Influential games and their horrible horrible consequences

[The Foxtrot]

Two weapons actually worked in Halo 1 because you had different enemies and different weapons and the whole "you have to think about what guns you're using" meme was a real thing.
It didn't work in realistic shooters because you have literally one enemy type (man with gun) and figuratively one weapon type (automatic weapon).

That, and the weapon sandbox in Combat Evolved was actually pretty small. You only had 5 Human weapons (Magnum, Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun and Rocket Launcher), and three Covenant weapons (Plasma Rifle, Plasma Pistol, Needler), and each weapon had a particular niche and functioned differently from each other. And not all weapons or enemies would be found in every level. Halo: CE had a particular balance struck, and the weapon sandbox reflects this.

But in realistic shooters, all guns basically do the same shit, they just have minor (read: meaningless) stat changes and different animations. Use the M4 or the AK-47, it doesn't really matter, they both go "pew pew pew!" really fast until the Bad Guys die.

Killzone 1 was sort of different in that you had three weapon slots, and ISA weapons and Helghast weapons didn't overlap that much. The Helghast would drop dedicated sniper rifles and anti-armor weapons, while the ISA had a dedicated shotgun and machine gun. The Helghast AR had a shotgun underbarrel, while the ISA's AR had a grenade launcher. Helghast weapons that do have ISA equivalents will fire slower and aren't as accurate, but do more damage, while ISA weapons are the complete opposite. Not to mention that there were different Helghast enemies too, they weren't all just reskins of the same template. If anything, Killzone 1 was the game that learned the right lessons from CE.

 

[Local Degenerate]

It's amazing how fast a subgenre can go from 'cool unique idea with different spins' to 'shitty clones' so hard, the originals start ripping off the clones.

I see Slay the Spire and Rogue mentioned, but I'm also going to throw in PUBG, Tarkov, and DayZ.

Battle Royales, Extraction Shooters, and survival games. The latter two are ideas I actually really like. However, they're so frequently used as an excuse to shit out half a game and just demand the fan-base make it interesting. Which usually results in tryhards making it insufferable to play inside a week by looking up pro-meta guides and treating it like a second job.

Overwatch was already mentioned, but it really is a fucking cancer on another level. TF2 may have started the lootbox industry, but it was Overwatch that really showed devs that you didn't need to make a full game, you could just shit out a barely functioning multiplayer mode, fill it with loot boxes, and make billions. Not to mention it killed it's far better big brother.

Surprised this hasn't been said, but WoW. Before hand, MMOs were a bastion of socialization for the nerd world. Even if it was forced, sometimes autists need to be forced into talking to people to make friends and connections. But being the biggest multi-billion dollar property wasn't enough, and they decided to rip the guts out of everything. From requiring effort to do raids, to communicating for dungeons, to making guilds just a raw stat boost, rather than something you did to hang out with people. Which is hilariously around the time their game started to tank. And yet, devs decided THIS was the time of WoW they had to rip off. So now every game has a group-finder, and everything is available to everyone with no effort.

Finally, not really a 'game', but Esports. I love the concept of it, I really do, since, let's be real, if chess and poker are sports, playing games at that level can be too. And it can be damn fun to watch from time to time, since most of us nerds know more about lane strats or match-ups than we do a line of scrimmage. But it became used as an excuse to make every single game it touches so much worse. Fighting games don't focus on single player, everything needs to focus on being optimized, 'pro' players for games that have no business being 'pro' dictate everything about games that they barely play (which is to say they may play one mode all day every day, but never touch any other mode), and fun things get thrown out, because they're not focused on the esport. And besides, it's all koreans anyways.

 

[Epoch]

Most PS1 style horror games miss the point and use it as an excuse to use bad assets. It's a shame as I'd love a fixed camera horror game like the classic Resident Evil's, but the few that exist aren't very good.

It really pisses me off when people call it 'PS1 style' but then completely ignore everything unique about the PS1 and just stick a shitty VHS filter over a Unity project. If you are going to do a PS1 style game, actually follow the limitations of the hardware. Doing that would require actual research and technical know-how though, and every game I can find that actually sort of succeeds at it is just using a generic Unity template someone made for ps1 style effects. I think the only PS1 horror dev that actually does this is 'Modus Interactive', which even captures the bad controls of PS1 games too, they are just not limited by strict hardware limitations now.

People just use the catch-all 'PS1 style' to describe low poly pixel art games, because they lack the artistic ability to do higher fidelity. Its the same sort of thing with those quirky wholesome pixel art RPGs about depression.

 

[Uncle Sid]

Doom/Wolfenstein. FPS is stupid, and I'm sick of all the bullshit clones these games spawned. Come up with your own original game idea, developers (something like Descent did at the time).

