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Maybe I'm just living in the past. Starcraft 2 does not give me the same warm and fuzzy feeling that Starcraft 1 gives me.
It could be the countless summers spent at my local cybercafe, playing BGH against random people on LAN. Or it could be the undetailed sprites and the 640x480 resolution, rather than the HD graphics of starcraft 2. Somehow, the graphics just looked way better at the time. Carriers shooting massive swarms of interceptors, Lurker spikes rippling through the ground, marines stimming, Arbiters cloaking, just looked so damn sick at the time, and they still do.
Starcraft 2 has amazing graphics, but leaves little to the imagination. This is not a problem with the game - just an element that applies to all new games. Graphical improvements reduce our ability to interpret the game abstractly. When I see a Colossi, I just think "War of the Worlds". When I see a reaver, I think "that's a badass robot bug that shoots crazy balls of plasma and evaporates your SCVs." We live in an HD world now, with implications far beyond the media we consume and the games we play.
Starcraft 2 is still an amazing game. It's so different from its predecessor, yet it's still starcraft and it's awesome.
And the hardcore factor just doesn't seem to be there. Again, this problem applies to many many games and isn't a problem with Starcraft itself. There's no crazy mechanics. A metaphor that illustrates this is comparing the transition from Smash Melee to Smash Brawl, in which the developers intentionally removed tactics that were muscle-memory intensive, like wave-dashing and L-cancelling. I'm not saying that difficult mechanics make a good game, but there's certainly something awe-inspiring about ridiculous mechanics.
I love SC2 and other modern games, but I live in the past and play CS 1.6, watch broodwar, and play BGHs with my friends. We still play N64 and it's still fun. I don't know why, but no new game has yet been able to captivate my imagination like older games. SC2 came close, and my relatively recent discovery of the Touhou series was fun for a while. It's hard to get excited for new games.
/sheds a tear
 
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I completely agree. I fear that Diablo 3 is going to be affected by this kind of thing as well. The gritty and dark images of Diablo 1 and 2 were a defining characteristic of the game. I'm sure 3 will be an awesome game but I feel it will loose some of its magic.
Similarly I have this feeling about Animated movies. I'm not a huge Anime person at all but I have watched some. At one point I watched a older Vampire Hunter D movie on vhs and realized there was a huge difference compared to newer anime. The images were darker, more imperfect, which led to it having an even more "evil" appearance. So yea I do feel like we are losing a great deal of "magic" and mystery when It comes to everything now being so crisp and HD.
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On February 18 2011 21:19 TheConstructed wrote:
I completely agree. I fear that Diablo 3 is going to be affected by this kind of thing as well. The gritty and dark images of Diablo 1 and 2 were a defining characteristic of the game. I'm sure 3 will be an awesome game but I feel it will loose some of its magic.
Upon release of Diablo 2, countless people complained about it not being "dark" and "gritty" enough due to the outdoor levels.
On topic: Nostalgia. That's your problem. You don't have an issue with the game but with what you expect the game to deliver. I've had the same problem. I used to play BW with a bunch of friends in my teens, we'd waste countless hours on TS and B.Net and jst have fun messing around. I no longer have the time to do that, I've lost contact to most of those friends of old and I (subconsciously) expected SC2 to deliver the same amount of "fun" that BW did. It took a while for me to get over that, now I enjoy the game for what it is.
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On February 18 2011 21:32 Shockk wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 21:19 TheConstructed wrote:
I completely agree. I fear that Diablo 3 is going to be affected by this kind of thing as well. The gritty and dark images of Diablo 1 and 2 were a defining characteristic of the game. I'm sure 3 will be an awesome game but I feel it will loose some of its magic. Upon release of Diablo 2, countless people complained about it not being "dark" and "gritty" enough due to the outdoor levels. On topic: Nostalgia. That's your problem. You don't have an issue with the game but with what you expect the game to deliver. I've had the same problem. I used to play BW with a bunch of friends in my teens, we'd waste countless hours on TS and B.Net and jst have fun messing around. I no longer have the time to do that, I've lost contact to most of those friends of old and I (subconsciously) expected SC2 to deliver the same amount of "fun" that BW did. It took a while for me to get over that, now I enjoy the game for what it is.
I agree that too many people already complained about the look of Diablo 3. But I still don't think that it's any less true. And while Nostalgia is inevitably part of it, It's not the only reason. You can see the difference is games you never played before or in other media such as animated films like I pointed out.
