/v/ - Video Games

>>235711 (OP) 
I think that "dated" means something that was actually bad even back then but  at the time it got a pass because at the time the novelty of the game (meaning graphics, mechanics and so on) made up for it.
What is dated to me?
Having to start the whole game from the very first level when you reach level 10, or even worse, the final boss, and find yourself out of lives, for instance.
It was shit even back then, but it got a pass because people were amazed by the graphics or even by the mere fact that they were controlling a character on their TV screen with a gamepad, so that novelty managed to override the fact that they were going to replay the same levels over and over again.

>>235711 (OP) 
it filters casuals  or it's just a bad game
9/10 it's  the first one

>>235729
>it filters casuals
Well, to the average single digit IQ normalfag, "dated" just means it isn't a walking simulator with cutscenes or it doesn't look or play the same as any AAA slop.

>>235737
pretty much  yeah they also want silent hill  2 reskinned over nu god of war

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>tank controls

>>235711 (OP) 
What >>235720 said. Another example would be something like how you can't manually reload in marathon.

It's hard to think of real, concrete ways a game can be "dated". Video games that were fun in the past are largely fun today, the biggest offenses caused by limited hardware are mainly things like not enough content, hard-to-see fonts at low resolutions, barren levels, etc.

I think the best examples I can come up with are things that hardware couldn't achieve but devs tried to implement with a bandaid solution. I'm talking shit like pong coming with colored plastic to drape over your tv so you could play "tennis", "Hockey" and "Soccer". Or like the virtual boy being what it is.

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>>235711 (OP) 
If the game is designed in a way that considers tank control, it would not be dated. Good example would be Resident Evil 4 with this case. The way you control your character, or have to stop in order to aim or shoot is the core design of that game, and probably what makes it lean to the "horror" genre. Tank control is limiting so you really have to consider when to shoot, how to move, take risks, etc. At least that's what I think about that game's control. Maybe they really made Leon move in tank control due to hardware restrictions. 
Remake of resident evil 4 is pretty much designed like a modern third person shooter. It feels more like a generic shooter and less of a horror game with survival elements.

I wonder how would God Hand play with less limited control. Tank control is very obviously designed as a deliberate choice for the game.

>>235711 (OP) 
>OP was so salty about the tank controls argument in the other thread he started a new one so his ID would change
I'd say it's fair to call something dated when you have examples of the same idea implemented in a better way in newer games. A trivial example would be how JRPGs on console went from obscenely long passwords to saves as soon as SRAM was cheap enough, or adventure game interfaces going from "verb noun" to Infocom approximating natural language to point-and-click.

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Random encounters.
But that was gay and stupid even back then.

>>235837
There's a simple solution to them to that even pokemon got: let me have an item that either boosts the encounters or outright prevents them.

>>235830
>OP was so salty about the tank controls argument in the other thread he started a new one so his ID would change
OP wrote that "some" people made that argument but when he played a tank control game it was actually well implemented, so no, he can't be be the salty anon of the other thread.

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Lack of PoC obviously :^)

>>235830
>long passwords to take note of
I think everyone will agree on that one.
I remember those times when i had to take pen and paper to write the password as the screen showed it up with nostalgia, but it is surely not something i miss.

>>235877
What's wrong with the Zillion?

>>235878
It's just dated. After Zillion 2 they stopped making TVs that were compatible with the Zillion. So really, you can't get any more dated than that.

>>235877
>>235879
You may be right about that, but OP was clearly talking about game design and mechanics, not hardware.

>>235877
Wouldn't that go for every light gun game out there? IIRC those games relied entirely on CRT TVs to work, from the NES all the way to the PS2.

>>235891
There are light guns made for modern TVs but they cost $100+  but it's not a huge difference enough that you should buy them instead of using wii remotes via a emulator

>>235884
Yeah but some peripherals make certain game mechanics possible. If those peripherals aren't made anymore then the mechanics, and game designs around that mechanics, are also not made anymore.

>>235711 (OP) 
1) The mindless following of designs or mechanics that only existed as limitations. Imagine playing a 2D platformer that asked you to write down a physical password for your unique game state instead of just letting you save. This was necessary in the days of the NES because the console literally didn't have that sort of memory but it is unthinkable now.

2) Not answering the "so what?" question, or seeming to be unaware of advancements other games in the genre have made. This tends to occur when self-styled spiritual successors retread the exact same subject matter as the game they're taking inspiration from without considering if its mechanics and challenges make sense to modern gamers.

The binary knowledge puzzle AKA the MMO fetch quest is a perfect example of this. A door needs a red key, but you don't know where the dwarf holding the red key is. In 1997 this may have been a way to get players to explore a magic forest, but in the current year it is nothing more than busywork because a player can be assumed to have access to all information cataloged in a wiki or visible in a YouTube video. If a player says "yeah, I've seen that idea before - so what?" and the game doesn't have a compelling answer then it is dated.

Occasionally game that has dated elements will feel charming and fusty like a kind old man wearing a bowtie (Dark Souls), but most of the time it just sucks.

>>236364
>In 1997 this may have been a way to get players to explore a magic forest, but in the current year it is nothing more than busywork because a player can be assumed to have access to all information cataloged in a wiki or visible in a YouTube video.
Anyone who uses JewTube videos or walkthroughs as guides when playing a game deserves anything and everything bad that happens to them.

