What makes videogames "timeless".
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When I hear most people talk about a game that "was good for it's time." It means that the game didn't have voiced dialogue or some of the quality of life features that they're used to.
Or.. just graphics
Like ultima I-II-III. They were good for their time, but how many new gamers would enjoy these games today ?@@christianacquasanta1472
A.K.A. Bloody mindless NPC drones
@@christianacquasanta1472 I personally just can't with ascii graphics. I grew up in the late 90s so my cutoff point is sprite art. If the visuals is just a bunch of letters on a black background I bow out immediately.
@@lcmiracle I see this comment so often, you'd think it comes from an NPC...strange
People confuse "timeless" with "replayable". A timeless game may be one you play and are done but a new player can come along years later and get the same enjoyment out of it as you did, even if YOU won't replay it because you've already seen the central conceit that made the game great. For example a timeless beautiful story game isn't really designed to be replayed to death but was and always will be amazing for everyone who plays it the first time. Timeless isn't just about a nostalgia rerun.
For me a timeless game is one that can be picked up years after its release and be enjoyed with minimum effort (small tweaks on control mapping, etc.). The original Doom stands out to me as an example of a fine aged game. I played it from start to finish for the first time when the game was a bit over 20 years old and it was such a fun experience (even using the original version on DOSBox).
It's mods even put some modern FPS to shame.
I would add Deus Ex to that list
@@jellegaard and a lot more games! It's just that Doom was a clearer example 'cause it's a simpler game.
@@jellegaard there is even a Deus ex mod for doom :p
Halo CE is another one
I think the "It's good for its time" can be explained with how we perceive good. Good is very subjective and with all things subjective, it evolves overtime. Subjectivity has one important factor which influence the "It's good for its time":
- Point of Reference
I could be wrong, but I definitely think the order in which you experience games affect significantly how much you will enjoy them which explains why game can or cannot age. Portal is a good example since alot of people never experience another game similar to Portal afterward which improved anything, it does not seem to age because there isn't any change in reference point
Another good example of "good for its time" is KOTOR. The game was and still is a masterfull narrative driven game still talked to this day. The graphics have obviously being surpased but were amazing at its time. However, if you gave it to someone who grew with current game design they will inmediately find out that the UI and controls are horribly outdated. So you can see that developers realised that even this master piece had flaws that could be improved in future games.
Yeah that's why when someone ask me to recommend games/music/anime i usually say the good but no so good ones first and the better ones last, for example my dark soul order would be to start with dark souls 2. It really does change the experience for better
@@phyrexian_dude4645 calling limited technical specs "flaws" is not a very good idea for a standard to be fair. KOTOR was good for its time graphically and ui-based, but that doesnt change how fantastic the story and combat(real time with pause is still used today) is. Sure the younger generations might have trouble wrapping their head around not seeing it in 1080p, but that doesn't directly make it a worse game.
@@m.dave2141 I would argue it expands on their experience to play them 1,2,3 so they are in the same conversation as everyone else and know what they are talking about when they say 2 was a step down from 1 or whatever.
@@Koranthus Disagree, old videogames definitely had some technical problems that if compared to newer games make them hard to enjoy even if a person never played a videogame before, that person would still pick the new one because it's just easier pick up and have fun with it
I have been playing Thief for a while, althought I never touched this series in my childhood before, I felt impressed and immersed by the world. The feeling of freedom in your actions and the many ways to tackle a objective it's what sold it for me.
Even if the games are old graphically I cannot deny that the gameplay is solid even to this day and age. I feel that games nowdays focus too much on cinematic instead of giving the player freedom of control.
I think typically the games which are “timeless” tend to have stylized graphics, good quality of life, and a story with tropes which hasn’t been wrung dry(even if they were early on in that “milking”).
For me, the trully timeless games are Heroes of Might and Magic 3, and Stronghold: Crusader.
Infinite replayability, and the fan content for these two is still going strong.
Indeed. HoMM 3 is a finetuned epitome of its niche that took three predecessors to make it whole while Stronghold: Crusader refined a already solid base game.
Stronghold as a game series never had the same polish after that which is a shame since 2 and 3 had potential.
Based. My step dad and I used to play vs each other on DSL internet and it was magical
Homm 3 all the way , such a perfekt game.
HOMM quest for the dragonbone staff is one of my favs
Too bad the IP for HoMM is held by one of the scummiest companies on the planet, ubisoft.
Your talk of video games being an art form that you experience actively, rather than passively is interesting. I think the way I would put it is that video games should be compared to a piece of music, rather than a painting. They are both a creative art form, as by the composer or the game developer, and a performative art form, as by the musician or the player. You can appreciate it some just by watching and listening to another person play, but to play it for yourself is a whole other thing. In either case, you don't truly get the experience of playing it for yourself, when you are just an observer.
A video game or a piece of music invites the player or musician to refine their own art within itself, and the better they get at playing it the more deeply they can appreciate the art of its creation.
Gothic 2 NOTR is still amazing.
When I was a kid the infinite health cheat codes and cheat devices usually made the game more fun for me. I really didn't want the challenge until I was a teenager. When younger I just wanted a digital playground that was relatively safe. So when I couldn't get past the first stage of some of those brutal NES games, that's when I'd get bored.
Never thought about this, but thinking about it now you're right. As a child you love videogames so much it's harder to burn out just by using cheats.
Only as you get older you begin cherishing the natural difficulty and learning experience.
Games of old were originally designed for arcade which has incentive to make you insert as many coins as possible, so the easy way to program that was to make it extremely difficult (bullet hell anyone?). People were also motivated to show off their digital dexterity in front of others.
Porting directly into home entertainment with nobody watching usually made for a poor experience.
