[erikb]

The work is very impressive and the following statement should in no way diminish that.

Maybe because I grew up with it, but I love the 2D pixelated version of most old school RTS and grand strategy games. I can't explain why but it feels like how RTS ought to be. Bird view with 3D HD rendered bodies always feels like wasting electricity and meaningless graphics card deterioration.

[theon144]

Honestly, it also looks a lot better in my opinion. The 3D version is for lack of a better word more "computer-y" and cheap, its shortcomings are visually jarring and it doesn't really fail gracefully at all. It almost looks like those shitty games from banner ads.

The 2D version in comparison is much more pleasing to look at, it has the feel of old-school hand-drawn animated movies.

I know they said its not the final version of the art, but I think my gripes are not just about models and lightning or what have you. It's AoE, I don't need or want photorealism!

[erikb]

Maybe, however let me disagree a little with that. It's not the same level of pain as Warcraft 3 and games from this timeframe where they started to do 3D without actually having the power to do it right yet. I'd say this AoE 3D version looks a lot more pleasing to the eye.

[pvg]

I think it also depends a lot on the quality of the game art and personal taste. To me, the 2d Red Alert (1996-97) looked terrible even at the time and the Total Annihilation (the OG 3d RTS, 1997) looked great.

[torrent-of-ions]

Funny thing is the version of AoE that I have in my memory from the 90s actually looks like the new version show here. Back then it was super HD (and did waste electricity and meaninglessly burn CPU cycles). I don't understand people who go back and play the original games from their childhood. The version of those games in my memory is so much greater and if I actually see the originals again I'm thoroughly disappointed.

[lawless123]

I think that has something to do with them originally being played on CRTs, the colour just looked better to me.

[masklinn]

Not only that, but CRT intrinsically blurred sprites, low-resolution sprites yield very, very different results on CRTs and LCDs. That is one of the things which bothers me with the revival of "pixel art" games, that's not how old games actually looked when you were playing them.

[adrianN]

Some people exploited this to get nice color effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors

[torrent-of-ions]

High quality CRTs looked better in every way really. But it's not just that. There are groups in my area that actually play old N64 games on old CRT TVs and it still looks bad. I really wished that I just kept those old games as treasured memories from my childhood and didn't go and revisit them.

[LordKano]

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

There are some old games that I revisit and still enjoy like I used to. Carrier Command is one such game. I still break it out to play every few years. Sim City 2000 is another game that I still enjoy playing but my style of play is much different now. I make LONG term plans when laying out and designing a city that I never did when I was younger.

I tried playing the original Sim City and yeah, it was better in my memory than it was to play again. I won't even try Falcon 2.0 because I know it will be awful to play now.

Some shooters hold up well because my newer hardware can support much higher graphics settings but then some others don't hold up because their physics were so primitive. It's really hit or miss.

I still want to eventually get around to replaying Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark again.

All in all, I don't regret any of the games I revisited.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Much smaller too, the vast majority had 14-15" CRTs back in the day (non-widescreen too) while 19"+ LCD is common now.