I feel like most of the 2000’s games were way ahead of their time. Not in every way but the games just felt so much more real and genuine compared to todays releases.
It's because that was before every game blatantly started copying Ubisoft and Far Cry 3. Basically every game follows the same formula and has the same mechanics now. The whole industry has just started making clones of previous games without innovating. That's why I tend to like linear single player games and indies more than the open world stuff again.
The games just felt so much more real and genuine??? I'm sorry but I have no idea what your talking about and I grew up right along side this industry...from Atari on up. Games feel more real NOW than they ever have. The amount of details that are being jammed into games right now is on rediculous levels. It's all the little things that make a huge difference. Remember when you played a game with wind....and everything moved the same way...the same time....same pattern. Don't see much of that anymore thankfully. Sorry yo...but I can't get to where you're at with that statement.
@@AsaRush It seems older gamers prefer newer games and newer gamers prefer older games, I have noticed this trend... Perhaps it´s because the grass is always greener on the other side? Or maybe because it has what we didn´t grow up with, making it new and exciting, instead of the old and boring same stuff?
I did not watch the Video yet, but please upvote my Comment if the Open World RPG "Gothic" from Germany was not in this List of 10 Revolutionary Games. If it wasn't, not surprised, insanely overlooked revolutionary open world RPG from early 2001. Far ahead of Morrowind and others (that came out after) and didn't have revolutionary Functions present in the first Gothic Game. There is a Reason the Gothic Series is to this day considered the best and favourite Open World RPG in every Country it was advertised in (Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, Netherlands, France etc.) I wonder if Piranha Bytes would have had the Money back in 2000-2001 to advertise in the US, UK etc. if it would be as popular. Also thank me later if "Gothic I & II" suddenly became your favourite Open World RPG of all Time after you read my Comment and checked it out. That's a common Reaction to People hearing and playing the Gothic Games for the first Time
I remember when crysis came out and it was Armageddon in the gaming world. No one had the hardware power to run it without crashing and those who did had super expensive setups. I had a friend that repaired computers and I remember the childish glee he had when talking about that monster of a game. I tried running it on my laptop and I just remember it looking stunning! And then not running properly lol
I had a single core Pentium 4 around 2.8 or 3ghz, with a GT 8500. With a mix of low and medium settings I could run Crysis well enough at subpar 30fps. I remember one day I decided to put everything on the highest settings and decided to run it, thinking I would get around 10fps. That did not happen. Instead there was a black screen for a while and then ONE SINGLE FRAME got displayed. After a while like maybe 20 or 30 seconds another frame for displayed lol. I couldn't do anything as my computer had locked up trying to render single frames of Crysis every half a minute. I had to hold the power switch to reset the PC lol.
I remember a quote from one gaming journalist when Crisis came out, saying something like: "Your dad might be a company CEO, but you won't be running Crysis on high settings".
Not to mention the unparalleled sense of evolution you got going from newbie butt-monkey prisoner to one of the most powerful beings in the colony. To this day, nobody made anything quite like it, at least not as far as I'm aware. Some came kinda close, but the only time I've felt it outside of the Gothic, Risen or Elex series (all by the same developer) was in 2022, when Chronicles of Myrthana was released. And that was a mod for Gothic 2. 😂 Here's hoping the remake does it justice and manages to inspire a few devs.
if it play like a modern open world 1st person shooter and not like itself back then, then yes with a hud and objectives and a map similar to farcry series.
I remember reading the first Jak & Daxter game was the first console game to have seemless travel between every hub area and their corresponding “levels” without loading screens. You could play that game front to back without ever running into a loading screen essentially making the world feel a lot more open, real and connective. It felt like they were really pushing the power of the PS2 while using techniques that still exist today in gaming.
Santa Monica probably saw that and decided to use some of the techniques there when making the first God of War. You never see a loading screen in that game, unless you try really hard to go faster than the game can load in the next area.
@@wariodude128 a lot of these games on the PS2 use the same techniques that even God of War 2018 use. The idea of having crawl spaces or gaps that you have to go through so that different areas load in without the player realizing. Jak did much the same thing with certain areas being visually “obstructed” by hills or rocks so that they didn’t have to load high quality assets for locations you were leaving or even like the lava canyon that connect the hub areas. What’s cool about those was they fleshed those areas out with collectibles just like any other level so even tho the game was essentially loading in the assets of the upcoming region you still had this sense of “this is its own place, level, mini game” whatever it may be.
@@ThePowerOfOneThePowerOfTwo absolutely. Was one of my favorite games growing up just bc of the gameplay, but as an adult I have an even deeper appreciation for the artistry and technical craft it took to create those games. Crash bandicoot was also so ahead of its time with polygon limits. Surprised none made it on this list but so many games during that time did great things in different ways - we sort of take it for granted that all these techniques were developed during that period and now a combination of all these learned processes are happening behind the scenes that we aren’t even aware of bc it’s so well hidden.
Yess, or even Far Cry 1 was waaay ahead of everything at the time in 2004 as an open world FPS. It's shortly mentioned at the start of this vid, but I think it deserves a spot. I still play through FC1 every year at least once, and am still surprised by the enemy sometimes... 🙂
When talking about Crysis people always forget how incredible the physics engine was. I didnt play it until 2013 and even then i was blown away by the interactivity. Picking up an enemy soldier and throwing them through a building while it crumbles around them realistically is still more satisfying than almost any game TO THIS DAY, let alone for 15 years ago
The character choice in Dragon age origins is pretty ahead of its time too. I remember playing that game and just straight up feeling like it was real life I could say or do anything my mind could think up the developers had already put into the game. I've actually spend thousands of hours and hundreds of playthroughs on dragon age origins and I'm still finding small details or choices I never new about that game will keep you playing for years.
DA:O crashes every few minutes. DA:I wouldn't even run. Yes, I have a modern machine (I7, 16 gb, 1660TI) and I applied suggested fixes (like disabling multi-threading), but these two games just won't run. DAII runs very smoothly. For the little I was able to see, I'm sure I'd like DA:O much more than DAII, but I don't have the patience to reload every few minutes. Thing is, I really like the way the DA RPGs are presented. Voice acting, characters that are large enough to make out details, the Baldur's Gate type of rtw/pause combat all contribute to making the game one I enjoy playing without squinting. I just wish I could play the better ones.
@@Xix1326 No offense at all my man but a 1660ti is not modern anymore. Either way, it should be way more than enough to run DA:O. But it definitely sounds like a problem specific to your rig, because I do not remember having any issues with DA:O back when I played it (2013-2014), and I didn’t even have a GTX back the (GT 610). Do you have a console maybe? I know the game runs pretty okay on consoles. You can also try reinstalling, checking drivers, rolling back your gpu driver.
I remember MGS1 on ps1 was on a different level. You had to disconnect the controller and plug it into the 2nd port during psycho mantis, he would also read your memory card and tell you what games you enjoyed based off of playtime. You also had to read the manual to figure out Meryls codex number. Pretty crazy components to a stealth game.
I'm surprised how EA Spore isn't even mentioned. There is still no character creator in any game even after all these years as versatile as Spore. It was pure creativity at some point. You guys should mention it more.
While Trespasser was indeed a mess, I played thru the entire game in 1998 and was amazed by some of the mechanics and the physics that I had not seen in any other game before. That weird mechanic where you could twist your arm and wrist to aim was awful though. It's best to just run from the raptors lol.
Crysis was the first game that I literally would just stop and look around at the amazingly beautiful scenery. Later games built on that but Crysis really set the standard.
I did that with Unreal 1, which I got with my weird Voodoo Rush 2D/3D mesh up card and then actually played on a Pentium II with 3dfx Voodoo2 card on full details. My mind was blown away by the light effects and the scenery. Also took the time to read all the notepads for the story and hunkered down in corners without enemies to record *.wav files of the awesome soundtrack which I still have as conversions to mp3. also when I saw Quake 1 in the vid I remembered that I played that on my first PC a i486 DX2 66 MHz CPU with a 90 MB harddisk. The game had something like 82 or 86 mb which left me only with MS-DOS instead of win3.11 and a lot of trouble with Memmaker to get the system running as it was supposed to run on the first Intel Pentium generation. ahhh the nostalgia ^^
I felt that playing Unreal 2 in 2004. Some scenery in Unreal 2 is even more realistic than Crysis that only few years ago some games started to match the level of that realism and detail.
I think Bioshock was ahead of its time for the "games as an art form" movement that is far more ubiquitous now than it was nearly 15 years ago. The game was able to convey a deep narrative without the needing to resort to lengthy exposition and had a plot twist that completely shattered the illusion of control that games typically provide.
