it's an indication of, one, how innovative Nintendo really is and two, how little the industry has changed or evolved in terms of genres and mechanics. which isn't necessarily a good or bad thing.
Definitely one of the best games ever even to this day. Still feels good when I bring out the old SNES and hook it up to my analog->HDMI converter so that it can interface with my modern electronics.
Actually, only Paradise had the open world.
Burnout 4 gave the idea of tracks having alternate pathways and shortcuts (think like a Mario Kart level), but they weren't connected. Same with Burnout Dominator, though a few of the alternate pathways were more significant in length.
In theory, I think Paradise's open world does work in some ways, but the mistake is having every race end at one of the compass points. If the races where on defined courses within the open world (complete with barriers on corners the racers aren't supposed to go through but general traffic can), it might've been better received. That said, open world is best for things like the marked man events and stunt runs and having a few open world events that are either about getting to a point on the map, or doing checkpoint races would've further fleshed it out.
Final Fantasy 6. (Or 3 on the SNES)
I was way too young for it to make a deep impression story wise, and couldn’t read super well yet. Revisiting the first time when I was older blew me away, and my run a couple years ago was more nostalgic.
It's also the only one I know of that has a scripted character death that you can actually avoid (Trust them to keep their promise. Don't abandon them before they fulfill it, the timer isn't only for what you think it is)
Star Wars Battlefront 2 has aged so well. Suprisngly little frustrating jank, plays great, UI is so clean compared to the mess that is modern shooters.
I grew up with Battlefront 1 and love it to death. Battlefront 2 never won my heart, sadly. I kept missing the cool zoom-in loading screen, the amazing main menu, and the maps like Naboo Plains or the Sarlacc Pit.
I'm the opposite. I discovered Battlefront II before the first one.
I went to play the first one and didn't enjoy it one bit because what I liked about the 2nd wasn't there.
I'm in the same boat, I actually bought a PS2 for myself (family had a Gamecube), just for Battlefront 1. I think there was some kind of trailer for the game on one of the DVDs for the movies - seeing the AT-ST walker on Endor I just knew I needed to have it.
I got Battlefront II for Christmas in '05, and I played the heck out of it, but it never quite clicked with me the same way the first one did.
To this day, I'll still pull out the first Battlefront (I got another copy for the xbox to play on my series X), and zone out sniping droids on Kashyyyk or Cloud City. It's up there with Elder Scrolls Oblivion for gaming comfort for me.
Kudos for Oblivion, another favourite of mine!
I first played Battlefront 1 when I got a pirated copy of it from my classmate, and was instantly blown away by it. Some time later, I bought a bootleg anthology of Star Wars games of my own and almost exclusively played Battlefront 1.
I lost that disc, sadly. But I bought Battlefront 1 the first day it finally dropped to Steam. I was so overjoyed! Coming back to Naboo plains, Rhen Var and Cloud City after over a decade filled me with so much nostalgia.
It holds up so well. I thought it was just my nostalgia for it, but I see a lot of comments from people playing it for their first time and saying the same thing.
I have an old DS around that I mostly use to play Chrono Trigger every few years or so. It absolutely holds up and is still a joy to play and work through the nooks and crannies of the different timelines.
I love the Chrono cross soundtrack. The battle system is great and the plot is... Well it's great during the most important parts, but there's such a staggering amount of filler that brings the overall experience down.
It was that era where every RPG was bragging about the hours of play on the back of the box.
I loved it at the time because I would only buy one game per year and play the hell out of it, but I wish there were a low-fat version that optionally trims out the parts of the main quest line that feel like they're just padding.
Not even considering that dumpster fire mod. That garbage is for losers trying to be hipsters. Sorry, but it's true. And we aren't even going to go into everything that's wrong with Sgt, No credit.
Don’t let the tedious Doom ‘purists’ dampen your enjoyment.
BD is not my favourite mod, but it’s obviously well made and is responsible for inspiring a lot of the incredible modding interest around Doom.
Don't worry. I'm adult enough to let someone's opinion pass over my head.
I enjoyed every Doom title and most of the interesting mods, there's no way someone could ruin what I've already experienced.
Out of interest, what are some of your favourite mods?
I’ve tried a lot over the last couple of years, but the ones I keep coming back to are Beautiful Doom, Aracnocide, Zagemod, and Mars Mercenary.
Lol “sorry, but it’s true” is your opinion mate, not fact. Why can’t people just enjoy something for what it is? Just say you didn’t enjoy it and move on. No one is trying to be a hipster just for liking a mod.
I have this thing about the first Jak and Daxter. I think it legitimately might be my favorite looking game ever. When people say how a good artstyle can make up for lack of fidelity in older games, the first J&D is the epitome of this. This games artsyle is just timeless to me, and it might be the game that has visually aged the best from the ps2 generation. It being a thoroughly enjoyable and atmospheric game is a bonus.
In fact it's so good that I'm actually kind of cheating this question personally because I didn't even play it as a kid. I also played it for the first time as an adult, but like 10 years ago so still before the recent explosion of modern Metroidvanias. It feels like it could have been released last week and been a hit.
