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[64bitmodels]

I can see the responses coming from a mile away if the thread question were the other way around (ohhh no MTX, no woke, etc), so let's actually flip it around. What stuff is in modern gaming you wish you had back then, that you're grateful for today?

For me....

1. consistent widescreen.

while it's easy to get 3d games on the N64 and PS1 and from then on into widescreen, games from the 8 bit/16 bit eras are not as lucky, they're designed specifically around their system aspect ratios. Not every game will work perfectly in Widescreen and while there are many great solutions for 16 bit games in widescreen, 8 bit games are still kind of fucked. And for console players who don't have the option of using emulators or PC ports which can be scaled to any res.... good luck. those rereleases are gonna be fucking hell.
Meanwhile these days TV screens are all 16:9, monitors are all 16:9, even handhelds are for the most part widescreen (the most part because the steam deck exists, that's 16:10). And games are designed around that much superior resolution. Feels good man.

2. Gyro Aim.

We're all thinking it. Halo 3 on 360 would have been much more fun if it supported 6axis like the PS3 controller. While it's getting there today, i seriously wished Gyro Aim were standardized in older FPS games. Games wouldn't have to be dumbed down as much for console controls and the skill ceiling for a lot of games would be much higher. No more crappy aim assist, not to mention it'd make controllers the perfect option for third person action adventure games since you gain the benefits of superior movement as well as great aiming. Perfect for GTA where you need the superior control for cars but the superior aiming for shootout sequences

3. Consistent Autosaving/Saves.

Passwords. Nuff said.

4. The conveniences of building a PC today.

My dad's old PC was such a confusing weird mess that i never really thought about opening it up, i just had to play what was available. Upgrading it was off the table thanks to how daunting and confusing everything looked. OFC this isn't as far back as you think, like 6 years ago. But my Dad built that PC in 2007.
fast forward a couple years later, now i can build my PC easily with a guide, a couple screws, and some patience. Imagine if building a PC were that easy in the 90s?

5. PC Handhelds (i.e steam deck)

Yeah, this one is a bit more recent since the Deck came out this year, but that console has completely redefined handheld gaming as a whole for a lot of people, and it singlehandedly fixes the biggest problems with handheld gaming- lackluster controls, lack of power, lacking game library compared to home consoles/PC. Imagine if handheld tech was that good in the 2000s, and you could pack a midrange gaming PC into a tablet form factor to play the biggest AAA games on the go?

Anyways, i'm done. Now you guys respond!!

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

Gamepass…when I was younger the ability to scroll through all of those options, I would have been in love.

 

[Beechos]

1. Ssd loading times - one of the main reasons i cant replay old retro games from the disc era.
2. cloud saves. Not having to deal with limited save slots and managing memory cards to save data.

 

[64bitmodels]

2. cloud saves. Not having to deal with limited save slots and managing memory cards to save data.

thats something i should really be grateful for, steam cloud saves mean that all the save data from my games are preserved no matter whatever PC i play on. It's sweet

 

[Power Pro]

1. Ssd loading times - one of the main reasons i cant replay old retro games from the disc era.

Maybe it's because I grew up playing an old Commodore 64, which was outdated even at the time I used it a lot, that I am so forgiving of load times. People complaining about 10-20 second load times, when shit...I had to sit through maybe 3-5 minutes of loading off of a 5 inch floppy disk at times. Even the worst load times on PS3 or PS4 were nothing compared to what I dealt with as a kid.

 

[adamsapple]

Auto complete or single button QTEs.

It's always enabled for me if the game has the option.

 

[vodka-bull]

Autosave. Made life so much easier.

 

[YukiOnna]

Auto-save and Cloud save is the greatest QoL update.
Not having to worry about if I saved or not or something happening and losing your progress.

Maybe it's because I grew up playing an old Commodore 64, which was outdated even at the time I used it a lot, that I am so forgiving of load times. People complaining about 10-20 second load times, when shit...I had to sit through maybe 3-5 minutes of loading off of a 5 inch floppy disk at times. Even the worst load times on PS3 or PS4 were nothing compared to what I dealt with as a kid.

