What are some games that you've played that have mechanics/gameplay that didn't age well?

[Islamic Jihad Rocket]

I don't know if a thread like this exists or not but I figured I'd post anyways since this is probably better than Q&A to post it in. Tell me something you've played where you think the gameplay or mechanics of the game didn't age well/feel outdated.

Pokemon is probably the number one offender for me especially as a once long time fan of the franchise, after sinking about a 100+ hours in to Palworld I seriously cannot go back to those games; the series has been stagnated since Gen 5 and having given it chance after chance; I don't think its aged very well in my mind. Also the fact that I've played a lot better RPGs that have a lot more engaging mechanics or things that make it more fun, Pokemon really just feels like a slog to play and it usually boils down to "kill enemy first before they kill you" kind of gameplay. Even with trying to "innovate" with Legends, the turn-based combat really kills the momentum since I'm more accustomed to just taking a gun and blasting the fucker than slow-ass turn based combat with text boxes that won't let you skip them.

 

[Anti Snigger]

Any FPS made after Half-Life. Whoever decided they all needed to be plodding and slow shooters should be court-marshalled.

 

[HyperboreanRightsActivist]

Any FPS made after Half-Life. Whoever decided they all needed to be plodding and slow shooters should be court-marshalled.

Cope harder, stealth shooters are fun

 

[Anti Snigger]

Cope harder, stealth shooters are fun

View attachment 5736367

say that to my face fgt

 

[HyperboreanRightsActivist]

View attachment 5736370
say that to my face fgt

Time and place, nigger

 

[Anti Snigger]

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Time and place, nigger

Your mom's house since we both will be there at some point

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Combos in fighting games. They became the focal-point in nearly every single fighting game after SF2, and their importance became basically the only thing you need to worry about. It kills the very idea of a play style. What's the point of all these characters if we're all trying to get in? Why aren't there more keep away characters or unique concepts? It's a stagnant genre. At least Divekick tried something different and it was just a meme game basically.

 

[eatler]

Your mom's house since we both will be there at some point

Im joining the fray and I don't, know why.

 

[Camo Fox]

I feel like as a stealth game, Hitman Contracts is mechanically terrible to play nowadays. But the gunplay makes up for it entirely. I don't know why or how but it has some of the coolest feeling and sounding guns of any game. The stealth is just shit and clunky, thief does a much better job at stealth during that era. The main issue with this is that you get ranked super low in missions if you play the game any way but stealth.

 

[Michael Wade]

Combos in fighting games. They became the focal-point in nearly every single fighting game after SF2, and their importance became basically the only thing you need to worry about. It kills the very idea of a play style. What's the point of all these characters if we're all trying to get in? Why aren't there more keep away characters or unique concepts? It's a stagnant genre. At least Divekick tried something different and it was just a meme game basically.

This is why mecha 3D third person fighters like Gundam versus are the best kinds of fight games



I really hate call of duty multiplayer. It was revolutionary at the time, but now it's just twitchy no fun, insta kill garbage in tiny ass maps. (Warzone sucks compared to battlefield)

 

[TheHarbinger]

Things like save points instead of being able to save at any time are way outdated. Tons of old RPGs had it so that you could be stranded and practically an hour away from being able to save properly because you were lost. Some older games even had it so that you could not even save the game and needed to beat it in one sitting like an arcade game. The bonus fights in the first (second?) God of War game didn't have a save feature and people would leave their consoles on overnight rather than lose their progress and have to replay them.

Codes to resume play instead of save files were even worse. When you beat the level you would get a code sequence that could be manually entered into the game the next time you started it up to resume your progress. Things like the save codes for something like Golden Sun II were nauseating and often didn't even work which was infuriating to waste all that time. You would enter a code that was encyclopedic in length and the game would give you an invalid code message anyways.

Another obnoxious one would be tapping for rapid fire or tapping for sprinting. Instead of just holding down whatever button you needed. I understand some games might have some button mashing sequences like if the boss grabs you and you can shake or struggle out of their grip. But having to mash every single second of the game to run is one of the worst designs.

The gambit system in Final Fantasy XII. You can beat all of the final battles without picking up your controller.

 

[eatler]

For me I never liked gtas mash A to run mechanic. It’s not engaging, just make it hold down a or hold down right trigger.

