Classic games I've never played

sarumite

Nody wrote: »

No, not even close. ME1 or ME3 possibly yes (ME1 being the role play game with a fun buggy, ME3 being the epic action adventure story streamlined utterly for consoles and easy consumption but having some "epic" decisions on who dies), Borderlands 2 maybe, Fallout 3 possibly. But ME2? No, not even close to best in generation; it's bland, boring and bring nothing that the ME1 or ME3 does not do better.

Am I the only person on here who preferred Fallout:NV to Fallout3?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

sarumite wrote: »

Am I the only person on here who preferred Fallout:NV to Fallout3?

no, it seems to be the more commonly preferred of the two. I'd admit that NV is probably the better game but I loved the atmosphere of the DC ruins in Fo3 more than the wasteland in NV so I'd always pick 3

steve_r

Kinski wrote: »

I suppose part of my problem stems from the fact that we don't differentiate game forms in terms of length as much as we do in other areas of arts and culture. We don't consider short films "equivalent" to feature films, or short stories to novels. For instance, it would seem a bit unfair to rate The Turn of the Screw higher than War and Peace, when one is about 40,000 words long and the other is well over half-a-million. But people talk about Portal being better than Half-Life 2. To be sure, they both have great gameplay, brilliantly-realised gameworlds, and excellent scripts, but one sustains it over maybe 15hrs, the other over just, what, 3 or 4?.

I think that's a very interesting point. From my own perspective, I don't have as much time to game as I used to. So shorter games, for me, are better, because I keep getting put off by long cut scenes/intro/character setup etc.

These things are all great and immersive if you have the time, but I just don't have that at the moment. It's a shame because there's games I have like Arkham City, Max Payne 3, AC Brotherhood etc that I know I'd love if I had the time but they are just so time consuming before I even get to play! I guess that's my long winded way of saying that I prefer shorter games! Most recent game I finished? Jetpack Joyride on Android. Jump in and jump out, easy to pick up and play, just fun, fun, fun.

Back on topic (And I haven't played the portal games either )

SMW was my first game for my first console (I got all stars as well). I preferred it but I love both it and SM3 (and Yoshi's Island) in their own way.

I never played Super Metroid either. Tried it a few times but couldn't get into it.

I missed out on a lot of the major PS1 and PS2 games (Technu, any RPG’s (FF etc – no patience for them unfortunately). Never played anything on the Wii or the Gamecube. Only really getting back into gaming now, finding that I prefer games on tablets/handhelds because it’s easier to jump in and jump out, I’m getting a bit frustrated that recent games I’ve played on PS3/PC just haven’t “grabbed me” the way they used to. Maybe I’m getting old, and just don’t have as much time/energy!

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

why on earth would you specify colour=black on boards?

sarumite

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

why on earth would you specify colour=black on boards?

Its even worse for people like myself who have the "evil" forum skin whereby there is a black background :pac:

Penn

krudler wrote: »

Can't believe people havent played stuff like Mario, Zelda and Metroid, you can get a snes emulator and the roms in 5 mins.

But do those games still hold up for people who have never played them before and wouldn't be playing them with rose-tinted glasses, and are they worth spending time playing more than current games out there?

I'm just saying, I could easily spend a few hours getting an emulator and playing Sonic, and a lot of the enjoyment would probably come from nostalgia. But I'd have zero urge to do that for Metroid when I could be playing current gen games instead.

Star Lord

Penn wrote: »

But do those games still hold up for people who have never played them before and wouldn't be playing them with rose-tinted glasses, and are they worth spending time playing more than current games out there?

I'm just saying, I could easily spend a few hours getting an emulator and playing Sonic, and a lot of the enjoyment would probably come from nostalgia. But I'd have zero urge to do that for Metroid when I could be playing current gen games instead.

Each of those three games hold up fantastically, and are still extremely playable today.

Retr0gamer

Super Metroid still holds up, it's as good today as it has ever been. The Zelda games from Link to the Past onwards are all amazing, however be warned the 3D games take a while to get into.

If it's a good game it will always be a good game. If it doesn't hold up then it was mostly hype, good graphics or lower expectations early on in a genre that made it so popular.

Star Lord

Retr0gamer wrote: »

If it doesn't hold up then it was mostly hype, good graphics or lower expectations early on in a genre that made it so popular.

