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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?
Gotta be pong!
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.
How about Dungeon Master? I'd say that would be one of the CRPG-defining games, if not the CRPG-defining game...
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I'm afraid I must agree, although the term "RPG" is really way too broad to be defined by any one single game.
Wasteland helped define the post-apocalyptic party-based RPG "genre".
Bard's Tale defined the standard form for many party-based RPGs for quite some time.
Ultima IV was a defining game for RPGs where your in-game choices changed your character, and where certain situations would have no "correct" solution.
Ultima VII showed that you could create a surprisingly living world.
FF6 may be genre defining for it's little niche of the RPG landscape... I haven't played it myself and can't really say.
For me, Duke Nuken Forever is defined the Vaporware genre.
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
Empire or Civilization 1 were genre defining games for turn based strategy. Civilization had descent graphics for its time and endless playtime.
I'm suprised Fallout didn't show up on that list. The game and its spiritual predecessor Wasteland were genre defining in a way - post holocaust RPGs. Granted, a very small genre but on their strength alone they should have gotten at least honorable mention.
the only genre-creating and defining game
First Person Sneakers!!!!
this sig has been discontinued.
I compare almost all strategy games I play to X-Com.
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.
Some reasonable enough picks in the article, but a lot of very strange omissions and perhaps a few unwarrented inclusions as well. Of course, it's hard to make just one pick per genre, so I'm not even going to bother trying.
Adventure:
I don't see how anybody can talk about genre defining adventure games without at least a nod to Zork. The license may have been driven into the ground since then, but it still has vast significance. Moving forwards, I guess the next big genre-definers were the Sierra adventures. I'm not sure which of these actually came first, so I'm just going to name the Police Quest, Space Quest, Kings Quest and Leisure Suit Larry games. Next came the Lucasarts games; I'm thinking particularly of Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max here, although Monkey Island also merits a nod. With the "no deaths" gameplay and the quirky humour, I think these basically represent the high-point of the genre. Finally, the Syberia games deserve a nod for trying to resurrect the genre on modern hardware.
First Person Shooters:
Wolfenstein3d and Doom were probably the big early genre-definers here. The former basically introduced gamers to the concept, while the latter really showed what the genre could do in terms of atmosphere and adrenelin. Quake probably represented the biggest technical advance, and hence has been massively important in defining the genre, but its single-player gameplay felt like a massive step back from Doom. Of course, it also popularised the idea of online gameplay to an extent that none of its predecessors have managed. I don't actually see Half-Life (or its sequel) as being particularly genre-defining... they were just examples of existing concepts done very well; they don't bring anything new to the genre.
Action/Platformers:
The early Mario games are obviously the most significant influences here, although I think Sonic also deserves credit for bringing a sense of fun to to the series (at least before the hideous 3d incarnations) that Mario never quite had.
Racing:
I think the most significant early racing game has got to be Outrun, which was massively popular in arcades for a while, with its big, shaking cabinet. Hard Drivin' was also significant; it had a more "realistic" feel than Outrun and its clones (despite the insane stunts) and I think modern racing games ultimately owe more to it than they do to Outrun. In the modern era, I think Ridge Racer was really responsible for bringing the genre onto modern hardware, while the Gran Turismo series have pretty comprehensively established the racing-sim category.
RPGS:
Ok, this is the section where I think the contributors to the article get it most "wrong". Very disappointing to not see a single nod towards the Ultima series. These defined the whole non-Japanese RPG world up until the early/mid-90s, even if the series did have a pretty dire ending. Of course, Ultima Online was also the first really successful MMORPG. Moving on to more modern games, it's probably right to recognise Baldurs Gate and its sequel, as they revived the fortunes of the "Western" RPG at a time when they were pretty low indeed. On the Final Fantasy front, I don't actually think VI is worthy of recognition, even though it's the one the fanboys like to drool over. It was essentially IV or V with a better story. I think you have to either point at II, which was the first to have any real story at all, or at VII, which was the first time that Square had the technical resources to do their story justice. Diablo probably deserves a nod as well, for largely inventing the action-RPG genre.
RTS
It's sad that so many people picked Starcraft here. Successful though it was, I fail to see how it defined the genre. Obviously, Dune 2 and Command & Conquer were the really important titles; I think C&C was more so, because it introduced the now-obligatory drag-click system, as well as multiplayer. Total Annihilation should get a nod for proving that RTSes don't have to look like crap.