It had the KONG letters and there were bonus stages to collect golden versions of the enemies and mounts.
Games That Change the Way You See Gaming
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
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Yeah, but that stuff all respawned when you replayed the level, and only gave extra lives which didn't persist when reloading a save. It didn't count for any more than Yoshi coins or 1UP shrooms. Donkey Kong Country 2 actually had proper collectables, though.
Actual Sunlight and Little Red Lie: after reading an article on Vice about bleak and pessimistic games as well as learning it through Errant Signal. These two games forced me to review my own life and bleak nature of capitalism.
Apex Legends and Sims 4: The former is the first AAA multiplayer I have played in 15 years since CoD and also my favorite since I got burned out by LoL. Also my first real experience in corporations being woke and admired EA for taking such a stance despite the claim about corps not being your friend. Because sure as hell beats being my enemy and being openly transphobic and homophobic reactionary devs like Running With Scissors.
Apex Legends and Sims 4: The former is the first AAA multiplayer I have played in 15 years since CoD and also my favorite since I got burned out by LoL. Also my first real experience in corporations being woke and admired EA for taking such a stance despite the claim about corps not being your friend. Because sure as hell beats being my enemy and being openly transphobic and homophobic reactionary devs like Running With Scissors.
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Hostile Waters: Anteaus Rising
On top of being a cool game with really well done in engine cinematics, it was the first game where I really noticed physics and they looked really good and interacted with themselves. Like you would blow up a tower and it would tip over and the pieces would fall. I know that Trespasser came out earlier and you could move stuff and stack stuff, but while that was impressive, it was also super jank.
On top of being a cool game with really well done in engine cinematics, it was the first game where I really noticed physics and they looked really good and interacted with themselves. Like you would blow up a tower and it would tip over and the pieces would fall. I know that Trespasser came out earlier and you could move stuff and stack stuff, but while that was impressive, it was also super jank.
Silent Hill 2 was the first time where I properly realized just what the artistic potential of the medium is. I think what it made me realize how writing and art design can elevate a game. It had this really emotionally interesting concept, about a man coming to terms with the guilt of killing a terminally ill family member. And, like, you could easily see a book or a film working with that premise. You could even see the type of more narrative driven style of game, say a visual novel or a walking simulator using it. But to explore a story as ambitious as that in the framework of a survival horror game with all the gameplay conventions customary to it genuinely made me realize that you can fit narrative and emotion into a perfectly conventional action-adventure gameplay model.
Deus Ex on the other hand changed the way I look at gameplay. The way level design, character customization, equipment loadout and scripting all work together to create a game that gives you a large number of options for each objective and is able to anticipate and react to most of them while maintaining the integrity of its plot progression and structure. Which made me realize that games don't have to sacrifice freedom for structure or vice versa, but that there is sort of a golden middle that offers just the right amount of both.
The most recent one was Death Stranding for me. It made me think about the way games treat action an combat. DS has all the mechanics of an open world, third person action game, but it never tries to play like one. It has combat and action setpieces, but they punctuate the gameplay, rather than being the foundation of its gameplay. And it made me think about the sort of abstract nature of action in games. Take a game like Red Dead Redemption 2. Very somber tone and cinematic presentation. But in almost every movie, even the most wild and over the top of action movies, the number and scope of gunfights in RDR2, much less their bodycount, would seem downright farcical. No movie would ever even try to maintain the tone of RDR2, while cramming so much action into it. Meanwhile a playthrough of DS will contain about half a dozen climactic bossfights, a handful of combat encounters with bandits you come across along the way and that's pretty much it. You are very likely to finish the game without having killed a single human enemy. Considering Hideo Kojima has a claim (albeit an extremely shaky one) of having invented stealth games he's obviously always at least questioned the role of violence as the core gameplay principle of most games, but DS takes it even farther by taking all the mechanics of an open world action game and completely recontextualizing them in a way that deemphasizes violent conflict.
Deus Ex on the other hand changed the way I look at gameplay. The way level design, character customization, equipment loadout and scripting all work together to create a game that gives you a large number of options for each objective and is able to anticipate and react to most of them while maintaining the integrity of its plot progression and structure. Which made me realize that games don't have to sacrifice freedom for structure or vice versa, but that there is sort of a golden middle that offers just the right amount of both.
