The Hot Topic Returns

[shinymcshine]

I remember being quite amazed by the innovative use of the PS1 dual shock thumbsticks in Ape Escape.

[mfnick]

Vib Ribbon - Data on a disc=music still confuses the fuck out of me. Imagine how I felt about that 26 years ago. But not only that, a game could take that data and make potentially infinite number of individual “levels” out of it. 
 

Uncharted 2. It was a playable blockbuster movie. We kind of take that for granted and even rally against it a bit these days but when this released it was genuinely unbelievable. Never thought a game could do something like that. 
 

God of War 3 - it was the sheer scale that did it for me here. Having entire levels take place on moving titans. I didn’t think that would be possible to pull off in games to this degree. 
 

The Last of Us - First game that ever made me shed a tear. I thought that would be impossible for a game to do. 
 

Mario & Sonic at the Olympics - Gaming can end wars. 

[Maf]

1-up for TLoU and especially Uncharted 2. 
 

It seems really obvious in hindsight but playing Devil May Cry for the first time where you can switch between swords and guns really blew me away. Up until that point I had played sword game or I had played gun game. The idea of playing sword and gun game felt like cheating. Next level shit 

[DANGERMAN]

X-men for the Mega Drive. It was a bit hit and miss, but to access the final level you had to reset the console. I'd never seen a game use it's hardware like that

 

 

I mention them a lot but I hadn't played anything like Dear Esther, something that slow and atmospheric. Around the same time I played the mod version of The Stanley Parable, what a clever game 

[shinymcshine]

Some of the in-game insanity effects of Eternal Darkness were pretty amazing too.

 

Also, playing Rock Band with a couple of friends (guitar, drums and singer) always felt elevated above just a videogame into a tight social bond, experiencing a joint earned reward - clearly seeing how everyone improved their skills as we progressed.

[one-armed dwarf]

Yes, DMC with swords and guns and using bullets to keep yourself in the air longer, or enemies, and all of it in the framework of a horror game, but with combos. None of the sequels (or reboot) quite have the original's perfect cocktail of styles and influences.

 

Sticking with this specific genre and MGR has been my answer for lots of questions, I can't think of an action game I played before it that had layered boss themes for each phase of the fight, injecting vocals into critical moments when the phases changed. Told me that video games could also deliver an unscripted anime sequence, and it sucks that this game has never received a sequel. It's the only action game where I've been ok with constant cutscene interrupts, DmC came out the same year as it and tried the same thing but it was the weakest part of that game (bosses)

 

Also, for some reason, reading people's emails in Deus Ex. That there's all this hidden detail in the game that's totally missable but can help you understand the layers of the surrounding conspiracy and twists before they occur. It's a video game world that encourages deep reading. I wish more games would put thought into the missable details and how rewarding it is for a player to come across that stuff, rather than push them through a set-piece driven theme park, speaking as someone who definitely lamented the turn the industry took under Uncharted 2, as impressive as it was in a vaccuum

[Maryokutai]

There's a cutscene in the first Yakuza game (the PS2 original) in which someone gets punched in the face mid sentence. I found that really impressive at the time, because videogame cutscenes with dialogue were mostly following the 'talking heads' system, with a very unnatural A-B-A-B- flow to conversations most of the time. But watching this it felt like something out of a movie with nuances and other elements influencing narrative segments beyond just the exposition. 

 

A more poorly aged example, admittedly, is the sex scene in Fahrenheit. It's a pure cringefest looking at it today, these nude low-poly models uncomfortably rubbing their bodies against each other at a moment, and in a place, where it doesn't make much sense. But it was also the first time I got a glimpse at the medium maturing beyond just anthropomorphic animals or dudes with big guns running around, even if the example given wasn't impressive on its own. 

 

And in a more general term, the first Life is Strange. I don't think I've ever had such a strong emotional response to a game either before or after. Maybe Eliza, but for very different reasons. But even my favourite games, of which I rate some higher than LiS, never had that specific kind of emotional impact. It was interesting to find a game digging a bit deeper, but not in a philosophical sense, but rather a relatable one.

[Maf]

5 hours ago, DANGERMAN said:

X-men for the Mega Drive. It was a bit hit and miss, but to access the final level you had to reset the console. I'd never seen a game use it's hardware like that

I don’t know this game but Sonic 2 had a thing where if you reset the MD instead of turning it on and off, the game starts again but you keep the Chaos Emeralds. So you can farm Emerald Hill over and over to get Super Sonic 

 

Speaking of Sonic and “video games can do that?” Obviously the Sonic and Knuckles cartridge was wizardry. Literally combining games together? It was beyond imagination. Especially as a kid and literally stacking games on top of each other like a tower of games was weird but amazing. 

