Basically what’s a game that you’ve played that seemed so mind blowingly unique at the time but for one reason or another the game never took off and other developers didn’t pick up and run with it either.
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The HUD being at the back of your car rather than in the corner of the screen in Split/Second. It feels like a no brainer that the important information is where your eyes are already focused, but I’ve never seen another racer do this.
This reminds me of Trackmania. The “license plate” in the current title is your speed and the number on your car changes with your position.
That’s pretty clever.
God I love that game so much, I’ve put so many hours into it with friends. Anyone who reads this, if you’re looking for a fun split-screen racing game, look no further. 10/10
You reminded me of The Getaway (PS2) a GTA style open world game set in London that was completely HUD less and they pulled it off well.
Navigation was done using car indicators, damage/health was done visually, bullets/ammo was tricky but there were always enough guns lying around to not be a huge issue.
Dragon’s Dogma Pawn system
Everyone has a Pawn, an NPC companion you create. The other two party members are also Pawns, but downloaded from other players.
Need a mage that knows a fire spell to fight a Griffin? Pop online and download one. One of your pawns too squishy? Download one with better armor.
The cool thing about this system is pawns retain knowledge from what they see and have done. If someone has finished a quest you haven’t, they will help lead you to the next location, or call out an enemy’s weakness.
Pawns also take back what they have learned to the player who owns them. And when you return a pawn, you can give it an item that goes back to the pawn’s owner.
It’s a great way to help other players in a single player game.
Pawns are stupid, why would I roleplay a friend playing beside me. At that point just add co-op and multiplayer. I hated and still hate dragons dogma for that decision.
The entirety of Death Stranding. The whole thing works perfectly but nobody has dared to copy it
I’ve never played it, but I can tell it’s not my thing from looking at it. That’s not really a mark against it.
I think with something like Death Stranding, it’s less a collection of cool mechanics and more the entire package. And I mean the whole thing, which takes a monster level of dedication on the development side. Mechanics, story, characters, atmosphere. Even down to HUD elements.
Like I said, I know I wouldn’t love the game, but even being an outsider looking in, I can tell it’s truly unique in every way.
Kojima reminds me of Queen. Every Queen song sounds different from the vast majority of other Queen songs, but they’re all distinctly Queen. Same way I feel about Kojimas’ game franchises
This, I want to see inventory weight distribution and physicality + terrain angle taken far more seriously in certain kinds of open world games the way Death Stranding does it, they lead to interesting things that actually feel like an adventure you’re going on, with stories to tell not of your destination, but the journey.
I feel like Death Stranding’s movement is like, a first-ish (do car-based delivery sims like MudRunner count? Feels like something that would be up for debate.) baseline for something other games can elaborate on.
WB’s nemesis system.
And sadly we’ll never see it go anywhere.
The upcoming Wonder Woman may have it according to leaks.
Simultaneous sound and light meters in Splinter Cell. Yes, some games have the enemies respond to fast/slow walking sounds differently, but having an actual volume readout was next-level.
Last time I saw a light meter was the Theif games.
I thought it would suck but it’s honestly an amazing feature
Ah Chaos Theory, such a good game.
On Xbox live you had to watch how loud you talked over the headset or gaurds would hear you.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is still my favorite stealth game.
It’s a goddamn shame that Ubisoft owns it. In the right hands, it could have had a second wind, but we all know that them rebooting the series would destroy it.
“Purchase your Thermal Vision Goggles for 4.99!”
“Purchase this invisible suit for 29.99!”
Dude I’ve waited years for a game to live up to Chaos Theory but nothing has and I doubt anything ever will.
The game I’d kick this off with is an EA game called Majestic from 2001. I remember playing this when I first started college and the internet was young and it blew my mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game)
This game was like being wrapped up in a real life conspiracy. You would browse obscure web pages, get faxes (which believe it or not was still a thing back then, haha), get phone calls, early blackberry texts, emails, and even a very rudimentary ai chat system over AIM. All while trying to uncover an online conspiracy.
I remember being super excited for each new episode and was really bummed when it got discontinued a year later. I seem to remember the writing wasn’t all that great and the acting was old school FMV bad, but IMO that added to the charm.
I feel like this game concept was way ahead of its time. Can you imagine a similar thing using AI tech from 2023? That feels like it would have so much potential.
You just unlocked a seriously backlogged memory. I remember reading about this game/service in a GamePro magazine and it sounded fucking NUTS. I always wanted to play it but I was too young and we didn’t have the necessary stuff like a fax machine to get the most out of it.
It was pretty nuts. I didn’t have a blackberry so I couldn’t use the blackberry feature. And our printer worked as a fax machine but we didn’t have a dedicated phone line for it cause it was also the dial up modem line haha. So I got kind of a watered down version of the game because I couldn’t use all of the features.
I remember that game! I played it for a bit and remember that it ended up making me paranoid as heck! You could choose anywhere from light immersion where all the phone calls and such had a disclaimer at the beginning that it was part of the game, to full immersion where there was no warning and you were getting death threats out of nowhere late at night.
It was a really neat concept and I was sad when they shut it down.
LOL. My parents would have killed me if I had them get random death threats to the phone line without a disclaimer. I was still living at home the first couple years of college. The game was super immersive. I liked the story too. They made that whole fake game company that supposedly made the game and then had them collapse and be behind the conspiracy. Super cool. Back when EA stood for innovation instead of destroying smaller companies that it acquires.
get faxes (which believe it or not was still a thing back then, haha)
I mean I can believe it considering I had to randomly fax something 21 years since then haha.
Interesting. I think The Black Watchmen has done something similar but I haven’t played it.
I used to play Black Watchmen and they did a lot of he same stuff described here. Depending on the city you lived in you could participate in real life events and they’d leave weird letters in your mailbox.
I mean, for me, it’d have to be the Nemesis system
Though not because nobody wanted to do anything with it
But because WarnerBros fuckin copy-righted it :P
Tribes: Ascend for me
Shazbot! Tribes ascend was peak fps for me and no other online shooter has come close. A shame it died.
What is the specific mechanic?
parrapa the rapper and umm jammer lammy
Mount and blade
Does black & white count here? The god game where you could be good or evil? I could be out of the loop but have there been similar games after b&w 2?
I really hope someone revives this genre. B+W 1 and 2 are some of my all time favorite games and nothing comes close. It was like Tamagotchi on steroids.
Wind-based quest markers - Ghost of Tsushima
The lost woods in breath of the wild used this mechanic as a puzzle
This has spoiled me so much that I just cannot stand open world games that constantly make you stare at a mini map to navigate it. It is soooo much more immersive and keeps your eyes on the world.
Rockstar games or Cyberpunk irk me with how much I have to look at maps. They’re beautiful worlds but you can’t even look at them when getting around.
Agreed, that was so dope. It’s so stylized though that it would be hard to a, have a good project to do it in, and b, not feel like a rip off. Maybe an indie title could pull it off.
Driver San Francisco, a game where to can instantly take control of any car of the traffic, and there’s that 2nd person mission too.
The game that nobody can get…
except using subway giftcards
Given that logic puzzles are hard to make and it’d be for a relatively niche audience, I’m not entirely baffled by no one ripping it off, but I’m surprised we haven’t had at least one developer copying Return of the Obra Dinn.
If you like Obra Dinn, Check out Curse of the Golden Idol! It has comparable detective / event reconstruction gameplay
Haven’t played it but chants of sennaar feels pretty similar from what I’ve seen you’re just deducing words instead of people identity
Nemesis system from shadow of mordor.