I tried playing Harvest Moon on the SNES today and having played Stardew Valley for hours, I thought I’d try and see how tolerable the original Harvest Moon was in comparison. I know and understand it is unfair because there’s a 20 year gap between Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, while also discrediting Harvest Moon’s later entries since there’s more than one.
Harvest Moon to me is a bit hard to revisit. Having to get used to only carrying two tools at the same time, your farm doesn’t seem as big, you don’t have a way to know that you’re tired as readily, you just have to watch for the signs and the village you visit doesn’t seem as characteristic. It’s a basic farming sim, it has to start somewhere.
But Stardew Valley does so many things that it is easier to revisit.
OK, maybe a slight twist, but Left 4 Dead absolutely sucks vs. Left 4 Dead 2. Want L4D? Fine. Play it inside L4D2 with better guns and zombies.
There’s something different between the two that I can’t put my finger on. Like everything feels a lot more solid?
I personally have a lot more memories of L4D and it’s cast of characters over L4D2.
Oof, can not agree. I found the first one being much easier to palate, not having any of those sections where you have to collect a bunch of items into another item. Like fueling the car in the mall. Absolutely frustrating trash.
Super Mario Bros 3 after playing the all stars version.
Probably nostalgia, but I prefer the original graphics…
The All-Stars versions of all the NES classic mario games do it for me better than the originals.
I was going to comment harvest moon after reading the title!
A lot of the older games for me. They’re just a lot harder. Like maybe they expect you to be willing to replay an area or a level over and over, getting a little farther each time until you beat it and I just don’t have the stamina for that anymore, or the time.
Newer games baby you, they increase the difficultly perfectly along side your ability growth. They might even make a level easier if you’ve failed twice. Older games don’t care if you’re having fun as much. There was less competition (fewer game choices) and more of a “gamers like this. If you don’t like it, you’re not a gamer” attitude, and now games want to attract everyone.
I have become such a baby about games. I want to have fun the whole time! I can’t handle failing over and over. I’d rather just read a book.
Same, this is how I got frustrated by Hades. I no longer have endless time to sink into a game to get good.
The “story” of Hades is that the guy you control gets better over time and finally escapes. How else can you convey it? With text (cardinal sin)?
I don’t think anyone is saying that the story of Hades isn’t portrayed well with the rougelike style, but it’s totally ok to say “I don’t have time to play a game that’s designed such that you fail dozens of times before you win”
Dark Souls 1. Especially on PC it’s almost unplayable due to bad porting and DS3 and Elden Ring have refined the formula so much, it’s insane. The remaster is ok though, so I don’t know if that counts.
The original is rough yes, but I don’t know anyone that would play it over the Remaster these days. And the remaster is fine as far as playability goes. However, it’s still a candidate for this thread simply because the DS1 bosses will feel very anticlimactic for anyone who has played DS3/ER/Bloodborne/Sekiro.
I kind of prefer DS1 with DSFix to the Remaster, but I might be weird. I just think it nails the atmosphere better somehow.
I have set up the original Fallout (fully modded and running through Fallout 1n2), but it’s pretty hard to get into. Not because of the graphics, which are actually fine, but just because the mechanics are quite intricate and I think my ability to learn new gameplay mechanics is declining as I enter my mid-30s (I’ve only played Fallout starting with Fallout 3). I’m going to keep trying to get into it!
No worries bud, the mechanics for 1 and 2 has always been shit. People sucked it up and played anyway because the writing was so damn good. If you can’t get into the game because the mechanics or controls are bad thats the games fault not yours.
I have been trying to replay both for years and everytime I give up after a few hours because the experience is just painful.
As someone who played Fallout 2 as a teen it’s not your age, the first 2 have a lot of little things that end up having a big effect, and they are difficult. They do not pull their punches and will happily smack you around.
I restarted Fallout 2 many times when I was first playing it trying to figure out a build I liked.
The classic Fallouts do have some quirks, but I hope you get through them and can get into it. They are absolutely amazing games, well worth your time.
I can’t even leave the starting room of the original System Shock. So glad the remake updated the controls.
I did manage to finish System Shock 2, but the “puzzles” are just RNG, so I’m hoping the remaster changes that and maybe even fixes the ending.
I just played the original System Shock and System Shock 2. Incredible games.
I saw the trailer for the remake for the first one and wanted one last memory before I get my mind blown.
The remake for the first game is so actuate to the original, you can use the old walkthough guides to beat it.
You could tell the ending was cut short for time with SS2. It would be nice if they took some creative liberties to bring it closer to what it was originally suppose to be.
This is ironic because I loved Prey but couldn’t finish SS2’s tutorial!
I can’t see myself going back to the original Half-Life after playing Black Mesa. The changes to Xen alone are massive improvements.
Just started a playthrough of Black Mesa the other week after having played HL1 like fuck idk, 18 years ago? Barely remember it, but going through the levels I’m like “Oh yeah I remember this part, with the mine cart/train thingies”
Looked at screenshots of HL1 the other day and laughed that I will never play it ever again
007 games. But the N64 soundtrack was great.
Esp given 007 on N64 varied so widely.
Idk how Goldeneye was ever playable yet it damn well was and the best!
Mount and Blade. Warband is just the better version all around. It works in reverse too cause Warband is better than Bannerlord.
Add Floris and it’s basically the only game in that sphere worth playing at all!
Prophecy of Pendor is legendary. I might get bannerlord if they release a Pendor mod for it.