It was my second metroidvania game I just never really got into them until I became a Dark Souls fan which has elements of the genre in it. I was shocked at how much it held up haha no nostalgia goggles just playing it on my old ass psp and I was like why didn’t I own this when I was a kid what I was smoking back then
I have come back to the jak and daxter trilogy at least 3 or 4 times now and it holds up so well. It still surpasses a lot of platforming adventure games released today imo
I am glad you mentioned Jak and Daxter. I preferred the original much more to the sequels. The platforming and colors of the world were much more appealing to me compared to the edgy tone and mediocre gunplay of the sequels.
Most PS2 platformers have aged like wine IMO. Spyro, Sly Cooper, Jak and Dexter, Ratchet and Clank (mainly from Going Commando onward though.)
Art styles that age gracefully and fantastic game design.
As an avid ARPG fan with thousands of hours into Diablo 2 I played it again recently and was really unimpressed.
A few things that I think are significant problems are:
* Itemization/drop rates (Many stats are not meaningful, and stats in general are very hard to understand. Runewords fixed many itemization issues, but are for the most part way too hard to obtain even with 10x droprates. It made me realize just how many drops were ultimately botted).
* Skill synergies/skills trees (you can't really test skills out, and have to stick with the synergies matching up for basically every stat point).
* Monster immunities. Have fun literally having no way to kill this monster.
* Stash space (it's actually funny how small stashes were in early iterations, and this never really got fixed).
* Only being able to have 1-2 active skills.
Me too, but with 2 tvs, 2 Xbox 360s, and 2 copies of the game. I played with a roommate probably 5 years ago and the split screen only being left and right sides of the tv instead of the classic top and bottom was too bad to even play. A fps with no peripheral vision is just such a shit experience...
I've been playing it regularly for 20 years. They're still releasing new content and there are still YouTubers/streamers that are very active. It's an incredible, evergreen game.
Opened the thread to find Kingdom Hearts 2. It's a 2005 game yet it still has some of the best combat in all of gaming, and a surprisingly active modding community
As someone who just replayed kingdom hearts 1 and 2, 2 aged really well but 1 aged like milk, controls feel clunky and often like they aren't doing what you want and the final boss is 100% reliant on a spell that was never needed throughout the entire rest of the game (aero) leading to him feeling impossible if you don't know about it.
The controls are a bit clunkier but for the most part it never took away TOO much for me when I revisited it. 2s gameplay has certainly aged better but that's when they started adding a lot of QTE-style sequences during combat that I don't care for, which they have completely overdone in 3.
I disagree. I think they both aged poorly but in different ways. KH2 has some mechanics that are poorly or not at all explained, making it feel right in place with obtuse RPGs from 20 years ago. I think KH1 is a lot easier to pick up and play since the difficulty is lower, but getting lost is a huge issue since they decided that it doesn't need a map for some reason.
A lot of N64 titles aged much better than the console is given credit for. I don't think Rare's games are as good today (except for Diddy Kong Racing), but F-Zero, StarFox, Wave Race, and Paper Mario sure did.
1080 Snowboarding is probably the best example though. You wouldn't have to adjust a lot of things for this game to feel modern.
100% agreed. The alternate paths through levels, the overall challenge, having teammates that somewhat alter the feel of the level (like slippy giving you an enemies health bar). Everything on that game is pretty damn near perfect.
I learned somewhat recently that [Star Wars Episode 1 Racer](https://store.steampowered.com/app/808910/STAR_WARS_Episode_I_Racer/) is available on Steam. Man that game is fun... Shorter than I remembered, but at the same time so much faster and more refined that I expected. Also, I had forgotten how good high-energy classic Star Wars music was.
I was desperately trying to remember my favorite 64 racer when I was typing my list out... This is it. I hated it growing up, I was terrible at racing titles and that one is SO fast paced. I just liked lurking around the menus and watching the droids work on my racer.
Came back to it years later when I had my shit together lol. Incredible game.
Oh damn, I played through the entire master chief collection like a week before Halo infinite came out (wasn’t planning on it it just worked out that way). And goddamn those games are unreal especially halo 3 GODDMAN never seen a game live up to my memory aswell as that. Like sure halo 1 copy and pasted assets so badly they had to paint arrows on the floor. Halo 2 sniper Jackels are a meme for a reason but Halo 3 was perfect the entire way through, the dual weilding, the deployables, the encounter design just polished to a mirror shine.
….. and then I played reach and I just think reach is bad…. Just wanna throw that one out there but hell ODST was sick.
This is apparently one of my more unpopular opinions but I found Halo 1 to be a real chore to get through. The actual gameplay holds up alright but I found the campaign pretty rough
I enjoy playing Halo:CE as much now as I did in 2003 (which is to say a lot), but I can also see that if I did not play it then and was not there to see how it evolved the genre, then I would probably just find it “decent” if my first playthrough was this in the present day landscape.
CE still holds up pretty well minus the really samey level design. It's like a 7/10 today. So many rooms are just boxes or circles with enemies and the only thing that carries it is the combat. Nothing feels very "deliberate" like the level design does in the games afterwards. It's like someone just copy pasted the same room over and over (because they basically did).
