Introduction
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Old games often got a lot of things right that modern games seem to have forgotten. Hi folks, it's Zaid Ikram, and today on Speed Tool, we're discussing 10 older games with better features than modern games. From the dynamic Blade Mode in Metal Gear Rising to the intricate AI in Oblivion, these classic mechanics offered unique and satisfying gameplay experiences that remain unmatched. Let's dive in and explore these forgotten gems.
Unique Gameplay Mechanics
Starting with number 10, it's Metal Gear Rising's Blade Mode. Seriously, why hasn't this been copied by anyone? It feels bizarre to say this, but this game is 11 years old this month, and no one has ripped off what is possibly one of the coolest, most satisfying mechanics in any action game ever. In most games, when you stun an enemy, you get the opportunity to follow it up with some kind of takedown. Been there, done that. In Rising, when an enemy gets stunned, you get to chop them into a red mist. It's completely absurd but incredibly satisfying. What makes it even better is that you can chop stuff up in the environment, like watermelons and other random objects. It's pointless and has no reason, but it's awesome, and that's what matters here. Modern games could easily expand on a mechanic like this, and it doesn't even have to be about the pursuit of ultraviolence. Think about a puzzle game where you had to cut things to solve puzzles. Remember Fruit Ninja? Fruit Ninja was fun as hell. Don't tell me that Metal Gear Rising's Blade Mode couldn't be applied to a situation like that in some way that isn't completely awesome. There are so many opportunities left on the table with the Blade Mode mechanic from Metal Gear Rising that remain unfulfilled. How is this the only game with dynamic mesh cutting or whatever you want to call it? I don't care what we call it; why is it not in more games? Every game with a bladed weapon should have some variant of this. It's been 11 years; why is this not a standard thing at this point?
User Interface Enhancements
At number nine is Dead Space's locator system. Unlike Blade Mode, where it seems like nobody's even tried to replicate it, there are a ton of games that do something kind of similar to Dead Space's locator system, but in my opinion, nobody's done it as well. A lot of games give you the means to find where the next objective is, but none of them are as slick and seamless as this. With just the press of a button, Isaac holds out his hand, and a line is drawn on the ground in the direction you need to go for your next objective. There's no special sight or unsightly objective markers, just a clear line telling you where to go next. If you didn't want to use it, you didn't have to. It wasn't this annoying thing on your screen at all times, blasting you over the head with the next location. When you did use it, it was slick, nice, and useful. I remember when Fable 3 tried to do something similar, but it was more distracting and annoying. This isn't a dig at Fable 3; I like Fable 3, but with Dead Space, the locator only appears when you want to use it and gives you the information you need in a way that doesn't feel out of place or distracting. Of course, this feature does show up in at least one modern game: the Dead Space remake, but that's about it. The only other game that finds a way to point you towards your objectives while also staying immersive is something like the Guiding Wind from Ghost of Tsushima, which is a great feature, honestly. It's a really good feature, but not quite the same thing.
Artificial Intelligence Systems
At number eight is Oblivion's Radiant AI. Even though it was kind of a mess in practice, a lot of the stuff Bethesda did with AI in Oblivion was pretty damn revolutionary. Oblivion's version of their system was the most complex and dynamic up to that point. It didn't just give NPCs schedules to follow; it gave them things to do and personalities of their own. It was hardly a perfect system; it would lead to these bizarre scenarios that were at the very least immersion-breaking and at worst could ruin gameplay progress, but damn, was it interesting. Yeah, sometimes NPCs just got lost looking for a spoon, but this was the first real attempt to have mass NPC simulations occurring in a gigantic open world, so kind of a fair trade-off. Later Bethesda games became a little less chaotic and more playable at the cost of losing some of the things that made Oblivion so interesting. Overall, the more limited version of the Radiant AI seen in games like Skyrim was, for all intents and purposes, an improvement, but we don't even have that anymore in modern games. It seems like most modern-day games have just kind of given up on AI, ironic given how ubiquitous AI is becoming. Nowadays, they just have NPCs wandering around aimlessly, standing in their stores 24/7. And I'm not just talking about Starfield here; almost every RPG or open-world game works the same way. I know Radiant AI could be janky as hell a lot of the time, but it made those games interesting and unique. A modern game with technology that completely works could probably do a lot more with it.
