Freezenet has had a lot of thought put into the game reviews system. CBR is showcasing why our theories are so well thought out.
Whenever I talk about how I review video games, a lot of people get confused over what I’ve come up with for a whole variety of reasons.
For some, they don’t understand why I don’t just plainly react to games as I see it today. After all, what could be more straight forward than just playing a game and just plainly reacting? Simply put, a game made 25 years ago had different expectations based on hardware and software limitations. As a result, you can’t exactly expect photo-realistic graphics on the N64 and anyone who expects otherwise is simply misunderstanding what it’s like to actually play games back then.
A great example of this is Super Mario 64. If you browse YouTube, you’ll get plenty of YouTube video’s arguing that it is one of the worst games of all time. To me, this is truly bizarre considering, as of this writing, this is rated as number 39 in the greatest games of all time. In viewing some of these video’s, I was left shaking my head at the level of ignorance of what was expected for games back in those days.
A lot of this can be explained simply because those producing those video’s weren’t even alive when it was first released. This eliminates a lot of context from the reviewers mind – context that was frequently lost on the reviewer on top of it all.
The major complaints I remember seeing in these video’s included how Super Mario 64 didn’t achieve 120, or even 60, frames per second. As such, for these reviewers, the game is laggy. What’s more, the lower polygons meant that the game also looked super ugly. Another complaint was that when playing on emulation (yes, some of them actually admitted to this), the controls are not that great. The idea of there being a difference between playing on a keyboard and playing on a native controller was also completely lost on some. Either way, the complaint was that the controls weren’t the greatest when using the arrows on their keyboards to play the game. Double-facepalm indeed.
The context here is absolutely critical for games like Super Mario 64. Super Mario 64 was a launch title for the Nintendo 64. For a lot of gamers, this was their first experience playing a fully 3D game. There were other games out there at the time that was stepping out into the world of 3D such as Doom and a few early titles for the Playstation, but it was entirely dependant on which platform of games you chose as your main go-to for games. If your main go-to was Nintendo, then your only experience was largely 2D platforms outside of SuperFX chip Super Nintendo games (and even then, the N64 was a huge leapfrog forward in technological power at the time).
Believe me, I was one such person that experienced life before 3D graphics and going from 2D games to 3D games was a completely mind-blowing experience. Fast forward to today and 3D is just a natural assumption for what gamers expect for most games. There is precisely zero novelty in playing a game in the third dimension.
So, what does Freezenet do? We look at games through the lens of what is expected for the time. Super Mario 64, at the time, set a major benchmark for what games could be back then and when developers looked for great examples of what good game design is, one title ends up being Super Mario 64.
This also follows similarly to another criticism I remember once getting. When looking at the greatest games of all time, one person once told me that while the games listed are generally good, the newer games should be moved up because they are more relevant today than some of the higher ranked games. The problem, again, is that it doesn’t take into perspective of what the older games accomplished back then. It gently touches on the idea that older games are automatically worse because they are older games.
While I had thought about writing an article explaining this, a couple of random YouTuber’s who obviously don’t know what they are doing (and I did confront one who angrily retorted that he knows more about games than some old guy like me and he was more qualified to review it than I’ll ever be while insisting that every point I made was wrong), it wasn’t exactly noteworthy because there are people who make cluelessly bad video’s all the time on YouTube.
All that changed more recently when publications started making the exact same blunder of arguing that old games are bad because they are old. One publication pushing this argument is CBR which has a pair of articles arguing that older games are horrible because they are, well, old. Believe me, while that argument is not the greatest, the examples they used are even more exasperating. So, in the first article, they argued that numerous 90’s games aged poorly. In one example, they said that Doom is just outdated and not that playable today:
Doom Has Been Succeeded by Better FPS Games
Doom has aged better than most first-person shooters of its era, even Wolfenstein 3D, which featured an unnecessary life and score counter. That said, Doom still has quirks typical of early first-person shooters, including a centered first-person point of view and key cards that can take up too much of the player’s time. It doesn’t make it a bad game, just a strange one by modern standards.
Yeah, the stupid, it burns.