@@philithegamer8265 Yeah i played the trilogy again a year ago and it was just as good as i remember. Despite being so old, I would still pick it over some newer released games.
Bioshock 1 is fantastic, but it’s pretty much the same story as System Shock 2, which came out in 1999. If you liked bioshock I’d recommend giving SS2 a crack, SS1 is very dated so I wouldn’t recommend it, however a remake is being developed.
As a PC gamer I remember how envious I was when I first learned of Shenmue and how proud I was that it's on XBox because XBox was the first console to bring PC features to console market
That was the first time I ever got a job 🤣 and that's all I did, I never went any further in the story... I just went and did my forklift and went home
Yeah still incredible today in my opinion, the fact you can open pretty much every drawer and cupboard in ryo’s house made it feel so realistic plus collecting all the sega toys was so fun and addictive - even if you get a lot of copies
Nice. Trespasser was a goofy game indeed. Remembered playing it Christmas Day and having no clue what to do lol. Took me a bit to realize as a kid I’m staring down at boobs for health as well. Another odd gameplay mechanic was the fact that if you died you could just sit there and watch the Dinos eat you infinitely. Sometimes they would hover over the gun and shoot them selves in the face while eating you.
Trespasser is one of those games that proves that if you're going to fail, fail because you were too ambitious. The fact that whenever I hear about the game I find myself thinking, "we need to try remaking that game with today's technology, I'll bet we could actually do what its makers originally shot for" is, I think, proof that Trespasser was a great idea that was simply limited by the technology of its time.
Other games way ahead of their time, was Resident Evil 4 with his perspective on the camera, and the storytelling in Dragon Age and the way you interact to choose, is truly amazing
Resident Evil 4 had so many more stuff besides the camera, like the game getting easier or harder based on how the player is performing which is never mentioned to the player, so the player doesnt even know these things are happening in the background the Human like animations and movements in Cutscenes and even in gameplay, the facial expressions because Capcom used Motion Capture for all of the animations and cutscenes and they also captured real human facial expressions these things didn't happen in every game in 2005, RE4 was Truly Ahead of its time and these are some of the reasons why it still holds up as a Masterpiece even today
@@SepehrKiller It did the OTS camera view, the 1st SC game. I'd even give a shoutout to Cold Fear, can't remember if it came out before or after Resi 4 though, they were very close together IIRC so they couldn't have inspired one another. No idea if the dynamic difficulty and all that was done before RE4 or not
Another great list! Just wanted to add the Half Life 2 felt like a huge leap forward when it came out in 2004. I'll never forget the first time I played through the opening level in the subway station. The level of detail and the fact that you could pick up every single item of trash was mind blowing. I feel like it's STILL more interactive than a lot of games coming out today. It may not have been the first game to do this, but it was the first to do it this well...
The same feeling playing Half-Life 2 after still playing Half-Life 1 a lot at the time was "oh this is too much". And it wasn't until RDR2 that I had that feeling again, still playing the original when the prequel came out "the colours are too bright, the bass sounds are too deep, the world is too big". Took some getting used to and felt like a leap forward.
That was one of the first games that had a level that made me feel height. The bridge level where you are under the bridge and jumping from platform to platform trying not to fall.
It makes sense though, if you had played System Shock. Deus Ex was basically System Shock 3. I honestly consider the Deus Ex series to be spiritual successors to the System Shock games.
Blood Money was already damaged by console stupid controls, Hitman 2 was much better game and Hitman 1 was revolution in stealth genre in that time. I like Blood Money for it's possibilities how to finish missions, but controls was really stupid compared to Hitman 1 and 2 which were really well playable on PC. Since Blood Money, almost every game has that stupid controls that you have extra separated button for each action and you have to remember too much buttons, it was really cutting me off good gaming experience because I very often did something wrong just because of that, it would not happen in Hitman 1-3. This problem is still even in today Hitman games, instead of select from list of actions in half second, you have to remember 10 action buttons.
The entire gaming industry is kind of an exaggeration, seeing as the crash only really happened in the USA... Yes, it was felt all around the world, but not nearly as severely as you had it there. You could say Super Mario Bros rekindled the interest in games in the USA, though. And that had a major impact, for sure. But the gaming industry was doing just fine elsewhere in the meantime.
Its sad to see that Gothic gets overlooked so often on lists like these. The first part was released around 1999 and had such an amazing 3 world that felt real and immersive. Ubisoft could still learn a thing or two from it even these days.
Gothic to me was the first "If you can see it, you can go there" open world game, just by virtue of the outstanding level design utilising every single square inch of space in the limited map. And the storytelling of the quests were all so specifically individual to every NPC's own story, you never felt like you were doing a quest because you were The Protagonist, you were doing it because someone needed something doing, and you wanted something from them, so of course they were going to try to get you to do their hard work for them. They didn't care who you were or about you, just about what you could do for them. A writing tone that most RPGs still completely fail at if they even try.
Nah it had a rough start but it’s made the game better for it. Honestly if it went or stayed in production for too long it may have risked being boxed up and canceled
Another game series that you guys did not mention was Myst, Riven, Myst 3 Exile, Myst 4 Revelation and Myst 5 End of Ages. Myst was released in 1993 and Riven in 1997. It is non-violent puzzle solving adventure exploration games and the storyline was unique at that time. It was REALLY complex at some stages where you had to literally take notes and make diagrams on a piece of paper.
Im honestly suprised none of the portal games were on this list, I remember being so dumbfounded by how good the quality, mechanics, storyline was on both of them
Ocarina of time always comes up in my head with revolutionary games. Pretty much every action RPG owes some credit to it with z targeting and its looping dungeon layouts
Its unfortunately not on this list but Dragons Dogma has become my benchmark for an open world RPG. Theres just so many awesome mechanics that games even now a decade later dont have. Also super glad Demons Souls is on here. When the remake came out it got a resurgence of love but i always felt it never truly got the love and respect that dark souls was shown.
You'll have to forgive my ignorance, but is Dragon's Dogma the game where you have to mantle the gigantic monsters to deal critical blows during combat?
@@Oroku_Sensei some of them. Climbing big monsters is certainly a big aspect of it. Its the one where the massive red dragon steals your heart and you and your pawn set off to get it back. It was on ps3 i think 2012.
If I could only have 1 more game come out for the rest of my life it would be dragons dogma 2. I have replayed this game a million times and have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Skyrim gets boring after 30 minutes.. dogma is hard to put down after 30 hours
I loved the original Silent Hill. And by “loved”, I mean “was terrified but could not look away.” It was maybe the 4th game I ever played and it just seemed unlike anything else around at the time.
Yeah I actually am probably one of the few who really love silent hill shattered memories which is pretty much a reimagining of the first silent hill game and for me the coolest thing in the game was how in these various psychology sections it changed things in the game based on decisions you made and this made it feel like your own personal story
Half life got missed, so did far cry - both moved things way forward.. No crysis without far cry. There's a couple more but I gotta remember the names.
This is not a list about the best games at the time. Half Life and Far Cry were both incredible games, but they 'just' perfected what was already there. They didn't really bring anything new to the table.
@@akito6572 the in engine scripted story elements in half life were huge - and got copied by almost every game that came after. The open world elements in far cry were way ahead of the rest. Same with the open world format used. Both of these things are still widely impactful today. But maybe you never played them or weren't around back then to understand.
@@akito6572 Half Life 1 was revolutionary. It literally invented the 'cinematic FPS' that would become ubiquitous later on. That opening tram ride alone was just off the wall cool and immersive back when it first came out, even though it seems completely insignificant by modern standards.
@@bustatron Crysis did more to its release time than Farcry did man. That’s not throwing shade at Farcry at all, but Crysis was a whole different thing.
Yeah I agree the fact you saw a drawer or cupboard and the game was like go ahead open that and look inside was revolutionary and made the game so realistic
Honorable mentions that should be on this list: MGS1 (Particularly the Psycho Mantis boss fight) and MGS2 (about the rise of misinformation) Final Fantasy X (The graphics of that game was at least two to three years ahead of its time) Batman Arkham Knight (The graphics of that game looked like it came at the end of the late 2010's. Plus, the graphics are almost realistic.) Resident Evil games (particularly Resident Evil 1, Resident Evil 4 and 5, and so on) GTA games (particularly GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas, GTA 4, GTA 5 and now GTA 6) Ghost of Tsushima (the graphics nearly look realistic) Far Cry 3, 4 and 5
Shenmue is so amazing the realism it gave to the experience but for me the greatest memory will be the first time playing the original crash bandicoot on the ps1 in the mid 90’s as it was only my second game I’ve ever played after Mario land on the game boy. Having a fully 3d space to platform around in and visiting the three islands that you could see off in the distance was so cool and fun, plus smashing crates will always be satisfying
Im so happy nier is on that list. I only picked it up as a kid because i saw it for like 5€ in a polish thrift store. Ohh boy it became one of my all time favorites I was blown away by the crazy and yet somewhat coherend and emotional story. And especially by the gameplay that always mixed up camera perspective and threw me for a loop.
