I've had this experience a number of times, to the point that I don't like to replay games. What made them special was what they inspired in me, and you can't cross the same river twice.
I've had this experience a number of times, to the point that I don't like to replay games. What made them special was what they inspired in me, and you can't cross the same river twice.
Yeah I feel this, and I've had the same experience a couple of times. There have also been some games that I've gone back and replayed and they've held up wonderfully, or I've even gotten more...
Yeah I feel this, and I've had the same experience a couple of times. There have also been some games that I've gone back and replayed and they've held up wonderfully, or I've even gotten more from them when playing later than I did the first time around.
I also think there's some different shades to this experience. Rasbuten touches on this some in his video a bit, where he talks about there being different reasons for games not aging well, and I think with some perspective we can keep some games in their time and place in our lives, while acknowledging that they don't necessarily hold up today. I think his example of Goldeneye 64 is a good one of this. That game was revolutionary at the time, and I spent hundreds of hours playing it both single and multi-player. But it's not really very playable now, not because there's anything wrong with it necessarily but just because it suffers from technical limitations and doesn't have any of the innovations that would come later to make console shooters work (like dual analog controls and aim assist/bullet magnetism). It's just a game that is very much of it's time, but even though I've tried replaying it and not really gotten much out of it, my memories of enjoying it haven't really been tainted.
Bioshock, on the other hand, is not a game that aged particularly well and one that I probably shouldn't have replayed. There are some technical reasons that it doesn't hold up (the PC port isn't very good and it just doesn't play as well as I remember - other games have done similar things much better in the intervening time), but I think one of the major things is that the story really doesn't hold up very well. I remember thinking it was really deep and being amazed at the twist, but playing it again it just seems very shallow and on the nose. That's one that probably should have just stayed in the nostalgia vault. I think the difference is that the flaws weren't all ones that were there because of the time and technical limitations, a lot of the were already there and I just wasn't mature or experience enough to see them.
But even with that said, I still look at that game fondly. I can remember how I experienced it the first time even though that experience was colored by lack of maturity. I think that perspective is important. The way we experience or remember things isn't fake just because when we go back we realize that those experiences were influenced by who we were at the time. It just means that they can't be reproduced in the present, because we aren't who we were. Thankfully, we can always just go have new experiences instead of just constantly reliving the past.
ETA: Sorry, this was a bit of a ramble and I may have indulged in some navel gazing, lol.
I’ve fallen victim to Bioshock nostalgia as well, but second hand. I gave it a try a few years ago after hearing so much praise. I think I only got a couple of hours in before quitting. I’m sure...
I’ve fallen victim to Bioshock nostalgia as well, but second hand. I gave it a try a few years ago after hearing so much praise. I think I only got a couple of hours in before quitting. I’m sure at the time it was better than your average single player game, but its formula has been improved upon too much to go back to.
I have a different perspective from most people because I grew up poor and was not able to afford new games when they first came out. I also have some more developed and arguably obscure tastes...
I have a different perspective from most people because I grew up poor and was not able to afford new games when they first came out. I also have some more developed and arguably obscure tastes than many gamers do. As a result I seem to have a completely different kind of nostalgia experience.
Your nostalgia experience is tinted with the hype the game had and the social interactions you were having with others at the time regarding it. And as such, you tend to remember “tentpole” games very fondly; games that were technically impressive or had innovative gameplay, or even just games that were heavily advertised. These games were undoubtedly good at the time but they aren’t timeless, as you have seen.
News media about games tends to not have people who are very into literature (especially in the past), and this they tend to be very bad at gaging the quality of a story or narrative. Bioshock probably had some of the best storytelling in an action video game at the time so it’s pretty easy to see why people would be so impressed. But if you were playing RPGs or good quality adventure games you may have already experienced a better story. In the case of Bioshock specifically, you would not be terribly shocked by anything if you already understood the philosophy of Ayn Rand and the criticism against it.
Bioshock Infinite is almost a different story. It really does feel like it was loved entirely for the hype.
(And as an aside I have no idea why Razbuten says that Infinite had great animation. I always thought the animation was absolutely horrible.)
To give a slightly more personal example, I remember a decade or two ago there was a game that got very popular called To the Moon. It was an RPG maker game that was basically a visual novel with a short bittersweet story. The hype was insane; people were talking about it as if it were the most emotionally gripping video game of all time. So I played it and while I found it to be good, perhaps slightly above average, it was nowhere near as gripping or intense as everyone was describing it as, and I found it somewhat underwhelming as a result. I had already played some less popular games that I found emotionally gripping, while I think that most players at the time found the previous peak of video game drama to be Aeris’ death in Final Fantasy 7.
