Gaming innovation landmarks

[AlexAL]

*crickets*

 

[Scooby Doo]

Dark Forces - first 3D environment game. It wasn't truly 3D, but all previous FPS games were limited in not allowing you to travel under/over other areas of the map. Dark Forces got around that limitation.

Well Descent 1 allowed all 6 degrees of freedom in a maze like map, which came out about the same time. Although i'm not sure what category it falls under, a flight-sim FPS.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Descent was awesome multiplayer too.

I guess it would be a sci-fi 3D space shooter.

 

[lakedude]

Descent, ugh, makes me dizzy just thinking about it.

Granted it was a cool game but the 3d maps in weightlessness were just a little too much for me. Which way do I go left or right, oh crap or up or down? Gravity would have helped but that weightless stuff, yikes.

"Okay time to exit, lets see I made left here coming in, but I was upside down at the time so the would be a right but now I'm headed the other way so it would be a left, I think..."

 

[DigDog]

wasteland had SKILLS.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I think Crusader: No Remorse was ahead of its time. Ironically it was marketed as "A shooter from a new perspective" when it was the isometric viewpoint that probably hurt it most. It had a degree of continuity, scripting, and minor puzzle solving that made it feel like an isometric Half-Life, and some of the hacking features and minor RPG elements were undoubtedly influential on Deus Ex. Oh, and can't forget the innovation of air duct crawling. :awe:

The death animations were top-notch too, two years earlier than Fallout. :awe:

EDIT: Oh, and one incredibly cult and forgotten game is The Colony. A first-person-shooter/adventure game from 1987 with System Shock-style level design (one giant space ship with goals throughout many floors in a quasi-non-linear way) and a lot of world interaction (keypads, drivable forklifts to pick up items, computer terminals/data pads to read about the backstory, etc).

 

[wuliheron]

Don't know about that. I succinctly remember using an in-game map and weapons mod program for Wolfenstein 3D.

It wasn't the first game that could be modified, but the first to really take modding out of the closet and apply the best mods people made to a commercial product.

 

[Stringjam]

Doom 3 - Worlds first flashlight simulator.

I can actually leave my flashlight on......I guess in the future tac lights don't have that capability.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Dark Forces - first 3D environment game. It wasn't truly 3D, but all previous FPS games were limited in not allowing you to travel under/over other areas of the map. Dark Forces got around that limitation.

Marathon did this earlier.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

wasteland had SKILLS.

Incredible game for the 80's, really.

Not sure if it was super innovative, but Eye of the Beholder really dropped my jaw when I saw my friend's older brother playing it on his computer years & years ago.


http://www.bestoldgames.net/eng/old-games/eye-of-the-beholder.php

 

[rayfieldclement]

Hold it Sim City. This first simulation game. What about NFL challenge, John Madden Football and Flight Simulator

Don't forget a game in the late 50s or early 60s called Spacewar.

 

[Pia]

Warcraft 1: Did this not kickstart the rts genre? I spent more time with Warcraft 2 though.

Warcraft was a lousy game and not much of a success IIRC. It was the first RTS to have non-local multiplayer (Herzog Zwei had local multiplayer) but the execution just sucked. For me C&C was the start of real multiplayer RTSing.

 

[waggy]

why is World of Warcraft brought up? it was spawned from Everquest. Hell even EQ was not the 1st MMO.


WoW hust happens to be the best one made.

 

[magomago]

Warcraft was a lousy game and not much of a success IIRC. It was the first RTS to have non-local multiplayer (Herzog Zwei had local multiplayer) but the execution just sucked. For me C&C was the start of real multiplayer RTSing.

yup i agree...I never even played WC1 back in the day, a few years back I went to give it a shot and I found it just lacking when compared to C&C. WC2 was much better though.

 

[Pia]

yup i agree...I never even played WC1 back in the day, a few years back I went to give it a shot and I found it just lacking when compared to C&C. WC2 was much better though.

Me and my friends used to have 2-4 computer LANs every month or so, and almost exclusively played C&C and Doom. I'd like to say we even got pretty good in C&C. Initially played with many scrub rules, but then just dropped them, engineer rushed each other and did every other dirty trick imaginable, until we could defend those things and were playing legit. At the end, I think the only thing we thought was actually broken was NOD bikes (too good at harvester sniping when microed well) and we kept a rule limiting them to 3 simultaneously on the field.

