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Games that are still ahead of their time
- Thread starter MormaPope
- Start date
zephervack
Member
Dark Souls is blowing my mind right now in this aspect, everything is connected and without loadings.
No, no it didn't. Most of these cover based shooters are copying GOW not Kill Switch.
Soul Calibur II. It's still the best fighting game ever made. For the record though, SC5 is fantastic.
SC2 isn't really a good fighter when you get into it because most characters are worthless due to the way you can defend.
Canis lupus
Member
Uncharted 2. Everything was so good about it, was like a Hollywood blockbuster.
thomasmahler
Moon Studios
Yeah, I think Ultima Online takes the cake here and that with ease.
You can do just about everything in it and you do it online with thousands of other players.
Some of its design was just beyond shitty and confusing, but man, was it ambitious.
You can do just about everything in it and you do it online with thousands of other players.
Some of its design was just beyond shitty and confusing, but man, was it ambitious.
And GOW got it from Kill Switch. Cliffy admitted this, and even mentioned Winback at least once in an interview.
I disagree!
zephervack
Member
What about something like Eve Online or Star Wars Galaxies pre patch, where the entire game economy is player based?
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
I'll add to this having just played the XBLA version a bit the other day.
-You could shoot out lights, to create cover of darkness.
-Shoot the weapons out of enemy hands, which they could then retrieve or use a sidearm.
-Wound enemies, who would then limp away bleeding and warn other enemies.
-Wounded enemies left blood trails you could follow.
-Higher difficulties actually added new objectives, boss fights, and encounters rather than just modified health/damage etc.
-You could command AI bots in multi to do your bidding, defend positions, attack certain people, etc.
-You could move around furniture to block doors and provide cover, etc.
-You could make AI surrender to you if they were wounded or you snuck up on them
-It had a hub world in the Carrington Institute that provided mini games and exploration as well as tutorials.
(Not to mention was brought into the actual game proper later on)
-game had some awesome lens flare effects for back in the day.
and a whole ton more.
Game is still a blast to this day.
I'm gonna say Final Fantasy XI. I've been saying it for years, because it's still the only decent console MMO that is worth playing and has been supported for many years. While the game was also released on PC, and Xbox 360, I've always considered it a very impressive PS2 game since that was the platform it was originally developed for.
While the resolution and framerate are not perfect, it still is the first and only MMO to bring that experience from the PC to console without any sacrifice to the game play. It's not just a button mashy game with an MMO coat of paint like Everquest Online Adventures, and DC Universe ended up being. It has received consistent updates over the years also.
Beyond the technical aspects though, it was years before any other developer attempted to have a decent story in their MMO like FFXI did. The game had cut scenes for the missions and quests that progressed the story and made it seem like you were taking part in something, and not just doing it for the loot. You were getting narrative and context on why you must go and kill a beast, or why you must hunt down a certain piece of treasure from a monster. Some of it all may have been so massive, and a little hard to follow since there was so much in the world, but at least it was there.
While the resolution and framerate are not perfect, it still is the first and only MMO to bring that experience from the PC to console without any sacrifice to the game play. It's not just a button mashy game with an MMO coat of paint like Everquest Online Adventures, and DC Universe ended up being. It has received consistent updates over the years also.
Beyond the technical aspects though, it was years before any other developer attempted to have a decent story in their MMO like FFXI did. The game had cut scenes for the missions and quests that progressed the story and made it seem like you were taking part in something, and not just doing it for the loot. You were getting narrative and context on why you must go and kill a beast, or why you must hunt down a certain piece of treasure from a monster. Some of it all may have been so massive, and a little hard to follow since there was so much in the world, but at least it was there.
All the recent cover shooters are copying GOW. And he got the idea from those games, but its obvious when you play GOW and those games that Epic's cover system is different and the current cover based games feel like GOW, not kill switch.
I disagree with you. A lot of the roster is useless because you can step guard then to death. Namco fighting games are overrated imo.
br0ken_shad0w
Member
All built upon Ultima Online.
Indeed, I've no proof but I'd say Ico was an influence on From Software for their Souls games, from a level design view anyway.
Host Samurai
Member
Jumping Flash (PS1)
Crime Crackers 1/2 (JPS1)
Burning Rangers (Saturn)
All way ahead of their times. All can use a serious update with better technology and controls.
Crime Crackers 1/2 (JPS1)
Burning Rangers (Saturn)
All way ahead of their times. All can use a serious update with better technology and controls.
zephervack
Member
YES!
What about the widescreen mod, hi-res mode, surround sound, mp3 playback implementation, extremely vertical levels, see through walls with that one aimbot gun.
And so much more, the feature list in this game would make any developer sweat just thinking about implementing, testing and balancing all this stuff.