When he was talking about that part the only thing i could think of was that as a 12 yo i was playing the first GTA. And we rarely did the mission. Just a few cheat codes and the open world was so much fun.
Same goes for sims, just unending money and the fun was your imagination.
When I was a kid I'd just play games like Pajama Sam or Monkey Island on PC. Was hard to fail a point and click game. I had some bad experiences with gamesharks and was turned off from cheats. Once they disabled achievements in most games while cheating from 360/PS3 onwards, I've not thought about using cheats at all.
There used to be many games made for kids that gave you plenty to explore and had a low skill ceiling. I'm tired of games making themselves accessible to children (or people with the intelligence of children) when they're rated for adults.
I think a video game being "timeless" means that even those who don't have the nostalgia or time sensitive context for the particular game, are still able to enjoy it immensely and would to some degree understand either subconcsiously or intuitively that the game is something special and deserving of the massive praise it got and still gets. I'd also say that a game being "good for it's time" doesn't meant it's necessarily bad now in the present, it's just less good.
being made by valve also seems to help
@@numberonedad well yes, Valve focused on building good games from the ground up, over just making some 'triple A graphics' bullshit and calling it a day
I think so too. Even if the graphics are "ugly" (meaning low poly or just looks old) they might still look good, and still immerse you enough to be able to really enjoy the game.
I emulated the original Silent Hill 1 a while ago, and although it looks old, it still feels *eerie*. It has so much atmosphere to it that I could play it 20 years in the future and still get the same feelings from it. Same with a lot of other really old game. But I also enjoy playing old games in general.
Pixelated games created today are cheaters imo though, no matter whether you play them now or 100 years in the future, they will always look, play and feel the same. Old Nintendo classics like Super Mario Bros was cutting edge back in the day, and gave players back then a completely different experience (in their minds) compared to how we experience games like that today.
One thing I'd like to add is that today, videos games are enjoyed passively.
Twitch and youtube(let's play) are just that.
But I'll also say that enjoying a game passively vs actively are two absolutely different things.
Are you saying that's common for all people to passively enjoy games or are you saying that people watch other people play games primarily?
@@Koranthus Neither. I'm just saying it's a thing that exists because he made it seem like the only way to enjoy video games is to play them.
I think it stems from the differences between a game created with an emphasis on ideas vs a game that's created with an emphasis on technology. The reason why a game like Link to the Past is timeless is because the underlying technology (graphics, readability, smoothness) are good enough to not hinder the player's experience while the player interacts with the ideas of the game. In other words, the technology is only a conduit. A large, mysterious overworld to be unlocked as you play, interestingly crafted dungeons that test your wits and provoke thought. These are experiences that never go out of style.
Contrast that with a game like Goldeneye 64, which is a beloved game to this day many have fond memories of, but certainly a product of its time. It's a game that relies primarily on technology, as many shooters do, and in order for a shooter to be enjoyable you need things like good screen resolution for readability, high consistent framerate, smooth controls, etc, neither of which hold up today as the technology has seen monumental improvements, and going back to a time when moving your gun felt like watching a slideshow is simply unacceptable. The technology is the lynch pin.
This is why I find that puzzle/strategy games are particularly more immune to "aging" over time (if done well, that is), as a good idea is always fresh when exposed to a new mind
Goldeneye is a good example. Loved it as a kid and had a lot of fun with multiplayer like others did. It doesn't hold up well at all now with bad control etc Unlike something like pokemon blue which is exactly as it was then or some other older games
Bioshock is another great example. Beautiful, unique environment, story, music, and fun gameplay.
Good point lol
Fun gameplay is a bit of a generous, BioShock had Alot of issues.
@@DevilSlayr Tbf BioShock excels in its presentation, atmosphere and artdesign. Gameplaywise.. its ok.
Link to the Past is still one of my favorite games of all time when it came out in 1991 and is still regarded as one of the best Zelda games. I think Pacman and Tetris are excellent examples as they are some of the oldest games out there that still get played even in their original form. Still, some games can be chalked up to nostalgia I feel, cause sometimes the controls or game-play with older games just are not as good as I remembered them being.
I was gonna comment before watching that as a Polish guy the Gothic series is timeless for me and i return to it regulary and next thing i see is Josh mentioning it thats crazy
I dunno if it's Nostalgia, but I really enjoy Dark Cloud. Every time I replay it, it sucks me into a very comfy mood.
Yeah, the sequel gets more love but honestly the simplicity of Dark Cloud makes for better replayability - going straight into the dungeon/town building mechanic instead of a long story dungeon focused on inventing parts for Steve gets you to The Cozy Zone a lot faster.
@@greenhowie I really disliked 2... It felt like so many different things where a downgrade. There where some improvements here and there, but it felt like so much was lost.
I loved that game. Really wish we could get a 3rd.
@@patrickbuckley7259 respectfully, Dark Chronicle is one of my all time favourites, even though I could write a 3 hour video essay on its faults. 1 was good, but it just didn't get me excited or anything, it's just filed in my head as "good game".
Metroid Prime, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil Remake, Max Payne, MGS2 just to name a few
Immediate example of a timeless classic to me is Chrono Trigger. Made in the 90s and still holds up well to this day.
And he talked about Chrono Trigger.
@@mapron1 yup he sure did.
You can't even talk down to Chrono Trigger because of its graphics, because have you even SEEN the resurgence of retro pixel art games these days? Sea of Stars ringing any bells? And Chrono Trigger, a game that came out in 1995, looks and plays BETTER than a lot of the modern games that are attempting to ape it. It could have come out TODAY and nobody would question it. That's the _definition_ of "timeless".
competency is probably the pure reason i still hold so many games dear to this day. Getting good at it, struggling with it, understanding them. (basically getting that dopamine buildup :3)
I think timeless, by definition, means that the game is still relevant today. In the same way we still have Beethoven's symphonies or Monet's paintings, a timeless game is one that doesn't fade into obscurity with time.
