Modern gaming continues to push the boundaries of what many could expect to be normal. Huge advances in gameplay mechanics often give a more interesting gameplay loop, with sandbox and open world experiences getting better and better. New hardware allows for visuals to look even more stunning, as photorealism makes its way into gaming. Even things like motion capture and voice acting have changed gaming for the better some may say.
Despite this, older retro games are still regularly revisited and highly rated, showing a simpler time of gaming, and many gaming fans are calling for games to return to a time before always online DRM and in-game purchases. For some genres little has changed. The growth of mobile gaming has seen an increase in markets like online credit card casinos, for example, which have remained largely unchanged, and smaller puzzle games are on the same trajectory too. With that in mind, though, what can modern gaming take from retro titles?
Couch co-op is still very much desired
While the internet has been incredible for bringing connectivity to a huge audience, it has often come at the expense of local multiplayer gaming, particularly through split screen and couch co-op styled games, which for a while had largely disappeared. Games like It Takes Two and the We Were Here series helped to show just how popular these types of games still are, and something that retro titles did very well.
Drop the always online requirement
Something that has been a sticking point for quite some time for many players is the always online DRM. Games that have services that always need an online connection to function and no offline feature. This change has often meant that when players buy a game, they don’t actually own it, and are always subject to this online DRM. Many players who’ve thought they’ve bought a modern game only for services to shut down later on have become all too aware of this.
MTX is quickly becoming a pain point
As gaming has continued to grow, studios are always looking for more ways to squeeze out a little bit more from players, and the method that has stuck around has come through microtransactions, whether through pay-for-convenience or for in-game cosmetics. For many players it has become such an issue that it’s even started to appear in single player games, premium versions of the game with unique model appearances for a premium, and for many players, it is something that has contributed to something of a decline in gaming.
There are plenty of other aspects to modern gaming that have become a pain point for many players, and whilst there are some fantastic advancements with modern gaming there are still plenty of lessons to learn from games of the past. As remakes and remasters continue to be a trend within gaming too, these modern titles often move more towards the modern trends and it’s immediately noticeable that the inclusion of these pain points takes away a bit from the older style of game they’re recreating.
Retro games certainly weren’t perfect, but there are plenty of aspects that were done extremely well, and as gamer trends continue to change, these older approaches certainly still hold merit. Particularly when recently released games which stick to these older methods with newer styles of games have shown to break records.