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>>235711 (OP) 
Best way I can describe it is things that felt fine then are hard to put up with now.
Lets talk UI. Look at most old computer games and you'll see large UIs taking up much of the screen. Marathon and System Shock come to mind, and any old dungeon crawler. Another mention goes to UI navigation. Fragile Allegiance has this animated UI thing where each screen slides out and "hooks in" to the frame. For every screen it has to dock and undock the panel. While cool, it's very cumbersome and navigating through information on your colony, build menus, fund allocation, fleet rosters, ship designs, etc. is all time consuming because of both the small screens and constant paging back and forth waiting for the menus to load. Honestly I wouldn't mind so much if the menus were more responsive and had more information available to view at one time and quickly. The aesthetic of these old UIs were great for getting you immersed. Even with all the modern improvements to UI design, throwing away the aesthetics in favor of bland simple minimalism is a mistake.

>>236380
>no, no, I enjoy shallow and uninteresting game mechanics
Fuck off.

>>236402
>no argument
>goes out of his way to cheat in a singleplayer game where it makes no sense
you would honestly get more respect and empathy if you weren't a massive faggot and at least spent some time before looking it up

>>236364
>A door needs a red key, but you don't know where the dwarf holding the red key is. In 1997 this may have been a way to get players to explore a magic forest, but in the current year it is nothing more than busywork because a player can be assumed to have access to all information cataloged in a wiki or visible in a YouTube video. 
>>236380
>Anyone who uses JewTube videos or walkthroughs as guides when playing a game deserves anything and everything bad that happens to them.
Before jewtube was even a thing, people used to buy gaming magazine with the complete guides for that kind of shit, so in a way, i'd say today it is better that you can look for it instantly and for free.

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>>236403
>if you acknowledge reality, you're a faggot
Kill yourself, newfag.

>>236406
>Before jewtube was even a thing, people used to buy gaming magazine with the complete guides for that kind of shit
You know, even in the 90s developers were aware of how stupid and obtuse their puzzles could be. I downloaded a point-and-click adventure game called Callahan's Cross-Time Saloon last year, and the manual had a hint book that explained literally every puzzle. This was a paper document that was bundled with the CD, because the game is about experiencing Spider Robinson's sense of humor and zany characters, not about decrypting clues.

The puzzles are all completely solvable if you pay attention, of course, but obviously not a single one of them could reasonably be designed with pixel hunting in mind because the player has access to the solution. The goal must necessarily be to design something inherently fun so that the player wants to keep doing it.

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>>236410
>reality

>>236410
You know i can understand people nostalgia of better times, i also remember fondly the times in my childhood when me and my sibling used to take pencil and paper to take note of clues and passwords, but that becomes annoying when you play at night and/or on your bed, and having to turn on the lights to get pen and paper is a pain in the ass in those cases.

>>236423
I still use my text editor to keep notes, or sometimes Krita to store partial screenshots and keep clues close to each other. Replaying MYST and playing the sequels for the first time was quite fun that way. Or for instance La-Mulana is hell without taking notes.
Sure, that doesn't help with playing in bed, but at night is no problem.

>>236403
>>goes out of his way to cheat in a singleplayer game where it makes no sense
What about games that have utter horseshit epin trol faggotry that seemingly was deliberately added to make the game as unfun as possible?
For example Jacob and Esau in Binding of Isaac. How could you possibly enjoy using a character(s) with two hitboxes in a game that was made difficult for one hitbox? I'm not going to do the video game equivalent of punching myself in the balls over and over just to unlock what are mostly shitty items for a fucking awful character, I'll cheat and get those and have fun with the other fuckload of characters that aren't total ass to play.

>>236483
Binding of Isaac  is dogshit so you shouldn't even be playing it in the first place
>lol unlock shit randomly unless you read a  community resource page
>purposely shit items with no combos to make it good

>>236483
>What about games that have utter horseshit epin trol faggotry that seemingly was deliberately added to make the game as unfun as possible?
Sounds like the problem is that you're playing shitty games.

>>236483
Mam, I got like 400 hours in that game and haven't touched jacob and esau. I think people with completionist mindsets have a bit of a disadvantage in games like BoI. They think the game is unlocking things or raising numbers or whatever and they miss the forest for the trees.

Consider the kind of person that collects all the korok seeds on breath of the wild. There's like 900 of those fuckers but you only need a fraction of them to unlock the useful rewards for getting them. 
The sane man just collects as they go and they are an occasional fun distraction. The completionist looks up guides and does the busywork of getting them all just to end up hating them and receiving a literal polished turd as a reward.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think being a completionist is a bad thing. It's just that being one puts you in a mindset of using a guide because you feel like you gotta do everything when not every game expects that of you.

>>236486
>>236488
Fuck off with this non-answer faggotry, the other characters are fun to play, or at least manageable and I've gotten more out of BoI than most supposedly good games /v/aginas recommend.
>>236490
>completionist
I just want the godhead item, if I didn't have to have their completion marks I wouldn't even look at them. There's other shitty unlocks for other characters that I don't care about and if I don't get around to getting them then I don't give a shit.

Wait I meant the rock bottom item I already have godhead.

>>236495
>non-answer
you just don't like the answer