Re: Old entertainments (Re: Free Castle Break on Steam!)

On Wed, 16 Oct 2024 02:14:42 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Sure, there were some good games. I'm particularly fond of titles like
"Doom", or original "Civilization", or "Full Throttle", for instance.
But there were so many _awful_ titles back then, and even a lot of
what we remember as "good" games don't hold a candle to the modern
game experiences. I _loved_ "Pool of Radiance" when it was new... but
even if you were to upgrade the visuals of that game to modern
standards, the _gameplay_ and controls would make it waaaay too
tedious to play today.

That's me with Dune 2 game after being spoiled by newer RTS games like
C&C, SC, WC, AOE, etc.

I love my obscenely-large collection of old-timey video-games... but
damn if most of them just aren't worth playing even for a few moments.

And even though they are playable, I suck at them! :(

Of course, with old-timey games, you're EXPECTED to suck at them.
Originating from arcades, most video games were -for the longest time-
extremely antagonistic towards the player. You weren't expected to
win; rather, you were expected to lose in order to milk you for more
quarters (or simply disguise how little game there actually was). It
took a long time before developers started thinking, "Say, what if the
idea was to let players actually see the WHOLE game instead of getting
repeatedl stuck on level three?"

I know there are some die-hard purists who see this shift as a bad
thing -- 'git gud, scrub!'-- but overall I prefer the 'modern'*
method. Aside from making for a better overall experience, it forced
developers to expand their game design. When you expect that most
players won't see more than three or four levels, you can get away
with only one mechanic, but once the expectation was that you'd get
through the whole game, developers had to start mixing things up and
adding variety to keep gamers from getting bored. ;-)













* 'modern' in the sense it's still the common theme today; the
change-over happened in the 90s ;-)