Games that are so good they've ruined every other game in their genre for you

[Angelblaze]

Tera Rising and Vindictus ruined MMO action combat for me. Now all I see when I look at WoW is a glorified kiddy pool, frankly.

 

[go-10]

not really ruined as I still play other games in the genre but ever since I played the Tomb Raider reboot whenever I played a third person action/survival/metroid shooter I end up wishing it was more like Tomb Raider... I think I really like that game

 

[Schtimpy]

So first ones kinda silly, but Final Fantasy 12 and jrpgs. It's not my favorite of the FF series, but it had something that changed how I view rpgs. The Gambit system. You told your guys what to do, and they did it. No more mashing x until your little bar fills up. They just do it. Hurt units? Poison? Fixed by your next turn. I could finally think things out, plan combos and such. Only problem was the combat wasn't really complex enough to justify this mechanic. "Ah HA! I used Oil and then Fire! Genius!" Most jrpg battles are really just busy work. You rarely make cool/important plays (shiva 4x in a row doesn't count), but what you're usually doing is attack, attack, heal on repeat. I'd rather have that be auto or have an extra mechanic added on, like Chrono Cross.

Second one has been mentioned already, but what the hay. Ninja Gaiden wrecked most 3rd person, uh, "Spectacle Fighters?" for me. The controls are precise, quick, and punishing. The main reason I couldn't get into Dark Souls is the guy moves around like he just woke up. You're so slow that the combat turns into a counter based combat without the 1 button counter. Only time I was sure I could hit a enemy was right after they attacked. In NG, I rush the first guy in the face, counter the second, wind path off the third and finish the first guy off with a double wallrun/flying swallow to the back. In Dark Souls? I slowly back away and look for an opening. Not that NG doesn't have that, but DS is so slow it's all there is. The DS example is kinda off, it is an rpg after all, but the combat is praised and I don't get why. Is it because it's so slow and frustrating it feels heavy? (like a story/game-play thing?)

NG ruined me with others for various reasons. Prince O' P was slow (warrior within had the best combat), DMC's (original 123) enemy's were pretty samey, and from what I've seen, Bayonetta seems to be too all over the place for me. Kratos (GOW) just flails randomly. I need to try more of the genre, especially recent ones, but I think I lucked into the best one.

Last but not least, we have a double entry : X-com and Minecraft. The mods are so good, they eclipse the originals. Now whenever I play a vanilla game, I'm asking myself "What If...?"

 

[Amir Kondori]

Some overlap here for me.

WoW ruined the theme park MMO, through sheer content depth. It's virtually impossible to launch a new theme park MMO now, it'll just get squashed or experience content exhaustion inside of the first month and lose 50% of its audience back to WoW. Even the flagging/sagging death-throes WoW has ten times the audience of its closest competitor. It is ridiculous.

Not really a genre thing, but Medieval 2 ruined me for later Total War games.

I won't say Witcher 3 ruined me for future CRPGs, because I love the genre too much, but it sure re-shuffled my list of favorites and set the bar at an extremely high level for new games. Most particularly it had me re-evaluating Dragon Age Inquisition from "disappointment" to "embarrassment".

The Witcher 3 is a very specific type of RPG though, open world third person action RPG. There are many different types of CRPGs that will never be replaced by it. Witcher 3 is amazing but its not going to make me stop playing Pillars of Eternity. If anything Witcher 3 makes you question why you would ever play another Elder Scrolls game.

 

[MechCollector]

For MMOs, for me the favorite was City of Heroes, by a long shot. (Nostalgic ramble incoming.)

Now, don't get me wrong, the game was by no means perfect; it had randomly generated levels with recycled assets out the wazoo, graphics were obviously quite dated, etc. But what they DID with what they had made the game perfect for anyone who just needs some narrative context, and their own imagination, to forge their character's adventure.

There was a sense of progression that (for me, at least) felt far better than any MMO; you began your heroic career as this weak little guy with two attacks, relegated to fighting some drug dealers with guns and knives in an otherwise normal looking 'burb. Eventually, you expanded a little; first to a seemingly benign park region that was soooorta stuffed to the gills with a mystic cult, and then to a region that had been torn apart by some form of disaster, leaving chasms and cliffs scattered throughout what had once been an inhabited area, but was now largely inhabited by a green-skinned gang who were taking, for lack of a better term, super-steroids. You didn't even have a travel power until level 10 or so, (been quite awhile,) and so got around essentially like a mountless WoW character would, making the last location I mentioned INCREDIBLY tricky to navigate, especially given it was littered with higher-level mobs. I remember that, if you were in a group, you always tried to get a player who had the earlier-earned 'Summon Friend' teleport ability, which as you might guess let them summon a teammate to their location, one at a time. Whoever had the ability became the scout, braving dangerous mobs to reach the distant mission door while the rest of the team largely sat around eating cookies, until the scout finally arrived and was able to summon all the teammates to the mission start point.

