All creative work has a shelf life and all art of any kind made now is in some way affected by, contextualized by or straight up about now. Even the most timeless of works intrinsically relate to the author or authors and the time that work exists in, but sometimes stuff just holds up. Video games are no different. Some of them stand the test of time and that’s what we want to talk about today.
Hi folks, it’s Zaid and today on “Aura Riot”, 10 games that have aged like fine wine.
10. Portal 1 and 2
Is kind of crazy how well both these games hold up. If they were made today, they would probably feel just about the same and they came out back in 2007 and 2011. The first Portal is old enough to vote, but you’d barely be able to tell other than the fact that it uses the Half-Life two engine. And I mean a lot of modern games are still made using Source. People are still using Source Filmmaker to make YouTube videos and stuff. It may look dated but it feels contemporary because it feels like a style.
But why these games feel so timeless is the gameplay. They’re brilliantly designed puzzle games that made incredible use of a simple but yet kind of mind blowing gimmick. The portals were impressive back then and they still kind of low key impress even now. It helps that very few games have ever really tried to replicate Portal, so the gimmick still is pretty fresh.
The presentation plays an important part in what keeps the games relevant as well. The voice acting, the deadpan humor and the overall excellent pace of these games makes them fun to go back to even after you know how to solve all the puzzles.
For most games like this, there’s little reason to go back and replay them after you finish, but with Portal and especially Portal two, there’s enough variety and humor to keep the experience feeling fresh and fun. Portals are just cool, too. It’s mind blowing tech back in 2007. It’s still an impressive novelty today.
Something else with enough variety and humor to keep the experience fresh, hopefully, is Gameranx, which we wanna ask you to subscribe ’cause believe it or not, most people watching are not subscribed right now. We do everything we can to make good stuff and your subscription helps us make more of it, so hopefully it helps you see some stuff you want to see. Thank you very much for that subscription and let’s get back to it.
9. F.E.A.R.
This FPS from the all time greats at Monolith, RIP, more clearly shows its age than something like Portal. It’s more of a traditional FPS game so there’s cut scenes that involve getting a nice big closeup of mid 2000s character models.
These potato face weirdos aren’t fooling anybody. It’s a telltale sign of an old shooting game. Character models may not hold up and the environmental design is pretty blocky, but the part that matters most, the actual shooting stuff part, still holds up in a big way.
For a 20-year-old game, the combat remains some of the best ever in a single player FPS. The way enemies would shout out what you’re doing and actually seem to have some tactics, put them well above most enemy AI, even in games made today. The actual act of shooting the guns feels extremely powerful in a way few games manage. And some of the effects are still more impressive than some stuff you see today.
Stuff like making it so lights actually cast rays even when you shoot them and make them shake. It’s not difficult to do today, but it was crazy difficult back then and you really don’t see developers showing off like this anymore.
The shooting is still some of the best ever and it’s kind of bizarre nobody really flocks to the fear like en mass as a genre. There’s that indie game Trap Inc too, which is awesome, don’t get me wrong. I’ll bring up Trap Inc two whenever I can. But that’s pretty much it.
I know the thing with Fear is that it is not a perfect game. It does have some boring parts. The environmental design is pretty drab, but none of that really matters once the action starts ’cause even now something has yet to been able to match it in pure adrenaline and satisfaction. It’s one of those games that just feels sublime to play and that holds up better than almost anything out there.
8. The Witcher 3
Can you believe this game is a decade old? Feels like one of those games is just perpetually a few years old, but time is finally starting to catch up with CD Projekt Red’s 2015 Masterpiece.
The first two Witcher games were solid efforts, but the jump in quality from those games to this one cannot be understated. The Witcher three was a real kick in the pants for the whole industry, not just the Witcher series. From a small time Polish company, they just came outta nowhere, and is now putting out games that the rest of the AAA gaming industry wishes they could put out.
Well, maybe not at Launch, but Cyberpunk 2077, you can’t argue with the behemoth that is that game. In some ways everybody’s still trying to catch up with what they were able to accomplish with this game though.
Most modern open-world games owe some debt to the Witcher three. It’s a game everyone wants to make, but nothing else is quite as idiosyncratic or as ambitious. It’s essentially an open-world game with action game combat. The combat is probably where the Witcher three holds up the least. It’s not terrible or anything, but it’s clearly made by a dev without a lot of action game experience.
