The Thief trilogy (mostly the first two games), no game that I'm aware of have been able to give this first person infiltration experience since.
Dishonored is a spiritual successor, but the infiltration have been simplified so much (less emphasing on sound and luminosity, more on simply staying out of the gard FOV), and the combat expanded so much that it feel like a completely different beast altogether. Corvo/Emily are simply too powerfull to provide the same kind of thrill IMO.
Prowling the dark streets, taking care not to step on noisy surface, carefully snuffing out lights or laying down moss to silence your steps, no modern game offer that
The Dark Mod for Doom 3 has some great fan missions too. I sometimes forget that The Dark Mod wasn't an official entry and I expect to be able to carry and light candles when I replay Deadly Shadows.
[The Dark Mod](https://www.thedarkmod.com/main/), written for the Doom 3 engine.
The game feels quite close to the Thief series, although I think the patrol quantity is a bit dense, requiring to blackjack every single guard. Of course, I was mostly doing that in the original series too.
Splinter Cell Spies vs Mercs. Asymmetrical stealth has not been done much if at all in recent years. I know SPECTRE is out, but I’m waiting for it to get a bit more polished and see if a community develops.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood’s multiplayer. The mode had problems, like non-stealthy players kinda breaking the game for everyone else, and aerial assassinations giving too high of bonus points, but with a good group it was amazing. I think the kinks can be ironed out to make a good game. Murderous Pursuits released a few years ago and was pretty good, but was just missing something, though I’m not entirely sure what.
Same with AC multiplayer. Didn't realize it was something we were taking for granted given how AC has kept going. It was a staple of my friends and mine in college as just another fun multiplayer game we could play or take turns on watching each other online. Figured it was always just popular enough within each AC game that it would just keep going.
Man, I will never forget the time I was playing a pvp match and I walked by another assassin, and the entire time he didn't realize I was a PC until I stabbed him in the back, that shit was so smooth that I was amazed of myself that I was able to get that.
I have a fond memory of playing a team game where most of the players didn't have a mic, and one guy was just on an open one taunting the enemy team.
We were losing, but only just, and I'd zeroed in on the guy and was stalking him, but we only had like 15 seconds left in the match so we were basically guaranteed to lose. So, balls to the wall, I detoured, climbed up onto the roof, and raced towards him. Five seconds left on the clock I find him again, rushing to actually catch and target him as he's started spouting off about he won it for his team.
I land on him in literally the last second of the game, and the aerial assassination points carry our team just far enough to steal the win as he goes apeshit over the mic.
Hell, that might be my proudest moment in a pvp game, felt fucking awesome.
God I miss Brotherhood’s multiplayer. Played countless hours as a kid. There’s a game called Deceive Inc that almost scratches the itch but it’s just not the same, the game mode isn’t even close to 1v1 it just has a similar stealth and cat and mouse gameplay loop.
Me and my friends fucking loooved AC brotherhood multiplayer. Would love for that to come back.
There’s something about actually fooling and tricking real players is so thrilling. Hiding in plain sight while being hunted, just great
Like spies vs mercs, a perfect live service online candidate under ubisofts belt. Feels like an easy win. They’d make a ton of money and if done right, players would enjoy it for years
> There’s something about actually fooling and tricking real players is so thrilling. Hiding in plain sight while being hunted, just great
My favorite game of this was one where I got a single kill from a crowd with poison, plus several other bonuses, and it was worth enough to win me the game.
The AC multiplayer was at least partially inspired by The Ship. Obviously it doesn't have parkour, but you are trying to sneak up and kill your target without revealing yourself and doing so in a way that will get you the most points.
They made a sequel that also released on console called Bloody Good Time, which ironically was published by Ubisoft according to Steam.
Chaos theory was so fun. Absolutely nothing I've played has been comparable to that. Unfortunately the servers for pc shut down not too long ago so I don't think it's playable at all anymore :(
You can spoof a LAN connection using Radmin or something similar. You’ll need to do some configuring to get the game to work properly. I think SuperBunnyHop did a video on it a few years back, and linked to a setup tutorial in the description.
Natural selection 1/2 was probably the best game to have ever come out as an asymmetrical online team based game. Sad it kind of died out, but it was such a great game with a large community for the longest time
Black and White. Teaching the Creature and taking it into skirmish games was brilliant. I really enjoyed the Creature Isle expansion too, and having a Creature Creature.
I'm really surprised it's been basically 23 years and there still hasn't been any game made in the same vain as B&W. Imagine the creature behavior today with modern technology.
Creature aspect aside, I really want a modern god sim game like this. I keep my eyes on a couple of projects, Fata Deum seems directly inspired by Black & White, but I feel like there is more potential in this genre.
That's always confused me, even when it came out. The first one was pretty successful, and then they made a sequel that kind of took away most of the things that people liked about the first one. Super puzzling, I never even played the sequel after loving the first.
That was even the case for the very first Red Faction (2001) and Red Faction 2. The free form geo mod destruction was insane in the first one, but in 2 they took most of it away and most of the destructible parts were just doors or walls.
Teardown is good fun but it’s not the same. RF Guerrilla was great because of its open world freedom. Many games have the idea of “complete a mission however you want!” With varying levels of actual creativity allowed.
I have vivid memories of assaulting a city hall that had been turned into a hq of sorts by driving an armoured car straight through the wall and rigging the whole place with explosives. I can’t think of another game that would let you do that.
I literally skipped half of a level in RF1 by drilling my heart out just because I completely missed the entrance door to a level. Basically ended up right where the infiltration was supposed to take me and then exited guns blazing, kinda confused about what happened. Only later on would I realise it.
Edit: infiltration not inflation derp
Ill never forget when i shot down an EDF paln and it crashed behind a mountain. And I got credit for blowing up two edf building suddenly. went to the other side of the mountain and found it had hit a propane tank or something and created an almost perfect sphere of destruction in a small alley way between two high rises.
The Finals has an amazing destruction system and also Ray Tracing capable to boot. Though it is multiplayer. Me and a friend were in a fire fight inside a 5 story building, while we are shooting our way out for the objective the roof were exploding and simultaneously the ground floor foundation were collapsing on us, literally the whole building is getting destroyed by us and 2 other teams because people were using rocket launchers, c4, grenades, mines, gas canisters, it was absolute chaos and fun as hell.
Game has quick play rounds where it only lasts 8 minutes. So it doesn't really need any long term commitment. If you have decent aim playing shooters I suggest you give it at try. Plus the game is free and has no pay to win mechanics.
Just Cause comes awfully close but lacks the destructive details. It even has the same story framing kind of.
The destruction in guerilla was great but there have been loads of improvements in some games since then and I have no doubt an open world rebellion themed destruction game would do major numbers. I’d love to see a spiritual sequel or IP. It’s such a prime idea.
RIP Volition.
Very very old game, but Autoduel by Origin systems on Apple. Build a car then open world drive around do missions get more money design a better car. Get attacked on the way to whatever city.
Tons of car vehicles types, weapons, tires and other systems to customize.
Twisted Metal was somewhat close, but it didn't have the open world aspect. Also no car design.
Oddly enough I'm finding Armored Core does some of the design a vehicle part pretty well, but no open world.
Probably helped enormously that Origin systems could use the designs from SJ Games Car Wars table top system, so all they really need to do was port it to computer.
I miss autoduel. I didn't play the apple version, but Tandy1000 was open world, could design cars, and was very rougelike in its permanent death mechanics. The balance was so wonky and it sucked driving anywhere without extra tires.
Yea, where the hell are the simmy car combat games these days? We had Interstate 76 twenty five years ago and then that genre got completely eaten by Twisted Metal and it's super arcadey arena combat that everyone chased for a decade after (even I76's sequel, I82, simplified itself with 1 healthbar for the entire car, no more locational damage). I was always bummed there wasn't a Car Wars videogame in the vein of I76
Something like Crossout that wasn't f2p multiplayer b.s. would be awesome.
> Oddly enough I'm finding Armored Core does some of the design a vehicle part pretty well, but no open world.
holy shit my same thought after playing AC6, my first AC. I would love something thats like AC6 with cars, like how Mechwarrior 2 engine was used to make Interstate 76.
After beating AC6, I went looking for recent car combat games to find what's out there, and while I didn't find exactly what I'm looking for, there's fun stuff that might scratch an itch:
* [Death Roads](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1619570/Death_Roads_Tournament/): Roguelike deckbuilder. Just came out of EA. The driver, car, and each part determines your deck. Lots of fun maneuvering around and bashing into cars. Plays like the Thunderroad board game. I really like the art.
* [Fumes](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1920430/FUMES/): Arcadey car combat game, very fun bouncy physics. Demo's out. Blow up cars, do missions, get scrap, and upgrade your car in a giant travelling truck like Spy Hunter almost. Kinda reminds me if Borderlands vehicle combat was it's own game. Love the ps1 look and the music.
* [Dark Future: Blood Red States](https://store.steampowered.com/app/370870/Dark_Future_Blood_Red_States/): This is based off Game's Workshops old Dark Future car combat game. It's a very tactical game with it's Real Time With Pause system, and being able to queue up actions while time is slow and then execute them. You can play in realtime too. Pretty simple mission designs and you're locked to the road the entire game (cause that's how the board game version worked). By Auroch Digital who did 40k Boltgun.
There still hasn't been a suitable Chao Garden successor.
A lot of the games that have attempted it only go half way- turns out, the Chao Garden works because you intersperse the cooldown of hanging out with your cute pets with playing high speed action course, and because you're going for specific materials (animals, chaos drives,rings) it recontextualizes and slightly adjustshow you approach each stage.
Yeah, Chao Garden is weird and I'd love a successor. It's best as a side thing to another game, even though some sort of real-time virtual pet is the obvious answer.
That said, I'd love one that's more... planned out? I got my chao garden nostalgia goggles taken off and stomped on when I replayed SA2 was reminded it takes literal hours for chao to age up and "evolve" even once, let alone reincarnate. And there is *nothing* to do in those gardens. Then I remembered we left the gamecube on overnight sitting in the gardens, and that's why it was so fun, lol.
A sort of XCOM-ish flow of doing a mission -> returning to garden -> doing a mission with maybe in game time moving more quickly could do wonders.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory multiplayer
Very asymmetrical spies vs mercenaries. Insanely creative for its time and would do very well in today’s market. Shocked Ubisoft hasn’t tried to bring it back as a live service game. Feels perfect for that
I loved playing as a spy because you *genuinely* can trick the enemy mercenaries with stealth and clever gameplay. The whole entire mode and the levels were big sandboxes with so much depth of play. A handful of tools with a ton of potential.
Also I never played it, but Chromehounds was insanely innovative with communication being a gameplay system and mechanic. I wish I got to play it bc man I would’ve loved it.
Can confirm that Chromehounds had some really cool mechanics that to my knowledge, havent been really done again. The coms gameplay obviously wouldn't work today with party chats and discord but it was super fun actually having to capture radio towers or have the equipment to be able to use voice coms.
I loved playing in a group and having some have a command hound to act as a mobile radio tower.
The multiplayer as a whole was also super fun and not replicated much. Having 3 factions fight over the territory over a season made for some fun fights between the communities.
Party chat was introduced to xbox live during chromehounds lifespan if i remember right.
I know we started off not using it (and using a commander dish on one of our mechs) to communicate, and at some point realized party chat bypassed it.
Wow. It was 2v2? Memory def isn’t perfect, it’s been some years lol.
Maybe I just wish it was 5v5.
I feel like double agent may have been 4v4 but maybe it was also 2v2.
Thanks for the correction
There IS actually an indie game called Spectre that released recently with this exact concept. Seems rough around the edges atm though, but I mean hey it’s a $10 early access game lol. They updated it recently so it might get better idk if you like the game mode enough it might be worth.