We tried WC2 for a little bit, but after C&C's asymmetric factions, we thought WC2's symmetric factions were really boring. Sure it was better than Warcraft, but not enough.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Half Life 2 was the first game I can remember that had a meaningful implementation of physics. To this day it still has the best physics based puzzles in gaming.

 

[FMX]

WoW hust happens to be the best one made.

Isn't that the point?

The iPad wasn't the first tablet - but it was and still probably is the best one made.

 

[thejunglegod]

Half Life 2 was the first game I can remember that had a meaningful implementation of physics. To this day it still has the best physics based puzzles in gaming.

Agreed. Portal is a close second though.

Blizzard was the first to invest in jaw-dropping cinematic cutscenes if i'm not mistaken.

 

[WT]

Quake 1- First completely 3D video game engine. Sounds maybe trivial today, but some of us were just floored when we discovered you could look in any direction including up and literally held our breath when we swam under water in a video game for the first time.

My vote goes to this one.

 

[Borealis7]

Agreed. Portal is a close second though.

Blizzard was the first to invest in jaw-dropping cinematic cutscenes if i'm not mistaken.

no...Westwood did it before, and better. the interlaced cutscenes from 1995's Command & Conquer made me gasp in awe at the time. and later, Lands of Lore 3 had pretty amazing cinematics.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Half Life 2 and Total Annihilation are also good examples.

 

[Texashiker]

Previously, quake had just been deathmatch.
r

Negative, there was capture the flag.

 

[thespyder]

that I can remember

Pretty much says it all.

For me, as far as landmark games....

Doom. Sure there was Wolfenstein first, but Doom really was the point where I got into FPS.

Baldur's Gate: there wasn't anything like this and there hasn't been anything since.

Neverwinter Nights: Really took the RPG and custom content to the next level.

Morrowwind: The creation (in earnest) of the Sandbox RPG. Sure there was Daggerfall and Arena prior, but Morrowind brought things to the next level

Diablo/Diablo 2: Say what you will, these games spawned a generation of Action RPG games. and gamers. Blizzard might have taken stuff that went before, but they did it right in ways that no one else had done. Pity they jumped the shark with the third one.

Masters of Orion Taking the 4X space exploration by storm and leading to MOO2 and GalCiv.

Xcom: Turn Based tactical squat based combat and exploration. turned the 4x strategy on it's ear.

Knights of the Old Republic: Taking RPG into the Star Wars universe.

Everquest: The ORIGINAL king of MMO. Anything and Everything that WoW has it owes to Everquest.

 

[thejunglegod]

Morrowwind: The creation (in earnest) of the Sandbox RPG. Sure there was Daggerfall and Arena prior, but Morrowind brought things to the next level Diablo/Diablo 2: Say what you will, these games spawned a generation of Action RPG games. and gamers. Blizzard might have taken stuff that went before, but they did it right in ways that no one else had done. Pity they jumped the shark with the third one.

Totally agree with you on these. The entire world of Morrowind was just jaw-dropping and unlike anything seen before.

BTW, i think there is a new breed of indie games out there that are hard as shit. A landmark perhaps? I think I wanna be the guy started it all. Presently there are a ton of insanely hard indie games that have the sole purpose of frustrating the hell out of you.
It appeals to a certain section of the crowd i guess.

 

[RocksteadyDotNet]

Ultimate Doom- First game to make extensive use of modders. Id deliberately made the game as easy to modify as possible and then collected all the best level mods in Ultimate Doom.

Quake 1- First completely 3D video game engine. Sounds maybe trivial today, but some of us were just floored when we discovered you could look in any direction including up and literally held our breaths when we swam under water in a video game for the first time.

Half Life- First real combination of a movie and a video game. No cut scenes, no text messages to read, just a seamless continuity of video game/movie where you shoot, move around countless objects in your environment, and characters talk to you as if you really were a main character in an epic movie. Even the AI was good and when Half Life 2 came out with significantly improved graphics and physics it blew people away.

Err, no. Decent did it before Quake.

And I'm pretty sure there was one before decent.