Games aging

I think it's a problem on your end buddy

Typically the only thing in a game that ages poorly is the graphics, AKA the least important part of a game. Anything else and it was probably already shit when it came out.

Kys nigger

...

A game ages insofar as it's "fun" was from novelty of mechanics or technology. Technology marches forward, and novelty works only by being…well, novel.

This is why you see so many early 3d games having aged like absolute ass. They were entirely banking on being "cutting edge", and when that edge is gone and they look hideous, there is not enough of a well designed game underneath.

This is also why some graphic styles don't age. They are stylized, which means the appeal is iconic, rather than realistic. It doesn't age past things like raw fidelity because it was never based around that in the first place. Think Super Metroid. It still is very pretty and aesthetically appealing. The SNES had this going for it big time with a lot of it's classic titles.

But play a game like morrowind. I think it's probably the best example of a game in which nearly everything about it has aged poorly, and yet the overall game is still tremendously entertaining and well made. My friend recently visited and, while relaxing for the evening, saw morrowind and started it up (he never had got to play it growing up and I had talked the game up enough). It was still engrossing and extremely fun. Even though it's even uglier than I remember and the combat was clunky as all shit.

Yes. Some are still good even today, others bad in comparison to games that did things better. DMC1 to DMC3 is a good example.

The reason Doom is still so revered and loved is because it made FPS into what we know of as FPS. Every FPS since Doom has basically copied it as the formula was already perfected. Its controls are simple, its mechanics tight, the rules fair. Doom has everything you need in an FPS.

Best succinct explanation I have ever seen to the controversial and elusive concept of a game 'ageing'.

Congratulations, OP, you get it.
Now you get progressively more and more irritated every time someone talks about a game "aging", especially when the things they complain about are the same flaws that the game has always had and you've always seen.

If a games has good story, music and characters it never ages. Those last forever.

Gameplay can age though. Take Xenogears: everything about that game is awesome except the random battles. Fucking tower of Babel.

Sad what happened to Bethesda. Fucking normalfags and casuals destroy everything. Nice to see people still pick it up.

Except there were improvements to be made and many FPS games did end up making them. Doom is a great game but Holla Forums has serious issues about accepting the objective improvments newer games have made just because they aren't innovative. No fucking shit a game isn't as innovative as the literal foundation of a genre, but that doesn't mean it's not good or even objectively better.

As big example is actual mouselook with 360 degrees of aiming.

Depends on one thing: whether the genre is stagnant or gradually improving. Games' "aging" means its unfavorable comparison to newer titles, that's all.

*Game's

It was shit to begin with. Or your tastes changed. Or it's just the type of game that isn't fun the second time around. Right now I'm playing through Morrowind, CK 2, and Wizardry 6. That's a game from 2002, 2012, and 1990. All good for different reasons. Except CK 2 is shit.

Yeah games age as standards improve/change
Back in 90s nobody gave a shit about your games running at single digit framerate so you had PC driving games made to run like shit and console games which were practically slideshows.

Look at Samsho 3's animations compared to 4-6's. 4-6 look janky/choppy af.

I think it depends on how you define "aging". It's true that there are commonly accepted conventions now that didn't exist years back. Some things were easier to tolerate then because you had no idea there could be better. However, I don't think a game can go from good to bad through aging. If there was anything worthwhile about the game in the first place, those things would still be worthwhile years later. Startropics is clunky as hell in some ways and contains many bullshit traps, but it's still a very fun and charming game at the end of the day.

Megaman Legends 2 could be easily released today with just some minor adjustments to controls and some AA and no one would think it was a PS1 game.

Let's be friends.

The models are still low-poly and the textures low-res, and an increased resolution with AA would only make it more obvious. The textures themselves are largely fine, but the models would need some smoothing out.

Yes but it's often not an issue. Games made during the transition from 2D to 3D are have been hit the worst. Sometimes early examples of genres feel like shit because the conventions for things like UI had not been established and they are a dick to actually play.

Games don't really age, so much as you become accustomed to different things. Not just better graphics, but smoother controls and certain game design features that don't necessarily make games easier, but definitely improve the user's experience.

Nothing wrong with either of those when they perfectly fit the overall aesthetic, and they absolutely do in that case. Low poly + high res textures looks like ass, as does high poly + low res textures.

That's called freelook user.

I was recently surprised to see how good Simpsons Hit and Run looks for a game that's 14 years old. I suppose it got very lucky given the source material.

Man I fucking loved that game.

Depends in the mindset. Some games I have a hard time getting into if the graphics are very primitive. But if the game is fun, I can look past the graphics to play it.

Anything has diminishing returns if you expose yourself to it enough. Even "timeless" music. A Tom Waits song can be relevant for ages, but not to someone who's listened to it hundreds of times.
With some of our favorite games, we obsess over them, we know every last corner of them and how to overcome every obstacle effortlessly. Wiith that, there's no more mystery. No more real unraveling. Just efficiency.

OP confirmed a fag.

I don't understand this. Do graphics affect people this much? I play a lot of games with horrendous graphics and never really care. I know you said you look past it if it's fun but you also said, you "find it hard". I just don't get what's so hard about it.

Except he said
I think MML2 looks great as it is, but to say no one would believe it was a ps1 game if it had improved controls and some AA is just wrong.

You're getting autistic about it and taking no one literally The obvious intent behind the statement was that it would pass for being a modern high quality, low-poly game, like Devil Daggers.