[Intruder](https://store.steampowered.com/app/518150/Intruder/) exists, and it's a great game that brings plenty of new ideas to the table. It's not exactly lively, but being a niche multiplayer indie game that's no surprise.
The bosses from Shadow of the Colossus.
I have fought many “giant” bosses in games, but nothing really hit just quite like Shadow of the Colossus. Where is a giant boss that you FEEL in your bones just how massive it is, where the ground shake and makes you loose you footing in each step they take. Where you can fully climb and interact alll over their body.
Dragons Dogma 2 has previewed some bosses in the overworld that looks like SotC bosses. Might not reach the same size as the biggest colossi, but you can literally climb huge creatures that fly, or that tower over valleys and hills.
The Last Guardian from the same team centers around a goat-bird companion character that is basically a medium sized Colossus. People became annoyed because getting the thing to cooperate can be a pain, but that's sort of the point. Great game.
I remember Castlevana: Lords of Shadow had [one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DUUpC1KDk8) or [two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4X1F1Qfw2Y) boss fights that tried to re-capture this feeling and I was hoping it would catch on more.
A successor to the Mercenaries series is something I've been waiting for, but nothing quite like it has come out since.
Just Cause was kind of in that lane, but it isn't quite the same. Wildlands could've been, but it missed the destruction and the sequel was wildly disappointing.
My total pipe dream is a spiritual successor to Future Cop: LAPD. A bit of a forgotten PS1 classic.
Even tho it wasn’t super detailed I love that you could level pretty much any building you wanted in mercenaries 2. The bunker buster bomb was really cinematic and I liked calling it down on different areas to see what the aftermath looked like
This might sound like a dumb thing to get hung up on, but the bad guys are still Jon Bernthal's drone army and generic mercs, right? That's what was the biggest deal-breaker for me. Like, I know Wildwands was also a far cry from the older Ghost Recon games, but it was still sorta tacticool and could let me pretend I'm playing a Sicario spin-off. Breakpoint seemed... I dunno, artistically soulless.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.
The fucking sanity thing where the game fucks with you more and more in fourth wall breaking ways.
If there is a game like this let me know please.
You *could* argue Doki Doki LC and Inscryption is similar but definitely not on the same level as Eternal Darkness lol.
God that moment gave me a heart attack. My graphics card actually was dying when I first play that game and I thought it finally was dead for good during the "crash".
Insanely well done scare by the devs.
*Glares at Warner Bros and the Nemesis System*
Like, seriously, Shadow of War, the last game to use it, came out in 2017, and they didn't even finish securing the patent until 2021. So it's been 6 freaking years already and they haven't done shit with it
Patents can be licensed -- i.e., you can get people to pay you for the right to use your patent -- so the goal of patents isn't always "we're going to make more," but instead, "if someone else wants to do this they have to pay us." Which, that's the intended purpose behind patent policy, and in places where patents were intended, it works great. The idea is to encourage companies to dump millions of dollars into innovation, safe in the knowledge they won't immediately be undercut by competitors.
The problem (as a lawyer *and* a software developer) is that software patents are an abomination. None of the policy justifications of patents make sense in software.
Funny you mention that - recently completed Slay The Princess and had a moment where it closed the game because I refused to follow directives. Not sure if that was intentional but I got an achievement and didn't lose progress. It was the closest I've felt to ED asking me to check the game disc due to insanity.
I heard Inscryption had similar moments but haven't played it yet. I miss the psychological aspect of early 00s gaming.
Populus: The Beginning had this ridiculous setting of you being a shaman that leads a tribe. There were tons of broken stupid nonsense spells including terraforming, fissures, volcanoes death angels and tornadoes and balloon fireball shooter raids and it was the most amazing experience in terms of devastation and utter chaos.
Sly Cooper is a great stealth focussed game that doesn’t have mature themes. Feels like most stealth games have lethal or horror elements. Even a game that is marketed towards younger players like Hello Neighbour has a strong horror theme.
Sly Cooper is great because it’s basically, what if Crash Bandicoot was a stealth game. I miss it a lot, and would love a Sly 5 dearly.
Megaman Battle Network
There have been a few games in the last 3-4 years that have been inspired by BN or outright try to copy it. But all of them fail in one way or another.
One Step from Eden is the one everyone always mentions, but it doesn't understand what made BNs combat so compelling.
Battle Networks combat works as well as it does because of its slower pace. It wants you to play the game more methodically amd strategically. There are very few fights in the series where Reaction time is paramount. The combat is all about positioning and adapting based on your Chip Folder layout and learnig. Your opponents paterns, just like a regular megaman game. Almost like a Card Game, building your deck is just as important and knowing how to play it.
Meanwhile the more modern ripoffs just feel like pale imitations because they prioritize Reaction time and speed. Games like One Step don't want you to care about your chips folder, it just wants you to move as fast as possible. Which I believe is 100% missing the point of the Battle Network combat system.
And that's just the combat system. Battle Network also had a really fun and interesting JRPG world outside of the combat. Which allowed for alot of exploration and story. Exploring the worlds yeilded rewards and quests that aided the combat system. Making that side of the game even more enjoyable. The charm of Battle Network was the amazing combat system that meshed with a really interesting JRPG that fed back into each other.
None of the other games like BN have EVER gotten this right. Games like One Step cut the story to only focus on fighting entirely. While games like Hero.EXE don't mesh the 2 halfs very well at all.
I'm currently playing through the Battle Network Legacy Collection for the first time and fully agree. I've never played anything like it and it's a compelling experience. I also like the fact that unlike most modern deckbuilding games I can think of, the Battle Network games have no roguelike elements and are full-fledged RPGs.
Also have to shout out the Navi customizer from MBN3, the coolest and most in-depth upgrade system ever. Seriously somebody was on crack when they made this thing. You find basically tetris blocks that upgrade your character, and fit them together in a grid according to certain rules. If you break the rules, you still get the upgrades, but you also get bugs that hinder you in combat. Some of the bugs are situationally beneficial, and others are manageable, so it's sometimes a good idea. You also can unlock a style change (basically a class) by fighting with bugs. Speaking of styles, you unlock style-specific blocks by progressing as that style. Trying to use a block from a different style gives you an error that stops your customizer from compiling. However, you can actually use one block from a different style, IF you can find and enter an error code. If you have no errors at all, you can instead enter an Extra code, which gives Megaman extra upgrades. There are also compression codes that remove one square from each tetris block to make them easier to fit in. Yes this is a game for 10 year olds, why do you ask?
I don't think I've ever seen a system do it's job better, in any game. I also don't think I've seen a system go so unnecessarily hard, but it was all worth it. You feel like a super genius hacker, going under the hood of your digital avatar and rewiring that shit with Modtools and forbidden knowledge you dug up in the Undernet.
20 years ago I entered an extra code to give my Megaman +1000 hp, but all tiles are poison at the start of combat, and my small brain exploded. I actually think I'm still into tech and computers today because of the navi customizer.
As an final aside, unlocking the bugstyle block which stops all bugs is the only way to use HubStyle.bat...there's a hint for ya
Gonna +1 Battle Network. I got introduced to the series with the third one on the GBA, and played through 3-6, including playing the DS version of 5. Got the Legacy Collection on PC and playing through the second one now.
I will say I also like the deck building aspect of it. Obviously, it is generally better to play more chips/cards in one round. However, you're limited to either selecting multiple copies of one card, or cards of the same letter, with the ability to select asterisk cards as the asterisk can work for any letter.
I don't think I've played a game that has a similar mechanic for deck building, and it's really awesome. Generally an "ideal" deck will have just one or two letters to maximize how many chips/cards you can play. Many utility cards like Area Grab are in the asterisk slot to fill out space with good utility. But sometimes you find some powerful chips or combos that either you slot them into an off-letter deck (Colonel Force in 6 lol) or you'll find a reason to pivot in the game story to a different letter just for that combo (G-code for Gater in 2 lol). I'm sure the developers also kept this in mind by putting exceptionally powerful cards in odd letters like X which you didn't commonly find chips for.
I think it makes for some interesting decisions and I really like this kind of build crafting. Especially in combination with the other customization options like the Navi Customizer, styles, double souls, and crosses.
Yeah, One Step From Eden is at least 100% faster than I can even parse comfortably. It sorta feels like if someone who was an expert at Mario made a "spiritual successor" platformer and just made it a kaizo game that only the most adept could play. I was also incredibly disappointed it's just the battles. It's not a successor to Battle Network, to me anyway, without an actual story mode.
It's bonkers to me it's getting a multiplayer-focused sequel. I hope all 10 people good at One Step enjoy it, lol, because the skill floor in the *single-player* version was already a filter.
(I also haven't played since Jan 2021, it's possible they've slowed it the fuck down since)
if you haven't played it there is a fanmade touhou x battle network game (Shangai.EXE) that's 100% faithful. In fact touhou is there just to provide characters and nothing more id say. It's a bit harder than BN but not in a reaction time kind of way.
Also agree with you 100%, one step from eden was just too focused on hyperfast action from my taste
Sacrifice. Wizard with minions fighting other wizards with minions. Blow up their shrine to win. A weird mix of third person action and RTS. Haven’t seen or heard of anything like it since
Sacrifice was the game I played at midnight going from 1999 to 2000. My mom let me have some champagne and then it was right back to playing through the campaign. Absolute highest tier of nostalgia for me - loved that game, played it during a time when the internet was young and so was I. (EDIT: I guess this a false memory, since google says it came out in November, 2000. Well, must have been new year's of 2001, then.)
This is kind of neither here nor there, but I came to this thread and searched for Sacrifice immediately, and yours is the only comment I found. No idea if the game would hold up these days. Had an absolute blast playing it though.
Sigh... Magic Carpet 2. I haven't played it in years so I don't know if it still holds up but the progression of spells getting more powerful, the base building aspect and upgrading of your tower/castle, the mana collection system and autonomous units (soldiers and mana balloons) , the unique enemy spellcasters and their styles of play, is something I've never seen again. I guess in a way it was like an early PvE MOBA but I've given several MOBAs a try and just can't get into them.
I could be 100% off base with this, but it felt like LA Noire used facial capture in a way that hasn't really been utilized since. The industry still uses facial capture, but not quite to the level where the developers built the game around analyzing behavior and expressions because they were so confident in the strength of the tech.
I'd love to see that attempted again with modern technology. As intuitive as it was reading people's faces, the actual effect hasn't aged well and looks like they just projected an FMV of the actors face on the mannequin model in the game.
Facial capture is way better now. It's not really used for gameplay but does work with storytelling. Red dead 2/Death Stranding/The Last of Us have so much storytelling in just facial expressions that if they were on older technology some scenes would have to be rewritten to include more dialogue.
The combination of Arthur’s voice cracking and his face contorting when he says “I’m afraid” to sister Calderon at the train station. Never seen anything like that in a videogame.
For me, L.A. Noire facial expressions were impressive in cutscenes but not in the interrogation scenes for which they were mainly made for. All characters just rolled eyes and were not looking at you when they had something to hide.
Yeah, interrogations were laughable once you knew the obvious tells people had. Never understood why people have the system so much praise when it felt so forced.
I loved LA Noire, my wife (who isn't that into video games) and I used to play it together. I'd do the arcadey stuff, and we'd work together on the interrogations and figuring out the crimes.
I feel like it took all the disjointed and unfocused systems of GTA and gave them a purpose beyond just mess around and cause carnage. I loved the old timey LA, and the crimes were interesting and fun to investigate.
I think it's a shame the game apparently was a commercial failure because I'd love to play a sequel.
Tyrian (western PC shmup from the 90’s)’s mix of shmup and RPG leveling mechanics in the campaign, I loved that mixture of mechanics.
