Oh no, it's one of those.
When I set out on this grand undertaking I set out to compare the games of yesteryears to the releases of today, and either confirm or debunk the claims of thousands of nostalgic gamers who believe that gaming has in fact gone downhill. Well ten old games later I'm not so sure I'm much closer to coming to a definite conclusion.
How the recaps will work is quite simple; I'm going to give a brief summary of all ten previous titles I looked over in detail and then give a more conclusive summary on whether it's really better than the games of today, or if that's just nostalgia talking. I'm going to try to be as objective as possible, but I don't believe in true objectivity so take that for what you will.
1. Wolfenstein 3-D
Summary: Nazis and Nazi zombies, what every growing boy needs. Wolfenstein 3-D was the first real first person shooter and as such laid the groundwork for the defining title Doom. As B.J. Blazkowicz the player had to traverse nine levels over the course of six episodes while fighting off Adolf Hitler's minions.
Final Verdict: As I pointed out in the full blog entry there isn't really any way that Wolfenstein 3-D can be considered superior to modern releases. It was the original FPS (not counting Catacombs 3-D), but this title can only carry it so far. If you're a modern gamer who hasn't played Wolfenstein 3-D it can be worth a look if you want to see how the genre more or less began, but it's probably not something you'll find yourself enjoying a great deal.
2. Zone 66
Summary: A semi-freeform overhead shooter where the player fought their way through a few episodes taking out primary installations and fighting off endless waves of enemy jet fighters.
Final Verdict: Zone 66 is in a league of its own; the overhead shooter isn't really a genre that receives a lot of attention today so there's nothing to compare it to, and even back then most overhead shooters were on rails. Suffice to say that if you like arcade games then even if you're a gamer of today you might find some enjoyment in Zone 66 if dying a lot doesn't bother you.
3. Alien Carnage
Summary: Attack of the killer space zombies! The player had to navigate Harry through a variety of large levels rescuing hostages, and slaying zombies with limited resources.
Final Verdict: Platformers went full 3-D a long time ago, but very few of them can compare to Alien Carnage from a tactical perspective. Alien Carnage required you to balance the use of your jetpack and weapons as your fuel was limited, and you had to pay for recharges. Most platformers I've played both old and new didn't require much thought beyond "do I want to attack, jump, or just run past this guy?" Alien Carnage definitely deserves kudos for that. On the other hand I personally never found it to be a very enjoyable game. 3D Realms has made this title freeware though, so it can be worth a look if the side scrollers of yesterday pique your interest.
4. King's Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder
Summary: As King Graham the player had to travel through dark forests, cold mountains, Harpy infested isles and foreboding castles in order to rescue his kidnapped family from the evil wizard Mordack. Gameplay came down to solving puzzles, usually with items players attained over the course of the game.
Final Verdict: Sierra's brand of adventure games don't exist anymore in the mainstream gaming market, so there's nothing recent to compare King's Quest V to save for Telltale's episodic Sam & Max and Monkey Island games. Would I say King's Quest is better than those? Sure, there's something about being able to die in fifty different ways that makes finishing King's Quest far more satisfying than finishing a Telltale adventure game. On the other hand some of the Sierra deaths may drive some players nuts, but really that's one of the reasons Sierra's adventure games were so great.
5. Star Wars: Dark Forces
Summary: As mercenary Kyle Katarn players assisted the Rebel Alliance in stealing the plans to the dreaded Death Star, and shutting down the Dark Trooper project in one of the first "Doom clones" that was able to step out of its older brother's shadow.
Final Verdict: While I loved this game back in the day, and while it brought a lot to the table and helped the first person shooter genre evolve Dark Forces pales in comparison to its sequel Jedi Knight which did everything this game did, and more. Dark Forces did have the first FPS engine to feature the capability of building levels on top of levels, though; it was also the first FPS to fully implement jumping and crouching. It's probably not as good as some modern shooters, but it was still a great game, and still is today if you can look past the dated graphics.
6. Sonic The Hedgehog
Summary: Blue streak speeds by; this game was a straight forward side scroller where the player guided the blue hedgehog Sonic through a bunch of loop de loop filled levels.
