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Dark Souls is hard, but fair. Until you lose several thousand souls for good and you quit in a fit of frustration.

I'm really looking forward to the revamped C&C and Red Alert myself, spent waaaaaay too many hours on those back in the day, I'm hoping that aside from a graphical and interface overhaul, it's as unbalanced, frustrating and unfair as then.

Fallout is a game I play every once in a while, never ceases to entertain me and it's pretty much the game that got me into RPG's in the first place.

 Overread wrote:
Darksouls uses a lot of gotcha moments - eg crossing the bridge with the dragon the first time its very likely it will fly over and blaze you and kill you without warning. DS is full of traps like that as well as generally tough and higher HP/Damage bosses and suchlike.

It's just as artificial as old games where, such as in RTS, the AI would often attack with pre-set waves that were often bigger than you could produce easily on your own without perfectly playing the opening of the game.


Modern and old games use all the same tricks because game AI is still not true AI in any sense of the word.


As for fake from the controls that's iffy - some newer games might have fancier interfaces but they aren't always superior to the old style. Of course if you go way back some games do have odd controls - the early Tomb Raiders had very rough movement controls even though other games of it era could achieve smoother movement.

A lot of newer games have distinctly worse interfaces because the devs took the lazy path and did controller interface first and didn't bother to put in the work to take advantage of a mouse and keyboard

When I think of good old games, I think of a few....

1) Richard Burns Rally. While you'll more or less need/want some mods, this is still one of the best rally driving/race sims out there. It's ancient by most measures, but some people still mod it and run the hell out of it.

2) Hidden & Dangerous (1 and 2): H&D first came out in the late 90's around the same time as the original Rainbow Six but was immeasurably better in every conceivable way. The second one is absolutely tremendous. A 3rd/1st first squad tactical game, in which you control four British SAS soldiers undertaking some incredible missions. Beautiful graphics (still actually holds up okay), really tough gameplay, and lots of unique challenges. The "small team tactical" games were always some of my favourite and H&D tops that list for me.

3) If you have access to an original Xbox, try the Conflict games for a similar reason listed above; only this time you can play co-operative on the same console or linked (I think). Graphics are crap, but the gameplay was exceptionally good. Conflictesert Storm, Conflict: Desert Storm II, Conflict: Vietnam, and Conflict: Global Terror. Ignore the "Denied Ops" one for 360...it wasn't actually a Conflict game they just pasted the name on there. Level and game design is excellent, the challenge is great, and there are loads of really nice elements to the game you don't see in other games. Accidentally shoot your firearm on a stealth mission? The alarm doesn't just go off...you'll see a guard hop out of a building and make for the alarm button - so you have a chance to kill him before it happens, etc. Some nice thoughts even back in 2002.

4) Total War: Up until they hopped on the awful DLC garbage bus....the Total War franchise was solid, going back to the late 90's when the first Shogun game came out. That one is a bit ancient now, but if you're looking for cheap excellent mass battle titles, any of the later Total Wars were good, up till around Shogun 2.

Thief 1: The Dark Project
Thief 2: The Metal Age

Both fantastic games. The first one basically invented first person stealth gameplay, and set a high bar for it that for a long time was only surpassed by the second game.
They're also one of those series that have an incredibly dedicated modding community, who over the past 20 years have released hundreds of fan missions and campaigns, some of which even surpass the quality of the originals.

Honorable mention to Thief 3. It's nowhere near as good as the first two, but it's still a fine game, and it does manage to close off the main plot of the trilogy in a reasonable manner.

There was definitely no fourth game in the Thief series. Nope. Never happened.



System Shock 2
Funnily enough, this was developed by the same people as the first two thief games, and runs on the same engine. Very different gameplay though. This game was the main inspiration for Bioshock. It's a bit heavier on the RPG mechanics than Bioshock was, featuring a diablo-like grid based inventory system, along with a stat point upgrade system. But it's still a shooter at heart.

Much as I enjoyed System Shock 1 in my youth, it's just a bit too janky to recommend. While it does some very cool stuff for its time, it came out less than a year after Doom, and things like first person game controls were still in a very experimental phase. Using a mouse cursor to aim around the screen while using the arrow keys to rotate your view never quite caught on for some reason



Freespace 2
A great space fighter sim. The intro cinematics for the both the first and second game are still awesome over 20 years later.
This is another of those games that has a very dedicated modding community. They have been upgrading the games graphics and engine over time, with the most recent stable release only a few months ago. With all the high res textures and fancy lighting effects and so on that they've made, the game actually looks pretty damn good even today.
There's also a plethora of fanmade missions/campaigns for it.