Or platform limitations that were overlook-able at the time, or not particularly noticed, but now stand out like a sore thumb.

Penn

I don't know, I remember years ago a bunch of us got emulators and roms off a friend of ours, including Mario and Sonic games. One of my friends was constantly playing Mario, and I was constantly playing Sonic. Why? Nostalgia. I played Mario every now and again (and he played Sonic, to see what the other saw in the games) and it was certainly playable, but I wouldn't really have chosen to play it.

I just think that without the nostalgia element, I'd have zero urge to play Mario, Metroid or Zelda given the current (or even previous) gen games I could be playing instead, even if they aren't considered classics and Mario/Metroid/Zelda are.

So again, even though there are emulators and roms out there for these games and they're easily obtainable, I don't see any reason to play those classics rather than playing current gen games. And I don't doubt why people call them classics and I'm sure they are very playable and enjoyable, but I do think nostalgia also plays a big part in it. Someone who played those games as a kid and who now downloads the emulators and roms would get far more enjoyment playing the game now than someone who never played the game and is playing a now 20-25 year old game, when they could be playing current games.

stateofflux

red faction
portal
battlefront 2
avp classic


...really looking forward to them

snausages

A real classic will be just as playable as any current gen game. Over the past 2 years I've played through Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, RE1-3 and the first two Silent Hill games. Had more fun with them than any new release I've played recently and nostalgia definitely wasn't a factor in that. Some games don't age well though, like RE1. It was such a shock going from that to RE2 and 3, both of which look beautiful.

McSasquatch

I've never played any of the Theme or Tycoon games. I keep saying I'll remedy it, but stupid developers keep releasing new games. Stupid new shiny graphics.

Grimebox

Penn wrote: »

I don't know, I remember years ago a bunch of us got emulators and roms off a friend of ours, including Mario and Sonic games. One of my friends was constantly playing Mario, and I was constantly playing Sonic. Why? Nostalgia. I played Mario every now and again (and he played Sonic, to see what the other saw in the games) and it was certainly playable, but I wouldn't really have chosen to play it.

I just think that without the nostalgia element, I'd have zero urge to play Mario, Metroid or Zelda given the current (or even previous) gen games I could be playing instead, even if they aren't considered classics and Mario/Metroid/Zelda are.

So again, even though there are emulators and roms out there for these games and they're easily obtainable, I don't see any reason to play those classics rather than playing current gen games. And I don't doubt why people call them classics and I'm sure they are very playable and enjoyable, but I do think nostalgia also plays a big part in it. Someone who played those games as a kid and who now downloads the emulators and roms would get far more enjoyment playing the game now than someone who never played the game and is playing a now 20-25 year old game, when they could be playing current games.

While I agree to extent, Sonic VS Mario is a bad example. I haven't seen anyone in this thread calling Sonic a classic (I could be wrong). I genuinely think nostalgia does come into account with that game series. Even back in the day I thought it was good, but not great. I would proudly tell anybody to give Yoshi's Island a shot and would love to hear any reasonable arguments of its shortcomings.

johnny_ultimate

Kinski wrote: »

I suppose part of my problem stems from the fact that we don't differentiate game forms in terms of length as much as we do in other areas of arts and culture. We don't consider short films "equivalent" to feature films, or short stories to novels. For instance, it would seem a bit unfair to rate The Turn of the Screw higher than War and Peace, when one is about 40,000 words long and the other is well over half-a-million. But people talk about Portal being better than Half-Life 2. To be sure, they both have great gameplay, brilliantly-realised gameworlds, and excellent scripts, but one sustains it over maybe 15hrs, the other over just, what, 3 or 4?

Couldn't disagree with this more. Some stories need to be War and Peace, others need to be The Old Man and the Sea (arguably a novella, but that's being pedantic). There are novels of varying lengths (from 100 to 1000 pages, and more), feature films of varying lengths and games of varying lengths. Length should be dictated by the demands and potential of the central ideas or story, and the ability of the author to realise them. There's a lot of great, important 'long' novels, but there's a lot of great 'short' ones too, plus everything in between.

