"There's no going back. You changed things."

[goodman528]

I can't seem to play CoH anymore. Online play is nothing but everybody meta-games and uses bland strategies. I'd rather play a click fest where multiple strategies are possible than a game where only 1 strategy is doable.

I'd argue that CoH is the most dynamic and least repetitive RTS I've ever played and like goodman, I find it hard to play other games in the genre after experiencing CoH.

However, like many of the games people are mentioning, it's not been around long enough to see how influential it'll actually be so isn't very relevant to this thread.

Yer, I think CoH has shown the way for the future, squad based tactics and "less is more". It's simply more fun that way. I hope future RTS developers really take some notice of this gameplay style. As for being around long enough to be influential, then Warcraft, C&C and Total Annhilation(?) has to be the top two / three.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

I'm sorry...I thought the gist of the title was "Games that changed the course of gaming history."

Course change, make all your shooters for consoles now!

That's the way I see it at least.

 

[Caliostro]

That's my problem with it... I don't see developers flock to copy gears of war... In fact I don't remember a single game that seems to have taken Gears of Wars as a huge inspiration...

Maybe you should look into Army of Two.

I admit I haven't played Army of Two.

Well, my bad, there's one game.

 

[Trace2010]

I'm sorry...I thought the gist of the title was "Games that changed the course of gaming history."

Course change, make all your shooters for consoles now!

That's the way I see it at least.

Oh #$%^$##$^ not Area 51!!! NOT AREA 51!!! NOT HOUSE OF THE DEAD!!!

(thus screamed in agonizing frustration when the Playstation version of Area 51 and the Dreamcast version of House of the Dead came out).

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Thief was a very ground breaking game in terms of first person shooters

Thank you! I was terrified that I'd get to the end of this thread and not see a single mention of the grand-daddy of stealth games. Thief showed us that you could make an interesting game without the ever-escalating armory of homing rocket grenade laser machine gun launchers. How many first-person games before Thief allowed you to win a level and proceed without laying a finger on a single enemy present?

And let's give Goldeneye 64 some love here. Not only did it redefine the console FPS scene, it also showed that movie-license-based games did not have to suck.

I actually kinda mentioned Thief and its sequels but what the hey

So you did, so you did. I must've missed that. My apologies.

 

[SimuLord]

When it comes to completely redefining a genre, I invite you to consider...

Grand Theft Auto III and Morrowind (redefined the third-person shooter and the RPG in such a way as that any game that doesn't open up its world and that restricts the player (or even provides the impression that it's too restrictive) is judged harshly. Look at Fable (the first one). Besides Molyneux running his yap, the game's biggest flaw was that it created the illusion of an open world without delivering the expectations that games like GTA and the Elder Scrolls series had set. Sure, true open-world RPG gaming probably goes back at least as far as Daggerfall, but it was in 2001-02 that it became the standard against which others are judged.

Rome: Total War finally got the concept of Total Strategy right to the point where you could consider it a distinct genre from the base-building build-and-bash RTS games like Age of Empires and War/Starcraft. Zerg rush doesn't work in Total War; you actually have to use strategy in a strategy game.

The Sims, of course, created a genre out of something so utterly mundane that you'd never think it'd be any fun. Get a job, buy better stuff, have a happy life through shameless materialism? That sounds like a dystopian world (and, to be fair, my Sims 2 neighborhood is pretty dystopian but that's only because the poor Sims have the misfortune of living under the thumb of a capricious and easily-offended god. I'm like Old Testament God when I play.)

And of course there's SimCity, Civilization, and Railroad Tycoon to consider for launching the city-builder, historical empire-builder, and business game genres to mainstream popularity...

 

[ImmortalItalian]

Doom <3 By far.

 

[Caliostro]

And of course there's SimCity, Civilization, and Railroad Tycoon to consider for launching the city-builder, historical empire-builder, and business game genres to mainstream popularity...

I'd say Theme Park launched the business one though.

 

[stompy]

That's my problem with it... I don't see developers flock to copy gears of war... In fact I don't remember a single game that seems to have taken Gears of Wars as a huge inspiration...

Most game developers don't actually say "Yeh, I was really inspired by such and such to include this feature..." (though, I suppose you could then suggest that kill.switch as influential in bringing the cover system into gaming, if you wanted).

Instead, have a look at the number of games that include cover systems in them now. Not so many had them before Gears, and even then, those that did revolved around tactical combat. Now, you find games such as Grand Theft Auto, where it's supposed to be a video game, having a cover system. The reason I nominated Gears is that it made cover systems popular mechanics in gaming today, and it's now many games.

 

[Wargamer]

In terms of Console FPS's, Halo doesn't even deserve a mention.

Goldeneye is probably the first FPS that I can think of which wasn't defined as a DOOM Clone. It was big, it was fun, it was very, very good. However, I'm not sure how much it really changed things.