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On February 18 2011 21:19 TheConstructed wrote:
Similarly I have this feeling about Animated movies. I'm not a huge Anime person at all but I have watched some. At one point I watched a older Vampire Hunter D movie on vhs and realized there was a huge difference compared to newer anime. The images were darker, more imperfect, which led to it having an even more "evil" appearance. So yea I do feel like we are losing a great deal of "magic" and mystery when It comes to everything now being so crisp and HD.
I feel this way about evangelion. Haven't seen any new series that captures the style of the original. As for movies, I can't get into the whole Michael Bay aesthetic.
On February 18 2011 21:32 Shockk wrote:
On topic: Nostalgia. That's your problem. You don't have an issue with the game but with what you expect the game to deliver. I've had the same problem. I used to play BW with a bunch of friends in my teens, we'd waste countless hours on TS and B.Net and jst have fun messing around. I no longer have the time to do that, I've lost contact to most of those friends of old and I (subconsciously) expected SC2 to deliver the same amount of "fun" that BW did. It took a while for me to get over that, now I enjoy the game for what it is.
Agreed. I didn't start getting into SC2 until a few months ago and now i'm as addicted as I was to brood war. The nostalgia factor remains the same, but that's true for anything I guess.
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Its definitely not bad, and the community is doing its best but with sc2 being so well-tuned i find that it doesnt really trigger my creativity the way brood war did. Wish the units werent so smart and the whole game so easy to play.
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On February 18 2011 21:44 red.venom wrote:
Its definitely not bad, and the community is doing its best but with sc2 being so well-tuned i find that it doesnt really trigger my creativity the way brood war did. Wish the units werent so smart and the whole game so easy to play.
Yup. It pisses me off how easy it is to get to masters, but on iCCup to move up 5 ranks would take years after years.
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There's nothing special about graphics anymore, barely anything that can be further improved.
That's one of the reasons developers need to get their shit together and start working on actual gameplay and story lines again. If that doesn't happen, then I don't see any appeal to playing games anymore.
We don't need any more games that only consist of cutscenes and quick-time events.
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Some agree - some don't.
I agree, but i also acknowledge the fact that the shiny graphics are a necessity for SC2 to make it as an ESPORT in the west - and for ESPORTs to make it at all in the west, a game like SC2 is required so. No way around it i suppose.
But ofc BW is better in every way. Currently casters are more famous than players, much due to the fact that we don't see a lot of consistency in the scene. No hero has yet risen.
Macro needs to be better rewarded. Multiple base management needs to pay off more. Cheese needs to be made more risky. All those factors would make SC2 a worse ladder game, which in Blizz's mind would destroy the expanding playerbase (new players don't want hour long exhausting macro games for their daily bread and butter - they wanna one-base).
SC2 will stand or fall with its first expansion, 'cause the time from now 'til its release is pretty much dead on the lifetime of the game as a "fresh new title".
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Yeah, nostalgia is a double-edged sword. I do agree that the golden age of games was around 95 - 2002 ish.
I'm a bit divided on this imagination thing, I always thought that BW was a bit too stale...
and I hoped SC2 would be a bit more rewarding to the more creative player.
It quite isn't although it's understandable IMO.
But then again this one day I was playing TvT doing my usual FE and had perfect scouting information of my opponent. I thought I knew what he was doing but then he raped me with a sweet elevator strategy with fast siege mode and in my mind that old videotape of Nada teaching TvZ started rolling.
Played the whole day trying to implement ghosts and nukes into standard strategies after that...
Nothing stops a creative mind.
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On February 18 2011 21:32 Shockk wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 21:19 TheConstructed wrote:
I completely agree. I fear that Diablo 3 is going to be affected by this kind of thing as well. The gritty and dark images of Diablo 1 and 2 were a defining characteristic of the game. I'm sure 3 will be an awesome game but I feel it will loose some of its magic. Upon release of Diablo 2, countless people complained about it not being "dark" and "gritty" enough due to the outdoor levels. On topic: Nostalgia. That's your problem. You don't have an issue with the game but with what you expect the game to deliver. I've had the same problem. I used to play BW with a bunch of friends in my teens, we'd waste countless hours on TS and B.Net and jst have fun messing around. I no longer have the time to do that, I've lost contact to most of those friends of old and I (subconsciously) expected SC2 to deliver the same amount of "fun" that BW did. It took a while for me to get over that, now I enjoy the game for what it is.
Nostalgia isn't the only reason.