The Natural Selection mod for Half-Life then later the standalone Natural Selection 2 game will always be my picks for games ahead of their time. The asymmetric gameplay of marines vs aliens and combining a FPS and RTS all into a single multiplayer experience was mind blowing to me.
I'm almost positive it was one of the first, if not the first, game/s to implement picking up weapons from off the walls or the ground and enemies that wasn't a first person shooter.
Gran Turismo was a pretty revolutionary game. The amount of real world tracks and licensed cars you could choose from and the level at which you could customize the cars was years ahead of anything else at the time.
Was the first game to legit scare me when i was younger. Had about 3 different insanity effects trigger at the wrong time while was in one of Alex's parts
I remember as a kid the first time I saw Mario 64 back when it came out in the 90s. Seeing a 3D game for the first time was utterly amazing. No words can really describe seeing mind-blowing effects like that the first time
Same, played it at a relatives house on Thanksgiving, all the adults were upstair, all the kids were taking turns playing Mario 64. Nothing in the gaming world will compare to that feeling of awe again.
The first time I saw a commercial for Ocarina of Time also blew me away. I mowed lawns and shoveled snow for a year to save up for an N64, my first big purchase.
I'm so happy to have played most of these games when they just came out! I was a bit young to fully embrace System Shock when it came out, so I mainly watched my dad play it and listen to him explain the story to me... Such great memories, despite me having a few nightmares featuring Shodan and being genuinely shocked by the concept of Edward Diego cyborg!
The revolutionary for me was a Real Time Strategy game. Homeworld. It has 3d mode view, interesting story for a strategy game, good songtracks and good gameplay, and it has spaceships!
Assassin's Creed to me was way ahead of it's time when it 1st came out. The parkour mechanic fascinated me as a kid. I always thought "so someone had to place all these objects specifically so you can climb all over them smoothly?" And even to this day the current games you can climb on just about anything and it looks good. I don't understand how creating games works but I know AC Odyssey and Origins couldn't have been easy to make
First Tomb Raider and the first Assassin's Creed years later were both pivotal moments in transforming the ideas of 3D gaming and level design and navigation. Tomb Raider was to 3D platforming what the original 2D Prince of Persia was to 2D platforming. Showed you could make something that looked organic and plausible (if, y'know, superhumanly athletic). Then Assassin's Creed eventually took the next step and showed that it could be made as fluid and intuitive as running around a flat level, not just a thing you made puzzles with.
Yeah still remember playing ac 2 for the first time and being able to climb any building you felt like gave you so much freedom, still need to get round to playing ac syndicate always wanted to climb Big Ben 😉
"The parkour mechanic fascinated me as a kid. I always thought "so someone had to place all these objects specifically so you can climb all over them smoothly?"" Actually no. The level designers just simply created the environment and the rest was the animators' and programmers' job to write the algorithm which finds the nearest edge or object on the map geometry your character can grab and play the appropriate animation. It was not scripted like in other games where you could do certain move only if the level designer marked that place as climbable for example.
@@TheFirstCurse1 I love Syndicate too but I wouldn't call it one of the classic AC games Assassin's Creed has 4 eras AC1 - AC Revelations (Classic) AC3 - AC Rogue (Reformed) AC Unity - AC Syndicate (HD) AC Origins - AC Valhalla (RPG) These aren't official labels or anything but you see what I'm saying
Love that you mentioned Shenmue. They are not perfect games but I love them. Even how deep the fighting system really is if you train your moves to level them up it actually changes the motion of the attack to make it more efficient.
Oh god, Crysis. I remember getting my first multi-core CPU and running Crysis and Bioshock at the same time just to see if I could. That game was something else.
Drakkhen for the Amiga and SNES. The first pseudo-3D open world with a day and night system, various environments and secrets, real time combat that feels like an 80s version of KoTOR and Xenoblade Chronicles, as well as a fantastic OST. Drakkhen is such a cool hidden gem that only has aged if you don't have the manual that explains how to play (but even without that it is interesting to play.) Felt like a proto-Elder Scrolls Arena.
Resident Evil 4 (2005) deserves an honorable mention. The graphics were incredible at the time and the 3rd person over the shoulder camera system influenced a lot of shooters in the years to come.
@@philithegamer8265 Resident Evil 4 is regarded as one of the most influential games of the 2000s, particularly due to its influence in redefining the third-person shooter genre by introducing offset camera angles that do not obscure action. The new gameplay alterations and immersive style appealed to many not previously familiar with the series. The over-the-shoulder viewpoint introduced in Resident Evil 4 has later become standard in third-person shooters and action games, including titles ranging from Gears of War to Batman: Arkham Asylum. It has also become a standard "precision aim" feature for third-person action games in general, with examples including Dead Space, Grand Theft Auto, Ratchet & Clank Future, Fallout, Uncharted, Mass Effect and The Last of Us. In 2019, Game Informer called Resident Evil 4 "the most important third-person shooter ever" and said it "innovated two genres", inspiring developers of both survival horror and shooter games. Resident Evil 4 redefined the survival horror genre by emphasizing reflexes and precision aiming, thus broadening the gameplay of the series with elements from the wider action game genre. Other major survival horror series followed suit, by developing their combat systems to feature more action, such as Silent Hill: Homecoming and the 2008 version of Alone in the Dark. These changes represent an overall trend among console games shifting towards visceral action gameplay. While working on The Last of Us, Naughty Dog took cues from Resident Evil 4, particularly the tension and action. Dead Space designers Ben Wanat and Wright Bagwell stated that their game was originally intended to be System Shock 3 before the release of Resident Evil 4 inspired them to go back to the drawing board. BioShock was also influenced by Resident Evil 4, including its approach to the environments, combat, and tools, its game design and tactical elements, its "gameplay fuelled storytelling" and inventory system, and its opening village level in terms of how it "handled the sandbox nature of the combat" and in terms of "the environment". Bloodborne’s environments, enemy design, and shift to a faster combat system compared to previous soulslike games was influenced by Resident Evil 4. Cory Barlog cited Resident Evil 4 as an influence on the God of War series, including God of War II (2007) and particularly God of War (2018), which was influenced by Resident Evil 4's "combination of poised camera exploration and scavenging". Uncharted director Bruce Straley called the Resident Evil 4 village sequence the best opening fight in a video game.
The RE4 remake this year was should be the bar for any future remakes. It's incredibly difficult to remake a revolutionary and almost universally-loved game, and they did an outstanding job. They improved on it without wrecking what people loved about it.
The original Ninja Gaiden console release was definitely ahead of its time as well. The cutscenes were a cut above most around that time (2004) and the gameplay could rival just about any hack and slash that came out around that time. One of my all time favorites
But seriously how insane was the trilogy like I remember I was, idk 7 or 8 at most when I got my first ps2 and it had the demo with sands of time in it (miss those CDs with so many choices of demo and trailers) and I instantly fell in love. Fortunately, when I got a bit older, I got to play all of them too
I know that racing sims all pretty much had/ have the same recipe, but graphically I think that Forza Motorsport 3 was way ahead of its time. Models were 3D scanned and meshed, super high fidelity textures and reflections as well as highly polished physics models. I know it’s probably not top 10 worthy but for a game from 2009 the graphics really were a massive leap forward and still hold up to this day.
I loved Trespasser. Played through it several times back in the day. It was very under appreciated at the time for what is was trying to do. I think a remake would be very interesting to see.
The wonderful narration by Minnie Driver and Richard Attenborough, as well as a glimpse behind the scenes at the early days of Hammond's whole Jurassic Park operation are what kept me coming back to this flawed gem. I could listen to his memoirs all day! _"My name is John Parker Hammond..."_
Better not forget Silent Hills PT as well. It's crazy to think that a 30 minute short horror demo inspired countless indie and AAA games and still does to this day.
We could really get a decent Singleplayer-intensive Jurassic Park game (or some other prehistoric / Dinosaurs related game) similar to ARK but massively improved and with a good enough story-line as well!
Agree with all the game choices on this video but I feel like GTA San Andreas definitely deserves a spot here too. The sheer amount of stuff that the game allowed players to do was insane back in 2004
Not just the sheer size, but on one disc, with no loading screens as you traverse the map, on a freaking PS2. I bought SA on release day and didn't think about that much at the time, but looking back itt was a huge achievement.