As for the main campaigns, the second game is much better than the first. But the fans have ported the entire first game to the second games engine, and applied the same graphical upgrades. So you can still play the first game in high res if you want.



Also I'll second Hostile Waters. That was a great game.

Arson Fire wrote:
System Shock 2
Funnily enough, this was developed by the same people as the first two thief games, and runs on the same engine. Very different gameplay though. This game was the main inspiration for Bioshock. It's a bit heavier on the RPG mechanics than Bioshock was, featuring a diablo-like grid based inventory system, along with a stat point upgrade system. But it's still a shooter at heart.

Also not a bad game to return to for co-op multiplayer with the mod to ramp the difficulty up - players can specialise into being the guy responsible for fighting, hacking, weapon upgrading, etc.

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 2 enhanced edition. Really, really excellent game.

Big fan of Fallout, and even more-so Fallout 2 for the improvements to quality of experience.

Also loved the (ancient, first played with 5.25” floppies) original Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. I tried playing on a modern computer a few years ago, and the processor speed just made it so I couldn’t tell what was going on... but if someone had the tech know-how to slow the program down, they were great games.

Never beat PoR (stupid Tyranthraxis!),but did the CotAB.

The first Final Fantasy, on Nintendo, is still a great if grinding experience by Modern standards, and emulators are a thing.

I noticed that Warcraft 1 and 2 have come to GOG. Personally, I didn't like the way they went with Warcraft 3 but the first two definitely count as golden oldies!

Warcraft 1 is very old now and you can feel the clunky nature of its interface. Warcraft 2 is actually comparably quite advanced for its day. Much of its interface is fairly set in stone to what modern RTS games evolved into. I think the only thing that ever really feels fiddly with it to me is its multiple unit selection cap (I think its 9 units at once you can select).

I've actually been playing Warcraft 1 more than 2 so far, I love to way it looks and the road mechanic.

I still play Broodwar quite often so only being able to able to select 4 units at once isn't too bad. It's cool how it makes large armies unwieldy!
I didn't remember the human crossbow man or the catapult being so powerful though

I liked that the roads system and walls in 1 were quite practical to use - something that steadily fell away with 2 and 3 as they become more about lanes and very limited build areas on the maps.

The original Deus Ex is still, to this day, probably one of the best RPGs ever made and I highly recommend it. It's still probably the best in the whole series.

 Elbows wrote:
When I think of good old games, I think of a few....

1) Richard Burns Rally. While you'll more or less need/want some mods, this is still one of the best rally driving/race sims out there. It's ancient by most measures, but some people still mod it and run the hell out of it.

2) Hidden & Dangerous (1 and 2): H&D first came out in the late 90's around the same time as the original Rainbow Six but was immeasurably better in every conceivable way. The second one is absolutely tremendous. A 3rd/1st first squad tactical game, in which you control four British SAS soldiers undertaking some incredible missions. Beautiful graphics (still actually holds up okay), really tough gameplay, and lots of unique challenges. The "small team tactical" games were always some of my favourite and H&D tops that list for me.

3) If you have access to an original Xbox, try the Conflict games for a similar reason listed above; only this time you can play co-operative on the same console or linked (I think). Graphics are crap, but the gameplay was exceptionally good. Conflictesert Storm, Conflict: Desert Storm II, Conflict: Vietnam, and Conflict: Global Terror. Ignore the "Denied Ops" one for 360...it wasn't actually a Conflict game they just pasted the name on there. Level and game design is excellent, the challenge is great, and there are loads of really nice elements to the game you don't see in other games. Accidentally shoot your firearm on a stealth mission? The alarm doesn't just go off...you'll see a guard hop out of a building and make for the alarm button - so you have a chance to kill him before it happens, etc. Some nice thoughts even back in 2002.

4) Total War: Up until they hopped on the awful DLC garbage bus....the Total War franchise was solid, going back to the late 90's when the first Shogun game came out. That one is a bit ancient now, but if you're looking for cheap excellent mass battle titles, any of the later Total Wars were good, up till around Shogun 2.

