this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
612 points (99.8% liked)
PC Gaming
15295 readers
1343 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Unlike with the other N64 decomps, this time the genre evolved drastically. It might be rough.
Perfect dark is fucking sick on PC I'll bet GoldenEye is too
What N64 decompilation projects exist where the genre didn't evolve drastically? Are you saying games like Mario 64 and OoT are representative of modern platformers/action rpgs?
Mario 64? Kinda yeah, because the Mario franchise has been more or less alone in the 3D platformer space, and everything since 64 has either been expansions on it like Sunshine, Galaxy and Odyssey, or that time they made the same 2D-but-in-a-3D-engine game 5 or 6 times. New Super Mario 3D World Land Wii U Switch.
Ocarina of Time is kind of similar: the classic Zelda franchise is kind of alone, especially after the 16 bit era ended nothing has really played like a Zelda game. They've only made like six of them; OoT got the formula almost perfectly right on the first try even if they were pretty much just re-implementing ALttP in 3D. Majora's Mask took the same engine and assets and made a heartburn simulator. I personally think it's less pleasant to play because of the constant time pressure but it's the most interesting one to study. Wind Waker returns to the formula with the sailing gimmick as "we gotta do something different" and as a way to mask loading screens. Twilight Princess was a reaction to fan clap back at Wind Waker's perceived childishness, it's basically OoT again, It's also the most blatantly unfinished. Skyward Sword is just Wind Waker but worse. The control scheme is hideous. You can feel Nintendo corporate breathing down the necks of the dev team talking about "we went full Japanese on motion controls this console generation and the best we have to show for it is the pack-in bowling demo. Put in as many motion controls as possible, even if the joystick would make more sense. After that they gave up and started making Just Cause games.
You didn't really make much of a case for those genres not evolving drastically, but kind of just went on a rant about Zelda games for a minute. Starting with Mario, there have been plenty of full 3D platformers out there. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank just to name a few. Arguably the genre as a whole has fallen out of favor, but even so there has never been a shortage of games in the genre, at least some of which would introduce their own unique mechanics and innovations.
And Zelda? Are you one of those people who actually think Ocarina of Time has aged well? There has been plenty of others, such as Alundra, Elemental Gimmick Gear, Darksiders, Psychonauts, Beyond Good and Evil, and Okami. Speaking of evolution specifically, while Metroid is primarily credited as creating the "metroidvania" subgenre, it has to be noted that Metroid itself was directly influenced by Zelda and the subgenre as a whole is really just sidescrolling Zelda clones. But the advent of that subgenre is one such example of one of the directions the genre as a whole has evolved.
In terms of modern games, I would argue Star Wars Fallen Order, and Survivor, have both scratched more of the Zelda-style itch than Zelda games have in years.
And this isn't even getting into all the indie games out there. CrossCode is both a stellar action rpg as well as having distinct Zelda-like puzzle elements. A Hat in Time seems to have gotten relatively popular for a 3D platformer. Apparently Spongebob games keep being churned out. Celeste. Yoku's Island Express. Yooka-Laylee. Sonic games keep coming out. LittleBigPlanet. It Takes Two. Neon White. The Rayman series.
It's so easy to think of examples of games that have refined or pushed the envelope in those genres in many ways, since Mario 64, and OoT came out. All of these genres have become much more since then.
Mario 64 is still a very recommendable 3D platformer (a genre that sees only a handful releases every year) that aged really well; Starfox 64 was just released again with better graphics because the game's still good (in a genre that's basically dead); OoT and MM are still peak Zelda in a very rather small pool of Zelda-likes (not action RPGs). So yes, I don't see much development in any of these areas.
Halo was the first console FPS with decent controls. I said it. They’re all borderline unplayable before that.
Using the c buttons to aim was super clunky
Halo was not the first fps with good dual analog controls, just one of the first that was as popular as Halo was.
Time Splitters
I don't think this is controversial. Halo is the first game that managed an actually useful but still subtle aim assist that allowed playing a shooter with an analog controller to actually feel good.
All FPS controller-based controls are inferior to keyboard+mouse. It just depends on how much hampering you can tolerate. People who played Doom on PC and adapted to Goldeneye were already making an alt control scheme work (although technically you could use 2 controllers to get a similar layout to Halo controls) because the game was good enough to warrant it at the time.
Of course the Halo twin stick controls were/are superior to the weird N64 controller, but none of them have "decent" controls once you're used to m+kb. I even played a bit of Goldeneye 20 years after release and had fun with it--muscle memory kicked in and it was fine.
Yes. This is why I never really liked Goldeneye that much. Just never got the big deal.
Halo is the first one that I thought was decent. I didn't say it had good controls, I said decent 😂
Did you play Doom or something? GoldenEye predates basically every 3d shooter. It's controls suck today even for controller standards but it did a lot for the FPS genre.. more than halo ce.
007 Goldeneye N64 did have (surprisingly modern) dual stick control layouts ... but it required 2 controllers. Of course it was ruined by how shitty the stock N64 controller was, never-mind having to hold one in each hand.
Here's a video of someone playing with the "2.2 Galore" control style
The only benefit to the N64 controller was that because it only had one stick, you could use 3 fingers of your hand on the stick rather than a thumb only. Way better control over the cursor than just a thumb.