Pointless thread, but I felt the urge to share some thoughts with someone, and it made more sense to share them with other amiga people than anyone else
As many of the regulars here will be aware, Ive recently gotten ahold of an a1200+'040 card again. Being that Ive only had it for a short while Ive been going through some of the old classic games again. While this has been a kind of fun, once the nostalgia receeds I find myself noticing that the majority of Amiga games havent aged well. This isnt just due to the age, I find myself still able to enjoy lots of games on machines just as old, or even older, but rather the Amiga simply got itself a lot of substandard software. There are plenty of exceptions, and I think no less of the Amiga for it (Im having a blast still), but I'd somehow not noticed just how average a lot of Amiga games are, even games that were big names back in the day. What I find disappointing though is the almost complete lack of good games that take advantage of expanded Amigas. There are some that take advantage of an expanded amiga, but so very few that are any good. The following are a few games that Ive been trying out of late.
Alien Breed 3d 1 and 2 I enjoyed, although not as good as I remembered.
Breathless is the most over rated piece of crap ever. Technically competant, but boring as mud. No imagination in levels, boring enemies, no sense of "being there", no atmosphere, boring weapons, bland textures. (I really dont like this one incase you couldnt tell
Flyin' High. Nice to have a 3d texture mapped racer for the amiga, and it looks ok and is technically ok, but plays badly.
Frontier. I wouldnt play it on anything less than '020 + fast mem, but a great game.
Payback. Very well done GTA clone. Not exactly my kettle of fish, but a good game nonetheless. Unfortunately not really a great experience on an aga machine unless using an '060, and even then only in lowest possible resolution/detail.
Gloom. Very simple game, but does what it sets out to do pretty well.
Virtual Karting. I really enjoyed this back in the day, but after trying to get back into it I find myself unsure what the attraction was all those years ago. Runs well, but is quite bland. I found myself mostly playing in overhead mode due to the weird perspectives for first person views.
StreetFighter2 (US Gold). Very quick using an '040 (even a stock a1200 its kinda nippy compared to a500), but plays like mud. I actually prefer it on a 68000 cpu, although it's far from great at the best of times.
SuperStreetFighter2 Turbo. Looks very nice, has all the parallax, etc. but has frames blatantly missing, which completely spoils the game.
Zool2AGA. Not quite as good as the ms dos version, but for my tastes a bloody good Amiga platformer.
Vroom. I'd never played it before, but I quite like it. Very (perhaps too?) fast.
Legends Of Valour. Smallish window, but runs great and I really like it. Not even sure why I like it, I just do
Z-Out. One of the most under rated shooters on the amiga. If you like Rtype you really should check it out. Very much a clone, but very well done. Slick, fast, and with nice graphics. My only "problem" with it is that it's not until a few level later that it really shows its technical prowess (nice multi level parallax, etc.).
Birds Of Prey. No idea why I used to think this is good (maybe the intro?). Horrible game.
Reading this back I must admit the crap to good ratio isnt as bad as it felt while having the big gaming sessions I had over the last few days. That said though, there's very few games that really drew me back to them after a few hours of play. I think part of my disappointment was with the fact that the vast majority of games were games that could be played on an a500 with a floppy drive. Sure, an '040 is far from cuting edge these days, but it wouldve been nice to have a few good games that are more of a match for an a1200 + faster cpu + extra ram. PC people had a better gaming experience for the most part with equivalent machines (486 era).
