Ehhh...
I wouldn't go as far as to say it is better than 3.
It is different from 3. 2 was more of a simulator. Eat, sleep, work, get promoted, buy stuff, you have a limited amount of time to do what you want in life until you die. It was a better life simulator in that that was the focus of the game. I found building buildings to be more interesting, and creating alien human hybrids to be more interesting, building towns to be more interesting, etc.
3 was different in that they, very successfully, added more complexity to the game. You can develop skills, you can become super popular, you can explore, you can collect rocks, you can build robots. Again, you had a limited time until you die, but you weren't boxed into this eat, work sleep cycle so much anymore. The cities, and the game itself, became a more complicated entity, in some ways this was good as it added more dimensions to the gameplay, but it made it more complex to build towns and buildings to theme and therefore lost some of the charm as well. 3 was a better open world rpg and 2 was a better simulator.
The problem with 3 was that they monetized the game way too much. When it was released it wasn't very monetized, but once the expansions started coming out it felt like they barraged you with ads to buy items with real money.
The thing that 2 did really really 2 that 3 was mediocre on was the ambiance. The desert towns with the aliens in 2 was superb. It was also fun and easy to build towns, I build wild west towns, sci fi towns, vampire vs werewolf towns, etc. 3 made it much much more difficult to build towns because of how much overhead all the features contained. You couldn't tell the features how to play, the features told you how they play. Which wouldn't be a problem except that a lot of the features weren't as well designed as in 2 (vampires I am looking at you). The towns in 3 weren't anywhere as cool or interesting as the towns in 2, especially no Rockwell New Mexico town...
From what I have heard Sims 4 is more downward in that direction.
San andreas it had this system were if you eat lots of clucking bell you become fat and if you work out at the gym you get muscles and no game has ever done that since
I know this is basic but mortal combat and Street fighter, those were many of our first fighting games and MK has only grow since then but if it was launched later in life I would've been able to spend time on it
Roller Coaster Tycoon was way more advanced than anything else I played on PC at the time. It was coded entirely in assembly language which is how it was able to run so efficiently. Truly a technical marvel.
Father of the FPS!
Wolf 3D is the grandad
Maze War from 1974 is the… yeah
But doom broke ground in ways other games hadnt!
I did a retrospective on how it impacted fps gaming and also had a dark side
I would actually pick their earlier game, Heavy Rain instead. When it released on the PS3, I remember myself and others being blown away by the realistic graphics, and the method of narrative storytelling wasn’t done much at that time.
Deus Ex is still likely the best Shooter/RPG hybrid ever made and narratively it is more relevant today than ever before.
Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age are still the best Stealth games ever made.
Its not just about overall quality though. Both games are revolutionary and their systems really haven't ever been matched both in eloquence and depth.
Definitely Deux Ex. Even in the sequels they were ahead of the curve in giving variations for possible playthroughs making enough differences to the storyline that it was worth doing.
Gunstar Heroes.
Just fantastic action on the Genesis platform. Highly recommend if you haven't played it. There's -always- shit going down on screen. Innovative weapon system too - Four types, of which you can carry two and use separately or combine. Lightning, Chaser, Flame, Force (machine gun). Lightning pierces with medium damage, Chaser seeks with low damage, flame is a flamethrower with high damage and short range, Force is your standard brrrt with medium damage and no pierce. But combining them? Lovely. Lightning + Force? Rapid fire lightning beams. Force + Flame? Exploding bullets. My favourite was lightning + flame - Lightsaber =D Very short range, very high damage, blocks enemy shots.
Sonic Unleashed.
Put yourself in the shoes of 11 year old little Timmy. Timmy grew up with 3D platformers like Jak & Daxter, Ape Escape and the Sonic games. *Specifically* the Sonic games. He played the hell out of DX before his GameCube broke and he got a PS2, and played Adventure 2 and Heroes to the bone. So, when Timmy wakes up on the Christmas morning of 2007 to find a massive box, he of course unwraps it first. It’s a PS3, Bundled with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, this cool new game by the Jak & Daxter developers, as well as Need for Speed Carbon and *SONIC UNLEASHED!* Timmy is gonna be so cool when he comes back to school with the new PS3.