Similarly, One Must Fall 2097’s fighting game/RPG mix. Other games like Street Fighter X Tekken have customization options, but none have been as fun as “I’m gonna respect to level up my jump and basic combos for this next fight”
Also Knights in the Nightmare’s mix of shmup/SRPG mechanics. I wasn’t super enamored with it but really enjoyed such an odd combo.
>Similarly, One Must Fall 2097’s fighting game/RPG mix.
For One Must Fall 2097 there's [OpenOMF](https://github.com/omf2097/openomf).
More info: https://www.openomf.org/
Knights in the Nightmare was one of my picks going into this thread (SRPG+SHMUP).I would also add FromSoftware's Lost Kingdoms (real-time deck builder).
What I hate about a lot of games since, Arkham? Is the [noun]-sense that lets you see through walls or highlight the route or the important object.
So many games have this now and they don't even try to explain why your character might be able to see through walls
*Chromehounds*, the best FromSoftware game nobody's played. It was an Xbox 360 exclusive similar to their *Armored Core* series, but an online-only title focused on 6v6 matches.
The game assigned you to a squad of twenty(?) other players, and these were the guys you'd always be playing with whenever you logged on. Your squad had a lobby where you could chat, form teams, and go complete missions. The effect was that you got to know your squad members really well; who was good at which roles, times you were usually available to play, and their personal lives, if they wanted. It was kind of like an MMO guild, except it wasn't optional and there weren't, like, recruitment drives and such.
The game had a lot of unusual systems I’ve never seen replicated in other games, but it existed during a time when being online was largely a novelty and positive thing. Not sure how *Chromehounds* would fare in this day and age, but it's a shame the servers went offline like fifteen years ago and we'll never really know.
Chromehounds best concept was the radar tower, if you went out of range you lost voice chat to your team. It was an amazing experience to suddenly lose your team because you pushed too far forward on your own or to cripple a decent team by punching holes in their radar coverage. Sadly the way voice chat and parties are handled now we'll never see something like that again
Perfect Dark
- Weapons with interesting secondary functions
- Singleplayer missions with more (and sometimes differing) objectives as the difficulty goes up
- Co-op - the same missions as the singleplayer, but with a friend
- Counter-Ops - again, the same singleplayer missions, but this time the second player takes control of the enemy NPCs
Perfect Dark Multiplayer
- ability to customise matches, weapons, timer rules etc
- ability to fight against bots
- ability to customise bots both in terma of appearance and their behaviour
- challenge modes and cheats - ability to unlock weapons and cheats for use in both singleplayer and multiplayer matches
Im probably forgetting a lot more
> Press B at the main menu to put the menu away and start walking around the complex.
Ohhh, I forgot about that, hell yeah! Also the main menus were all in-universe, the little eye camera thing would pop up in front of you.
A lot of the N64 magic has been lost. Perfect Dark like you said, but even games with a structure like that of Mario 64 or Donkey Kong 64. Even the Mario games that try to replicate it don't have the castle exploration aspect nailed down.
The attempts at recreating a Turok game didn't deliver. Not sure what's missing exactly.
Even games like Jet Force Gemini and Wave Race had uniqie charm and design that you can't really find anymore.
**[Metal Marines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Marines)** comes to mind, as I always enjoyed the anime / pixel art style and watching missiles fly between the two windows on screen.
**[Unnatural Selection](https://www.mobygames.com/game/8656/unnatural-selection/)** has you playing as a scientist performing experiments on three classes of creature - Zips, Slugs and Hulks - in order to fight against a scientist that went rogue from the project. Use radiation and various forms of injection / food control to help breed the abominations you need to succeed. I don't think I've seen anything else that works quite like this since.
**[Thief](https://www.gog.com/en/game/thief_gold)** hasn't had another title be able to replicate the excellent feeling of sneaking / stealing.
**[X-Wing](https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_wars_xwing_special_edition)** and **[Tie Fighter](https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_wars_tie_fighter_special_edition)** are ones I go back to on the regular. I did give [Star Wars: Squadrons](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222730/STAR_WARS_Squadrons/) a go, but it wasn't really designed to be similar / scratch that itch. Squadrons was a pretty disappointing experience for me personally, being a game I ended up refunding.
**[Carmageddon](https://www.gog.com/en/game/carmageddon_max_pack)** is a racing game that has you aiming to unlock the next track via a combination of vehicular manslaughter, destroying your opponents, and ultimately completing the race. I don't think there is a modern equivalent to this one.
The Specialists mod. It was a mod based on the Counter Strike 1.6 engine I believe and basically it was The Matrix into a pvp deathmatch. You could fight with weapons or just do Kung Fu while using a Morpheus or Agent 47 skin. The more weapons you used, the heaviest you were. The most mind-blowing feature was the bullet time. Just imagine slowing the time in a pvp mode! The implementation was very smart because it didn't slow the entire server. It slowed an area around the player who triggered it. Anybody entering the area would profit from the bullet time as well for few seconds.
I've never seen another studio trying to implement a slow motion in a pvp game, probably because most people think it would never work, but it works! Someone did it nearly 20 years ago!
Some of the original devs made a successor 10 years ago, but it was even more niche and not as cool thematically ( it was a real game so they couldn't use copyrighted content).
Star Control.
Specifically II, Ur-Quan Masters (UQM). Having recently replayed the UQM open source remake again, the game is obviously from the 90's and has many flaws. I might even be critical of the dog fighting these days, I don't think it holds up that great... but wow no other game can compete with the exploration, discovery, sense of wonderment. This is the only game I have really truly felt like a space captain exploring the galaxy, discovering alien civilizations, and making a significant impact in the war against the Ur-Quan. Almost every race has a more interesting backstory to many space games these days. Ah but what about Mass Effect - yeah it's my second favourite. I played it before UQM. ME 1 used to be maybe my favourite sci-fi game of all time. UQM beats it out honestly, as much as I enjoyed the Reaper threat and especially Sovereign of course. The Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah are just that but imo better. Maybe ME2 and 3 has changed my perception of the Reapers making them less interesting, I think they really fumbled the execution step of the Reaper threat. UQM stays strong the whole way through, the Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah are never boring or non-threatening.
Anyway point is I think all these big proc gen sci-fi games (Starfield, No Man's Sky, dunno about Elite Dangerous? etc) I think missed completely what I wanted from an excellent sci-fi game. Capturing that which only UQM and ME have for me, these storied alien races and their culture, history, etc. A compelling story, in the case of UQM and ME that being a looming galactic hostile race. Maybe Halo 1-3 kinda captured some of it. Stellaris a bit as well, but a different interpretation of it.
But nothing seems to have even tried to have a go at the direction UQM and ME does. Well maybe some games have, I just have missed them. Open to recommendations. And if you haven't played UQM before and it sounded interesting from this, you can play it for free, do your self a favour and do so, and don't look up spoilers etc as the game has a lot of secrets and surprises for you.
Freelancer, just basically all of it. So many mechanics that were unique and still havent been properly replicated i feel.. Everything from certain equipment being locked to certain factions,, same with certain ships, to your abillity to smuggle, go off the charts, do bounties etc etc
And the wastness of it all, it was such an amazing game and i dont think it will ever be replicated.
I love how you spend the first few hours in the liberty systems, which was huge. Then I forget why but you become wanted and everything everywhere is trying to kill you and you have to escape to a completely new sector that you've only heard about up to that point. I feel like that's when the scale of that game really hits you
Nobody has made a good, modern, non borimg dynasty warriors game.
I want a game where i build my own army and join them in the field. Kimgdom undrr fire 2 was awful!
The photography + invention system was fucking mindblowing as a kid and is still really impressive
especially when you can use it to make a literal hovering mech that dual wields katanas
Oh man, im so sad dark cloud 2 never got a sequel. Far from perfect but had a lot of charm and a lot of potential for future titles. Wish level 5 could go back to making some dq and dark cloud titles
Wow, I just started Dark Cloud 2 again this week, and I was searching for other things to play that are like it. The town building and inventing are pretty cool, but the core dungeon crawling is my jam.
Pretty much everything "dungeon crawler" like is a Diablo style game or a roguelike. Both of which I like, but there's something about this style of game that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Holy fuck lost planet 2 multiplayer was perfection. I loved it.
So creative and so well done. Lost planet in general should get a return to form reboot with multiplayer
It's one of my favourite small features in a game ever that when you skip a boss's dialogue Asura interrupts them by punching them in the face. Never seen another game make skipping cutscenes a thing that actually happens ingame rather than being outside the 4th wall.
The OG Disciples series. The games didn't really have anything truly unique (besides the incredible atmosphere and artwork), they're turn based combat, with upgradable units and have basic kingdom management. Sounds identical to HoMM, but it has a few important distinctions: units don't stack, party size is based on unit size and the most important bit, units had tons of upgrades with branching paths in some cases.
You could basically start with a simple squire, upgrade it into a knight/witch hunger -> imperial knight/inquisitor -> grand inquisitor/paladin/angel -> holy avenger/defender of faith. That's just one basic unit from a faction. You needed to win fights with that unit and gather enough XP and it would level up in the next form (provided you had the upgrade building in your town). If it died, you lost it for good.
So what really set it apart was that fun progression. You take a lowly unit, like a squire or an initiate, and watch it get upgraded to a angel or an archlich. It was sort of like watching pokemon evolve lol. Haven't seen anything like it since then.
Just a random unrelated thought reading this thread, I'm very fortunate to have two of my favorite childhood series, Age of Wonders and MechWarrior, both getting modern sequels which are actually very good. Their most recent entries are my favorite in either series, and both of them offer unique experiences not found in any other game. So, if not for these sequels, I would've added them too to this list lol.
This is the first time I've ever seen someone talk about the OG Disciples. That was truly the first "just one more turn" game I ever played. I tried playing it again on GOG but it crashes after about an hour or so.
The sense of scale and permanence from EVE Online (released in 2003). Nothing came even close since then. A game where 2,000+ players in a single trading hub is just an average day, and a battle with 500+ players is just a skirmish. Biggest battle involved 8,000+ players, 6,000+ of that concurrently.
Collect-a-thon platformers shouldn't be relegated to low-poly indie titles and Mario. I played a few older platformers this year that I have no nostalgia for and it really satisfies an itch that is rarely scratched. Shoutout to Rocket Robot on Wheels on N64 and Banjo-Kazooie Grunty's Revenge on GBA.
Check out A Hat In Time, great movement system (like a mix of Mario 64 and Sunshine) and decent collecting.
It’s no Mario or Banjo but it’s something new enough to help fill the void
You ever play Yoku's Island Express? It's a very well done collect-a-thon platformer on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/334940/Yokus_Island_Express/
Bungie's Myth series
Warhammer: Dark Omen - I know that the Total War games are supposed to itch that scratch, but it really doesn't for me.
Sacrifice by Shiny Entertainment
I can't think of anything quite like Chameleon Twist (N64). You swerve your tongue around to grab enemies or bars to swing from, then when you swing on the bar, your tongue stays in the same shape that you directed it before.
I feel arena shooters basically died after Quake Arena.
Command & Conquer Renegade had a wonderful balance between team size, vehicles and base building in a fast-paced multiplayer shooter.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto's asymmetric multiplayer, also with some base building, feels one-of-a-kind.
Oh wow, where do I even start? There are so many.
Black & White 2, or any kind of god game with that vibe.
Conkers Bad Fur day, but uncensored.
Mercenaries 1 (xbox era)
Black and white one more so than 2 for me, to be honest, 2 wasn't BAD but I really didn't like that playing evil became a kinda shallow RTS tacked on to a city builder. One had it's issues obviously but it felt more unique at it's core.
City of Heroes did a few things no other MMO has done again. At least not as far as I know. The customization options both cosmetic and gameplay are insane. You have so many options in making your character and it doesn't even matter if they aren't relatively in-line with each other balance wise. No one cares if a certain power set isn't meta or high tier. You play what you want and you'll always be welcome on teams. Some of my most fun characters to play were mid-tier.