Perfect Dark is a game that SHOULD have changed things, but HaloTards are proof that stupid sells. Perfect Dark had, and still has, some of the best multiplayer around. Why? It has AI.

You can have up to eight AIs, known as Sims, and up to four players. Each Sim has six levels of difficulty (Meat, Easy, Normal, Hard, Perfect and Dark), and christ knows how many 'Personalities' that define how they behave (ie: PreySim makes them attack the weakest player, VengeSim makes them actively hunt whoever killed them last). In total, you've got over a hundred different combinations. Then there's the cosmetic side - there's probably several hundred possible combinations of head and body models.

As I look through my gaming library, I realise how few games actually pick up on the fact that players like Bots. Quake 3, Dredd vs Death and MOH: Rising Sun are all I can find. Unfortunately, Quake 3 offers nothing else in terms of gameplay except multiplayer deathmatch, Dredd vs Death feels clunky in deathmatch, and Rising Sun has way too few game types.

What really pisses me off is that even before games all jumped over to Online play, the idea of giving us AI opponents for Deathmatch seems to largely be an after-thought, if it's there at all. I don't find it fun playing 1 on 1 Deathmatch. I'd much rather play a 5 vs 5 using eight Bots and 2 players. I sure as hell don't want to play a 5 vs 5 online with 2 players and 8 retards.

 

[Sennz0r]

Thief was a very ground breaking game in terms of first person shooters

Thank you! I was terrified that I'd get to the end of this thread and not see a single mention of the grand-daddy of stealth games. Thief showed us that you could make an interesting game without the ever-escalating armory of homing rocket grenade laser machine gun launchers. How many first-person games before Thief allowed you to win a level and proceed without laying a finger on a single enemy present?

And let's give Goldeneye 64 some love here. Not only did it redefine the console FPS scene, it also showed that movie-license-based games did not have to suck.

I actually kinda mentioned Thief and its sequels but what the hey

So you did, so you did. I must've missed that. My apologies.

No harm done

 

[TheCheryl]

Oh wow. That would be a hard to answer question there. I've seen so much evolution to games over the years that it's staggering how far we've gone. The old DOS game days where there would be blue and pink graphics and simplistic controls turned into eight colors, then sixteen, now we have 32 bit plus.

The introduction to the mouse for use in games was big because it was all keyboard and you either typed out what you wanted or used arrow keys depending on the game before. Escape From Castle Wolfenstein was the first I think to give the illusion of a 3d environment where upon Mario 360 was the first 3d environment you could move about freely in.

Then we got pieces that changed gaming via advanced AI. Creatures, Black & White, Farcry. Creatures had instincts, emotions, biological needs, a capability of learning so strong that people would endless debate whether or not they were alive it was so well done. The creature from Black & White also whom would learn from your teaching and behave the way you directed it to be. Farcry who had enemies that actually would try to outsmart you.

There are others obviously but it would take a while to list them all for what they did. That's apart of the joys of gaming; you get to see new amazing things happen all the time.

 

[Caliostro]

earth 2140 (that was the old one right? the first ever 3d strategy game?) or at least ground control 1,

Wasn't Dune the "first" ever 3d rts?

I might be mixing things though.

 

[Zac_Dai]

Serious lols in this thread.

Some of you don't get that the thread is about games that changed the face of things and not just games that did it first. Then some seem to think that the XBOX 360 was first games console evar!! Then you have the posters who pretend PC gaming doesn't exist and likewise PC gamers who think console gaming doesn't matter. Then you get the guys who are so retro that it hurts.

Anyway enough flamebait for now. I have a long list of games I think were influential but I think it would be easier just to group them altogether and call it the Playstation one.

Might sound fanboyish but in my very humble opinion I've never known such a huge concentration of creative, original and fun games to grace any platform (including PC) in the time frame the Playstation was out for.

Now you might think thats a very bold claim but I do base it off a gaming experience spanning all consoles and PC gaming since 1992. But as with all things this is all highly subjective opinion.

As for Halo all the first one did was save a shit console, and its easy to stand out as awesome on a console full of crap games. As for the guy who claims that there was no other FPS before it or it wasn't that popular. Well you are wrong, there were plenty of decent FPS on consoles and plenty of people played them.

Nobody I know ever cared about dualwielding or silly health mechanics, it was all about shooting shiny aliens with a cool little ammo counter on your rifle. It was a fun game with nice graphics and that was it.

Now Halo 2 is important for two reasons, first that it basically made online gaming on consoles a standard and second it was the first console game to have a massive fanboy following. Now wether these were bad things or not it still changed everything.

Halo 3 should also be honoured for being the first game to have an advertising campaign more enjoyable to watch then its actual single player campaign was to play. Well done Bungie.