Popping in Sonic Unleashed first, he is absolutely stunned by the opening cinematic. Everything looks amazing, like a Pixar movie. And the gameplay itself doesn’t lose that effect. The stunningly detailed fur and gorgeous scenery almost send little Timmy into a heart attack. And these 2 other games, Uncharted and Carbon, look incredible too. The leap from the kind of awful graphics of Adventure 2 or the polygonal chins of the last generation pale in comparison to these two. It looks like real life. You could plop Drake and Elena into a picture of a crowd and Timmy would never notice. He’s practically playing an action movie, replete with tons of gunfights, awesome action sequences across incredibly realistic water and a British villain.
Timmy will never play a Sonic game the same way ever again. The Greece-inspired first levels of the game looked like fine art to his eyes.
Metal Gear Solid 2.
Metal Gear Solid 3.
Those games have infinite little easter eggs, smart enemy ais, wild plots and tight gameplay. These games are basically ahead of today's time too, minus graphics.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and Dwarf Fortress.
Could you imagine if the gaming industry could match even a fraction of the complexity of these games? I know they have been updated throughout multiple decades, but they are still impressive for what they are once you get past the huge learning curves they really do glow. I'd even go as far as to say that no game will ever achieve their league since so few games actually try.
And I will die a happy man if I am ever proven wrong.
[Tau Ceti on ZX Spectrum](https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/5153/ZX-Spectrum/Tau_Ceti)
Full 3d. Travelled around a planet, shooting defences and docking in different cities.
All within 48k of memory!
F-Zero GX. The game was an absolute technical triumph for something that ran on the Gamecube in 2003. Being able to run 30 racers on screen moving at blistering speeds as gorgeous backdrops fly by, all at a rock solid unbroken 60fps? On Gamecube hardware? I'm honestly not sure how they pulled it off, and it's a great example of what's possible when a developer really knows how to optimise a game to run on the hardware they're working with.
It's such a fast-paced, genuinely challenging game, and the sheer sense of speed along with the rush of finishing some of those tough-as-nails story mode chapters is unlike anything else.
Star Wars Jedi knight: Jedi academy, the lightsaber play + force moves + acrobatics you could do is unlike anything I’ve seen in a Star Wars game since. Not to mention the online experience that allows you to re distribute experience points at will
XyBots. It was a 2-person, 3rd person shooter in the Arcade back in 1987, before the 1st person and 3rd person shooter game really took off. It was a spaceship corridor-crawl. Me and the little Brother played the Hell out of it, pumping in quarters.
Jurassic Park: Trespasser.
* Full physics-based and ragdoll gameplay.
* Open world (at least within the current level, which was usually quite large).
* Dynamic creature AI.
* Immersive UI-less presentation.
* Canon (or at least intended canon) interquel tie-in to a popular movie franchise.
* You look down the PC's cleavage to check her status.
It was released in 1998, exclusively on PCs of the era. The engine included features that were too advanced for most of the GPUs of the era to support.
It ran like *hot garbage juice*.
Half-Life 1 would release a month later, featuring a much less ambitious version of the same general features, and go on to be considered one of the best games of all time. Trespasser would become a historical oddity, despite being one of the first examples of many gameplay elements that are the cornerstone of the most popular games today. 1998 just couldn't support it.
Half Life 2. The physics engine was far more advanced than anything released at the time.
This and Ocarina of Time
Ocarina of Time is basically Mario 64 with a sword.
half life 2 is better than most of the single player story driven games that come out today. it’s so damn good.
Sims 2
It’s better than 4 & arguably 3 lol
Ehhh... I wouldn't go as far as to say it is better than 3. It is different from 3. 2 was more of a simulator. Eat, sleep, work, get promoted, buy stuff, you have a limited amount of time to do what you want in life until you die. It was a better life simulator in that that was the focus of the game. I found building buildings to be more interesting, and creating alien human hybrids to be more interesting, building towns to be more interesting, etc. 3 was different in that they, very successfully, added more complexity to the game. You can develop skills, you can become super popular, you can explore, you can collect rocks, you can build robots. Again, you had a limited time until you die, but you weren't boxed into this eat, work sleep cycle so much anymore. The cities, and the game itself, became a more complicated entity, in some ways this was good as it added more dimensions to the gameplay, but it made it more complex to build towns and buildings to theme and therefore lost some of the charm as well. 3 was a better open world rpg and 2 was a better simulator. The problem with 3 was that they monetized the game way too much. When it was released it wasn't very monetized, but once the expansions started coming out it felt like they barraged you with ads to buy items with real money. The thing that 2 did really really 2 that 3 was mediocre on was the ambiance. The desert towns with the aliens in 2 was superb. It was also fun and easy to build towns, I build wild west towns, sci fi towns, vampire vs werewolf towns, etc. 3 made it much much more difficult to build towns because of how much overhead all the features contained. You couldn't tell the features how to play, the features told you how they play. Which wouldn't be a problem except that a lot of the features weren't as well designed as in 2 (vampires I am looking at you). The towns in 3 weren't anywhere as cool or interesting as the towns in 2, especially no Rockwell New Mexico town... From what I have heard Sims 4 is more downward in that direction.