Conflict: Desert Storm (maybe II) brings back some great memories. Playing 4 player split screen with my brother & 2 friends. My brother used to run the demo expert under the guns of armored vehicles and plant C4. Blow up the vehicle and himself until one of us could run up and heal him. Good times. Thanks for that!

the_scotsman wrote:
I've been playing Baldur's Gate 2 enhanced edition. Really, really excellent game.

Agreed, by far one of the games I have sunk too much time in over the years. The whole story and feel of the game world, and respect for the system it is based upon makes me long for such a game to be made again

Ork-en Man wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
When I think of good old games, I think of a few....

1) Richard Burns Rally. While you'll more or less need/want some mods, this is still one of the best rally driving/race sims out there. It's ancient by most measures, but some people still mod it and run the hell out of it.

2) Hidden & Dangerous (1 and 2): H&D first came out in the late 90's around the same time as the original Rainbow Six but was immeasurably better in every conceivable way. The second one is absolutely tremendous. A 3rd/1st first squad tactical game, in which you control four British SAS soldiers undertaking some incredible missions. Beautiful graphics (still actually holds up okay), really tough gameplay, and lots of unique challenges. The "small team tactical" games were always some of my favourite and H&D tops that list for me.

3) If you have access to an original Xbox, try the Conflict games for a similar reason listed above; only this time you can play co-operative on the same console or linked (I think). Graphics are crap, but the gameplay was exceptionally good. Conflictesert Storm, Conflict: Desert Storm II, Conflict: Vietnam, and Conflict: Global Terror. Ignore the "Denied Ops" one for 360...it wasn't actually a Conflict game they just pasted the name on there. Level and game design is excellent, the challenge is great, and there are loads of really nice elements to the game you don't see in other games. Accidentally shoot your firearm on a stealth mission? The alarm doesn't just go off...you'll see a guard hop out of a building and make for the alarm button - so you have a chance to kill him before it happens, etc. Some nice thoughts even back in 2002.

4) Total War: Up until they hopped on the awful DLC garbage bus....the Total War franchise was solid, going back to the late 90's when the first Shogun game came out. That one is a bit ancient now, but if you're looking for cheap excellent mass battle titles, any of the later Total Wars were good, up till around Shogun 2.

Conflict: Desert Storm (maybe II) brings back some great memories. Playing 4 player split screen with my brother & 2 friends. My brother used to run the demo expert under the guns of armored vehicles and plant C4. Blow up the vehicle and himself until one of us could run up and heal him. Good times. Thanks for that!

Yeah, they were really good games, though the graphics were very poor. My buddy and I one time spent maybe an hour and a half on a single level, because we managed to do an entire one without being detected - something we weren't even sure was possible. We managed to sneak, crawl, hide, and knife our way through what could have been a 15 minute mission. It was extremely fun.

 Trondheim wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I've been playing Baldur's Gate 2 enhanced edition. Really, really excellent game.

Agreed, by far one of the games I have sunk too much time in over the years. The whole story and feel of the game world, and respect for the system it is based upon makes me long for such a game to be made again

Well...I guess soon, we'll see! I'm playing through all of 2 thoroughly so I can be ready for 3. there's enough old-game jank in there to frustrate me (pathing is a nightmare, and a lot of the game is juggling sneak and check for traps on your rogue as you figure out where the enemies are, disarm the stupid, stupid traps, and I HATE that there is no preview showing you what the exact AOE of the spells you're about to cast is) but I love the writing, love the tactical combat, love just how MUCH of it there is, it's great.

If I could just convince my guys to walk down a narrow hallway without the Very Good Pathing AI deciding "The way is blocked! I know, I shall walk all the way around the entire dungeon to achieve this new position!"

No mention of Star Control 2, remastered as the Ur-Quan Masters, as yet, I see. That is such a great *PARTY* game. Star Control Origins almost has it, but not quite.

Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2 were awesome games, I kept buying copies as I wore out the discs. There have even been mods of them for Star Wars and Wing Commander. I'd bother getting a digital copy if I had a flight stick to use with it.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Baldur's Gate meets Star Wars an even longer time ago. Great storyline that inspired the Clone Wars/Rebels creators.