 

MGS2 was full of things it was hard to believe a video game could do or simulate. Shooting radios. Tranquillisers work quicker/slower depending on what part of the enemy’s body you shoot. Holding up guards and making them shake in fear. And then some of them would try to fight back which was even cooler. That was next level video games. Like I can’t believe we’re here 

 

Lastly, and this is just a graphics thing. Playing Smash Bros Melee and being able to see the stitching on Mario’s dungarees was a striking detail. Up until that point 3D graphics were scaling upwards in “how big” and “how many” but the GameCube came along, with Luigi’s Mansion, Rogue Squadron 2 and in particular Melee and it showed we were in a whole new world of detail. I was shocked because up until that point video games had been advancing in size and complexity, but are now presenting realistic, tiny details which actually makes the game look even better and more impressive 

[one-armed dwarf]

Occasionally, FFX did this thing where it would trigger a turn based battle but the battle sequence would kinda fade into the actual environment the characters are in, quite literally blurring the lines between field and battle events. Though it only did it occasionally, it was XI and XII which eventually shattered the division entirely. But the blending of cutscene and player controlled action felt like such a cinematic upgrade to overall presentation and is imo a big reason why X was so impressive, even if it felt like a step back in scope from earlier titles (which basically was how every FF ended up being up until VII Rebirth, imo)

 

 

Of course, games like Chrono Trigger and earlier titles already did this, but I think it's different when it's done in a high budget 3D game. It's clear that from this point forward they were trying to make their games feel like playable movies, but they got beaten to the post by Naughty Dog, albeit in a different genre entirely

[radiofloyd]

I think puzzle/adventure games have done this countless times.

 

Remember walking around the train in The Last Express and hearing people speaking multiple languages around you? I don’t remember experiencing that before (or much since).

 

Even something like Thimbleweed Park, I’m not sure if there has ever been such an intricately designed game where all of the individual puzzles add up to huge interconnected puzzle, in a way that is almost mind-boggling. 
 

Fantasy World Dizzy was a fascinating game that introduced the entire idea of environmental/inventory puzzles to me. 

[Sly Reflex]

I have a few instances.

 

Metal Gear Solid

 

Fourth wall breaking with the Mantis fight and asking to use the code on the back of the CD box. I don't think I'd ever seen the game address the player that way before, and if I did I was maybe a bit young to understand it. But both of these blew my mind back then and I don't think it can really be done all that often because people would see it coming. I think they dug further in instances like Bioshock where they did a little more with the fourth wall being kicked through, but again it's not something that games should well travel, should the impact be diluted.

 

Spec Ops: The Line

 

The line being constant war crimes. I think at face value we've always been conditioned to shoot first and never even bother asking questions later. Those guys are bad, go kill them. We don't really think about the impact we have, we're just given orders and we blindly follow them. When you think about all the games you've played and how many potential atrocities you've committed over a lifetime of gaming, it makes you wonder how many crimes you have done and how fucked you would be if there was such a think as a digital Hague.

 

Animal Crossing

 

At some point we've all save scummed our way across a game because we didn't get the desired outcome. Here they built a whole thing into it where you get such a bollocking that gets more and more severe over the number of times you decide to try it on with the game that eventually it pulls a trick and makes you believe that it's deleted your game save permanently. It's a real shame they softened the edges of Resetti, as well as some of the other pricklier villagers, because I feel that we're going to meet arseholes in our life, and sometimes those arseholes are going to be warranted with going off at us because we refused to play by the rules. Sometimes they are just going to be mean because they are shitheads. I know it scared kids, but at the same time I think there's a lesson to be learned in that awful people exist and sometimes even the safe space of a videogame isn't going to shelter you from them.

 

Fez

 

There's one specific puzzle in the game that requires you to  be in the right place at the right time. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before or since, not as precise as this anyway.

 

Halo Reach

 

This has displayed the most advanced AI I've ever seen in a game. I was playing it on the hardest setting solo and there was this Elite I just couldn't get past, it was shredding me. I tried a few different tactics and decided that I was just going to sneak past him. The thing is there wasn't enough cover to do it, so I had to go get some camo and use it to get where I needed to be, and then let it recharge and then use it to escape the fight. He knew I was there and was searching frantically for me, shooting the places he knew I had been. Once I had passed him he was running around losing his shit, just blasting his gun into the air in frustration. It's the first time I'd ever seen an AI react like a person would and then throw a tantrum when it couldn't achieve its goal.

 

Left 4 Dead 1/2

 

I think in general we're so used to games giving us most of the picture as to what's going on, but Left 4 Dead goes completely against that. You get small fractions of story spoken between the survivors and those that they interact with, as well as them talking to themselves or mentioning the environment you're walking through. There's a whole story there that a lot of people will miss outside of 4 people go from place to place avoiding zombies. The more runs you do and the more you play as each character you build this profile of what you know and what you don't, sometimes getting answers before questions, and something getting questions without getting answers. The only way to really get the bigger picture is to play a lot. Each time you play you're filling in gaps, it's such an unconventional way to do a story and really rewards the player for playing lots of times and also paying attention and linking events together.

 

Soul Reaver

 

More of a mechanical feat of programming and design here, but watching something switch in real time with no loading screens between the real and spirit words, with the spirit world twisting and getting grotesquely contorted as you sent into it is some fucking wizardry.