I kind of think that makes it interesting personally. I’m certainly never going to tell people it’s the most advanced combat in the world, but I’m always gonna be one of its defenders ’cause I enjoy it. It’s not just another copy and paste open-world combat system like you’d see in so many other open-world games. It’s a little floaty, a little loose, but I mean to have this big of a game, both in actual scope and in cultural reception have such an idiosyncratic aspect to it that it’s just, there’s not really anything else on that level that’s like it.
It doesn’t even necessarily need to be because it’s good, it’s just, it’s different. I would say that it’s good. It’s certainly not great, but it’s good.
But in truth, the thing that makes Witcher Three stand out is the details. The game is absolutely stacked with little details, unique character interactions, funnier, unusual bits of dialogue, easy to miss secrets and alternative quest resolutions.
On top of all that, the game mostly holds up pretty well graphically, too. The way the game goes for a, sort of, heightened realism works in its favor. The characters both look realistic while also having a little bit of a stylized appearance that manages the increasingly outdated graphics.
Again, it comes off a bit as a style and because of that, it just, it does a better job holding up. It does help that this is one of the most bespoke, carefully crafted open-worlds ever. It’s a mix of art design and technical prowess that makes the Witcher’s visuals look fantastic.
To this day, especially to this day when the frame rate is a conversation that is long ended, the game was such a revelation that it really was just a tough act to follow. Cyberpunk struggled under its shadow initially at least. And no matter how good the Witcher four ends up being, it’s gonna get compared to the Witcher three. I think it will ultimately probably be to its favor.
Witcher four is going to, I think, be a real behemoth as well. But no matter how great it is, it can’t be the thing to gaming that Witcher three was. Witcher three changed a lot of things. It’s because the standard by which all other open-world games are measured against and even now most don’t compare favorably to it.
7. Ratchet and Clank Future
What’s so impressive about the first place agent three entry to the long running Ratchet and Clank series is that it feels like it could have come out 10 years later and it would be almost indistinguishable. You can barely tell the game came out in 2007. It’s practically old enough to drive, but you’d hardly know it.
I mean the lack of fancy shader effects gives it away at least a little bit. But the animation quality and the art design still hold up spectacularly.
The thing about the Ratchet and Clank games is that they’re all pretty much the same past the second one, that includes its strafing. They’ve been all pretty much the same thing from there, only slightly updated to keep up with the times.
I mean, look at the latest game and compared to this one. Obviously the newest game is light years ahead in terms of tech, but gameplay wise, they’re pretty much the same.
The only major difference is it rifed apart, has a dash and portals. The portals are crazy in that game. Different than the portal portals, but crazy nonetheless.
Gameplay though always simple in these games and that’s what makes them so timeless. You run around levels and blast everything that moves and a lot of other stuff that doesn’t. It’s classic and it works.
There’s a reason these games keep getting made. There’s an elemental pleasure to them that, at least for a lot of people, never really gets old. So it doesn’t matter how many times they keep repeating the formula, they’ve done enough as the games have progressed. They’ve touched the things that can use it, level, design, technology, and they’ve left the stuff that should be left alone, alone, the gameplay. It’s great gameplay.
And while the PlayStation two games were impressive for their time, they do show signs of age. They look old even if when you’re actually playing them, they’re still a ton of fun. What stands out about the PlayStation three entries though is that even though they’re pretty long in the tooth, they look amazing. The updated character designs and the greatly improved animation really go a long way toward making these games feel timeless.
Future looks incredible and the sequel, a Rift in Time, looks even better. People were saying these games look like live-action Pixar movies back in the late 2000s and honestly they still hold up to that statement. Maybe not today’s Pixar movies, but certainly Pixar movies from some era. The cutting edge graphics of the time plus the timeless game play, make the games just hold up really well today.
6. Ori and the Blind Forest
Practically cheating with this one ’cause just look at it. The game is absolutely incredible looking. It is still, to this day, one of the most beautiful side scrollers ever made. The art design is impeccable and that’s undeniable.
What’s is especially impressive though is how the 3D models seamlessly integrate with the painted backdrops. In most games, a 3D character are mixed with 2D elements. Feels jarring, but they manage to make it look totally natural here.
Honestly, after having not played it for a little while, I kind of forgot that they did that. And coming back to it, I mean it looks like it could have come out yesterday. People would be singing the praises of its visual design, certainly if it came out yesterday.
And on top of that, the original Ori is just a good game. It’s not like incredibly innovative or doing anything especially new outside of opening the game with an extended cut scene that’ll make even the most glassy-eyed sociopath react for a box of tissues. That’s a new idea, I guess. Introducing some kind of emotional narrative to what is otherwise pretty conventional in Metro Vania.
