I was always a console gamer in my childhood so I missed the boat on a lot of the most iconic PC games.

I feel like I might catch some heat for this one, but recently I tried Half Life 1 and I just couldn't get into it. The game just feels so...lifeless. I got about 10 chapters in, which is like 60% or so of the way through, and every moment just feels like I'm playing House of the Dead in the arcade, walking down a hallway and shooting jumpscare enemies. I think the lack of any semblance of story or motivation for what I'm doing is especially egregious to me.

In general I can play any game regardless of age, unless the controls are complete garbage and cannot be changed. Luckily on PC a ton of games can be modded for the better, but not always and it's always down to controls feeling too off that I'll drop something I'm otherwise interested in.

Reading the comments here hurts my soul, everyone hates all my favorite games. 🤣

Suikoden III really should have used voice acting. I think it came out at the beginning of the voice acting era, but chose to make the player read everything. It's a fantastic game otherwise, but that makes replays unappealing.

These days, for me the absolute minimum is full controller support due to the wife acceptance factor. She loved Dragon Age Inquisition so we tried to play Origins a couple years ago, and even though I'd cloned the displays, me sitting behind her at my computer instead of next to her on the couch was a deal breaker.

There are other plusses in terms of WAF, full voice narration and a good story being chief among them. There's a reason the only soulslike I've ever really played is Fallen Order. 😆

For me playing alone (which I almost never do anymore), one example I can think of is trying to go back to Dark Age of Camelot after playing WoW for a while. That was...painful.

I don't really understand what it is about HMMIII you don't get. It is a relatively simple game concept, and the fundamentals has remained largely unchanged from iteration to iteration. I personally prefer III over most of the later ones exactly because of its simplicity (and none of those ugly 3D graphics).

For me what mostly antiquates a game is if it was primarily based on graphics which have been outdated, otherwise I don't really have a problem even with much older games. But then again I also grew up playing games in the 80s, so I have been used to those my entire life. Some of the games which fascinated me on account of the complexity, like the early Ultima games (at least I and II), doesn't exactly stand revisits, because they were very barebones compared to the later games in the franchise. Ultima V still holds up beautifully, simply because it is so complex behind those primitive graphics.

It bothers me how fucking monumental of an achievement Xenogears could have been, how incredible it still is, and how unbearably painful it is to try and play today.

It's still one of the most wild sci-fi stories I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing, [and I read a LOT], but even at the time it was a really clunky combat system and the controls can be absolutely maddening.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater games that I can't fully get into because they're missing mechanics from the later games.

What mechanics is the new THPS1+2 remake missing besides being able to get off your board and walk around? Or do you just mean mechanics from other skate games like Skate or Session aren't in it?

Emperor: Battle for Dune was a solid Westwood RTS but it only allowed for one-button controls, rather than the two-button system that arrived with Age of Empires 2 which dominated all RTS games since.

Also from AoE2 the idle peasant button.

Watch Dogs 2. It was going cheap on steam, but it feels so outdated, the most generic game-themed game with all the game elements you've seen before.