Off topic. Anyway, from there, as you grew more powerful and gained new abilities (including unlocking a travel ability, though you could have more than one,) you would continue to expand into increasingly bizarre and fantastical things. The homeless in the sewers, genetically enhanced by an alien race and sent to do their bidding, the inevitable appearance of the aliens themselves, megacorporations with private soldiers and brainwashed superhumans, honest-to-god Frankenstein monsters and the sick surgeons who sewed them together, Supersolider neo-Nazis, an elemental race full of golems and other creatures. Crazy mystic cultists, SEVERAL flavors of gang, and plenty more, even a late-game Dark Mirror universe where all the NPC heroes in the canon are in fact dictators and villains, ala Justice Lords. I'm not even counting several different types of giant monster (like, size of a city block, it felt like in some cases) that would require the combined forces of dozens of heroes to take down, necessitating public and unofficial collaboration. In any case, towards the peak of my character's progression, I ended up in a parallel dimension, composed entirely of floating islands with rivers of blood, fighting horrid creatures aplenty with such kickassery I was a kick-throwing martial arts master with darkness powers who could @*##&$ TURN INTO A WINGED DEMON! >.< *coughwithacostumequickchangemacrocough*

The important thing here, though, is becoming a badass hero felt EARNED. I played DC Universe Online, reached level cap in THREE DAYS, which culminated in saving Superman from Lex Luthor. Whoop-de-freakin-do, because I swear my progression from newbie to savior felt faster than Neo's. With City of Heroes, when the story said 'Wow, you're one of the big boys now, looks like,' I was able to look back on the countless missions and storylines I had taken part in, and think 'YEAH. Yeah I am!' As someone who enjoys slapping a head-canon story on characters he creates, City of Heroes kept me engaged in new story arcs and areas so long, my character went through multiple changes, and ultimately ended up a completely different person than when he'd started out.

That and the community was SO nice, my God, I have never, in any online circumstance, had such a pleasant time, with few if any actual problems with anybody. I normally inch away from multiplayer nowadays, but I was quite a social butterfly on CoH because I felt genuinely comfortable bumping into new people. Missions with large groups were far MORE difficult because the mission areas scale depending on players, and with eight players you'd often end up with mobs so big they melded with other mobs to become UBER mobs, so one bad foe-summon teleport could bring forty baddies down on your head, leaving heroes dropping like flies as the strike team fled for the elevators. But we'd always bounce back, form a new plan, and ultimately strike down our foes with fire, fists, ice, lightning, SO MUCH COOLNESS. >.<

And I'm still leaving out City of Villains, building bases to house your Supergroup, holiday events, an absurd level of character and costume customization including bold choices like making you wait til you reach a certain level to EARN the right to wear a cape, making you feel so awesome when you finally could, and... just...

...Goddamnit I miss that game.

I came here to say that, but you put so much feeling into it that I can't improve it.

City of Heroes/Villains/Rogues ruined all future MMO's for me. No loot system, no rolling for the ingredients to your IO recipe, teaming up was super easy with the sidekick system, bases were amazing and once built up, could help streamline the game for you. AE, giant monsters, zone events, Task/Strikeforces, incarnate system, alignment(hero, vigilante, rogue, villain) switching, the insane amount of character customization, badge collecting, loyalty rewards(especially angel/demon wings of course), travel powers at 14 originally but lvl 4 later, near infinite respecs, and the best gaming community I have ever encountered.

I recently thought about it, and maybe it's a good thing the game shut down. I'll always have the memory of my perfect MMO, which made you feel like a super being and whose scope in terms of story and interesting characters dwarfs even WoW by far.




Fallout 1&2- ruined RPG's for me. The open world, story telling, and general atmosphere of the games puts even the newer FO games to shame.


Okami- other action adventure can't compare to the fun, style, depth, and level/dungeon design of Okami. Sure the combat was a little lackluster at times but the game, steeped deeply in Japanese culture and the Shinto religion was an interesting world that I couldn't stop coming back to.

