Games that you loved back in the day but will never ever play again

[Blutwurstritter]

Heroes of Might and Magic 1, I loved that game as kid. But it lost its appeal once HoMM2 and HoMM3 were out. I started it again a while a go, for nostalgic reasons, but put it down after a few turns; the sequels have just too many improvements. Also The Chaos Engine on Amiga. I played that game as kid with my brother all the time. But I don't think I will ever touch it again, unless I somehow manage to get the same authentic setup from back then, with Joysticks, Amiga and CRT monitor. Then there's Total Annihilation, whose place was taken by Supreme Commander. I replayed the SupCom and Forged Alliance campaigns at least 2 or 3 times and never felt the urge to return to TA.

 

[Ezekiel]

I don't believe in the idea of games ageing. I'd rather people took responsibility for their bad tastes instead of blaming the times. Flaws don't appear with time. I don't know why someone can't judge a game on its own merits instead of comparing it to other, sometimes newer ones. Things improve, sure, but games are also being simplified in negative ways, like level design and platforming (which is often automated now), and many of them are now getting bogged down by upgrade systems, collectibles, crafting, ADS/OTS views, excessive cutscenes, forced walking, open worlds and more.

Speaking of Tomb Raider and old games, I started playing the first generation Tomb Raiders this year. Of those, I've only beaten Tomb Raider II, which I found okay. I also beat Resident Evil the remake for the first time last year and didn't mind the tank controls and fixed camera angles. On the other hand, I beat Max Payne 1 last year and found it mediocre. But I wouldn't have liked it even in 2001. It's the only one in the series I will never replay.

To answer the question, there are lots and lots of games I will never ever play again. Not necessarily because they're bad, but because I got my fill of them and life is too short.

Didn't know I replied to this thread. I lied. I did replay Max Payne 1 some time after that post and enjoyed it more the second. Not one of my favorites in the genre, but would play again.

 

[Morenatsu.]

In general, most games aren't really meant to be replayed. Like, are you actually meant to rewatch most shows or movies? Reread most books? Probably not. Most games I replay now are many years after my last playthrough.

It's not really a question of ‘I don't have time to waste playing things I already played’ but more of ‘is this game really so compelling that I'd willingly waste my time playing it again’. I mean, if you can play games at all, you have time, and most of that gaming time is probably better spent replaying old classics than nushit anyway. The former is how useless old men think.

In fact, I have more time for games now than I did when I used to replay the same things over and over. I think it was just much easier to feel so compelled by something when you were five years old. Makes you think.

 

[JarlFrank]

Diablo and its clones. I used to enjoy them but the gameplay loop just doesn't do it for me anymore. Grind trash mobs, get random loot drops, repeat. The combat is neither as cerebral as a turn based tactical RPG nor is it as full-on action fun as Quake. You pretty much just click the left mouse button on enemies and that's the gameplay. I'm not a buildfag so I don't really care about the 50 different character builds I can make, the core gameplay is still just left clicking on monster mobs repeatedly.

 

[Norfleet]

All those old MUDs of the past. Because they're gone now. Otherwise I still would be. That's pretty much the reason I'm not playing the old games of the past I used to play: Because they're either finished, or their infrastructure has collapsed and they are no longer practically playable, either due to abandonment or physical death.

 

[laclongquan]

Knights and Merchants. The randomness of pathfinding AI would be too much for me now~

 

[anvi]

Games age even worse than comedy. And the classics that I loved back in the day are usually not great to play over and over. Stuff like BG2 I could replay a few times but mostly they are a one time thing for me.

I cannot agree with this statement at all... mostly I find myself replaying good old titles. The majority of modern games I end up refunding.

I mostly only play old stuff too but I can't replay the same things over and over. So all the classics I've completed once or twice, a third time I can't do.

 

[catfood]

Knights and Merchants. The randomness of pathfinding AI would be too much for me now~

The Knights and Merchants Remake fixes the pathfinding issues.

 

[Pound Meat]

Anyone who "wrestles" with tank controls after a few minutes or so is retarded.

Top kek especially so in the case of Tomb Raider.

And it manages to capture the weightiness of such acrobatic feats without taking control away.

Let's be serious for a moment: The player in the gif makes a simple turn and stops for five seconds in order to adjust Lara Croft and the camera so that she can complete a very straightforward set of jumps without jumping out of the frame to her death. It gets even better in combat where you'll spend most of your time shooting stuff you can't even see and have to rely on extreme aim assist to hit anything. Is it playable? Sure. Is it good? Hell no, and especially that horrid, sluggish camera is something I hope to never see again.

