"There's no going back. You changed things."

[Spidey78]

Actually there were several games with cover systems before...do you mean the ability to hide against cover? Or crouching or something?

Pressing oneself to a low wall? Because that was done way before Gears of War, and if you only noticed a few games with a cover system, then that still means other games did it first.

Of course cover would probably come more often nowadays, what with the attempts at improving gameplay and higher technology. Though I always considered it a well established gameplay mechanic that really should be in every game....and I think it very nearly is. Cept Halo of course.

EDIT: Hey! It didn't show the quote....

 

[MawnLower]

Tetris.
EDIT: Quote? What quote?

 

[Thirtysomething]

Hahahaha mygod you lot are all so young!

Space invaders "what, use computers for entertainment? It'll never catch on!"
Driller/Total Eclipse (one of the first truly 3D first-person games)
Get Dexter (Fallout? Isometric adventure pioneer? Don't make me laugh! Also one of the first games I can remember that gave you a sidekick)
Way of the Exploding fist (way before streetfighter or tekken)
Jet set willy (that spanish plumber could lean a thing or two from this guy)
R-Type (Ikaruga bows to this)
Elite (one of the first true "sandbox" open world games with a huge universe)
Dizzy (this is why we have monkey island and its ilk)
Captain Blood (Dialogue trees have come a long way since, but this was I think the first game to try giving you the ability to fully converse with the NPCs using combinations of individual words to construct sentences - hell, this was before the term "NPC" had even been coined!)
Outrun (popularised racing as a genre)
Starglider (you wouldn't have had your tie fighter or freespace if it wasn't for this)
Barbarian (forget mortal combat and manhunt, this was the first game I can ever remember causing controversy for being violent)
Bard's Tale (what you thought you were retro just because you play some MUD?)
Chaos/rebelstar/laser squad (you are not a true turn based strategy fan if you haven't played or heard of at least one of these. Chaos was the best one)
Doom (popularised and set the standard for the modern-day FPS with multiplayer, this caused more waves than all your Halo's put together. Everyone remembers their first doom multiplayer match)

Shame on you all! You don't know you're born!

I have no idea what the quote is from though so you got me there.

;-)

 

[Skalman]

Mass Effect was the biggest revolution (oh god, I hate that word!)

You hate the word that means turning???

No I don't hate the meaning of the word, but it's been so overused in the hyping of every damn game it's tragic, every game released now a days is hyped by the creators to be a "revolutionizing new what-ever-crap"

Mass Effect was the biggest revolution (oh god, I hate that word!) .... I can't ever imagine a RPG without that dialogue system again...

...

....

.....

Neverwinter Nights
Every point and click adventure
The Icewind dale series (however its spelt)

Most RPGs before Mass Effect had dialog systems. Hell, even the old text based one's probably did, given most of the stuff 'invented' now was invented in the text-era.

I loved the dialogue system because it was so fluid and made every conversation seem like a cutscene, also the way they portrayed emotions with body language was better than I've seen in most games (not the only game that's good at it though, so don't start flaming)

 

[Loderian]

quote: Batman Dark Knight. Actor: Heath Ledger, the Joker.

Game: final fantasy

 

[Railu]

You can definitely tell the generations of each player.

I am impressed with the knowledge of gaming history. But there does need to be a distinction between the first, than to be the most influential. Yes, a lot of games did things first and should get the credit for being the pioneer. Games like Halo, CoD, WoW, Gears are all tremendously popular, but they are just games that hit the trend at its peek. They did not start the trend.

So if you're going to say that they are the most influential, that's fine because they made a lot of money and that's what businesses want and that's what they will emulate to make more money. But if you do, you need to pay homage to all its predecessors that made it possible.

 

[stompy]

I am impressed with the knowledge of gaming history. But there does need to be a distinction between the first, than to be the most influential. Yes, a lot of games did things first and should get the credit for being the pioneer. Games like Halo, CoD, WoW, Gears are all tremendously popular, but they are just games that hit the trend at its peek. They did not start the trend.

So if you're going to say that they are the most influential, that's fine because they made a lot of money and that's what businesses want and that's what they will emulate to make more money. But if you do, you need to pay homage to all its predecessors that made it possible.

Frankly, I don't think that anyone is trying to say that Halo, Gears, or any other 'popular' game created techniques. But, the question asked was whether the games were influential, if the game made something, or brought something, popular in gaming, and consequently copied by many games out there.

In that respect, while many games brought new ideas (kill.switch, for example), you can't say that there are legions of games that use cover systems because of kill.switch. It wasn't kill.switch that made cover mechanics (not just ducking) popular in video games, but Gears. In the same vein, should a game introduce something, but it doesn't catch on, then it's not influential. It's innovative, but not influential, which is the OP's question.