Final Verdict: Sonic was a great game, but it was surpassed by its immediate successors. I actually haven't played any of the new stuff, but from what I hear it's not that good so this is probably one game that could be considered superior to more recent titles.
7. Fallout
Summary: Greetings from the wasteland! As the legendary Vault Dweller of Fallout lore players had to (initially) navigate treacherous post-apocalyptic California in search of a replacement water chip for their home of Vault 13 while helping, or hindering others along the way with an innovative dialogue tree system, and tactical turn based combat.
Final Verdict: Fallout still is a great game because it was very different from other RPGs out on the market then, and it is definitely unique now in an age where folks don't have any patience for turn based gameplay. This is also the game that introduced the dialogue tree system that BioWare would go on to utilize in Baldur's Gate and many other future titles. It's definitely worth playing today if you have the patience for turn based gameplay.
8. Red Baron
Summary: As a fighter pilot in World War I players had to take on a variety of missions for either the Royal Flying Air Corps, or the German Air Service while rising through the ranks and trying to stay alive.
Final Verdict: Red Baron has been surpassed time and time again; unlike other genres flight sims haven't changed all that much in the time since their introduction. There hasn't been an awful lot of WWI aerial sims in recent years, but there have been enough to label Red Baron as an outdated title that isn't really worth playing unless you just want to play an oldie, and since this game was made freeware by Sierra then it's not a bad choice for just that.
9. Doom
Summary: Players took on the role of one lone space marine in an epic battle against the forces of Hell as they made their way through three episodes set in the UAC Phobos base, the lost UAC Deimos base, and in Hell itself. You could also slaughter your friends in online deathmatch, or fight alongside them in coop.
Final Verdict: You won't find Doom's straight forward run and gun gameplay in many modern shooters save for the possibility of Painkiller, and even that's stretching it since Doom didn't seal you in rooms forcing you to fight off waves of enemies until magically opening again (not usually anyway). Doom was the first person shooter that defined the genre, and even today its fast and fluid gameplay is enjoyable. Is it better than modern shooters? I'd have to say no.
10. Command & Conquer
Summary: As a Commander for either the heroic Global Defense Initiative or the sinister Brotherhood of Nod players had to battle their nemesis in lengthy campaigns. Players could also take the battle to their friends with multiplayer support.
Final Verdict: Okay so the villain was a bit too much like Lex Luthor right down to his lack of hair, but the game was still a blast back when the RTS genre was fairly new. Unfortunately Command & Conquer hasn't aged well due to its primitive AI, and lack of a skirmish function. It doesn't help that the Command & Conquer series has in fact improved with sequels (I may or may not be including Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3 in this tally), and the genre has come a long ways since its debut in Dune II: The Building Of A Dynasty. Still the game has been made freeware by EA, so it may be worth a play through if you want to experience the beginning of the epic conflict between GDI and Nod.
Conclusion: Well I can conclude that these blog entries aren't going to end the old school versus new school debates that's for sure. Honestly as I'm sure you can tell from my final verdicts; I'm finding it extremely difficult to compare the games of yesterday to the games of today. I believe that this is because the games of today don't really resemble the games of yesterday all that much. Is it evolution? De-evolution? Neither? At the moment I honestly couldn't tell you. I'm leaning towards neither at the moment, but that's subject to change.
I will say one thing though; we had greater diversity back in the 1980's and 1990's. Back when games were cheaper and easier to produce taking risks was easier, and less costly. The price of those pretty graphics of today's titles and a more mainstream industry is publishers who are only interested in funding what will sell, and this leads to more of the same. The more unique games out of the ten I've looked over thus far were the hardest to compare to recent titles. How do you compare Zone 66 to anything recent? You can't because there are no overhead shooters let alone freeform overhead shooters.
So far my only conclusion is really this: the cheaper production costs of yesteryears lead to a more diverse selection of titles. The older generations of gaming had bad games just as the newer generations do, but the older generations seemed to offer more. This isn't really a breakthrough as I'm sure many folks have come to this conclusion, but we'll see what this morphs into (if anything at all) after the next ten walks down memory lane which I'm going to start off with the original Final Fantasy for the Nintendo Entertainment System (or Famicon depending on where you're from), so get psyched.
Note: Screenshots taken from the Windows re-release
We've got a fun one this time.
Developer: Westwood Studios Inc.