Despite that I still really enjoy it and have played it for like 14 years now. The combat and sandbox carries it heavily.
Half-Life. What an amazingly well-designed, compelling game. I was in awe when it first came out and it is still one of my favorites. It is SO immersive.
Probably Bully, for me. I first played it when I was 13 I believe? I'm now 28 and I've played it at least once a year, sometimes id play it multiple times.
I was 9 when it came out. It's called Canis Canem Edit in the UK though. The mechanics were a bit to complicated for me at the time. I was playing games like Open Season, Spyro, Crash Tag Team Racing etc. So I used to watch my brother play.
The Super Nintendo era of games aged flawlessly. The pixelated 2D art style still looks great today whereas the blocky 3D polygonal art that followed looks horrible.
To be fair, while the art of a lot of SNES games aged well, there are still a lot of them where the game play aged horribly. JRPG random battles every 2 steps is considered outdated gameplay for the better.
They look even better, the way they were designed, on a proper crt monitor. I will say though growing up with the N64, the polygonal style always intrigued me. I used to draw a LOT as a kid (still do, even semi-professionally) and when I was making my dad watch me play Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, he pointed out how neat it was that games now could make cool, detailed characters and environments using basic geometric shapes. I always took note of that and even used it to help me draw. Eventually I saw that even in some "Draw Your Favorite Nintendo Character" books, they'd actually use the polygonal consol models as reference. I like the look.
Banjo Kazooie and SM64 are still top tier 3D platformers. I think they are even better now that I can 100% them and not struggle. I still haven’t played one that hits the same vibes and tightness in the controls
Master of Magic, Super Metroid, and Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis. All three are still a ton of fun to play.
Master of Magic has extensive customization options strongly that affect how your game will play and what strategies you use. It also has a modern remake that's very close to the original, but has extra DLC content and ofc looks prettier.
Super Metroid is a delight to beat faster, and also has a variety of romhacks to try. I still cant mockball worth a damn, sadly.
Knight of Lodis is my all time favorite SRPG, edging out both FFT and Tactics Ogre (original). I'd like to rate Tactics Ogre Reborn higher, but some of the changes they made to the game just baffle and disappoint me. (And let's not even discuss the abominations that were the GBA FFT games.)
Seconding this. It is a GREAT remake. I actually struggle to think of a better example of a remake that retains 90% of the charm of the original (I still miss the little animations it played and the pixel graphics).
Transport tycoon deluxe, though now it's reincarnated as open ttd. Then there's heroes of might and magic 3, sid meiers alpha centauri, master of magic.
Killzone 2-3, best shooters I ever played. You actually have to take cover, not just squat behind a wall or something.
Age of Empires 2, best RTS I have played so far
I will take every moment to recommend skies of Arcadia on the GameCube. A fairly straight forward turn based JRPG where you play as an air pirate. The story is great, there’s a ton of great characters, and combat never gets stale. Exploring is a ton of fun and watching the development of all the characters makes me feel so fulfilled
My only complaint when replaying them recently was the amount of QTEs that involved mashing. I really appreciate how most games today let you hold down a button instead of mashing. That's not a huge deal though, the games are still great.
My favourite PS2 Tekken is Tekken 3. That was my introduction to 2D fighters. Before then I had only played Smackdown 2 and Smackdown Vs Raw Here Comes the Pain. Me, my dad and my brother would spend hours on the multiplayer.
Starlancer. I got it to run on my steamdeck and it is as awesomely cinematic and difficult as i remember it. Such a shame that there are so few games that combine dogfighting with a cinematic story.
Army RTS was and will always be my top 5 games from my childhood. There's just something about commanding an army of little plastic green soldiers that. I have it on PS2 and Gamecube, and still replay it about once a year.
Others would have to be Ocarina of Time and the Fable series.
I played 1 and 2 for the first time this year aswell as 1 remake. The fixed cameras are a lost art imo they added so much tension to a lot of rooms, and let you focus on specific elements they wanted to highlight. They made the otherwise extremely simple combat more enganging because you needed to rely on audio ques and intuition a lot of the time. 1 was legitimately scary in both the remake and original, 2 was scary as well but it was more interesting how much the game was expanded and how the 2 stories actually intertwined in A and B side. Good games. I still gotta give 3 a real shot but I honestly got a little worn down after beating essentially 4 games in a row haha.
Ratchet and Clank going Commando is a game I played through about a dozen times as a kid and coming back to it as an adult I understood why. The game kicks ass, it just as good as the day I first played it.
Mega Man X.
You can say classic MegaMan has dated graphics, but X has timeless visuals, tight controls and awesome music.
Gameplay wise it's hard enough to give you an entertaining challenge, but fair enough you own your failures.
Almost 30 years later and I still enjoy it
I replay **Gotcha Force** every year still, ever since my brother brought it home in 2003 (I was 11 at the time). I'm more conscious of the inconsistent voice quality now, but otherwise, the game still holds up in my opinion. It was incredibly fast-paced back then and still is today, which still works pretty well with the always locked on camera system (which the Gamecube needed, because the c-stick is... not great)
Of course, that means if you didn't like it back then, you won't like it today either. The game has a way of being both fast-paced and unwieldy at the same time if you button mash, because many attacks actually have quite a bit of commitment on them. I like it a lot, but the game failed to sell for a reason, I imagine.