Anyone who "wrestles" with tank controls after a few minutes or so is retarded.

Top kek especially so in the case of Tomb Raider.

And it manages to capture the weightiness of such acrobatic feats without taking control away.

inb4 telling me it's not as smooth as Super Mario 64.

This and the Dagger of Xian gif get poasted over and over again whenever TR's shit controls come up. Newsflash: someone who's practiced performing the exact same scripted routine hundreds of times can make something look natural and intuitive. Now drown youself in a bathtub.

Carrion and Ed123 speaks the truth. And truth shall make you free*
*from edgelordism

So what they're saying is someone who's played a game and gotten used to the controls can handle the character better than a manbaby who throws the controller away after five minutes because he "CAN'T GET USED TO TANK CONTROLS"?

 

[Zlaja]

the major offender is the so called tank controls of classic Tomb Raider and Silent Hill games

If Drog hadn't self-ejected he would deserve a 'dumbfuck' tag for mentioning the first Silent Hill (the best Silent Hill) in this thread.

 

[Norfleet]

You know, I've always wondered...what are "tank controls"? I've seen games that I'm familiar with criticized for this, but I don't remember any tank controls in the game, and as someone who regularly drives a tank, I think I know what tank controls look and feel like. Also, why are they bad? Tank controls are meant to be easy to use, even a child can manage them.

 

[karoliner]

Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 1-3 and all of the Age of Empires. The last one is a bit odd i still enjoy Mythology a lot and replay it often.

 

[Ash]

You know, I've always wondered...what are "tank controls"? I've seen games that I'm familiar with criticized for this, but I don't remember any tank controls in the game, and as someone who regularly drives a tank, I think I know what tank controls look and feel like. Also, why are they bad? Tank controls are meant to be easy to use, even a child can manage them.

Then you of all people should understand!

The problem is a tank is not a human. Forward, Reverse, turn (slowly). It is super simple, but creates difficulty when under pressure when a tiger is on your ass, and is not how a human moves. It shouldn't take multiple seconds to line myself up for a jump, or to turn 90 degrees.

However, as stated: it's still simple. People need to adapt. As with any good game, there is a learning curve. It takes a little while to get used to in Tomb Raider especially, but if the game is good it is worth doing. Which Tomb Raider is. We're not talking rocket science here or learning to play piano, it doesn't take that long and people need a better mindset & adaptability, but it is still ultimately clunky and unintuitive. It is forever a set of rules you have to overcome, it will never not be challenging performing certain basic maneuvers in Tomb Raider, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at it like a game in of itself. Furthermore to the poster claiming it adds nothing, also fake news. It adds pressure and tension because a tiger is on your ass! Not a desirable way of doing so, no, but it does make things extra scary and hardcore and that is cool. It helps in gauging your jump distance, you soon learn a standing jump covers 2 blocks on the grid, a running jump after one backstep covers 3 bocks on the grid. A roll 1 block. With more complex controls (and graphics) these simple grid-based rules are harder to convey. But I think it was worth trying instead of going the crystal dynamics route.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Well maybe I like tigers on my ass! The controls should make it easier to get that juicy tiger-on-ass action goin

 

[Delphik]

Because my first RPG was Fallout 3 I absolutely loved it, same with The Witcher 1 & 2 & 3, Oblivion and Skyrim, the concept of having choices and doing whatever you want and killing random NPCs that can talk to you was new to me, after playing other RPGs though I thought those games were shit and I can never go back and replay them.
And before you say it those games were "Back in the day" for me at least in terms of PC Gaming.

 

[Ash]

Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 1-3 and all of the Age of Empires. The last one is a bit odd i still enjoy Mythology a lot and replay it often.

The primary reason I can't stomach MGS1 and RE1-3 is not in their design, as they're all definitely worth playing even if they're not the best thing ever (they're not), but rather that I've played each too many times over at this point (at least x3 each) and mods don't really exist for them to keep me coming back like they do with other classics. I had no problem playing a similar game (Parasite Eve 2) recently because it was fresh and new to me.

