Can we criticize older games? Should We?

Recently there has not been a LOT of games to play. So, I have decided to look back into the past a bit to find some games I missed, or replay some old favorites. And as I did a question creeped into my head:

Can we criticize older games?

As I played Burnout 3 I noticed that drifting was not what I was used to. It was more subtle, not quite the whiplash inducing slides that more recent driving games have. I wanted to at first criticize the game for having a less then great drifting system, but it felt unfair. Later my brother stopped by and played Burnout 3. He too picked up on the more subtle drifting and also complained about the ugly menus. I didn't know how to respond, its partially why I'm writing this.

Can we criticize older games?

Granted, Burnout 3 is not that old, its not even 10 years since its release. But the question still applies. After some Burnout I played some Mega Man 2. I've never played a Mega Man game before, so for me it was difficult as hell.( I didn't beat it..didn't get close..) As I played I started to think about the games art/graphics, controls, level design, checkpoints etc. I never experienced Mega Man 2 when it was new, so I don't have the same context that someone else would who DID play the title when it first released.

So, were any of my criticisms valid? Were they fair? I don't quite know how to answer that. At first I thought that it was really unfair to judge a 20 year old game by today's standards. Its graphics were a product of less powerful hardware and limited storage.(And to be fair I found the art style to be generally good looking.) The limited life system is a byproduct of Arcade games from around that era, it was just how you made games back then. The difficultly level is also a trait of games of that time. But were any of these complaints fair to make?

Can we criticize older games?

As I thought about the question more, I began to think of it from a different perspective.

Films like Citizen Kane, Aliens, Star Wars, Terminator, Godfather, Gone With the Wind and other classics are frequently referred to as some of the greatest movies ever made. But to many, myself included they also stand up to this day. Their stories, characters, sound design, imagery and more are still very iconic and well received. These are still fundamentally good movies. Is Mega Man 2, by similar criteria, still a fundamentally good game?

I'm not going to answer that, because I don't know. On the one hand games like Burnout 3 and Mega Man 2 show signs of their age, ugly UI, weaker graphics, harder challenges, outdated game-play mechanics and more, which if we follow similar criteria that we apply to "classic" films, would possibly make them not so great games when compared to modern games in the same genre. BUT games are computer based while films are still generally live action. And computer graphics are naturally going to evolve over time, thats just the nature of the beast.

Can we criticize older games?

I don't know. But Mega Man 2 is fun, and I'm glad I played it. (I owned a Genesis so Sonic/Vectorman were MY platformers back then.) And Burnout 3 is still a lot of fun, crashing into stuff is always fun. Really, that's probably the answer. As long as a game is fun, as long as you are enjoying your time spent with the game, then it can be called a good game.

Maybe. I don't know...

Yes and yes.

Interesting article. I think to an extent we can but not in a vacuum. Like you say, they're a product of their time and where the medium was and if we're going to analyze them we can't compare them to games today. Games that were awesome back then might be near unplayable today but they still deserve to be labeled great games. I think the movies comparison is a bit apples and oranges, a movie isn't as hampered by technology as a game is. Older movies stand up way better then older games do. That's my thought anyway. Great article duder.

Well they are old no one cares anymore. You can't criticize stuff you can get for free or very very cheap.

I do it all the time on this very website, so yes.

YES

Yes, you can. Just because something is free doesn't mean you can't be critical of it. Actual, intelligent criticism isn't solely influenced by price.

Being critical of old games is a benefit for everybody because the newbies can cut through some of the nostalgic nonsense we all have for certain things and get closer to the truth. That being said, Mega Man 2 is a nearly perfect game and always will be. ;)

My thoughts exactly. Games are quite context sensitive to the market they were released in at the time. When giving criticism to these games, I think you need to remember what games were like back then and how a particular game compared to the others of it's time. You simply can't make the comparison between an old game and a modern one. Tech will always be advancing, so any game can look out-of-date after a some years have passed.

Yes and yes. Though, criticism and a judgment of quality can be different. I may not think an old Atari game holds up, but it doesn't mean I can't acknowledge where it fits into history and its relative quality at the time. Games continue to progress, and while there are some classics, a lot of games will simply suffer from being part of a bygone era. So, yes, we can criticize, and we should. But we also need to criticize them in context. Otherwise, any game we deem good today could easily be considered rubbish in the future, but the reality is somewhere in between. Advances can make older games feel outdated, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't still be recognized as good in their relative context.