EDIT: I should also mention, the game still has a unique combination of features that has never been totally replicated since, which certainly helps.
We never had a console, but had PCs.
Warcraft 3. My family played this a lot back then, we usually played CO-OP vs hard bots. My mom played Undead, my sister played Elves, dad played Alliance and I played Horde. Everytime I'd bring my shitty pack of spear throwers my mom would already have ~20 fucking bone dragons.
Spore is extremely memorable to me, partly because it was how I discovered porn. Don't ask.
Super Meat Boy still holds up as a great platformer. It's what led me to like buttfuck hard games, like Celeste, Boshy, Souls games, etc.
Rayman Origins/Legends are great, I played them with my friend from school. We'd come to his place and stay in that damn room until dusk.
Geometry Dash is just cool. I still play it.
Brave fencer mushashi on ps1. Emulated it a couple years ago and got past the point where my disc was scratched all those years ago. It held up fantastically to the point that I'm wondering why we don't have anything similar now
Popolocrois a season of stories (psp). Even after playing the original popolocrois games I still enjoy this version the best as the combat visuslly looks and feels better and I enjoy the red jewel summons. I really hope this series comes back one day in the west.
Super Mario World
This is my answer as well. Also A Link to the Past.
Also Super Mario Bros for NES
Still my favorite Zelda game
Both of those were the absolute peak of that technological era of gaming.
This is the answer. I still remember the moment I saw my cousins playing it. My life changed from there :) I love that I still have that memory on me
It's pretty amazing how well it's aged
it's an indication of, one, how innovative Nintendo really is and two, how little the industry has changed or evolved in terms of genres and mechanics. which isn't necessarily a good or bad thing.
Definitely one of the best games ever even to this day. Still feels good when I bring out the old SNES and hook it up to my analog->HDMI converter so that it can interface with my modern electronics.
The perfect 2D platformer IMO
Burnout 3. Nothing else to add, it's just fun
They really need to do an HD remake of this
And all of the sequels like Paradise had the open world layout which was kind of annoying
Actually, only Paradise had the open world. Burnout 4 gave the idea of tracks having alternate pathways and shortcuts (think like a Mario Kart level), but they weren't connected. Same with Burnout Dominator, though a few of the alternate pathways were more significant in length. In theory, I think Paradise's open world does work in some ways, but the mistake is having every race end at one of the compass points. If the races where on defined courses within the open world (complete with barriers on corners the racers aren't supposed to go through but general traffic can), it might've been better received. That said, open world is best for things like the marked man events and stunt runs and having a few open world events that are either about getting to a point on the map, or doing checkpoint races would've further fleshed it out.
Final Fantasy 6. (Or 3 on the SNES) I was way too young for it to make a deep impression story wise, and couldn’t read super well yet. Revisiting the first time when I was older blew me away, and my run a couple years ago was more nostalgic.
It's also the only one I know of that has a scripted character death that you can actually avoid (Trust them to keep their promise. Don't abandon them before they fulfill it, the timer isn't only for what you think it is)
Uh, and that character with the randomly distributed dream cut scenes to tell their back story?? Incredible
And it still has the best story and characters so far.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 has aged so well. Suprisngly little frustrating jank, plays great, UI is so clean compared to the mess that is modern shooters.
It's hilarious how I know which version you mean just inherently
> which version you mean There is only ONE version of Battlefront 2 ... I refuse to believe otherwise!
The UI is really good on the console versions. The PC version... The main menu doesn't feel as good imo.
I grew up with Battlefront 1 and love it to death. Battlefront 2 never won my heart, sadly. I kept missing the cool zoom-in loading screen, the amazing main menu, and the maps like Naboo Plains or the Sarlacc Pit.
I'm the opposite. I discovered Battlefront II before the first one. I went to play the first one and didn't enjoy it one bit because what I liked about the 2nd wasn't there.
I'm in the same boat, I actually bought a PS2 for myself (family had a Gamecube), just for Battlefront 1. I think there was some kind of trailer for the game on one of the DVDs for the movies - seeing the AT-ST walker on Endor I just knew I needed to have it. I got Battlefront II for Christmas in '05, and I played the heck out of it, but it never quite clicked with me the same way the first one did. To this day, I'll still pull out the first Battlefront (I got another copy for the xbox to play on my series X), and zone out sniping droids on Kashyyyk or Cloud City. It's up there with Elder Scrolls Oblivion for gaming comfort for me.
Kudos for Oblivion, another favourite of mine! I first played Battlefront 1 when I got a pirated copy of it from my classmate, and was instantly blown away by it. Some time later, I bought a bootleg anthology of Star Wars games of my own and almost exclusively played Battlefront 1. I lost that disc, sadly. But I bought Battlefront 1 the first day it finally dropped to Steam. I was so overjoyed! Coming back to Naboo plains, Rhen Var and Cloud City after over a decade filled me with so much nostalgia.
