What are some old games that still look and play great today? I'm not talking about games you're nostalgic for and still enjoy. I mean games that a new player could pick up today and still think is graphically appealing and doesn't have that retro-game "clunk" in the controls. You may still love an old game, but you have to admit that it is ugly and a chore to play compared to modern games in the genre.
I just replayed Doom 3 again today for the first time in years, and it inspired this thread. Modern shooters still play pretty much identical to how Doom 3 did, whether you're using a keyboard and mouse or gamepad. And the graphics still look really good. Stylized graphics always hold up better than realistic, and the bulky character designs and stark shadows aged really well compared to games like FarCry or Half Life 2 that came out around the same time (not to say either of those games are bad, but they definitely show their age compared to Doom 3).
You could really add any of the old Doom games as well. No matter how old they get, the style, soundtrack and gameplay of the classic Doom games always holds up.
Comedy The Darjeeling Limited (2007) - My fav Wes Anderson film, its also a great travel film so Im cheating!
My favourite Wes Anderson films are Fantastic Mr Fox, The Life Aquatic and The Grand Budapest Hotel. I have only seen about a third of The Darjeeling Limited, but I did like what I saw.
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Animation Porco Rosso (1992) - Spirited Away might be their best film, but this grows on me more every year.
I totally forgot to include an animation category. I think my favourite would have to be Howl's Moving Castle.
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Western True Grit (2010) - I love the way they did the language in this, its just a perfect western all around.
The True Grit remake was awesome! I'm not a big western fan, but that one and the most recent remake of Magnificent Seven are great films.
I'm also going to change my pick for best action movie. It's actually The Fifth Element.
Since it's so hard for most people to pick a single, overall favourite movie, I thought I'd break it down by genre to see if it makes it easier. There are a lot more genres than I've listed below, of course, and genres can't always be easily defined since some movies are a mix or defy genre conventions. These are just the genres that I have enough of an opinion about to put on my list.
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Comedy Without a doubt, my favourite is Weekend at Bernie's. This movie is ridiculously funny from concept to execution. It's peak '80s in terms of creativity without being too crude. There's still a bit of your typical '80s womanizing, but not much compared to most comedies of the time.
Fantasy I'm tempted to cheat and say the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, but if I had to pick just a single movie it would be The Fellowship of the Ring. I'm not really a huge fantasy fan, but LotR is so prototypical of the genre that it covers all of the expectations.
Sci-fi This one is hard because sci-fi is my favourite genre. Most of what I like is sci-fi/horror though, so I'm forcing myself to pick just a straight sci-fi film. I've always been more of a Star Trek fan than Star Wars, and my favourite of those films is Star Trek: First Contact.
Action I'm not a big action movie fan, so I'm going to flub my answer a bit and say Jurassic Park. It's definitely sci-fi and a little bit of horror, but I think it has enough action to qualify.
Horror It's really a three-way tie between The Thing, Alien and Pitch Black. They're all sci-fi as well, but of the three The Thing is the most pure horror movie so I'll make it my official pick.
Ummmm the ONLY bond worth watching is Sean Connery
The sets and GADGETS are admittedly waaay cooler in the Pierce Brosnan movies; the new movies are lame; and all the in between movies aree simply lacking Sean Connery
Which movie would you say is the best, and is it one with Connery?
It's hard for me to match the best Bond to the best movie. Brosnan's filmography is mostly bad. GoldenEye is the only one that I could argue is objectively good. In my opinion Craig had two of the best movies in Skyfall and Casino Royale, but all the others were stinkers. Quantum of Solace and Spectre are probably the two worst that I have seen, and after reading a synopsis for No Time to Die it sounds like it's even worse.
I have only seen Doctor No from the Connery era. It was okay, and holds up well for the time, but I wouldn't place it among my favourites.
I actually really like On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I think Lazenby could have been great if he stayed on for at least one more movie to explore the aftermath of the ending.
I played it on PS4 Pro when it first came out and actually didn't experience any bugs or framerate issues. I just found the game to be incredibly boring. I wasn't one of those overhyped CDPR fans who thought the game was going to deliver the world and be absolutely immersive and perfect. I had modest expectations, but the game was still disappointing. Its RPG elements are too basic to be a selling feature, and as a shooter it was stiff and unsatisfying. So it was really selling itself on the world and characters, and those were just dull to me. It's also one of those open world games where, as soon as you open the map for the first time, you're bombarded with quest markers all over the place. It's very Ubisoft-esque and I've never liked their style of open world games.