That's the first time I've heard someone put a positive spin on Tresspasser's development, but you're totally right. They did do some really amazing and innovative things :)
No Asura's Wrath on this list is a shame. Even now, games that try to use QTE's have never been able to so quite like it in a way where you truly feel empowering. Meanwhile, Asura's Wrath is all about it, and the true final boss even has his own QTE's you counter and end up winning over. Its honesly amazing.
QTE's are not revolutionary, was just a trend. I don't recall games now a days using it anymore. And if does, they do it as a manner to engage players in a cutscene that would be the same without the qte.
Not sure why Half-Life 2 wasn't on here. It came out three years before Crysis, had similarly good graphics (Crysis does have an edge on it, though), was not only the first game to implement an actual physics engine, but also still has better physics than most games today, and has better facial animations than todays games. I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, but Half-Life 2 was really ahead of its time.
just for your info, elder scrolls oblivion was that open world game that changed everything for the genre. came out in 2004 with all these details and graphics was amazing for 2004, crysis came out in 2007 there was a new generation of consoles at the time.
I feel like Duke Nukem 3d and Terminator: Future Shock deserve some honourable mention alongside system shock. DN3D had destructible environments and a shrink ray that sometimes you had to use in a mirror to get to certain areas, it feels like it had interesting ideas abounding. T:FS was one of, if not the first game to use mouse look which is fundamental to FPS games today. I see it credited on wikipedia as such but it could also have possibly been Marathon that got there first. Either way in the space of a year or so every FPS had this control option. One cannot overlook also how dank and moody the environment was, it was quite terrifying at the time. It also had vehicle combat - hover copters, jeeps. I cannot remember if you could dismount during a level but I think not. I also get that Crysis often gets reduced to it's graphical contributions but, am I the only one that thinks that both the level design and this incarnation of the nano suit were just great gameplay? Crysis 2 decided to highlight every available path which really took away from any idea of exploration and the suit was a lot more restricted. Yeah Yeah, the original Crysis' suit trivialised the game even on delta but that was on you.
Honorable mention for Elite, the grandaddy of all open world space exploration and trading games. which first came out on the BBC Micro way back in 1984. It was incredible how they managed to cram a game with 3d-wire frame graphics and a eight procedurally generated galaxies totaling 2048 star systems into 22kb of memory. They even hacked the BBC hardware to use two different graphics modes at once so they could have a color HUD for the spaceships you flew while using higher resolution monochrome mode for the 3d graphics. Even decades later it took years before even one BBC emulator could accurately emulate the tricks they used! It was years ahead of its time and spawned a franchise that's still going strong and coming up to its 40th anniversary next year.
I'd say the 1992 Alone in the dark was pretty ahead of it's time, deserves an honorable mention, also POPULOUS and Sim City both came out 1989. I never heard of like.. seven out of the ten games you guys mention in the video. Making top-ten lists is getting kinda difficult now that there are literal millions of games for dozens of systems (over 50 or so years, depending how you count.)
I think "ahead of its time" is meant as "the world wasn't quite ready for it yet, that idea would be developed better in following years but started here". What you mention is more like "milestones". Most of the games in the video are not particularly good for a reason or another (even just because they were impossible to play for the average user), and their innovations would be recognized only later.
You guys might have covered Doom 3 in some other similar video but damn.. those level of details in a game and at that time were just unbelievable! I couldn't even run that game for a long time until I got a decent enough PC.. Good times! ♥
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was way ahead of its time graphically and the lighting and ambient sound engine were impressive as well. First game to my recollection that had rag doll physics as well
I had already played a few PS1 games when I played Mario 64, if felt like the first big revolution in gaming that I remember. The jump to 3D polygons was amazing. The only time I've gotten a Whoa! factor like that from gaming since then, was my first time playing VR on my Oculus Rift S.
Great list! Surprised that Portal didn’t make the list for its puzzles and gameplay. Also Gears of War for its 3rd person controls and ammo reload system
The Ancient Art of War pc game from Broderbund back in 1984/85. Probably the very first rts strategy game. on one floppy disk. One 5 1/4 inch floppy. Had a map and scenario creator. You could even write your own intro to the map you created. Cga graphics, the works. Ah good old days.
You should do me a big favor and reply to this comment so that I can come back to this suggestion once I have access to my PC. I definitely need to check that out.
How is Resident Evil 4 not on this list? It invented the 3rd person over the shoulder camera with the red dot aiming that every single 3rd person action game has used since. It also was the first game to actually do QTE the right way
What about race and chase? That game was truly ahead of its time. That’s the origins of GTA. Also Battlefield was modern before call of duty BF2 2004 MW 2007…
I feel like most of the 2000’s games were way ahead of their time. Not in every way but the games just felt so much more real and genuine compared to todays releases.
If they were all ahead of their time, they weren't ahead of their time. That's just how games were at the time
Ahann... do you remember Doom 3? Now wasn't that something!
It's because that was before every game blatantly started copying Ubisoft and Far Cry 3. Basically every game follows the same formula and has the same mechanics now. The whole industry has just started making clones of previous games without innovating. That's why I tend to like linear single player games and indies more than the open world stuff again.
The games just felt so much more real and genuine??? I'm sorry but I have no idea what your talking about and I grew up right along side this industry...from Atari on up.
Games feel more real NOW than they ever have. The amount of details that are being jammed into games right now is on rediculous levels.
It's all the little things that make a huge difference. Remember when you played a game with wind....and everything moved the same way...the same time....same pattern. Don't see much of that anymore thankfully.
Sorry yo...but I can't get to where you're at with that statement.
@@AsaRush It seems older gamers prefer newer games and newer gamers prefer older games, I have noticed this trend... Perhaps it´s because the grass is always greener on the other side? Or maybe because it has what we didn´t grow up with, making it new and exciting, instead of the old and boring same stuff?
No idea how y’all keep turning out these quality videos. Thank you!
All thanks to the support we get from you guys
I did not watch the Video yet, but please upvote my Comment if the Open World RPG "Gothic" from Germany was not in this List of 10 Revolutionary Games.
If it wasn't, not surprised, insanely overlooked revolutionary open world RPG from early 2001. Far ahead of Morrowind and others (that came out after) and didn't have revolutionary Functions present in the first Gothic Game.
There is a Reason the Gothic Series is to this day considered the best and favourite Open World RPG in every Country it was advertised in (Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, Netherlands, France etc.)
I wonder if Piranha Bytes would have had the Money back in 2000-2001 to advertise in the US, UK etc. if it would be as popular.
Also thank me later if "Gothic I & II" suddenly became your favourite Open World RPG of all Time after you read my Comment and checked it out. That's a common Reaction to People hearing and playing the Gothic Games for the first Time
@james conlin no
I remember when crysis came out and it was Armageddon in the gaming world. No one had the hardware power to run it without crashing and those who did had super expensive setups. I had a friend that repaired computers and I remember the childish glee he had when talking about that monster of a game. I tried running it on my laptop and I just remember it looking stunning! And then not running properly lol
I had a single core Pentium 4 around 2.8 or 3ghz, with a GT 8500. With a mix of low and medium settings I could run Crysis well enough at subpar 30fps. I remember one day I decided to put everything on the highest settings and decided to run it, thinking I would get around 10fps. That did not happen. Instead there was a black screen for a while and then ONE SINGLE FRAME got displayed. After a while like maybe 20 or 30 seconds another frame for displayed lol. I couldn't do anything as my computer had locked up trying to render single frames of Crysis every half a minute. I had to hold the power switch to reset the PC lol.
@@maskednil lmao I cranked everything up to high too! Just to see what would happen. Boy were those simpler times. Haha
I've just upgraded my PC at the time, and was so glad that it could handle Crysis decently... until the snow level...
Fast forward crysis can run on handhelds now!
I remember a quote from one gaming journalist when Crisis came out, saying something like: "Your dad might be a company CEO, but you won't be running Crysis on high settings".
Jurassic Park: Trespasser. A prime example of how sometimes it's better to try, and fail. Then to not try at all.
Than*
Agreed
Tell that to your investors.
@@ast-og-losta
The point
@Narkomancers Cool story bro
Gothic 1 immersive world and quests felt like way ahead of it's time.
Yeap Gothic is still really enjoyable to play today with some mods.
Apart from the clunky controls, Gothic 1 is a masterpiece
Not to mention the unparalleled sense of evolution you got going from newbie butt-monkey prisoner to one of the most powerful beings in the colony. To this day, nobody made anything quite like it, at least not as far as I'm aware. Some came kinda close, but the only time I've felt it outside of the Gothic, Risen or Elex series (all by the same developer) was in 2022, when Chronicles of Myrthana was released. And that was a mod for Gothic 2. 😂
Here's hoping the remake does it justice and manages to inspire a few devs.
