Games that were ahead of their time

[apac]

I had a conversation with a friend of mine earlier today and we got to talking about a few excellent games I played many years ago. When he mentioned that he'd never heard of any of them, and this is a guy who had played the original Starcraft, Diablo, etc, it occurred to me that these are considered "failures" because they never achieved the player base to be widely successful.

I wouldn't be surprised if games like this would probably be very successful today given the huge shift toward broadband internet, and multiplayer PC and console gaming. In fact, one of the thoughts I had was that it's rather surprising that no one has tried to re-make the ideas. Are there patent laws that prevent it? Here's one we were discussing.


Allegiance (Microsoft) -

Online space combat FPS. It played like an interesting combination of Freespace and Homeworld, with a taste of Battlefield thrown in. Players on each side begin at one end of a network of control zones. The goal is to take control of each of the zones (there was the equivalent of a "warp gate" between each) and eventually destroy the other teams capitol ships and starbase. Controlling zones earned your team money, which could be used for tech upgrades.

Each player controlled one of a handful of ship choices (heavy fighter, scout, etc), and one player assumed the role of a commander. Eventually your team teched up enough to have frigates and larger cruiser-type ships, and improved tech on your fighters, which lead to some pretty fun battles. At least, as awesome as they could be with 8 (?) people per team.

Problems at the time
- they tried a pay-to-play model, which really wasn't sustainable for that type of game
- dial-up internet could lead to annoying latency problems
- server and client machines had difficulty handling large numbers of players in a given area
- gameplay could get repetitive, needed a bit more depth

I'd love to see a company take the idea and evolve it to a Battlefield-style or MMOFPS game, with veterancy, galaxy control, etc.

 

[OCGuy]

ARMA and ARMA 2.

The most immersive, beautiful multiplayer games I have played. The learning curve is so high, however, that it turns most people off within the first 5 minutes of trying.

It is worlds apart from your typical CoD/Valve FPS.

 

[shortylickens]

Deus Ex.
Homeworld 1.
Half-life.

 

[apac]

Deus Ex.
Homeworld 1.
Half-life.

I'd actually argue that those games WERE in their time. All of those were pretty successful, expecially half-life. Did they advance the genre? Absolutely.

I'm talking about games that only had a cult following but by today's standards were largely unsuccessful. Another one that comes to mind is Asheron's Call. ~8 servers, with peak load ~3000 players per server. I played that game more than any other to date, and most people have never heard of it. I think the learning curve turned most people away but it had a pretty unique world that I found much more fun to explore than, say, WoW. Also they tried to compete against Everquest when pay-to-play was not very common, and everyone that wanted to was playing EQ.

 

[KaOTiK]

I loved Allegiance, teams could be much larger then 8 though, I can't remember how many per side but it was much more then 8. I was so damn good at that game and loved it so much.

My vote would probably be Planetside.

 

[apac]

I loved Allegiance, teams could be much larger then 8 though, I can't remember how many per side but it was much more then 8. I was so damn good at that game and loved it so much.

My vote would probably be Planetside.

I think the teams could be much larger than 8, but there were 2 problems
- not enough players to fill the servers, so the teams were never maxed
- latency and framerate lag could be a problem with too many people

Agree about Planetside. Never played it myself, how similar was it to Tribes? You'd think some of that community would have kept it going.

 

[Via]

My vote would go to the strategy series by Koei, which I played as a kid on NES.

Especially Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

What you could do in that game was nothing short or miraculous for an early 90's console game. The battles alone are still some of the most fun I've ever experienced on any platform.

If you were outnumbered you could set fire to certain tiles you could burn the enemy up and survive. Or the wind could change direction and fry you instead.

Awesome stuff.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Xcom it didn't fail but today they could do Internet coop maybe user made content. It was the first game I saw that had field of view, units that got better with use and destructible battlefields.

 

[KaOTiK]

I think the teams could be much larger than 8, but there were 2 problems
- not enough players to fill the servers, so the teams were never maxed
- latency and framerate lag could be a problem with too many people

Agree about Planetside. Never played it myself, how similar was it to Tribes? You'd think some of that community would have kept it going.

I always played in at least 1v1 team full matches, but many times 3+ team ones. I remember the events the devs would have with custom maps for like 12 teams and they would be all filled up, I was almost always a commander, ppl thought I was a dick but I won nearly all the time .

Planetside was tribes ish but on a much larger scale. I think the monthly fee and you needed a pretty good computer at the time to run it ultimately killed it. Was good though from what lil I remember. I'm interested in how the new one is going to turnout.

 

[Martimus]

Galactic Civilization had crappy graphics and an even worse UI, but the options and AI on it were second to none. That game along with its sequel are still the only two 4x games I have played where playing the computer actually seemed like playing another person since they followed the same game mechanics you did, and made logical decisions that weren't scripted.