Anyways, onto me rejecting Gears of War as influential. Yes, congrats, you have a cover system. So did (among others) Winback, Killswitch, Perfect Dark Zero, GRAW, and Rainbow Six: Vegas. Hell if Vegas had come out a week earlier people probably would've said Gears of War was ripping it off. The very same criticisms everyone throws at Halo for not being innovative can be said about Gears. The only difference being Gears was latched onto by fanboys enough to warrant it being labelled "innovative"

Speaking of Rainbow Six I think it was innovative because it brought the concepts of realism and tactical shooters to the FPS genre.

I think you've got things mixed up. Gears, as you pointed out, didn't invent cover systems. Thing is, all the other games out there didn't influence the whole industry in order to use cover systems. It's influential, making many others in the industry copy it, instead of innovative, inventing the mechanic.

 

[Caliostro]

I think you've got things mixed up. Gears, as you pointed out, didn't invent cover systems. Thing is, all the other games out there didn't influence the whole industry in order to use cover systems. It's influential, making many others in the industry copy it, instead of innovative, inventing the mechanic.

That's my problem with it... I don't see developers flock to copy gears of war... In fact I don't remember a single game that seems to have taken Gears of Wars as a huge inspiration...

 

[Vortigar]

Thirtysomething (To expand that list):
Star Wars Arcade
Dig Dug
Zaxxon (Inventor of the isometric viewpoint. Yes, older than Q-bert)
Virtua fighter (Inventor of polygon characters. The beginning of all 3d games/engines.)

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Zaxxon (Inventor of the isometric viewpoint. Yes, older than Q-bert)

Zaxxon completely blew my mind when it came out... more than Wolfenstein did, though I guess that's because Zaxxon came first. It literally gave me a new way of looking at video games, so as far as I'm concerned it's an excellent candidate.

-- Steve

 

[Rhodite]

Quake/Quakeworld - this really kicked off the first proper truely 3d FPS shooters on the net and with friends.

Command and Conquer - WHile Dune2000 was arguably the original RTS C&C was the big one that made it popular.

 

[Kunzer]

I don't know if this one has been said yet, but if there is any one game which has completely changed the world around it's genre, it would have to be World of Warcraft.

I don't know of any other genre, (MMOrpg's) that has been SO changed by the release of one game.

 

[s-l-u-g]

mario?

 

[Trace2010]

Isn't anyone going to mention GoldenEye for 64??? Forget Halo- that FPS had people playing vs modes long into the night well before Microsoft thought their own console was possible.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

That's my problem with it... I don't see developers flock to copy gears of war... In fact I don't remember a single game that seems to have taken Gears of Wars as a huge inspiration...

Maybe you should look into Army of Two.

Isn't anyone going to mention GoldenEye for 64??? Forget Halo- that FPS had people playing vs modes long into the night well before Microsoft thought their own console was possible.

Yeah, then what? Rare made a couple more shooters, there was a few other's. Then Halo and bam! the games in development for consoles list started looking like:

shooter
shooter
shooter
shooter
RPG
platformer
shooter
RPG
shooter
shooter
RPG
action
shooter
shooter
shooter
adventure

 

[Trace2010]

That's my problem with it... I don't see developers flock to copy gears of war... In fact I don't remember a single game that seems to have taken Gears of Wars as a huge inspiration...

Maybe you should look into Army of Two.

Isn't anyone going to mention GoldenEye for 64??? Forget Halo- that FPS had people playing vs modes long into the night well before Microsoft thought their own console was possible.

Yeah, then what? Rare made a couple more shooters, there was a few other's. Then Halo and bam! the games in development for consoles list started looking like:

shooter
shooter
shooter
shooter
RPG
platformer
shooter
RPG
shooter
shooter
RPG
action
shooter
shooter
shooter
adventure

I'm sorry...I thought the gist of the title was "Games that changed the course of gaming history."

 

[Trace2010]

Man, so many missed:

Centipede

Moon Batrol

Asteroids

Battle Zone

Spider Fighter

Pac Man (and it's derivatives)

Galaxia

Mario Brothers (the original, not Super)

Arch Rivals (ability to hit other players...always fun)

BLADES OF STEEL NES (the hockey game that was ALL about the fights)

Zork (and its derivatives)

 

[goodman528]

I can't seem to play CoH anymore. Online play is nothing but everybody meta-games and uses bland strategies. I'd rather play a click fest where multiple strategies are possible than a game where only 1 strategy is doable.

I'd argue that CoH is the most dynamic and least repetitive RTS I've ever played and like goodman, I find it hard to play other games in the genre after experiencing CoH.

However, like many of the games people are mentioning, it's not been around long enough to see how influential it'll actually be so isn't very relevant to this thread.

Yer, I think CoH has shown the way for the future, squad based tactics and "less is more". It's simply more fun that way. I hope future RTS developers really take some notice of this gameplay style. As for being around long enough to be influential, then Warcraft, C&C and Total Annhilation(?) has to be the top two / three.