Perhaps Trespasser (Jurassic Park) should be remastered and we could see what they really had in mind making it.
We really need a good Jurassic Park game
looking at the flabby arm reminds me to surgeon simulator btw
A polished turd is still a turd. I think a remake is what you was thinking of.
if it play like a modern open world 1st person shooter and not like itself back then, then yes with a hud and objectives and a map similar to farcry series.
make it vr, because frankly thats what it looks like at time, :> trying to pick up a weapona nd hold it hehe.
I remember reading the first Jak & Daxter game was the first console game to have seemless travel between every hub area and their corresponding “levels” without loading screens. You could play that game front to back without ever running into a loading screen essentially making the world feel a lot more open, real and connective. It felt like they were really pushing the power of the PS2 while using techniques that still exist today in gaming.
Facts
Santa Monica probably saw that and decided to use some of the techniques there when making the first God of War. You never see a loading screen in that game, unless you try really hard to go faster than the game can load in the next area.
Jak 2 was the shit and left me in awe the first time I played it. Those games were definitely ahead of the curve
@@wariodude128 a lot of these games on the PS2 use the same techniques that even God of War 2018 use. The idea of having crawl spaces or gaps that you have to go through so that different areas load in without the player realizing. Jak did much the same thing with certain areas being visually “obstructed” by hills or rocks so that they didn’t have to load high quality assets for locations you were leaving or even like the lava canyon that connect the hub areas. What’s cool about those was they fleshed those areas out with collectibles just like any other level so even tho the game was essentially loading in the assets of the upcoming region you still had this sense of “this is its own place, level, mini game” whatever it may be.
@@ThePowerOfOneThePowerOfTwo absolutely. Was one of my favorite games growing up just bc of the gameplay, but as an adult I have an even deeper appreciation for the artistry and technical craft it took to create those games. Crash bandicoot was also so ahead of its time with polygon limits. Surprised none made it on this list but so many games during that time did great things in different ways - we sort of take it for granted that all these techniques were developed during that period and now a combination of all these learned processes are happening behind the scenes that we aren’t even aware of bc it’s so well hidden.
For me, Far Cry 2. Awesome systems, doesn't hold your hand and a time when triple A devs took chances.
@Joel Anderson
It's a CRYing shame that it wasn't included.
real shit doe, one of the first pc games I got into, them fire effects mann
My least fav Far Cry, but yeah, great systems. Ubi have taken some chances with it since tho-Blood Dragon, Primal, that mars one…
Yess, or even Far Cry 1 was waaay ahead of everything at the time in 2004 as an open world FPS. It's shortly mentioned at the start of this vid, but I think it deserves a spot. I still play through FC1 every year at least once, and am still surprised by the enemy sometimes... 🙂
@@MrBlaDiBla68 Yeah, I most've played FC1 5-6 times in the 00s. I played the other 2004 biggie Half Life 2 twice-superb game, but I enjoyed FC more.
When talking about Crysis people always forget how incredible the physics engine was. I didnt play it until 2013 and even then i was blown away by the interactivity. Picking up an enemy soldier and throwing them through a building while it crumbles around them realistically is still more satisfying than almost any game TO THIS DAY, let alone for 15 years ago
The character choice in Dragon age origins is pretty ahead of its time too. I remember playing that game and just straight up feeling like it was real life I could say or do anything my mind could think up the developers had already put into the game. I've actually spend thousands of hours and hundreds of playthroughs on dragon age origins and I'm still finding small details or choices I never new about that game will keep you playing for years.
Origins was a fantastic game. It’s too bad DA2 was such garbage
@@dvan7500 Not garbage, just different.
DA:O crashes every few minutes. DA:I wouldn't even run. Yes, I have a modern machine (I7, 16 gb, 1660TI) and I applied suggested fixes (like disabling multi-threading), but these two games just won't run. DAII runs very smoothly. For the little I was able to see, I'm sure I'd like DA:O much more than DAII, but I don't have the patience to reload every few minutes. Thing is, I really like the way the DA RPGs are presented. Voice acting, characters that are large enough to make out details, the Baldur's Gate type of rtw/pause combat all contribute to making the game one I enjoy playing without squinting. I just wish I could play the better ones.
@@Xix1326 No offense at all my man but a 1660ti is not modern anymore. Either way, it should be way more than enough to run DA:O. But it definitely sounds like a problem specific to your rig, because I do not remember having any issues with DA:O back when I played it (2013-2014), and I didn’t even have a GTX back the (GT 610). Do you have a console maybe? I know the game runs pretty okay on consoles. You can also try reinstalling, checking drivers, rolling back your gpu driver.
@@Xix1326 Format your pc, install the game and run it. If it doesn't run then your rig sucks, sry to break it to you but what else can i say 🤷♂
I remember MGS1 on ps1 was on a different level. You had to disconnect the controller and plug it into the 2nd port during psycho mantis, he would also read your memory card and tell you what games you enjoyed based off of playtime. You also had to read the manual to figure out Meryls codex number. Pretty crazy components to a stealth game.
"Look on the back of the CD case."
Yeah when devs was really creative and used everything they got instead of just good graphics.
I also remember Psycho Mantis remarking on how often you saved.
I'm surprised how EA Spore isn't even mentioned. There is still no character creator in any game even after all these years as versatile as Spore. It was pure creativity at some point. You guys should mention it more.
I remember playing with my friend side by side and the character creation was just so damn fun!
I loved just making the creatures, the gameplay itself was honestly pretty bad to say the least
Will Wright had way bigger plans for that game, but was limited by time and budget.
Not a single strategy game 😢
Spore was a huge let down though. So it never hit the mark.
I absolutely love that you put "Trespasser" on this list!
While Trespasser was indeed a mess, I played thru the entire game in 1998 and was amazed by some of the mechanics and the physics that I had not seen in any other game before.
That weird mechanic where you could twist your arm and wrist to aim was awful though. It's best to just run from the raptors lol.
Crysis was the first game that I literally would just stop and look around at the amazingly beautiful scenery. Later games built on that but Crysis really set the standard.
And the tree rigs/physics and the water and and and...
I did that with Unreal 1, which I got with my weird Voodoo Rush 2D/3D mesh up card and then actually played on a Pentium II with 3dfx Voodoo2 card on full details. My mind was blown away by the light effects and the scenery. Also took the time to read all the notepads for the story and hunkered down in corners without enemies to record *.wav files of the awesome soundtrack which I still have as conversions to mp3.
also when I saw Quake 1 in the vid I remembered that I played that on my first PC a i486 DX2 66 MHz CPU with a 90 MB harddisk. The game had something like 82 or 86 mb which left me only with MS-DOS instead of win3.11 and a lot of trouble with Memmaker to get the system running as it was supposed to run on the first Intel Pentium generation.
ahhh the nostalgia ^^
Far Cry felt also waaay ahead
I felt that playing Unreal 2 in 2004. Some scenery in Unreal 2 is even more realistic than Crysis that only few years ago some games started to match the level of that realism and detail.
and gun 2005 was too isnt included here graphic gamplay is amazing for 2005
I think Bioshock was ahead of its time for the "games as an art form" movement that is far more ubiquitous now than it was nearly 15 years ago. The game was able to convey a deep narrative without the needing to resort to lengthy exposition and had a plot twist that completely shattered the illusion of control that games typically provide.
Bioshock's still a great story driven game 15 years later.
@@philithegamer8265 Yeah i played the trilogy again a year ago and it was just as good as i remember. Despite being so old, I would still pick it over some newer released games.
Bioshock is the game that made me realize video games are art
Bioshock 1 is fantastic, but it’s pretty much the same story as System Shock 2, which came out in 1999. If you liked bioshock I’d recommend giving SS2 a crack, SS1 is very dated so I wouldn’t recommend it, however a remake is being developed.
Absolutely. I was blown back when I played the original back when it released. Literally my favourite series. And it still holds up so well today!
The first two Shenmue games were some of the most important games of my teenage life.
Same for my college years, need to replay it all again if it wasn’t for the yakuza series pumping out great games
As a PC gamer I remember how envious I was when I first learned of Shenmue and how proud I was that it's on XBox because XBox was the first console to bring PC features to console market
That was the first time I ever got a job 🤣 and that's all I did, I never went any further in the story... I just went and did my forklift and went home
Yeah still incredible today in my opinion, the fact you can open pretty much every drawer and cupboard in ryo’s house made it feel so realistic plus collecting all the sega toys was so fun and addictive - even if you get a lot of copies
Nice. Trespasser was a goofy game indeed. Remembered playing it Christmas Day and having no clue what to do lol. Took me a bit to realize as a kid I’m staring down at boobs for health as well. Another odd gameplay mechanic was the fact that if you died you could just sit there and watch the Dinos eat you infinitely. Sometimes they would hover over the gun and shoot them selves in the face while eating you.