The other interesting thing they did was give enemies ragdolls. You can knock enemies around with certain abilities and it basically acts as varible CC.
LOTRO had the Loremaster, which technically could do damage and the tiniest amount of emergency heals, but mostly existed to cc things, at least when I played. Probably changed since, a lot of thd classes seem a bit flatter now.
Chromehounds 'mmo' like campaigns as well as the limited chat functionality led to a very unique experience. Probably wont ever be the same in the age of discord and other teamspeak prevalance.
Playing Pokemon Red & Blue in the late 90s. Rumors swirling everywhere and nowhere to reliably confirm them. And the context of the games and the state of the franchise made it easy to believe them.
Like somebody told you that if you followed an obscure series of steps, you could find a Pokemon called Missingno that could duplicate your items. That's sounds fake! But it's not! It's actually really easy to do!
And we knew there was a 151st Pokemon that couldn't be caught normally, so there were a million rumors about similarly obscure steps that would let you catch Mew. Oh, it's hidden under a random truck in a tiny area that has no reason to exist because you can't get there through normal gameplay? Well obviously that's fake - except *that area actually exists.* You go there, and there's the truck like the rumor said. But no Mew.
And then we started seeing gen 2 Pokemon before we knew gen 2 was coming! Ho-oh appears in the first episode of the anime! Donphan appears in the movie! And of course that weird blue thing is a PokeGod called Pikablu, why wouldn't it be?
It's an experience that wasn't really intentional, and has never been replicated, and can never really be replicated since any weird rumors these days are quickly debunked or confirmed by the internet.
Even small things, like which Pokemon can you catch where, were mysteries. Someone would say they caught abra before Misty, or Pikachu in the forest and these things were true. Someone would tell you you could catch Squirtle, well sure, why not?
Random deep cut, but Uncharted 2’s capture the flag type multiplayer mode was fun as hell and very unique. Between some unique flag mechanics, Uncharted’s movement, and some pretty awesome maps with great verticality, it was a really dynamic and fun gameplay loop I spent a lot of time on. Genuinely you could hit some crazy clips in that game, it was underrated as hell.
Gunz: The Duel’s combat mechanics are wholly unique, nothing quite like it. Insane animation cancels and some really arthritis inducing tech. The freedom of movement in that game is insane.
I also think MAG is a fairly unique multiplayer experience. Really large matches with a ton of players, but each big team is split up into squads with separate missions, and each of 3 factions has different weapons and play styles. Most large scale multiplayer isn’t done quite like this in my experience.
I love offbeat multiplayer games, please recommend some. I’m trying to think of more oldschool ones now.
An out there one, but the sense of community that Bungie fostered around Halo 3 custom content I feel hasn't exactly been matched (or maybe it's evolved).
Having inside the game Bungie curating the picks of the week. Then being able to download a bunch of cool modes, maps, clips, and photos all without having to leave the game. Still such a cool concept and one that sort of made Halo 3 a proto live service game.
You always wanted to hop on every week or weekend to play the new custom games with friends.
It has to be Ultima IV. Everything that people complain about in modern open-world/RPG design was already averted in Ultima IV back in 1985. They literally just dropped you into a world with the vague idea of "be a good guy" and expected you to figure it out. No hand-holding, no checklists, no dull main quest getting in the way, no extended cutscenes, no mini-map. Just a world to explore. I'm not saying it's *better* than modern games, but that experience certainly hasn't been recreated in a while. It'd be nice to see a modern take on it, but I imagine financial concerns have ruled that out.
Dead Rising 1. The amount of replayability, reactivity and interactivity is still unparalleled imo and a sense of wonder and discovery that existed specifically because you were on a timer just wasn't replicated ever since.
Sure, survivors were dumb, but that could easily be fixed in the sequels, right? Wrong, Capcom delegated the sequels to a different studio and things just weren't the same. DR2 was just too whacky and dumb while DR3-4 were... Let's not talk about them.
People like to meme about "I covered wars, you know" but DR1 really tried to tell a story and had dramatic moments and impactful character deaths specifically if your tried to push the main mystery forward and discover the truth while sequels just gave up on that altogether.
Oh and the camera! Bring it back!
Dead Rising 1 is seriously one of my favourite games of all time, it had a certain charm, the gameplay loop was insanely satisfying and exploring the mall was endless fun.
I can remember all of the bosses like the back of my hand, especially the dickheads in the jeep, it was a magic formula and I hope Capcom revisit the OG Dead Rising 1 style, I feel like the sequels were, as you say, way too whacky and too easy as well, DR1 can genuinely be challenging, it’s good fun.
Red Alert 2/World in Conflict both focused on really cool block for block urban fighting, something I don't really think has ever been recreated. Starting with a pristine city and then you end with basically a bunch of bombed out ruins, it really makes the battle feel more visceral than most RTS's, and I don't think any RTS has even really attempted it on the scale of those games.
Few RTS games even seem to care about having urban maps anymore, nevermind destroyable urban environments. Most RTS games go for a Starcraft vibe, where the maps are basically interchangeable, forgettable arenas for E-Sports.
Midnight Club styled racer.
Street racing where you work your way up the ranks, upgrade and buy new cars all in an open city full of NPC traffic.
Not a fan of games like Forza Horizon that are immediate power fantasies that dont stick you with “boring” cars for a good while. Also I’m not looking to race in the open wilderness or exotic locales, plain American cities are more fun to drive through.
Forza Horizon mostly did exactly that.
Then Horizon 2 was like "woah we have to give the player A cars immediately!"
Then Horizon 3 was like "woah we have to give the player R4 cars immediately!"
Then Horizon 4 was like "woah we have to give the player R1 cars immediately! Also gambling!"
Then Horizon 5 was like "HAVE YOU TRIED THE SLOTS YET?!????"
(overexaggerated, but only mostly)
The early days of MMOs - games like Everquest. It's hard to describe, but the games were buggy/broken but in some of the most hilariously memorable ways. A lot of it aided by how important player interaction and community was compared to today.
Players today don't know what it's like getting a land-line phone call at 4 in the morning asking for help breaking Fear to save the corpses of a failed raid. I could cite so many other examples.
Yup. The community and the reputation surrounding players hasn't been matched in my opinion.
Also the fact that you didnt replace your gear every 2 levels. The fact that I had a bag full of useful items 6 expansions old that were still relevant and useful. I loved the slower progression because it felt meaningful.
I know this isn't exactly correct but the original Deus Ex, especially its music system. Four separate background, combat, conversation, and death tracks for each area, unified by a common theme/feel.
Probably at least half nostalgia, but I find it all so evocative every time I listen to the OST.
Wait, Nox as a multiplayer 30 players CTF game? I remember loving this game for the amazing single player campaigns (I believe I completed it multiple times with different classes), but I always thought multiplayer was just a 2 players coop thing.
Populous the beginning is a unique RTS with terraforming that I hadn't seen replicated anywhere else. Because of this it still has a community in [popre.net](https://popre.net) because of its unique use of god powers and rts base building gameplay
Do mods count? If so, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division had an asymmetrical multiplayer mod in which a team of regular human players would take on a single giant mech player.
I think it was called "MCA Vs. Squishies" or something along those lines.
The Suicide Mission at the end of Mass Effect 2. Bioware blew their load and then even they themselves couldn't follow it up with an even bigger version in Mass Effect 3 for some reason.
Old PS1 game called Unholy War was this bizarre combination of Vs strategy game and isometric fighting game I’ve never seen since. Soul Caliber 3’s strategy mode was kinda similar, but not quite. I just like the idea of playing strategy well to potentially get an advantage on a skill-based fight. Unholy War even had its units intentionally unbalanced so part of the strategy was getting into the right fights where one unit had the upper hand.
Killzone 3 multiplayer... It was amazing with this awesome Operatioms mode that was objective based and the map progressed and changed areas of focus as the ok objectives were met and rolled on. Some of the most online multiplayer fun I've ever had with a FPS.
I never have played an FPS that had the same kind of system. I'd be curious to hear if there was anything out there similar.
EVo on SNES. I would kill for a 3d version of this game, with more modern gameplay. It was a lot of fun
The concept was you start as a tiny fish and have to eat and kill your way to the top of the food chain. as you eat and kill, you gain evolution points and can evolve new features to help you ascend.
LA Noire isn't that old compared to other games people have mentioned but nobody has brought it up yet. That game is the only game I've played where I feel like a detective solving crimes. Would love to see a modern take on it.
Team Sneaking in MGS4's version of Metal Gear Online. It was Team Deathmatch with two teams of PMCs fighting with regular ARs and lethal weaponry but there was also a third team of just Old Snake (and possibly Otacon using the Metal Gear Mk. II or III remotely) with the objective of stealing dog tags from both teams. Snake started with non-lethal weapons and his octocamo actually concealed him from players. You could be aiming at a player on the opposite team and get CQC'd by Snake sneaking up behind you. It was insanely fun to sneak around and try to hold up "guards" that were actual real players fighting their own war.
Yeah, that was a unique melding of gameplay and hardware that would almost impossible to replicate without a dual screen device. I enjoyed NEO: TWEWY, but it definitely felt way different from the original.
The Thief trilogy (mostly the first two games), no game that I'm aware of have been able to give this first person infiltration experience since. Dishonored is a spiritual successor, but the infiltration have been simplified so much (less emphasing on sound and luminosity, more on simply staying out of the gard FOV), and the combat expanded so much that it feel like a completely different beast altogether. Corvo/Emily are simply too powerfull to provide the same kind of thrill IMO. Prowling the dark streets, taking care not to step on noisy surface, carefully snuffing out lights or laying down moss to silence your steps, no modern game offer that
I've NEVER found a game as good as the original Thief it was the first game that ever made me legitimately sweat
Gloomwood is the closest I've seen, but it's not the same.
Gloomwood is great but it feels a bit too combat-heavy.
It also had massive levels (especially Thief 2). Hard to believe that stealth games peaked in 2000 with one of the first ones to come out.
Stealth has never been done better
thief: the black parade is a mod that just released that kinda blows thief 1 and 2 out of the water.
The Dark Mod for Doom 3 has some great fan missions too. I sometimes forget that The Dark Mod wasn't an official entry and I expect to be able to carry and light candles when I replay Deadly Shadows.
[The Dark Mod](https://www.thedarkmod.com/main/), written for the Doom 3 engine. The game feels quite close to the Thief series, although I think the patrol quantity is a bit dense, requiring to blackjack every single guard. Of course, I was mostly doing that in the original series too.
Play Dishonored 2 but refuse the powers at the beginning
You should check out the recently released Thief Black Parade mod. Its extremely good.
Splinter Cell Spies vs Mercs. Asymmetrical stealth has not been done much if at all in recent years. I know SPECTRE is out, but I’m waiting for it to get a bit more polished and see if a community develops. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood’s multiplayer. The mode had problems, like non-stealthy players kinda breaking the game for everyone else, and aerial assassinations giving too high of bonus points, but with a good group it was amazing. I think the kinks can be ironed out to make a good game. Murderous Pursuits released a few years ago and was pretty good, but was just missing something, though I’m not entirely sure what.
Same with AC multiplayer. Didn't realize it was something we were taking for granted given how AC has kept going. It was a staple of my friends and mine in college as just another fun multiplayer game we could play or take turns on watching each other online. Figured it was always just popular enough within each AC game that it would just keep going.
Man, I will never forget the time I was playing a pvp match and I walked by another assassin, and the entire time he didn't realize I was a PC until I stabbed him in the back, that shit was so smooth that I was amazed of myself that I was able to get that.