I'm also glad I'm not bothered by load times. I didn't come from that far back, but the idea of not being able to play due to lengthy load time is alien to me. I just wait since it's not that long.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

I like the fact I can buy as much booze and weed as I want now compared to in high school.

 

[Punished Miku]

Xbox has so many FPS games. The lack of gyro aim literally is shaving years off my life from sheer disappointment.

Phil. Why.

 

[adamsapple]

Xbox has so many FPS games. The lack of gyro aim literally is shaving years off my life from sheer disappointment.

Phil. Why.

I never got the hype for it. I tried it in Days Gone when they added support, did not like it at all. It's nowhere near as precise as using a mouse, for example, there's a lot of wild gesticulating to try and use it.

I'm fine with standard dual analogs on consoles, personally.

 

[Punished Miku]

I never got the hype for it. I tried it in Days Gone when they added support, did not like it at all. It's nowhere near as precise as using a mouse, for example, there's a lot of wild gesticulating to try and use it.

I'm fine with standard dual analogs on consoles, personally.

The only real gyro is Nintendo 1st party and Neon White.

I bought DOOM on Switch but haven't tried it yet. Any real Splatoon player will swear by it. Its night and day superior. Not having it as a default option is unforgivable.

Days Gone gyro on DS4 is weak. Gravity Rush 1 and 2 probably had better gyro.

 

[Warablo]

Saves
Journals, minor hand holding things.

 

[jigglet]

Mario Bros 1 - being able to walk / scroll back to the left. That was such a refreshing change from older style platformers.

 

[64bitmodels]

Xbox has so many FPS games. The lack of gyro aim literally is shaving years off my life from sheer disappointment.

Phil. Why.

considering that xbox is usually at the forefront when it comes to adding all this new controller stuff (adaptive controllers, elite controllers) its quite shocking they havent standardized gyro yet. they're holding us back!!!! plus, gyro support in Xinput would make it way easier to implement on PC. Nerrel had to write a fuckin 20+ minute guide on how to properly make it work. it shouldnt be that complex lmao

 

[jigglet]

considering that xbox is usually at the forefront when it comes to adding all this new controller stuff (adaptive controllers, elite controllers) its quite shocking they havent standardized gyro yet. they're holding us back!!!! plus, gyro support in Xinput would make it way easier to implement on PC

this. wii remote aiming was sublime.

if nintendo is ever leading the pack in something the industry should be fucking ashamed

 

[64bitmodels]

Auto complete or single button QTEs.

It's always enabled for me if the game has the option.

never heard of that in a modern game, actually. is it in God of War?

 

[Dick Jones]

1. Ssd loading times - one of the main reasons i cant replay old retro games from the disc era.
2. cloud saves. Not having to deal with limited save slots and managing memory cards to save data.

Basically this. I can enjoy playing older games but if I had 2 picks it would be these and in your order.

 

[odhiex]

Digital Downloads, Gaming subscriptions as well as access to hundreds or thousands back-catalog through emulation.

 

[Beechos]

Maybe it's because I grew up playing an old Commodore 64, which was outdated even at the time I used it a lot, that I am so forgiving of load times. People complaining about 10-20 second load times, when shit...I had to sit through maybe 3-5 minutes of loading off of a 5 inch floppy disk at times. Even the worst load times on PS3 or PS4 were nothing compared to what I dealt with as a kid.

Sadly, i don't remember loading pre disc era. I think the 1st pc game i played was oregon trail on a c64. From there it went to windows only thing i still remember from that era were instling games from 1.44mb hard floppys are whatever they were called. That did take forever though along with using msdos to decompress the data, pkunzip lol.

 

[AV]

Said in another thread but some of these modern QoL options are fantastic. Auto-loot all the junk pickups in Ragnarok, auto-jump over obstacles and pits that you had no change to fall down anyway. Literally thousands of button presses saved over the course of playing a game with zero detraction.

 

[TintoConCasera]

I never got the hype for it. I tried it in Days Gone when they added support, did not like it at all. It's nowhere near as precise as using a mouse, for example, there's a lot of wild gesticulating to try and use it.

I'm fine with standard dual analogs on consoles, personally.