Now it's so bad that everyone just uses Unreal and other engines to crank out more of the same stupid garbage with the same stupid gameplay flow and boring point of view we've had since Rise of the Triad (which was actually low-key based.)

 

[byuu]

PS1 style horror game:

Much better looking actual PS1 horror game:

 

[Local Degenerate]

Y'all talking about low poly games just brings up another example:
Megaman 9 and 'retro games'.

I love sprite art. I'm one of the autists still bemoaning Disgaea's switch from HD sprites to 3d models. But the vast majority of the time, using sprites (or low poly art) isn't a stylistic choice, it's because any retard can sit down with a graph overlay, and draw a sprite. And I do mean any retard.

Pretty sure Chris Chan and DSP could manage it.

It's expensive to pay someone, and time consuming to learn, how to make good, high quality resources for your game. So, it's so much easier to just throw together a game with 8 colors and call it 'retro'.

That's not to say there's not good retro/sprite work games. Overhyped as it is, Shovel Knight is gorgeous, and I do believe the choice was intentional.

 

[Meat Target]

Todd Howard and Bethesda have provided me with countless hours of fun and memories. Everything from Morrowind to Fallout 3 to Skyrim was so well-received that they began to think they could never make a dud.

We all know how that turned out: Fallout 4 was a mediocre rehash of 3, and 76 was one of the biggest nuclear bombs in the history of vidya.

And like the aforementioned RE4, Skyrim has been remastered and ported to everything from the Switch to graphing calculators.

 

[Namesarehardtocomeupwith]

A more serious answer would be Amnesia the dark descent. It killed the entire horror genre. After Amnesia games were no longer developed to be play, they're meant to be watched. People no longer care if the game is shit as long as some faggot can scream into the camera to entertain their 12 years old audience.

 

[Whatevermancer]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Minecraft yet. It popularised the "Procedural generation+open world+survival+craft" formula, but it's not that bad, especially compared to early access, which it also popularised.
Now it's come to a point that even large studios release their games incomplete and full of bugs.

 

[Absolutego]

Starcraft 2's eSports success not only managed to kill off AAA RTS games as a genre, it also led to multiple studios (Blizzard included) killing future games trying to make sure they became a popular eSport.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Overwatch was already mentioned, but it really is a fucking cancer on another level. TF2 may have started the lootbox industry, but it was Overwatch that really showed devs that you didn't need to make a full game, you could just shit out a barely functioning multiplayer mode, fill it with loot boxes, and make billions. Not to mention it killed it's far better big brother.

Another trend Overwatch is guilty of starting. Mainstream coomer bait. It makes sense for anime tiddy games like Senran Kagura or Gal Gun. But Overwatch seemed to actively pander to the source film maker crowd. I remember when Randy Pitchford even made a porn subreddit for Battleborn in an attempt to get more players because the fans didn't do it themselves.

PS1 style horror game:
View attachment 4461313
Much better looking actual PS1 horror game:
View attachment 4461309

And then you have games like Overblood that look worse.

People just use the catch-all 'PS1 style' to describe low poly pixel art games, because they lack the artistic ability to do higher fidelity.

It's expensive to pay someone, and time consuming to learn, how to make good, high quality resources for your game. So, it's so much easier to just throw together a game with 8 colors and call it 'retro'.

This is a sad, but practical reality. While going for 100% PS1 compatibility is more hassle than it's worth, and I wouldn't mind it if it wasn't so half arsed so often that it ruins it for everybody else.

Now it's come to a point that even large studios release their games incomplete and full of bugs.

I don't know which game started the "release it broken and patch it later" trend (maybe Fallout New Vegas?) but got to blame No Man's Sky for the trend of lying about the game and getting fans to accept it with hollow claims of "we'll make the game we promised in a couple of years".

 

[The Foxtrot]

I see Slay the Spire and Rogue mentioned, but I'm also going to throw in PUBG, Tarkov, and DayZ.

Battle Royales, Extraction Shooters, and survival games. The latter two are ideas I actually really like. However, they're so frequently used as an excuse to shit out half a game and just demand the fan-base make it interesting. Which usually results in tryhards making it insufferable to play inside a week by looking up pro-meta guides and treating it like a second job.

I feel this when I played Tarkov online. Hell, it's why I only play SPT-AKI now. The biggest strike I have against Tarkov is the playerbase. It is absolutely filled with asshole tryhards who poopsock the game and know every map in autistic detail and have high-end gear early into a wipe so guys like me who play more casually just can't compete unless we resort to cheap tactics and camping. Which isn't fun for either side.

Overwatch was already mentioned, but it really is a fucking cancer on another level. TF2 may have started the lootbox industry, but it was Overwatch that really showed devs that you didn't need to make a full game, you could just shit out a barely functioning multiplayer mode, fill it with loot boxes, and make billions. Not to mention it killed it's far better big brother.

