Games and game mechanics that you'd like to see again

[CrazyCrab]

Hi everyone,
recently when I was browsing my old game stockpile I realized that there was a couple of games with game mechanics so bizzare that they arent replicated in modern games anymore and I begun to wonder why. Are they simply too complicated and ImpractIcal? Is it a question of "appealing to a wider audience? I really dont know, for me thats what made them fun.
Here is a couple of examples:

- city building games like Pharaoh, Zeus and Caesar - the road + movement mechanism. If you dont know what im talking about, the buildings in that game had NPS spawning who would walk on roads connected to the building and spread the service that way. For ex the guard would lower crime in all buildings he'd pass by. Personally I liked it, as it meant thay you had to plan the streets, roadblocks etc for an efficient city and gave an extra layer of complexity. Right now the only game I can compare those to is Anno, but there its all circles.

- pretty much everything in Ghost Master - getting new characters by solving mini puzzles, defeating your enemies by scaring them away, the wonderful feeling of spreading chaos and destructIon everywhere as the leader of a ghost squad and not being politically correct whatsoever. That game Is one giant packet of weird concepts and I love it. Shame that there is nothing like it.

I could go on, but Im typing on my phone and Its quite a pain. (Sorry for the mistakes)
I guess ill edit once i get home.
Anyway, what are your little gems that youre missing?

 

[Pink Gregory]

There's probably something on Kickstarter that's an attempt at redoing city-builders; but frankly going up against the undoubtably classic Sierra city builders (Caesar, Pharoah, Zeus, Emperor) is quite a tough prospect for any devolper.

 

[shrekfan246]

Well, it's not an old game by any means, but I've been playing a fair bit of Fire Emblem: Awakening lately, and I really wish more character/story-driven RPGs let you reforge and name your weapons.

Also, Final Fantasy VII - Secondary characters that have their own quests and additions to the main plot, but can be completely missed if you don't happen to recruit them.

While I don't have a specific example for this, I'd like to see more alignment options in RPGs, especially in how to solve quests. I'd like to see options that are analogous to the D&D alignment system; Lawful Good/Neutral/Evil, Chaotic Good/Neutral/Evil, etc. because they always seem to resolve with "Capture the guy to be sent to trial or kill them!" which is just boring.

 

[The Wykydtron]

The inventory system from Resident Evil 4 was great, really odd that we didn't see many or any at all really other games pick it up.

I like how nitpicky some people get over it, they must have all the ammo on the right and the health items on the left and the guns neatly positioned in the middle at all costs.

 

[piinyouri]

Well, it's not an old game by any means, but I've been playing a fair bit of Fire Emblem: Awakening lately, and I really wish more character/story-driven RPGs let you reforge and name your weapons.

There's no weapon renaming, but if you liked FE you may enjoy Final Fantasy Tactics, Front Mission 3, and Tactics Ogre.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The inventory system from Resident Evil 4 was great, really odd that we didn't see many or any at all really other games pick it up.

I like how nitpicky some people get over it, they must have all the ammo on the right and the health items on the left and the guns neatly positioned in the middle at all costs.

Deus Ex Human Revolution had the same inventory system. It just wasn't an attache case.

OT: The Boosting mechanic from Vanquish where you spent the entire game sliding around on the ground while shooting enemies. Shooters these days tend to not let you shoot while sprinting, so being able to shoot while using a rocket boost was pretty damn fun.

 

[Tahaneira]

There can only be one answer to this.

Age of Mythology.

Seriously. Whoever wound up with the IPs after Ensemble's collapse needs to get off their ass and start make Age games again. They were awesome RTS, and I'd like to see some new entries.

And Mythology in general needs a sequel. You can have armies running around with Cyclopes and fire giants as members, and smite your enemies with meteor storms! How can that not be awesome?

 

[fix-the-spade]

Mechanic: Magazine based reloads.

Way back in the day of Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and the early Battlefield you didn't carry X-number of bullets, you carried magazines. When reloading you either threw away the magazine and it was gone or you hung onto the half empty magazine for later use.

