Old games are hard

[elmuerte]

I've been played a bunch of Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior. I don't recall these games to be this difficult 15 years ago. Now I'm even struggling on normal difficulty. Often running around searching for health.

Maybe it's because I'm getting old, or maybe it's because all modern games are baby games.

 

 

[TychoCelchuuu]

I think it's a bit of both. Old games didn't give a shit if you lost sometimes. New games are deathly afraid of you ever entering a fail state that you don't instantly recover from.

[youmeyou]

It's also fairly easy to stumble into an unwinnable state in old games. Not picking up certain items early in Fate of Atlantis as one example. Running out of health pickups in Half-Life and trying in vain to get through an area with a few points of health remaining is another.

 

Actually Half-Life is a good example of an old game I admire but will never finish because the gameplay is just too grindingly difficult. I've had a save from somewhere in the train tunnels for ages now. I'd had enough of all the enemies aiming with 100% accuracy from across the room. Clearly all modern games are baby games in comparison.

[Twig]

Not picking up certain items early in Fate of Atlantis as one example.

Huh?

[tegan]

I am absolutely terrible at basically any pre-64 Mario game.

[Nappi]

Huh?

 

I second that huh.

 

I get youmeyou's point, though. I'm trying to remember if Leisure Suit Larry had delayed unwinnable states, because it would be interesting to see whether the remake "fixed" those somehow. I only remember the cheap deaths.  

 

Also, if the game were still as hard and frustrating as they were in the bad old days, I quite simply would not play them. I died a dozen or so times in a short but quite unforgiving boss battle in Rayman Legends today and I already started to feel frustrated. And that was nothing compared to a standard level in an old game.

 

I am absolutely terrible at basically any pre-64 Mario game.

 

My sister and I played got really far in The Lost Levels on SNES. I have no idea what kept us playing.

[eot]

It's also fairly easy to stumble into an unwinnable state in old games. Not picking up certain items early in Fate of Atlantis as one example. Running out of health pickups in Half-Life and trying in vain to get through an area with a few points of health remaining is another.

 

Actually Half-Life is a good example of an old game I admire but will never finish because the gameplay is just too grindingly difficult. I've had a save from somewhere in the train tunnels for ages now. I'd had enough of all the enemies aiming with 100% accuracy from across the room. Clearly all modern games are baby games in comparison.

That's surprising to me, I think a lot of modern games are harder than Half-Life, but I guess it depends on how you play them. The first time I played it I definitely saved before and after every encounter and often replayed them if I think I took too much damage. I imagine people don't have the patience for that today.

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm pretty sure there are no unwinnable states in Fate of Atlantis whatsoever. Are you thinking of Last Crusade?

[Twig]

I've been playing Electronic Super Joy. It's one of those Fucking Hard platformers. It's fucking hard.

[youmeyou]

If I remember correctly in Fate of Atlantis, if you didn't pick up something in the library when you first went through it, you couldn't solve a puzzle when you returned to it. But it could also have been just 'cus I was a stupid kid.

[Twig]

I dunno. I've played that game a million times and never reached an unwinnable state. Granted, I may just know what I need to pick up and when I need to pick it up, but I'm pretty sure everything you need later in the game is accessible later in the game.

[Ucantalas]

Personally, at least some of it feels like I dealt with it as a kid because I didn't have much to play.

For the longest time, the only games I had for my NES were Super Mario Bros, Friday the 13th, and Ghostbusters. (Two of those are known for being almost impossible to beat...) I didn't really have much of a choice: If I wasn't doing well, it was either keep playing or go do something else. So I forced myself to continue because often I had nothing else to do. 

Now I can switch between 20 different games on different consoles, not to mention all the free game apps and Flash games online... I have access to a near limitless amount of choices, so if I start getting frustrated, I can just... leave. I couldn't really do that as a kid, so I wonder if that plays into my perceptions of how difficult games were. 

[elmuerte]

But most of the good old games are not frustrating, they are simply quite difficult overall. Modern games are quite often frustrating due to meat circus segments. Maybe these meat circuses exist because they are most of the time a baby game, until that point.

[Tanukitsune]

Difficulty is such a strange subject, many games were difficult back in the day because... there weren't well made. I don't care what people will say, the random spawning hawk in Shadow Warriors is BS. People weren't sure of what they were doing, they were challenging not by choice, but by bad design, as in bad level design, bad enemy patterns, etc, etc... There is a reason a certain angry nerds likes to shout about how badly made old games were. 

 

The thing is, many of the challenging but fair games did baby us a bit, but it wasn't as obvious, Mega Man would introduce a new element to the game in a more safer environment before truly testing your skills with it. Like the "blinking" platforms, sure they are hard, but the first time you see them, there is a floor under you to practice a little. World 1-1 is a very subtle tutorial in its own way since it does the same thing I just explained.

 

But if there is one thing I hate about older FPS games is their level design, I would find every secret in the level, but not the exit and then I'd get frustrated or either cheat or quit.

 

As games get longer and longer, and have actual plots, they have to be "baby" games. How many of you would play a 50 hour game if it had limited lives or continues and you died in one hit? 

 

If a game lets you learn from your mistakes, it's tough but fair in my book. If it's something where you can't learn from your mistakes because the game doesn't tell you you've made one (un-winnable situations) or because there is no logic, pattern or strategy to learn, it's probably not that well made.

 

Not to mention that challenge is subjective, a game can claim Demon's Souls is easy because despite dying a hundred times, the game let's them continue... and he'd be right in his own way. What I said is my personal interpretation of a truly difficult game.