Overwatch tried so hard to present itself as the "successor" to TF2, but it wound up being a really shitty imitation. Funniest of all is that what Overwatch is mostly known for nowadays isn't even the game, but the porn. I'd dare say that's a complete L. Set out to dethrone one of the biggest multiplayer FPS games on the market, wind up being a game almost nobody cares about except to shit on or make porn of.

Surprised this hasn't been said, but WoW. Before hand, MMOs were a bastion of socialization for the nerd world. Even if it was forced, sometimes autists need to be forced into talking to people to make friends and connections. But being the biggest multi-billion dollar property wasn't enough, and they decided to rip the guts out of everything. From requiring effort to do raids, to communicating for dungeons, to making guilds just a raw stat boost, rather than something you did to hang out with people. Which is hilariously around the time their game started to tank. And yet, devs decided THIS was the time of WoW they had to rip off. So now every game has a group-finder, and everything is available to everyone with no effort.

WoW ruined MMOs, and I'll die on this hill.

Finally, not really a 'game', but Esports. I love the concept of it, I really do, since, let's be real, if chess and poker are sports, playing games at that level can be too. And it can be damn fun to watch from time to time, since most of us nerds know more about lane strats or match-ups than we do a line of scrimmage. But it became used as an excuse to make every single game it touches so much worse. Fighting games don't focus on single player, everything needs to focus on being optimized, 'pro' players for games that have no business being 'pro' dictate everything about games that they barely play (which is to say they may play one mode all day every day, but never touch any other mode), and fun things get thrown out, because they're not focused on the esport. And besides, it's all koreans anyways.

Esports on its face isn't that bad, it's when the rest of the game is sacrificed on the altar of catering to the Esports crowd, or a game that was never intended to be made for "esports" or any sort of competitive multiplayer (such as SSBM) winds up being flooded by wannabe Esports faggots.

I'll say that these complaints can also be leveled at streamers and YouTubers, which Tarkov became a massive victim of.

 

[Calandrino]

the biggest horrible consequence is that there are just too gosh darned many great games to enjoy

 

[Meat Target]

View attachment 4461467

A more serious answer would be Amnesia the dark descent. It killed the entire horror genre. After Amnesia games were no longer developed to be play, they're meant to be watched. People no longer care if the game is shit as long as some faggot can scream into the camera to entertain their 12 years old audience.

This is why I was so underwhelmed by Elden Ring. It hung too much of its cred on having GRRM as its lore writer, as if that automatically makes it good.

You also can't make Soulslike games too open-world. Flitting around hither and thither in Elden Ring made me forget what I was supposed to be doing. Being able to go do something else any time diminished my drive to go Captain Ahab on the boss that keeps flattening my dick.

 

[Articles and Nudes]

Whoever popularised the Skinny Legs pixel art style should burn in hell along with the faggots that started Cal Arts.

 

[Shroom King]

Wait, no one has mentioned John Madden Football and the 30 year habit of releasing the same sports game year after fucking year?

 

[BrunoMattei]

Wait, no one has mentioned John Madden Football and the 30 year habit of releasing the same sports game year after fucking year?

I never understood that about sports games. Yes, I know the roster changes from year to year but that's it. Why buy the same full price game that has only marginal differences year after year?

Granted, okay, yes, there is a precedent with the numerous versions of Street Fighter 2. But that's about it.

 

[Thomas Talus]

Going to name and shame Dear Esther as well, for starting the Walking Simulator genre. If we're be generous, a game without gameplay or interaction could be a novel concept, and as a free mod it was inoffensive. Then the glut of shit like Gone Home, Everyone's Gone to the Rapture, and the just mentioned Amnesia flooded the market and created a "high brow/low brow" split that never existed in gaming before.

I'm a sucker for pretty landscapes, and a lot of walking sims are good at delivering that, but at the same time I think my list of "games I'm mad I wasted time on even if they were free or near-free" is mostly composed of walking sims or borderline walking sims. EGttR, The Vanishing of Ethan Carver, What Became of Edith Finch, some game that was free on PSN that I can't even remember the name of, etc.

 

[Epoch]

You also can't make Soulslike games too open-world. Flitting around hither and thither in Elden Ring made me forget what I was supposed to be doing. Being able to go do something else any time diminished my drive to go Captain Ahab on the boss that keeps flattening my dick.

As much as I love Elden Ring, the best parts of it were the legacy dungeons that play like a more open Dark Souls. I hope they continue with the more open dungeon design instead of more open worlds in the future

 

[The Ugly One]

Halo was mentioned for its double weapon system, but I also think it should be mentioned for it creating console shooters, and for regenerating health bars. Basically every dev took the wrong lessons from Halo.

Also Oblivion and it's micro-dlc that would become microtransactions.

Tell me you've never killed a cyborg T-Rex without saying you've never killed a cyborg T-Rex

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