, not having retarded encounters was great.
also ayla best waifu and 600AD best song, fuck you if you disagree.

oh and i played olde Fallouts like 1, 2 and BoS... fuck this cancerous turn based shit, i hope someone mods these games into fallout 3 or 4 if bethesda doesn't exhume them, having to wait for 7 fucking radscorpions to take their sweet ass time trying to kill me was the most boring shit i had to endure during last year even with combat speed being on fast, everything else was fine but the combat being shit literally poisoned my view of the old fallouts to a point i consider them bad just for the combat being hot poo poo and it makes me appreciate drakensang river of time, FF12 and Chrono Trigger even more because of the ATB system as i said a while back, this is how you make turn based combat GOOD.

by the way, i never knew BF2142 was so fun, even with bots all of the crazy hijinks kept me at my feet, i remember missing a EU buggy because the bots sort of bumped in a battlewalker remains and it made the buggy jump, i couldn't stop laughing at that, also how a PAC gunship kissed mine for no reason or how the bots kept crashing on shit in suez canal, even had one of these crashes fall on me, top fucking kek.

 

[The Ugly One]

fuck this cancerous turn based shit

you shut your whore mouth

 

[Freaky Flicker]

I played the gameboy TMNT games, the first one looks better than the second but they are both the plainest jump and shoot game. Makes me appreciate all the more complex titles on handhelds, the third game is a cool metroid style game that I haven't gotten very far into but you have to rescue the rest of the turtles and beat up bats and stuff.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

The fundamental problem is it's kind of shit at everything it does. The base-building is pretty one-dimensional, and you can't affect the map at all. The turn-based combat is over in a couple rounds and is tactically shallow. Your heroes are mostly irrelevant, except the wizards, so the RPG aspect feels pointless. Really, all it comes down to is accumulating the most powerful units and curbstomping your rivals.

HOMM IV is a very flawed game but it has it's upsides. For one your heroes are absolutely not irrelevant but you need to get to mid game before they really start taking off. Eventually a melee hero with maxed out spell resistance and combat skills can just tank doomstacks of black dragons. Magic is all right too but eventually the game's jank just puts might heroes on top. Of course the unstoppable hero is trumped by the greatest unit in the game by miles which is the vampire. You rush them so you get your first stack on turn 3 or 4 and vampires don't just bring back dead vampires, they make more for every living thing killed. Vampire rushing is actually easier the higher the difficulty gets because there's larger stacks of tier 1 creatures milling around to build your vampire ball with.

So... now that I think of it, yes the game is shit. Especially if you've played HOMM III which is perfection. It's still fun when you get into late game and start dicking around with stupid shit though.