The most recent one was Death Stranding for me. It made me think about the way games treat action an combat. DS has all the mechanics of an open world, third person action game, but it never tries to play like one. It has combat and action setpieces, but they punctuate the gameplay, rather than being the foundation of its gameplay. And it made me think about the sort of abstract nature of action in games. Take a game like Red Dead Redemption 2. Very somber tone and cinematic presentation. But in almost every movie, even the most wild and over the top of action movies, the number and scope of gunfights in RDR2, much less their bodycount, would seem downright farcical. No movie would ever even try to maintain the tone of RDR2, while cramming so much action into it. Meanwhile a playthrough of DS will contain about half a dozen climactic bossfights, a handful of combat encounters with bandits you come across along the way and that's pretty much it. You are very likely to finish the game without having killed a single human enemy. Considering Hideo Kojima has a claim (albeit an extremely shaky one) of having invented stealth games he's obviously always at least questioned the role of violence as the core gameplay principle of most games, but DS takes it even farther by taking all the mechanics of an open world action game and completely recontextualizing them in a way that deemphasizes violent conflict.
Mass Effect, Virmire. The decision between saving Kaiden and Ashley was the first time in any video game I played where it actually felt like my decision had real weight. Sure, there were other RPGs I'd played where my decisions had consequences, but that was mostly "good vs evil", and if I disliked the "bad" option, I could just reload and pick the better option for me. This time, though? No matter what choice I made, someone who had been with me throughout the whole game was going to die. There was no way to save both, and the decision on who survived was up to ME. Not the game, not the script. I was the one who was going to decide who lived and died, and again, there was no third option that would allow me to save both.
That was the first time in any game with multiple branches where it actually felt like what I said and did mattered.
That was the first time in any game with multiple branches where it actually felt like what I said and did mattered.
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Oh, I got a better one. Breath of Fire 2.
BOF2 was the first game I remember having an emotional connection to a character and the first one that really messed with the player. Like there was a fight you couldn't win, I remember farming gold to buy elixirs and even hitting my my big dragon form each turn I couldn't beat it.
The second game that managed this was Morrowind. There was just this Kajite woman outside of a big dwemer city and she would have you go on these little quests and it actually felt like a relationship was being built, I still remember the one where she had you get 2 flowers and gave you one. It was very sweet, naturally once you finished her quest line she became just another npc since its an elder scrolls game so nothing you do really matters or changes anything. But for that time I was doing quests for her I was very engrossed.
BOF2 was the first game I remember having an emotional connection to a character and the first one that really messed with the player. Like there was a fight you couldn't win, I remember farming gold to buy elixirs and even hitting my my big dragon form each turn I couldn't beat it.
The second game that managed this was Morrowind. There was just this Kajite woman outside of a big dwemer city and she would have you go on these little quests and it actually felt like a relationship was being built, I still remember the one where she had you get 2 flowers and gave you one. It was very sweet, naturally once you finished her quest line she became just another npc since its an elder scrolls game so nothing you do really matters or changes anything. But for that time I was doing quests for her I was very engrossed.
Eh, idk. Moderately {insert title} here with shinier graphics going up through the generations (although around late PS2 or PS3 I wouldn't really say that started having much impact).
Neverwinter Nights was proably my first social game. Where the members of the persistent servers often interacted beyond the game and such. Destiny would eventually be the console equivalent (until nigh everyone got sick of the second-job requirements).
Ultima was my first game, so obligatory mention. When you start on the open world character-driven story based RPG with team based tactical combat ... yeah it kind of makes sense a lot of the ones mentioned above never quite seemed as innovative (and maybe why I find Bethesda to be just kind of a shinier but poorer imitation of Ultima)
Immersion is an odd one, people always mention it. I have never once felt like i'm not "playing a game". This is probably related to why horror games basically have no emotional effect on me (which then correlates into simply recognizing all the little annoyances they put in the gameplay to try and stress you)
Neverwinter Nights was proably my first social game. Where the members of the persistent servers often interacted beyond the game and such. Destiny would eventually be the console equivalent (until nigh everyone got sick of the second-job requirements).
Ultima was my first game, so obligatory mention. When you start on the open world character-driven story based RPG with team based tactical combat ... yeah it kind of makes sense a lot of the ones mentioned above never quite seemed as innovative (and maybe why I find Bethesda to be just kind of a shinier but poorer imitation of Ultima)
Immersion is an odd one, people always mention it. I have never once felt like i'm not "playing a game". This is probably related to why horror games basically have no emotional effect on me (which then correlates into simply recognizing all the little annoyances they put in the gameplay to try and stress you)
It's a shame that's essentially the only thing that persist beyond the first game. Rachni queen? w/e reaper made a clone. Human council? Who care, they don't matter anymore. Destroyed the collector base? lololololol, cerberus just collect all the debris and get what they want anyway.
Lufia 2 (I think, or maybe 1) had a big bad that you couldn't beat... except you could if you grinded enough, you even got a special weapon for it, didn't change the story but that was neat.
I think the scope of the ME story kind of got away from them. Like they had all these cool choices in the first game, but quickly realized that those choices would build and add too much complexity for subsequent games that they simply couldn't keep up with.