I really do see Razbuten’s point of having the memories of a game being tainted with the memories of social interactions they had which were related to these games. But at the same time I think that regretting replaying the games is short-sighted and limited. You are never robbed by learning the truth; you are enriched. and honestly there are many more games that I would consider to be timeless than there are games that are lionized as being much better than they are.
I've had this experience a number of times, to the point that I don't like to replay games. What made them special was what they inspired in me, and you can't cross the same river twice.
Yeah I feel this, and I've had the same experience a couple of times. There have also been some games that I've gone back and replayed and they've held up wonderfully, or I've even gotten more from them when playing later than I did the first time around.
I also think there's some different shades to this experience. Rasbuten touches on this some in his video a bit, where he talks about there being different reasons for games not aging well, and I think with some perspective we can keep some games in their time and place in our lives, while acknowledging that they don't necessarily hold up today. I think his example of Goldeneye 64 is a good one of this. That game was revolutionary at the time, and I spent hundreds of hours playing it both single and multi-player. But it's not really very playable now, not because there's anything wrong with it necessarily but just because it suffers from technical limitations and doesn't have any of the innovations that would come later to make console shooters work (like dual analog controls and aim assist/bullet magnetism). It's just a game that is very much of it's time, but even though I've tried replaying it and not really gotten much out of it, my memories of enjoying it haven't really been tainted.
Bioshock, on the other hand, is not a game that aged particularly well and one that I probably shouldn't have replayed. There are some technical reasons that it doesn't hold up (the PC port isn't very good and it just doesn't play as well as I remember - other games have done similar things much better in the intervening time), but I think one of the major things is that the story really doesn't hold up very well. I remember thinking it was really deep and being amazed at the twist, but playing it again it just seems very shallow and on the nose. That's one that probably should have just stayed in the nostalgia vault. I think the difference is that the flaws weren't all ones that were there because of the time and technical limitations, a lot of the were already there and I just wasn't mature or experience enough to see them.
But even with that said, I still look at that game fondly. I can remember how I experienced it the first time even though that experience was colored by lack of maturity. I think that perspective is important. The way we experience or remember things isn't fake just because when we go back we realize that those experiences were influenced by who we were at the time. It just means that they can't be reproduced in the present, because we aren't who we were. Thankfully, we can always just go have new experiences instead of just constantly reliving the past.
ETA: Sorry, this was a bit of a ramble and I may have indulged in some navel gazing, lol.
I’ve fallen victim to Bioshock nostalgia as well, but second hand. I gave it a try a few years ago after hearing so much praise. I think I only got a couple of hours in before quitting. I’m sure at the time it was better than your average single player game, but its formula has been improved upon too much to go back to.
Yeah I think there's a legitimate reason that it did so well, but it's very much of it's time and unfortunately just hasn't aged well.
I have a different perspective from most people because I grew up poor and was not able to afford new games when they first came out. I also have some more developed and arguably obscure tastes than many gamers do. As a result I seem to have a completely different kind of nostalgia experience.
Your nostalgia experience is tinted with the hype the game had and the social interactions you were having with others at the time regarding it. And as such, you tend to remember “tentpole” games very fondly; games that were technically impressive or had innovative gameplay, or even just games that were heavily advertised. These games were undoubtedly good at the time but they aren’t timeless, as you have seen.
News media about games tends to not have people who are very into literature (especially in the past), and this they tend to be very bad at gaging the quality of a story or narrative. Bioshock probably had some of the best storytelling in an action video game at the time so it’s pretty easy to see why people would be so impressed. But if you were playing RPGs or good quality adventure games you may have already experienced a better story. In the case of Bioshock specifically, you would not be terribly shocked by anything if you already understood the philosophy of Ayn Rand and the criticism against it.
Bioshock Infinite is almost a different story. It really does feel like it was loved entirely for the hype.
(And as an aside I have no idea why Razbuten says that Infinite had great animation. I always thought the animation was absolutely horrible.)
To give a slightly more personal example, I remember a decade or two ago there was a game that got very popular called To the Moon. It was an RPG maker game that was basically a visual novel with a short bittersweet story. The hype was insane; people were talking about it as if it were the most emotionally gripping video game of all time. So I played it and while I found it to be good, perhaps slightly above average, it was nowhere near as gripping or intense as everyone was describing it as, and I found it somewhat underwhelming as a result. I had already played some less popular games that I found emotionally gripping, while I think that most players at the time found the previous peak of video game drama to be Aeris’ death in Final Fantasy 7.
I really do see Razbuten’s point of having the memories of a game being tainted with the memories of social interactions they had which were related to these games. But at the same time I think that regretting replaying the games is short-sighted and limited. You are never robbed by learning the truth; you are enriched. and honestly there are many more games that I would consider to be timeless than there are games that are lionized as being much better than they are.
Skyrim held up for me when I replayed at this past fall.
At the opposite end of this spectrum lie Portal and Portal 2.