Keep in mind that this came out before the huge surge of Metroid Vegas. They were popular, but Hollow Night didn’t come out until 2017 and that’s years after this game was published. Hollow Night was… I mean that’s the true oversaturation of the genre right there. That’s the beginning. So even though it was a game made before the big resurgence, I would say it holds up better than most.
5. World in Conflict
A Cold War RTS that holds up for a lot of reasons. For one, it was an innovator in the RTS space right around the time the bottom fell out at the genre. So feels pretty modern today simply because the big budget, real time strategy games just started dying out.
Nobody’s really trying to be cutting edge with these games anymore. Instead, they were just trying to chase an increasingly dwindling audience with nostalgia. StarCraft 2 pretty much plays like StarCraft 1. Same goes for the last remaining command in Conquer Games except the that last one we don’t talk about. The very last one.
World in Conflict was actually doing something completely new by having an actual functional camera and making the game tactical but accessible.
The multiplayer was fun, but the… It tells this Cold War narrative about the US getting invaded, which sounds like it could easily lean into Red Dawn levels of schlock. But the weird thing is the game mostly plays the scenario straight, feels more realistic and believable than these stories usually go with strong characters, excellent cussing direction and it just blows away any other RTS ever made.
It’s far more cinematic than it has any right to be. It’s also paced excellent. It’s got the forward momentum of a Call of Duty campaign, but with a little more heart and intelligence than you’d expect from something like this.
It’s a special game. It was able to combine production values that were excellent for their time and still hold up for this type of game, especially today with fun gameplay that keeps you engaged without making the act of playing too much of a chore.
Also, there’s airstrikes, there’s tons of airstrikes. There’s few things as satisfying as blowing up entire columns of tanks with single well-timed bombing runs. This game makes RTS fun in a way few games have managed before or since.
4. Batman: Arkham Asylum
Rocksteady’s game was revolutionary back in 2009 and holds up shockingly well today. Depending on who you ask, they might even say the original game is held up better than sequels.
There’s zero bloat with this game. No open world stuff to slow you down. Just a single island with a perfectly paced story that doesn’t drag on too long.
Going back to this game, even now, what strikes me the most is just how weird it is. The design decisions are crazy. The way Batman moves through the environment, et cetera. But it all just works absolutely perfectly.
The combat and stealth of the top of the line stuff here. But the game doesn’t just rely on that to work. The whole thing is a perfectly streamlined entertainment machine designed to keep you hooked.
Even people who barely care about Batman get sucked in by this game. It’s just a really well made game. It does slightly start to run outta steam near the end when there’s like one boss fight that goes on a little long.
But the design of the asylum itself is, is crazy good. The character models are great. The story is fun. It’s a great excuse for a bunch of villains to be around, including some memorable turns from the Scarecrow.
There’s only two actual Scarecrow segments in Asylum, but each one is extremely memorable and extremely expertly crafted. It’s stuff like that and the Ridler trophies.
And just the many weird little things they do to play with your expectations. It give this game and its sequels so much life. A lot of games have tried to copy the combat system, which is of course excellent and simple and sad, it’s fine, but so little details that made the Rocksteady Batman game so great.
These things are clearly a labor of love from a developer who had a whole lot of ideas and managed to use them in a way that’s really, really fun.
3. Dishonored
They don’t get a lot better than Dishonor. The original game is just pitch perfect. And while the graphics, they’re kind of showing their age, I don’t know. That really depends on how you look at it. I return to it and just, again, it feels stylistic.
But you’re not playing it for the graphics, you’re playing it ’cause it’s got a simple timeless story. You’re out to get revenge against all the people that accused you of a crime you didn’t commit and you’re doing it one target at a time with a bunch of really impressive movement and assassination powers.
Each mission has a target you can either kill or neutralize in some other less violent way, which often seems worse, but that’s besides the point. The game gives you a lot of options for how you want to achieve your goals and have get any given mission.
Each level’s a sprawling collection of paths. It can be navigated slowly and carefully using stealth to remain undetected or you can just charge through like a madman killing everyone in sight with some crazy powerful abilities that are granted to by a godlike being called the Outsider.
Missions can be completed in minutes or take hours, depending on how thorough you want to be. You basically define your own difficulty. If you want to go through the game as stealthily as possible, it’s gonna be harder than just embracing your abilities and cutting a bloody swath through the city of Dun Wall.
