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Influential games that weren't worth buying?

Hugos House of Horrors, Maniac Mansion, Space Quest, Police Quest, Loom, Monkey Island 1, Day of the Tenticle, Full Throttle, Sam & Max, ect.

THESE GAMES NEVER REALLY TOOK OFF. (Don't argue this. You know deep down that they could have ultimately had eternal longevity as a popular game style)

.. Damn your fps games (Although I play those too.)

S.C.U.M.M. C.O.M.E. Back.....
 
Scopebob Sniperpants said:
Hugos House of Horrors, Maniac Mansion, Space Quest, Police Quest, Loom, Monkey Island 1, Day of the Tenticle, Full Throttle, Sam & Max, ect.

THESE GAMES NEVER REALLY TOOK OFF. (Don't argue this. You know deep down that they could have ultimately had eternal longevity as a popular game style)

.. Damn your fps games (Although I play those too.)

S.C.U.M.M. C.O.M.E. Back.....
Click to expand...

And even Hugo got turned into a FPS eventually :(
 
AfunkyArcadeStick said:
Super Smash Bros Melee.It was fun for a week, i think I've played it about 2 or 3 times after that initial week.
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i could see getting bored with it after target practice and adventure + classic mode. i mean there's only so much to unlock.

clearly you didn't play it with friends that have any sort of skill. Because mulitplayer is where 90% of games longevity kicks in.

This game without a doubt is the most fun i've ever had on a console. and i've been a gamer since the atari days~

i've played civ1, wolfenstein, mario brothers, the sierra graphic adventures kings quest, Leisure suit larry, space quest, the classic era of lucas arts games such as:
monkey island 1,2, tie fighter, the CD rom era of games such as tex murphy's the pandora directive and under a killing moon.

most of the classics from 1985-2000 I played

basically i've played all the firsts of genres in their hayday. So yes i know quality gaming.

Smash Brothers melee would be one of the best games ever made.. and it looks like Brawl is gonna top it.

there aren't many influential games anymore. Wii sports is the first in a long time to make me somewhat in awe of gaming again. Graphics and sound impress yes but it's not the same type of awe as a new way to play games. The mario 64 awe i don't think i'll ever experience again.

that's a tough question to answer.. i'm sure there's a game out there somewhere i'd choose. But most influential games were worth playing in their day.
 
DKnight said:
That's not an influential game.
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No company has dared to compete against nintendo in that genre is all.

powerstone from capcom was the closest thing to smash brothers.. that was a solid title.

but smash brothers is very influential..

not on the same level as something like street fighter which spawned hundreds of 2d fighting clones.

or the first of the 3d fighters.. virtua fighter i beleive.

but it's Influential nevertheless
 
Night_Trekker said:
And even Hugo got turned into a FPS eventually :(
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Not if you pretend Nitemare 3d never existed it didn't... :D

The three Hugo adventure games were some of the first adventure games I ever played. Classics... I liked them a lot, even if the text parser was annoying sometimes. Saying that the genre never could have made it long term isn't fair... adventure games were popular (as text adventures) from like the late 1970s through much of the '80s, then graphical adventures were popular until the mid '90s... I still blame Myst for killing the genre. Everybody copied Myst, everybody's games sold badly, everybody decided adventure games were dead. And presto, mostly low-budget European stuff excepted, they were. This has nothing to do with this thread, though... I'd say that the Hugo games and the Lucasarts and Sierra classics definitely are must-plays. Not necessarily all of them, but a good sampling at least. :)

Halo: Combat Evolved. Seriously.
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The only thing about Halo that impressed me was that nine or ten minute 1998-1999 E3 Halo demo video, from when it was still a PC game (that video was awesome... the game? I never cared)... so I'd lean towards agreeing with this one, if just out of personal preference.

Hmm... I can think of a better answer, though. Ultima I-V (or so), Akalabeth, and the first four to six Wizardry games -- those classic RPGs which defined the genre early on but, by modern standards, are virtually unplayable thanks to impenitrable interfaces, huge complex maze dungeons with no ingame mapping, and game designs which seem specifically ordered to make you suffer...

