Oh hells yes. Twas glorious.
Heroes of Might and Magic IV - the revised levelup system for heroes had a ton of promise. Also, the soundtrack was again excellent (and I might even argue best ever). I even liked heroes on the battlefield, though the game needed some serious mechanical adjustments not called “sanctuary potion” (or whatever it was called).
It also was much superior with regard to getting troups moved around. It could have been improved even further, but it was a step up from its predecessors.
Too bad about the AI and the quirks accompanied with the shift in movement. And the “simplified” town didn’t improve things.
Ok, I guess that’s more than one thing.
Way of the Samurai 2 did more than one thing right–sword collecting was an ongoing carrot, combat was okay once you got the rhythm of it, and I liked its shot at “very short story, many branches” design which more games should take a (much) more polished crack at. But the loading screens every two steps, the general art direction, the localized voice acting…ye gods, the voice acting…the flat difficulty plain with random difficulty walls instead of a curve and so on added up to quite the list of flaws I kept playing in spite of.
And the doe-eyed, “Why would anybody mistake it for a stealth game?” routine.
Don’t get all teary-eyed, that apology looked more patronizing than genuine to me. He’s got nothing to apologize about.
Dynasty Warriors X (X being any number between 1 and a million)
Making you feel powerful and putting you in epic fights.
Now, it wasn’t challenging, tactics were usually ‘offense’ ‘defense’ or ‘which general do i kill first’ etc, but I don’t think anybody who booted up DW for the first time on the PS2 didn’t think “holy shit this is epic.”
Spec Ops 2 had a 4-man squad with a Battlefield 2 style squad control system way ahead of its time, and soul switching to boot. Everything else about it was shit.
Respectfully
krise madsen
Another - Terra Nova, for offering Tribes/Battlefield-style combat way ahead of its time.
Rune had pretty fun melee combat for the time. But it became pretty dull after a few hours. Multiplayer was fun for a bit.
I was trying to think of an older game to add to the list and the first one to come to mind was TMNT for the NES. HORRIBLE game, but the overworld ‘driving around in the Turtle Mobile’ element was actually pretty cool. Didn’t you have to drive through a barrier at some point, or DO something other than travel? It was sorta great for the time, if I recall correctly.
Republic Commando did squad chatter really well. Also - a space faceplate wiper for when you blew up a space pig and his space viscera covered you like marmite on a bun.
Oddworld: Strangers Wrath for the depth of field blurring on the sniper … device. Squealy-alien bug launcher.
Republic Commando did squad chatter really well. Also - a space faceplate wiper for when you blew up a space pig and his space viscera covered you like marmite on a bun (in space).
Oddworld: Strangers Wrath for the depth of field blurring on the sniper … device. Squealy-alien bug launcher.
Total Annihilation for a couple reasons:
- Awesome soundtrack
- Horrible AI (somewhat fixed via 3rd party patches)
- Soul-less story (as if there really was one…)
- …but very, very good at building upon those that came before it in the RTS space, and expanded the control and ability given to the player. (such as easier/better unit selection, better/expanded grouping, patrol paths,etc)
I’m sure that there’s examples of games that came out previous to it that individually did a lot of the niceties that TA put all into the same punchbowl, but here, the mix seemed pretty good.
Oh, and it still works under XP/Vista even today… shame the UI wasn’t built to be scalable to today’s resolutions, but aside from that, it’s still as playable now as it was when it came out.
Unreal did more than one thing well, but it was certainly flawed and didn’t compare well to the superior Half-Life, released about 6 months later. Still, Unreal remains one of my all-time favorite shooters because it completely nailed the atmosphere. No game before or since gave me the same sense of wandering on a strange alien world, full of possibility, with strange creatures at every corner and vast celestial bodies hovering in the skies. There aren’t many 10-year-old games I revisit regularly – even Half-Life, I’d say, is pretty well played out for me – but Unreal is among them.
Another: the eviscerations in the combat from Die by the Sword.
That’s a great example. The control scheme for combat in that game was so awful, but you have to give it props for trying something new. It’s probably the first true 3D game to feature limbs being hacked off.
Was just discussing Bethesda’s great ability to craft a fun RPG sandbox with a crummy storyline and I specifically mentioned to my co-worker how great Morrowind’s soundtrack was.
Desslock: Terra Nova did a helluva lot more than just that one thing right. That game was f’n amazing for early 1996.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
The combat was insanely bad. The world/level design went from bad to worse, depending on the section… The game was buggy as shit but damn if it didn’t have awesome voice acting and characterization.
Majesty. It had the right concept (a hands-off fantasy kingdom thing), but the execution fell far short of my dreams mostly because maps were either gimmicky or had a tipping point at which your adventurers would suddenly go from fighting for their lives to crushing the enemy.
Escape Velocity, for Mac. Not really flawed so much as eccentric. What an amazing universe to exist in. It truly could suck you in for months. Made you feel silly, since it was just little rinky dink ships, and most combat ended quickly and decisively. Save for planetary battles.
Great game, but it is what it is.
here here! Still buggy. I am ashamed I paid on Steam for this since it’s still a shambling mess, bugs-etc.