Don't know about Day's Gone implementation, but I fell in love with gyro aim the moment I was able to beat Ion Fury on the Steam Deck thanks to it, and without any kind of auto-aim.

I guess it depends on the game. It also helps that with the Steam Deck gyro is only enabled when you rest your thumb on the thumbstick, which is a pretty cool feature I hope for other gamepad manufacturers to implement.

 

[Spaceman292]

Auto complete or single button QTEs.

It's always enabled for me if the game has the option.

It's absolutely worth looking through the accessibility options in all new games just for stuff like this. I'm playing TLOU Remake, and it's got an option which lets you skip all those annoying ladder puzzles. Instantly makes the game 20% better.

 

[Rayderism]

For me, it's the all-digital aspect. Despite obvious cons of digital, I love having a veritable arcade full of games at my fingertips without having to get up or fiddle with disks.

 

[WoJ]

Suspend/resume single handedly makes long single player games feasible as working adult with wife and kids.

 

[Neo_GAF]

Gamepass…when I was younger the ability to scroll through all of those options, I would have been in love.

one and done.
games were expensive back in the day and never on sale.
i got one game a year. the rest of the year i had to lend games from friends or from a rental store.
now you pay 100€/year and you get more than 100games... holy cow.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Digital gaming + home sharing combo.

Share a console with a buddy or fam member. Access to all each other's digital games, including sub plans are shared too. You basically cut the price of games and sub plans in half.

 

[Psychostar]

Definitely the object ping system in games like Apex, Overwatch, Fortnite etc.

Just the other day I was playing Returnal co-op and realized how annoying it was not being able to ping items for my teammate. This applies for so many games. Left 4 dead 2 even lol

 

[ironmang]

Being able to pause/skip cutscenes or just fully suspend the hardware.

One of my best childhood friends was big into JRPGs and you'd often have to wait 20-30 minutes for some cutscene to end so he could save and come out to play.

 

[West Texas CEO]

Save states and new Mountain Dew flavors.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

For me....

1. consistent widescreen.

man, widescreen support used to be so spotty.
even if the game supported the aspect ratio, there was no guarantee rendering would be 100% correct (e.g., HL2 @ launch), as basically all games were still primarily made for 4:3.

anyway, couple things i appreciate:

• vrr (implementation issues aside, it feels so good)
• PC-TV compatibility (monitors used to be the only high quality display options... now TVs are the best IMO)
• wireless controllers (easy to take for granted)
• high resolution (it makes such a massive difference in IQ... a lot of older games had amazing quality assets, but a low output resolution made them look like a blurry mess)
• fan curves/undervolting (yeah this stuff's been around for a while, but it's way more accessible these days)

 

[64bitmodels]

there was no guarantee rendering would be 100% correct (e.g., HL2 @ launch), as basically all games were still primarily made for 4:3.

the letterboxed widescreen in games were the worst lmao, you get worse visibility than 4:3 but hey at least it's scaled to fit

 

[TheInfamousKira]

Good topic, Necro Gods rolled good this turn.

I, of course, value obvious QoL stuff. Markers, distance counters, intuitive menus, check points, etc. I also greatly value the kind of modular nature of UI's and stuff nowadays, too. Being able to (in a sense) adjust the difficulty of a game solely based on which helpful side widgets you enable or disable, is really cool, and not something that devs really even had in their creative toolkit until the games these features support became complex enough to warrant them.

 

[SHA]

Working systems from the get go, literally not wasting time from day one, the gap is gone.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

the letterboxed widescreen in games were the worst lmao, you get worse visibility than 4:3 but hey at least it's scaled to fit

letterbox widescreen on a 4:3 display is for psychopaths.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

letterbox widescreen on a 4:3 display is for psychopaths.

LOL. That reminds me of yesterday.

I was checking the NBA scoreboard and clicked Anthony Davis in the Laker's game. I then googled street clothes.

If any of you havent seen the NBA TNT clips, find YT videos or Barkley ragging on Anthony Davis, and also Shaq arguing with Barkley. Hilarious stuff.

 

[NeonDelta]

the Ability to simply save a game.