The Battlefield franchise. I went back and played 1942, and disregarding the graphics, omg it’s so slow and clunky. It was the shit for the day, but man…compared to 2042 it’s super-dated.
Starcraft! I really think Starcraft Brood War is a better, more balanced game. The quality of life changes in Starcraft 2 make it so hard to go back to playing Brood War. I don’t know if I can adjust back to only selecting a lot amount of units or needing to click on each building to build stuff or not having smart-casting and good pathing.
I tried, but I just can’t go back and play Oblivion after playing Skyrim with all the quality of life mods. I’m waiting on the Skyblivion release to revisit it.
Oblivion’s graphics did not age well, but just about everything else about it was better than Skyrim.
Better quest lines, better setting, better plot (probably, I never really get super far into the main quest of these games)…
I agree, but going back to Morrowind is incredibly easy oddly. Oblivion was on the path to Skyrim, but Morrowind is in a totally different position.
The loading screens omg
I put hundreds of hours into that game and loved all 15 of them I spent actually playing
I managed to play and enjoy Oblivion after Skyrim, but found a brick wall when trying Morrowind.
I could and i did. It was great. Sorry you couldn’t find a similar feeling.
Ps: nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh
I actually did. After waiting 10 years for a new TES game after Skyrim, I got bored and installed Morrowblivion. Played that all the way through. Then I played Oblivion with some visual mods. It was still quite fun, though I didn’t do a full play through. If I hadn’t already done a full play through, then Oblivion would still be an awesome game after playing Skyrim.
I’d say TES as well, but with Oblivion > Morrowind. I had trouble getting used to it being more toward the RPG side than Action. But it’s rewarding if you see it through.
I couldn’t ever get into oblivion since skyrim was my first Bethesda game and a lot of oblivion felt like (to me) slightly janky skyrim. I was able to get into morroeind though because it was just so diffrent.
And I’m from the other end where I came from Morrowind and couldn’t get into Oblivion because it was so generic compared to the earlier game. Monsters leveling to the character made it so safe.
I remember when the monster that was spawning everywhere changed type I knew I had leveled up.
Halo MCC version over the original.
I saw Halo running on a classic Xbox and tried to play with the clunky Xbox controller. Couldn’t do it. Everything looked so low res and blurry.
Goldeneye. Revolutionized the FPS genre at the time. Nigh unplayable now. Tried recently using both NSO and on an original N64, it just hasn’t aged well when compared to something modern.
Perfect Dark, on the other hand, totally still holds up today in my opinion, and there’s a decompilation project that works great on PC and Steam Deck.
Perfect dark holds up even better if you use two n64 controllers. Basically modern FPS style controls! I think Golden Eye had the same option?
I tried that with a friend once and we were confused about the purpose. Now it makes sense!
I love love love perfect dark. But it’s uhhh it does not hold up. The campaign starts fairly strong and craters pretty quick. It really feels like they just weren’t able to really… Finish the game when it came out.
Also, like GoldenEye, a huge component of Perfect Dark was multiplayer.
Yeah, I felt that way about GoldenEye after getting used to PD. GoldenEye was one of the GOATs in its day, but that day passed pretty quickly. Halo then further improved on the controls and CoD improved on the multiplayer mechanics.
When that GoldenEye for PC project released some years ago, I was excited to download and install it (because PC port meant it would get PC controls, which have always been superior to console controls, even after Halo fixed them) but I think I only played one game before remembering that you start with nothing and have to find guns and the port was more crowded than the 2-4 player games back in the day where you could at least spawn away from the action and get a chance to arm up before others made their way to where you were.
With the N64, it helps if you can hook it up to a TV from around that era too. Games like Goldeneye look terrible on a modern LCD. I had that experience myself - “Man, I know I’m used to modern games now, but I don’t remember these games looking this shitty”. Then I dragged out my old CRT and hooked it up, and instantly it was “Now this is how I remember these games looking like”.
I played Goldeneye at an arcade recently that had an N64 set up and actually had a great time. But people who hadn’t grown up with it and tried to join in found it pretty frustrating. So I can see that going either way tbh.
Yeah it already had inferior controls at the time if you were familiar with FPS gaming on computers. But it was still a ton of fun and when I went back to it some years ago I fell back into the n64 controller muscle memory no problem
The key is to change the layout, then the only problem is really replacing a mouse with the joystick.
Yeah you can use two controllers to mimic the more modern twin stick ones that have become standard, but I don’t think too many people figured that out back then. Still though, controller will never be as good as mouse + keyboard for FPS games.
Plug in a second controller and switch the control option to 2.4.
Ah yes, “co-op mode”
You can actually play it with modern controls on NSO if you do a fair amount of tweaking. Makes it MUCH better.
I played a port to the modern system recently. WASD, mouse… Was rather fun.
No, I don’t believe it was this. It looked exactly like an original. Just the input layout was more modern.
Play the xbla version via Xenia with mouse support and you’ll love it more than you ever did.
I recently finished playing Breath of the Wild and declared it as one of my favorite games ever played. I just started Tears of the Kingdom, and it feels like I may not go back to BOTW, which is crazy that I could consider it one the best experiences ever, and also feel like I may never play it again so shortly after beating it. TotK seems to have everything in BotW and more, with quality of life changes on top of it all.
Totk is… more of an expansion/dlc than a sequel. Even the intro has near identical beats. The map is literally re used.
Fun game still.