Most modern games suck period. I would say that the 90's were the golden era for gaming. That is where most of the amazing games that are remembered are from: broodwar, warcraft, cs etc. There is even a thread made for this somewhere.
The gaming industry today, I feel is too focused on graphics, and I guess part of the fault is within the new generation of gamers. Whenever I hear my console classmates talking about games, all I hear is
"ooh, check out this game this has such sick graphics!"
"I know right?"
With the industry too focused on graphics, the story and gameplay just gets forgotten. There are very few good modern games compared to the 90's. That is why I have never bought any (newer) console, or any modern games except for starcraft II, and even that I regret. There is a reason why most modern games are forgotten after 1 or 2 years while the 90's games are still remembered.
With diablo III, I'm going to ask my hardcore diablo II friend on how good it is before I buy it. Last time I saw him before he moved in 2005, he was playing diablo II, so there is a good chance he still plays now just as I still play broodwar.
Or maybe it really is just nostalgia, as my childhood was in the 90's.
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On February 18 2011 22:33 Nemesis wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 21:32 Shockk wrote:On February 18 2011 21:19 TheConstructed wrote:
I completely agree. I fear that Diablo 3 is going to be affected by this kind of thing as well. The gritty and dark images of Diablo 1 and 2 were a defining characteristic of the game. I'm sure 3 will be an awesome game but I feel it will loose some of its magic. Upon release of Diablo 2, countless people complained about it not being "dark" and "gritty" enough due to the outdoor levels. On topic: Nostalgia. That's your problem. You don't have an issue with the game but with what you expect the game to deliver. I've had the same problem. I used to play BW with a bunch of friends in my teens, we'd waste countless hours on TS and B.Net and jst have fun messing around. I no longer have the time to do that, I've lost contact to most of those friends of old and I (subconsciously) expected SC2 to deliver the same amount of "fun" that BW did. It took a while for me to get over that, now I enjoy the game for what it is. Nostalgia isn't the only reason. Most modern games suck period. I would say that the 90's were the golden era for gaming. That is where most of the amazing games that are remembered are from: broodwar, warcraft, cs etc. There is even a thread made for this somewhere. The gaming industry today, I feel is too focused on graphics, and I guess part of the fault is within the new generation of gamers. Whenever I hear my console classmates talking about games, all I hear is "ooh, check out this game this has such sick graphics!" "I know right?" With the industry too focused on graphics, the story and gameplay just gets forgotten. There are very few good modern games compared to the 90's. That is why I have never bought any (newer) console, or any modern games except for starcraft II, and even that I regret. There is a reason why most modern games are forgotten after 1 or 2 years while the 90's games are still remembered. With diablo III, I'm going to ask my hardcore diablo II friend on how good it is before I buy it. Last time I saw him before he moved in 2005, he was playing diablo II, so there is a good chance he still plays now just as I still play broodwar. Or maybe it really is just nostalgia, as my childhood was in the 90's.
Your perspective is off.
Most old games sucked as well. It's not as if the 90s had a dozen decent games and a handful bad ones and that was it. If anything, there were more games available as you didn't need a huge budget to produce and market a game, piracy wasn't as rampant in the days before p2p and customers were happier with less game for their buck in general compared to today.
Even the issue with games going for graphics instead of gameplay is an old topic. Those discussion were going on as soon as games started utilizing 3D graphics (and failing at it most of the times).
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Nostalgia.......
The games you grew up on and spent countless hours on will always be your favorites, and as you get older and have less time to spend on newer games, you don't develop the same nostalgia for them. It's scientifically proven that you tend to tend to sugar coat your past memories.
I realize I do this for a LOT of games even fairly recent ones. A good gauge of this is having someone who never got into the old games to judge them. I myself got into PC gaming too late to really enjoy BW and CS1.6. And while I watch professional matches of them all the time, and played a decent bit of both, they really hold no attraction to me. There isn't some "it" factor that BW/1.6 has. That's just your experience of thousands of games played adding your bias to the equation. Are there some things it did better? Sure. There were also plenty of things it did worse. I've been part of 4 separate BIG competitive communities, and WITHOUT fail every new game that comes out is blasted by all the ancients of the community because it doesn't provide the "same feel". And also, without fail, someone always brings up how they like the old graphics better....in EVERY SINGLE GAME.