Publisher: Virgin Interactive Entertainment Ltd.
History: Westwood Studios single handedly created the real time strategy genre in 1992 with Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty when they came up with the idea to take the strategy genre (which was up until that point turn based) in a new direction. Dune II was met with critical acclaim, and following that game's success Westwood set out to create a new series in the same vein. Thus Command & Conquer was born.
Gameplay: Command & Conquer set out to bring the military, economic, and construction aspects of the strategy genre into a real time environment on a larger scale than Dune II and it for the most part succeeded. The game centered around two warring factions: the U.N. funded military organization the Global Defense Initiative (GDI), and a large faction of religious terrorists known as the Brotherhood of Nod who fanatically followed their self-proclaimed Messiah Kane. The gameplay of C&C consisted of building up a base, and a military force by collecting a glowing green extra-terrestrial mineral known as Kryptonite - sorry I mean Tiberium which was transformed into credits when a harvester returned to a Tiberium Refinery. Using these credits you could build new structures and train new units.
Your primary objective was usually to destroy every last enemy structure and unit on the map, so in a way the game was fairly straight forward. Some missions actually tried to mix this up though; for example there were commando missions where you had to guide one lone commando across a map and destroy certain targets. Most of the missions in the game did ultimately come down to completely wiping out the enemy, though.
Design: Due to the rather simplistic nature of the artificial intelligence a lot of C&C's many missions were setup in a way that forced the player to use certain units for certain tasks, or started the player out with a small team that had to take out certain targets before being able to deploy a construction yard. For example in one mission you may have had a small team with no base, and you had to take a certain path with certain units to ambush certain types of enemies so that your primary group could pass through a canyon in one piece and setup a base on the other side. This made the game somewhat interesting because it forced the player to think on their feet and learn the strengths and weaknesses of every unit type under their command. It also forced some folks to tear the hair right out of their head.
One aspect of C&C that everyone liked (and if they say otherwise they're lying) was the full motion videos that played between missions. There were basically three types of FMVs; the briefing which usually featured an actor (usually a developer) playing the role of a commanding officer, then the pre-mission and post-mission FMVs which were usually just flashy videos that contained some action and generally contributed nothing to the overall storyline.
Nostalgia Factor: My first C&C game was actually the original Red Alert (blasphemy!), but it's been long enough for my perspective on this game to be painted partially by nostalgia since I played it shortly after Red Alert.
Critical Reception: Command & Conquer received positive reviews when it came out. Reviewers seemed to enjoy its fast gameplay. Here is the Gamespot review, and here is the MetaCritic page.
How it holds up: Unfortunately unless you just want to see the storyline first hand, not well. Command & Conquer games (usually) improved with every sequel, and the original C&C didn't even feature a skirmish function. Basically the game is just a combination of primitive AI, and scripted single player missions. Command & Conquer is still a game that belongs in any collector's museum despite its antiquated design, though; along with Dune II the original Command & Conquer was a game that defined an entire genre.
Legacy: Command & Conquer is generally considered a masterpiece for its time, and has lead to a prequel, and a legion of sequels and spinoffs. On top of that C&C played a major role in defining the RTS genre. The main storyline of the series will actually be seeing a conclusion next year with EA's Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. Let's hope it's actually good.
Useless Trivia:
- Command & Conquer had a small expansion called Command & Conquer: Covert Operations.
- The game actually has a story subtitle like the rest of the games in the series, but it can only be found in the old DOS readme files. The full name of the original C&C is Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn.
- Kane is bald.
External Links:
"What's Doom?" – Anonymous
At first I wasn't sure if I was going to bother returning to this game for these articles, but in an era where first person shooter is synonymous with Halo of all possible titles I decided to take this title and run with it. I'm also introducing two new categories for this entry and future entries known as History and Legacy which will look at a game's impact then, and its impact now (if it had\has one).
Developer: id Software
Publisher: id Software
History: For the uninitiated Doom was the game that launched the first person shooter genre into mainstream gaming; prior to that the genre was fairly niche with most gamers preferring side scrolling platformers and overhead shooters. There was of course Wolfenstein 3D which was released a year earlier which basically jumpstarted the genre, and a legion of Wolf 3D imitators after that such as Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, but it was Doom that ultimately thrust the genre into the mainstream largely due to the implementation of multiplayer support.