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I don't think its possible in BOF2 since you losing and
losing a party member
To be slightly fair, it actually still does make a difference with the rachni queen. If you free the clone in the third game, she goes nuts and massacres some of the engineers working on the project, which makes you take a hit to your Effectiveness Rating, while the real deal actually helps out and adds to it.
That said, I do agree that most of the choices didn't have the impact they should have, but Virmire man...that still sticks with me.
They were planning on having a similar situation occur on Thessia at the Temple of Athame, where it would be a choice between Liara and whomever you brought with you.
Well, seeing as I take her and Javik for the best experience of the Temple of Athame...
She will be remembered in the coming Empire.
Elder scrolls: Oblivion totally blew my mind when I first played it, over a decade and a half ago. I never imagined video games could be that open ended and liberating, and visually (for the time) absolutely beautiful too. I still get chills when I hear the opening music.
I’d have honestly had trouble with the decision. Regardless of who I’d take.
I grew up playing games like Might and Magic VI, Fallout 2 and Deus Ex. So in a way I started thinking that games were meant to be these large open play as you wish type deals full of places to explore and decisions to make. Only to see games get smaller and smaller in scope even as technology improved.
I don't deny that there has been a lot of graphical, technical and design improvements over the years. But there's also this sense of wonder that has been lost so I don't think there's many games that have really changed the way I see gaming, at least not in a very good way.
I suppose Morrowind was one of the games that made me go - well damn. Games can actually be feckin' huge and full of stuff! I guess I did play M&MVI which is similar, but Morrowind with its polygonal graphics and less jankiness in general, also me being a bit older and more conscious of stuff made me notice it more.
Warcraft 3 I suppose opened me up to the idea of a game being a platform for stuff. I spent countless hours on the silly custom maps which were basically whole different games unto themselves. And many games did they become - the whole MOBA genre was pretty much birthed from here. It wasn't the only game that did this at the time, there were healthy customs going on with stuff like CS, UT99 etc. I don't play DOTA2 but I heard it also has a custom map thing going on and you can play Tower Defenses in it and stuff. And I guess there's goddamn Roblox.... though nowadays I'm not playing anything that has such a custom scene anymore. I was hoping for the "NEW" Unreal Tournament to fill that niche but Fortnite happened. I was thinking maybe Halo Infinite might be able to turn things around.... but my expectations aren't too high even if the recent updates are pretty nice.
I don't deny that there has been a lot of graphical, technical and design improvements over the years. But there's also this sense of wonder that has been lost so I don't think there's many games that have really changed the way I see gaming, at least not in a very good way.
I suppose Morrowind was one of the games that made me go - well damn. Games can actually be feckin' huge and full of stuff! I guess I did play M&MVI which is similar, but Morrowind with its polygonal graphics and less jankiness in general, also me being a bit older and more conscious of stuff made me notice it more.
Warcraft 3 I suppose opened me up to the idea of a game being a platform for stuff. I spent countless hours on the silly custom maps which were basically whole different games unto themselves. And many games did they become - the whole MOBA genre was pretty much birthed from here. It wasn't the only game that did this at the time, there were healthy customs going on with stuff like CS, UT99 etc. I don't play DOTA2 but I heard it also has a custom map thing going on and you can play Tower Defenses in it and stuff. And I guess there's goddamn Roblox.... though nowadays I'm not playing anything that has such a custom scene anymore. I was hoping for the "NEW" Unreal Tournament to fill that niche but Fortnite happened. I was thinking maybe Halo Infinite might be able to turn things around.... but my expectations aren't too high even if the recent updates are pretty nice.
I wouldn't, unless I was doing a rare (for me) Liara-as-Romance run... or the game somehow forced me to bring along Vega as the other companion.
Offff good thing they didn't do, that Kai Leng fight was such infuriating bullshit if they killed someone there on top of that I would have just stopped playing right there.
Earthbound: Showed me the possibilities of stories in games. You aren't a knight or a future soldier, you're a kid with psychic powers that also looked a lot like myself when I played the game.
Paper Mario: The game came out in a time when everyone was saying 3D was the future and it seemed like the old style of games were going to be left behind. Seeing a game deliberately have flat sprites for it characters told me that we weren't going to lose styles of games or art but that they were just going to expand.
Ico: Showed to me that games could have a quiet beauty and awe, majesty, to them. I know the "are games art" debate is tired and old but this was the game that was the one that told me "yes" they can be.
Paper Mario: The game came out in a time when everyone was saying 3D was the future and it seemed like the old style of games were going to be left behind. Seeing a game deliberately have flat sprites for it characters told me that we weren't going to lose styles of games or art but that they were just going to expand.
Ico: Showed to me that games could have a quiet beauty and awe, majesty, to them. I know the "are games art" debate is tired and old but this was the game that was the one that told me "yes" they can be.