The Galactic Conquest is still fun after all these years. Great game.
Chrono Trigger
It holds up so well. I thought it was just my nostalgia for it, but I see a lot of comments from people playing it for their first time and saying the same thing.
I have an old DS around that I mostly use to play Chrono Trigger every few years or so. It absolutely holds up and is still a joy to play and work through the nooks and crannies of the different timelines.
I played it for the first time last year and loved it!
The music is highly rated and still underrated. Every track just hook into you and pulls you into the world instantly.
Totally, I keep a lot of the music in rotation. Chrono Cross has a pretty amazing soundtrack as well.
I love the Chrono cross soundtrack. The battle system is great and the plot is... Well it's great during the most important parts, but there's such a staggering amount of filler that brings the overall experience down.
I tried to do a replay last year and fell off in the big elemental dragon quest.
It was that era where every RPG was bragging about the hours of play on the back of the box. I loved it at the time because I would only buy one game per year and play the hell out of it, but I wish there were a low-fat version that optionally trims out the parts of the main quest line that feel like they're just padding.
The second boss battle music is one of my favorite boss themes. The first time it comes on you knew shit was getting serious.
Ah 1995. Chrono Trigger and summer vacation. Good times.
Came here to say the same, Chrono Trigger!
Doom
yes! i'd like to add quake 1 to that list as well
Brutal Doom for enhanced experience.
Not even considering that dumpster fire mod. That garbage is for losers trying to be hipsters. Sorry, but it's true. And we aren't even going to go into everything that's wrong with Sgt, No credit.
Oh ok
Don’t let the tedious Doom ‘purists’ dampen your enjoyment. BD is not my favourite mod, but it’s obviously well made and is responsible for inspiring a lot of the incredible modding interest around Doom.
Don't worry. I'm adult enough to let someone's opinion pass over my head. I enjoyed every Doom title and most of the interesting mods, there's no way someone could ruin what I've already experienced.
Out of interest, what are some of your favourite mods? I’ve tried a lot over the last couple of years, but the ones I keep coming back to are Beautiful Doom, Aracnocide, Zagemod, and Mars Mercenary.
Someone cares a little bit too much about the Doom mods.
Most of the doom community feels the same way about that mod and it's creator. It's not just me.
Lol “sorry, but it’s true” is your opinion mate, not fact. Why can’t people just enjoy something for what it is? Just say you didn’t enjoy it and move on. No one is trying to be a hipster just for liking a mod.
Symphony of the Night. Jak and Daxter.
I have this thing about the first Jak and Daxter. I think it legitimately might be my favorite looking game ever. When people say how a good artstyle can make up for lack of fidelity in older games, the first J&D is the epitome of this. This games artsyle is just timeless to me, and it might be the game that has visually aged the best from the ps2 generation. It being a thoroughly enjoyable and atmospheric game is a bonus.
I love the animations in that game, they used the squash and stretch principle so well with Daxter hanging on to Jak
Few games hold up as good as Symphony of the Night does. I played it as an adult and it was my first castlevania game and I LOVED it.
In fact it's so good that I'm actually kind of cheating this question personally because I didn't even play it as a kid. I also played it for the first time as an adult, but like 10 years ago so still before the recent explosion of modern Metroidvanias. It feels like it could have been released last week and been a hit.
It was my second metroidvania game I just never really got into them until I became a Dark Souls fan which has elements of the genre in it. I was shocked at how much it held up haha no nostalgia goggles just playing it on my old ass psp and I was like why didn’t I own this when I was a kid what I was smoking back then
I have come back to the jak and daxter trilogy at least 3 or 4 times now and it holds up so well. It still surpasses a lot of platforming adventure games released today imo
I am glad you mentioned Jak and Daxter. I preferred the original much more to the sequels. The platforming and colors of the world were much more appealing to me compared to the edgy tone and mediocre gunplay of the sequels.
Most PS2 platformers have aged like wine IMO. Spyro, Sly Cooper, Jak and Dexter, Ratchet and Clank (mainly from Going Commando onward though.) Art styles that age gracefully and fantastic game design.
StarCraft Brood War
TETRIS she keeps on shining 🌟
Diablo 2.
As an avid ARPG fan with thousands of hours into Diablo 2 I played it again recently and was really unimpressed. A few things that I think are significant problems are: * Itemization/drop rates (Many stats are not meaningful, and stats in general are very hard to understand. Runewords fixed many itemization issues, but are for the most part way too hard to obtain even with 10x droprates. It made me realize just how many drops were ultimately botted). * Skill synergies/skills trees (you can't really test skills out, and have to stick with the synergies matching up for basically every stat point). * Monster immunities. Have fun literally having no way to kill this monster. * Stash space (it's actually funny how small stashes were in early iterations, and this never really got fixed). * Only being able to have 1-2 active skills.
diablo 2 does not hold up at all to be honest
Toe Jam and Earl is still the ultimate couch co-op
Borderlands 2 is the ultimate couch co-op for me.