@james conlin …what are next?
@@amelzon1 just a bot, ignore it
Trespasser is one of those games that proves that if you're going to fail, fail because you were too ambitious. The fact that whenever I hear about the game I find myself thinking, "we need to try remaking that game with today's technology, I'll bet we could actually do what its makers originally shot for" is, I think, proof that Trespasser was a great idea that was simply limited by the technology of its time.
Other games way ahead of their time, was Resident Evil 4 with his perspective on the camera, and the storytelling in Dragon Age and the way you interact to choose, is truly amazing
@narkomancers5262 you are right
Resident Evil 4 had so many more stuff besides the camera, like the game getting easier or harder based on how the player is performing which is never mentioned to the player, so the player doesnt even know these things are happening in the background
the Human like animations and movements in Cutscenes and even in gameplay, the facial expressions because Capcom used Motion Capture for all of the animations and cutscenes and they also captured real human facial expressions
these things didn't happen in every game in 2005, RE4 was Truly Ahead of its time and these are some of the reasons why it still holds up as a Masterpiece even today
And Splinter Cell sheds another tear in the corner while even more people say that Resi 4 did it first....feelsbad
@@KB-du3rh what did Splinter Cell do? and in which Splinter Cell game?
@@SepehrKiller It did the OTS camera view, the 1st SC game. I'd even give a shoutout to Cold Fear, can't remember if it came out before or after Resi 4 though, they were very close together IIRC so they couldn't have inspired one another.
No idea if the dynamic difficulty and all that was done before RE4 or not
Another great list! Just wanted to add the Half Life 2 felt like a huge leap forward when it came out in 2004. I'll never forget the first time I played through the opening level in the subway station. The level of detail and the fact that you could pick up every single item of trash was mind blowing. I feel like it's STILL more interactive than a lot of games coming out today. It may not have been the first game to do this, but it was the first to do it this well...
Thanks for the support
Hit me up i gat something special for you 👆👆🎊🎉🎉🎁🎁^^^^^^^^
I just came for this.
It feels great to play
The same feeling playing Half-Life 2 after still playing Half-Life 1 a lot at the time was "oh this is too much". And it wasn't until RDR2 that I had that feeling again, still playing the original when the prequel came out "the colours are too bright, the bass sounds are too deep, the world is too big". Took some getting used to and felt like a leap forward.
That was one of the first games that had a level that made me feel height. The bridge level where you are under the bridge and jumping from platform to platform trying not to fall.
NFSMW (OG version) blew me away back in 2005. Still one of the best racing game I've played till today.
I'm playing it on my laptop with a widescreen and controller mod. Still great.
@james conlin no
@@baddman69 has it been modded to run at 4k/60?
My dumb ass read the acronym and really thought it said “Need For Speed: Modern Warfare” xd
@@dnegel9546 Nope. My laptop can't handle that.
Surprised that Deus Ex only got a passing mention. So influential! A huge game, deep storytelling, and such a wide range of choice!
It makes sense though, if you had played System Shock. Deus Ex was basically System Shock 3. I honestly consider the Deus Ex series to be spiritual successors to the System Shock games.
The Conspiracy was absolutely mind blowing back when it first came out. The story and amount of choice they gave you in the game was incredible.
Hitman Blood Money mastered the open ended stealth game like no other, exept maybe the new Hitman games. I think it is pretty ahead of its time.
yeah, considering its graphics also, its considerably ahead otf its time.
God I loved that game.
Blood money was goat for awhile -
Blood Money was already damaged by console stupid controls, Hitman 2 was much better game and Hitman 1 was revolution in stealth genre in that time. I like Blood Money for it's possibilities how to finish missions, but controls was really stupid compared to Hitman 1 and 2 which were really well playable on PC. Since Blood Money, almost every game has that stupid controls that you have extra separated button for each action and you have to remember too much buttons, it was really cutting me off good gaming experience because I very often did something wrong just because of that, it would not happen in Hitman 1-3. This problem is still even in today Hitman games, instead of select from list of actions in half second, you have to remember 10 action buttons.
@@Pidalin Well, i never found it hard to remember the controls…
I think Super Mario Bros in 1985 was also really revolutionary since it revived the entire gaming industry after it crashed.
The entire gaming industry is kind of an exaggeration, seeing as the crash only really happened in the USA...
Yes, it was felt all around the world, but not nearly as severely as you had it there.
You could say Super Mario Bros rekindled the interest in games in the USA, though. And that had a major impact, for sure. But the gaming industry was doing just fine elsewhere in the meantime.
Its sad to see that Gothic gets overlooked so often on lists like these. The first part was released around 1999 and had such an amazing 3 world that felt real and immersive. Ubisoft could still learn a thing or two from it even these days.
Gothic to me was the first "If you can see it, you can go there" open world game, just by virtue of the outstanding level design utilising every single square inch of space in the limited map. And the storytelling of the quests were all so specifically individual to every NPC's own story, you never felt like you were doing a quest because you were The Protagonist, you were doing it because someone needed something doing, and you wanted something from them, so of course they were going to try to get you to do their hard work for them. They didn't care who you were or about you, just about what you could do for them. A writing tone that most RPGs still completely fail at if they even try.
here is like and stab with Uriziel :)
and gun 2005 was too isnt included here graphic gamplay is amazing for 2005
Cyberpunk 2077 was ahead of its time, because it should’ve been released two years later
Lol
Nah it had a rough start but it’s made the game better for it. Honestly if it went or stayed in production for too long it may have risked being boxed up and canceled
😂
Definitely Crysis, that whole series was ahead of its time, and the first one holds up today and looks better then some recent releases
👍🏼
The first one better than triple A releases !? Haha nice joke :) its good, but not near good as new open world aaa titles.
Agreed. The first time I played that I was blown away. Every person I showed it to just wanted to play over and over.
@@milosstojanovic4623 then you don't know how to play it , it's not run & gun like cod or halo
Agreed, it holds up to a lot of today's games
Another game series that you guys did not mention was Myst, Riven, Myst 3 Exile, Myst 4 Revelation and Myst 5 End of Ages. Myst was released in 1993 and Riven in 1997. It is non-violent puzzle solving adventure exploration games and the storyline was unique at that time. It was REALLY complex at some stages where you had to literally take notes and make diagrams on a piece of paper.
Im honestly suprised none of the portal games were on this list, I remember being so dumbfounded by how good the quality, mechanics, storyline was on both of them
Ocarina of time always comes up in my head with revolutionary games. Pretty much every action RPG owes some credit to it with z targeting and its looping dungeon layouts
I just wrote the exact same comment :D I should have scrolled down a little further.
I thought it would be on the list but yeah it definitely belongs in the revolutionary category. I saved my lunch money for a month to buy it!!
Its unfortunately not on this list but Dragons Dogma has become my benchmark for an open world RPG. Theres just so many awesome mechanics that games even now a decade later dont have. Also super glad Demons Souls is on here. When the remake came out it got a resurgence of love but i always felt it never truly got the love and respect that dark souls was shown.
You'll have to forgive my ignorance, but is Dragon's Dogma the game where you have to mantle the gigantic monsters to deal critical blows during combat?
@@Oroku_Sensei some of them. Climbing big monsters is certainly a big aspect of it. Its the one where the massive red dragon steals your heart and you and your pawn set off to get it back. It was on ps3 i think 2012.
If I could only have 1 more game come out for the rest of my life it would be dragons dogma 2. I have replayed this game a million times and have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Skyrim gets boring after 30 minutes.. dogma is hard to put down after 30 hours
Thanks Luke!
@james conlin all you're going to achieve is getting yourself muted
I loved the original Silent Hill. And by “loved”, I mean “was terrified but could not look away.” It was maybe the 4th game I ever played and it just seemed unlike anything else around at the time.
Yeah I actually am probably one of the few who really love silent hill shattered memories which is pretty much a reimagining of the first silent hill game and for me the coolest thing in the game was how in these various psychology sections it changed things in the game based on decisions you made and this made it feel like your own personal story
Half life got missed, so did far cry - both moved things way forward.. No crysis without far cry. There's a couple more but I gotta remember the names.
This is not a list about the best games at the time. Half Life and Far Cry were both incredible games, but they 'just' perfected what was already there. They didn't really bring anything new to the table.
@@akito6572 the in engine scripted story elements in half life were huge - and got copied by almost every game that came after.
The open world elements in far cry were way ahead of the rest. Same with the open world format used.
Both of these things are still widely impactful today. But maybe you never played them or weren't around back then to understand.
@@akito6572 dude half life was a revolution for the game industry what are u talking about?