Obviously there's a complicating factor of "the accessibility of a game is controlled by its IP holder", but that's as good a definition as can be given.
Dungeon Keeper 2 was way ahead of it's time still hilarious and fun
Both Starcrafts, Warcraft 3, Witcher 2,3. Dark souls 1-2. I play them ever year and i still enjoy every second of them. I also love Witcher 1, i play that game every year too but that game aged, holy mama that combad aged 69 minutes after the release :D
RIGHT? That and an atrocious chapter 1 made deinstall the game and only after witcher3 i properly played through it. I could kick myself in hindsight, since the combat clicks after a while but they didnt make it easy to love the game. Also love Warcraft 2 It is the epitome of SVGA Graphics and it is still a looker...
@@christopherschneider2968a looker. But that side panel takes up a 1/3 of the screen in a game that's already 4:3 ratio. Not easy to go back to..
@@phillystevesteak6982 That sidepanel is 100% of game information including minimap and unit stats plus you can use it for all mouse control.
It was the least of wc2 problems
I'd say some art forms also have a skill requirement: you can play an instrument or sing a song instead of just listening to it, just like you can play a video game instead of watching a walkthrough. In both cases you've experienced the music/game, but you can either do it as a spectator or as a player.
This was exactly my first thought - games aren’t any different in that regard to really any other art form.
When you’re watching a ballet you’re also not required to be good at ballet. The peak irony of this tangent was that it was happening while Josh was streaming himself playing a game.
Josh should do a full analysis of video game design, his favourite video games, genres like immmersive sims and RPGs.
Gothic is so fucking good and so overlooked. It's a shame that it had bad marketing and never really got much attention outside of central and eastern europe.
love it to bits but holy shit is it clunky, it was clunky even for its time, which is a shame because as an RPG its absolutely top class. Piranha bytes never really improved the technical aspects of their games, and i feel like thats what they owe their downfall to. even after their resurrection elex continues to control like frozen dogshit on a chain
@@oomree This. Fallout 2 and Half-Life 1 are solid and sturdy even now in gameplay department. Gothic 1-2 are so freaking clunky and janky compared to those games from that same age.
Oh yes, I agree. I also hope he covers Chronicles of Myrtana, or at least talks a little bit about it, since it's a rather new project. But soo good.
I remember playing Gothic 3 like over a decade ago. It had very nice OST, and very chill paced game play.
But then I noticed that, even though the game world takes place across 3 nations, the population is like: 1000 hairy dudes in lederhosen, and 6 unnamed women, 3 of which are slaves sold in the desertstan.
Also there was just randomly dragons beneath one small village in a cave, like, there was no real reason or anything, just... dragons. And those were the only dragons in the game. Then there was the fact that, most "monsters" in the game were just either goblins, or regular animals with 1.5 scale with an extra horn glued on to them and 0.5 scaled dinosaurs.
I honestly thought back then, that this is what German game developers and markets like, lots of hairy men in leather with no women, and not that there is anything wrong with that, but I didn't really care to try Gothic 1 or 2 after that, just seemed like I was the wrong kind of audience.
@@themurmeli88 That's really funny, because I remember hating Gothic 3 when it came out and I never played through it. I tried to get Gothic 2 running on my Windows 10 machine a few years ago but I couldn't get it to run without crashing and errors. I remember playing that game on my family's old office PC, having to edit config files to get it to run on its 100MB RAM.
When I heard you mention Champions of Norrath I was overcome by nostalgia. Couch co-op champions 1 and 2 with my childhood best friend is my best gaming experience outside of world of Warcraft and I would love to see you cover it. Merry Christmas!!!!!
A timeless game should also appeal to people who are younger than the game and have never played the game before. This just occurred to me when I saw some of the suggestions in the chat... Just because you enjoy a game from your childhood does not make it timeless.
The interactive element of gaming presents a unique way to present your themes and art to the person experiencing it.
Music, art, video.. these can all make you feel things as a response.
But a game can make you feel the themes directly.
As an example, you can listen, look at or watch media that expresses "madness", and you can feel unsettled or understanding or disgust.
But a video game can make you experience madness itself.. and let you feel what it is like to truly KNOW it.
This is what I think the added layer of interaction can do. There can be a gulf of difference between understanding something and truly knowing it.
Josh shares my love for Ratchet and Clank. I am truly complete.
Legend of Dragoon with its addition system.
Legend of Legaia with the Arts and small-scale battle arena.
Legend of Mana has so much with the various workshops you get. And the STs, how you learn them from using basics like Crouch and Jump to make Hi-jump.
There's so many but this is definitely nostalgia. They're all great games that I should revisit.
"I never played Silent Hill before I played it"
Eloquent as always
It's not just graphics but also sometimes the games industry improves upon an existing gameplay mechanic in a way that's just better and sets a new standard for all future games. In those cases old games can feel dated just because they lack those improvements. One example would be sprinting in shooters or i-frames for evading attacks. Or new controls like the introduction of analog sticks which was important for 3d games.
But some games feel natural to play even with such limitations to a point where you don't miss it.
Dawn of war is a great game, I still go back and play from time to time. The voice-recording for the chaos army always seems to crack me up, and summoning the giant demon guy from one of your aspiring champs is always on the list of things i want to see again.
For me though, the real timeless game is Banished. Its been a favorite of mine since it came out, and is something i still go back and play once a year or so.