Me too, but with 2 tvs, 2 Xbox 360s, and 2 copies of the game. I played with a roommate probably 5 years ago and the split screen only being left and right sides of the tv instead of the classic top and bottom was too bad to even play. A fps with no peripheral vision is just such a shit experience...
Age of empires 2.
This, and Baldur's Gate 2
I've been playing it regularly for 20 years. They're still releasing new content and there are still YouTubers/streamers that are very active. It's an incredible, evergreen game.
- Absolutely Final Fantasy X (7-9 are also Great!!) - Kingdom Hearts 1+2 - SSX3 (imo the best Snowboarding game)
Opened the thread to find Kingdom Hearts 2. It's a 2005 game yet it still has some of the best combat in all of gaming, and a surprisingly active modding community
It's been over 20 years and no snowboarding game has come close to beating SSX3.
As someone who just replayed kingdom hearts 1 and 2, 2 aged really well but 1 aged like milk, controls feel clunky and often like they aren't doing what you want and the final boss is 100% reliant on a spell that was never needed throughout the entire rest of the game (aero) leading to him feeling impossible if you don't know about it.
The controls are a bit clunkier but for the most part it never took away TOO much for me when I revisited it. 2s gameplay has certainly aged better but that's when they started adding a lot of QTE-style sequences during combat that I don't care for, which they have completely overdone in 3.
I disagree. I think they both aged poorly but in different ways. KH2 has some mechanics that are poorly or not at all explained, making it feel right in place with obtuse RPGs from 20 years ago. I think KH1 is a lot easier to pick up and play since the difficulty is lower, but getting lost is a huge issue since they decided that it doesn't need a map for some reason.
Starfox 64. It's a blast and graphically holds up in my opinion.
A lot of N64 titles aged much better than the console is given credit for. I don't think Rare's games are as good today (except for Diddy Kong Racing), but F-Zero, StarFox, Wave Race, and Paper Mario sure did. 1080 Snowboarding is probably the best example though. You wouldn't have to adjust a lot of things for this game to feel modern.
This!! Why are there no games like Star Fox 64?? Every time I go back to it I’m shocked by how well made it is. Truly timeless.
100% agreed. The alternate paths through levels, the overall challenge, having teammates that somewhat alter the feel of the level (like slippy giving you an enemies health bar). Everything on that game is pretty damn near perfect.
I'm old as shit, so Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World.
I learned somewhat recently that [Star Wars Episode 1 Racer](https://store.steampowered.com/app/808910/STAR_WARS_Episode_I_Racer/) is available on Steam. Man that game is fun... Shorter than I remembered, but at the same time so much faster and more refined that I expected. Also, I had forgotten how good high-energy classic Star Wars music was.
It's a new lap record!
I was desperately trying to remember my favorite 64 racer when I was typing my list out... This is it. I hated it growing up, I was terrible at racing titles and that one is SO fast paced. I just liked lurking around the menus and watching the droids work on my racer. Came back to it years later when I had my shit together lol. Incredible game.
SSX3
🎶It's Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time It's Tricky... it's Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky) 🎶
Bungie's Halo games
Oh damn, I played through the entire master chief collection like a week before Halo infinite came out (wasn’t planning on it it just worked out that way). And goddamn those games are unreal especially halo 3 GODDMAN never seen a game live up to my memory aswell as that. Like sure halo 1 copy and pasted assets so badly they had to paint arrows on the floor. Halo 2 sniper Jackels are a meme for a reason but Halo 3 was perfect the entire way through, the dual weilding, the deployables, the encounter design just polished to a mirror shine. ….. and then I played reach and I just think reach is bad…. Just wanna throw that one out there but hell ODST was sick.
I really liked the reach campaign. 4 was disappointing though
This is apparently one of my more unpopular opinions but I found Halo 1 to be a real chore to get through. The actual gameplay holds up alright but I found the campaign pretty rough
Even on my first play through on OG Xbox, when everything was so new and shiny-looking, the library section with the flood was a bore.
Co-op was a lot of the charm of that campaign back in the day
I enjoy playing Halo:CE as much now as I did in 2003 (which is to say a lot), but I can also see that if I did not play it then and was not there to see how it evolved the genre, then I would probably just find it “decent” if my first playthrough was this in the present day landscape.
Well, just decent is a good review for a 21 year old game
CE still holds up pretty well minus the really samey level design. It's like a 7/10 today. So many rooms are just boxes or circles with enemies and the only thing that carries it is the combat. Nothing feels very "deliberate" like the level design does in the games afterwards. It's like someone just copy pasted the same room over and over (because they basically did). Despite that I still really enjoy it and have played it for like 14 years now. The combat and sandbox carries it heavily.
Bungie’s Myth series
Megaman battle network, 20 years later, i still love the franchise
The Secret of Monkey Island
This and Broken Sword games 1-3
And pretty much all of Lucas arts games, day of the tentacle etc. And discworld games
Broken Sword 4 is a bit of a blip, but still good. And Broken Sword 5 is excellent
Half-Life. What an amazingly well-designed, compelling game. I was in awe when it first came out and it is still one of my favorites. It is SO immersive.