... of course, there are people who actually like to play NetHack and stuff, and that game's as cruel or more cruel than any of those, but... I don't know, while I recognize their contribution to the genre, I just couldn't quite recommend that someone actually play any of the things unless they like suffering. :)
 
A Black Falcon said:
Not if you pretend Nitemare 3d never existed it didn't... :D

The three Hugo adventure games were some of the first adventure games I ever played. Classics... I liked them a lot, even if the text parser was annoying sometimes. Saying that the genre never could have made it long term isn't fair... adventure games were popular (as text adventures) from like the late 1970s through much of the '80s, then graphical adventures were popular until the mid '90s... I still blame Myst for killing the genre. Everybody copied Myst, everybody's games sold badly, everybody decided adventure games were dead. And presto, mostly low-budget European stuff excepted, they were. This has nothing to do with this thread, though... I'd say that the Hugo games and the Lucasarts and Sierra classics definitely are must-plays. Not necessarily all of them, but a good sampling at least. :)



The only thing about Halo that impressed me was that nine or ten minute 1998-1999 E3 Halo demo video, from when it was still a PC game (that video was awesome... the game? I never cared)... so I'd lean towards agreeing with this one, if just out of personal preference.

Hmm... I can think of a better answer, though. Ultima I-V (or so), Akalabeth, and the first four to six Wizardry games -- those classic RPGs which defined the genre early on but, by modern standards, are virtually unplayable thanks to impenitrable interfaces, huge complex maze dungeons with no ingame mapping, and game designs which seem specifically ordered to make you suffer...

... of course, there are people who actually like to play NetHack and stuff, and that game's as cruel or more cruel than any of those, but... I don't know, while I recognize their contribution to the genre, I just couldn't quite recommend that someone actually play any of the things unless they like suffering. :)
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i agree man.. Ultima 1-5 were awesome games but pretty hard to play even back in the day. where spelling etc had to be dead on in some parts. i remember my good friend played through them all and made it quite far.. impressed me for sure. those games definitly influenced tons of the modern day developers.

It would be interesting to know which games influenced some of the big up and comming game designers today.
 
edwardslane said:
No company has dared to compete against nintendo in that genre is all.

powerstone from capcom was the closest thing to smash brothers.. that was a solid title.

but smash brothers is very influential..

not on the same level as something like street fighter which spawned hundreds of 2d fighting clones.

or the first of the 3d fighters.. virtua fighter i beleive.

but it's Influential nevertheless
Click to expand...

Influential as in only Jump Superstars and that crappy XBLA game even comes close to copying the formula?

Yeah, so influential that I can't turn on ANY of my games machines without being hit in the balls with a SSB clone.

Seriously, what?
 
Trespasser was the right answer. most everyone else is just playing that 'i don't like a game everyone else does so i must argue that it is over rated!' game again... which always bores me.

trespasser on the other hand was horribly broken, but had a game design that was way way ahead of it's time (that's half of why it was broken, PC's couldn't handle it). no hud in a first person shooter... physics based gameplay (and sound effects!)... huge open environments... behaviour based AI...

it just didn't work very well, nor was it much fun... but influential? yeah. everyone making games at the time new what the trespasser guys were trying to do. no way it didn't influence later games.
 
I can think of games that aren't worth buying now, but at the time were good pickups. Like Frequency on the PS2, the game that started us down the road to Guitar Hero, and eventually Rock Band. I wouldn't recommend it now as it's horribly dated, but it was an worthy game when it came out.

I agree 100% with the Trespasser nomination. What a flaming turd that game was. Still there were some good ideas hidden in there.
 
A Black Falcon said:
... of course, there are people who actually like to play NetHack and stuff, and that game's as cruel or more cruel than any of those, but... I don't know, while I recognize their contribution to the genre, I just couldn't quite recommend that someone actually play any of the things unless they like suffering. :)
Click to expand...

Nethack isn't inherently cruel. It just has emergent cruelness.
 
I hope that Halo 3's film editor, party system and huge customisation of modes makes it into other games. I don't care for the title though.
 
edwardslane said:
No company has dared to compete against nintendo in that genre is all.

powerstone from capcom was the closest thing to smash brothers.. that was a solid title.

but smash brothers is very influential..

not on the same level as something like street fighter which spawned hundreds of 2d fighting clones.

or the first of the 3d fighters.. virtua fighter i beleive.

but it's Influential nevertheless
Click to expand...

there have been several smash bros inspired games/clones since then.
 
Smash Bros. is influential because it proved to people that a non-serious fighting game could have sales legs, and also ones gears more toward a wider market. (using recognizable characters and levels, bouncy combat, etc.)

