In my heart of hearts, I am a retro gamer. I still regularly play retro games and enjoy them greatly. Do you know what argument I hate? Ihateit when people tell me that I only like certain games because of nostalgia. What an incredibly condescending position to take. Now, I see you there, squinting with incredulity. I get it. I know what the title of this list is. I wrote it!
I’m not here to tear down your favorite games. I’m here to talk about games that I was fond of at one point in my life, but, upon replaying, I felt didn’t hold up. Am I coming in hot? You bet your sweet butt I am. I expect the comments section to return that energy, and I don’t blame them one bit. But I stand by my opinion that the games on this list have not withstood the test of time.
WHERE TO PLAY
TheMortal Kombat: Legacy Kollectionis about to release, and I think some older fans are going to come to the same shocking revelation that I did: the firstMortal Kombatgame hasn’t aged poorly, it was never a good game to begin with. Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting released in Arcades around the same time as Mortal Kombat. One of those two games is still played competitively to this day; the other is Mortal Kombat.
Mortal Kombat deserves a ton of credit for taking the world by storm. It was brash, bold, and its gore was a real conversation starter. But while gamers ate it up with feverish intensity back in the day, that fever has since broken. What we are left with is a clunky fighting game that doesn’t really doanythingwell. By modern standards, it isn’t even particularly gory.
But wait… didn’t Ijustsay in the Mortal Kombat section thatStreet Fighter 2is still a good game? Yes and no. Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting (or Turbo, as it is sometimes called) is still legit, but The World Warriors? That game just doesn’t pass the sniff test. The smaller roster is to be expected, of course, and being unable to select the same character as your opponent is almost quaint. The real problem is the gameplay. This first iteration of Street Fighter 2 is quite simply too agonizingly slow to go back to at this point.
Famously, Street Fighter 2 received a ton of revisions, but World Warriors was the version that sold the most, and it wasn’t even close. This places the game in a pretty interesting place, nostalgia-wise. When people think back to their time playing Street Fighter 2, there is a good chance that they are remembering The World Warriors. It is the version I played the most with my brothers, so imagine my surprise when I jumped back into it recently and discovered that it plays like the Street Fighter 2 I remembered… but if it was set in one of those underwater stages from Sonic The Hedgehog.
I loveSuikoden. I have played through it at least a dozen times. But I’m coming for a lot of games that people love in this list, so I can’t exclude my darlings. At the end of the day, while Suikoden still has a wry sense of humor that I find charming, and a massive roster filled with neat characters, its script is also pretty bare-bones.
While modern RPG scripts cansometimeslanguish, spinning their wheels with dialogue that goes on too long for how little is being said, Suikoden has the opposite problem. The script zips past at a pace that never allows the big moments to land squarely. I think Suikoden 1 benefits greatly from its ties to Suikoden 2. Especially since the save transfer system allows the first game to tie into the second in a lot of very cool ways. However, while its sequel has aged very gracefully, the game that got the ball rolling in the first place has not.
Resident Evil 5
Resident Evil 5was a big deal back in the day. It was the successor to the adoredResident Evil 4, and featured a focus on co-op, meaning that you and a friend could both get in on the action. This was a bigger, bolder take on what Resident Evil 4 did. And boy, in retrospect, it sure feels like a downgrade.
While Resident Evil 4 can be blamed for moving the series firmly away from its horror roots, it at least featured a pretty intense first act. Before you get all your upgrades, there is a real palpable tension. Resident Evil 5 never bothers with that. Chris and Shiva tear through enemies like they are nothing. But hey, if you love wacky anime villains, Resident Evil 5 has that going for it. It tookCode Veronica’s very silly version of Wesker, and cranked up the absurdity all the way to 11.
If you were always in it for the camp, then disregard me. Resident Evil 5 ispeakcamp.
Playing Resident Evil 5 now is a reminder of how dire the seventh generation of gaming truly was. From its brown-centric palette to its reliance on QTEs to its unengaging third-person shooter combat, every aspect of Resident Evil 5 is constantly reminding you that your time would be better spent playing nearlyany other Resident Evil game.
When you talk about the best 3DCastlevaniagames,Lord of Shadow is likely to be brought up as being the good one. It didn’t feel as barren as the PS2 titles, and it felt better to control than the janky N64 duology. Add to that the Kojima being involved, and you surely have a banger, right? Well… while there issomenovelty in a Castlevania-themedGod Of Wargame, Lords of Shadow has alotof problems.
For starters, it abandons every Castlevania design principle. Deliberate platforming, high-commitment combat, and meticulously designed stages are replaced with level design where you move from screen to screen and mash buttons to flail flashily at enemies. And you know what? I would have been okay with that if it wasn’t also filled to the brim with some of the most aggravating QTEs to ever grace a game.
We can all thank our lucky stars that this trend died off. After replaying Lords of Shadow, I gained a renewed respect for the N64 games. While they were rough on release, they somehow managed to age more gracefully.
I was considering putting Super Castlevania 4 on this list, but while I have a number of complaints, I think that game is beloved primarily because of its aesthetic elements, and those still hit hard. I mean, how am I going to hate onthis?
Fallout 3
Fallout 3 takes place in a ruined area around Washington D.C. two hundred years after the Great War. In a game met with critical acclaim, you must traverse this wasteland looking for your father, while solving the mystery of his disappearance.