If anything, brevity is the single-most underappreciated trait in gaming. In the last year or two, several of my favourite games have been playable in one brief sitting. Nothing wrong with the epic game either - Ni No Kuni is currently consuming my time - but even otherwise great game developers have repeatedly shown their inability to understand concerns of pacing or repetition (Hideo Kojima, anyone?). How many otherwise spectacular games have run out of ideas long before the end credits roll, or buff up their running time with streams of endless enemies or fetch quests? Games like Half-Life 2 that sustain their extended length are, IMO, very much exceptions - rarer still when you enter time consuming genres like RPGs. Many games' single greatest crime is that they waste our time.

Developers are always working against time limits and with tight resources. Sometimes, making a short game full of imagination and new ideas is vastly preferable to a hundred hour epic filled with mindless sidequests and lazy storytelling. Portal's most admirable trait is that at no point does it feel like ideas are being recycled - it's a couple of hours of consistently inventive, exhilarating gameplay and frankly inspired writing. Crucially, it never wears out its welcome.

Kinski

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Couldn't disagree with this more. Some stories need to be War and Peace, others need to be The Old Man and the Sea (arguably a novella, but that's being pedantic). There are novels of varying lengths (from 100 to 1000 pages, and more), feature films of varying lengths and games of varying lengths. Length should be dictated by the demands and potential of the central ideas or story, and the ability of the author to realise them. There's a lot of great, important 'long' novels, but there's a lot of great 'short' ones too, plus everything in between.

Something I probably didn't make clear in my last post was that just as I think it "unfair" to appraise a novel in relation to a short story, I consider it equally unfair to dismiss a short story because it's not a cinderblock-sized tome.

But really what I was arguing for was for a greater range of formal descriptors for games. If we had a recognised category of "short games," then Portal could be argued to be one of the great short games, and HL2 one of the great "epic" (or whatever) ones.

You're quite right to say that certain "stories" (though games are never just about narrative, and are often barely concerned with narrative at all) are suited to short-tellings, some to long, but I would disagree that the distinction between a novel and novella is "pedantic." Measuring a prose work's length in terms of pages is a very imprecise and unreliable method, but for convenience sake, we'll say a novel is roughly between 180 and 1300 pages, give or take (and I guess most would fall between 240 and 400); any prose fiction that goes much over or under than, and really you're dealing with a different form. Same for films: a feature might be 70mins or four and a half hours, (and most would range from 90mins to 2 1/2hrs) but it won't be 10mins, or 60hrs.

So why shouldn't we think like this for games? I think everyone would agree that, even examining them just in terms of their respective lengths, Skyrim and Super Hexagon are profoundly different experiences. To me, they are both examples of different forms of games, and I wouldn't ask which is "better" than the other.

And so maybe the same applies to Portal, which is only a fraction of the length of HL2. But having said all that, I still think Portal falls short. IMO, it doesn't outstay its welcome because it doesn't have enough ambition, doesn't push its gameplay mechanics as far as it can, leaving lots of unrealised potential leftover. That's why I don't consider it one of the greatest games ever.

Potential-Monke

Darvich wrote: »

I've never played any of the Theme or Tycoon games. I keep saying I'll remedy it, but stupid developers keep releasing new games. Stupid new shiny graphics.

I'll recommend Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 so, as best as i can tell, there is no more!

Quite a few "classics" I've never played:

Any Sonic game
Any Zelda game
Any Metroid game
Nearly anything on PC pre-2007 (I do believe i've only played RCT1&2 and Age of Empires 1 & 2)
The Final Fantasy Series (tried 7, hated it, tried 12 & 3, hated them)

There are a lot more, but like Penn, i prefer more modern games as there are many of them which i haven't played either!

lazlo

Portal always struck me as a concept-game. A template for Portal 2. Which is a marvelous game, one that will take it's place in history as a classic.

krudler

Penn wrote: »

I don't know, I remember years ago a bunch of us got emulators and roms off a friend of ours, including Mario and Sonic games. One of my friends was constantly playing Mario, and I was constantly playing Sonic. Why? Nostalgia. I played Mario every now and again (and he played Sonic, to see what the other saw in the games) and it was certainly playable, but I wouldn't really have chosen to play it.

I just think that without the nostalgia element, I'd have zero urge to play Mario, Metroid or Zelda given the current (or even previous) gen games I could be playing instead, even if they aren't considered classics and Mario/Metroid/Zelda are.