@@akito6572 Half Life 1 was revolutionary. It literally invented the 'cinematic FPS' that would become ubiquitous later on. That opening tram ride alone was just off the wall cool and immersive back when it first came out, even though it seems completely insignificant by modern standards.
@@bustatron Crysis did more to its release time than Farcry did man. That’s not throwing shade at Farcry at all, but Crysis was a whole different thing.
This whole video I was thinking, what about Thief? What about Deus Ex? Ha, I'm glad they were mentioned.
The sheer exploration factor of Shenmue alone blew my mind. It was so immersive. I really felt like I was there.
Hit me up I gat something special for you 🎉🎊🎁🎁🎁>>>>>>
Yeah I agree the fact you saw a drawer or cupboard and the game was like go ahead open that and look inside was revolutionary and made the game so realistic
I don't think I left my room for 3 days when I got Shenmue.
@@llama2022 yeah, I am still collecting all the sega capsule toys instead of following the story…..so addictive
And for me, the first two Gothic games were a huge inspiration for every rpg afterwards 😊😊😊
Shenmue on Sega Dreamcast may very well have changed my life. I still remember that feeling of amazing fulfillment.
Yup I remember getting my entire family to watch it while they played, and everyone was so amazed on how realistic it was
Honorable mentions that should be on this list:
MGS1 (Particularly the Psycho Mantis boss fight) and MGS2 (about the rise of misinformation)
Final Fantasy X (The graphics of that game was at least two to three years ahead of its time)
Batman Arkham Knight (The graphics of that game looked like it came at the end of the late 2010's. Plus, the graphics are almost realistic.)
Resident Evil games (particularly Resident Evil 1, Resident Evil 4 and 5, and so on)
GTA games (particularly GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas, GTA 4, GTA 5 and now GTA 6)
Ghost of Tsushima (the graphics nearly look realistic)
Far Cry 3, 4 and 5
Shenmue is so amazing the realism it gave to the experience but for me the greatest memory will be the first time playing the original crash bandicoot on the ps1 in the mid 90’s as it was only my second game I’ve ever played after Mario land on the game boy. Having a fully 3d space to platform around in and visiting the three islands that you could see off in the distance was so cool and fun, plus smashing crates will always be satisfying
Im so happy nier is on that list. I only picked it up as a kid because i saw it for like 5€ in a polish thrift store. Ohh boy it became one of my all time favorites I was blown away by the crazy and yet somewhat coherend and emotional story. And especially by the gameplay that always mixed up camera perspective and threw me for a loop.
And the music…oh my goodness. Easily my favorite video game soundtrack.
The Natural Selection mod for Half-Life then later the standalone Natural Selection 2 game will always be my picks for games ahead of their time. The asymmetric gameplay of marines vs aliens and combining a FPS and RTS all into a single multiplayer experience was mind blowing to me.
I would have liked to see Soul Reaver on this list. I feel like that game pulled off a lot of mechanics that set the bar for other games to come.
mmm i dkn.. bout game mechanics but one part where that game really shined was the voice acting.
I'm almost positive it was one of the first, if not the first, game/s to implement picking up weapons from off the walls or the ground and enemies that wasn't a first person shooter.
I could be wrong, it's the one thing I remember being mind blown by though.
It's pretty badass how Falcon just gave us a history lesson on video games! Thanks bird!
Gran Turismo was a pretty revolutionary game. The amount of real world tracks and licensed cars you could choose from and the level at which you could customize the cars was years ahead of anything else at the time.
nah forza go vroom vroom way better yes sirrrr
When I was a kid playing it on PS1 it really felt like you were driving an actual car.
@@themanstan0785 I said “anything else at the time”. Forza was 8 years after Gran Turismo.
Always happy to see Eternal Darkness mentioned in a list, me and my big brother had a GameCube while growing up and he loved this game
Was the first game to legit scare me when i was younger. Had about 3 different insanity effects trigger at the wrong time while was in one of Alex's parts
"Always happy to see Eternal Darkness"
You know that doesn't work, right? Right??
Literally bought a GameCube for that game
I feel like this channel is the spiritual successor to what we used to have back in the day when G4TV was on TV
I remember as a kid the first time I saw Mario 64 back when it came out in the 90s. Seeing a 3D game for the first time was utterly amazing. No words can really describe seeing mind-blowing effects like that the first time
Hit me up I gat something special for you 🎉🎊🎁🎁🎁>>>>>>>>
Remember playing Mario 64 on my friends n64 for the first time while I had a ps1 I was jealous it was so revolutionary
Same, played it at a relatives house on Thanksgiving, all the adults were upstair, all the kids were taking turns playing Mario 64. Nothing in the gaming world will compare to that feeling of awe again.
The first time I saw a commercial for Ocarina of Time also blew me away. I mowed lawns and shoveled snow for a year to save up for an N64, my first big purchase.
yup, kids in line at the toys r us were gobsmacked
One of your best lists - love these history focused episodes.
I'm so happy to have played most of these games when they just came out! I was a bit young to fully embrace System Shock when it came out, so I mainly watched my dad play it and listen to him explain the story to me... Such great memories, despite me having a few nightmares featuring Shodan and being genuinely shocked by the concept of Edward Diego cyborg!
The revolutionary for me was a Real Time Strategy game. Homeworld. It has 3d mode view, interesting story for a strategy game, good songtracks and good gameplay, and it has spaceships!
Also check out Haegemonia
And Homeworld 3 should be releasing soon!
Homeworld *still* hasn't been matched. The control scheme alone was art.
So glad Planescape Torment had its mention. Still the best cRPG you can have played to this day. A masterpiece.
Thanks for the support
Hit me up i gat something special for you 👆👆🎊🎉🎉🎁🎁^^^^^^^^
This coming from Fallout 1's Albert Cole is a true statement 😀
@@senhorlampada Hehe ! It seems you played Fallout in late 90s too, old man !
Assassin's Creed to me was way ahead of it's time when it 1st came out. The parkour mechanic fascinated me as a kid. I always thought "so someone had to place all these objects specifically so you can climb all over them smoothly?" And even to this day the current games you can climb on just about anything and it looks good. I don't understand how creating games works but I know AC Odyssey and Origins couldn't have been easy to make
First Tomb Raider and the first Assassin's Creed years later were both pivotal moments in transforming the ideas of 3D gaming and level design and navigation. Tomb Raider was to 3D platforming what the original 2D Prince of Persia was to 2D platforming. Showed you could make something that looked organic and plausible (if, y'know, superhumanly athletic). Then Assassin's Creed eventually took the next step and showed that it could be made as fluid and intuitive as running around a flat level, not just a thing you made puzzles with.
Yeah still remember playing ac 2 for the first time and being able to climb any building you felt like gave you so much freedom, still need to get round to playing ac syndicate always wanted to climb Big Ben 😉
@@therunawaykid6523 Assassin's Creed Syndicate is awesome. It's my favorite of the "classic" Assassin's Creed games (the non-RPG ones).
"The parkour mechanic fascinated me as a kid. I always thought "so someone had to place all these objects specifically so you can climb all over them smoothly?""
Actually no. The level designers just simply created the environment and the rest was the animators' and programmers' job to write the algorithm which finds the nearest edge or object on the map geometry your character can grab and play the appropriate animation. It was not scripted like in other games where you could do certain move only if the level designer marked that place as climbable for example.
@@TheFirstCurse1 I love Syndicate too but I wouldn't call it one of the classic AC games
Assassin's Creed has 4 eras
AC1 - AC Revelations (Classic)
AC3 - AC Rogue (Reformed)
AC Unity - AC Syndicate (HD)
AC Origins - AC Valhalla (RPG)
These aren't official labels or anything but you see what I'm saying
I think the Tribes series, especially tribes 1 and 2, were ahead of their time. The sad part is, nothing has carried the torch, since.
My first thought, when I saw the title, was Eternal Darkness and I’m so glad you put it on the list.
Love that you mentioned Shenmue. They are not perfect games but I love them. Even how deep the fighting system really is if you train your moves to level them up it actually changes the motion of the attack to make it more efficient.
Oh god, Crysis. I remember getting my first multi-core CPU and running Crysis and Bioshock at the same time just to see if I could. That game was something else.
Drakkhen for the Amiga and SNES. The first pseudo-3D open world with a day and night system, various environments and secrets, real time combat that feels like an 80s version of KoTOR and Xenoblade Chronicles, as well as a fantastic OST.
Drakkhen is such a cool hidden gem that only has aged if you don't have the manual that explains how to play (but even without that it is interesting to play.) Felt like a proto-Elder Scrolls Arena.
12:53 _Trespasser_ is not a bad game, but its not good game either. I've been playing until finished and for me, _Trespasser_ is a fun game.