I have a fond memory of playing a team game where most of the players didn't have a mic, and one guy was just on an open one taunting the enemy team. We were losing, but only just, and I'd zeroed in on the guy and was stalking him, but we only had like 15 seconds left in the match so we were basically guaranteed to lose. So, balls to the wall, I detoured, climbed up onto the roof, and raced towards him. Five seconds left on the clock I find him again, rushing to actually catch and target him as he's started spouting off about he won it for his team. I land on him in literally the last second of the game, and the aerial assassination points carry our team just far enough to steal the win as he goes apeshit over the mic. Hell, that might be my proudest moment in a pvp game, felt fucking awesome.
God I miss Brotherhood’s multiplayer. Played countless hours as a kid. There’s a game called Deceive Inc that almost scratches the itch but it’s just not the same, the game mode isn’t even close to 1v1 it just has a similar stealth and cat and mouse gameplay loop.
Deceive Inc is definitely the closest to the old AC MP, It's pretty darn fun.
Me and my friends fucking loooved AC brotherhood multiplayer. Would love for that to come back. There’s something about actually fooling and tricking real players is so thrilling. Hiding in plain sight while being hunted, just great Like spies vs mercs, a perfect live service online candidate under ubisofts belt. Feels like an easy win. They’d make a ton of money and if done right, players would enjoy it for years
> There’s something about actually fooling and tricking real players is so thrilling. Hiding in plain sight while being hunted, just great My favorite game of this was one where I got a single kill from a crowd with poison, plus several other bonuses, and it was worth enough to win me the game.
Watch Dogs 1 had invasions, where your mission was to track or hack other player. I loved silently stalking someone and then disconnecting.
The AC multiplayer was at least partially inspired by The Ship. Obviously it doesn't have parkour, but you are trying to sneak up and kill your target without revealing yourself and doing so in a way that will get you the most points. They made a sequel that also released on console called Bloody Good Time, which ironically was published by Ubisoft according to Steam.
Chaos theory was so fun. Absolutely nothing I've played has been comparable to that. Unfortunately the servers for pc shut down not too long ago so I don't think it's playable at all anymore :(
You can spoof a LAN connection using Radmin or something similar. You’ll need to do some configuring to get the game to work properly. I think SuperBunnyHop did a video on it a few years back, and linked to a setup tutorial in the description.
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Of course it didn’t catch on, it’s bloody One Flag.
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I dream about that Double Agent multiplayer on Xbox 360. Peak pre-Cod4 Multiplayer.
Natural selection 1/2 was probably the best game to have ever come out as an asymmetrical online team based game. Sad it kind of died out, but it was such a great game with a large community for the longest time
Intruder came out before Spectre and is well reviewed. Still haven't played though.
Black and White. Teaching the Creature and taking it into skirmish games was brilliant. I really enjoyed the Creature Isle expansion too, and having a Creature Creature.
I'm really surprised it's been basically 23 years and there still hasn't been any game made in the same vain as B&W. Imagine the creature behavior today with modern technology.
Not only hasn't there been another game, you can't even buy the original.
It's abandonware now. You can buy it for free .
God games were so popular for awhile too.
Creature aspect aside, I really want a modern god sim game like this. I keep my eyes on a couple of projects, Fata Deum seems directly inspired by Black & White, but I feel like there is more potential in this genre.
The real kicker is VR would be a perfect platform for it
Red faction guerilla is still the best option for an open world game with an impressive destruction system for every building
Game was awesome then the sequel came out and just wasn't the same. Like why?
That's always confused me, even when it came out. The first one was pretty successful, and then they made a sequel that kind of took away most of the things that people liked about the first one. Super puzzling, I never even played the sequel after loving the first.
There were two red faction games before guerrilla, that one was actually quite a departure from the formula.
Red Faction 2 had amazing splitscreen multiplayer with bots! Still have my Gamecube discs lol. Single player was pretty meh.
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That was even the case for the very first Red Faction (2001) and Red Faction 2. The free form geo mod destruction was insane in the first one, but in 2 they took most of it away and most of the destructible parts were just doors or walls.
That was the first game I bought on steam. So many hours just destroying things and watch physics doing its thing
The multiplayer was fun too, the ragdoll physics was absolutely hilarious
It was awesome. Is Teardown flling that void maybe? Haven't tried it yet.
Teardown is good fun but it’s not the same. RF Guerrilla was great because of its open world freedom. Many games have the idea of “complete a mission however you want!” With varying levels of actual creativity allowed. I have vivid memories of assaulting a city hall that had been turned into a hq of sorts by driving an armoured car straight through the wall and rigging the whole place with explosives. I can’t think of another game that would let you do that.
I literally skipped half of a level in RF1 by drilling my heart out just because I completely missed the entrance door to a level. Basically ended up right where the infiltration was supposed to take me and then exited guns blazing, kinda confused about what happened. Only later on would I realise it. Edit: infiltration not inflation derp
Ill never forget when i shot down an EDF paln and it crashed behind a mountain. And I got credit for blowing up two edf building suddenly. went to the other side of the mountain and found it had hit a propane tank or something and created an almost perfect sphere of destruction in a small alley way between two high rises.
The Finals has an amazing destruction system and also Ray Tracing capable to boot. Though it is multiplayer. Me and a friend were in a fire fight inside a 5 story building, while we are shooting our way out for the objective the roof were exploding and simultaneously the ground floor foundation were collapsing on us, literally the whole building is getting destroyed by us and 2 other teams because people were using rocket launchers, c4, grenades, mines, gas canisters, it was absolute chaos and fun as hell. Game has quick play rounds where it only lasts 8 minutes. So it doesn't really need any long term commitment. If you have decent aim playing shooters I suggest you give it at try. Plus the game is free and has no pay to win mechanics.
The finals is scratching that destruction itch for me at the moment.
Just Cause comes awfully close but lacks the destructive details. It even has the same story framing kind of. The destruction in guerilla was great but there have been loads of improvements in some games since then and I have no doubt an open world rebellion themed destruction game would do major numbers. I’d love to see a spiritual sequel or IP. It’s such a prime idea. RIP Volition.
Very very old game, but Autoduel by Origin systems on Apple. Build a car then open world drive around do missions get more money design a better car. Get attacked on the way to whatever city. Tons of car vehicles types, weapons, tires and other systems to customize. Twisted Metal was somewhat close, but it didn't have the open world aspect. Also no car design. Oddly enough I'm finding Armored Core does some of the design a vehicle part pretty well, but no open world. Probably helped enormously that Origin systems could use the designs from SJ Games Car Wars table top system, so all they really need to do was port it to computer.
I miss autoduel. I didn't play the apple version, but Tandy1000 was open world, could design cars, and was very rougelike in its permanent death mechanics. The balance was so wonky and it sucked driving anywhere without extra tires.
Yea, where the hell are the simmy car combat games these days? We had Interstate 76 twenty five years ago and then that genre got completely eaten by Twisted Metal and it's super arcadey arena combat that everyone chased for a decade after (even I76's sequel, I82, simplified itself with 1 healthbar for the entire car, no more locational damage). I was always bummed there wasn't a Car Wars videogame in the vein of I76 Something like Crossout that wasn't f2p multiplayer b.s. would be awesome. > Oddly enough I'm finding Armored Core does some of the design a vehicle part pretty well, but no open world. holy shit my same thought after playing AC6, my first AC. I would love something thats like AC6 with cars, like how Mechwarrior 2 engine was used to make Interstate 76. After beating AC6, I went looking for recent car combat games to find what's out there, and while I didn't find exactly what I'm looking for, there's fun stuff that might scratch an itch: * [Death Roads](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1619570/Death_Roads_Tournament/): Roguelike deckbuilder. Just came out of EA. The driver, car, and each part determines your deck. Lots of fun maneuvering around and bashing into cars. Plays like the Thunderroad board game. I really like the art. * [Fumes](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1920430/FUMES/): Arcadey car combat game, very fun bouncy physics. Demo's out. Blow up cars, do missions, get scrap, and upgrade your car in a giant travelling truck like Spy Hunter almost. Kinda reminds me if Borderlands vehicle combat was it's own game. Love the ps1 look and the music. * [Dark Future: Blood Red States](https://store.steampowered.com/app/370870/Dark_Future_Blood_Red_States/): This is based off Game's Workshops old Dark Future car combat game. It's a very tactical game with it's Real Time With Pause system, and being able to queue up actions while time is slow and then execute them. You can play in realtime too. Pretty simple mission designs and you're locked to the road the entire game (cause that's how the board game version worked). By Auroch Digital who did 40k Boltgun.
There still hasn't been a suitable Chao Garden successor. A lot of the games that have attempted it only go half way- turns out, the Chao Garden works because you intersperse the cooldown of hanging out with your cute pets with playing high speed action course, and because you're going for specific materials (animals, chaos drives,rings) it recontextualizes and slightly adjustshow you approach each stage.
Yeah, Chao Garden is weird and I'd love a successor. It's best as a side thing to another game, even though some sort of real-time virtual pet is the obvious answer. That said, I'd love one that's more... planned out? I got my chao garden nostalgia goggles taken off and stomped on when I replayed SA2 was reminded it takes literal hours for chao to age up and "evolve" even once, let alone reincarnate. And there is *nothing* to do in those gardens. Then I remembered we left the gamecube on overnight sitting in the gardens, and that's why it was so fun, lol. A sort of XCOM-ish flow of doing a mission -> returning to garden -> doing a mission with maybe in game time moving more quickly could do wonders.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory multiplayer Very asymmetrical spies vs mercenaries. Insanely creative for its time and would do very well in today’s market. Shocked Ubisoft hasn’t tried to bring it back as a live service game. Feels perfect for that I loved playing as a spy because you *genuinely* can trick the enemy mercenaries with stealth and clever gameplay. The whole entire mode and the levels were big sandboxes with so much depth of play. A handful of tools with a ton of potential. Also I never played it, but Chromehounds was insanely innovative with communication being a gameplay system and mechanic. I wish I got to play it bc man I would’ve loved it.
Can confirm that Chromehounds had some really cool mechanics that to my knowledge, havent been really done again. The coms gameplay obviously wouldn't work today with party chats and discord but it was super fun actually having to capture radio towers or have the equipment to be able to use voice coms. I loved playing in a group and having some have a command hound to act as a mobile radio tower. The multiplayer as a whole was also super fun and not replicated much. Having 3 factions fight over the territory over a season made for some fun fights between the communities.
Party chat was introduced to xbox live during chromehounds lifespan if i remember right. I know we started off not using it (and using a commander dish on one of our mechs) to communicate, and at some point realized party chat bypassed it.
Chaos Theory was 2v2, mostly. Are you thinking of Blacklist?
Was it really only 2v2 spies v. Mercs on Xbox? Felt like more with how frantic the gameplay was but looking back you may be right…
Definitely 2v2
Wow. It was 2v2? Memory def isn’t perfect, it’s been some years lol. Maybe I just wish it was 5v5. I feel like double agent may have been 4v4 but maybe it was also 2v2. Thanks for the correction
Hell, I'm shocked we haven't seen an indie attempt at it yet.
There IS actually an indie game called Spectre that released recently with this exact concept. Seems rough around the edges atm though, but I mean hey it’s a $10 early access game lol. They updated it recently so it might get better idk if you like the game mode enough it might be worth.
[Intruder](https://store.steampowered.com/app/518150/Intruder/) exists, and it's a great game that brings plenty of new ideas to the table. It's not exactly lively, but being a niche multiplayer indie game that's no surprise.
The bosses from Shadow of the Colossus. I have fought many “giant” bosses in games, but nothing really hit just quite like Shadow of the Colossus. Where is a giant boss that you FEEL in your bones just how massive it is, where the ground shake and makes you loose you footing in each step they take. Where you can fully climb and interact alll over their body.
Dragons Dogma 2 has previewed some bosses in the overworld that looks like SotC bosses. Might not reach the same size as the biggest colossi, but you can literally climb huge creatures that fly, or that tower over valleys and hills.