Stealth and Lighting Mechanics
At number seven are the light mechanics from Splinter Cell. Video game lighting has gotten incredibly impressive, but rarely do you interact with it anymore. Most stealth games function purely on line-of-sight rules rather than the old days like Thief and Splinter Cell, making both sound and light levels central mechanics when it comes to stealth. Splinter Cell is especially obsessed over light and dark, giving you many tools for taking out lights and seeing in the dark better to stalk your prey. Modern games focus on ease of use and visibility over everything else, and it does make for more fast-paced, readable stealth, but you lose a lot of the atmosphere and tension of older sneaking games. There's something satisfying about entering a room and carefully shooting all the lights out in a Splinter Cell game, leaving all the guards blind as you turn on night vision and pick them off one by one. It's crazy; you feel like the coolest person who has ever lived. When light doesn't matter as much in these games, some of the depth of the mechanics is just lost. It flattens the game overall. While I wouldn't want every game to focus on hiding in the dark to avoid enemies, I feel like stealth-focused games have overcorrected in the wrong direction.
Customization and Creation Modes
At number six is WWE 14's Create-a-Story mode. You might think this is stupid, but there are many, many ways in which the old WWE games are way better than the new ones, as people have thoroughly cataloged. But if there's one feature the old games had that every modern game with a create-a-character should have, it's the Create-a-Story mode. For a short period in the mid-2010s, this mode was responsible for some of the funniest crap I've ever seen. Yeah, it's fun to download community creations like Super Mario and Taylor Swift and have a fight, but it's even better when somebody makes a meticulous story mode detailing why they fight. Video Game Championship Wrestling was built entirely using this story mode editor. They managed to create some of the most deranged crossovers the internet has ever seen. In general, more games should include tools like this, even if it's probably not very cost-effective. It is tremendously entertaining.
World Design
At number five is the interconnected world from Dark Souls. There were two Dark Souls sequels, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring, yet for some reason, the studio never quite returned to the formula introduced in the first game. There have been plenty of copycats and similar games, but nobody's quite managed to do what the first Dark Souls did: create a truly interconnected 3D environment. There are plenty of 2D sidescrolling Metroidvanias that have pulled something like that off, but other than maybe the Metroid Prime series, which is also kind of doing its own thing, no other game has quite managed to pull off what Dark Souls did. And honestly, not even they were able to fully complete it. The first half of the game is extremely dense with interwoven areas crossing over and connecting. The second half is mostly built from standalone areas that can only be accessed one way and are generally pretty linear. Elden Ring is a massive game, but it fits much more into an open-world formula. Someday, I'd like to see something really take the interconnected world of Dark Souls and run with the idea, just go crazy with secret doors, optional areas, and unexpected connections. It's got to be hell to design; that's probably why so few have attempted it, but I would love to see what a talented studio could do with such a concept.
Sandbox Modes
At number four is Crackdown's Keys to the City. Every open-world action game should have a mode like this, but almost none of them do. Keys to the City was added to the original Crackdown in a free update and acts as a sandbox mode, letting you do whatever the hell you want. I know a lot of survival games have a sandbox mode, but rarely do open-world games do it. Just fully open-world games, games that aren't survival games, are probably the type that could benefit from it the most. It sucks that cheat codes are a thing of the past, but is it hurting developers to put in some kind of alternate game mode where we can just screw around and have fun? I know all the excuses: these modes are buggy and hard to support, but when did that stop games from coming out before? Do you want to tell me that the people who have been putting out games for the last decade refuse to allow bugs, like their quality
control has been so good that it stops a cheat mode from appearing. I'm not buying it. Bring back cheat codes, bring back the Keys to the City. They were a blast and added a ton of replay value. I know modern games have become all about monetization, but if they're worried about it competing with that, then fine, make it a DLC. If it was a fun mode like this, I'd probably actually pay for it.