Even the best cave paintings are rather amateurish in relation to art today, but some paintings were better than others. And it's in the environment of the time which I would deem one to be a standout worthy of recognition.

which if we follow similar criteria that we apply to "classic" films,

Games are not films. Remember that.

To your questions, the answer are "yes" and "absolutely". How else are we going to learn about our medium and evolve and move on? Video game design could absolutely learn a lot from going back and studying the important games of the past, from Pong to Super Mario Bros. to Chrono Trigger to Doom and Ocarina of Time and on up until now.

For that matter, Doom has had a few books written about it, usually coupled with some stuff on the early days of id. I think it's a prime example of an old game that both holds up amazingly and should be studied.

I think you can and definitely should criticize older games.

@hailinel: well anything bad can be offset by saying "what do you want it, it was free?"

Being free doesn't offset the general quality of a game. Just because a game is offered up for free doesn't mean that it's somehow immune from criticism.

Of course. I don't think it's fair to criticize them by the standards of a modern game (although it IS fair to consider them by the standards of a modern gamer... some things just don't hold up, sad to say, and they can't deliver the same experience they once did), but for the vast majority of games, we can still look back and recognize the differences between a bad game and a good one.

@jz What does price have to do with criticism? If I study art, do I have to buy the Mona Lisa before I can observe it critically? That also brings me to the "it's old, so nobody cares" comment... of course they do. Since when do people stop wanting to discuss older entertainment? Half the internet is about older entertainment.

Yes. I don't see why you could not, and there are so many ways to go about it. You can analyze and criticize game by comparing them to current games, you can compare them against other games from their era, you can compare how certain game mechanics have evolved over time and assess the pros and cons of each approach, you can express personal opinion and preferences, etc.

Regarding the analogy to cinema, I think again you can look at classics, but you can also look at the mainstream cookie cutter films, the formulas of the time. I think some films do not age well; such as black and white films which just instantly feel old (we get over it for the truly great one, but still). There are also extremely formulaic story telling mechanism, the way scenes were shot, and the slower pacing of older films (showing someone travel by car to their next location; have a look at "The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing" for a fantastic analysis on the subject).

I say sure, and there's many ways to go about it. We learn from history, and art forms have rich histories to learn from. I would personally resist the envy of absolute judgements (e.g. good, bad, etc) as they are shallow in value. It's all about perspective.

I own mega man 2 in the box never beat it

Pretty hard game

@truthtellah said:

Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. (You have habit of doing that :D)

Essentially, reviews have always been operating as a contemporary cultural process but almost immediately after a game is out and others are then released a bit later, a second quality is necessary to consider which is time. There is no other way to reconcile how people have come to view something like Sonic Adventure. Well reviewed in it's day but it aged like milk and became a poster-child of questionable Sonic games and frankly busted gameplay in the 3d era.

So it's a different metric whether a game holds up over time, one that's a compliment or corollary to a game's relative impression and quality upon release. In fact, it's the one way I can justify playing older games to someone who justifiable only looks to games released in their generation. They see the graphics and design they like, why go back? Of course I see plenty of reasons but it's important to emphasize the value of playing games that don't hold up to gain historical perspective but not assume or ignore games that do.

Oh hell yes. Don't let a game's age get in the way of figuring out how it functions (if it functions in the first place).

If you can compare old games to new ones and being all nostalgia about it without even seeing the flaws it would have today than you certainly can criticize old games as well. For example Try to play Shenmue today a fan favorite. But it has aged terribly. Bad controls, bad cutscenes, bad voiceacting etc. Today it would not be a 5.0 game in that quality.

Off course you can criticize older games. But it's pretty reasonable to keep in mind that most of the norms we have today probably wasn't invented when the game came out. Still, the sole purpose of a game is to entertain you, isn't it, no matter how old it is. I'd say Burnout 3 and Mega Man 2 does a better job with that than many modern games.

Sure, I'll do it right now.

MGS 1 is barely a video game at this point and Half Life 2 plays like butt and should be like 4 hours shorter. Two games that were revolutionary at the time but I never, ever want to play those again.

Yeah, but it needs to be in context. If I were to say "Pong's graphics suck. Two white lines and a dot? What were they thinking?" it would be incredibly dumb. But to say "Pong's graphics are very basic, featuring only two white bars and a white dot. That's because it came out in 1972 and was one of the very first video games" is fair.

