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Game Innovators Pick Their Favorite Titles
Thanks to Ludology.org for pointing to the Georgia Tech game morphology project, which, although still in development, has asked famous creators and academics for their favorite games of all time. Interesting picks include Warren Spector's kudos for Ultima IV ("Wait, you mean games can be about more than just killing
things? Whoa! This game, with its ethical underpinnings, changed my life"), Henry Jenkins' choice of Myst ("not a great game from the perspective of game play... [but influential because] it brought some degree of middle class respectability to games"), and Will Wright's picking of Pinball Construction Set ("[a] heavy influence for me - construction is fun.")
Story can definately hurt a game. Although it doesn't have to be the case, most games with involved stories are much more linear because of it.
Linearity kills replay value. The older Zelda and Metroid games were great because although there was a certain order you were expected to do things in the first time through, you weren't held to that order very tightly. In Zelda 1, it's sometimes easier to do things in different orders. For example, Level 7 is much easier than Level 6, so beating Level 7 first means you can be stronger when you do Level 6. Wind Waker's heavy story eliminated those options, leaving most people with no desire to play the game a second time.
In all the Metroid games, after you beat the game once it will become obvious that there are better paths to take to get upgrades sooner and/or get 100% more efficently. Metroid Fusion had to eliminate most of that due to the heavy story.
Not only was it a great game -- when I worked at NASA Ames for a summer internship, my boss (who specialized in human-computer interfaces) said he believed it was the first instance of an iconic drag-and-drop interface ever written.
Of course, you had to use the joystick -- no mouse support!
Innovation in my book is games that did things that were new and fresh, take games like The ancient art of war or the later Dune][, the basis for all C&C/starcraft games of today.
And how can you forget Wolfenstein 3D as a revolution in digital killing...
I gew up playing on a BBC Acorn, but games memories of the original cga Test drive and Paratrooper all made games what they are today...IMHO that is.
It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious. -B.Hicks-
The new one, Nova, is very good. But if you feel this way, its granddaddy "Elite" was one of the most progressive games of its time. Immersive 3-D space trader with a gigantic universe and plenty of things to do, completely non-linear and open ended, and you could play it on an Apple IIe. 3-D polygon "line" graphics like asteroids come to live but still you felt it when the ships flew over your cockpit.