Age of Empires it's a different case, it IS in their design. I enjoyed a lot of AoE1 when I was like 9 years old or something. But at 9 years old my tastes & standards had barely formed and the entire concept was new to me. I bought AoE2 Remastered recently having never played it before and didn't enjoy it after 10 hours or so. I just don't like that style of gameplay that boils down to following the one or two rigid strategies and otherwise furiously panning and clicking on shit, and not a lot else to it. There is only five resources (or inventory items) - MEat, Wood, Stone, Gold, Relic, only one form of attack per unit, exploration is unexciting/not really a thing at all, there are not really sub-elements of gameplay like for example puzzle, navigation, platforming...it's boring. Hopefully I didn't misintepret what the game was. Because I know there are people out there that racked up hundreds of hours in AoE. I am not going to say they have lower standards than me like I do with mole poppers when I could be misunderstanding the game entirely. But yeah, RTS is seemingly not for me. But I love other forms of strategy, like TBT. Maybe it's possible that my brain and motor skills aren't fast enough to micromanage a huge army with differing attributes, and that therein is where the fun truly lies. I am open to that.

 

[Pound Meat]

Because my first RPG was Fallout 3 I absolutely loved it, same with The Witcher 1 & 2 & 3, Oblivion and Skyrim, the concept of having choices and doing whatever you want and killing random NPCs that can talk to you was new to me, after playing other RPGs though I thought those games were shit and I can never go back and replay them.
And before you say it those games were "Back in the day" for me at least in terms of PC Gaming.

Fallout 3 on the PS3 is the preferred Fallout experience.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Most of them, I guess.

Deus Ex and the LGS Thief games are the rare exceptions.

 

[Daedalos]

Fallout 1

 

[JarlFrank]

Age of Empires it's a different case, it IS in their design. I enjoyed a lot of AoE1 when I was like 9 years old or something. But at 9 years old my tastes & standards had barely formed and the entire concept was new to me. I bought AoE2 Remastered recently having never played it before and didn't enjoy it after 10 hours or so. I just don't like that style of gameplay that boils down to following the one or two rigid strategies and otherwise furiously panning and clicking on shit, and not a lot else to it.

Funny, I play AoE2 online since 2015, my skill is mid-level and my experience is completely different. I still love it as much as I loved it when I was a kid, and now that I learned how to play I'm having a lot of fun in multiplayer matches.

My favorite map is Megarandom and I play with random civs, don't follow any specific build orders (I guess that's why I'm only at mid-level ELO, ha) and don't even use hotkeys. Sure, the pace is fast and you have to react to your enemy's moves quickly, but it's not furious clicking on shit at all.

 

[Gregz]

All those old MUDs of the past. Because they're gone now.

This is true of classic MMOs as well. There was a sweet spot back in time, and it will never be that way again. I don't mean nostalgia, I mean the naiveté of the player base and the feature set that existed during that specific period of time.

 

[Ravielsk]

Anyone who "wrestles" with tank controls after a few minutes or so is retarded.

Its not really about "wrestling" with them its more about precision you can achieve with them right out of the gate. Tank controls are easy to grasp but executing and sort of elaborate maneuvers with them can be tricky especially with fixed camera angles that throw off your sense of direction.

 

[Radiane]

A game that I definitely won't touch again in its original version is Warcraft 1. It was cool when it was relatively new, the rts genre was just developing, but even then, this game had its drawbacks, such as the inablility to command more than 4 units, and even that was a bit of a hassle. Warcraft 2 & 3 otoh are very much playable to this day

 

[Ravielsk]

Diablo and its clones. I used to enjoy them but the gameplay loop just doesn't do it for me anymore. Grind trash mobs, get random loot drops, repeat. The combat is neither as cerebral as a turn based tactical RPG nor is it as full-on action fun as Quake. You pretty much just click the left mouse button on enemies and that's the gameplay. I'm not a buildfag so I don't really care about the 50 different character builds I can make, the core gameplay is still just left clicking on monster mobs repeatedly.

I actually find Diablo clones better with a gamepad. Since you cannot click to move you actually get to control the character directly which turns the game into more of a isometric God of War rather than the click-a-ton it normally is. Diablo 3 is definitely better this way than with mouse and keyboard.

 

[Gregz]

Diablo and its clones. I used to enjoy them but the gameplay loop just doesn't do it for me anymore. Grind trash mobs, get random loot drops, repeat. The combat is neither as cerebral as a turn based tactical RPG nor is it as full-on action fun as Quake. You pretty much just click the left mouse button on enemies and that's the gameplay. I'm not a buildfag so I don't really care about the 50 different character builds I can make, the core gameplay is still just left clicking on monster mobs repeatedly.

I actually find Diablo clones better with a gamepad. Since you cannot click to move you actually get to control the character directly which turns the game into more of a isometric God of War rather than the click-a-ton it normally is. Diablo 3 is definitely better this way than with mouse and keyboard.

I play D2R this way.