Command & Conquer is getting a Remaster soon, so I guess we'll see how that goes with EA still remotely near the franchise.

 BrookM wrote:
Dark Souls is hard, but fair. Until you lose several thousand souls for good and you quit in a fit of frustration.

I'm really looking forward to the revamped C&C and Red Alert myself, spent waaaaaay too many hours on those back in the day, I'm hoping that aside from a graphical and interface overhaul, it's as unbalanced, frustrating and unfair as then.

Fallout is a game I play every once in a while, never ceases to entertain me and it's pretty much the game that got me into RPG's in the first place.

On this topic I remember deamon souls screwing me over more then any other souls game. There’s a boss that can actually de-level you. I lost a level so I couldn’t wear my equipment anymore. Didn’t realise it at first, just couldn’t move. Then I got de-leveled 5 more times. Try playing dark souls and falling down 6 levels. My god that felt unfair. I’m very happy that they left that mechanic in deamon souls.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I've been playing Baldur's Gate 2 enhanced edition. Really, really excellent game.

Agreed, by far one of the games I have sunk too much time in over the years. The whole story and feel of the game world, and respect for the system it is based upon makes me long for such a game to be made again

Well...I guess soon, we'll see! I'm playing through all of 2 thoroughly so I can be ready for 3. there's enough old-game jank in there to frustrate me (pathing is a nightmare, and a lot of the game is juggling sneak and check for traps on your rogue as you figure out where the enemies are, disarm the stupid, stupid traps, and I HATE that there is no preview showing you what the exact AOE of the spells you're about to cast is) but I love the writing, love the tactical combat, love just how MUCH of it there is, it's great.

If I could just convince my guys to walk down a narrow hallway without the Very Good Pathing AI deciding "The way is blocked! I know, I shall walk all the way around the entire dungeon to achieve this new position!"

Enable console commands and use EnableCheatKeys(). Ctrl-J will save so much frustration when you've cleared an area and are just trying to get back to the exit, or just want to get to the other side of the screen in one of the Athkatla maps. Also saves you from the dreaded "You must gather your party before venturing forth"

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I've been playing Baldur's Gate 2 enhanced edition. Really, really excellent game.

Agreed, by far one of the games I have sunk too much time in over the years. The whole story and feel of the game world, and respect for the system it is based upon makes me long for such a game to be made again

Well...I guess soon, we'll see! I'm playing through all of 2 thoroughly so I can be ready for 3. there's enough old-game jank in there to frustrate me (pathing is a nightmare, and a lot of the game is juggling sneak and check for traps on your rogue as you figure out where the enemies are, disarm the stupid, stupid traps, and I HATE that there is no preview showing you what the exact AOE of the spells you're about to cast is) but I love the writing, love the tactical combat, love just how MUCH of it there is, it's great.

If I could just convince my guys to walk down a narrow hallway without the Very Good Pathing AI deciding "The way is blocked! I know, I shall walk all the way around the entire dungeon to achieve this new position!"

Enable console commands and use EnableCheatKeys(). Ctrl-J will save so much frustration when you've cleared an area and are just trying to get back to the exit, or just want to get to the other side of the screen in one of the Athkatla maps. Also saves you from the dreaded "You must gather your party before venturing forth"

I'll do that, but mostly it's a problem with areas I haven't cleared yet that have narrow hallways, or areas that have hazards that aren't traps. I just did the "shade lord" section and my characters took unnecessary damage from the stupid lava room and indiana jones letter puzzle soooo many times.

The trick to areas like that is send one character forward, then pull back to the rest of the party and let the monsters follow. It doesn't work as well if there are archers, but the undead packs... well. Its particularly good with the 'lava' room, as the undead will stand in the fire a lot.
When you have to traverse it, its better to send one character at a time, just send each character around the corner.
Firkaag's mini dungeon is similar- there are enough tight corridors, traps and nonsense that its better to stand the party in a safe spot and have someone drag the monsters to you- with appropriate protections against the more annoying enemies.

As far as pathfinding goes, I think its worse in the Enhanced Edition than the original. I don't know if they added more check nodes or what, but the game seems instantly aware that a path is blocked, and immediately looks for a new path. Even if the 'block' is two party members temporarily blocking a doorway as they pass through. Once its on the new path, that's less likely to be blocked, so the AI doesn't deviate as much. Which is pretty much the opposite of what you want to happen.