Dark Souls- The first Legend of Zelda game, all grown up. Free open world exploration, almost no clue what to do or where to go next, punishing difficulty if you don't choose correctly, and an atmosphere that completely engulfed me.

Total War series- I might play some RTS games like Warcraft 3 or Red Alert 2 because of nostalgia, but the Total War games are consistently the best RTS games ever created. The depth of gameplay and the chance to change history... especially for history buffs like me, the games are amazing.

Super Smash Bros. Melee- I've been playing fighting games since 1994. Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes, and on and on. Only SSBM is as exciting and fast paced as I want, with a skill cap that's sky high and infinite replayabilty. It's 14 year lifespan on the competitive scene is testament to that.

Mechwarrior 2- Sorry Heavy Gear, forgive me Armored Core, I apologize Steel Battalion, you'll have to excuse me Chrome Hounds but nothing matches the gameplay, story(if you read it) and atmosphere of Mechwarrior 2, Ghost Bear's Legacy, and Mercenaries. From the halls of the honor bound Clans, to the mechbays of cutt throat mercenaries, these games never let up and never stopped being the most exciting mech sim around. Let me know when they make a proper sequel. Until then, mech sims are ruined for me.

 

[kilenem]

I guess Mario Kart. Crash is the only thing that comes close, since MK8 ripped it off.

Smash Bros. Playstation Allstars kind of Blew.

Marvel V.S Capcom 2. I don't think any other game has matched its insanity of Just random ass characters from two different franchises in a fighting game. Disney and Waner Bros. have the power to try to Match it.

X-men Legends. No dungeon crawler has matched the amount of fanservice.

 

[SeventhSigil]

I came here to say that, but you put so much feeling into it that I can't improve it.

City of Heroes/Villains/Rogues ruined all future MMO's for me. No loot system, no rolling for the ingredients to your IO recipe, teaming up was super easy with the sidekick system, bases were amazing and once built up, could help streamline the game for you. AE, giant monsters, zone events, Task/Strikeforces, incarnate system, alignment(hero, vigilante, rogue, villain) switching, the insane amount of character customization, badge collecting, loyalty rewards(especially angel/demon wings of course), travel powers at 14 originally but lvl 4 later, near infinite respecs, and the best gaming community I have ever encountered.

I recently thought about it, and maybe it's a good thing the game shut down. I'll always have the memory of my perfect MMO, which made you feel like a super being and whose scope in terms of story and interesting characters dwarfs even WoW by far.

What irritates me about it shutting down was, well, the same kind of Burn Everything And Salt The Earth approach companies can take; the game had a pretty passionate fanbase, and even Paragon itself was trying to organize a deal to buy itself out, (becoming independent from NCSoft and take CoH with it) but regardless, NCSoft just ended up torpedoing the whole thing instead. All to keep an IP that they don't actually seem to be doing anything with. Bwargh.

Keeping an eye on the Kickstarted City of Titans, but trying to keep my hopes down. It still looks super early in development, either way, so nothing going to be happening on that front any time soon.

 

[Kyle Winston]

Fire Emblem games seem to be the only grid-based, tactical game I seem to like. I hated all the preparation you had to go through in the Tactics Ogre games, as well as slow combat seem to go. Same with Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea. I also have no interest in the Agarest Kingdom series.

 

[someguy1231]

Tekken 5, 6, and TTT2. Before 2008, I use to play all kinds of fighters and was pretty decent at them, but when I started playing Tekken competitively I stopped giving a shit about the rest because I wasn't getting the rush I got from Tekken from other fighters.

 

[Akjosch]

I'd say it's not because it was good, but ARMA 3 ruined FPS's, probably because I played with people who know a ton about military hardware. Practicality and adherence to reality became far more important than anything else for me, so whenever I see some fool carrying a marksman's rifle without a scope I just get ticked off.

Pretty much the same for me, though I already held up the original Operation Flashpoint and Arma games as quintessential FPS games for a long time.

In other types of games, Dwarf Fortress ruined everything with procedural generation for me. When a single developer can consistently out-perform top AAA studios, you know they screwed up.

 

[Rabish Bini]

Warlords Battlecry II ruined the RTS genre for me. Any other strategy games like Civ or whathaveyou I'm fine with, but I can't play games like Age of Empires or Warcraft III, because WBC2 is just better.