One mechanic that’s old that they should bring back is the health systems in the og cods. Don’t much care for the screen turning red, I like having to plan out things and scavenge for health packs. Normally I’d you have good saves it won’t be a problem and if you let someone save anytime then it’s not really isn’t too much of a problem.

 

[The Evil Midnight Bomber]

I'm playing Morrowind for the first time right now and let me tell you that game has not aged very gracefully. I'm just gonna list off the things that annoyed me the most:

1. My Spellsword character with 50 agility and 70 long blade skill still misses half his sword swings so I mostly just run around like a headless chicken casting OP spells.
2. If you load out of the cell the enemies are in you can just rest outside and recharge your health and magicka making your character functionally invincible unless the enemies can one shot you.
3. The NPC AI is basically non existent, they won't even react if you lead half the wild animals of Vvardenfell into their town. The guards also won't arrest you unless you commit a crime right in front of them or talk to them while you have a bounty. You can walk around with a 1000 gold bounty and nobody will care.
4. The economy in the game is completely broken, I haven't even found the Dwemer puzzle box yet but I already have 30K gold from stealing, cheesing a bunch of high level orcs to death and murdering the dark brotherhood assassins that constantly try to kill me.
5. Your walking speed at the beginning is painfully slow for no reason.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

Any FPS made after Half-Life. Whoever decided they all needed to be plodding and slow shooters should be court-marshalled.

The irony is that Half-Life itself caused this because it pioneered the scripted story-driven linear gauntlet kind of FPS, other games just decided to go full retard with the cinematics and slowed the pacing down to a crawl.

I can't think of too many games that feel noticeably worse today than they did at release. Modern games, especially AAA, are such a shitshow that if something older also feels bad in comparison to the new shit, it must've always been bad. But I want to give a special mention to Duke Nukem Forever because it's unbelievable that a 2011 game is so fucking trash compared to Duke 3D, a 1996 game, which in comparison feels totally timeless.

DNF had cringy forced humor, too many retarded and heavy handed gimmicks (in DN3D it felt effortless and fun to walk up to a pool table and [use key] to smack the balls around or take a piss for health or anything, in DNF you have a giant "PRESS [F] TO PICK UP THE PIECE OF SHIT" tooltip and a 5 second long animation that freezes your movement) , too much scripting and handholding, the idiotic 2 weapon limit that I'd rate as one of, if not the dumbest decision in the history of game design (it's fucking DUKE, not Call of Duty, niggers!) and they turned Duke into an actual cunt with zero respect for women instead of what he used to be, a badass who loves them. Shitty pacing and controls, too. And SJWs will point at that game and use it as "proof" that Duke as a whole hasn't aged well. We're never getting another Duke game again because of Greasy Bitchford and his sleazy colossal fuckup. I'm feeling pissy and wanting more Duke now.

 

[Jason Wynn]

A minor one but certain lengthy RPGs having time limits. I get the notion behind it, the devs wanting to create a sense of urgency on the players and show that the villain isn’t just sitting on his ass twiddling his thumbs waiting for you to saunter up to his stronghold.

Exploration and side questing are major factors of RPGs however. I hate feeling like I’m going to miss a good chunk of the game if I don’t hurry my ass up through the main quest or else I’ll fail the time limit and it’s game over then. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is especially bad about this, to the point I have to have mods installed while playing it that helps mitigate the time limit, otherwise I’d never be able to really enjoy that game.

 

[Anti Snigger]

The irony is that Half-Life itself caused this because it pioneered the scripted story-driven linear gauntlet kind of FPS, other games just decided to go full retard with the cinematics and slowed the pacing down to a crawl.

I can't think of too many games that feel noticeably worse today than they did at release. Modern games, especially AAA, are such a shitshow that if something older also feels bad in comparison to the new shit, it must've always been bad. But I want to give a special mention to Duke Nukem Forever because it's unbelievable that a 2011 game is so fucking trash compared to Duke 3D, a 1996 game, which in comparison feels totally timeless.

