I've noticed this with my games too. I've bought many out of recommendations that i never played and I don't find them that enthralling, but it's also because I've played newer games that have improved on the old game's gameplay mechanics and when I go back to play the original for the first time, the once innovative mechanic feels more like a drawback.

I tried replaying BG1 recently and was pretty bored to be honest. Might try 2 again soon.

Oh, yes. I already have quite an allergic reaction to pointy-eared elves with bows and inexplicably Scottish-sounding dwarves wielding axes. As Yahtzee pointed out the other day, "fantasy" is just about the most ridiculous name the genre could possibly have.

There are two specific groups of old games I do detest to a certain degree.

The first is early full-3D games. I like Doom, Duke3D etc. well enough, but they used sprites for the models instead of polygon models. However, the earliest games using polygons for everything really haven't aged well. Actually, to be honest, they looked like crap even back then. And the very worst of them were the ones who had no good reason to use 3D in the first place, like Simon the Sorceror 3D. Lots of games were made in 3D at the time, simply because "you had to use 3D", according to the studio/publisher execs of the period. In many cases, it was a poor choice.

The other group emerged just after the CD-ROM entered the mainstream. Again, questionable decisions were made in the development industry. The argument went something like "We have a whole 650 MB of space for the game. Fill it!". This led to a steaming pile of crap games full of poorly produced FMV sequences and absolutely shitty gameplay.

This is pretty much how I feel about the PSone. With a few notable exceptions, the vast majority of full 3D PSone games (that weren't racing games at least) sucked ass. Most of the titles that people rave about - like Final Fantasy 7 - had prerendered backgrounds, and even that looks pretty crap these days.

There were some games that used the PSone's hardware limitations to its advantages and eked out their own art style that could be easily reproduced on the console - Crash Bandicoot with its textureless, gouraud-shaded figures comes immediately to mind.

As I say, there were a few exceptions - Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Wipeout, Resident Evil 2 and 3, Rage Racer and Ridge Type 4 - but the majority of 3D games were 3D for the sake of being 3D.

Of course, now games feel the distinct need to be 2D, no matter how crap they are, just so that they can lay claim to being "indie" and "cool".

Crash Bandicoot 2 has some of the best 3d graphics on the PSX (nest to Alone in the Dark 4 and it's wonderful animated backgrounds). Tomb Raider is an example that aged rather well graphically (the gameplay is another story. It's playable, but hard as hell). Another example that still looks decent today is Medal of Honor (as long as you're in a 1999 mindset).

I have a rather high tolerance in terms of graphics. My tolerance usually ends with absurd difficulty (especially combines with the inability to save). My worst problem was Might and Magic 1 (It started alright, I thought I figured the learning curve and the controls, but then the game became WAY too hard and I have now to resort to the cluebook everytime I play) and the first King's quest (I play them to experience them, but these days I tend to use a walkthrough). Never played a text adventure game, though, but I love gamebooks (especially GrailQuest and Lone Wolf) so maybe I'd enjoy them

I overdosed on text adventures back in the Apple ][ days, so they don't interest me anymore.

I doubt I could play games like Temple of Apshai (reading area descriptions from a list) or the Gold Box games (manual mapping) now-a-days.

Graphics, or lack thereof, don't worry me too much - currently have a copy of Sopwith Author's Edition in all its CGA glory ☺

I picked up AITD4 in a PS1 bundle off eBay about a year ago, but seeing as I have it on PC I've neglected to touch it. I'll have to have a look at that.

Tomb Raider does indeed still look good, but the controls, like many of its contemporaries, were absurdly clunky. I remember it took something silly like 4 seconds to turn 90 degrees in either direction. Having played the excellent TR Anniversary through, it's kinda hard to go back to the original.

Medal of Honor...mmmh. I don't really think it looks or plays all that well these days. It had that wow factor back in 1999, but its numerous sequels and Call of Duty have basically ruined it now. The view distance is appalling, the animations remind me of the zombies mode in CoD: World at War and the AI is dreadful even for the era. I'm struggling to think what it brought to the table aside from pioneering the dual analogue stick controls and high-budget production values we so infamously see in shooters today.

I don't know about that. I have a feeling that the majority of 2D indie games are that way because it's easier to handle programatically, and many of them have pretty crap lo-res graphics because they're made by teams made up of programmers with no real graphics artists among them. Of course, the success of such games have proven that graphics really isn't everything.

I do appreciate really well made 2D graphics. I think it's a pity that so few industry titles are 2D. Bitmap graphics also tend to age much better than 3D graphics do.

The biggest issue that I tend to encounter with older games are with the interface. UI's were godawful in a lot of those old games, missing basic stuff we take for granted now.

What really impressed me back then was how detailed the levels were (they were much more complex than those in recent COD for examples. The animations were also rather impressive (all the different ways an enemy soldier could react from being shot despite some memory limitation (why all soldiers fall backwards when they die)).

How was the AI dreadful? It still has the tendency to go out of cover at the worst moment, but they still pulled off some impresive maneuvers (when those weren't scripted). And it was the first time I've seen an AI throw back a grenade or trying to dodge projectiles like rockets (I didn't play Unreal back then and such behavior was unseen before on consoles).

I think it's pretty obvious that the "old school" CoD/MoH games are distinctly separate beasts from the effectively modern and reimagined CoD/MoH games today. The original CoD, CoD 2, and MoH:AA (and its expansions) were games oriented towards the PC, whereas everything that pretty much came after that were console titles first and foremost (with the possible exception of CoD 4).

With respect to the limitations of the AI, it's worth bearing in mind that both MoH:AA and CoD were built using grossly extended and upgraded versions of the idTech 3 (Quake 3) engine; by that time they'd hit the limitations of what the engine could do and partially had to make up for the AI issues with scenery and level design tricks. I think CoD 2 had better AI with Infinity Ward's custom in-house engine, but even that was derived from idTech 3. With all that in mind, what they achieved was actually pretty impressive for its time.

Old-school graphics are a part of the charm of these games.

If the game interests me (and it can do that for various reasons), I can put up with antiquated graphics, control schemes, etc. So in effect, I'll play anything from text adventures to recent releases.

I think the only thing I have a problem with is RTS, but that's genre more than anything else. I can't stand the whole "build-stuff-up-and-rush-the-enemy" style of gameplay that repeats every single map. When it comes to strategy games, I'm more of a 4X gamer.