Is it really nostalgia talking, or did older games actually do more with less?
People like to say you’re only clinging to old games because you’re clinging to your youth. You remember them fondly because you had more free time, fewer responsibilities, and no internet to tell you a game was bad before you played it.
That’s easy to say. But it ignores the actual differences in how games were made, how they played, and how they respected your time.
Take level design. In older games, maps were tight and purposeful. Doom, Thief, Deus Ex, Half-Life. Everything was placed with intent. You didn’t get a floating marker telling you where to go. You had to explore, pay attention, and figure things out. Now you get a glowing trail and a mini-map covered in icons. The design isn’t about discovery. It’s about efficiency.
Or look at difficulty. Not artificial padding or stat inflation, but proper challenge. Games like X-COM, MechWarrior 2, Commandos, or Homeworld gave you problems to solve. There were no hints, no rewind buttons, no instant respawns. You failed, you learned, you tried again. That built memory. It made wins feel earned.
Then there’s storytelling. A lot of older games had janky dialogue and clunky pacing, but they gave you freedom to shape the narrative. Baldur’s Gate II didn’t care if you went completely off script. Planescape: Torment let you talk your way through most of it. Now you’re often stuck choosing between three versions of the same outcome, all leading back to the same cinematic.
Even the sound design was sharper. Think about the way Silent Hill 2 used audio to mess with your head. Think about how Thief made every creak or footstep mean something. Games today still sound great, but a lot of it blends together. Big orchestral swells, dramatic violins, and ambient noise that fades into the background.
Older games also felt more personal. You could mod them. You could break them. You could open up the install folder and mess around. Developers left in tools. They didn’t treat players like liabilities or pirates. You were allowed to tinker. Now everything’s locked down, encrypted, or tied to a launcher that phones home.
None of this means older games were flawless. Plenty of them were clunky, unbalanced, or outright broken. But the good ones? They took risks. They weren’t afraid to confuse you, frustrate you, or leave you alone for a while. They didn’t assume you needed handholding. And they weren’t designed around metrics and engagement.
It’s not nostalgia. It’s comparison. If a modern game gave you the same sense of space, challenge, mystery, or control, you’d be talking about that instead.
But they rarely do.
What’s one old game that still does something better than anything modern?