There's so much emphasis on 'realism' now but that mechanic is sorely absent, there's no reason to conserve ammunition or reloads now, fire one or fire thirty you still make a gratuitous reload. I've been playing BF2 this week and had forgotten how much of a difference to play it makes.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we need more twitch shooters. Whilst UT3 killed the series stone dead, I would love to be playing Unreal Tournament 4 anytime soon. It doesn't need to be pretty or expensive, it just needs to be fast and contain the Redeemer.

Having said that, Titanfall looks like it's going to be firmly planted in the twitch end of shoot em ups, so there's hope yet.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Parasite Eve's insane levels of customisation, armor and weapon upgrading, and vast array of tactics. I've never realy seen this done - a game where 90% of your stats come from your equips, and you'll really need to plan ahead to survive at all.

ALso, The Gregory Horror Show. All of it. From the tactical time-based stealth, to the evergrowing threat of hilariously ridiculous Japanese superstitions.

And Resident Evil 4's inventory. Even if I did have to constantly reorganise it because when it comes to things like inventory management, I'm completely adamant and methodical with it (Weapons>armor>healing>keyitems>otheritems>survival utilities, or something like that) so it was a nice change of pace than Resident 1-3's inventory,

 

[NeutralDrow]

I'm not sure if I've recently seen an equivalent to Soulbringer's "seculorum" mechanic, a more complicated take on the "elemental rock-paper-scissors" idea. Basically, all magic in the game is divided into five elements, each balanced against two of the others (fire>spirit>air>earth>water>fire), and the seculorum represents how balanced you are in each. Using spells of one element increases your power one element, but lowers you in its consuming element (eg: spirit is strong against air, but is consumed by fire).

Spoiler: Image.

Becoming unbalanced towards an element carries benefits, by strengthening that element's spells and making you take increasingly less damage against it; first you take lower damage from that element, then you're immune to that element, and in severe cases you can be healed by it. However, your spells of its consuming element become steadily weaker, and you become much more vulnerable to them (by the time you're unbalanced enough towards fire to heal yourself with Magma spells, even a simple water-based Poison Bolt is a serious threat). Elemental balance is its own reward in that way, by not increasing your vulnerability, and by powering up the handful of pan-elemental spells.

I wouldn't mind seeing that idea revisted, especially if a game managed to give all the elements time to shine. Soulbringer didn't really do a bad job with that (all the spells had attack, utility, and healing spells; when's the last time you've seen healing fire magic?), but some elements were underrepresented or underpowered, and obtaining spells could be slow.

 

[GundamSentinel]

There can only be one answer to this.

Age of Mythology.

Seriously. Whoever wound up with the IPs after Ensemble's collapse needs to get off their ass and start make Age games again. They were awesome RTS, and I'd like to see some new entries.

And Mythology in general needs a sequel. You can have armies running around Cyclopes and fire giants as members, and smite your enemies with meteor storms! How can that not be awesome?

I'll second that. Age of Mythology was the game that brought me back to gaming. It was so colourful and lively. It really needs a sequel. Even a remake would be fine with me.

 

[FPLOON]

I know this will never happen (probably), but I loved how the MP was handled in the first Kingdom Hearts game... You have the main blue solid bars and then you have the orange charge bar... The orange charge bar not only charged up your blue solid bars, but also worked as a means to save you from using up a blue bar of MP during certain situations...

The reason why I missed it is because of how playing through Kingdom Hearts 2 made me realize just how well-designed the magic-usage was... Cure never used up the rest of your MP and shooting "pistol" fire or "shotgun" blizzard barely took up a single MP bar, but instead a part of the orange charge bar... As much as a love Birth By Sleep's use of combat mechanics as a whole (where the variety is actually effective when you use certain attack combinations instead of having one main attack combo that's only "interrupted" by pressing triangle "most" of the time...), I really like to see the use of the MP gauge to be of a similar fashion used in the first Kingdom Hearts game to be implemented in future Kingdom Hearts games... (or at least the ones that are going to use an MP bar, that is...)

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we need more twitch shooters. Whilst UT3 killed the series stone dead, I would love to be playing Unreal Tournament 4 anytime soon. It doesn't need to be pretty or expensive, it just needs to be fast and contain the Redeemer.

If you haven't yet you should play Nexuiz, it's about as twitch shooter as it gets, and it's a spiritual successor/homage to Unreal Tournament.