RedNumberFive
Banned
I always hoped for a sequel, or at the very least, a spiritual successor to this game.
zephervack
Member
This is funny because it was the first thing my brother said as soon as he landed on Firelink shrine.
BlackBanditSho
Member
Rockstar's THE WARRIORS
King of the Potato People
Member
Thousands of fans complained XII was too unfocused, that it didn't have enough cut-scenes and was unemotional, so SE made XIII very linear and added too many cut-scenes with loads of melodrama. What a shame. XIII was a result of fan feedback and ironically became one of the least popular entries in the series. Sometimes it's best for a developer to just ignore them.
Soul Calibur II. It's still the best fighting game ever made. For the record though, SC5 is fantastic.
until you find out about sc 2 step g.....
But I will agree with you saying sc5 is fantastic.
edible_candle
Member
I don't think they thought too much about balancing stuff. Which was great, since you could customize your multiplayer games to such a massive degree. Go balls out with crazy weapons, or have a toned down match with a balanced weapon set.
On the topic of widescreen mode, you could even play it at the cinematic ratio of 2.35:1. Super widescreen.
This game is the main reason I'll pick up a 360 someday, along with REZ HD and the Halo series
MrOogieBoogie
BioShock Infinite is like playing some homeless guy's vivid imagination
There is no shooter as advanced for its time as System Shock was in 1994.
Iingenious level layout and puzzle design, a genuinely interesting story and antagonist, excellent writing and voice acting, a full 3D space to play around in, and creative missions all combine to form what is a masterclass in game design. With mouselook enabled, the game is just as playable today as it was when it released.
Sounds like BS. Every decision that led to FFXIII was made due to technical and time restrictions because they had trouble with HD assets.
Silly.Mikey
Banned
To me Halo CEs gameplay and AI is still one of the best in the biz. Just playing through Anniversary again and it blows me away everytime how much they got right in so little time.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Correct as well. Dunno how I missed that.
zephervack
Member
Why did they do that? In case you plugged your N64 to a cinema projector? hahaha crazy rare, they were inspired.
What about the crazy input methods they programmed, like using 2 controls at the same time.
This is what I was thinking. Goldeneye or Perfect Dark.
RockmanWhore
Member
Is this a stealth Perfect Dark appreciation thread? I wish today's shooter feature half of the feature of this game. I'd be happy with challenging and meaty single player campaign though, but even that seems too much to ask.
Silly.Mikey
Banned
Man, i replayed it recently and even 10 years later its still challenging and fun. That game was so ahead of its time its not even funny and i don't even think Bungie realizes it even today.
Just like in the library level for example, everyone complained about it (me included) but if you really take a good look at it, its basically a big level when full of small "Horde" moments 10 years before Horde made that shit popular. Every moment in that level is a small confined area with waves of enemies coming at you. And the pacing of it just makes it so different than every other level in the game.
Im seeing all these little things now, a decade later, and it still blows me away. This game is just insane.
dantevsninjas
Member
The Nomad Soul a.k.a. Omikron. The first game I played where I felt like I was actually exploring a living, breathing world. It tried to meld fighting, RPG style stats, first person shooting and adventure game elements all together...not always completely succesfully I'll admit. Exploring the world and find stuff to do was still great fun, and if it never quite lived up to it's ambitions, I thought it was way ahead of it's time, and to this day I haven't played many games that sucked me into it's world as much as this one. I thought Fahrenheit was pretty good but it wasn't quite the same. Only played a few minutes of Heavy Rain before it got stolen and I haven't yet bothered to buy another copy.
One other thing:
Virtual David Bowie. That is all.
Good call. I wish I could get that game working in Windows 7. A follow up to this, done right, would be excellent.
zephervack
Member
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
The ultimate answer here is Jurassic Park: Trespasser released in 1998 for the PC
Technically speaking, it was so far ahead of it's time it's ridiculous. The game's graphics engine was coded to make use of bump mapping, specular lighting and the game's engine was coded specifically to handle large open world complex environments. These are things we would not see from video games until the mid 2000's at least.
Every AI in this game had it's own set of independent objectives that don't have anything to do would you. Raptors would dinosaurs in packs trying to get a meal and would leave you alone if there was something bigger to kill. This sort of thing was not even tried in video games until STALKER. A quick side note, the early versions of STALKER were in of itself pretty ahead of the curve on this note, the developers intended for some AI characters to be on the same main quest as you making it possible for an AI to "win" the game before you did.
Trespasser had an advanced physics engine that we would not see again until Half Life 2. Every item in Trespasser had weight and could be manipulated with your hand. Random rocks could be thrown off cliffs to hit dinosaurs and kill them, crates could be piled on top of each other and turned into a makeshift ladder. Even the guns were handled like this. You literally had to pick up guns with your virtual hand.