Thief 2 The metal age is still one of my favourite games of all time - its antagonist is so good
if you could install a game during the year 3870 and be blown away by it, thats timeless.
For me the nostalgia plays a big role in a game being timeless. Also if the games soundtrack is really good I feel like I'm 8 years old again in a second. Many happy memories
timeless game to me is just a game i can play years later and enjoy it just as much, maybe even more. the stories, or gameplay , world is just really well done enough that out of date tech doesn't really hurt the game. timesless games to me are like deus ex , ff6, hl1, halo CE, baldurs gate 2, neverwinter nights , command and conquer , wipeout.
The thing Josh starts talking about around the 6 minute mark is such a powerful idea, and it's really what sets video games apart as an artistic medium more-so than any other quality they may have. Books, music, visual arts, etc. are all things you can passively experience, but there's a kinesthetic quality to video games that ONLY video games have. Dark Souls' difficulty is an INHERENT part of its world - Dark Souls is meant to be a dark, gritty, hopeless world in which you're almost guaranteed to fail, and that is represented BY the fact that almost anything you encounter in Dark Souls is capable of killing you. The way a book or a movie goes about showing you that it takes place in a dark, gritty world is by harming the characters on screen or putting them in hopeless situations, but in a video game, YOU, the player, ARE THE MAIN CHARACTER, and thus, in order to actually feel like you are a part of that story, YOU must be shown how difficult life is for the characters in this world BY getting stomped by even the most lowly, naked, beef-jerky zombie waving a torch in your face. The idea of "going hollow" in Dark Souls is also, itself, a meta part of the game's own mechanics, as it's implied throughout the game that "going hollow", for you as a player, is basically just what happens when you give up on the playthrough and never come back because the game is too hard, which is effectively the same as your character losing the motivation to go on within the game's context. Only video games are capable of giving you, as the player, this kind of very literal first-person experience.
one series that really stands as timeless to me are the advance wars games for the gba and the ds. even if i played through the original games for the first time only a few years back the games still were a blast. not to even mention the fact that there is an online community of thousands of people still playing the game against each other through a fan made website that is almost two decades old at this point
a game can still give you the rush of narrowly "making it" without ever putting the player near a failure state. I don't remember which game that did this - the full HP bar except for the last part when it turns red and you know, signals that you're in danger happened at effectively the 50% hp mark... you could still take just as much hits when you hit that last hp as the entire hp bar...
that simulates that narrow escape very effectively without everytime almost killing the player. but it feels cheap if you for example drop your controller at that "final hp" and get hit 8 times without dying.... you feel cheated/manipulated and the next time, the jig is up and you won't get that rush, you might even die never getting the rush...
First game that comes to mind for me is Flatout 1.
It came out in 2004, but it has one of the best physics engines I've seen in a racing game. The engine still holds up and as long as you play it with the widescreen support patch, you'll have a blast with it.
I just started a new game in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade after so many years. Hearing that it's your next "Was it Good" game makes me so happy.
Part of the charm of the original Ratchet and Clank was that it was a platformer with shooting elements, from the second title onwards it became the reverse which has its own charm still :)
What I ended up doing when I had invincibility was exploring more, like some weird kind of free form nature documentary stuff, there's no challenge but that doesn't mean you can't find fun in a different kind of way.
I really hope you do Dino Crisis 1 and 2 for the "Was it good" series - To this day they are still some of the most memorable and enjoyable games for me! Would love to get your opinions on those games
Pretty sure he did Dino Crisis ages ago, had a few really good sketches in it. He might be remaking it to fit with the current format though I guess.
technically speaking josh has already done dino crisis, but the video is on his main channel because josh strife plays wasnt a thing back then. The video is called "Dino Crisis - Resident Evil with DINOSAURS!"
The line between "good for its time" and "timeless" is so very hard to define. I've been going back and playing through a lot of older games, and while I love a lot of older game design sensibilities (not specifically nostalgia because I have never played most of these games before and still love them) I must say that these games are personal favorites but I have to acknowledge their failures, they aren't timeless.
Games that were "good for their time" often fall short over time either because their playability is surpassed or because their ideas are no longer novel. Games like Super Mario 64, Half Life 1 or Final Fantasy 7 are great games, but they are not as special to people playing them for the first time today as they were to people playing them in the era in which they came out.
Meanwhile, truly "timeless" games either do things so unique, or with such mastery, that they have yet to be surpassed in the eyes of many. Portal, Chrono Trigger or Diablo 2 are, in my mind, truly timeless games because they were special, unique, and still to this day are looked back on as triumphs, and no game that has come out has ever truly "replaced" them at the top of what they did best - they might tie at best, or be superior in some ways but inferior in others.
And then there's the subjective element. I consider Starcraft: Brood War to be a timeless game, but I can't deny that it has playability issues. However, those issues are in many ways contributing factors to its success (particularly control group limits and pathfinding issues), and games that removed those issues are definitely more user-friendly, but are not necessarily superior outright because the way they fix those issues create other issues, or just make the game less memorable.
I think confusing innovation for not being timeless is not a helpful standard for being timeless. Just because a later game in a trilogy improves every aspect of the first game in the trilogy doesn't make the first game bad magically. You can still play both games and know that they are great within their limitations. I think limitations add to the playability of a game too, like older games where maybe you couldn't jump so you had a completely different mindset approaching terrain challenges.
@@Koranthus I think it depends on what the game is trying to do. If the game would be better with a jump, say the level design just flows better with jumps than without them. Then I would think that it cant be timeless. To truly reach the apex of being timeless. A game needs to be perfect for what it is attempting to be. Portal and Chrono trigger both achieve that. If you added more to them, they wouldn't become better. They would become different types of games, and possibly be worse in that scenario.