On that thought, STALKER is another game that seemed to be ahead of its time. I loved the fact that the game world would advance just fine without me pushing it along like in other games. I loved that you might see the corpse of a guy you talked to before since he got into some trouble somewhere and coudlnt' handle it. I liked that the NPCs seemed to have their own life that didn't rely on you, and they tried to make their life make some logical sense so the world didn't kill imersion like so many other games do.

 

[zerocool84]

ARMA and ARMA 2.

The most immersive, beautiful multiplayer games I have played. The learning curve is so high, however, that it turns most people off within the first 5 minutes of trying.

It is worlds apart from your typical CoD/Valve FPS.

The thing is that most people want to play a game. If a game is too realistic it sucks because it's just not fun.

 

[HarvardAce]

I remember playing Allegiance in college when it was in Beta. I had a lot of fun with it, but never played once it went live and they started charging for the game.

That said, a quick google search makes it seem like Microsoft released the source for it and it is now available as a free game: http://www.freeallegiance.org

Anyone have any experience playing this version of it?

 

[BladeVenom]

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, dumbed down gameplay, half finished buggy mess, almost completely absent AI, combined with no support made it a failure when it came out. Now lots of new games are like that.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Ultima Underworld. Leagues ahead of any other first person game based on engine, which was probably the most advanced 2.5D shooter engine ever aside from maybe Marathon's, resulting in it being unplayable for many computers of its time. Moreover, the FPS/RPG mixture was much more complex than what most were used to at the time, and the controls a bit too retro (I don't think mouse-usage was widespread in games in 1992) for all of the gameplay features present.

 

[Barfo]

Any game that ran like ass, had beautiful graphics and crappy gameplay predicted the future.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Any game that ran like ass, had beautiful graphics and crappy gameplay predicted the future.

On this note: Trespasser. The large outdoor jungle levels were definitely new for its time and ragdoll physics was unheard of at the time, released the same day as Half-Life. Didn't save it from a 3.something from Gamespot.

 

[apac]

On this note: Trespasser. The large outdoor jungle levels were definitely new for its time and ragdoll physics was unheard of at the time, released the same day as Half-Life. Didn't save it from a 3.something from Gamespot.

Was that the one where you looked down and saw your characters cleavage? And you had a hand that you could try and grope yourself with?

 

[hellios318]

This was no pc but the first red faction for ps2 with geomod tech ...tunneling!

 

[eLiu]

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, dumbed down gameplay, half finished buggy mess, almost completely absent AI, combined with no support made it a failure when it came out. Now lots of new games are like that.

ahahahaha oh man i remember when that came out. the gamespot video review was hilarious

 

[BFG10K]

Descent, Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake.

 

[shortylickens]

On this note: Trespasser. The large outdoor jungle levels were definitely new for its time and ragdoll physics was unheard of at the time, released the same day as Half-Life. Didn't save it from a 3.something from Gamespot.

Yeah but they admitted many times that Trespasser was coded poorly and thats the main reason it never got more than 10 FPS.

 

[Mogadon]

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, dumbed down gameplay, half finished buggy mess, almost completely absent AI, combined with no support made it a failure when it came out. Now lots of new games are like that.

That cracked me up, unfortunately so true.

My vote goes to Planetside. Although it's not like the game wasn't a success, it certainly made Sony alot of dollar, just never made it mainstream big. Hoping we'll see more of the same great gameplay in Planetside 2.

 

[zinfamous]

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, dumbed down gameplay, half finished buggy mess, almost completely absent AI, combined with no support made it a failure when it came out. Now lots of new games are like that.

lol. well played, sir.

 

[zinfamous]

Star Control 2.

I've yet to see another game that has a progressive, real-time storyline that will pass you buy if you waste your time dilly-dallying on something else, and will essentially force you to start over a new game if you fuck up too much.

No one else has done this, as best I can tell. Combine that with RPGlite upgrading, excellent 2D space combat mechanics, excellent writing and characterization, you have one hell of an awesome game that is probably more fun to play than 80% of today's games--and it's ~16 years old, now?

 

[CurseTheSky]

Asheron's Call.

This is STILL, in my opinion, the best MMO to come out to date. The fact that they initially released the game with no true level cap (you would eventually hit a max level of 126, but you could still gain exp and increase skills / stats with it), the landmass was HUGE, there were countless dungeons and special areas, very few items (normally only quest-related) were bound to your character, all of the good items were randomly generated loot, virtually any monster of a decent level could drop a godly random loot item, projectiles (spells, arrows, etc.) shot in a target's direction but could actually be dodged by moving or strike another object first, etc. all contributed to the game's success.

Unfortunately, the graphics and interface are so dated by today's standards that few would ever consider trying it. It's sad really, because Turbine put together the groundwork that would literally create a blockbuster MMO if released with a brand new engine today.

I say that it's ahead of it's time because back in its heyday (1999-2004ish), MMOs, even despite Everquest and Ultima Online, weren't as popular or well known as they are today. Now they're almost a household name.