Gameplay: Doom isn't overly complicated in its design; like Wolfenstein 3D, and most of id Software's pre-Doom 3 games really it's the very definition of an arcade shooter. The story? You're one man against the world, or in this case one man against the forces of Hell. You can take more damage than Mr. T, and carry more guns than Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator, and it didn't get any more complicated than that.
The gameplay essentially consisted of going from level to level killing zombies and demons, finding colored keys, flipping switches and making it to the exit. Despite this rather monotonous sounding cycle the game managed to be very fun because of its fast, fluid, no non-sense gameplay. Cover was for sissies and a low difficulty level a sign of weakness. To this day there are dedicated fans who are still trying to finish Hangar (the first map of Episode One: Knee Deep in the Dead) on Nightmare (the highest difficulty level where monsters are abundant, and they respawn after twenty or so seconds) in the fastest time possible.
Design: As I pointed out in the gameplay section Doom was pretty straightforward. The map design however was a huge step up from Wolfenstein 3D's monotonous maze levels. Doom featured some large, open areas as well as a bit more creative level design in general. It wasn't logical level design by any stretch of the word, but it definitely made the game a lot more fun than Wolf 3D was due to the variety of map layouts id Software implemented. Unfortunately map layout is where the creativity ended; each episode of the game basically used one consistent tileset throughout its entirety. Once you finished the first map in each episode you essentially knew what the rest of the episode would look like. Episode 1 was all Tech Base, Episode 2 was a fusion of Tech Base and Hell, and Episode 3 was all Hell.
One area of design I'd like to praise is the enemy lineup. Doom featured far more enemies than Wolfenstein; granted you encountered some far more than others, but compared to Wolf 3D's grand total of five different enemy types the larger amount in Doom was nice. There were also more weapons for the player to utilize, and Doom was the first FPS to feature splash damage from explosive barrels and rockets.
Nostalgia Factor: I had a good time with Doom; it was one of the first PC games I played back in 1993. It was fast, and for the time it was creepy. I'm sure I have a higher opinion of this game than a gamer from one of the latest generations would if he or she sat down with it, but Doom stands as a milestone in the gaming industry, so a certain degree of respect is due.
Critical Reception: Doom received mostly positive reviews from critics worldwide who enjoyed its abundance of levels, and fast gameplay. See a detailed list of reviews here.
How it holds up: This is a question I find difficult to answer; like I said under nostalgia this is a game that definitely deserves a token of respect because of what it accomplished in the industry, but as a game it's very antiquated. On the other hand Doom offers something that most modern shooters do not; fast and fluid arcade action without any of the limited weapon or cover-focused mechanics of newer titles. If you prefer those games than Doom probably would seem like a fossil from a primitive era of the genre to you; on the other hand if you prefer games like Doom than the game definitely has something to offer if you have yet to play it, or even if you have played it already it never hurts to revisit. It belongs in any collector's library regardless; as Doom jumpstarted network multiplayer, and of course brought the first person shooter genre to the forefront.
Legacy: Doom has left quite a legacy in its wake. Although Wolfenstein 3D pre-dated Doom; Doom was the game that really defined the genre. As such Doom would be the standard that other first person shooters would be judged by for years to come with many fans regarding newer shooters as little more than "Doom clones" regardless as to whether or not that was actually true.
Doom definitely left a legacy as far as multiplayer is concerned since Doom was the progenitor of Deathmatch, and was the first FPS to feature an actual multiplayer component.
Doom itself still exists today in the forms of Doom 3 and the in development Doom 4, but in my opinion (and the opinion of many other old school Doom fans) the series is a shadow of its former self as Doom 3 tried to play the horror card instead of staying true to what made Doom great way back when it first hit store shelves in 1993.
Useless Trivia:
- id Software released a free expansion for Doom called The Ultimate Doom which added a fourth episode called Thy Flesh Consumed that bridged the gap between Doom and its sequel Doom II.
- Each episode of Doom featured a secret map that was accessed via a hidden exit in one of the primary Doom maps. Episode 1 had Military Base, episode 2 had Fortress of Mystery, episode 3 had Warrens, and episode 4 had Fear.
External Links:
My Ratings