Quality of Life Improvements
At number three is Final Fantasy X: The Zodiac Age's speed-up feature. A lot of modern RPGs give you a means of speeding up the battle, whether it's auto-battle or a literal speed-up, but as far as I know, nobody has done it like Final Fantasy X: The Zodiac Age. Keep in mind, that I am not talking about the original game here. I am talking about the remaster, which has the incredibly novel feature of allowing you to speed up the game whenever you want. By that, I mean you aren't limited to hitting the fast-forward during battle; you can do it anytime. The game lets you pick up time two times, four times, and you can book it when you get up there. This is a feature I would like to see in more games, not just RPGs, but games period. Every game should just let you hit the fast-forward button when you need to speed up boring travel times or tedious sections that you've maybe seen before. Throw in some kind of automation and you got a legit fast-forward button. Let us control our games like a movie and skip around and rewind and do whatever. It's probably not going to be a common feature anytime soon due to technical reasons, but I'd like to see it all the same. Imagine the replayability this would add. There are a lot of games I don't return to just because there is so much tedious crap in them that you could skip.
Psychological Effects
Number two is Eternal Darkness' sanity mechanic. The original just does its best. A lot of horror games include some kind of basic sanity mechanic where your screen shakes and your vision gets blurry, but nothing comes close to what Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem managed to accomplish. Instead of a few boring screen effects, Eternal Darkness would get creative when you'd lose your sanity. It'd make cockroaches crawl on the screen or trick you into thinking you're losing game progress, or the screen would just flat-out mess up. They do the kind of stuff you'd see in Batman Arkham under Fear Gas, but anytime. I feel like there's a lot of potential left on the table with this type of thing. A modern game could go crazy with the sanity effects if they wanted to. There's an opportunity to do something really surprising and creepy using some of the ideas from Eternal Darkness, but no modern game has tried.
Physics-Based Gameplay
Finally, at number one is Half-Life 2's gravity gun. So many games have tried to copy the gravity gun, but none of them have dethroned it. I'm not just talking about the blatant rip-offs like the Grabber from the Doom 3 expansion. I'm also talking about the dozens of games that have psychic powers where you can grab and throw things with your mind. Don't get me wrong; a lot of games have great psychic powers, but they're just not as satisfying as the gravity gun from Half-Life 2. The thing just feels right to use, from puzzle-solving to zombie-slaying, it all just works perfectly. There's only one game that's managed to do something even close to what the original Half-Life 2 did, and that's Half-Life Alyx. Even there, it's not quite the same. What made the gravity gun so good was how versatile it was and how much fun it was to use for everything. In general, modern games don't let you play around with physics as much. You either get games entirely dedicated to realistic physics, like BeamNG.drive, or you get everything else where physics hardly even comes into play anymore. There's just so much more that could be done with a gravity gun, but there's nothing like the original.
Bonus Features
I got a couple of bonus ones for you here too. You probably thought about it the whole video, and so have I, but Red Faction: Guerrilla's destruction. You know how this goes; I talk about it all the time, but it's still true. It's never not true. There's still nothing else like Red Faction: Guerrilla and it sucks. Just imagine a modern game running on an SSD with this amount of destruction; it could be mind-blowing, but nobody has even attempted it. Some smaller games and The Finals, which is not even the same type of game, have managed to pull off some impressive physics destruction, but it's just not the same. We just need a story game with this tech in it. I would love to see a new Red Faction game, honestly, but if we can't get that, somebody needs to make a spiritual successor to Guerrilla.
Next, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system. Another obvious one, but come on. We've got just two games that use this unique system that makes enemies feel so much more alive and reactive. The second game managed to build on the concept with a lot more variation in enemy responses and characters, and it just stopped after that. No other game even tried to do something similar other than Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and that barely counts. The thing that sucks more than any other feature on this list, though, is that it's a patented idea. The publisher decided that nobody should be able to use it, and I just kind of feel like that's BS. It's probably not legally defensible, in all honesty, except for the fact that nobody wants to spend the money litigating it.
Finally, 2014's Thief: The Swoop. One more quick one here. The fourth Thief game is universally reviled, for good reason. It's not a good reboot of the legendary series, but there's one thing that I like in this game, and it's the swoop. It's a dodge but for stealth. It's a move where you quickly dart forward, and you can easily dart between shadows without drawing attention. I like this mechanic, and I wish more stealth games had it. It's a simple idea that's a more grounded version of Blink from Dishonored, but it just feels really good to use and takes a lot of the guesswork out of sneaking from shadow to shadow.
Outro
And that’s all for today. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.As always, thank you very much for reading this blog. I’m Khizar Ikram and we’ll see you next time right here on The Speedify.
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