The Game That Changed Gaming?

Wolfenstein 3d (started the whole FPS thing off)
Doom (did the standard FPS thing very, very good)
Half-life (did the FPS thing in a very, very different and extremely good way)
Mario
Civilization 2 (it was quite new and exciting at one time :P)
GTA (I'd say both nr 1 and 3, freedom of choice)
BF1942 (created a new trend in veichle and cooperation-based gameplay online... sort of.)
Duke Nukem Forever (has invented a new way of measuring time)
 
Ultima Online - it pretty much invented the modern MMORPG.

-Angry Lawyer
 
GTA III for it's living, breathing, free-roaming world.
 
Gargantou said:
Indeed, besides, saying that Deus Ex was THE game that changed gaming feels a bit over the top tbh!:laugh: I would deff. agree that it changed the faces of semi-openended FPSes though : )
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Well.. I meant A game, I shouldn't have said THE game.

Sorry?
 
Half-Life - Changed the modding community forever

Starcraft - Showed developers what players want in different races. Also showed balance and strategy

Command and Conquer - Opened up the RTS community

Dune 2 - Opened up the RTS community more

Diablo - Showed the power of online play, and the importance of service. Also opened up a whole new realm in the realm of hacking...

Uplink - Best hacker game ever. Hell, anything Introversion touched is legendary
 
Also opened up a whole new realm in the realm of hacking...
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I remember Diablo and hacking and duping. God was that gay.
 
lol, strength potions + dex potions + vit potions + int (was it int? can't remember, havn't played Diablo 1, or 2 in a long time..) potions + duping = biggest cheat in a game. Ever.
 
DOOM- Didn't create FPS games, but made them popular.

Half-Life- Showed that shooters could have intelligent storytelling and didn't have to focus on the lets-shoot-things attitude that DOOM established in FPS games. Also changed mods into a mainstream gaming thing.

Final Fantasy VII- Helped popularize console RPGs and cutscenes. Also, set a new direction for the series itself.

Starcraft- Combined good storytelling with great gameplay. Still one of the best balanced RTS games, in that it doesn't really on the hokey "rock-paper-scissors" thing to try to force strategy. Broodwar also showed people that expansions could meaningfully change the game, and didn't have to just be there to get money for the publisher.

Goldeneye- Showed that shooters could be done on a console, and set the standard for console shooters.

Halo- Set the standard for modern console shooters. Also, it helped popularize vehicles and the idea of limiting your weaponry.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time- A perfect example of translating old franshises into 3D games.

There's probably alot more games that you could say "changed gaming."
 
lol, strength potions + dex potions + vit potions + int (was it int? can't remember, havn't played Diablo 1, or 2 in a long time..) potions + duping = biggest cheat in a game. Ever.
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Godly Plate of Whales man!!! Obsidian Ring of Zodiac!!

Duping spell books to. Then there was Bobafet, biggest cheat program ever. God Mode and Auto Dupe. Could even look at what other people had and dupe it into your inventory.
 
Big Rigs: off the road racing. It showed just how bad games could be and it implemented "winnar" into the gaming genre.
 
Jangle said:
Monster Maze - first 3d game ever.
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"Landmark 3D games for other platforms that came before 3D Monster Maze were Atari's Battlezone (1980), an arcade 3D video game built with specialized vector graphics hardware" Taken from that very link you posted ; )
 
Oh noes! :(

I didn't actually read that article, I just posted it in case people hadn't heard of the game. I'd read about it in a magazine, and it said it was the first 3d game ever.
 
Jangle said:
Oh noes! :(

I didn't actually read that article, I just posted it in case people hadn't heard of the game. I'd read about it in a magazine, and it said it was the first 3d game ever.
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Let's sue the magazine for spreading false information!:frown:
 
Metal Gear Solid -- (emmotion/societal reflection)
Half-Life -- (immersion)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time -- (story telling)
Starcraft -- (social strategy)

These titles I believe revolutionized video games into more than just things of play, and gave them narrative and depth similar to great literature or film. Each standing for a genre that has become something different because of its existence.
 
Would just like to add Battlezone to the list, not the old Amiga version or whatever it was, but tthe 1998 Activision released PC version.

FPS/RTS/Sci-Fi quality, combined first-person action/exploration/shooting with base building and resource management set in a great Sci-Fi world. Great dialogue between missions, great game
 
No single game can be named... many can be, though, and in different genres.

Doom - grandfather of FPS games. Not the first one, but it defined the genre. It also made deathmatch popular, and had groundbreaking graphics in its time.

Half-Life - redefined the FPS genre, impacting just about any single-player FPS to this very day. It made levels much more cohesive to form a story, and introduced many storytelling aspects. More revolutionary than Quake 2 with its storytelling.

Quake - the first truly 3D FPS game, enough said.

Deus Ex - a RPG/FPS hybrid, quite innovative. Not that many like that have been made since then, though.

Starcraft - legendary competitive gaming, the campaign absolutely raised the bar for what was expected in SP RTS games.

Civilization - this is to TBS games what Doom is to FPS games. Not the first one technically, but very, very important.

SimCity - a pretty unique concept and the now-classic "Sim" open-ended gameplay. This is the revolutionary game, not The Sims.

Daggerfall - the predecessor to Morrowind... a very important step in sandbox games. Plus random generation of, well, stuff.