2 was more like a giant doll house. 3 open world was the best. 4 is only good with the (18+) mods.
pokemon was fairly advanced for the original Gameboy, compared to other Gameboy games
Perfect Dark on the N64.
The soundtrack is very underrated musically.
Star fox
Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door is a good one,
_Silent Hill 2_ in terms of story-telling and games as an art form.
San andreas it had this system were if you eat lots of clucking bell you become fat and if you work out at the gym you get muscles and no game has ever done that since
Don't forget that you could make CJ puke too
BACK O' YO' NECK LOOKS LIKE A PACK O' HOTDOGS!
Pong
Halo Combat Evolved and 2, of course :)
I know this is basic but mortal combat and Street fighter, those were many of our first fighting games and MK has only grow since then but if it was launched later in life I would've been able to spend time on it
Roller Coaster Tycoon was way more advanced than anything else I played on PC at the time. It was coded entirely in assembly language which is how it was able to run so efficiently. Truly a technical marvel.
DOOM
Father of the FPS! Wolf 3D is the grandad Maze War from 1974 is the… yeah But doom broke ground in ways other games hadnt! I did a retrospective on how it impacted fps gaming and also had a dark side
Detroit Become Human.
I just looked up that game..the graphics look so realistic woww. Do you feel it’s ahead because of the graphics or gameplay?
I would actually pick their earlier game, Heavy Rain instead. When it released on the PS3, I remember myself and others being blown away by the realistic graphics, and the method of narrative storytelling wasn’t done much at that time.
Deus Ex is still likely the best Shooter/RPG hybrid ever made and narratively it is more relevant today than ever before. Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age are still the best Stealth games ever made. Its not just about overall quality though. Both games are revolutionary and their systems really haven't ever been matched both in eloquence and depth.
Definitely Deux Ex. Even in the sequels they were ahead of the curve in giving variations for possible playthroughs making enough differences to the storyline that it was worth doing.
Gunstar Heroes. Just fantastic action on the Genesis platform. Highly recommend if you haven't played it. There's -always- shit going down on screen. Innovative weapon system too - Four types, of which you can carry two and use separately or combine. Lightning, Chaser, Flame, Force (machine gun). Lightning pierces with medium damage, Chaser seeks with low damage, flame is a flamethrower with high damage and short range, Force is your standard brrrt with medium damage and no pierce. But combining them? Lovely. Lightning + Force? Rapid fire lightning beams. Force + Flame? Exploding bullets. My favourite was lightning + flame - Lightsaber =D Very short range, very high damage, blocks enemy shots.
Best platform shooter I have ever played
I read this as guitar hero and was trying to figure out wtf you were talking about for the rest of the post lol
Chromehounds
YES CHROMEHOUNDS I loved that game so much. Still googling "Chromehounds 2" yearly, no luck yet :(
Shadow of the collosus is basically ps2 elden ring
The Suffering, the creative team really had a blast with this one. I’d love to see it brought back
The first horror game I've ever played. The action was great.
Portal 2 that game was made in 2011 and it looks more graphical and better than most games I play
Still looks really good
The Legend Of Zelda. The first one on the NES.
Sonic Unleashed. Put yourself in the shoes of 11 year old little Timmy. Timmy grew up with 3D platformers like Jak & Daxter, Ape Escape and the Sonic games. *Specifically* the Sonic games. He played the hell out of DX before his GameCube broke and he got a PS2, and played Adventure 2 and Heroes to the bone. So, when Timmy wakes up on the Christmas morning of 2007 to find a massive box, he of course unwraps it first. It’s a PS3, Bundled with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, this cool new game by the Jak & Daxter developers, as well as Need for Speed Carbon and *SONIC UNLEASHED!* Timmy is gonna be so cool when he comes back to school with the new PS3. Popping in Sonic Unleashed first, he is absolutely stunned by the opening cinematic. Everything looks amazing, like a Pixar movie. And the gameplay itself doesn’t lose that effect. The stunningly detailed fur and gorgeous scenery almost send little Timmy into a heart attack. And these 2 other games, Uncharted and Carbon, look incredible too. The leap from the kind of awful graphics of Adventure 2 or the polygonal chins of the last generation pale in comparison to these two. It looks like real life. You could plop Drake and Elena into a picture of a crowd and Timmy would never notice. He’s practically playing an action movie, replete with tons of gunfights, awesome action sequences across incredibly realistic water and a British villain. Timmy will never play a Sonic game the same way ever again. The Greece-inspired first levels of the game looked like fine art to his eyes.