The reality is that the keycard system was actually a major strength of Doom and similar games back in the day. The reason for this has to do with level design. For one, the keycard system was a component to the problem solving mechanics that the player went through. It wasn’t just a mindless shooter where you just have a glorified shooting gallery, there was actual thought involved in the game itself.
Another aspect of the keycard system is that it also enabled a more, what felt like, realistic level layout. When you encountered a locked door, the ask was to explore an opened area to find the card you needed to advance in the level. As a result, you were actually exploring areas in a game and finding all sorts of things in the process. Maybe you might find a better weapon or you found a mega armour item. The point was that it compelled players to actually explore the level.
Exploration in shooters would soon die out in favour of flashy graphics and higher frame rates. Eventually, this gave way to games like Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, Red Faction, and even Max Payne where the level designs were quickly squashed down to a single hallway for the most part. You might get an extra alcove or two here and there or a short little fork in the path that quickly rejoins a few feet away, but exploration became an extinct concept in most FPS games. This is a concept I dubbed “long hall syndrome” in a number of my reviews.
This concept of actually exploring in an FPS (and third person shooters for that matter) didn’t get resurrected until years later when open world game like Just Cause, Borderlands, and Fallout games after Fallout 2 were starting to gain popularity. At that point, however, it was part of a broader concept of RPG elements being incorporated into FPS style games. Games didn’t have to be open world in order to bring back the exploration aspect, but it appears to be what was needed to bring back the concept of level design that wasn’t dumbed down to all hell. Believe me, the lack of exploration was a very common complaint back then.
It’s actually a testament to the level design that was accomplished in games like Doom and similar games back then such as Duke Nukem 3D. The games involved more than just the occasional lever switch or pressing a single button to advance from time to time. There was actual thought involved in the level design. To call the keycard system a waste of the players time is just completely bizarre. What’s more, I’d argue that modern games struggle to accomplish what the original Doom managed to accomplish to this day. Believe me, the microtransactions and always online DRM for single player games plaguing modern games is a testament to that.
Another example that is truly insane is this:
GoldenEye 007 Has Turned to Bronze With Time
Widely considered a seminal entry in the first-person shooter genre, GoldenEye 007 earned praise for its gameplay mechanics and fun four-player mode. However, it wasn’t the first FPS of its kind, nor would it be Rare’s best effort in the genre. Its biggest issue is the sloppy controls, which make it difficult to return to today.
Here’s a question for the author of that ludicrous pile of crap: did you even play the game at all? If you did, then you would know that Goldeneye 007 features a whole bunch of control schemes for the player to choose from. Some of them are joke layouts, sure, but there are multiple control styles for you to pick from. If one set didn’t work for you, then you could pick a different set that works better for you.
What’s more, I found the controls to be quite responsive. If I deactivate an alarm, it deactivates. A single button press and I can cycle through the weapons. What’s more, I can pick a specific item in my inventory through a simple pause menu. Moreover, the UI makes the game very intuitive. I don’t even know what the heck the author there is even talking about, making me suspect that he was just trying to pull a complaint out of his ass to make it sound like the game is horrible.
Even their own comments section was not pleasant to the author. Here’s a few fun examples:
Saying classic Doom is bad by today’s standards is mind blowing to me, considering that lots of people still play it to this day, and even modern gamers find it fun.
I usually like to stay objective and say everyone to their own opinion. But the author is absolutely wrong on nearly all accounts.
Anyone who starts their article with Doom having aged poorly clearly knows absolutely nothing about anything.
While I could go on and on about how horrible that article really was (and you could pick apart that article yourself and find many more reasons to think the author is an idiot), I’ll move on to the other article that the publication pushed a few days later.
It wasn’t bad enough that they bashed 90’s games, but they also bashed 80’s games as well. The examples used were just as atrocious.
SimCity Is Incredibly Limited
It became the first installment in the now-iconic SimCity series, with later entries improving significantly on the original. With that in mind, it’s clear how limited the original SimCity feels today. Aside from the well-regarded Super Nintendo version, it hasn’t aged as well as it could have, especially when compared to later installments and modern competitors like Cities: Skylines.