Mafia - was widely praised as revolutionary in its time. Think serious GTA, more detailed, more exploration, more options, more open-ended gameplay and plot.

Counter-Strike - not revolutionary in gameplay, but being a huge online success, it brought the concept of online gaming to a new level.

Half-Life 2 - takes physics, which had previously served as eye-candy mostly, and makes them an integral part of gameplay. Not the first game to try it, but the first one to actually pull it off.

Doom 3 - the first game to use fully real-time lighting and shadowing. As modern computers are finally starting to be up to the task, this will be a future standard.

Diablo - re-created the action-RPG subgenre, spawning many such games in the years to come.

All these games have had huge influence on their respective genres, or have been technically new in some regard, or both. And many others could be added to the list.
 
I'd like to add RTCW for taking team and objective based gameplay to a whole new level. Still yet to be bettered, it represents the pinnacle of teamplay in video gaming and was the best clan game there has been.

R.I.P

ET is a pretty good substitute, but lacks what really made RTCW great.
 
Warbie said:
I'd like to add RTCW for taking team and objective based gameplay to a whole new level. Still yet to be bettered, it represents the pinnacle of teamplay in video gaming and was the best clan game there has been.
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DIS-ARM ZEE DYNOMITE!
 
Oh I forgot to add...

Team Fortress: I don't think there were really any class based games before this.
 
babyheadcrab said:
It had lots of social commentary.
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Deus Ex also had lots of social commentary, that was easier to take seriously thanks to Ion Storm not including stupid scenes like "There will be no more continues, it will be a game over" and so on.
 
Doom 1

Mortal Kombat - very original fighting game, with the fatalities which had never been done before. Spawned many clones

Half Life - revolutionized storytelling through a FPS game in a way that quake and doom failed to do. Half Life 2 raised the bar even further.

I want to say Deus ex was revolutionary. But it seems that the RPG/FPS hybrid genre never really caught on to the mainstream. It does get an honorable mention from me though. It's ability to put together these 2 genres into one while telling an exceptionally good story was just amazing. Kick ass game. Invisible War, on the other hand, was terrible. It seems that the developers got more concerned about making money than a good game.
 
all games which scored over 9.5 at the gamespot, gamespy, IGN rating poll.
 
Sparta said:
Deus Ex also had lots of social commentary, that was easier to take seriously thanks to Ion Storm not including stupid scenes like "There will be no more continues, it will be a game over" and so on.
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Two totally seperate genres and game play styles.

Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Deus Ex (2000)

Also a bit of a time difference, and the thread was asking titles that changed the game world forever. I happened to think both titles did :). One the FPS genre as far as narrative and story telling, and the other more or less created the next generation sneaking style title.
 
Gorgon said:
all games which scored over 9.5 at the gamespot, gamespy, IGN rating poll.
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Nah, that's poor criteria. Firstly, it's THOSE websites, secondly, games that change gaming aren't necessarily excellent overall products with the polish that will get them scores above 95.

Thirdly, Halo.

And back to the Metal Gear Solid versus Deus Ex arguement, I still maintain that Deus Ex had minimal influence, and many of its non-stealth features were pre-empted in System Shock 2 anyway (which itself was largely pre-empted by System Shock 1's features).
 
Yeah, Deus Ex is a happening game, but I can't think of a single game it might have influenced in any major way...
 
Oh! Oh! (yeah yeah, double post, but I kinda killed it and edits don't bump)

Dead or Alive. For revolutionising gaming forever with it's innovative bouncing breast physics :thumbs:
 
MYST was the first game ever to utilise the compact disk and influenced game developers and PC users alike to adopt the CD as standard gaming media. What's more, for almost a decade, it was the best selling game franchise on pc/mac platforms, topped only recently by The Sims.

Love it or hate it, I'd say that was pretty influential in changing the shape of gaming.
 
babyheadcrab said:
Two totally seperate genres and game play styles.

Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Deus Ex (2000)

Also a bit of a time difference, and the thread was asking titles that changed the game world forever. I happened to think both titles did :). One the FPS genre as far as narrative and story telling, and the other more or less created the next generation sneaking style title.
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True in a sense, but Deus Ex still had much more social commentary than just "war and nukes are bad mmkay". Also Thief came out only 2 months later then MGS did and did pretty much the same thing as MGS, only much better. So if you're giving props to MGS, you gotta give props to Thief as well.
 
Hmm... would Thief have been the first game that used realistic stealth based on lighting and actually hiding in the dark? If so, that'd be quite influential, it's been adopted by a whole bunch of games now, namely Splinter Cell.
 
Sparta said:
Also Thief came out only 2 months later then MGS did and did pretty much the same thing as MGS, only much better. So if you're giving props to MGS, you gotta give props to Thief as well.
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Yeah but if we're gonna go way back, the game that 'invented' stealth games was Castle Wolfenstein(Don't confuse it with Wolfenstein 3D, the FPS), after that no game used it again until Metal Gear in 1987.. So I'd still say Kojima is more deserving of props when it comes to stealth-based games than the team that did Thief, although it was Metal Gear Solid that popularized the stealth-based games. Make no mistake though I love the Thief games too but I see MG series and Thief games as some form of seperate stealth-games.. They just feel alot different when you play'em imo..
 
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