 

[dangoball]

I'm not really one to have things ruined or spoiled for me by an excellent entry, but I think that:

Sandbox games got ruined for me by Mount and Blade: Warband. God, I've clocked over 320 hours into that game and I'm so far from getting bored of it. It's also like two different games in the mercenary and the ruler stages. First you worry about meeting an army that will whack your ass and scatter your army, but once you have a company of 150 elite troops and a kingdom behind your back, battles no longer phase you, now it's all politics and managing relationships (Diplomacy player here).
Like Saint Rows 4 is fun, but it grows repetitive so fast. The most fun I had with the game was when I first entered virtual Steelport and tried to survive for as long as I could on full alert (no wardens yet). I even managed to hijack the UFO bomber, that was epic and a highlight of the game.

I've put a solid 127 hours into it thus far.

I laugh at your puny number.

 

[mysecondlife]

Witcher 3 certainly has increased my dislike for Skyrim. I don't think I'd ever play western RPG (mainly dominated by Bethesda and Bioware) again. I haven't finished the game but I'm confident that W3 has set the standard for fantasy western RPG. Now only if they fixed the crafting bugs...

EDIT: Also, I'm willing to give Guild Wars 2 a try. I haven't played it but I hear high praises about it. I'm already writing off all the others for having subscription fees.

 

[DerangedHobo]

Katawa Shoujo - I don't think I will ever pick up a VN after that.

Life Is Strange - Telltale can git fucked with their defeatist bullshit. Even though I respect Telltale games from a character standpoint, it seems to me that Life Is Strange actually manages to add in the idea of consequence into that genre. Either that or I'm just a soppy bastard (that ending, man).

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I'm not really one to have things ruined or spoiled for me by an excellent entry, but I think that:

Sandbox games got ruined for me by Mount and Blade: Warband. God, I've clocked over 320 hours into that game and I'm so far from getting bored of it. It's also like two different games in the mercenary and the ruler stages. First you worry about meeting an army that will whack your ass and scatter your army, but once you have a company of 150 elite troops and a kingdom behind your back, battles no longer phase you, now it's all politics and managing relationships (Diplomacy player here).
Like Saint Rows 4 is fun, but it grows repetitive so fast. The most fun I had with the game was when I first entered virtual Steelport and tried to survive for as long as I could on full alert (no wardens yet). I even managed to hijack the UFO bomber, that was epic and a highlight of the game.

I've put a solid 127 hours into it thus far.

I laugh at your puny number.

shhhhh.....I'm pacing myself.

Spoiler: I'll get there someday.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Open world i would have said Morrowind. Total game changer and one game i still play now. GTA5 was good, but once i completed the story the fun dropped and the game world was boring.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Nothing. I've strained to recall all the best games I have played, and every one of them has its share of flaws.

The closest I've come is Metroid Prime 1&2, followed by Terraria and the original Final Fantasy Tactics. But even all of those games have elements I feel can be (or have been) done better, and so long as there is room for improvement, I cannot see their genres as "ruined".

As for others...well, I'll just say I find perennials like WoW to be grossly over-rated as games.
(I played WoW for about a week before realizing that was literally all I would be doing for months on end going forward.
Even with friends in a well-established guild, I decided that if I wanted to socialize and play why would I bother with mindless grind?)

 

[sageoftruth]

Superman 64 best game ever made

Hell yeah! The visuals were simply breathtaking and the experience was so empowering. It really is a shame no one makes any good super hero games like this one any more. Batman just runs around and beats up thugs, but Superman can fly through RINGS, man! How awesome is that? People just stopped making good games after that gem was released. A shame really.

 

[someguy1231]

Witcher 3 certainly has increased my dislike for Skyrim. I don't think I'd ever play western RPG (mainly dominated by Bethesda and Bioware) again. I haven't finished the game but I'm confident that W3 has set the standard for fantasy western RPG. Now only if they fixed the crafting bugs...

EDIT: Also, I'm willing to give Guild Wars 2 a try. I haven't played it but I hear high praises about it. I'm already writing off all the others for having subscription fees.

Yea, after Skyrim I didn't think any WPRG would ever dethrone it. Then a little-known studio from Poland came out of nowhere...

As for Guild Wars 2, I have it and I've leveled to 80. My opinion of the game? Meh, at best. Maybe my experience was unique but the game didn't feel very social to me. As I leveled, other players rarely spoke to me, and I rarely even saw other players except in the big city hubs. By the time I hit 80, I felt like I had just completed the first ever single-player MMO. Of course, the "no subscriptions" thing is certainly nice...

 

[cikame]

Tekken Tag 2, every other fighting game seems small and unpolished with worse netcode in comparison.