Seriously, what the hell is this crap? I don’t even know what the complaint about the game even is. I mean, the author keeps saying that it’s limited, but in what way? Was it the space you get to build up your city (because by late game, that is a limitation, but not before you’ve poured hours into the game itself)? Did the author think that the kinds of buildings you can use to build up your city wasn’t sufficient in variety? Did the author think the scenarios that were given weren’t enough? What is the author even saying here? This isn’t even getting into how bad it is to compare it to a game made so many years later which is a facepalm worthy statement in and of itself.
Another example from that article was this:
The Legend of Zelda Has Become Less Legendary Over Time
The Legend of Zelda is among the best NES games and for good reason, at least for its time. However, when compared to later installments in the series, it hasn’t aged as well. The game includes features that weren’t available across all regions, and the gameplay feels relatively stilted by modern standards. Its limited weapon variety and vague progression also make it harder to revisit today.
OK, um, wow. Where do you even begin? What does the author even mean when they say “features that weren’t available across all regions”? Did the Japanese release have features that the North American release didn’t have? Was this the fact that late game items couldn’t be used in the early dungeons? I honestly can’t make heads or tails of what the complaint even is (nor did the author bother to elaborate). That’s not getting into how the controls are somehow “stilted” as I don’t know what the author even means by that.
Then there is the complaint about a limited weapon variety. This is where I ask the question again: did the author in question actually play the game in question? If the author did (like I did), then they would know that you have a huge number of weapons. This includes the sword (and there’s three of them), the boomerang (there’s two of those), the bow and arrow, the flame candle, and the book and wand. That’s… actually a decent arsenal for a game made for the NES. In fact, many of the weapons reappeared in later instalments. This includes the sword, the boomerang, and bow and arrow that features across multiple later instalments. All of those were inspired by early instalments such as the first game.
Finally, what the heck does the author mean by “vague progression”? My best guess is that the author was complaining about the fact that the game is an open world game. An open world game on the original NES. I’ll say it again: an open world game… on the original NES. If that is the complaint, then I strongly urge the author to lay off the crack pipe. The open world nature was an incredible accomplishment on the NES. Yes, there is a dungeon level progression that can be a bit difficult to get right, but at least the game points out what level number you are on upon arrival.
Unsurprisingly, the feedback for the author from the comments section did not hold back:
Honestly, I think most of these hold up just fine. I think the OP grew up in an era where games hold you hand and wipe your……
This is a terrible list.
The Legend of Zelda is a great game to play even today. Even after beating it multiple times I still like to go back to it.
Worst list ever. I have plates most of the games on this list and they are classics. If you think that Pacman is repetitive where is Tetris? Maniac mansion is a great game, with multiple endings! Or the writer never played these games in their time or it’s made by an AI
All of this is precisely why when I review games, I take into consideration the time it was released in. It doesn’t make sense to complain that Super Mario 64 doesn’t have photo realistic graphics and runs at 120 frames per second when the hardware back then simply didn’t allow that. It implies that games made more than 5 years ago generally aren’t worth playing at all – something I wholeheartedly disagree with.
I think what I find personally frustrating in all of this is that I am sitting here putting in all the hard work to try and understand gaming in all different era’s and carefully crafting what I personally thought were strengths and weaknesses (and people are free to disagree with my findings), authors like these crap out garbage articles like the above two examples and get all the views. I’m willing to bet the author scored huge amounts of traffic by writing this clickbait nonsense while I am sitting here being thrilled I got more than 5 views on an article or review. People who write garbage get rewarded and people (like me) who put in the honest work get shafted. It’s not fair to authors like myself.
Still, when I look at articles like this, I feel more confident that all the thought that went into fairly judging games paid off in the long run – at least in terms of quality on the ensuing reviews afterwards. Putting games in the context of when it was released (and I do frequently browse the list of games I reviewed released around the same time while writing many of my reviews) was absolutely the right call. While this does lead to some old games being placed at the top of the best games lists (which apparently annoys some people out there), it accurately reflects the quality of the game for the time period. It does, after all, beat the garbage crapped out by CBR at least.