Looking like a game trying to pass as a game from the nineties is barely a step above looking like a ps1 game. You might as well say that increasing the view area in Super Metroid would make everyone think it was an indie game emulating the 16-bit look. There's hardly a point being made. Any old game is going to look like a new game emulating old games if you add some modern elements to them.

Define "trying to pass", because the implication here is that you either go full AAA bullshit or you're merely pretending, and you're dead wrong on that since AAA shit looks like ass a couple years down the line, while low poly/pixelshit can look both fantastic and timeless as long as it has great art backing it up.
What?
Again, this goes back to your "you either go full AAA bullshit or you're merely pretending spiel", which says more about you and your shit taste than about the games you're criticizing.

Like some anons said, if a game was good, it is still good.
If a game relied on novelty or gimmicks, then it can age like fucking shit because it is a shit game. Exceptions for Ape Scape, still a good game even if it relies on gimmicks

We can have as an example Severance the edge of darkness as a great game even today, it is a bit clunky when jumping or dodging but the gameplay and level design are still great even today. A shame that the only way to play it now is torrenting the dead GoG version, good luck finding it luckily I have a copy myself but it won't run on anything above windows XP

Now, for an example of games that aged like shit we could say Zelda Ocarina of Time were the controls are so clunky that is borderline frustrating to play now.

tl;dr: Actual good games are still good games even if you play it now. If you enjoyed something when you were a kid and found it horrible now, it's because the game is awful but you did not notice back then because of a gimmick/novelty or shit taste.

Everybody hates having to change to a different system instead of doing it the way they're familiar with, every game that uses a different method of control will not be received well from people used to the modern conventional standard aka everyone else uses it. Graphics age though, and simplicity up to a point.

Aging well is all about making sure the mechanics are solid. Shit like bad cameras, sticky controls, etc. can ruin a game. I tried replaying some old DOS games I found hidden away and some of them really did not age well. SimCity is garbage, and Prince of Persia made me want to fucking kill myself because it plays like shit. It was like a completely unfun Blackthorne. But other games from that time period, like Mega Man 2, Legend of the Red Dragon, and River City Ransom, all hold up pretty well.

The 3DS version plays a lot better, thankfully. Hell even the Gamecube one does… good luck finding it though.

The past decade or so I've had the most fun I've ever had with vidya in mastering old games, especially arcade.

But games do not "age". If you claim that a game has "aged poorly", all you as saying is that you were too ignorant to realize its flaws originally.

Or use Nintendont on a soft modded wii

This is true, they cut out a good deal of animation frames between SS3 and 4 in order to fit more shit into the game.
Samurai Shodown 3 has Garou and SF3 tier of animations, while in SS4 and 5 they are around regular KOF level, i.e. not very fluid.

Go play original Leynos and then Valken, and tell me that one of them isn't clunky ass piece of shit and another isn't top-tier action game despite its age.

This guy

Nailed it. Nothing really changes on a fundamental level in this world except you. Average games don't suddenly become shit–you're just exposed to something better and have your tastes elevated. It's why the more people experience, the more picky and jaded they get.

Lots of gameplay mechanics that were acceptable back in the day start to feel like shit now

Great for music
Awful for sound effects

This right here. It's the player that changes, but that's not necessarily bad.
Your taste grows and you get to see new things and compare previous ones to them.

For instance, like that other user said, you see a game that prides itself on how realistic it's graphics are and at the time they probably were. But you compare it with something you played recently, and it looks worse.
Similarly, you play a game with a certain gameplay mechanic and later on find a newer game that does the same thing but better and no matter how good the first one was, it's gonna look worse.

This isn't always the case, but it happens. For instance:
Deus Ex does the XP part very, very well. You're rewarded for accomplishing goals and exploring secrets, not for taking down people. You can indeed play however you want as long as it gets the job done.
Deus Ex 2 doesn't have XP, so it was worse but the augmentations were done in a better way. A bit more streamlined but they were more usefull mostly and some had auto-use when turned on.
Deus Ex HR however tries to do the XP detail but fails horribly because their rewards favour a certain aproach to the game, gating how you play it and their augmentations were actually worse.

So you have Deus Ex, then Deus Ex 2 comes along and makes augmentations and graphics in the first one feel old because it does them better, then you have DXHR come along and make the graphics of the previous too seem neat in comparison, the XP of the first better and more original and the augmentations of the second more practical and unique.
It's fun.

games progressively get better, so it gets harder to deal with the flaws of old games
there's a handful of classic titles that are "timeless" but besides that the average new game is generally more enjoyable than the average retro game

Luckily the developers fixed that problem in MD. Now we can pay for upgrades! Lucky us! Am i right?!

Deus Ex also always looked like shit even when it came out, everyone agreed it was fucking ugly and the graphics were shit.

I don't think they age. Look at this video, tell me if this is not amazing.

I think that there are a ton of nu-males who are making stupid games now, or people who don't love games but they see that there's money in it. With the internet they can see this and take advantage of this, therefore there's a lot of crap.

Forgot to say, I completed this game for the first time a few weeks ago. So fucking amazing that I had to do it again. Sorry for the low quality, but I just wanna say that it's really amazing for decade old games to be better than most new games. It shows that games back then could be as good as they are now with effort, of course.

Games do not age, but they can become dated if they use mechanics or graphics characteristic of a particular time.

Faggots, shit like Gimmick and Shatterhand are still great games, hell I have fun even with simpler games like Pitfall 2 and Lode Runner.