Why playing old games is better?

Date: 2021-07-22

Hello there! Long time no write anything! Not that there is a lot of things going on in my life right now, just enjoying the social media-less life, reading books I should have done decades ago (Brave New World, as much as it is depressing, but also must read these times).

I was recently on holiday abroad (which I never do, I barely know my own country, the last time was in a foreign country, it was like 25 years ago), and before that I discovered the youtuber, Civvie11, who makes videos about mostly retro FPS games. Games I played when I was a kid, like Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Hexen, etc.

I never had a decent gaming computer, and my current little card can barely run games from 2016 at low settings. I also think that todays games are simple not for me. I rarely had fun with modern games, and most of them are just the same-same games every year. I am looking at you Assassin's Creed, and others as well.

So when I think about gaming, I think about old stuff, mostly pre-2010, since not just these are the games that I can run well on my computer, but these are the games that gives me good stories, fun gameplay, or occasionally something to think about. There are games from the past decade that I like though: the rebooted Shadow Warrior (2013), Alien: Isolation, Shadow Tactics (my new favorite), Slay the Spire, the Metro Series, and This War of Mine.

Civvie inspired me to start playing old build games again, and I checked out the 3D Realms channel (yes, they still exist!), and apparently we soon can enjoy remastered versions of SiN and Kingpin, two lesser known first person shooters, which are more story driven and interactive, similar to DN3D in a way, but both has a story and stuff. Also note: Ion Fury - Aftershock is coming to, the DLC for the most modern build game (and a must buy if you are a fan of old school shooters), plus Rise of the Triad remastered.

I must say, after 3D Realms couldn't crack Duke Nukem Forever - or more likely they cracked under the pressure of the Duke Nukem name - they came back and become the publisher of these old games remastered version. I usually not a fun of movie sequels and reboots in movies, but for games it's alright, since we have so few fun games these days. Basically a good chunk of our childhood games are back in a little bit modern form, so we can show the current generation what games were like back in the day.

I think with consoles, the gaming landscape changed so much, that PC games lost their identity, their complexity. Most of the games these days have extensive tutorials and shit, there is virtually no sense of discovery, and people started calling hard games the "Dark Souls of [insert category here]", because according to modern gaming, Dark Souls is really hard… which means those people rarely played any games from the 1990s probably.

Anyway I just want to say, that I will post some retro games stuff on my Old Games page more frequently. As usual I try to preserve some history of these, because who knows how long we can enjoy them.

Until then, I will get some bubblegum…