However, because the game was so far ahead of it's time - and still is in many ways, it was incredibly buggy and impossible to play on 1998 computers.
Technically speaking, it was so far ahead of it's time it's ridiculous. The game's graphics engine was coded to make use of bump mapping, specular lighting and the game's engine was coded specifically to handle large open world complex environments. These are things we would not see from video games until the mid 2000's at least.
Every AI in this game had it's own set of independent objectives that don't have anything to do would you. Raptors would dinosaurs in packs trying to get a meal and would leave you alone if there was something bigger to kill. This sort of thing was not even tried in video games until STALKER. A quick side note, the early versions of STALKER were in of itself pretty ahead of the curve on this note, the developers intended for some AI characters to be on the same main quest as you making it possible for an AI to "win" the game before you did.
Trespasser had an advanced physics engine that we would not see again until Half Life 2. Every item in Trespasser had weight and could be manipulated with your hand. Random rocks could be thrown off cliffs to hit dinosaurs and kill them, crates could be piled on top of each other and turned into a makeshift ladder. Even the guns were handled like this. You literally had to pick up guns with your virtual hand.
However, because the game was so far ahead of it's time - and still is in many ways, it was incredibly buggy and impossible to play on 1998 computers.
zephervack
Member
How did I forget this, the map editor is ridiculous, not sure how and when someone will surpass this.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Banned
Deus Ex and Crysis have far more interesting design than basically every shooter or WRPG made today and Crysis' tech is also superior to most games still.
I can see MGS2 as still being ahead of the time because it was willing to experiment artistically in video games, but not a lot of the other stuff. FFXII is surpassed pretty thoroughly by Xenoblade in gameplay-design.
I can see MGS2 as still being ahead of the time because it was willing to experiment artistically in video games, but not a lot of the other stuff. FFXII is surpassed pretty thoroughly by Xenoblade in gameplay-design.
The AI was planned but never implemented. The dinosaurs were supposed to have routines for hunger, anger, curiosity and other "emotions," many of which were independent of the player thus creating a living ecosystem in the game.
They could never get it working right, so all the meters were set down to 0 except for anger, which was at 100. They just hate you on sight, lol.
The game was a buggy pile of shit mainly due to mismanagement. It was advanced on paper but what was released was garbage.
Spieler Eins
Member
Seriously, nothing beats the world of MM. Just making shit bigger really doesn't make things better in certain genres, if none of these soulless NPCs/quests in it come close to the details of a single citizen of clock town. There's so much detail in this game, even if it doesn't revolve some quest or anything, but simply to add to the mood.
ctrl + f "trespasser". All is well.
It's like the first Kinect game that couldn't even wait for Kinect to come out. I absolutely adored that game because it felt like you could complete your objectives in ways the game hadn't even thought about.
Messofanego
Banned
(1996)Neverhood's claymation art blew my mind back in the day, and still does. No other developer would dare to put that much still motion work into their game. Also, had one of the greatest soundtracks in VGM history.
I'm glad at least one more claymation adventure game, The Dream Machine (2012), has come out since then.
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (2005)
LIVE AMMO!
SWAT 4 (2005)
What is this, non-violent options in my shooter? No "shoot first, ask questions later" design tenet to a FPS? Shout commands as a central gameplay feature? Decking out my whole crew with just paintguns? The ability to see every single member of your team's viewpoints in picture-in-picture display? Enemy AI that can fake an arrest and pull out a hidden gun while they're lowering their hands for surrender? Random enemy spawns? 4 player online co-op?
If you want some hilarity, watch Spoony's videos on it.
I think only Payday The Heist is similar in cribbing some of the mechanics.
Indeed. Bioshock takes some cues from this and the audio logs act like the scans, but I still think that Metroid Prime did it better.
Absolutely right. It's a great mix of the japanese RPG mechanics with western RPG ideas. I still have to play Xenoblade, I don't have a Wii now...
Skyrim was kinda successful in Japan, wasn't it? If that one leaves a mark on the jRPG genre, which results in more games like FFXII, I really would like it. FFXIII-2 is also a lot more open than FFXIII.
Do you really think that this belongs to Winnie the Pooh?
(Btw, even though I love the FFXII soundtrack, I must say that the FFXIII one is better)
Damn right, with Jamix giving good reasons why.
I wish to see another sequel to this. Such a great game.
----
And not to forget:
F-Zero GX
Great amount of content, nice soundtrack, and it looks absolutely incredible while staying at 60 FPS. The sense of speed and challenge is completely unmatched.
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