Topic: Retro games - just as fun as modern games

[Ian Sane]

Mop's Doom example bring up a good point.  One thing that can be frustrating about modern game design is when they introduce modern ideas into old game series and end up transforming them into something that lacks the whole appeal of the series in the first place.  At that point the series more or less just becomes a name with familiar characters but is has no real connection to a style of gameplay.  A good example is Mega Man who seemed pretty lost and irrelevant until Capcom went the retro route with Mega Man 9.  I'm not saying the retro route was completely necessary but the series had changes so much that "Mega Man" had just become a name.  It had no real connection to any sort of gameplay.  With Mega Man 9 they got back on track.

I'm not saying that sequels should be cookie cutter.  You can innovate and move a series forward while still maintaining the same basic core gameplay.  In fact if you really analyze a game there are usually only a few key components that makes the series what it is.  And there have been examples like Super Mario 64 or Resident Evil 4 where they went in a very different and modern direction but the results were fantastic.  Though I do like how Mario now co-exists in both 3D and 2D games.

Doom is about non-stop visceral first-person shooting action.  Keep the game true to that basic core definition and you'll make a good Doom sequel.

[Morari]

DooM is not about setting and atmosphere. If they wanted that, they should have created a new IP instead of turning DooM into something it was never meant to be. Imagine if BioShock were actually DooM 4...

I don't think you properly recall playing Doom back in 1993. It wasn't all just hordes of monsters being mowed down... in fact, that memory mostly comes from Doom II. The first game had plenty of moments that were pretty scary for the time period. It was a very natural and sensible choice to make Doom 3 a horror title. The problem was that they relied too much on the original games' mechanics, such as hiding monsters in purposeless closets and right behind doors for cheap scares.

It sounds like what you wanted was Serious Sam with imps and cyber-demons. You can't expect a game's sequel to be pitch perfect when there's a ten year gap between entries. Everyone else wanted Doom 3 to be what it was in the leaked alpha... a scary-as-**** FPS. I feel that the game only fell short of that goal due to lazy level design throughout later portions of the title. Had they stayed true to the atmosphere that they created during the initial parts of the game, it would have been one of the most memorable titles ever.

[Mop it up]

Eh, I think if it were meant to be a horror game, the stage design, graphics, and music would have all been a lot different. It'd have been more like Resident Evil in first-person. Just my belief, though.

[Pandareus]

As far as I'm concerned, good design is timeless. Mario and Mega Man games are still fun to play today because they were well-designed. Sure, they were difficult, but if you died, it was your own fault. You had all the tools needed at your disposal to finish the game.
 
I guess you could say they didn't contain "BS difficulty".
 
Compare that to Rayman on PSOne, which I recently tried to play for the first time. Beautiful, beautiful game, much better looking than either Mario or Mega Man. And yet, if you were to tell me it is one of your favorite games, I'd have to assume you're saying that because of nostalgia. The game doesn't have, and never had, good design.
 
It's just so difficult for all the wrong reasons. Like, they designed the levels just to frustrate you, or made sure Rayman's abilities would be nearly useless in them. He's really slow, they make the enemies fast. It's a pain to attack while jumping, they put flying enemies in there. Tiny platforms? Let's put enemies so small your attacks can't touch them on there. You can't spam your attack since you gotta wait for your fist to come back to you? Let's make sure we have enemies that take a dozen hits to kill in there.

I can go back to Mario and Mega Man, no problem. Rayman, which is more recent and more beautiful? Eff that game.
 
As for the topic; are retro games as fun as modern games? If they were well designed? Absolutely. Sure, today's games are better-looking and everything, but there are a tons of games out there that I find badly designed, and no matter how beautiful they are, or how vast their worlds are, I think the classics compare favorably to them and are more worth sinking time into.
 
And this is not me putting Mario up against shovelware, either, but against well-regarded games such as Assassin's Creed 2 and Kingdom Hearts, though I don't know if I want to get into that.
 
If you want to, you can probably look for my Kingdom Hearts rant here on this forum.

[NWR_insanolord]

As far as I'm concerned, good design is timeless.

This right here is the truth. There are great games in every era, and talented developers are able to get fantastic results no matter what technology they're working with.