 

Fallout: New Vegas

 

This game was the king of environmental story telling. There's a lot of instances like the one I am following up with after this, but they are there if you are looking for them. There was one time I was out in the middle of the wilderness and I find a huge stash of drugs. Naturally I loot them. And then as I walk a bit further there's bodies all over, a shoot out had clearly happened. I go through all the bodies looting them one by one and find a few lists, one with the drugs I had found, and another with a price list of what the other guy was willing to pay for the drugs. I comb around the area and eventually find a lock box full of caps. This event wasn't marked on the map, it wasn't something you were walking past all the time, it was just in the middle of nowhere, a little drug exchange gone wrong. I get that games have done stuff like this before, but this was so detailed that it's hard to forget. New Vegas is peppered with stuff like this, sometimes you can walk over them over and over and not notice the story that's right under your feet. 

[Maryokutai]

I think the streaming tech in general was really impressive in Soul Reaver at the time, even if it made the Dreamcast even noisier than usual. But the fact they pulled it off even on PS1 was a minor miracle.

 

As for Reach I really liked how they

Spoiler

killed off the main character in the end.

It was unavoidable and somewhat expected, but still quite powerful and an unusual narrative device that in videogames is mostly reserved to prologue characters or something along those lines. And even then it's rare to see it happen to the character you effectively control.

[one-armed dwarf]

When I was talking about Spec Ops a while back in here (on the shout thread, I think), it was in regard to its self-criticism of games being part of a long tradition of America-centric propagandist messaging, was looking on wikipedia and forgot about this loading screen message

 

Quote

To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless.

— Spec Ops: The Line loading screen hint

 

It's not really about the violence in the games, at least I don't believe it is, so much as their exploitation of visuals and settings that resembles real-world conflicts but without their problematic context, and how it along with films and news media can subtly work to make people indifferent/unquestioning. I think it's trying to situate video games as a cog in a larger cultural framework, one in which it may not necessarily be the designer's aims to deliver propaganda, but the reality of working under the pressure of market forces and corparative interests makes it impossible not to

 

I think Spec Ops is a bit too blunt about it, as I guess it didn't want its message to get lost, but it took a rare enough swing with it all the same by making its usually consequence free violence actually matter a bit

[Maryokutai]

I remember when I first started to get a more global view on the medium by regularly buying magazines and such, which was on the road to the PS2 generation, I felt the entire concept of war games being tackled as shooters extremely off-putting. It probably says a lot that during the years after I just kind of accepted them as is and looked at it as 'it's just a videogame', but like you say there's more to it than that and my initial youthful and naive response was likely the more sensible one.

 

I'd also say that it's rather telling that The Line was a European/German game. I can't imagine anyone in the states pitching something like that. Even guys like Levine usually criticise less controversial themes in their games (in the sense that the general consensus about them is bad, not only the perspective in specific parts of the world).

 

Edit: sorry, this is completely off-topic.

[one-armed dwarf]

Anyway, the Zero Parades coverage has it in my mind, but I sort of dismissed the possibility of a video game ever trying to develop a literary language specific to video games until Disco Elysium tried it with its cast of inner voices giving good/bad advice to your role playing. It's such a cool, somewhat obvious idea that it's weird that more games don't do it.

 

Video games are so in love with cinema, but very quickly disregarded the text medium as soon as 3D and voice acting took off, which was a big mistake cause I think it could have helped develop the medium into something different if that next step took longer to reach (cinematic visuals)

[DANGERMAN]

there's a book about Spec Ops The Line I recommend called Killing Is Harmless. A lot of it is what it is about what it does in its world building, stuff like you're always going downwards, deeper, in the game, but it does touch on what it says about violence

 

anyway @Maryokutai I agree with you. I've said this before but I remember a Medal of Honour game making a big deal about how accurate and considerate their game was going to be, that they'd spoken to people who were there. Then I remember seeing a sniper mission that just felt like Virtua Cop or Point Blank. Cannon Fodder did a better job of dealing with the cost of war, then I can't remember much else until Spec Ops The Line and Valiant Hearts

[Sly Reflex]

Now you've brought it up, I think Cannon Fodder might have been the first time I saw satire in a game that I understood. For sure it existed before that, but that's not really the point of the question.

 

Before Cannon Fodder everything I played was very pro war and glorified it. Cannon Fodder did as well, but it was all tongue in cheek, it was pretty sarcastic about what you were doing.

[Sly Reflex]

I don't know if we've had this one before, so apologies if we have. Besides, something new might have come up since then.

 

Quote

What's a game you enjoyed, but would struggle to recommend to most people?

 

I think pretty much all the games I play would be covered here.  

[Metroid66]

Got to be final fantasy 15. Played it 3 times and am planning a 4th.

 

It doesn't do anything good, combat, exploration, open world, story, side quests, it's all well below par.

 

Ultimately it's a masterpiece. I just can't figure out why.

[Maryokutai]

I was struggling for something even though I play some odd games here and there, but FFXV is indeed a good example for me as well.

 

But there's also objectively good stuff, like Sayonara Wild Hearts, that still won't resonate with everyone even though I consider it a masterpiece.

 

Also maybe the entirety of Suda51's catalogue.