Unlike MythrilZenith, I don't think Diablo 2 is timeless, it doesn't achieve half of what POE does for me when Im in the mood for a Diablo 2 like game. I think FFVII actually plays better in the new remakes they are dropping, achieving more in the same scope of the same type of game.
Its almost like a slider on a scale. What is the game trying to be? Lets call that the scales name. What is the worst/Best version of that game? Lets call the 0 to 100%. To be timeless, you have to have the highest score on that sliding bar.
Broodwar is great because it's a game that naturally became an esport and wasn't made to be one unlike so many now. I don't see an rts like Broodwar happening again. The hard parts make it better to watch knowing how hard it is. Easy to follow. Smaller engagements mean more instead of giant death balls
You raise some really great points! I think part of it too can be that some of the Older Graphics just don't age well.
IF you're removing a Mechanic, it should be in Service of the Core Mechanic. Monster Hunter World did a Quality of Life upgrade to STOP the Artificial Time Padding of making it take extra time to gather resources. Instead, it let you spend more time on the Core Mechanic.
Funny enough, I was thinking as I read your comment how games like Super Mario 64, Half-Life 1, and Final Fantasy VII are actually PRIME examples of timeless games. They are THAT level of quality. Sure, there is something about playing them back in the day, but overall they certainly withstand the rest of time. That being said, I also adore Chrono Trigger (my favorite game of all time) and Diablo 2, and completely agree on those in particular!
Skies of Arcadia. Turn the game on and get lost in the adventure. Timeless.
I love the Thief series. I've not seen any other game that utilizes sound in such a way for a stealth game. No seeing through walls. No looking around corners without actually moving to see around corners. It's audio. My fave from the three is the second one.
8:00 This highly depends on the game in question. Consider Minecraft, not playing survival mode. A creative sandbox. Plenty of people have poured days into making impressive stuff with it. Was their time not valuable to them? I would say it was considering they managed to complete their projects. Animal Crossing has no fail state, yet it has quite the fandom. Harvest Moon is another one. Any of the The Sims games.
Damn I'm mentioning all these games that I love, and have poured so many weeks/months into.
No fail states is highly dependant on the game in question. Not all games need a fail state to be worthwhile/memorable.
I actually think half-life 1 is more timeless than 2
I definitely agree. The guns and especially the grenades and explosives felt really fun to use. There also isn't the awful boat to ravenholm to car section that hl2 has
@@OriginalRaisins what about the traintrack level though
@@whattodo3116 A novelty of a game mechanic, woven nicely into the flow of the game and not overstaying its welcome. Unlike the boat sequence in HL2, guess that are reasons why even (or especially?) this part will also remain timeless(ish).
Yeah, HL2 didn't feel like a fun experience.
@@whattodo3116 You can just walk along the side of the rails for a lot of that segment. I don't remember needing to do a lot with the train.
I heard Josh say "Gothic" and I jumped. I need more spotlight on the first game I really remember playing. I played it as a.... 8-10 year old and being majorly terrified of the Mine Crawler Queen
Gothic 3 game loop was boring tho.
Well deserved, too bad Piranha Bytes couldn't repeat anything on quality of Gothic 1 and 2 ever again. At least we've got Archolos and hopefully remake will be good.
@@davorbrijacak no, problem is that they have been releasing Gothic 2 for the past 10 years without managing to repeat the atmosphere. Let's be honest Gothic is very much carried by the atmosphere and early game story.
@@janstraka8674 They weren't innovating enough, sure, but their later games while still enjoyable aren't nearly as good as Gothic 2, and not just because of atmosphere, but because of other gameplay systems as well. Archolos proved that there's no need for complete overhaul of those game systems, just minor changes and additions with lots of quality content.
I didn't play a lot of "classic" games as a kid since I missed that generation, but I try to go back and play them.
Resident Evil 4 is a game that really blew me away and I would say it holds up to this day and is timeless. I VERY rarely immediately do another playthrough of a game after completing it but as soon as I rolled credits I started a hard-mode (forget what it's called) playthrough. The controls of that game are such as record of that time of game development yet they hold up due to the mechanics of the game that support it.
If you have never played the OG Resident Evil 4 PLEASE give it a go. You will not be disappointed.
I first played A Link to the Past over 30 years ago, and I last played it two days ago. Crazy timeless game
Oh one I'd love to see is Warlords Battlecry 2, mainly because it never got really popular but was - in my opinion - far ahead of it's time by taking relatively new things and mixing them together.
"Can it run Crysis" makes that one quite timeless
A couple of years ago a Call of Duty game from back in the early days was given away for free (it's been a while I cannot remember or be bothered to look) and I remember playing the heck out of it back when it first released, so the nostalgia was hitting hard as I downloaded this freebie. I could barely play the game lol the default controls (that was not customisable) was so different to how I have become used to playing FPS's these day.
I disagree with the "other forms of art don't shut you out of them" argument. Video games just have a higher barrier of entry. A book may not slam shut halfway, but you're required to know how to read in order to engage with the book. We currently view this barrier to entry as relatively small due to how high the literacy rate is. In a similar way, pieces of art that require comprehension will lock a significant part of their experience away if the observer doesn't understand the art. The song Hey Ya by Outkast is a good example of this, where an average listener can get a lot of enjoyment out of passively listening, but if you pay close attention to the lyrics you can get a deeper appreciation of it. A game like Dark Souls can get a fair amount of artistic appreciation from the introductory area, but to see the full picture, there is a skill requirement, much like other pieces of art. The main difference is that the skill of having the hand-eye-coordination of playing a video game is significantly more recent a development than that of other forms of art.