 

[Riddle78]

Starfighter games in general,like Freelancer I want to see come back,complete with that glorious Engine Kill function. Turn off your main engines so you can turn in place while moving,and shooting the enemy,and using bursts from the afterburner to throw you on a new vector.

I'd also like to see more people than just John Mavor (One of the guys behind Total Annihilation,Supreme Commander,and Planetary Annihilation) use streaming economy in RTS games. You'd be amazed at just how much it can change a game. I'd also like to see construction assisting,again,much like Mavor's games. There have to be other ways to look at resources and construction in RTS games than "One builder per project,pay for it in full up front".

And finally...The ten weapon arsenal. I like having options.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I think I might have just blown up on Microsoft in another thread for leaving a bunch of Xbox exclusives on the wayside when it came time to make games for the 360...I never played Brute Force but games like Breakdown, Whacked!, Otogi: Myth of Demons and, Crimson Skies were games that I poured a lot of time and effort into and greatly enjoyed. I can see a somewhat tangible link being made between Crimson Skies and Dark Void (since both star Atton Rand as a WWII-era fighter pilot in an alternate reality) and Panzer Dragoon is kind of coming back for the XBone80 but that doesn't excuse the other Xbox Exclusives that Microsoft swept under the rug.

As for game mechanics...I wish Nintendo had a more lax policy when it came to controller choice gameplay and, game settings in general. If I could have played Skyward Sword with a classic controller I would have been able to actually play the freaking thing. Also, we're into the 6th generation of Pokemon and there's still no option to make a second profile on the same cart. I don't think the Mario games even have an option screen...not that I can think of anything that could be changed...other than toggling Super Guide off or changing the difficulty...

Speaking of toggling features on and off; cheat menus. Cheat codes in general like big head, super speed...we have unlimited lives and, regenerating health so I guess...the opposite of those things.

 

[pilouuuu]

Lemmings.

I'd love to see a game similar to that. Where we point and click to save characters with special abilities. It was really unique and I think there's no puzzle game like it nowadays. Lemmings 2 was especially amazing.

 

[xDarc]

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we need more twitch shooters.

Yep, this is the biggest and least discussed loss to gaming. FPS games got dumbed down to become a household product; the old stuff is locked up like the necronomicon and developers dare not speak it's name or read from the book. To do that would be to kill the cash cow that is Battlefield and CoD.

I always get a chuckle when I see people arguing about how BF and CoD are nothing alike- any game with a heavy movement penalty on cone of fire that forces you stop moving to shoot is an anti-twitch game and it's all the same to me.

You know what I do about it? I look for ways to bend the rules of these games to force run and gun. In BFBC2 I abused the hell out of the shotgun because it had zero cone of fire and slugs were one hit kills at times, and in CoD I'd take the movement perks and a sub machine gun with rapid fire to close distance while spraying. I'd only play on the smaller maps where you could really take advantage of it. It did work some times, it would feel just like "running the board" in old skool game of Quake and all the kids would get pissed off and rage quit.

That's why nobody likes old skool run and gun/twitch games- they were hard and you could be beaten mercilessly. The games these days, everyone gets kills, everyones a winner- and if you kill X people in a row, hell, the game will kill a few more people for you in the form of a kill streak reward. Way to go winner!

Ok, sorry, I'm done.

 

[Tupolev]

Bloodwake. It was going to get a sequel, but the project was cancelled for unknown reasons.

It's not the most amazing game ever, but it was good fun, and there was so much room for expansion and improvement. Not to mention, the gaming industry has a depressing lack of that kind of water physics.

 

[Joffas16]

Wow, this thread has made me want to go back and play so many old games.

Now, hmmm, things I want to see again, I know it has been said about three times already but I guess that that just goes to show how great it is. Of course I'm referring to the inventory in Resident Evil 4. That game actually made inventory management engaging, what a perfect system.

Also, it's been about a week since I went on about 3D platformers so I might do that.

It's probably been about a decade since a good collect 'em up 3D platformer was released. Seriously, what the hell happened to those games? After Super Mario 64 everyone wanted to make their own now they're practically non-existent. There were some really good ones on the Xbox like Vexx, Jet Set Radio Future and Voodoo Vince, then people just stopped making anything resembling them.