 

I can't remember having meat circus situations in games lately, just stupid padding with turret sections and escort missions and that sort of broken and forced gameplay. The closest thing would be the "lazy lockdown arena" which is more of a "meat grinder", because you're forced to fighting until the boredom and tediousness makes you mess up.

[elmuerte]

You're wrong on some points Tan.

 

Random spawning hawk in Shadow Warrior?! Is this the new one? Today I finally finished the original Shadow Warrior (it was rather short, only 2 episodes?) I tried hard to find all the secrets...but I bare got close to 60%, seriously where are they?

Shadow Warrior does have quite a bunch of instant death elements (usually falling to your death because you failed a jump). But the main difficulty is in the fact that the enemies damage you a lot, and you don't regenerate. (and no checkpoints).

 

Ok, so pointing out where Tan is wrong. First of, Megaman is really a one off in explaining the gameplay. It does it almost perfectly, hardly any other game from the same erra comes close. The big difference between old games and newer games is that old games presented pretty much all the gameplay within the first few scenes. Modern games often introduce new gameplay elements right before boss battles. Little time for training. Zelda and Final Fantasy have always been shit like this.

 

Old FPS games mostly had level creation, hardly level design. I think level design didn't start until Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. At that point people started working out flows through the levels. Very abstract levels, and once the flow was good they started dressing up the levels. A lot of polish went into making great movement flows through the world. The same amount of polish evolved into single player worlds. With the results, boring ass levels where everything is significant. There's no searching or exploring anymore in the modern games.

 

As for length of games. Games didn't get longer. Some games are long, maybe 20 hours. Most linear FPS games barely touch 10 hours. But this is often the correct length. The perfect length of a game is just before you had enough of it, so you're left with wanting for more. But if you polish enough the game becomes bland.

 

I haven't played Deamon Souls, but what I've heard from it, it doesn't shy away from punishing people from making mistakes. How does it let you continue? There's no wall?

 

I've hit meat circuses quite often. In fact, I have a meat circus in Max Payne 3, I haven't returned yet to try to get past the airport baggage thingy. Talking about unfair instant kills. No time to learn, not, just die and try again and again and again. There are way way too many quick fail situations in games and not having an idea what to do to get past it.

[Tanukitsune]

Oh, I forgot got my Shadow Warriors mixed up? One is the European name for Ninja Gaiden and has the cheap hawks and the other one is the one is the FPS game?

 

I'm sorry, but introducing new elements in the final segments isn't new, the Dragon boss in Mega Man 2, how am I supposed to be prepared for fighting a boss while the level scrolls and I can fall to my death? And the bad games did it all the time.

 

I'm no expect in level design, I practically skipped from Doom-like games to Half-Life, but in the Doom era? Many of the Doom clones had TERRIBLE levels that might have been creative in looks and design, but in flow and figuring out where to go? Ick...

 

And.. Umm.. No... Games ARE getting longer, early JRPGs rarely were over 10 hours long, normal games were rarely over 2 hours longs, shooters were about 3 hours long. And I'm talking really early games. 

 

Yeah, Demon Souls punishes you, but you can always play it safe and grind, you only lose the unspent XP if you die before recovering it.

 

Isn't a "meat circus" situation a bad design choice more than anything? They either think we can handle it or don't realize how broken the situation they are creating is.

[elmuerte]

For me "meat circus" was failing to clear the flooding of the meat circus 1000 times because I wasn't able to perform the whole segment perfectly. It's hitting the wall, hard.

 

I don't agree games have gotten longer. Sure, speed running might get you to complete a lot of games within 10 hours. And there's still games that take a shit load of hours to complete. Daggerfall takes a long time to complete. Stonekeep really takes more than 10 hours to finish. Duke Nukem 3D, first time, in 10 hours, really difficult. Little Big Adventure? I know the game by heart and it takes me 6+ hours to speedrun. A lot of old games are closer to 20 hours than 10 when you play it for the firs time. And with the difficulty with those games it takes even more time to complete.

[Twig]

Just piping in to brag again about how I don't find the Meat Circus all that difficult.

 

Wokka wokka!

[elmuerte]

That's because you played it after it was fixed

[Twig]

Not true.

(I won't for a second pretend it wasn't bad design, though.)

[Tanukitsune]

I was more of a console gamer as a kid, so I wouldn't know if cRPGs were that long, but still less than 20 hours is still shorter than a modern game today. Gamers today would throw a hissy fit if their RPGs weren't at least 60-80 hours long minimum. And like you just said, a 10 hour game became a 20 hour game because it was harder, but now a 20 hour game is 20 hours plus maybe a few more if you died and 40 more hours if you're a cheevo fanatic or do sidequests.

[Sno]

PC RPG's were definitely always really, really long slogs.

Those Bethesda games didn't get bigger as the years went on, they got smaller.

[feelthedarkness]

A few of my all time favorite games have been Ultimas, but those early/mid ones could be punishing. Ultima 5 stands out in particular. I could never get it going for more than a little while because it was so hard to get money, then your food ran out right away, and I couldn't get an injured team back on its feet. I remember reading a thing that suggest you serial remake the party, gathering the default food onto one character. 

[Tanukitsune]

Even in the disquette days? Sure a CD-Rom could fit a 20+ hour game, but how much content could you fit into a disquette?

[TychoCelchuuu]

Even in the disquette days? Sure a CD-Rom could fit a 20+ hour game, but how much content could you fit into a disquette?

Quite a bit.