Age Isn't the Only Reason We're Struggling with Retro Games

Recently, I have been playing through the Jak and Daxter Trilogy, and I find myself revisiting a thought I had while playing through Crash Bandicoot: have I become worse at platforming games as I’ve got older?

It would make sense; after all, as you age, your response times get worse, but with that being said, there has to be a limit here. I am only 35; I shouldn’t be struggling this much. Yet, as I try to navigate my way through an Ice Cave, I find myself dying constantly. So, either my mind and body are slowly failing me, or there is something else at work here. 

One thing throwing me off is that there are certain games in which this doesn’t occur, namely when replaying Spyro the Dragon. So, does that mean that Spyro just had a better-designed game? Well, personally, that feels like it might be a part of it, but that is more down to preference. Instead, I think the answer might be due to several varied factors. 

Firstly, let’s look at the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, the remasters of games that I played a lot when I was a kid. Primarily, there has been a lot said about the change to Crash’s character model, with the developers making it more rounded. This, in turn, makes certain jumps more difficult, but it doesn’t explain everything. I think it might be simply down to forgetting just how much I actually died when I played the game as a kid. 

The problem is that this doesn’t explain Jak and Daxter because I never played it as a kid. So, does this mean that I may, in fact, just be bad at platformers? Well, there’s likely a grain of truth to that, but I don’t think that’s the only factor. I am going to be completely candid here: while the game is fun, some noticeable issues with it are indicative of problems that most older titles struggle with. 

Primarily, the camera angles are abysmal, with your point of view constantly getting stuck on random pieces of the terrain. That was an issue in a lot of games at the time, so seeing it here is certainly no surprise. On top of that, the checkpoint system can best be described as… “there”. There’s also the issue of the controls not really being as tight as we are used to in modern games. For instance, the roll mechanic is noticeably unforgiving as you need pinpoint timing. The advantage of being younger is that it’s much easier to adapt to this, whereas I am dealing with twenty-something years of evolving games. 

So, does that mean that Jak and Daxter, and by extension all retro games, are bad as a result? No, but we have to take these factors to heart and realise that we’ve not got worse at games, we’re just worse at older game designs. Or, at least, that is what I am going to keep telling myself. On top of that, we don’t really have the free time nowadays to put as much into these kinds of games as we used to, and there’s nothing wrong with that

But let me know what you all think: have you found that you’ve become worse at games as time has gone by, or do you have another theory?