It's all about giving it the correct context. Video games are a young medium. Playing a game from the 80's isn't like watching a movie from the 80's. It's more like watching a movie from the 20's. It's fair to judge them, but that context always needs to be taken into account.

In addition to what most people have said I also find it interesting to see how certain games hold up relative to one another, some games can really stand the test of time, while others age incredibly poorly.

You can't criticize Burnout 3, or I'll come at you with a switchblade

The thing about "criticizing older games" is that many people miss what made the games likable in the first place. I have little doubt these days that what people enjoy when they say they enjoy videogames is 100% different than what people enjoyed about games 10 years ago. It's a completely different hobby, and the people who used to play have either adapted or left. But that doesn't mean they don't still enjoy what they enjoyed about teh older games. The resurgence of old developers on Kickstarter picking up right where they left off with games like Shadowrun Returns, and the success they are having, is proof of that.

Take Final Fantasy I for example. A lot of modern Final Fantasy fans look at that game and say it sucks because they story is awful. They play FF games for the story, as is the point of modern FF games, and so FFI is a failure to them. But, in reality, FFI has much more in common with, like, Diablo than it does modern Final Fantasy games. It was about grinding, leveling up, gaining money, and buying better equipment. That gamplay is still fun for the people who like that kind of gameplay. But people who were never attracted to that will look back and judge it as a poor relic of the past and say that anyone who liked it has "rose colored glasses" simply because they NEVER would have liked what it offered in terms of gameplay.

Saying that old game doesnt have stuff that we are used to now may not make much sense. Its like saying Aliens has not enough CGI effects and so on. You can criticize older games but it should make sense.

I think you should be able to criticize old games, so long as you try to keep what games were like during that period, and whether you feel the game holds up regardless of the limitations of that era.

I think you can and should critic a game but not in the same manner as a film. Games are about immersion into the world created to be played and yes visuals, sound,etc. are factors but there not like film simply because film never really relyed on tech to tell a story or its never been an interactive medium like a videogame.

Sure, as long as we don't attempt to rewrite history in the process and gloss over how games were received at the time and the impact they had.

You see this a lot with the Half-Life games for instance, especially from people who didn't experience those games until years after release. It's easy to miss what the big deal is about certain 'classic' games if you're only experiencing them for the first time years after the fact, simply because the gaming environment you've grown up in has been so heavily influenced by them that you take the elements they popularised for granted. You'll eventually see the same thing happen with Gears of War & CoD 4.

It's much easier to go back and judge a cult classic like eg. Deus Ex fairly I think, because -as great as it was- it was basically a game design cul-de-sac. It never became a 'blueprint' game which the industry latched onto and ran into the ground, and so your judgement won't be coloured by years of having played countless, gradually improving Deus Ex clones.

For for objective critical analysis to exist within gaming, we must hold older games and newer games to the same standard.

You should check out Classic Game Room. He has his stuff on YouTube. He reviews pretty much everything. Nice guy. It's pretty cool.

Absolutely. One of the goals of criticism is to assess whether we or other people should play things or whether we'd enjoy them, and to that end I think criticising older games is entirely valid. If you think games like Mega Man 2 or Burnout 3 might not be fun for others to play then by saying so we can all get a better idea of what it's like to play those games, whether we should, and where our expectations should be set. We can also learn a lot on how to properly make games by finding the flaws in any game, old or new, and to see how our medium has evolved then we need to be able to point out the flaws in older games.

Of course we can't expect a lot of the flaws in these older games to not be there, but an explanation of why they're there doesn't really change the fact that they are flaws. The way I see it the only real goal to which we can't criticise older games that we can with new ones is criticise those old games in the hope that the games that come directly after them will improve on their flaws. That ship has of course sailed.

As Jimbo said, you have to separate the criticism from the history. I don't like the monolisa, i think it is ugly, but I understand where it came from in history.

Not even close!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_video_game

And yes, you can of course criticize or analyse or review anything from anytime, you just have to do what matty said and take into account context. My analysis of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, for example, would now be slightly different because recent events have modified the situation somewhat, as compared to when I originally looked at it during the first year after the accident.

Lots of great responses.Thanks for reading duders.

