We didn’t need online access back then, we had LAN parties.
Most of the time you didn’t need updates, because back then they were much more diligent about making sure a game released without bugs. Yes a few existed, but much less than what you see in today’s games. A showstopper bug was death for sales, since it couldn’t be fixed inexpensively.
And those instruction books, especially if you are into the artistry that they put into them, is sorely missed, truly.
Hmmm, I don’t think that I can agree with the point about older games having fewer bugs. In my experience, 2000s 3D games are riddled with bugs to the point of becoming unplayable in many instances.
Yeah I always get pushed back on that, but honestly, I’ll “die on that hill”. Also, speaking of games not just in the 2000s, but even earlier.
Back then corporations had to sell cartridges and ship them, and if they shipped with any bugs, that was the death of the game.
At the end of the day, usually when I’m debating this topic with someone, they can only point to a few examples of bugs in cartridge games or in PC games back then, which was a very small ratio to all the ones that shipped correctly.
My point is basically the ratio of good games to buggy games was a lot better back in the day than it is today, because developers are time-pressed and semi-lazy, and they just figured they could fix bugs in post-production.
And funny enough, the pushback I usually get seems to be from astroturfers trying to hide that fact, of not doing as much due diligence before shipping, because it could just be fixed after the fact, regardless if the customer gets a worse product at first or not (not saying that of you, just generally).
There were some pretty bad bargain bin releases, and a lot of games had glitches but I can’t remember any game from a big company that released with a critical bug. I do think today companies are much more blasé about releasing games with serious issues and patching it later.
Couch multiplayer and LAN parties had a sort of friendly atmosphere that is sorely lacking from most online multiplayer today. Folks are all business, no fun. Even in casual modes people get mad if you fool around.
I miss open server browsers. I had a few servers I would frequent for UT2k4. It was nice just bouncing in for a few rounds. People were there to win, but between teams being shuffled between games and no real ranking system, no one was really a tryhard.
Wouldnt it make more sense to add official mod support to bedrock than to java? Java already has unofficial modloaders and more people play on bedrock edition
Still playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines all these years later. Writing more than makes up for dated combat. Hoping the second one is decent.
To be fair, as awesome as World of Darkness is… Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines is still the only good Video Game adaptation they’ve made (Why is it this hard!!!)
I love my old school games and will never stop playing SNES, 64, PS1, and PS2, but there were plenty of crap games on those systems too. Just like how indies and Minecraft and Soulsbornes right now are dope as hell, but everyone complains about Ubisoft and EA so much you’d think that they were the only publishers in the 2020s. There’s been solid titles and shovelwware every single generation ever since the Atari 2600. Also, the games that a lot of us grew up playing that have gone down as “the best games of all time” like FF7 and Goldeneye would be considered borderline unplayable by kids today.
Tunic is great! The dev said he wanted to replicate the experience of playing a game in a different language that you don’t quite understand at first, and he made it perfectly. English is my second language, and it reminded me of the times trying to play games before I understood it, struggling with manuals and dictionaries.
The special edition comes with a physical manual, but ironically the player shouldn’t open it until they 100% the game. It’s like a spoiler.
Most people don’t know about, or don’t remember, the old bins filled to the brim with garbageware games. Back when shit was still the wild west and people were releasing crap left and right.
Agree. I just wish bedrock was a straight port from the java version instead of being borderline ruined, the only difference should have been better performance from not using java and it being rebuilt from ground up.
I’m still using a GTX 1070. When I was building a new PC 2 years ago I had to decide whether to splurge on a new GPU. I thought about all of the games I played in the last 5 years and realized none of them were GPU intensive (the most intensive was Minecraft with shaders and that one was bottlenecked by my CPU). To this date I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that my GPU couldn’t handle.
Me too! I also built around the same time and had to decide whether or not it was worth upgrading… Still going strong for 1080p. (I don’t have a 4k monitor anyway)
I’m also on a 1070, but mine’s been trucking along since 2019. I do occasionally play something GPU intensive, but I often avoid going full MAX GRAFFICS because the laptop gets really toasty, which causes visible screen tearing due to most of the hot air being blown straight onto the fucking screen. Great engineering, ASUS, gg.
The 1070 was an amazing card for it’s time but DLSS 3 is a game changer, especially if you game at 4K. But for 1080p and below the 1070 can hold its own. I used one up until last year.
Game updates bring bad with the good, because devs often rely on them to deliver a full, playable game.
When you bought a game back in the day, you got a full, playable game on the media. It wasn’t always bug-free, because… you know… it’s software, but they had to at least quash all the showstoppers without the benefit of a Day 1 patch.
Fair, but ET was such an awful debacle that it killed Atari as a company and paved the way for Japanese companies to take over the entire market for the next couple of decades.
They were also much simpler and smaller back then with often extremely limited specification variations. And DRM existed back then too, with some fairly egregious and infamous physical DRM checks.
There’s an analogy with the music industry too. Music recording before was for the “elite” who were sure that their music would hit. Nowadays, the music recording broadens to the public, ergo more less quality focused music is released.
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