To the user at 2:05 who suggested Sudeki, you sir/madame/mx have earned yourself a drink; so glad there are other Sudeki fans out there ❤
Josh has nailed EVERY point apart from one, video games are they only non-passive form of art but John Cage challenged that in 1952. 4'33" was a treatise in the listener being an active part of a live composition.
The fact that the Gothic series is on the list makes me very happy :)
I do hope, he plays it with the original german voiceover, since the english dub is ... less than great xD
Also maybe a comparison with the remake coming out next year? I am excited!
Archolos proved why Gothic is so timeless, all the core features and design philosophy are amazing and Archolos just added lots of high quality content to that formula.
Some of my favourite PS2 games were character sprites on fixed backgrounds, but they were so attractive and filled with personality and sense of world that they've stayed with me far longer than anything else from the era. (Atelier Iris and Mana Khemia, for the record.)
3d models on prerendered backdrops and 2d sprites on 3d backgrounds are both such amazing looks.
i like when josh play video game and make point
For me two games I always come back to are Pharaoh and The Sims 2. It was also an interesting experience to hear sounds from Pharaoh in FFXIV, apparently they are ingrained into my brain forever.
God eater 2 is for me a timeless game. I like the gamplay so much and how fast you can do missions. A shit ton of enemys,yes they get a rescin as a new enemy but also the details in attacks change.Like a attack you are used to easy doge has now a diffrent range it can hit you. Big battles with up to 4 big monsters vs your team of 4 and you have to be aware of what enemy is doing to whom since they change their targets constantly. I had so much fun battle enemys i doged attacks from monsters i barly saw or just noticed on the mini map they are looking in my direction.
7:54 That's actually exactly what I've been doing with the Dead Space remake. Over the past three years I've become a full time working father of two. I may get a couple hours to play before I go to bed on a work day and nowadays I want my games to be fun, sure, but also relaxing and therapeutic. I also want to feel like I'm progressing because there are so many games I'd want to experience.
Dead Space remake has a story difficulty setting where you're virtually invincible. The experience then is more like watching and controlling the pace of a horror movie, and without having to worry about difficult enemies or resource management I find myself paying more attention to the surroundings, audio logs, text logs etc. When not stressed about the in game challenges, I got a lot more relaxed enjoyment out of it. I'm definitely trying that with other games when I'm done with DS.
God,I had a friend who strongly believed that people "put up with" old games back in the day because that was what they got and they knew they were dogshit as well as saying how sites like GOG are "a waste of time and bandwidth"
@@Birdhatter She's not a techbro, she's just a stuck up bitch who thinks her farts smell of roses
Fun is timeless. A game that was fun 20 years ago is still fun today. It's people's fault if they are unable to appreciate older video games and it's mostly due to their own prejudices against things like older looking visuals.
I think it's a little more complicated than that. Sometimes it is just down to visuals, but there were a lot of advances in gameplay that was important to make certain genres of games more accessible.
Let's use me as an example: I really enjoy the D&D classics from the late 90s and 2000s. Baldur's Gate, IWD, NWN. But despite making an effort, I just can't get into a game like Strahd's Possession because the way the game is played is just not something I found fun. The gameplay advances from the Gold- and Silverbox RPGs to the more modern RPG style BioWare had were important to make the genre accessible to people like me.
Maybe with enough time and effort I could get into it enough to see past how the gameplay is implemented, but that is time that I think is usually better spent playing a game I enjoy.
Its funny you mention ratchet and clank, because when I was a kid I got 2 and 3 and beat them. I got 1 a few years later and the controls were so hard for me to play because of knowing what they became in 3.
8:00 I (and probably a lot of people my age) had a Game Genie when I was a kid. There are some games that I never would have been able to finish without cheating because back then developers intentionally made games ridiculously difficult so you couldn't rent it from Blockbuster and finish it over a weekend, and have even admitted to it in interviews. Like, I've beaten Dark Souls but gave up on Lion King on SNES.
Personal timeless masterpiece of mine is burnout 3, got a ps2 emulator just to come back to it and it's still my favorite arcade racer to this day.
My choice of timeless games are: Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, Devil May Cry 1 and the entire Quest for Glory series. ^^ Love those games and often come back to them. Even after all those years.
Would love a "Was it good?" On Ratchet and Clank. The OG trilogy was my childhood along with Jak and Daxter.
Company of Heroes 1 for me is a timeless masterpiece. I can still pick it up today and end up going start to finish.
What a dashing young man.
6:14 music is not always passive! There are pianists that have practiced more than no-hit soulsbourne marathon runners and it's interesting to think that, back in the day before recordings, music was like games: you had to either find someone skillful to listen to or you or you had to deal with the upright in your parlor that didn't just give you the music: you had to earn the music with your competency.
Diablo 2 and D2LOD are a good reason why I still play it.
omg I remember going through that same huge hassle trying to emulate those snowblind games 😩
ended up having to just get a ps2 and playing them legit, is that something you have considered and just record the footage from the video output instead of emulating?
Half-Life thumbnail is for a reason.
Last year HL community organized an event to break ATH for concurrent players on Steam. They succeeded and set a score of over 12 000 people playing HL at once.
This year Valve remastered the original game and this 25-year anni edition re-invigorated HL DM scene. Many servers are up all the time with absolute chaos going on classic Crossfire map.
I played countless mods for HL, some bad some astoundingly good. This is a game that spawned Black Mesa, a mod that eventually developed into a full paid game. Extremely few games do that. There's also Chronicles of Myrtana Archolos for Gothic and Horn of the Abyss for Heroes III. These two aren't paid but the quality is on par of the original game.