One way the game discourages you from going too crazy is there’s a karma system that eventually affects the final mission and ending of the game. If you indiscriminately kill everything, you’ll increase the overall chaos and that makes the plague worse.
So you can play more carefully, mostly knock people out instead of killing them. That results in a more peaceful city as well as fewer swarms of rats and zombies wandering around.
It’s a cool idea that, I mean, some people don’t like all that much ’cause this system doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but who cares? It’s an interesting bit of interactivity that completely changes what the final mission looks like.
The thing that makes Dishonored work isn’t the systems or story or even special abilities, all that stuff is really good, but what really defines the game is it is best in class level design. That’s the part of the game that has stood the test of time more than anything else.
The missions are brilliant, unique, they feel like real places with a touch of surreal whimsy. They’re fantastic. Everything about this game is fantastic.
Here’s the final section of your blog post, Zaid — continuing seamlessly from where we left off:
2. Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2
Take pretty much any of the better Mario games, I’m not talking about stuff like Mario is Missing. and you got a game that’s probably aged pretty well. The NES and SNES games have a timelessness that makes them fun for people decades after they originally came out.
The situation with the 3D titles a little bit more complicated. Something like Mario 64 might be tougher to get into, but the Galaxy Games absolutely are not. The Galaxy Games, they’re rock solid. The control is just about pitch perfect and each level is creative. And most importantly, the games are consistently fun.
They’re just a blast to play. The sort of game where we can even turn it on for a few minutes to get some footage and we’ll end up playing the game for an hour or two just ’cause they suck you in. They’re constantly introducing new ideas, new power ups, new and varied locations that mix up the challenge.
And they’re never all that difficult. They’re not easy to the point of being boring though. And that’s an important distinction because if they were incredibly easy, they would not be as engaging as they are.
The Mario Galaxy games hit a perfect balance between engaging and fun while still keeping you on your toes. These games have shorter levels that are generating more linear than something from the previous 3D Mario games, but that works for these games ’cause they don’t overstay their welcome. They’re not confusing, they’re not unclear.
The first Mario Galaxy is very well designed and the sequel’s possibly better. A lot of people like Galaxy Two better than the first. And I can see it. It’s a game bursting with new innovative ideas. It’s a refinement of the first Galaxy, which is already one of the best Mario games ever and that’s saying a lot.
Either way, both these games hold up extremely well, especially if you’re playing ’em on Switch. But even the original Wii releases hold up. They’re just held back a little bit by the Wii mode. I got used to it but I’m never gonna say, like, “I prefer a Wii mode to a…” That’s never. Controllers are better.
1. Silent Hill 3
Going back a little further to 2003 with this one, but it cannot be understated how good this game looks for a PlayStation two game released all the way back in 2003. It may be the best looking game on the console, full stop and it looks shockingly good even now.
Its visuals hold up more than 20 years after it came out. You can obviously still tell it’s an older game, but some of the weirdness actually adds to the horror. The sometimes blurry textures are used to great effect in the other world segments for example.
The gameplay mostly holds up, too. It’s not an example of the tank controls that many games at the time were still like struggling to move on from. It’s got full analog movement. I mean the horror gameplay loop, it’s still used to this day. So you’re gonna avoid monsters, collect health drink and weapons, solve puzzles. If you play a horror game now you’re gonna feel accustomed to Silent Hill three.
The story is surprisingly mature and deals with issues that don’t get brought up in a lot of games, even today. It was way ahead of its time back in 2003 and that’s what makes it hold up so well now.
It’s not mechanically complex. The combat’s quite simple and can be mostly ignored. And there’s still a lot of broken locks to sort through as is Silent Hill tradition. But everything else about the game feels surprisingly modern.
I’d say this game wouldn’t look out of place next to the many indie survival horror games that have been coming out recently. But it’s clearly got a bigger budget in those games. The character models and cut scenes are pretty impressive even now.
It may not be your personal favorite Silent Hill game, but it’s definitely one that’s aged the best outta the original four. Just skip the HD collection version. They didn’t butcher it as bad as Silent Hill two, but it’s not great.
The PC version is still the best version of this game, especially patched. That’s a little hard to get these days, to be fair. Hopefully this game will get like a GOG release sometime soon. It’s kind of crazy there’s no way to legally purchase this game right now other than through resellers and used copies.
It really should be available ’cause it’s an impressive achievement and easily one of the best Silent Hill games period.
Leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. And as always, we thank you very much for reading this blog. We’ll see you next time right here on “Aura Riot”.