So again, even though there are emulators and roms out there for these games and they're easily obtainable, I don't see any reason to play those classics rather than playing current gen games. And I don't doubt why people call them classics and I'm sure they are very playable and enjoyable, but I do think nostalgia also plays a big part in it. Someone who played those games as a kid and who now downloads the emulators and roms would get far more enjoyment playing the game now than someone who never played the game and is playing a now 20-25 year old game, when they could be playing current games.

Because a lot of them are simply better games than some of the stuff around today? Its all relative, I'd easily get as much enjoyment out of playing Mario World for the day as I would something current gen.

penev10

Older games can be off-putting because of their aesthetics, difficulty, control systems etc. You need to be able to look past these anachronisms to appreciate their quality but sometimes one of these factors is so discouraging it's a deal breaker.

For instance, I have no problem with 2D sprites (and actually love good pixel art) but give me 32-bit era polygons and usually I just can't play the game (despite being in awe of them in their day). A 3D environment requires a good draw-distance for starters and those insipid textures just kill the immersion factor for me.

Reekwind

Darvich wrote: »

I've never played any of the Theme or Tycoon games. I keep saying I'll remedy it, but stupid developers keep releasing new games. Stupid new shiny graphics.

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe (OpenTTD) is an open source version of Transport Tycoon available online. Highly recommended

Azza

Glad to see no one mentioning Street Fighter, everyone deserves to experience pyscho power at least one time during their life. Without that they will never be truly able to appreciate Tuesdays.

Magill

Im ashamed to admit it, but i've never played shadow of the colossus... im sorry.

Also, never played... starcraft or buldars gate.

Grimebox

Magill wrote: »

Im ashamed to admit it, but i've never played shadow of the colossus... im sorry.

I've played next to no console games since the N64

Magill

Grimebox wrote: »

I've played next to no console games since the N64

noob.

lazlo

Azza wrote: »

Glad to see no one mentioning Street Fighter, everyone deserves to experience pyscho power at least one time in during their life. Without that they will never be truly able to appreciate Tuesdays.

:cool:

CastorTroy

Magill wrote: »

Im ashamed to admit it, but i've never played shadow of the colossus... im sorry.

I've got that and Ico sitting on my PS3 hard drive.

circadian

I've played many classics. Super Metroid in a friends house all summer. Lemmings on the Amiga. Cannon Fodder and sensi soccer etc. Speedball 2 anyone? Gunstar Heroes was amazing!

One classic I never played.
Chrono Trigger. Must correct that.

Star Lord

Penn wrote: »

I don't know, I remember years ago a bunch of us got emulators and roms off a friend of ours, including Mario and Sonic games. One of my friends was constantly playing Mario, and I was constantly playing Sonic. Why? Nostalgia. I played Mario every now and again (and he played Sonic, to see what the other saw in the games) and it was certainly playable, but I wouldn't really have chosen to play it.

Grimebox wrote: »

While I agree to extent, Sonic VS Mario is a bad example. I haven't seen anyone in this thread calling Sonic a classic (I could be wrong).

My first console was a Sega one, my first console game was Sonic, and I loved them. But while I've tried playing the old Sonic games a few times, they hold no interest for me. Super Mario World, Super Metroid, and Link To The Past: All three of those I never actually owned, I'd just swapped/borrowed for a while back in the day, and enjoyed them immensely. When I go back to play them, particularly Super Metroid, it just leaves me wanting more. (Although, it also leaves me wanting the grip mechanic that Metroid Fusion/Zero Mission introduced!)

Penn

krudler wrote: »

Because a lot of them are simply better games than some of the stuff around today? Its all relative, I'd easily get as much enjoyment out of playing Mario World for the day as I would something current gen.

That's fair enough, and it is a subjective thing. I guess my point was basically, I don't know if Mario World is a good game. I don't know if Sleeping Dogs is a good game. But given a choice between the two (which is a realistic choice as like you said, emulators and roms can be downloaded in minutes, and I'm currently downloading Sleeping Dogs for free from PS+), I'm going to play Sleeping Dogs because I think current gen games (with good reviews) are more appealing to a lot of people than much older games (even if they are considered to be classics). Just my opinion based on my own preferences though.