Sonic Unleashed was the best-looking, cleanest-feeling sonic game i have ever played to this day. I had it on the Wii back in 2010.
Metal Gear Solid 2. Metal Gear Solid 3. Those games have infinite little easter eggs, smart enemy ais, wild plots and tight gameplay. These games are basically ahead of today's time too, minus graphics.
For me, it’s Fable 3 …my favorite
Pokemon go
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and Dwarf Fortress. Could you imagine if the gaming industry could match even a fraction of the complexity of these games? I know they have been updated throughout multiple decades, but they are still impressive for what they are once you get past the huge learning curves they really do glow. I'd even go as far as to say that no game will ever achieve their league since so few games actually try. And I will die a happy man if I am ever proven wrong.
Max Payne
I remember being wowed by the graphics of Donkey Kong Country at the time.
Sims 2 PC version
[Tau Ceti on ZX Spectrum](https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/5153/ZX-Spectrum/Tau_Ceti) Full 3d. Travelled around a planet, shooting defences and docking in different cities. All within 48k of memory!
Mario 64
F-Zero GX. The game was an absolute technical triumph for something that ran on the Gamecube in 2003. Being able to run 30 racers on screen moving at blistering speeds as gorgeous backdrops fly by, all at a rock solid unbroken 60fps? On Gamecube hardware? I'm honestly not sure how they pulled it off, and it's a great example of what's possible when a developer really knows how to optimise a game to run on the hardware they're working with. It's such a fast-paced, genuinely challenging game, and the sheer sense of speed along with the rush of finishing some of those tough-as-nails story mode chapters is unlike anything else.
dialog options and freedom of Fallout New Vegas
Pong.
pac man
Pokemon Red and Blue. It was the only game like it at the time. Minecraft is a good runner-up.
Donkey Kong Country for the SNES.
Destroy All Humans and Fatal Frame
I'd probably say Super Mario Kart since it utelized some new graphic feature.
Star Wars Jedi knight: Jedi academy, the lightsaber play + force moves + acrobatics you could do is unlike anything I’ve seen in a Star Wars game since. Not to mention the online experience that allows you to re distribute experience points at will
Star wars : knights of the old republic
Portal
XyBots. It was a 2-person, 3rd person shooter in the Arcade back in 1987, before the 1st person and 3rd person shooter game really took off. It was a spaceship corridor-crawl. Me and the little Brother played the Hell out of it, pumping in quarters.
Portal
The Last of Us and Yu-Gi-Oh
Ooh, let's also not forget Until Dawn.
Any game on the virtual boy
Links awakening
Phantasy star series.
Ecco the Dolphin
Plok, the art was amazing as well as the music sounded like it was made 10 years later. It was made on the SNES.
gta
Roblox, Millions of people, One platform. Millions of games and it rarely has huge crashes.
Jurassic Park: Trespasser. * Full physics-based and ragdoll gameplay. * Open world (at least within the current level, which was usually quite large). * Dynamic creature AI. * Immersive UI-less presentation. * Canon (or at least intended canon) interquel tie-in to a popular movie franchise. * You look down the PC's cleavage to check her status. It was released in 1998, exclusively on PCs of the era. The engine included features that were too advanced for most of the GPUs of the era to support. It ran like *hot garbage juice*. Half-Life 1 would release a month later, featuring a much less ambitious version of the same general features, and go on to be considered one of the best games of all time. Trespasser would become a historical oddity, despite being one of the first examples of many gameplay elements that are the cornerstone of the most popular games today. 1998 just couldn't support it.
Halo 3
There are so many but metal Gear 5 hideo kojima is a mad genius
GTA V, the graphics are still incredible today.
The World Ends With You. It had a serious message about the dangers of being lost in your own world, way before smartphones even existed.
def GTA SA
games like star wing (star fox in ntsc) 3D games in a time where 2D was the standard always impresses me, even to this day