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Am I the only person that feels that retro games are better? (beehaw.org)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Less DRM, smaller filesizes, no stupid anticheat, and no always online bs. Anyone agree with me?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I'd say that in my experience, retro games or games with a retro design philosophy tend to be more enjoyable and replayable. The nostalgia helps with that, but I think a big part of it is never having to tinker with graphics settings or anything technical. You just boot it up and play.

I'd personally consider anything older than 2005 to be a retro game (or at least retro-adjacent) in my library. It feels like around that time there was a major shift in how games were made; some really benefiting from the new design philosophies but many falling very short of their hype and ultimate goals.

For me the biggest problem with modern games is the obsession with high fidelity graphics. The dev teams that create games without a focus on photo-realism or jaw dropping visuals are often the teams creating the best games in my eyes. See Heart Machine, ConcernedApe, Polytron, Ludeon Studios, Maddy Makes Games, etc...

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good modern games. The retro design philosophy just resonates much stronger with me when I just wanna sit down and enjoy something. Shoutout to Maxis for making SimCity 4, that game is sucking up the hours lately. lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Maybe it's me being old, but I've been hearing "the problem with modern games is they put graphics over gameplay" since 1991.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

For me the biggest problem with modern games is the obsession with high fidelity graphics. The dev teams that create games without a focus on photo-realism or jaw dropping visuals are often the teams creating the best games in my eyes.

I think this is very much down to personal taste. While I don't think a great game needs photo-realistic graphics, for me a game's graphics do factor into my enjoyment of it, so it should at least feel like the devs put some effort into making the game visually appealing. That could be focusing on making the graphics beautiful, or stylised and quirky, or just incredibly cute. But if I'm gonna spend hours looking at something, I want it to look nice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I'd say that in my experience, retro games or games with a retro design philosophy tend to be more enjoyable and replayable.

I don't like chiptune music, where music is designed to sound like it's being played on an old console's frequency synthesizer.

I think that there are some good arguments for low-resolution pixel art in terms of reducing asset cost while still having a playable game -- the brain is good at filling details in. But I don't think that that applies to music, don't think that there are good cost trade-offs.

And while I don't have a problem with low-resolution pixel art graphics, I do have to say that for some of the successful games that I've played with it, I'd really like to be able to buy an HD graphics pack. I'm kind of surprised by how infrequently it is that I've seen game devs do that. Cave Story did it. I'd like to see some games like Caves of Qud have HD DLC.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

See Hyper Light Drifter for a retro-style game with an unbelievably deep soundtrack. Fez also has an amazing soundtrack. Both are nods to chiptune but with incredibly modern production techniques.