It reminds me a lot of Rage 2, which I have very similar complaints about. But between the two, I found Rage 2 to be more exciting. It wasn't much of an RPG, the shooting felt weak and the open world was littered with markers for uninteresting side objectives to pad out the gameplay. But its world and characters were generally better realized and more varied. I still revisit it every once in a while to give it another chance, but have never felt compelled to do the same for Cyberpunk.
I forced myself to play Cyberpunk for a few hours to give it a chance before I lost all interest in progressing and gave up. Luckily, because of the bugs and framerate issues others were experiencing at launch, Sony was offering refunds to anyone who requested one at the time so I got my money back.
I should mention that I also didn't enjoy the Witcher games. I tried all three but barely made it past the intro before likewise getting bored and quitting. So it's likely that CD Projekt Red's style of games just aren't for me.
@Melon, I can understand what you mean about the icky feeling. The game is definitely one of those cyberpunk dystopias where everything is scummy and there are no morally good characters. I don't really care for that kind of experience either. It's hard to stay immersed in a world that is 100% negative. I find that's the problem with most cyberpunk stories, so I generally prefer the low-budget, retrofuture aesthetic and general optimism of raypunk.
one my favorite records as of late. i dont listen to country so this record changed my view on how great the genre can be if used right. its both beautiful and tragic.
I used to listen to country, but not really anymore. This gave me definite Paul Simon vibes though. So of course now I'm listening to "You Can Call Me Al."
It arrived in the mail today. It's a lot bigger than I was expecting, but also a lot more comfortable. It's a similar form factor to the Switch, but the button arrangement and overall shape is way more ergonomic. I miss the days when Nintendo made the most comfortable controllers.
Games run great on it, even ones that aren't listed as compatible. But battery life is awful. I played Elden Ring for about 20 minutes unplugged on default settings and it drained nearly half the battery. I'll definitely be leaving it plugged in while playing.
The last console I had was the Nintendo Wii, I guess that kind of dates me lol. My lady friend's a little younger, still pretty into it all, and she's still playing PS4 and doesn't plan on upgrading to PS5 anytime soon. I'm out of the loop but she says it's a waste of money lol. So I don't know, but I've been told...
The more I think about getting a PS5, the more I agree with your lady friend. There just isn't enough to justify the cost, especially with Sony porting a lot of their exclusives to PC now. If the Demon's Souls remake ever makes it to Steam, that eliminates the one compelling reason for me to get a PS5.
The Wii was a great console though. So many of my favourite games came out of that era. If Nintendo spent a couple years just porting all of the best Wii games to Switch, I'd happily rebuy them.
Maybe it's just because he's the one I grew up with, but Pierce Brosnan is the actor who most embodies the character of James Bond for me. He's suave, conventionally handsome, and more lithe than brawny. He prefers to use tools and gadgets, and if he does get into a fight his fighting style is more about skill with martial arts than brute strength.
Timothy Dalton is a close second, but his Bond had a much more serious, hard edge to him. He has the look, but not the charisma.
Daniel Craig is definitely more of a brawler, and you could almost say the same for Sean Connery. Connery was also suave, but too much of a womanizer. I guess that's part of the character, but it's too uncomfortable to watch.
I'm not a Roger Moore fan because I don't like the sillier tone of those movies.
As for George Lazenby, I thought he was good in his single film, but I don't think Bond works as a family man.
As for who was in the best movie, I think it's a tossup between Craig in Casino Royale and Brosnan in GoldenEye. I really like Dalton in The Living Daylights as well, but I can't argue it's the best.
Also I dropped in here to say that Mick Gough who played Alfred in the 90s movies used to be my neighbour; we had dinner with him a few times, I don't remember much but he once asked me how I was and I said "Fine" and he said "No you're not; you're 12 and you're bored out of your mind, you're bloody well not fine". That was the day I learned not to give people generic answers and say what I really felt! Him and his wife also gave me a cool gothic looking chair for my birthday once. Im sad he died and I wish Id been smart enough to know him a little better
That's really interesting. I've never known a celebrity in my everyday life like that. Since he was the only consistent thing about those four movies, I mentally refer to them as the Alfred Quadrilogy.
All that aside, I guess I still have a soft spot for the old live action TV show, that was what I grew up with (It was normal for Irish TV in the early 2000s to be 80% re-runs of 60s and 70s shows/movies, Im not sure if the rest of the world was like that) and I reaaaalllyyy wanted to be THAT batman when I was 6. So I guess the 1966 movie would be my favourite, I still aspire to be batman from the 60s!