For thief characters, I've always just tended to relegate them to trap and archer duty. They're too squishy to bother with melee, even on the off chance backstab can be effective. One less thing to micro in the scrum.

 Trondheim wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I've been playing Baldur's Gate 2 enhanced edition. Really, really excellent game.

Agreed, by far one of the games I have sunk too much time in over the years. The whole story and feel of the game world, and respect for the system it is based upon makes me long for such a game to be made again

In my experience, BG and BG2 were fine at the time, but they're really starting to show their age and are nearly unplayable in modern days.

Granted, they also use the horrible mess that is older DnD, which is already a mark against them, but the user interface, to me, leaves much to be desired.

I don't find the user interface for them hard to use at all. It's a very simple system - you've got tabs that you can easily click on for inventories, quests, maps, character details. It's pretty much your basic interface of menus that most more detail orientated RPG games use.

Pathfinding is always a bit of a tricky thing, but at the same time its likely something I've never really noticed many issues with because a lot of the times its just you moving a small party around in the same locality.


The rules system is a bit odd on PC - seeing your team swinging swords for 5 mins of combat and appearing to hit nothing the whole time is a bit odd to see. Granted its the mechanics of rolling to hits and such and bonuses coming into play; but its not as fluid as some more modern systems where there's block and dodge visuals and where hits tend to connect more often.
There's also clearly some other issues in moving a tabletop to PC game system - things like familiar for wizards. In game offering very little with a very high risk that your little ferret or whatever gets killed and takes away a full point of constitution forever (which on a character that's typically low in that score to start with is a big loss). Meanwhile in tabletop ferrets can do all kinds of nifty story crafted things that gets around the fact that, in combat, its really not going to do much.


That said the interface is pretty easy to get on with and I think stands the test of time well. It's simple, easy to get to grips with, has information in sensible easy to work out spots. It might be "old" in that its got that window style approach as opposed to more modern minimalist interfaces, but that's more just a a feature of presentation of the underlaying interface of menus.

 Overread wrote:
I don't find the user interface for them hard to use at all.

It's not hard to use. It's ancient, dated, and clunky compared to a lot of newer games.

As for DnD 2nd edition, it's just kind of a bad system compared to any DnD edition afterwards (imo, obviously, before anyone hyperventilates about that statement). Since I have long since moved on to playing these better systems in my actual dnd roleplaying games, it's just frustrating to come back and deal with the mechanics that I never liked in the first place and moved on from when I moved to better editions.

How is it clunky? It's the same basic interface system that Pathfinder and Divinity Original Sin series games use.

 Overread wrote:
How is it clunky? It's the same basic interface system that Pathfinder and Divinity Original Sin series games use.

Yeah, I'm not really seeing the clunk. The tabs for different things are all nice and show you the stuff you need to see for that screen.

For example the inventory screen shows you your HP, AC, damage ranges, to hit modifiers. Basically most of the stuff that will get affected by your equipment

Your character record tab shows you more in depth stuff including your attributes, stuff derived from those attributes (such as ability to force open doors, sneak skill values etc.), number of attacks per round, current effects affecting you (Free movement, Silence, Rage etc.)...

Then you have your spell tabs, one for wizard/sorcerer/bard and one for cleric/druid/ranger/paladin

and so on

I mean, the original BG 1 & 2, yeah it was a bit clunky. But anyone playing BG nowadays are playing the enhanced edition which basically eliminates all the clunkyness.

Which reminds me, I should go back and continue my solo game I started....

 Overread wrote:
How is it clunky? It's the same basic interface system that Pathfinder and Divinity Original Sin series games use.

That explains why I couldn't get very far in to D:OS. Found it annoying to play.

What about games like Diablo 2? They use a very similar system of different tab pages for different properties; the main difference simply being that things like the character screen are much more simplified and you only have one set of attributes and inventory and the like because you've only one active character.

 Overread wrote:
What about games like Diablo 2?

Diablo 2's UI isn't the same except superficially. You aren't managing any but a single character, and actions take place in a fully real time scenario rather than a pseudo-turn-based one, with easier access to powers that are more convenient to use.

At this point, though, we're really getting off topic.