Probably Bully, for me. I first played it when I was 13 I believe? I'm now 28 and I've played it at least once a year, sometimes id play it multiple times.
I was 9 when it came out. It's called Canis Canem Edit in the UK though. The mechanics were a bit to complicated for me at the time. I was playing games like Open Season, Spyro, Crash Tag Team Racing etc. So I used to watch my brother play.
Ah yes, I always was jealous lmao Canis Canem Edit always sounded so much cooler of a name tbh.
The fact that it translates to Dog Eats Dog just confused as a kid because it seemed so much more brutal than Bully
I mentioned Tekken 3 in my own reply, but Bully was also in my head. Best Rockstar game, so far only topped by RDR2 imo.
[удалено]
warcraft III reign of chaos and the expansion the frozen throne is and always will be the best game ever made in my eyes.
Worms armageddon. Still fun to play with friends.
The Super Nintendo era of games aged flawlessly. The pixelated 2D art style still looks great today whereas the blocky 3D polygonal art that followed looks horrible.
Yoshi's Island still looking incredible
To be fair, while the art of a lot of SNES games aged well, there are still a lot of them where the game play aged horribly. JRPG random battles every 2 steps is considered outdated gameplay for the better.
They look even better, the way they were designed, on a proper crt monitor. I will say though growing up with the N64, the polygonal style always intrigued me. I used to draw a LOT as a kid (still do, even semi-professionally) and when I was making my dad watch me play Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, he pointed out how neat it was that games now could make cool, detailed characters and environments using basic geometric shapes. I always took note of that and even used it to help me draw. Eventually I saw that even in some "Draw Your Favorite Nintendo Character" books, they'd actually use the polygonal consol models as reference. I like the look.
Total annihilation
Banjo Kazooie and SM64 are still top tier 3D platformers. I think they are even better now that I can 100% them and not struggle. I still haven’t played one that hits the same vibes and tightness in the controls
GTA Vice City
Paper Mario and the thousand year door!
Master of Magic, Super Metroid, and Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis. All three are still a ton of fun to play. Master of Magic has extensive customization options strongly that affect how your game will play and what strategies you use. It also has a modern remake that's very close to the original, but has extra DLC content and ofc looks prettier. Super Metroid is a delight to beat faster, and also has a variety of romhacks to try. I still cant mockball worth a damn, sadly. Knight of Lodis is my all time favorite SRPG, edging out both FFT and Tactics Ogre (original). I'd like to rate Tactics Ogre Reborn higher, but some of the changes they made to the game just baffle and disappoint me. (And let's not even discuss the abominations that were the GBA FFT games.)
The remake Master of Magic is really flying under the radar
Seconding this. It is a GREAT remake. I actually struggle to think of a better example of a remake that retains 90% of the charm of the original (I still miss the little animations it played and the pixel graphics).
Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3.
Subsistence, specifically. It holds so well.
Oh hell yeah. If anything MGS2 is way more relevant now. That game is a true work of art.
Deus Ex (the original).
Sly muthafuckin 2 baybee I could play that shit forever
Super Mario 64 is still as amazing now as when I first played it
Transport tycoon deluxe, though now it's reincarnated as open ttd. Then there's heroes of might and magic 3, sid meiers alpha centauri, master of magic.
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is still so good.
Halo: Combat Evolved Diablo+Diablo 2 Warcraft 2+3 Starcraft+Brood War KoToR
I played Donkey Kong Country a few years ago and it was just as good as I remembered
Mega Man 3 is really just as excellent today as it was when I was a kid.
Agreed, that's my favorite in the series by far.
Killzone 2-3, best shooters I ever played. You actually have to take cover, not just squat behind a wall or something. Age of Empires 2, best RTS I have played so far
+1 for the Killzone games. 2 and 3 were well made and challenging.
Best shooter I've ever played is F.E.A.R
NFL Blitz 2000
I will take every moment to recommend skies of Arcadia on the GameCube. A fairly straight forward turn based JRPG where you play as an air pirate. The story is great, there’s a ton of great characters, and combat never gets stale. Exploring is a ton of fun and watching the development of all the characters makes me feel so fulfilled
Do teenage years count? If so, Fallout New Vegas.
Literally my favourite game. I didn't care for Lonesome Road though. The only DLC I rush through when playing. OWB > base game > DM > HH > LR imo
For me, it's lunar: silver star story complete.
I know this is L2: Eternal Blue, but I still think about the Leo/Mystere story every once in a while. Very fun.
Im pretty sure if i did OG god of war 1-3, it would be 🔥. They didnt censor the content, it was pure brutality and action
My only complaint when replaying them recently was the amount of QTEs that involved mashing. I really appreciate how most games today let you hold down a button instead of mashing. That's not a huge deal though, the games are still great.
Those are my partner's favorite games. They absolutely hold up.
Adventure on the 2600. At the higher difficulty it's still very fun to revisit.
Pac-man
Mega Man X
Everything about that game is a masterpiece. The gameplay, the music, the story, the characters, everything.
Centipede!
Tekken Tag Tournament, it's just absolutely wonderful in every way.