Though I think there's evidence of it directly influencing a lot of games. Someone mentioned Powerstone, but I think it also spawned stuff like Kung Fu Chaos, Jump All-stars, Shrek Superslam, Spider-Man Friend or Foe (if you play the vs. section anyhow), etc. It might not be as hugely influential as other games, but i think it generated a sub-genre in fighting for bouncy combat that wasn't another SF/SNK-style combo game.

(and I suppose a case could also be made for Powerstone instead spawning that subgenre, but i might recommend that game to someone and would take it out of contention for this thread.)
 
edwardslane said:
No company has dared to compete against nintendo in that genre is all.

powerstone from capcom was the closest thing to smash brothers.. that was a solid title.

but smash brothers is very influential..

not on the same level as something like street fighter which spawned hundreds of 2d fighting clones.

or the first of the 3d fighters.. virtua fighter i beleive.

but it's Influential nevertheless
Click to expand...

While I love Smash Bros. and know it's one of the best selling games in years, I'm not sure it's influential in any way OTHER than helping Nintendo sell game systems. SSB hasn't really lead to a change in the games being made by other companies.
 
edwardslane said:
stuff
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Are you seriously me telling me what I did and didn't play on my game? :lol
I played against both "tourney" players and casual players.The Game got boring within a week.I hated the game's mechanics.The controls(the GC pad didn't help much) the only interesting thing was playing with items.I liked finding out what each item did.Now a "tourney" type game without items is the most boring time I had with the game.Everything got 3x duller.

Also smash influenced several clones?

Name one.
 
edwardslane said:
No company has dared to compete against nintendo in that genre is all.

powerstone from capcom was the closest thing to smash brothers.. that was a solid title.

but smash brothers is very influential..

not on the same level as something like street fighter which spawned hundreds of 2d fighting clones.

or the first of the 3d fighters.. virtua fighter i beleive.

but it's Influential nevertheless
Click to expand...
If no company has dared to compete against it, I would not call it influential. Influence != quality.
 
Open Source said:
Nethack isn't inherently cruel. It just has emergent cruelness.
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Any game which requires you to restart the game every time you die and has no form of permanant saving, only temp-saves that delete when you load them, is EVIL.

Maybe it's less cruel than Wizardry 1-6 and Ultima 1-5 thanks to the fact that it's top down so at least you can't get lost in the maze, and it runs on a very specific set of rules that you can learn and that eventually make sense versus ... well, a set of rules that you can learn and that eventually make sense... but are in first person and have incredibly cruel things like Wizardry 6's door/chest lock system (fail to unlock a door and it can jam. Jam a door and you'll almost certainly never open it. You're stuck... save before you try to open every locked door or chest...) that NetHack doesn't quite do. NetHack is definitely still evil though, and I maintain my "I'd only recommend it to someone who says they want to suffer" point, even if its top down nature makes it easier to navigate. :)
 
A Black Falcon said:
Any game which requires you to restart the game every time you die and has no form of permanant saving, only temp-saves that delete when you load them, is EVIL.

Maybe it's less cruel than Wizardry 1-6 and Ultima 1-5 thanks to the fact that it's top down so at least you can't get lost in the maze, and it runs on a very specific set of rules that you can learn and that eventually make sense versus ... well, a set of rules that you can learn and that eventually make sense... but are in first person and have incredibly cruel things like Wizardry 6's door/chest lock system (fail to unlock a door and it can jam. Jam a door and you'll almost certainly never open it. You're stuck... save before you try to open every locked door or chest...) that NetHack doesn't quite do. NetHack is definitely still evil though, and I maintain my "I'd only recommend it to someone who says they want to suffer" point, even if its top down nature makes it easier to navigate. :)
Click to expand...

Tetris is not evil.

Nethack is really not about progressing through the game, as other RPGs are. It's about discovering how the world and the stuff in it works, and about having wildly different experiences in each new game. You're supposed to die so that you can start over and see another dungeon that makes you play a different game than you played the time before. And the bones levels make it so that the more you play, the easier it is for future characters to succeed.

ADOM, on the other hand, is cruel. You have to know in advance which quests to accept, you have to write down the type of monster that is your first kill, and all sorts of other arbitrary stuff, or you may not ever be able to win the game or acquire critical skills. Learning game mechanics is one thing; memorizing all the "gotchas" in the content and the correct order you should do things in (in a supposedly free-roaming game) is another.
 
Bioshock

Being forced to pay $60 for relatively short single-player games so you can play them at the same time your "friends" are playing them is complete insanity imo...
 
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