P.S 10 good console FPS before halo

Red Faction
Golden Eye
Turok
Timesplitters
Soldier of Fortune
Perfect Dark
Rainbow Six
Time Crisis
Medal of Honor
Max Payne (technically third person but then so is gears of war)

 

[Lord Krunk]

Final Fantasy VII (No matter what people say), Half-Life (original) and Halo: Combat Evolved.

These are 3 of the games that revolutionised gaming as a whole.

 

[SunoffaBeach]

WOW

(i never played it and i never will)

 

[JediMB]

Alrighty, time to put together a little list of influential games, in chronological order:

Tennis for Two (1958)
Spacewar! (1961)
Space Invaders (1978)

Pac-Man (1980)
Donkey King (1981) - The first platformer, unlike a certain Pitfall
Duck Hunt (1984)
Tetris (1985)
Super Mario Bros. (1985)
The Legend of Zelda (1986)
Dragon Quest (1986)
Contra (1987)
Metroid (1986)
Prince of Persia (1989)

The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) - Made point and click adventures bearable
Street Fighter II (1991)
Wolfenstein 3D (1992) - The original World War II FPS
Mortal Kombat (1992)
Super Mario Kart (1992) - Because cars are more fun with colorful weapons
Virtua Fighter (1993)
Doom (1993) - Popularized the FPS genre
Sim City 2000 (1993)
Super Metroid (1994)
Warcraft II (1995)
Duke Nukem 3D (1996) - Brought sex to the FPS genre >_>
Resident Evil (1996)
Metal Slug: Super Vehicle-001 (1996)
Quake (1996) and Quake II (1997) - Yay for polygonal shooters!
Super Mario 64 (1996)
Final Fantasy VII (1997)
GoldenEye 007 (1997)
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (1997) - Let's call it the influence of every GOOD Star Wars game ever released
Starcraft (1998)
Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Half-Life (1998) - Revolutionized storytelling and character interaction in shooters
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)
Thief: The Dark Project (1998)
Dance Dance Revolution (1999)
Quake III Arena (1999) / Unreal Tournament (1999)

The Sims (2000)
Diablo II (2000)
Grand Theft Auto III (2001) - I prefer the 2D-games, but they weren't as influential as part three
Halo (2001) - The game isn't really any good, but I do love the grenade button, and it did have its effect on console-based multiplayer communities
Final Fantasy XI (2002) - Cross-platform MMO
Battlefield 1942 (2002)
Half-Life 2 (2004)
World of Warcraft (2004) - I prefer FFXI, but WoW has done some big things for the genre
Guitar Hero (2005)
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007)
Portal (2007)
Super Mario Galaxy (2007)


And I KNOW my list is missing games from multiple genres, but I've already listed games that I must admit are somewhat obscure to me, and I just can't be expected to keep up on things that don't really interest me, can I? =P

P.S 10 good console FPS before halo

Red Faction
Golden Eye
Turok
Timesplitters
Soldier of Fortune
Perfect Dark
Rainbow Six
Time Crisis
Medal of Honor
Max Payne (technically third person but then so is gears of war)

I'd like to add that the PlayStation version of Doom was quite excellent. Not until I played that did I realize how much better the game is with a joypad. <.<

 

[leafsnail]

Well, almost all games are fairly generic these days, and the really creative ones are overlooked (so don't change much). My one would be Space Invaders or Pac Man. Showing that Small Graphics doesn't make the game any less likely to make you become legally missing.

 

[HydraZulu]

Marathon
/thread

EDIT: I mean, Do I really need to go into more detail? It completely changed the face of the FPS

Fixed it for you.

Oh, I wish... but alas I don't think Marathon influenced the industry at large, just with Bungie.

Oh, and of course SimCity was spectacularly influential in ushering in the "god game"/Sim genre.

-- Steve

Correct me if i'm wrong (i probably am), but wasn't marathon the first game to feature dual-wielding? If it wasn't the first, it was one of the first.

Oooo...pissing match. Duel wielding was first featured in Monolith's Blood game as a power-up, followed by the sequels using it as an actual weapon.

Oh my god. No pissing match going on here. I even said that I was probably wrong! I was pretty much as polite as i could possibly be. I admit my post was wrong in one area: it was off-topic. Perhaps Marathon wasn't the first game to feature dual-wielding, but it appears to me that it was the one that influenced the later games to include it. Nobody should ever forget that this ENTIRE thread is about peoples OPINIONS. I'm seeing lots and lots of people saying "OMG this game was first!!!", or "This game was the most popular!", when that is not what this thread is about. The way we should go about this, is look at a game, determine it's key features, then look at the games released over the next few years. If a majority of those games have a majority of those same features (not just basic, feel free to nit-pick), then that original game can be considered to be influential. This is the most methodical way that I can think of right now (i'm tired). I'll stop here, and allow for responses before I continue.

 

[MagnetoHydroDynamics]

Has anybody mentioned pong?