EDIT: Just finished watching the 1966 movie and its so bad, I loved it!
The '66 movie got me into the old series as well. When I was in college a friend and I would each buy a $6 bottle of Arbor Mist and spend our nights drinking and watching old Batman and Power Rangers reruns. We were the coolest kids in school.
What order would you rank the Batman movies? Are there any you haven't seen?
I haven't kept up with the animated films and not all are worth mentioning, but I'll include a few. I also haven't seen The Batman.
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My least favourite is The Lego Batman Movie. I loved The Lego Movie so had high expectations, but it just didn't do it for me. I think I only got one laugh out if it when Robin puts on the old costume with the "revealing" shorts.
Under the Red Hood isn't much better. The story of Jason Todd is just too over-told. I was looking forward to hearing John DiMaggio's take on the Joker, but it sounded like he was trying too hard to emulate Mark Hamill.
I'm not sure if Justice League should count as a Batman movie, but I'll include it. I actually liked the theatrical cut more than the Snyder version. Neither are good, but at least the original wasn't as self-serious and was shorter so there is less of it to hate.
The Dark Knight Rises is... okay, but it has too many plotholes. The worst two are, how did Bruce get back to Gotham when all his assets were frozen, and why would every single cop in the city go into the sewers after Bane? They're big issues that the plot hinges on, so it all falls apart as a result.
I really do like Mask of the Phantasm, but I think it's a bit overrated. The plot is predictable, Joker feels tacked on, and it's paced like a 30 minute episode that got stretched out to feature length. But that said, BtAS is always good and the opening theme and credits are absolutely amazing.
Next is Subzero. This is where it starts getting positive. BtAS did a great job of reinventing Mr. Freeze, and I feel like this is the perfect conclusion to his story.
Batman Begins was the perfect way to reboot the franchise, and I love Scarecrow.
Batman Forever used to be one of my favourites, but after rewatching it recently I had to drop it a few points. I think Val Kilmer is a great Bruce Wayne, but isn't as imposing as he should be as Batman. Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones are the clear standouts.
I actually rank Batman & Robin a lot higher now than I used to. If you think of it as a sequel to the Adam West Batman movie instead of the Tim Burton movies, it's actually really great. Speaking of...
Batman '66 is one of the best comedies I've ever seen. A lot of older comedies don't hold up because the jokes age too much, but this one makes me laugh every time.
Batman v Superman is a lot better than people give it credit for. What cemented it for me was the scene where the cops are raiding a building and Batman is lurking inside. It's the first time a movie has nailed the stealth and fear that Batman is supposed to employ. Also, it fully realizes that Bruce Wayne is nuts. You can complain about how violent he is, or "Martha" all you want, but all of Snyder's DC films are a deconstruction of superheroes to reveal how they would look in the real world. As a result it humanizes Batman instead of mythologizing him.
The Dark Knight is just awesome. Heath Ledger's Joker is the all-time best. But it's at the bottom of my top three because it feels like Batman is barely in it. It's more of a Joker movie.
Batman '89 is the one that set the tone for everything outside of the comics going forward. It is the quintessential Batman movie, but it's no...
Batman Returns. It's not quite the perfect Batman movie, but it's a perfect Tim Burton movie. He clearly had a lot more control over this one. I just love the style. It's darker without being too serious, and it redesigned Gotham as a decaying art deco metropolis. It'll always be my favorite Batman movie.
I recently got through the modernized port of Sonic CD and subsequently went all-in on mods - besides the obligatory Knuckles/Amy addons, the Randomizer both works at a mechanical level (remarkably few game-breaking glitches), and really fits in with the theme of chaotic temporal shenanigans! For extra chaos, the palette randomizer actually looks good more than half the time (certain design elements share palettes with characters providing a baseline of color coordinations), and allowing random water levels can lead to some fascinating challenge scenarios!
I remember playing Sonic CD back when it was new. It was one of the coolest games I'd ever seen. The final boss is permanently etched into my brain, and I still listen to the (American) soundtrack every once in a while.
Then, continuing the saga of The Boys who may or may not be on their way to kill you, Kiss Me (Kill Me). Really loved the first one but I think I might actually prefer this one!
I love this! It has a very Hellraiser-ish vibe to it, which scratched the itch left by the latest film which I can't watch because we don't get Hulu in Canada.
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That was the day I learned not to give people generic answers and say what I really felt! Him and his wife also gave me a cool gothic looking chair for my birthday once. Im sad he died and I wish Id been smart enough to know him a little better 