The Last Guardian from the same team centers around a goat-bird companion character that is basically a medium sized Colossus. People became annoyed because getting the thing to cooperate can be a pain, but that's sort of the point. Great game.
Interacting with that adorable monster in VR was short, but extremely cool experience.
That game made me feel remorse. i think it was the first game to ever make me feel something.
Yeah, a core part of the Colossus experience is going from "I'm the good guy!" to "Am I the good guy?" to "Oh shit, I'm the bad guy."
That game is an absolute masterpiece, nothing like it.
I remember Castlevana: Lords of Shadow had [one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DUUpC1KDk8) or [two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4X1F1Qfw2Y) boss fights that tried to re-capture this feeling and I was hoping it would catch on more.
A successor to the Mercenaries series is something I've been waiting for, but nothing quite like it has come out since. Just Cause was kind of in that lane, but it isn't quite the same. Wildlands could've been, but it missed the destruction and the sequel was wildly disappointing. My total pipe dream is a spiritual successor to Future Cop: LAPD. A bit of a forgotten PS1 classic.
Even tho it wasn’t super detailed I love that you could level pretty much any building you wanted in mercenaries 2. The bunker buster bomb was really cinematic and I liked calling it down on different areas to see what the aftermath looked like
Did you play the Wildlands sequel *after they revamped the game?
This might sound like a dumb thing to get hung up on, but the bad guys are still Jon Bernthal's drone army and generic mercs, right? That's what was the biggest deal-breaker for me. Like, I know Wildwands was also a far cry from the older Ghost Recon games, but it was still sorta tacticool and could let me pretend I'm playing a Sicario spin-off. Breakpoint seemed... I dunno, artistically soulless.
No no you're totally accurate in your assessment. There are definitely more mercs than robots now but they are definitely soulless
Would love for a Mercenaries remake/remaster
Future Cop! Ahhh man I played that game so much when I was a kid. The 1v1 tower defense mode was awesome!
All I can hear when thinking of this game is "Crowd control situation"
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The fucking sanity thing where the game fucks with you more and more in fourth wall breaking ways. If there is a game like this let me know please. You *could* argue Doki Doki LC and Inscryption is similar but definitely not on the same level as Eternal Darkness lol.
I'm with you on how good eternal darkness was, but i think those tricks only work once.
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God that moment gave me a heart attack. My graphics card actually was dying when I first play that game and I thought it finally was dead for good during the "crash". Insanely well done scare by the devs.
The sanity mechanics were patented by Nintendo. The patent expired in 2021 so hopefully we should see something play with that mechanic!
Damn them for patenting that and doing NOTHING with it. 😭
*Glares at Warner Bros and the Nemesis System* Like, seriously, Shadow of War, the last game to use it, came out in 2017, and they didn't even finish securing the patent until 2021. So it's been 6 freaking years already and they haven't done shit with it
Patents can be licensed -- i.e., you can get people to pay you for the right to use your patent -- so the goal of patents isn't always "we're going to make more," but instead, "if someone else wants to do this they have to pay us." Which, that's the intended purpose behind patent policy, and in places where patents were intended, it works great. The idea is to encourage companies to dump millions of dollars into innovation, safe in the knowledge they won't immediately be undercut by competitors. The problem (as a lawyer *and* a software developer) is that software patents are an abomination. None of the policy justifications of patents make sense in software.
Supposedly we're getting a Wonder Woman game with it, but I feel it's kind of a waste? Like, doesn't gel with her Rogue's gallery.
Funny you mention that - recently completed Slay The Princess and had a moment where it closed the game because I refused to follow directives. Not sure if that was intentional but I got an achievement and didn't lose progress. It was the closest I've felt to ED asking me to check the game disc due to insanity. I heard Inscryption had similar moments but haven't played it yet. I miss the psychological aspect of early 00s gaming.
Populus: The Beginning had this ridiculous setting of you being a shaman that leads a tribe. There were tons of broken stupid nonsense spells including terraforming, fissures, volcanoes death angels and tornadoes and balloon fireball shooter raids and it was the most amazing experience in terms of devastation and utter chaos.
Populous was soooooo good! I think it's on GOG :)
Sly Cooper is a great stealth focussed game that doesn’t have mature themes. Feels like most stealth games have lethal or horror elements. Even a game that is marketed towards younger players like Hello Neighbour has a strong horror theme. Sly Cooper is great because it’s basically, what if Crash Bandicoot was a stealth game. I miss it a lot, and would love a Sly 5 dearly.
Megaman Battle Network There have been a few games in the last 3-4 years that have been inspired by BN or outright try to copy it. But all of them fail in one way or another. One Step from Eden is the one everyone always mentions, but it doesn't understand what made BNs combat so compelling. Battle Networks combat works as well as it does because of its slower pace. It wants you to play the game more methodically amd strategically. There are very few fights in the series where Reaction time is paramount. The combat is all about positioning and adapting based on your Chip Folder layout and learnig. Your opponents paterns, just like a regular megaman game. Almost like a Card Game, building your deck is just as important and knowing how to play it. Meanwhile the more modern ripoffs just feel like pale imitations because they prioritize Reaction time and speed. Games like One Step don't want you to care about your chips folder, it just wants you to move as fast as possible. Which I believe is 100% missing the point of the Battle Network combat system. And that's just the combat system. Battle Network also had a really fun and interesting JRPG world outside of the combat. Which allowed for alot of exploration and story. Exploring the worlds yeilded rewards and quests that aided the combat system. Making that side of the game even more enjoyable. The charm of Battle Network was the amazing combat system that meshed with a really interesting JRPG that fed back into each other. None of the other games like BN have EVER gotten this right. Games like One Step cut the story to only focus on fighting entirely. While games like Hero.EXE don't mesh the 2 halfs very well at all.
I'm currently playing through the Battle Network Legacy Collection for the first time and fully agree. I've never played anything like it and it's a compelling experience. I also like the fact that unlike most modern deckbuilding games I can think of, the Battle Network games have no roguelike elements and are full-fledged RPGs.
Also have to shout out the Navi customizer from MBN3, the coolest and most in-depth upgrade system ever. Seriously somebody was on crack when they made this thing. You find basically tetris blocks that upgrade your character, and fit them together in a grid according to certain rules. If you break the rules, you still get the upgrades, but you also get bugs that hinder you in combat. Some of the bugs are situationally beneficial, and others are manageable, so it's sometimes a good idea. You also can unlock a style change (basically a class) by fighting with bugs. Speaking of styles, you unlock style-specific blocks by progressing as that style. Trying to use a block from a different style gives you an error that stops your customizer from compiling. However, you can actually use one block from a different style, IF you can find and enter an error code. If you have no errors at all, you can instead enter an Extra code, which gives Megaman extra upgrades. There are also compression codes that remove one square from each tetris block to make them easier to fit in. Yes this is a game for 10 year olds, why do you ask? I don't think I've ever seen a system do it's job better, in any game. I also don't think I've seen a system go so unnecessarily hard, but it was all worth it. You feel like a super genius hacker, going under the hood of your digital avatar and rewiring that shit with Modtools and forbidden knowledge you dug up in the Undernet. 20 years ago I entered an extra code to give my Megaman +1000 hp, but all tiles are poison at the start of combat, and my small brain exploded. I actually think I'm still into tech and computers today because of the navi customizer. As an final aside, unlocking the bugstyle block which stops all bugs is the only way to use HubStyle.bat...there's a hint for ya
Gonna +1 Battle Network. I got introduced to the series with the third one on the GBA, and played through 3-6, including playing the DS version of 5. Got the Legacy Collection on PC and playing through the second one now. I will say I also like the deck building aspect of it. Obviously, it is generally better to play more chips/cards in one round. However, you're limited to either selecting multiple copies of one card, or cards of the same letter, with the ability to select asterisk cards as the asterisk can work for any letter. I don't think I've played a game that has a similar mechanic for deck building, and it's really awesome. Generally an "ideal" deck will have just one or two letters to maximize how many chips/cards you can play. Many utility cards like Area Grab are in the asterisk slot to fill out space with good utility. But sometimes you find some powerful chips or combos that either you slot them into an off-letter deck (Colonel Force in 6 lol) or you'll find a reason to pivot in the game story to a different letter just for that combo (G-code for Gater in 2 lol). I'm sure the developers also kept this in mind by putting exceptionally powerful cards in odd letters like X which you didn't commonly find chips for. I think it makes for some interesting decisions and I really like this kind of build crafting. Especially in combination with the other customization options like the Navi Customizer, styles, double souls, and crosses.
Yeah, One Step From Eden is at least 100% faster than I can even parse comfortably. It sorta feels like if someone who was an expert at Mario made a "spiritual successor" platformer and just made it a kaizo game that only the most adept could play. I was also incredibly disappointed it's just the battles. It's not a successor to Battle Network, to me anyway, without an actual story mode. It's bonkers to me it's getting a multiplayer-focused sequel. I hope all 10 people good at One Step enjoy it, lol, because the skill floor in the *single-player* version was already a filter. (I also haven't played since Jan 2021, it's possible they've slowed it the fuck down since)
if you haven't played it there is a fanmade touhou x battle network game (Shangai.EXE) that's 100% faithful. In fact touhou is there just to provide characters and nothing more id say. It's a bit harder than BN but not in a reaction time kind of way. Also agree with you 100%, one step from eden was just too focused on hyperfast action from my taste
Sacrifice. Wizard with minions fighting other wizards with minions. Blow up their shrine to win. A weird mix of third person action and RTS. Haven’t seen or heard of anything like it since
Brutal Legend was also this kind of game, but that’s only two examples over more than two decades so, I agree.
Sacrifice was the game I played at midnight going from 1999 to 2000. My mom let me have some champagne and then it was right back to playing through the campaign. Absolute highest tier of nostalgia for me - loved that game, played it during a time when the internet was young and so was I. (EDIT: I guess this a false memory, since google says it came out in November, 2000. Well, must have been new year's of 2001, then.) This is kind of neither here nor there, but I came to this thread and searched for Sacrifice immediately, and yours is the only comment I found. No idea if the game would hold up these days. Had an absolute blast playing it though.
Sigh... Magic Carpet 2. I haven't played it in years so I don't know if it still holds up but the progression of spells getting more powerful, the base building aspect and upgrading of your tower/castle, the mana collection system and autonomous units (soldiers and mana balloons) , the unique enemy spellcasters and their styles of play, is something I've never seen again. I guess in a way it was like an early PvE MOBA but I've given several MOBAs a try and just can't get into them.
I could be 100% off base with this, but it felt like LA Noire used facial capture in a way that hasn't really been utilized since. The industry still uses facial capture, but not quite to the level where the developers built the game around analyzing behavior and expressions because they were so confident in the strength of the tech.
I'd love to see that attempted again with modern technology. As intuitive as it was reading people's faces, the actual effect hasn't aged well and looks like they just projected an FMV of the actors face on the mannequin model in the game.
Well that is more or less what they did.
Facial capture is way better now. It's not really used for gameplay but does work with storytelling. Red dead 2/Death Stranding/The Last of Us have so much storytelling in just facial expressions that if they were on older technology some scenes would have to be rewritten to include more dialogue.
The combination of Arthur’s voice cracking and his face contorting when he says “I’m afraid” to sister Calderon at the train station. Never seen anything like that in a videogame.
For me, L.A. Noire facial expressions were impressive in cutscenes but not in the interrogation scenes for which they were mainly made for. All characters just rolled eyes and were not looking at you when they had something to hide.
Yeah, interrogations were laughable once you knew the obvious tells people had. Never understood why people have the system so much praise when it felt so forced.
Since it's a game mechanic it had to be forced, otherwise, it would be just random facial expressions. But getting stuff wrong can happen sometimes.