DNF had cringy forced humor, too many retarded and heavy handed gimmicks (in DN3D it felt effortless and fun to walk up to a pool table and [use key] to smack the balls around or take a piss for health or anything, in DNF you have a giant "PRESS [F] TO PICK UP THE PIECE OF SHIT" tooltip and a 5 second long animation that freezes your movement) , too much scripting and handholding, the idiotic 2 weapon limit that I'd rate as one of, if not the dumbest decision in the history of game design (it's fucking DUKE, not Call of Duty, niggers!) and they turned Duke into an actual cunt with zero respect for women instead of what he used to be, a badass who loves them. Shitty pacing and controls, too. And SJWs will point at that game and use it as "proof" that Duke as a whole hasn't aged well. We're never getting another Duke game again because of Greasy Bitchford and his sleazy colossal fuckup. I'm feeling pissy and wanting more Duke now.

In DN3D if you kill any of the babes the game's difficulty basically goes to 11, you are punished for it

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Everything about Half-Life 2's gameplay, from the painfully dull combat with brain-dead AI to the physics puzzles to the vehicle section, has aged poorly.

It was a game built entirely on impressing the player with new tech, spectacle, and production values. Once time diluted those things, you're left with a deeply underwhelming first-person shooter. It's all blandly functional, but there's not a single thing about it that's exciting or compelling.

 

[SauceRyuKen]

I played Bully recently. Funny as it was to see a 2006 game without people having cellphones and MP3 players, I think that helped to make the atmosphere timeless. Also the fact that you'll scarcely see even a landline phone and the computers are boxy 80's computers except for the one at the nerd's hangout. It's anachronistic enough that you won't think about it too often. No wonder it's still popular.

That said, the police system is just in place to cheapshot a rowdy player to death and it's not even sneaky about it.

- Lawkeepers will spawn right on your ass if you hit certain spawn tiles, requiring you to be really careful about where you go in a chase.
- They will spawn right in front of you, fuck up your pathing and instakill you if you go for certain doors, like the boys' dorm.
- They will sometimes tank a blow that would normally stun them, I.E a fully charged sling headshot.

You can still cheese it with Jimmy's infinite stamina as long as you stick to ranged attacks, of course. Something funny about a 15 year old having an extended standoff with the police with a slingshot, eggs and stinkbombs. And winning it, too.

There's a boatload of clothing too and the sorting system is horrendous. Lots of AI breaking jank that you just wouldn't notice if you played it as a kid. Races don't have pathing on your map so you sometimes have to take leaps of faith. The very amusing fact that Jimmy's probably by far the weakest GTA protagonist for three missions then he gets the slingshot and goes on to become by far the strongest of them all. This kid would kick Arthur Morgan's ass easily. That said, the controls suck. Up for free aim. You can run to cancel it but it doesn't work very well.

 

[AMHOLIO]

I think every game that included a trendy mechanic will be dated in some way. Some stuff is things you can't play anymore like MMOs, and I'm sure battle royale stuff that feels tacked on will show it's age in a few years if it hasn't already. I know the industry is already moving away from that as we speak.

It's harder to think of game trends off the top of my head since I played older games too much. I think one is cover shooting in Dead Space 3, but that is technically more related to it not incorporating well. It is a product of its time and shouldn't have been there though, and that mechanic of scavenging for parts to do microtransaction bullshit when you didn't need to also reeks of it.

Pokemon makes me think dated when I revisit red/blue and Gold/Silver, the bag limitations and crazy box system are remenants of their time. I enjoy the turn based nature, but it is a comfort game and the games weren't as, uh, hectic as they are now.

Badly aged mechanics stick out more when the gameplay doesn't evolve to make them feel new, fun, or like they belong. It's easier to forgive something or even enjoy it if the game incorporates or compensates the mechanic into its gameplay.

We're never getting another Duke game again because of Greasy Bitchford and his sleazy colossal fuckup. I'm feeling pissy and wanting more Duke now.

Eid, Drofhctip Ydnar, eid!

 

[The Evil Midnight Bomber]

Oh yeah another very obvious flaw with Morrowind is the vanilla draw distance. The fog is so dense you'll easily get lost if you don't check your map every 5 minutes.



Here is the same town (Balmora) with the render distance turned up beyond throwing range (which is only possible by either modding the old Gamebryo engine or downloading a 64 bit engine overhaul):



Believe it or not there are people that defend this unbearably short draw distance because "It makes Morrowind feel bigger."