I think the point about mechanics done well is very accurate. On top of that I could say that there are games that try to impress the players in some way, be it graphics, physics in games, animations, and if this is all that these games have going for them, they stay "good for their time". Uncharted 2 is timeless to me, I didn't play 3, but I recently played 4 and... it was a great game, but it was great because of the story. The graphics were nice, impressive even, but I've already seen it all, it's Uncharted 2 but with better graphics and a new story. Half-Life has always been a sort of different shooter, and I played that game pretty late after it was released because the game must have been like 14 at this point, and I still loved it. I do agree that it often comes down to the style of a game. A game doesn't have to be the best at everything, but if the entirety creates an immersive experience where everything works, then god damn, it's gonna win over Fallout games because they actually kinda suck. Sure there are good things to say about most Fallouts but it's a chore to play these games.
I also think nostalgia plays a big part; it's hard to prove, but we all have that one game that you liked growing up, and now that you play it 15-20 years later you still have fun, but the chances of someone experiencing the game for the 1st time and enjoying it seems low.
Big yes on the Dawn of War Josh 0:37
"I'd never played Silent Hill before I played it."
I know, especially from context, what you meant. But on its own...:)
on the point of "video games are the only medium you need to be good at to get to experience it", I propose the counter argument: music.
Not listening to music. Playing music. There's a pleasure that can only be found in playing music (compared to listening), and that's why we actualy sing along: it's participating.
We can even go easy mode: just "hum hum" instead of singing actual lyrics, or singing 2 octaves lower because we can't reach the high notes, and so on.
I think that "good for its time" can be said about games that got surpassed in almost all aspects by games that followed them. So like "it was good for its time, but we now have something that fills the same niche, but is better in most every way". "Good for its time", in my mind, doesn't deminish the games' achievements, but just indicates that there are better alternatives now.
For an example of a timeless game I would name HoMM3 (but damn, I can make the list long)
My example of a Timeless game would be almost forgotten adventure game made in clay stop motion animation called Neverhood. If you can find and and run it, it is always a great ride.
To this day the original DOOM (1993) is the game I still play the most, with more mods and maps than probably any every other game put together still blow out of the water even modern FPS.
Another one I love to play to this day is UFO: Enemy Unknown (the original 1994 X-com from MicroProse). The old Baldur's Gates and Icewind Dale are still among my favourites.
I Also love The King of Fighter series since 1994, and still play KoF98, KoF2002um, KofXIII (and the recent KofXV).
Metal Gear Rising: Revengence fills that description of a timeless game for me. Its graphics were pretty good for the time, but they've held up admirably because of style, and there's a REALLY well-developed geometry system that allows you to infinitely slice up objects which the game will keep track of as individual pieces with their own unique geometric mesh. It's a revolutionary piece of clever game development that the game devs had to make some game memory sacrifices for and I have not seen it since. Any game that boasts of "destrusctable terrain" is secretly praying their audience has never played Metal Gear Rising, because they simply won't be able to meet that benchmark.
Psychonauts is timeless. You can play Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2 back to back and the transition won't be jarring.
For the most part, I feel like a game being dated is not a real thing.
Most problems people describe with a game's age tend to be issues the game had since its inception, or a perceived lack of polish which is in reality, very intentional.
There are games like Resident Evil 1. Many perceive it as dated, due to a fixed camera and tank controls. These were things which yes, did exist due to technological constraints. But they also create a unique gameplay style which is not necessarily dated, just different. Tank controls are the best fit for fixed camera angles, and fixed camera angles allow for the slow building of tension and mood in a unique way. Both can be something the player gets used to, with fixed angles allowing for certain areas to be immediately recognizable due to the shot composition and tank controls being always reliable regardless of camera position.
This example is the best example I can give because it's something people will call dated, when it is not.
It is why I believe there are very few truly dated games. Most of the time, they are just different. Not dated.
Here is a Brian Eno quote that I think applies.
"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them." -Brian Eno, 'A Year With Swollen Appendices'
Grandia 2 will always be a timeless game for me, the music and combat was fucking magical
+1 for Gothic.
Gothic is kinda hard to put on the 'good for its time' vs 'timeless' scale. For me its definitely both. I'd even go as far as saying there is a certain objectivity on it being timeless.
However, there is things on it that are hard to overcome today. With the handling definitely being the very first thing i think about.
Oh, and i dont know about the english VA
@@Nelsathis I think the handling is actually very clever. It can genuinely be played with one hand. The VA is bad in every version. But also there are gems like Archolos, which won mod of the decade. It's immersive, it deserves a play through from just about anyone.
On the Gothic 2 side, we have the likes of New Balance mod, which brings possible classes up to something like 20 and you can easily sink 300 hours per playthrough. It also has coop, which I'm playing with my wife. Works flawlessly.
@@Paddzr I am a little unsure how i would credit games like that with what mods do, though. The gothic mod community is amazing, dont get me wrong. To this day it is one of the best examples for me that you dont need big studios.. hell, apparently dont even dedicated money to do stuff that, at times, is better than some tripple A games..
But nonetheless its not really 'the game'. Hell, Gothic 3 even being played today is basically due to mods.
I think what makes a game timeless for the most part is pacing and preformance. That doesn't depends on graphics and incredible systems. It's just the capability to keep you entertained and grabbed to it.
Someone mentioned in the chat Tales of Symphonia. That for me is an example of such a game. I played the Gamecube version back in the day and i enjoyed it. It wasn't the best game i ever played, but it was enjoyable. Years later they remastered it in several systems and i played it again and i was impressed how well it held up. The character moves at a stark pace in towns and dungeons, the combat is fast paced as well and battles end quickly. The game performs well. I don't recall any slowdowns that ruined the experience. The dungeons were not huge, grindy or overly complicated plus how fast everything moves makes the story itself move at a satisfying pace where you are always entertained. That is a timeless game in my opinion. It doesn't have the graphics or crazy systems. It just runs well and moves at a satisfying pace.