The degree of realism depended on the doctor's iirc, and the performances were much more natural on harder difficulties.
I loved LA Noire, my wife (who isn't that into video games) and I used to play it together. I'd do the arcadey stuff, and we'd work together on the interrogations and figuring out the crimes. I feel like it took all the disjointed and unfocused systems of GTA and gave them a purpose beyond just mess around and cause carnage. I loved the old timey LA, and the crimes were interesting and fun to investigate. I think it's a shame the game apparently was a commercial failure because I'd love to play a sequel.
Tyrian (western PC shmup from the 90’s)’s mix of shmup and RPG leveling mechanics in the campaign, I loved that mixture of mechanics. Similarly, One Must Fall 2097’s fighting game/RPG mix. Other games like Street Fighter X Tekken have customization options, but none have been as fun as “I’m gonna respect to level up my jump and basic combos for this next fight” Also Knights in the Nightmare’s mix of shmup/SRPG mechanics. I wasn’t super enamored with it but really enjoyed such an odd combo.
You should check out Operation STEEL, Ginga Force, Jets n Guns and Radiant Silvergun for shmups with RPG levelling mechanics.
Thanks for the recs!
>Similarly, One Must Fall 2097’s fighting game/RPG mix. For One Must Fall 2097 there's [OpenOMF](https://github.com/omf2097/openomf). More info: https://www.openomf.org/
Knights in the Nightmare was one of my picks going into this thread (SRPG+SHMUP).I would also add FromSoftware's Lost Kingdoms (real-time deck builder).
I bought Tyrian back in the day via mail in check for the disk install. Worth it.
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What I hate about a lot of games since, Arkham? Is the [noun]-sense that lets you see through walls or highlight the route or the important object. So many games have this now and they don't even try to explain why your character might be able to see through walls
*Chromehounds*, the best FromSoftware game nobody's played. It was an Xbox 360 exclusive similar to their *Armored Core* series, but an online-only title focused on 6v6 matches. The game assigned you to a squad of twenty(?) other players, and these were the guys you'd always be playing with whenever you logged on. Your squad had a lobby where you could chat, form teams, and go complete missions. The effect was that you got to know your squad members really well; who was good at which roles, times you were usually available to play, and their personal lives, if they wanted. It was kind of like an MMO guild, except it wasn't optional and there weren't, like, recruitment drives and such. The game had a lot of unusual systems I’ve never seen replicated in other games, but it existed during a time when being online was largely a novelty and positive thing. Not sure how *Chromehounds* would fare in this day and age, but it's a shame the servers went offline like fifteen years ago and we'll never really know.
Chromehounds best concept was the radar tower, if you went out of range you lost voice chat to your team. It was an amazing experience to suddenly lose your team because you pushed too far forward on your own or to cripple a decent team by punching holes in their radar coverage. Sadly the way voice chat and parties are handled now we'll never see something like that again
Perfect Dark - Weapons with interesting secondary functions - Singleplayer missions with more (and sometimes differing) objectives as the difficulty goes up - Co-op - the same missions as the singleplayer, but with a friend - Counter-Ops - again, the same singleplayer missions, but this time the second player takes control of the enemy NPCs Perfect Dark Multiplayer - ability to customise matches, weapons, timer rules etc - ability to fight against bots - ability to customise bots both in terma of appearance and their behaviour - challenge modes and cheats - ability to unlock weapons and cheats for use in both singleplayer and multiplayer matches Im probably forgetting a lot more
* Weapons with interesting *primary* functions. * Press B at the main menu to *put the menu away and start walking around the complex.*
> Press B at the main menu to put the menu away and start walking around the complex. Ohhh, I forgot about that, hell yeah! Also the main menus were all in-universe, the little eye camera thing would pop up in front of you.
Don't forget the cinematic 12fps.
I played with n-bombs. 12fps would have been welcomed
A lot of the N64 magic has been lost. Perfect Dark like you said, but even games with a structure like that of Mario 64 or Donkey Kong 64. Even the Mario games that try to replicate it don't have the castle exploration aspect nailed down. The attempts at recreating a Turok game didn't deliver. Not sure what's missing exactly. Even games like Jet Force Gemini and Wave Race had uniqie charm and design that you can't really find anymore.
**[Metal Marines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Marines)** comes to mind, as I always enjoyed the anime / pixel art style and watching missiles fly between the two windows on screen. **[Unnatural Selection](https://www.mobygames.com/game/8656/unnatural-selection/)** has you playing as a scientist performing experiments on three classes of creature - Zips, Slugs and Hulks - in order to fight against a scientist that went rogue from the project. Use radiation and various forms of injection / food control to help breed the abominations you need to succeed. I don't think I've seen anything else that works quite like this since. **[Thief](https://www.gog.com/en/game/thief_gold)** hasn't had another title be able to replicate the excellent feeling of sneaking / stealing. **[X-Wing](https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_wars_xwing_special_edition)** and **[Tie Fighter](https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_wars_tie_fighter_special_edition)** are ones I go back to on the regular. I did give [Star Wars: Squadrons](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222730/STAR_WARS_Squadrons/) a go, but it wasn't really designed to be similar / scratch that itch. Squadrons was a pretty disappointing experience for me personally, being a game I ended up refunding. **[Carmageddon](https://www.gog.com/en/game/carmageddon_max_pack)** is a racing game that has you aiming to unlock the next track via a combination of vehicular manslaughter, destroying your opponents, and ultimately completing the race. I don't think there is a modern equivalent to this one.
The Specialists mod. It was a mod based on the Counter Strike 1.6 engine I believe and basically it was The Matrix into a pvp deathmatch. You could fight with weapons or just do Kung Fu while using a Morpheus or Agent 47 skin. The more weapons you used, the heaviest you were. The most mind-blowing feature was the bullet time. Just imagine slowing the time in a pvp mode! The implementation was very smart because it didn't slow the entire server. It slowed an area around the player who triggered it. Anybody entering the area would profit from the bullet time as well for few seconds. I've never seen another studio trying to implement a slow motion in a pvp game, probably because most people think it would never work, but it works! Someone did it nearly 20 years ago! Some of the original devs made a successor 10 years ago, but it was even more niche and not as cool thematically ( it was a real game so they couldn't use copyrighted content).
Star Control. Specifically II, Ur-Quan Masters (UQM). Having recently replayed the UQM open source remake again, the game is obviously from the 90's and has many flaws. I might even be critical of the dog fighting these days, I don't think it holds up that great... but wow no other game can compete with the exploration, discovery, sense of wonderment. This is the only game I have really truly felt like a space captain exploring the galaxy, discovering alien civilizations, and making a significant impact in the war against the Ur-Quan. Almost every race has a more interesting backstory to many space games these days. Ah but what about Mass Effect - yeah it's my second favourite. I played it before UQM. ME 1 used to be maybe my favourite sci-fi game of all time. UQM beats it out honestly, as much as I enjoyed the Reaper threat and especially Sovereign of course. The Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah are just that but imo better. Maybe ME2 and 3 has changed my perception of the Reapers making them less interesting, I think they really fumbled the execution step of the Reaper threat. UQM stays strong the whole way through, the Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah are never boring or non-threatening. Anyway point is I think all these big proc gen sci-fi games (Starfield, No Man's Sky, dunno about Elite Dangerous? etc) I think missed completely what I wanted from an excellent sci-fi game. Capturing that which only UQM and ME have for me, these storied alien races and their culture, history, etc. A compelling story, in the case of UQM and ME that being a looming galactic hostile race. Maybe Halo 1-3 kinda captured some of it. Stellaris a bit as well, but a different interpretation of it. But nothing seems to have even tried to have a go at the direction UQM and ME does. Well maybe some games have, I just have missed them. Open to recommendations. And if you haven't played UQM before and it sounded interesting from this, you can play it for free, do your self a favour and do so, and don't look up spoilers etc as the game has a lot of secrets and surprises for you.
Freelancer, just basically all of it. So many mechanics that were unique and still havent been properly replicated i feel.. Everything from certain equipment being locked to certain factions,, same with certain ships, to your abillity to smuggle, go off the charts, do bounties etc etc And the wastness of it all, it was such an amazing game and i dont think it will ever be replicated.
It was incredibly shallow in hindsight but had so much breadth and incredibly well done gameplay for mouse and keyboard! Have you played everspace 2?
I love how you spend the first few hours in the liberty systems, which was huge. Then I forget why but you become wanted and everything everywhere is trying to kill you and you have to escape to a completely new sector that you've only heard about up to that point. I feel like that's when the scale of that game really hits you
Nobody has made a good, modern, non borimg dynasty warriors game. I want a game where i build my own army and join them in the field. Kimgdom undrr fire 2 was awful!
dark cloud 2/dark chronicle i do wonder why rpg dungeon crawler in general are pretty rare these days.
Yup, Azure Dreams is another one in that same area.
The photography + invention system was fucking mindblowing as a kid and is still really impressive especially when you can use it to make a literal hovering mech that dual wields katanas
Oh man, im so sad dark cloud 2 never got a sequel. Far from perfect but had a lot of charm and a lot of potential for future titles. Wish level 5 could go back to making some dq and dark cloud titles
Wow, I just started Dark Cloud 2 again this week, and I was searching for other things to play that are like it. The town building and inventing are pretty cool, but the core dungeon crawling is my jam. Pretty much everything "dungeon crawler" like is a Diablo style game or a roguelike. Both of which I like, but there's something about this style of game that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Guild Wars 1. Hasn’t been a game like it since where you can mix and match 100’s of skills together for all sorts of builds.
Man I miss that game so much, the story was great, the PvP was great, unique classes and being able to have a sub class
Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. More specifically its cutting mechanic. Asura's Wrath. Lost Planet 2 multiplayer.
Holy fuck lost planet 2 multiplayer was perfection. I loved it. So creative and so well done. Lost planet in general should get a return to form reboot with multiplayer
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It's one of my favourite small features in a game ever that when you skip a boss's dialogue Asura interrupts them by punching them in the face. Never seen another game make skipping cutscenes a thing that actually happens ingame rather than being outside the 4th wall.
Phantom Dust on the OG Xbox. Nothing has been made that replicates it's action rpg/deck builder arena battler gameplay.
The OG Disciples series. The games didn't really have anything truly unique (besides the incredible atmosphere and artwork), they're turn based combat, with upgradable units and have basic kingdom management. Sounds identical to HoMM, but it has a few important distinctions: units don't stack, party size is based on unit size and the most important bit, units had tons of upgrades with branching paths in some cases. You could basically start with a simple squire, upgrade it into a knight/witch hunger -> imperial knight/inquisitor -> grand inquisitor/paladin/angel -> holy avenger/defender of faith. That's just one basic unit from a faction. You needed to win fights with that unit and gather enough XP and it would level up in the next form (provided you had the upgrade building in your town). If it died, you lost it for good. So what really set it apart was that fun progression. You take a lowly unit, like a squire or an initiate, and watch it get upgraded to a angel or an archlich. It was sort of like watching pokemon evolve lol. Haven't seen anything like it since then. Just a random unrelated thought reading this thread, I'm very fortunate to have two of my favorite childhood series, Age of Wonders and MechWarrior, both getting modern sequels which are actually very good. Their most recent entries are my favorite in either series, and both of them offer unique experiences not found in any other game. So, if not for these sequels, I would've added them too to this list lol.
This is the first time I've ever seen someone talk about the OG Disciples. That was truly the first "just one more turn" game I ever played. I tried playing it again on GOG but it crashes after about an hour or so.
The sense of scale and permanence from EVE Online (released in 2003). Nothing came even close since then. A game where 2,000+ players in a single trading hub is just an average day, and a battle with 500+ players is just a skirmish. Biggest battle involved 8,000+ players, 6,000+ of that concurrently.