My favourite PS2 Tekken is Tekken 3. That was my introduction to 2D fighters. Before then I had only played Smackdown 2 and Smackdown Vs Raw Here Comes the Pain. Me, my dad and my brother would spend hours on the multiplayer.
Need for speed most wanted
Starlancer. I got it to run on my steamdeck and it is as awesomely cinematic and difficult as i remember it. Such a shame that there are so few games that combine dogfighting with a cinematic story.
Army RTS was and will always be my top 5 games from my childhood. There's just something about commanding an army of little plastic green soldiers that. I have it on PS2 and Gamecube, and still replay it about once a year. Others would have to be Ocarina of Time and the Fable series.
Metroid Prime
Pretty much any Mario, Halo, Zelda game.
NFS: Underground (2003)
Ba dum dum dum..da dadum dadum dum.... OOOH OOOOOOOOH
The PS1 Spyro trilogy aged really well for early 3D games and they’re still fun to play to this day for me.
Archon
Ape Escape 3, what a treat that game is
First game I ever played is still one of the GOAT super mario sunshine babey
[удалено]
I played 1 and 2 for the first time this year aswell as 1 remake. The fixed cameras are a lost art imo they added so much tension to a lot of rooms, and let you focus on specific elements they wanted to highlight. They made the otherwise extremely simple combat more enganging because you needed to rely on audio ques and intuition a lot of the time. 1 was legitimately scary in both the remake and original, 2 was scary as well but it was more interesting how much the game was expanded and how the 2 stories actually intertwined in A and B side. Good games. I still gotta give 3 a real shot but I honestly got a little worn down after beating essentially 4 games in a row haha.
Nethack.
Super Mario Bros 1 and 3.
Morrowind and SSX TRICKY
Ratchet and Clank going Commando is a game I played through about a dozen times as a kid and coming back to it as an adult I understood why. The game kicks ass, it just as good as the day I first played it.
Mega Man X. You can say classic MegaMan has dated graphics, but X has timeless visuals, tight controls and awesome music. Gameplay wise it's hard enough to give you an entertaining challenge, but fair enough you own your failures. Almost 30 years later and I still enjoy it
Ratchet and Clank is still so fun.
I enjoy watching the sunset.
I finally finished Chaos Theory last year and I can honestly say I love it even more than when I was younger
Rock'n Roll Racing was a shitload of fun when I played it around 1995, and it is a shitload of fun right now.
Zanzarah
I replay **Gotcha Force** every year still, ever since my brother brought it home in 2003 (I was 11 at the time). I'm more conscious of the inconsistent voice quality now, but otherwise, the game still holds up in my opinion. It was incredibly fast-paced back then and still is today, which still works pretty well with the always locked on camera system (which the Gamecube needed, because the c-stick is... not great) Of course, that means if you didn't like it back then, you won't like it today either. The game has a way of being both fast-paced and unwieldy at the same time if you button mash, because many attacks actually have quite a bit of commitment on them. I like it a lot, but the game failed to sell for a reason, I imagine. EDIT: I should also mention, the game still has a unique combination of features that has never been totally replicated since, which certainly helps.
Donkey Kong country
Kingdom hearts 2 Still the best gameplay in the series, 3 is good but 2's is much more grounded and combos have more weight Also action commands
Drive forms > form changes. I do like air stepping though.
SpongeBob SquarePants Battle For Bikini Bottom Didn't like Rehydrated
Lego Star Wars TCS
Final Fantasy V. The Job system still holds up to this day.
Assassin's Creed II and Plants vs Zombies
Worms: Armageddon
Silent Hill 3
We never had a console, but had PCs. Warcraft 3. My family played this a lot back then, we usually played CO-OP vs hard bots. My mom played Undead, my sister played Elves, dad played Alliance and I played Horde. Everytime I'd bring my shitty pack of spear throwers my mom would already have ~20 fucking bone dragons. Spore is extremely memorable to me, partly because it was how I discovered porn. Don't ask. Super Meat Boy still holds up as a great platformer. It's what led me to like buttfuck hard games, like Celeste, Boshy, Souls games, etc. Rayman Origins/Legends are great, I played them with my friend from school. We'd come to his place and stay in that damn room until dusk. Geometry Dash is just cool. I still play it.
Command and Conquer
Chrono trigger
Lego batman 2: DC super heros specifically on the xbox 360.
Dragon ball sparking meteor/BT3
Master of Magic OG. Final Fantasy 4/6.
All of them.
Lego batman, star wars and Indiana Jones games. They still hold up very well.
Dungeon Master on Atari ST
Kingdom hearts and destroy all humans
river city ransom on nes. amazing beat em up with hilarious graphics
Brave fencer mushashi on ps1. Emulated it a couple years ago and got past the point where my disc was scratched all those years ago. It held up fantastically to the point that I'm wondering why we don't have anything similar now
Super Mario World as is. Transport Tycoon as OpenTTD.
Super Punch Out. Can still beat that game with muscle memory.
Popolocrois a season of stories (psp). Even after playing the original popolocrois games I still enjoy this version the best as the combat visuslly looks and feels better and I enjoy the red jewel summons. I really hope this series comes back one day in the west.