Playing Old Games For the First Time - Give a Short Review of Some 10+ Year Old Game You Played For the First Time

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Recently beat Skies of Arcadia (og Dreamcast version on an actual Dreamcast :)). The game low key terrified me. Dont know why, but flying around in a world where the skies below obsure vision and you have no idea what's there scares me even more than a conventional ocean would. Had similar feelings of eerieness when I played Freelancer. Its not a bad thing, if anything it made exploration feel thrilling.

Two biggest takeaways were how much I love a game where the characters actually have some positive energy. Vyse and Aika are always up for adventure and manage to stay upbeat even when things get rough. It was honestly refreshing considering how dour modern games get, even when they do it well.

The other big thing was just how bright and colorful the game was. There was something about the dreamcast, but it has some of the most vibrant games Ive ever played. It really gave them an appeal that Ive not experienced since that generation. I miss games that were pretty in ways other than graphical fidelity.

Anyway, great game. Maybe too many random encounters, but otherwise a great experience with some great dungeons and imaginitive combat sections. The way it rewards exploration is awesome as well, and something I wish other jrpgs would copy. Def recommend. Will prob emulate the gamecube version since it has extra content.
 
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WarrenZHarding said:
Recently beat Skies of Arcadia (og Dreamcast version on an actual Dreamcast :)). The game low key terrified me. Dont know why, but flying around in a world where the skies below obsure vision and you have no idea what's there scares me even more than a conventional ocean would. Had similar feelings of eerieness when I played Freelancer. Its not a bad thing, if anything it made exploration feel thrilling.

Two biggest takeaways were how much I love a game where tha characters actually have some positive energy. Vyse and Aika are always up for adventure and manage to stay upbeat even when things get rough. It was honestly refreshing considering how dour modern games get, even when they do it well.

The other big thing was just how bright and colorful the game was. There was something about the dreamcast, but it has some of the most vibrant games Ive ever played. It really gave them an appeal that Ive not experienced since that generation. I miss games that were pretty in ways other than graphical fidelity.

Anyway, great game. Maybe too many random encounters, but otherwise a great experience with some great dungeons and imaginitive combat sections. The way it rewards exploration is awesome as well, and something I wish other jrpgs would copy. Def recommend. Will prob emulate the gamecube version since it has extra content.
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real talk though, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
 
WarrenZHarding said:
There was something about the dreamcast, but it has some of the most vibrant games Ive ever played.
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Combination of things. One is unlike the PS2, Dreamcast games were more likely to use full-color textures due to having 8 MB of VRAM and GPU-native texture decompression. PS2 devs often used 4-bit textures in order to have more detail in a scene. Devil May Cry was rather famous for this, note how every texture is nearly monochromatic:

1752801829447.webp

A second reason is that due to hardware limitations, lighting in DC games was less complex than PS2 games, so you tended to have more polygons displayed at full brightness.
 
The Ugly One said:
Combination of things. One is unlike the PS2, Dreamcast games were more likely to use full-color textures due to having 8 MB of VRAM and GPU-native texture decompression. PS2 devs often used 4-bit textures in order to have more detail in a scene. Devil May Cry was rather famous for this, note how every texture is nearly monochromatic:

View attachment 7657469

A second reason is that due to hardware limitations, lighting in DC games was less complex than PS2 games, so you tended to have more polygons displayed at full brightness.
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The More You Know. Thanks for the explaination.
 
Lord of the Large Pants said:
Double posting, but it's relevant. Chrono Trigger started life as part of Secret of Mana. See, Secret of Mana was supposed to be a much larger game on the SNES CD. However, Nintendo completely screwed the pooch and left Square hanging. This is one of the big reasons that the story in Secret of Mana feels weird and disjointed, because it's basically half a story. The remainder got recycled into Chrono Trigger, which they had more time to finish.

This is also why Square and Nintendo got divorced, and why FF7 ended up on Playstation.
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I remember that, yeah, it was a Secret of Mana related situation. I really wanna see the original project.

Scarlett Johansson said:
Jet Force Gemini. I remember I had the VHS of the N64 previews. One included JFG.

This fucking game...a nightmare lol.
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I remember getting stuck and not knowing what to do. Same for Rayman 2. I sometimes wonder if they were just glitched out or something because I tried everything.
 
SSj_Ness (Yiffed) said:
I remember that, yeah, it was a Secret of Mana related situation. I really wanna see the original project.


I remember getting stuck and not knowing what to do. Same for Rayman 2. I sometimes wonder if they were just glitched out or something because I tried everything.
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What sucks is it turns into probably Rare's worst collectathon of their golden era. Gotta get all those damn critters to unlock the finale. Agony. Pain. More agony. I can imagine playing this as a child not realizing its not technically for kids and then seeing how weirdly violent it was.
 