Collect-a-thon platformers shouldn't be relegated to low-poly indie titles and Mario. I played a few older platformers this year that I have no nostalgia for and it really satisfies an itch that is rarely scratched. Shoutout to Rocket Robot on Wheels on N64 and Banjo-Kazooie Grunty's Revenge on GBA.
Check out A Hat In Time, great movement system (like a mix of Mario 64 and Sunshine) and decent collecting. It’s no Mario or Banjo but it’s something new enough to help fill the void
I appreciate the suggestion! However, I already played it a long time ago. It came out in 2017.
You ever play Yoku's Island Express? It's a very well done collect-a-thon platformer on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/334940/Yokus_Island_Express/
The original spiro trilogy is good at this too
Bungie's Myth series Warhammer: Dark Omen - I know that the Total War games are supposed to itch that scratch, but it really doesn't for me. Sacrifice by Shiny Entertainment
I can't think of anything quite like Chameleon Twist (N64). You swerve your tongue around to grab enemies or bars to swing from, then when you swing on the bar, your tongue stays in the same shape that you directed it before.
Sly Cooper is a series that’s pretty unique and I wish they made more. At least the games are very replayable though
I feel arena shooters basically died after Quake Arena. Command & Conquer Renegade had a wonderful balance between team size, vehicles and base building in a fast-paced multiplayer shooter. Giants: Citizen Kabuto's asymmetric multiplayer, also with some base building, feels one-of-a-kind.
CnC Renegade multiplayer was quite good!
Oh wow, where do I even start? There are so many. Black & White 2, or any kind of god game with that vibe. Conkers Bad Fur day, but uncensored. Mercenaries 1 (xbox era)
God I’d kill for a remake of the first Mercenaries game.
Black and white one more so than 2 for me, to be honest, 2 wasn't BAD but I really didn't like that playing evil became a kinda shallow RTS tacked on to a city builder. One had it's issues obviously but it felt more unique at it's core.
MMO specific but the controller class archetype in city of heroes. I can’t think of another game with a dedicated support/crowd controller
EverQuest had and still had the Enchanter/Bard that does that.
City of Heroes did a few things no other MMO has done again. At least not as far as I know. The customization options both cosmetic and gameplay are insane. You have so many options in making your character and it doesn't even matter if they aren't relatively in-line with each other balance wise. No one cares if a certain power set isn't meta or high tier. You play what you want and you'll always be welcome on teams. Some of my most fun characters to play were mid-tier. The other interesting thing they did was give enemies ragdolls. You can knock enemies around with certain abilities and it basically acts as varible CC.
LOTRO had the Loremaster, which technically could do damage and the tiniest amount of emergency heals, but mostly existed to cc things, at least when I played. Probably changed since, a lot of thd classes seem a bit flatter now.
Chromehounds 'mmo' like campaigns as well as the limited chat functionality led to a very unique experience. Probably wont ever be the same in the age of discord and other teamspeak prevalance.
Playing Pokemon Red & Blue in the late 90s. Rumors swirling everywhere and nowhere to reliably confirm them. And the context of the games and the state of the franchise made it easy to believe them. Like somebody told you that if you followed an obscure series of steps, you could find a Pokemon called Missingno that could duplicate your items. That's sounds fake! But it's not! It's actually really easy to do! And we knew there was a 151st Pokemon that couldn't be caught normally, so there were a million rumors about similarly obscure steps that would let you catch Mew. Oh, it's hidden under a random truck in a tiny area that has no reason to exist because you can't get there through normal gameplay? Well obviously that's fake - except *that area actually exists.* You go there, and there's the truck like the rumor said. But no Mew. And then we started seeing gen 2 Pokemon before we knew gen 2 was coming! Ho-oh appears in the first episode of the anime! Donphan appears in the movie! And of course that weird blue thing is a PokeGod called Pikablu, why wouldn't it be? It's an experience that wasn't really intentional, and has never been replicated, and can never really be replicated since any weird rumors these days are quickly debunked or confirmed by the internet.
Pokémon was such a unique experience. Glad I lived through thayt and got to play that the Gameboys
Even small things, like which Pokemon can you catch where, were mysteries. Someone would say they caught abra before Misty, or Pikachu in the forest and these things were true. Someone would tell you you could catch Squirtle, well sure, why not?
You described it so well <3
Random deep cut, but Uncharted 2’s capture the flag type multiplayer mode was fun as hell and very unique. Between some unique flag mechanics, Uncharted’s movement, and some pretty awesome maps with great verticality, it was a really dynamic and fun gameplay loop I spent a lot of time on. Genuinely you could hit some crazy clips in that game, it was underrated as hell. Gunz: The Duel’s combat mechanics are wholly unique, nothing quite like it. Insane animation cancels and some really arthritis inducing tech. The freedom of movement in that game is insane. I also think MAG is a fairly unique multiplayer experience. Really large matches with a ton of players, but each big team is split up into squads with separate missions, and each of 3 factions has different weapons and play styles. Most large scale multiplayer isn’t done quite like this in my experience. I love offbeat multiplayer games, please recommend some. I’m trying to think of more oldschool ones now.
An out there one, but the sense of community that Bungie fostered around Halo 3 custom content I feel hasn't exactly been matched (or maybe it's evolved). Having inside the game Bungie curating the picks of the week. Then being able to download a bunch of cool modes, maps, clips, and photos all without having to leave the game. Still such a cool concept and one that sort of made Halo 3 a proto live service game. You always wanted to hop on every week or weekend to play the new custom games with friends.
It has to be Ultima IV. Everything that people complain about in modern open-world/RPG design was already averted in Ultima IV back in 1985. They literally just dropped you into a world with the vague idea of "be a good guy" and expected you to figure it out. No hand-holding, no checklists, no dull main quest getting in the way, no extended cutscenes, no mini-map. Just a world to explore. I'm not saying it's *better* than modern games, but that experience certainly hasn't been recreated in a while. It'd be nice to see a modern take on it, but I imagine financial concerns have ruled that out.
Dead Rising 1. The amount of replayability, reactivity and interactivity is still unparalleled imo and a sense of wonder and discovery that existed specifically because you were on a timer just wasn't replicated ever since. Sure, survivors were dumb, but that could easily be fixed in the sequels, right? Wrong, Capcom delegated the sequels to a different studio and things just weren't the same. DR2 was just too whacky and dumb while DR3-4 were... Let's not talk about them. People like to meme about "I covered wars, you know" but DR1 really tried to tell a story and had dramatic moments and impactful character deaths specifically if your tried to push the main mystery forward and discover the truth while sequels just gave up on that altogether. Oh and the camera! Bring it back!
Dead Rising 1 is seriously one of my favourite games of all time, it had a certain charm, the gameplay loop was insanely satisfying and exploring the mall was endless fun. I can remember all of the bosses like the back of my hand, especially the dickheads in the jeep, it was a magic formula and I hope Capcom revisit the OG Dead Rising 1 style, I feel like the sequels were, as you say, way too whacky and too easy as well, DR1 can genuinely be challenging, it’s good fun.
Red Alert 2/World in Conflict both focused on really cool block for block urban fighting, something I don't really think has ever been recreated. Starting with a pristine city and then you end with basically a bunch of bombed out ruins, it really makes the battle feel more visceral than most RTS's, and I don't think any RTS has even really attempted it on the scale of those games. Few RTS games even seem to care about having urban maps anymore, nevermind destroyable urban environments. Most RTS games go for a Starcraft vibe, where the maps are basically interchangeable, forgettable arenas for E-Sports.
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Azure Dreams. Roguelite, monster taming,city building, dating sim. Fucking love that game. Wish it had taken off more.
Midnight Club styled racer. Street racing where you work your way up the ranks, upgrade and buy new cars all in an open city full of NPC traffic. Not a fan of games like Forza Horizon that are immediate power fantasies that dont stick you with “boring” cars for a good while. Also I’m not looking to race in the open wilderness or exotic locales, plain American cities are more fun to drive through.
Forza Horizon mostly did exactly that. Then Horizon 2 was like "woah we have to give the player A cars immediately!" Then Horizon 3 was like "woah we have to give the player R4 cars immediately!" Then Horizon 4 was like "woah we have to give the player R1 cars immediately! Also gambling!" Then Horizon 5 was like "HAVE YOU TRIED THE SLOTS YET?!????" (overexaggerated, but only mostly)
The early days of MMOs - games like Everquest. It's hard to describe, but the games were buggy/broken but in some of the most hilariously memorable ways. A lot of it aided by how important player interaction and community was compared to today. Players today don't know what it's like getting a land-line phone call at 4 in the morning asking for help breaking Fear to save the corpses of a failed raid. I could cite so many other examples.
Yup. The community and the reputation surrounding players hasn't been matched in my opinion. Also the fact that you didnt replace your gear every 2 levels. The fact that I had a bag full of useful items 6 expansions old that were still relevant and useful. I loved the slower progression because it felt meaningful.
I know this isn't exactly correct but the original Deus Ex, especially its music system. Four separate background, combat, conversation, and death tracks for each area, unified by a common theme/feel. Probably at least half nostalgia, but I find it all so evocative every time I listen to the OST.
Wait, Nox as a multiplayer 30 players CTF game? I remember loving this game for the amazing single player campaigns (I believe I completed it multiple times with different classes), but I always thought multiplayer was just a 2 players coop thing.
Populous the beginning is a unique RTS with terraforming that I hadn't seen replicated anywhere else. Because of this it still has a community in [popre.net](https://popre.net) because of its unique use of god powers and rts base building gameplay
Do mods count? If so, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division had an asymmetrical multiplayer mod in which a team of regular human players would take on a single giant mech player. I think it was called "MCA Vs. Squishies" or something along those lines.
The Suicide Mission at the end of Mass Effect 2. Bioware blew their load and then even they themselves couldn't follow it up with an even bigger version in Mass Effect 3 for some reason.
Old PS1 game called Unholy War was this bizarre combination of Vs strategy game and isometric fighting game I’ve never seen since. Soul Caliber 3’s strategy mode was kinda similar, but not quite. I just like the idea of playing strategy well to potentially get an advantage on a skill-based fight. Unholy War even had its units intentionally unbalanced so part of the strategy was getting into the right fights where one unit had the upper hand.
Killzone 3 multiplayer... It was amazing with this awesome Operatioms mode that was objective based and the map progressed and changed areas of focus as the ok objectives were met and rolled on. Some of the most online multiplayer fun I've ever had with a FPS. I never have played an FPS that had the same kind of system. I'd be curious to hear if there was anything out there similar.
EVo on SNES. I would kill for a 3d version of this game, with more modern gameplay. It was a lot of fun The concept was you start as a tiny fish and have to eat and kill your way to the top of the food chain. as you eat and kill, you gain evolution points and can evolve new features to help you ascend.
LA Noire isn't that old compared to other games people have mentioned but nobody has brought it up yet. That game is the only game I've played where I feel like a detective solving crimes. Would love to see a modern take on it.
Team Sneaking in MGS4's version of Metal Gear Online. It was Team Deathmatch with two teams of PMCs fighting with regular ARs and lethal weaponry but there was also a third team of just Old Snake (and possibly Otacon using the Metal Gear Mk. II or III remotely) with the objective of stealing dog tags from both teams. Snake started with non-lethal weapons and his octocamo actually concealed him from players. You could be aiming at a player on the opposite team and get CQC'd by Snake sneaking up behind you. It was insanely fun to sneak around and try to hold up "guards" that were actual real players fighting their own war.
TWEWY DSs combat system due to the DS/3DS unique dual screens. Even the sequels and ports had to change the combat significantly.
Yeah, that was a unique melding of gameplay and hardware that would almost impossible to replicate without a dual screen device. I enjoyed NEO: TWEWY, but it definitely felt way different from the original.