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No, it’s not just nostalgia!!!
As someone who’s been playing videogames for almost three decades, every time I play a new release one simple yet cynical question comes to my mind, were old games truly better than the new ones?
One could brush this question off as random babbles of a man-child who can’t let go of his nostalgia, which is a fair point, after all, we know that nostalgia is a powerful tool and companies profit from every ounce of it, I believe that nostalgia is so powerful that you can even sell it to people who were not even born when the actual thing came out, case in point, silent hill 2 remake was followed by a joke that I saw all over the internet, “ can’t wait to see silent hill 2 fans playing their favorite games for the first time”, the nostalgic power behind SH2R was that impactful, but why? Well it’s an easy question, SH2 is one of, the best psychological- horror games ever made, of course people feel nostalgic for it, it was a great game and for so many people no other game, even the remake, could top it, and this simple statement might be interpreted as “all of new games bad, all of old games good” which is, in all fairness, a stupid statement to be honest.
I just finished black myth: Wukong and it was fantastic, graphics and art designs were absolutely gorgeous, some of the bosses were spectacle masterpieces and fighting against them gave me the same feeling that I felt when I played Shadow of the Colossus for the first time, long story short, I enjoyed my time with the game but then a voice inside my head started whispering, it sounded like a picky child who is about to throw a tantrum because his apple chips were miss shaped, but in all honesty it was something that I believed in, “Was it really that good? Was the combat as good as Prince of Persia Warrior Within?”, and I know this is like comparing apples to oranges, Prince of Persia was an action adventure game that focuses on combat and Wukong is an action adventure game that focuses on comba… how did it end up like this?
You see my profile picture, I am a Sands of Time trilogy fan boy and I fully believe that if you put all three game in a blender you could end up with the closest thing to perfection, but I promise that I’m talking as unbiased as I can be and I’m not trying to attack Black Myth Wukong, I’m attacking 90% action games on the market! All jokes aside, we can agree that POPWW, has one of the greatest combat mechanics of all time, right? There are so many combos and combat moves that feels like you’ve opened a character’s move list in Tekken, you can walk over an enemy, use his body to boost yourself into the other enemy, slash his throat, disarm him and then throw his weapon at the first enemy, it’s Awesome! But in Wukong all you do is spamming light attacks, yes you can press the heavy attack button between your light attacks up to two times for what the game hilariously calls varied combos but that’s all you need to do for the rest of the game, and upgrades feel less like an upgrade and more like duct tapes to fix downgrades, enemies keep attacking you off screen? How about an upgrade that makes you take less damage on your final hit of a light attack combo, what’s that? Enemies keep interrupting you while you are doing a 20-hit combo that only the final hit deals actual meaningful damage? Well now you can dodge in middle of it. Look, at the end of day, the game works, it’s fun and to quote a certain someone, “if it’s not fun why bother” but my problem is deeper than just crying why every game is not like Prince of Persia and I can’t figure out what it actually is.
Let’s, for the sake of argument, focus on the action games only, almost every new game combat mechanic is a coin toss between souls-like combat or for the lack of better term, Arkham combat. One could argue that mechanics are that way because the formula works, why fix something that is not broken? Well, I have two arguments against this statement, let me explain them one by one, I would argue that the aforementioned combat mechanics are not perfect and those mechanics feel shallow compare to the gold standards of the older generations, just compare the movement and action variety of the games like Prince of Persia, Devil May Cry 3 or Ninja Gaiden to most of the modern AAA games and you understand the wide gap between the old and new, sadly POP died ages ago and Ubisoft is literally puppeteering a corpse, you have to sacrifice your first born son to Cthulhu at this point if you want to get a new DMC game, and until few days ago I thought Ninja Gaiden is dead and buried six feet under but to my surprise at least one of the old guards is alive. Nowadays, game companies try to make a game that appeals to everyone, the days of keeping your combo up, making calculated decisions on when to use your limited magic and solving puzzles in God of War are far gone, today you spam attack and wait for your cool attacks’ cool-down to finish while your wacky companions give you the answer of every single puzzle, because god forbid you let go of the controller and stop playing the game that they put millions upon millions of dollars into it. Even games that have some unique combat mechanics are shifting toward the streamlined mechanics, God of War, Assassin’s Creed, Spider-man, and many more are the examples of this shift. Now you might say that copycats were in the older generations as well, which is true but many of them added their own flavor and created something special, God of War was inspired by DMC, Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks is DMC but with Co-op shenanigans, Bayonetta was made by the same guy who made DMC for god sake and all of these examples feel unique enough that you don’t call them DMC clones at the first glance unlike Black Myth Wukong that everyone collectively called it another dark souls clone even though it has its own fun additions like transformations and spells that you could mess around with but perhaps these additions were not bold enough for today’s market to not bury it under the souls-like genre which means almost everything at this point everything is a souls-like now, “Hollow Knight is the dark souls of the platformers”, my brother in Christ have you ever heard of metroidvania? If you are a developer, you must be so different that people don’t see your game as yet another souls clone and that leads to my other point of argument, new games lack ambition.
Companies always want to attract as many potential customers as possible to maximize their profit so they stick to what worked before, if people like souls like then make the next game just like that, even Spider-man PS4 was barrowing some of the Arkham series’ mechanics, but why risk it? Because of ambition of course. Ambition was the driving force behind the creation of MK Shaolin Monks, no other companies would green light another spin-off after 2 stinkers but midway did it and the game turned out to be amazing and in my opinion it’s the best game in the franchise. There were few games that were ambitious enough to bring back the combat depth of the older action games while using the new streamlined mechanics, Nioh, Star Wars Jedi Survivor and the most recent one, Stellar Blade and few other games were fantastic, Nioh added stance switching and ki charging into the souls-like design and made it more skillful, Jedi Survivor added force powers that made the combat more creative, and Stellar blade which became one of my favorite action games of all time, has so many fun mechanics, lots of varied combos, three types of perfect dodges, different counter attacks, this game is much more than what internet led me to believe, yes it has lots of problems, and yes it’s thirst-baity, but behind all the fan service, there is a game worthy of your attention. So to answer the question, “were old games truly better than the new ones?”, I must say yes but actually no!
The older games had one major driving force and that was ambition and that ambition led to creative choices in gameplay department that are sadly missing in this generation. Games become more casual and artificial, everything feels simpler now, I’m pretty sure that even my grandma can beat GOW PS4, and I know I am a contrarian here, people love these new games, they look better, sound better and are more cinematic, everyone loves The Last of Us, and here I am, typing for 5 hours like an absolute moron, missing the days that movies were cinematic and games were supposed to have fun and engaging gameplay. Sometimes I look into myself thinking that I have become a miserable old man who forgot what “fun” is, new games are fine, I’m just a hater who know nothing, I’m wrong to like those old silly games but then games like Sifu, Cup Heads, Dynasty Warriors Origins come out and warm my heart and reminds me of why I love videogames so much. Many new games come out each year that have masterful gameplay mechanics because devs actually polished what have worked and added their own ideas on top of it instead of just copying it, video games have all the potential to become the greatest form of entertainment if the companies don’t lose sight on what made videogames unique in the first place instead of trying to be movies, reignite the flames of ambition and build upon the creative ventures of the past games and I will be there to play them and enjoy my favorite form of art.
