I just finished playing half-life 2 in VR with a third party VR mod and it was amazing how well this game stood up to the test of time.

There's really a lot of value in retro and mods IMO. Sure it's not for everyone but what is?

I never played HL originally so I had no nostalgia from it, but when I tried it a few years ago it just felt very dated. Sure, the mechanics and story probably hold up. But the visuals, ui, modern niceties, etc are all absent. Just doesn’t seem worth playing when you could pick up a newer similar game instead.

HN is always telling us to be outraged when an online game is shut down, but by the time they get shut down, hardly anyone cares about playing them anyway, they moved on to newer stuff.

The visuals aren't absent, that's what I was trying to say. They hold up surprisingly well, though a high-res texture pack would obviously help.

And in the VR realm there aren't a ton of large story FPSes now. Especially not of this caliber.

> For pretty much every style of game, you can get newer, better games that pull off the concepts better.

Hard disagree here. Some subgenres don't even have any newer games at all.

And even for genres that have been embraced by the mainstream, often they are all polished into the same shape. Yeah, there are plenty of conveniences now that older games might not have but a lot uniqueness is also lost in the process. How many modern games still expect you to navigate an environment yourself instead of feeding you questmarkers and triply-redundant messages and reminders of what you need to be doing next? How many shooters that just focus on the shooting instead of feeling the need to add some skinner-box-inducing RPG-lite mechanics. How many Point & Click adventures that even come close to scope or engrossing art styles of the classics? Why is Planescape: Torment still considered one of the best (C)RPG stories by many when writers had almost 25 years to surpass it?

Yeah, if you pick a random game from the 90s and a random game from today, then the latter will perhaps be more playable. Many old games have plenty of jank that wouln't fly today. Because today's games are designed for just that: so that anyone with half a braincell can complete them. That means ecessive hints. It means refusal to provide challenges that might limit your market. It means limiting the amount of text because everything needs to be voiced which costs a lot. It means repeating mechanics that "work" instead of daring to try something unique.

> I see gaming like most forms of entertainment which are enjoyed in the moment and then you move on. When I got to a music concert, I don't sit there and record it for watching again 10 years later. I enjoy it in the moment and move on, there will be newer ones to enjoy later.

Yet people still listen to classical music and everything in between then and now. Some even mainting their own collection. Are you really going to say that for every Mozart or The Beetles or Black Sabbath or whatever there is a 2020s group that pulls of the concepts better? Does the warm fuzzy sound from old analog recordings prevent you from enjoying them as much as older graphics do?

Of course the answer to what is better also depends a lot of taste. Just like with music, the predominant styles of games shifts over time.

Off-topic, but I see this strange pattern on HN a lot: You say it's hard to disagree with something, then you spend paragraphs disagreeing. What is hard disagree? Why not just say I strongly disagree?

They didn’t say it’s hard to disagree, they said it’s a hard disagree, as in they don’t agree with them at all.

I don't think any RTS pulls off the concepts in Dawn of War even half as good as Dawn of War does.