Now it’s been long enough to officially call the PlayStation 5 a “current gen” system, comparisons can begin to be made between PS5 and PS4 games. The fact that the previous generation lasted about eight years means it’s only natural that games released near the beginning of the generation have begun to show their age, with certain games being more noticeable in their lack of longevity than others.
Some games, however, can look dated even after a couple of years. If a game has aged poorly, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a bad game, just that technology or some aspect of game design has noticeably progressed between the time of its release and now.
10 Killzone Shadow Fall May Still Look Good But Its Story Belongs In The Past
Graphically, Killzone Shadow Fall still holds up. It’s a beautiful-looking game with great art direction. But graphics are not the only way a game can age, and besides, nobody wants to just look around in a game the whole time.
The story is borderline incomprehensible and full of plot holes; the AI is incompetent and impacts on the shooting; and there are countless strange design choices. The game wasn’t exactly well-received when it was released in 2013, but in the years since the game’s inadequacies have become all the more stark.
9 The Last Guardian’s Long Development Ensured It Would Feel Dated On Day 1
It’s not surprising that a game that was in development for nine years already felt a bit outdated upon release. It was arguably outdated when it released in 2016. It’s only five years old at the time of writing, but besides seeming older than it actually is, The Last Guardian had a number of issues; frame rate problems and poor camera controls chief among them.
Although filled with charm and the atmosphere of the developer’s previous games— Ico and Shadow of the Colossus— The Last Guardian was held back by its long development which caused it to age faster than it should have.
8 Mass Effect: Andromeda Gets Worse As Time Advances
Mass Effect: Andromeda had a lot of problems, among them freezes, severe frame rate drops, and glitches such as NPCs duplicating or floating in some weird position. Its graphics were mediocre and the facial animations were so bizarre that no amount of patching could fix them.
A victim of the series’ success, it becomes increasingly apparent as time goes on that Andromeda was a big step back for the franchise. For a time, it was the only way to play Mass Effect on a platform newer than PS3 and that caused some people to be kinder towards its issues, but the release of the Legendary Edition of the original trilogy has only further cemented Andromeda‘s irrelevance.
7 DayZ Is A Port Of A Game Originally Released In 2013 & It Shows
A port of a game that began as a mod for PC game ARMA 2 in 2012— though its final version wasn’t released until 2018 following a five-year period where the game was in Alpha— DayZ for the PS4 has not aged well.
It both looks and plays like a game that was made in the early 2010s, the developers doing the bare minimum, or so it seems, to bring it up to what was until recently for the current generation. The textures are awful, the frame rate tanks frequently, and the running animation alone makes DayZ outdated. Perhaps the PS4 version should’ve had its own dedicated five-year Alpha period, too.
6 Until Dawn Was A Cheesy Throwback In A Time Of Cheesy Throwbacks
This interactive horror game was intentionally full of clichés: Teenagers in the woods, a cabin, psychopaths, etc. Even so, there was a time and place for paying homage to B-horror movies, and it feels like that time has passed, at least for now.
A choice-driven game in the vein of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, while it may have seemed fresh at the time Until Dawn now seems just as cheesy as the B-horror movies of 30 years ago. Such is the risk when trying to capture a very specific trend from a very specific era— it all but guarantees that the game will very quickly feel dated once said trend has died out, and die out trends always do.
5 Mad Max’s Mechanics Didn’t Have The Legs To Age Well
There were few things in Mad Max that gamers hadn’t seen before. Questionable mechanics such as repetitive side quests, the generic camp setup, and miniboss fights that accounted to beating the same enemy several times over throughout the game.
Lambasted as bland and boring by some but praised by others for its graphics and characterization, it’s harder and harder for the positives to outweigh the negatives as technology advances.
4 Knack Dated Itself By Imitating Games From 20 Years Ago
A chintzy art style, generic NPCs, stereotypical characters spouting cheesy one-liners— Knack is not a good look in 2021. It was intended to be a reprisal of the kinds of games from 20 years ago that were simple but challenging, which is why Knack wouldn’t have been out of place in the PS3, or even PS2 era.
Knack now has the look of a mobile game, and even then a dated one. In addition, what it was trying to do has since been outdone by other, better ’90s 3D platformer throwbacks like Yooka-Laylee, the Spryo Reignited Trilogy, and the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection.
3 Times Have Changed Since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
While The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was lauded for its graphics at the time, someone picking up the game for the first time in 2021 having played Red Dead Redemption 2 would be forgiven for not being impressed by them.
Geralt, the protagonist of The Witcher 3, with his gravelly voice and air of mystery, seems cliché by today’s standards, especially since games like Horizon: Zero Dawn and its protagonist, Aloy, have brought a much-needed breath of fresh air to epic, open-world AAA games. At this point, anybody who hasn’t played Wild Hunt already should probably just wait for the next Witcher game instead.
2 Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Already Seems As Old As Its Predecessors
Graphically, A Thief’s End still holds up, except for some of the water areas where it looks grainy, but what dates Uncharted 4 is the fact that it was the fourth entry in what was at the time of release a franchise that was almost a decade old.
Despite improvements to the graphics, the core game wasn’t much different from the previous three. Games have since moved on to be more diverse, less corny, and with more varied and interesting gameplay. Uncharted is clearly inspired by Tomb Raider, and unfortunately, that seems to also extend to the latter’s tendency to try and squeeze too many games out of an aging engine and play mechanics.
1 Fallout 4 Didn’t Do Enough To Bring Itself Up To Modern Standards
Fallout 4 couldn’t get away with its ugly color palette when it was released, and it looks even worse when revisited six years later. And the movement of the characters was slow and laborious, especially when wearing power armor.
There was a lot of expectation on Fallout 4, and while it is still a fun game in 2021, it didn’t go over and above what Fallout 3 did, and it’s started to show its age; especially since the release of The Outer Worlds, with its brighter and generally more appealing visuals, better writing, and more contemporary gameplay mechanics that demonstrates the right way to do a new game in the “Fallout style” but still make it feel fresh.
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