The games were CS/CSS, Quake 2/3/4/L, Halo CE/2/3, and SC:BW/SC2. EVERY single game has had the same community reaction. Some (quake4) are legitimately worse than their predecessor, though still far from bad. Others(QL) despite being almost mirror images, are blasted for not providing that elusive "it factor". There is no "it factor". The "it factor" is you playing the same game for 8 years, for hours at a time, so much that you understand every tiny nuance of the game, and know instantly what every little variation can mean. You haven't gotten to that point with the new game yet....so calm down.
And lol at the "golden age of gaming" being the 90s. I didn't get to play many of them until later in life....and when I tried to play and enjoy them after having played the good games I know and played, they seem like absolute crap 90% of the time. Goldeneye is NOT fun after you've played BF2, sorry. Nope, playing BW AFTER you've already played games like AoE2 is not some amazing gaming experience. Nope, playing diablo 1 was not even remotely fun after playing Diablo 2.
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5930 Posts
Goldeneye is still ridiculously fun if you get past the now horrible and clunky controls. I took it out after 10 years in storage and while my friends and I found the controls to be fucking terrible, after you get used to it and understand the necessity of abusing the auto aim it still does a lot of things better than the current FPS games of this generation.
A lot of things you could consider to be retarded game design (remote mines exploding in mid air, proximity mines, two controllers controlling one player) but it works really well for Goldeneye. The multiplayer was still as fun as ever especially if you want to relax a bit.
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On February 18 2011 21:32 Shockk wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 21:19 TheConstructed wrote:
I completely agree. I fear that Diablo 3 is going to be affected by this kind of thing as well. The gritty and dark images of Diablo 1 and 2 were a defining characteristic of the game. I'm sure 3 will be an awesome game but I feel it will loose some of its magic. Upon release of Diablo 2, countless people complained about it not being "dark" and "gritty" enough due to the outdoor levels.
Yeah, diablo 2 never quite did it for me. The first act was somewhat memorable but even still not that enjoyable. The most fun was playing the classes up to like 40-60 levels before it got stale for me. Even the spells in diablo 1 generally looked "cooler", and just hitting stuff had better "oomph" to it.
The sound effects played a big role. I can remember D1 sound effects as if I played it last week, don't remember D2 except for like frozen orb and frost nova.
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On February 18 2011 23:48 Womwomwom wrote:
Goldeneye is still ridiculously fun if you get past the now horrible and clunky controls. I took it out after 10 years in storage and while my friends and I found the controls to be fucking terrible, after you get used to it and understand the necessity of abusing the auto aim it still does a lot of things better than the current FPS games of this generation.
A lot of things you could consider to be retarded game design (remote mines exploding in mid air, proximity mines, two controllers controlling one player) but it works really well for Goldeneye. The multiplayer was still as fun as ever especially if you want to relax a bit.
Guess what...you played it when it was still a fresh experience, and breaking new ground. I played it after I had already played Bf2 and CoD. It sucks balls in comparison.
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5930 Posts
The big difference is that I played with friends. The single player from Goldeneye was always awful and technically it wasn't close to being as good at the FPS games on the computer (Quake and Duke Nukem 3D especially).
Goldeneye wasn't even the best FPS on the N64 as Duke Nukem 64 was the best FPS game on the system. But the reason it worked was the campy design choices and the weapons, which are still more fun than the majority of weapons in today's FPS games because of how absurdly overpowered they are.
Its kind of like how game journalists reacted to the first hour or so of Duke Nukem Forever. Some people like Gamespot (?) complained how it doesn't play like Call of Duty with the lack of iron sights but they've completely missed the point. Its hard to explain, you either get it or you don't which is the case with many games and that's not really due to nostalgia...the closest case I can think of would be the Tales JRPG and Metal Gear Solid series: both series of games are worse than their genre peers in basically every single way, Final Fantasy and Splinter Cell respectively, but many people find them more fun for whatever reason.
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On February 18 2011 22:33 Nemesis wrote:
Most modern games suck period. I would say that the 90's were the golden era for gaming. That is where most of the amazing games that are remembered are from: broodwar, warcraft, cs etc. There is even a thread made for this somewhere.
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No... most games suck period. You only think that the 90's were better because you've forgotten most of the 90's. It's the same reason every generation thinks the new generation of music is terrible - you don't remember the shitty artists or games from your childhood, you remember the best of a generation. There will be just as many nostalgic feelings about games from the 2000s, once we actually are several years out from then.
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On February 19 2011 00:43 Womwomwom wrote:
Metal Gear Solid series: ... worse than ... genre peers in basically every single way, ... Splinter Cell ...
Will you excuse me as my brain melts to a little puddle of trolled-to-death juice?
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EPT
