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Genre-Defining Games?
Gamasutra has up responses from its frequent feature, the question of the Week. This week's question was a call for the best of the best. "For any genre of your choice, what is the game that defines that genre for you?" From the article: "For the RPG, simply Final Fantasy 6. It has the best story, greatest variety of characters, tons of different music, and added many secret areas. It was the first game to truly to define a real experience of an RPG to the player.
-Anonymous" What games would you refer to as Genre Defining?
No mention of the pure classic that is Populous? It's the classic God-genre game; although it's a genre mostly consisting of Peter Molyneux games. It's got to be a strong influence for many RTS games, though. I also see the infamous Brandon Every puts his (apparently) unqualified oar into the proceedings...
There is a moment in Max Payne 2 where you can listen to recorded messages from Max's tapped phone lines. You hear a couple of phone conversations that push the story a little, and then there is one where Max calls a phone sex line. He sounds depressed, lonely and in a way, confused.
The whole game you have Max in your ear, talking in this very noir tone. He's narrating his own story, if you will, and telling the player what he wants them to hear. That moment when you hear the phone sex call was almost like a breach of privacy between the player and Max. It was on Max's intention for the player to hear this low moment in his life.
Games are great at making one scared, surprised, intrigued and a bunch of other emmotions, but that was the first time that I felt empathy towards a video game. It's not genre defining, but it was a moment that shows that there can be a lot of depth to what games can be. They can be more than just shoot-em-ups. They can convey some serious, complex emmotions. We will see more of this in games in the future.
I don't mean to nit-pick (except really I do), but FF6 was 1994, and was ported to the Playstation in 1999. Still, it's hardly genre-defining. Perhaps it defines the 16-bit subset of console RPGs... but then you're getting far too specific for this issue.
I think it's safe to assume that console RPGs are a whole different animal than PC RPGs. They're only likely to diverge farther, too.
If there were a defining game for console RPGs, I'd put it at Dragon Warrior III.
...but is it art?
Empire or Civilization 1 were genre defining games for turn based strategy. Civilization had descent graphics for its time and endless playtime.
I'm just going to point out some things that I think.
I would take Planescape: Torment for RPGs over any Final Fantasy game, hands down.
Ico had an emotional pull like few other games I've played.
Not that I don't love Splinter Cell, but I'd rather play any of the Metal Gear Solid games any day.
I hate to use newer games that have just come out really recently, but in WWII shooters, Call of Duty and Brothers in Arms are just head an shoulders above the rest.
In the category of Graphic-Based Adventure Games, I nominate The Secret of Monkey Island. It was not the first by a long shot. If this were a thread about "created the genre" I'd probably put King's Quest in this place.
I almost said Grim Fandango, but really Grim Fandango is just as good as Monkey Island or Sam & Max Hit the Road or Day of the Tentacle but not so hugely better that I'd think it defined the genre. Re-introduced it, yeah, and that was wonderful. Monkey Island was funny, intelligent, not so entirely hard that I couldn't finish it, and has a fantastic soundtrack. (MI2's was even better.)
My love of Monkey Island 1 & 2 was what made the cancellation of the second Sam & Max harder to take. We all want to re-live the glory days in new and interesting ways.
This now concludes our broadcast day.