It's not even my favorite Tales of games, but i can recognize how timeless it is. Which i am sure none of the post vesperia games will be. They are bloated and badly paced.
there's a brazillian channel here in yt called YouGameTubeBr that does reviews similarly to your "Was it Good?" series, although with a very different format, its very interesting to see that you came to almost the same conclusion about Tomb Raider and Silent Hill
The resident evil series is a good example of timeless vs good for the time games. Og resident evil 1 2 and 3 are good for their time. Resident evil 4 is timeless
Resident Evil 1-3 are still fantastic fun, play well and still look alright with the pregenerated backgrounds even now, what the fuck are you smoking
@@cal5365 buddy I'm sorry you have nostalgia goggles glued on but resi1-3 are relics of a time where they needed to use tank controls and fixed camera angles to make an effective horror game. It is not fun to play resident evil 1 2 and 3. The only people who think it is are people who have played it back when it came out.
I won't deny it was good for when it came out but resi 4 is way more playable today
There is no way you just said RE 1-3 aren't rough to play when viewed from a modern gaming perspective... the entire industry has stopped using the control scheme of those games because of how dated and horrible they feel play. That wasn't just for no reason lol@@cal5365
Id also put the remake of 1 in there, especially since rereleases have included improved controls.
@@devastatheseeker9967 Weird that modern indie horror titles are going back to tank controls because it works so well for the genre.
If you want to actually have a good example without sounding like a condescending prick with 0 taste, the original alone in the dark is an example of impressive for the time but absolutely terrible today.
Something to consider in games we consider "outdated" is how they introduce the player. Most old pc games for example, have a completely different and much more complicated control scheme than what were used to today. In modern times, movement is wasd, mouse is an action command, and the rest of the keys can be whatever. Old rts and dungeon crawlers however usually use the mouse as the core basis of player control, while the keyboard is mostly there for convienience. (That's still relatively true for those genre's but it's much more simplified) Controller consistency is very important when introducing players to a game, so it's easy to call those old games outdated in that aspect. But the reality is that players back in the day meshed with that control scheme just as easily as we do today. If players know how to play stronghold crusaders for example, they'll likely know how to play dungeon keeper or evil genius, despite those games being completely different. Just like how we could play mario and understand how to play sonic, kirby or even zelda. So really, when were talking about games that were "good for their time", were not talking about games that people put up with initially, were talking about games that meshed incredibly well with the immediate audience, but couldn't keep up with the ever changing gaming sphere. That's why NES games wouldn't exactly age well today for their arcade-like structure, while SNES games are still considered classics today, for their narrative-based structure that developers are still building on. It's a difference of player expectations, not in quality but in gameplay.
I think part of what makes a game age well or poorly, or "be good for its time", is when it has certain design ideas that go against today's principles, but was still a pioneer of ideas that hold up today.
A good example would be the types of *very* early rpgs on the pc, as described by Dan Olson in Wow Classic and What We Left Behind, when he pointed out that some of these games were incredible innovators. However, he also mentions that there were issues like how, for example, a game would do absolutely nothing to stop you from soft-locking the main story *and* also not tell you that you'd done so. Or how some of these games would have magic systems, but not tell the player any details of how they work (and in some cases, explicitly say that the player is expected to just try stuff and see what happens).
That's an example of "It was good for the time". Even if many aspects of rpgs still hold up today, most designers would agree that the player should be simply disallowed from doing something that would make story progression impossible. Or that a game's approach to tutorials in singleplayer games shouldn't be "trial and error".
It's worth noting that "it was good for the time" doesn't mean "it's bad now"; at least not to me. It just means that some aspects of it are dated, or have aged poorly. You can enjoy subpar game design.
I played FF1 on my original front-loader NES just a month ago and I had a blast. It's a game I never got further than the Earth Cave in as a kid, but as an adult getting through the entire game was no big deal.
I find the distinction of videogames and art interesting here. I've watched quite a few movies that fell flat for me on first watch but got vastly better when I put in the effort to watch actively and sometimes do some research. Lord of the Rings with its HUGE amount of lore is actually a good example - for those interested, it's a goldmine, for many, it's just a good movie. For many paintings too, on the surface you just have pretty colors or an interesting composition, but I find the more engaging part is if you actively think about its meaning.
All of these things I just mentioned require active participation in the sense that you need to pay attention and do some work. I have the same experience experiencing pieces of art (mostly movies and paintings) as I do videogames - the ones that stick with me are the once I actively experience and that challenge me mentally. I don't think they are that different in that regard.
For me the most timeless game is Warcraft, especially with Frozen Throne. The mechanics are perfect. It's responsive, its elegant, it has good story with great characters. It has stylized and VERY readable graphics, nice music, and it's incredibly moddable. For me it's one of the few "perfect" games.
It's also one of the few strategy games that are very easy to pick up, there's basically no barrier to entry, you don't need to go deep into the game mechanics to go through the story.
When many other strategy games tends to be very difficult to pick up when you are not experienced with the genre.
I think part of the “good for its time” is that people play games as kids. Sometimes you experience a story or elements of storytelling you’ve never been exposed to before and it’s AMAZING. As you see it more throughout your life it’s hard to say if everything you associate with the game was really it’s own doing. It is hard to separate your personal experience of the game from it’s place as “timeless.”
I feel like "Good for it's time" is another way of saying "I played it only because of clout this game had, it wasn't good then and it isn't good now". Because if a piece of art is good - it's good forever. Your tastes may change, but art stays the same.
"I never played Silent Hill, before I played it." True, but meaningless. 🤣
I agree with what you're talking about though.