I still, to this day, have the lunchbox and bobble head that came with my copy ofFallout 3. I love the Fallout games. I was a big fan of the first two titles and enjoyed Tactics for what it was. So, I was eager to see what Bethesda would do with the third game, and while I may not have preferred it to the first two titles, I was pretty happy with it nonetheless. But upon a replay of Fallout 3, I didn’t have to get too far into the wasteland before it hit me how rough it all is.
Naturally, a big part of that is the classic Bethesda jank. Things phasing through solid objects, being launched into space by an enemy, NPCs T-posing… you never know what’ll happen next! And the gameplay sure is something. Replaying Fallout 3 makes me appreciate Fallout 4’s gunplay a little more. That’s how rough it is. I am finding myself complimenting Fallout 4. spit
However, where Fallout 3 really goes off the rails is the story. The writing lacks impact, and every step of your journey through the wasteland feels painfully contrived. The ending is a particular lowlight. But hey, at least we got New Vegas and a pretty entertaining show out of this new era of Fallout! And while I do think Fallout 3 is a far worse game than we all remember it being, I will say this about Fallout 3: it is still far from beingthe worst game in the franchise.
Diablo 2
Diablo 2 is an acclaimed action RPG from Blizzard, launched in 2000. Players must progress through levels, acquiring better loot, in order to stop Diablo once more.
There was a time whenDiablo 2stood out as being the king of its genre. This is a game that I thought the world of back in the day, and there is still a lot to like. The roster of characters is fantastic and there is somegreatbuild variety that is bolstered by an excellent approach to loot. The grim tone still works brilliantly and gives the game a strong aesthetic that really pulls you in. And you may be a werewolf. That’sawesome!
I was excited to give the remake a spin a few years ago, but while I was having a ball at first, something happened around six hours in: I got bored. I gotrealbored. Because for all it does right, the mish-mash of repetitive dungeons that all look identical, have no semblance of design, and feature encounters that do very little to differentiate themselves from each other, started to wear me down.We’ve just come a long way since Diablo 2. Not only do we have novel takes on the genre, such asHades, which provides a substantially better designed combat encounters. But there are quite simply more engaging top-down dungeon crawlers as well. In a world wherePath of Exile 2exists, Diablo 2 simply feels like a victim of progress.
Final Fantasy 4
The Kingdom of Baron sent their elite airship fleet, the Red Wings, to attack the surrounding countries. Distressed by his mission, Cecil, a dark knight and captain of the Red Wings, decides to fight against the tyrannical Baron with his trusted friend and his paramour at his side. In his search for the crystals, Cecil must travel over land, under the ground, to the Land of Summons, and even to the moon. Join forces with Kain the dragoon, Rosa the white mage, Rydia the summoner, and many more skilled allies.FFIV is the first title to introduce the dynamic “Active Time Battle” system, where time moves even during battle, giving the players an exciting sense of urgency.Thanks to the wide appeal of the game, this revolutionary system would be implemented in many future titles in the series.Witness the dramatic story and dynamic battles in this fourth installment of the FINAL FANTASY series!
The SNES Final Fantasy titles are legendary.Final Fantasy 6features a fantastic soundtrack and a phenomenal cast.Final Fantasy 5, with its free-spirited vibes and excellent implementation of the job system, is the closest thing the series has to a hidden gem. And then there isFinal Fantasy 4. The game that started it all for a lot of fans. The Final Fantasy that introduced the ATB system. Surely it stands shoulder to shoulder with its 16-bit brethren, right? Well, only if you are able to ignore thepainfullymelodramatic story.
It is still a Final Fantasy game, so it still has a killer musical score. And its cast of charactersisextremely likable. However, as charming as they all are, they are about as deep as a puddle in the Arizona desert. There isn’t a party member in the cast that couldn’t be adequately summed up in three words. And you probably need fewer than that for Rosa, who feels more like a plot device than a real character. It is still an important game in the franchise. I still think “You Spoony bard” is a fire line. But if you are in it for the story, this is one RPG that’s probably best left in your memories.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
The fourth mainline entry in the Metal Gear Solid series, Guns of the Patriots puts players in the shoes of an ageing Snake and takes place in an alternate timeline in which the Cold War continued into the 1990s. The game introduced several new camera perspectives, including an optional first person mode while aiming weapons.
Back whenMetal Gear Solid 4released, the PS3 was in a pretty bad place. Basically, Sony needed a win. And Metal Gear Solid 4 was ahugewin. It was a cinematic epic! A game that, to its credit, stillplaysvery nicely. At least during those rare moments when MGS4 remembers that it is, in fact, a game. Which is a big part of the issue here, as the division between gameplay and storytelling is pretty staggering. You’ll never be playing for long before you are thrown back into anotherexcruciatinglylong cutscene.
But there is an even bigger problem at play. Guys, the writing is bad. Like,reallybad. It is so ham-fisted that Porky Pig would blush. Not only does it attempt to wedge every character ever introduced in the series into its disjointed five acts, but it is all tied together by overwrought melodrama so heightened that it teeters on the edge of parody. The monologues given by the game’s bosses attempt to reflect the horrors of war, yet they were so over-the-top that I found myself chuckling. I’m pretty sure that’s not the reaction Kojima was going for. Metal Gear Solid 4 is quite simply a testament to how far our cinematic games have come in the last couple of decades.