Scarlett Johansson said:
What sucks is it turns into probably Rare's worst collectathon of their golden era. Gotta get all those damn critters to unlock the finale. Agony. Pain. More agony. I can imagine playing this as a child not realizing its not technically for kids and then seeing how weirdly violent it was.
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That sounds unbearable...
 
SSj_Ness (Yiffed) said:
That sounds unbearable...
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It's worse than it sounds. Unlocking the final boss requires collecting all the space koalas
...who must all be collected on the same run through the level
...and which can only be collected by the same character
...you can't switch characters mid-level
...so you have to find koalas you can't get to, then restart the level with the right character
...but remember, you need to get all of them on the same run
...oh, and did I mention they can be killed? So be careful with your shots lmao
...and sometimes the space bugs will kill them within seconds of you seeing them
...all means all, so if a space koala dies, you need to restart the level

I never finished it, because fuck that.
 
ChampFantana said:
I recently started playing Arcanum: of SteamWorks and Magick Obscura. It's basically everything I've EVER wanted from an isometric CRPG.

I'm not that far into it yet, but it's already shaping up to be an all-timer.
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It's a great game, but I'll warn you right now that similar to some other good CRPGs, the last like 20% of it feels kind of rushed.
 
Played Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 for the first time.

I had a lot of fun with it, although if I had any complaints with it, it's that Chris Sawyer's autistic insistence on scenario goals and deadlines severely hampers creativity. Since you cannot build ANYTHING while the game is paused, time spent building, testing, and modifying a custom coaster is time lost on making improvements to your park, and since rides attract a certain number of guests regardless of how large it is, the systems in play instead encourage you to plonk down pre-built coasters and spam compact attractions like 1-tile mazes.

A sandbox mode where I can experiment and build my own park at my own pace would've helped the experience a lot, I feel.

Anyway, here's a couple screengrabs of some of the rides I named:
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Book Thief said:
Played Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 for the first time.

I had a lot of fun with it, although if I had any complaints with it, it's that Chris Sawyer's autistic insistence on scenario goals and deadlines severely hampers creativity. Since you cannot build ANYTHING while the game is paused, time spent building, testing, and modifying a custom coaster is time lost on making improvements to your park, and since rides attract a certain number of guests regardless of how large it is, the systems in play instead encourage you to plonk down pre-built coasters and spam compact attractions like 1-tile mazes.

A sandbox mode where I can experiment and build my own park at my own pace would've helped the experience a lot, I feel.
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Might I interest you in OpenRCT2?
 
Book Thief said:
That's how I was playing it, actually.
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I'm surprised OpenRCT2 doesn't have a sandbox mode, I thought it did. I should give RCT2 a try myself these days (I have the game) given how badly I was burned by Planet Coaster.
 
I played Dead Space and Dead Space 2 for the first time. I think Dead Space could've been a more effective horror game than it is, but overall I see why many people regard it fondly. There's a very strong consistency to the design, how all the systems function, and the way everything is presented that makes it feel like a single person's cohesive artistic vision (even if it wasn't).

Dead Space 2, though? It jettisoned everything that made Dead Space unique for the worst of 2010s AAA gimmicks, higher production values, and bafflingly terrible writing. You could remove Stross (one of the game's very few characters and featured heavily throughout most of it) from the game entirely and NOTHING about the plot would've changed in the slightest.

Dead Space feels uncompromising, Dead Space 2 feels designed by committee.
 
I picked up Deus Ex 2: Invisible War, which I never played back in the day because I didn't have a DX8 graphics card. It was criticized at the time for being overly simplified for console babies. Now that I'm a couple hours in, I can say those criticisms are completely justified. I haven't played Deus Ex in over 20 years, but this still manages to be a letdown.
  • There's no skill system at all, so you don't have much of a "build," really, just six biomods.
  • Your inventory is tiny, and there's no weight/size, just about a dozen slots.
  • Levels are extremely claustrophobic
  • The silenced pistol cannot kill somebody with a headshot, so forget about stealth takedowns in the early game. Maybe the sniper rifle can take people out.
  • Neither can the nonlethal dart gun
  • Neither can any melee weapon
  • There's only one ammo type
The writing so far is okay, and the game looks reasonably good for a game of that generation. It's too easy to just go in blasting, and nobody seems to care that a maniac just murdered everyone in a nightclub. It doesn't hold a candle to its predecessor or, for that matter, any other stealth action game of the generation, like Thief III or Splinter Cell.
 
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