Yes but be sure to provide context. For example, as much as I loved GoldenEye back in the day it's not a very good game now. And if I were to criticize it now it would be whether this gem is worth checking out again and/or whether younger audiences should bother playing it. That being said my entire critique would be filled with a lot of positive things about how awesome and important the game was at the time.

Film isn't a good comparison. Movies, especially those back then, are about the actors and their portrayal of the characters on screen. Sometimes the visuals become the actors but you get my drift. Games are entirely tech driven. It isn't really fair to compare a game then to now. the original Zelda is the greatest game ever made in my opinion but if it were to come out today and be judged by the games that built on top of it it would be skewered. There are indie games that do more than that Zelda.

As long as the criticism is met with an open mind on all sides (and not spiraling into insane fanboy/fangirl arguments) then sure. Upon a game's release I'd personally want honest criticism of my game versus someone shooting it down for all the wrong reasons where they didn't play the game or just compare it to another game without seeing what works in the game just released. Besides some love of games, including some PC games with me, can just be nostalgia talking where you played the game early on without being aware of the more noticeable flaws because you were having fun with it.

While I think you obviously can examine it as it stood back in the day, I totally think old games are fair to criticize. Saying a game is great without comparing it to anything else, just because it is old, is a completely silly notion.

@shagge: well it all goes me thinking discussing if a game is good or bad, is never interesting. If I like a game and you don't, I don't care. I'll just respect the fact that you don't like it, and move on with life.

Now if you want to talk about what you did in the game, or the fiction of the game. Stuff like that is fun to discuss, but I don't care and never will care what anyone thinks about anything. If you like something I like great, if not totally fine we all snowflakes. As for the free thing, if you pay 60$ for a bad game you have the right to feel cheated. If pay notthing for a game and it's bad, who cares? That's why free games never get reviewed.

Yes. No? Yes? Perhaps No, or maybe Yes?

I'm well aware of the games that came before pong. Hence why I said "one of the very first video games". Wikipedia seems to think that pong is the 11th video game ever. Considering there have been hundreds of thousands of video games, I'd consider 11th to be one of the first. Anything in the top 100 would be one of the earliest games.

@hailinel: well if a free game is bad, who cares?

@bigjeffrey: Yoshi`s Island does suck

Connan O Brian sums it pretty much up^^

http://teamcoco.com/video/clueless-gamer-throwback-edition-atari-2600

Games back then were mostly terrible if you compare them with today. But somegames have just a nostalgia factor and memories connected with them that make these games look much better than they actually are. Also why would anyone Think ET was the worst game? Alone the Gold game they show is much much worse than ET. ET actually looked pretty good and played well. The concept was bad but not the game^^

Most old games suck. Most old movies suck. Most old books suck.

There's no reason to hold them in high regard if they don't hold up. You don't have to like something just because people who are older and more respected than you like it.

@grantheaslip: ok games from 15 years ago would suck today? My god what a revelation.

Context is a weird thing. For example, the graphics for Flight of the Amazon Queen pale in comparison to other adventure games at the time like Full Throttle. However, playing it today the graphics seem fairly decent since you're not comparing it to games that had just come out. Instead they have a timeless feel, reminding me of games like The Secret of Monkey Island and Fate of Atlantis. But are there other things that it would be fair to criticize the game for. FotAQ lacks ability to double click an area to speed up the character or skip the walking animation altogether. Was this mechanic prevalent enough at the time that it would be fair to criticize the game for that?

I can't answer your question, but I do know that Burnout 3 is fun as fuck even today

I think criticism of older games is not only something we can do, but should do.

Obviously, complaining about the graphics in an NES game comparitive to anything other than other games of the era is hilariously unfair, but truly good game design stands the test of time. I can play SMB 1, 2USA, and 3 today and they're still entertaining as all fuck, but as the recent release of Ducktales: Remastered proves, there are lots of games whose place in history is owed entirely to nostalgia. The original was a fun game for its time, but nothing about its gameplay would entertain someone walking into it today the way the original SMB games do, and there was nothing in it that could be seen as the kernel that led to some greater work the way the SMB games set the framework for the entire 2D platforming genre. It's a game held close to people's hearts purely because of the fond memories people have of when it first came out, and while there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, it's disingenuous to put games recommend Ducktales to someone who doesn't love the original, much less hold it up as a shining beacon of 2D platforming that can stand up with the greats of the genre.

TL:DR version - not every game deserves our nostalgia.