Omfg I’ve been looking for shenmou for YEARS I remember playing it in ps2 when I was a kid bout could never remember what it was! THANKS
Resident Evil 4 (2005) deserves an honorable mention. The graphics were incredible at the time and the 3rd person over the shoulder camera system influenced a lot of shooters in the years to come.
RE4 is still kinda overrated.
@@philithegamer8265
Resident Evil 4 is regarded as one of the most influential games of the 2000s, particularly due to its influence in redefining the third-person shooter genre by introducing offset camera angles that do not obscure action. The new gameplay alterations and immersive style appealed to many not previously familiar with the series. The over-the-shoulder viewpoint introduced in Resident Evil 4 has later become standard in third-person shooters and action games, including titles ranging from Gears of War to Batman: Arkham Asylum. It has also become a standard "precision aim" feature for third-person action games in general, with examples including Dead Space, Grand Theft Auto, Ratchet & Clank Future, Fallout, Uncharted, Mass Effect and The Last of Us. In 2019, Game Informer called Resident Evil 4 "the most important third-person shooter ever" and said it "innovated two genres", inspiring developers of both survival horror and shooter games.
Resident Evil 4 redefined the survival horror genre by emphasizing reflexes and precision aiming, thus broadening the gameplay of the series with elements from the wider action game genre. Other major survival horror series followed suit, by developing their combat systems to feature more action, such as Silent Hill: Homecoming and the 2008 version of Alone in the Dark. These changes represent an overall trend among console games shifting towards visceral action gameplay.
While working on The Last of Us, Naughty Dog took cues from Resident Evil 4, particularly the tension and action. Dead Space designers Ben Wanat and Wright Bagwell stated that their game was originally intended to be System Shock 3 before the release of Resident Evil 4 inspired them to go back to the drawing board. BioShock was also influenced by Resident Evil 4, including its approach to the environments, combat, and tools, its game design and tactical elements, its "gameplay fuelled storytelling" and inventory system, and its opening village level in terms of how it "handled the sandbox nature of the combat" and in terms of "the environment". Bloodborne’s environments, enemy design, and shift to a faster combat system compared to previous soulslike games was influenced by Resident Evil 4. Cory Barlog cited Resident Evil 4 as an influence on the God of War series, including God of War II (2007) and particularly God of War (2018), which was influenced by Resident Evil 4's "combination of poised camera exploration and scavenging". Uncharted director Bruce Straley called the Resident Evil 4 village sequence the best opening fight in a video game.
@Phili the Gamer its never been overrated. What are you talking about? Its still considered the best one in the franchise
The RE4 remake this year was should be the bar for any future remakes. It's incredibly difficult to remake a revolutionary and almost universally-loved game, and they did an outstanding job. They improved on it without wrecking what people loved about it.
The original Ninja Gaiden console release was definitely ahead of its time as well. The cutscenes were a cut above most around that time (2004) and the gameplay could rival just about any hack and slash that came out around that time. One of my all time favorites
We can even trace back to the original Ninja Gaiden to see how it revolutionized storytelling in video games via cutscenes...
For me Prince of Persia and the Onimusha series were way ahead of their time!
But seriously how insane was the trilogy like I remember I was, idk 7 or 8 at most when I got my first ps2 and it had the demo with sands of time in it (miss those CDs with so many choices of demo and trailers) and I instantly fell in love. Fortunately, when I got a bit older, I got to play all of them too
The entire PoP series was ahead of its time which lead directly to the first assassins creed also bring ahead of its time
that jurassic park game at number 1 is ON SO MANY OF YOUR LISTS
I know that racing sims all pretty much had/ have the same recipe, but graphically I think that Forza Motorsport 3 was way ahead of its time. Models were 3D scanned and meshed, super high fidelity textures and reflections as well as highly polished physics models. I know it’s probably not top 10 worthy but for a game from 2009 the graphics really were a massive leap forward and still hold up to this day.
I loved Trespasser. Played through it several times back in the day. It was very under appreciated at the time for what is was trying to do. I think a remake would be very interesting to see.
The wonderful narration by Minnie Driver and Richard Attenborough, as well as a glimpse behind the scenes at the early days of Hammond's whole Jurassic Park operation are what kept me coming back to this flawed gem. I could listen to his memoirs all day! _"My name is John Parker Hammond..."_
Better not forget Silent Hills PT as well. It's crazy to think that a 30 minute short horror demo inspired countless indie and AAA games and still does to this day.
Oh god, I actually forgot that was a short demo. EVERYONE copied that and it's become a staple in indie horror games now.
Also ICO (the first game to have a companion)
We could really get a decent Singleplayer-intensive Jurassic Park game (or some other prehistoric / Dinosaurs related game) similar to ARK but massively improved and with a good enough story-line as well!
Maybe a new turok game! But Disney owns the license....
Agree with all the game choices on this video but I feel like GTA San Andreas definitely deserves a spot here too. The sheer amount of stuff that the game allowed players to do was insane back in 2004
Grand Theft Auto 3 as well. I would go over my friend's house everyday after school JUST to play GTA 3.
Sorry Jessie. I used you 😢 😂
Honestly still impressive today. I can’t think of another game that allows you to do more random things, even if the mechanics are dated today
Not just the sheer size, but on one disc, with no loading screens as you traverse the map, on a freaking PS2. I bought SA on release day and didn't think about that much at the time, but looking back itt was a huge achievement.
I feel like this list needed Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, Gran Turismo, GTA 3, Doom, and Half Life 2.
That's the first time I've heard someone put a positive spin on Tresspasser's development, but you're totally right. They did do some really amazing and innovative things :)
Wow. Never heard of Trespasser before but it looks like it could have been great if it were more recent. Hopefully it gets remade some day for VR.
No Asura's Wrath on this list is a shame.
Even now, games that try to use QTE's have never been able to so quite like it in a way where you truly feel empowering. Meanwhile, Asura's Wrath is all about it, and the true final boss even has his own QTE's you counter and end up winning over. Its honesly amazing.
QTE's are not revolutionary, was just a trend. I don't recall games now a days using it anymore. And if does, they do it as a manner to engage players in a cutscene that would be the same without the qte.
@@yuri_cobaia Then you've never played Asura's Wrath, then.
Not sure why Half-Life 2 wasn't on here. It came out three years before Crysis, had similarly good graphics (Crysis does have an edge on it, though), was not only the first game to implement an actual physics engine, but also still has better physics than most games today, and has better facial animations than todays games. I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, but Half-Life 2 was really ahead of its time.
just for your info, elder scrolls oblivion was that open world game that changed everything for the genre. came out in 2004 with all these details and graphics was amazing for 2004, crysis came out in 2007 there was a new generation of consoles at the time.
Always happy to see Shenmue get recognition. Keep it up guys.
Will do. Thanks
Everyone and their uncle knows what Shemue is, dude.
@@philithegamer8265 you’d be surprised at the people who don’t know
Great Video as usual. I love hearing about the innovations we take for granted these days. Well done!
I got something special for you hit me up to acknowledge it now 🎉🥳🥳^^^^^^
I feel like Duke Nukem 3d and Terminator: Future Shock deserve some honourable mention alongside system shock. DN3D had destructible environments and a shrink ray that sometimes you had to use in a mirror to get to certain areas, it feels like it had interesting ideas abounding. T:FS was one of, if not the first game to use mouse look which is fundamental to FPS games today. I see it credited on wikipedia as such but it could also have possibly been Marathon that got there first. Either way in the space of a year or so every FPS had this control option. One cannot overlook also how dank and moody the environment was, it was quite terrifying at the time. It also had vehicle combat - hover copters, jeeps. I cannot remember if you could dismount during a level but I think not.
I also get that Crysis often gets reduced to it's graphical contributions but, am I the only one that thinks that both the level design and this incarnation of the nano suit were just great gameplay? Crysis 2 decided to highlight every available path which really took away from any idea of exploration and the suit was a lot more restricted. Yeah Yeah, the original Crysis' suit trivialised the game even on delta but that was on you.
Honorable mention for Elite, the grandaddy of all open world space exploration and trading games. which first came out on the BBC Micro way back in 1984. It was incredible how they managed to cram a game with 3d-wire frame graphics and a eight procedurally generated galaxies totaling 2048 star systems into 22kb of memory. They even hacked the BBC hardware to use two different graphics modes at once so they could have a color HUD for the spaceships you flew while using higher resolution monochrome mode for the 3d graphics.
Even decades later it took years before even one BBC emulator could accurately emulate the tricks they used!
It was years ahead of its time and spawned a franchise that's still going strong and coming up to its 40th anniversary next year.
Shemue is still my all time favourite game for its brilliance and it was way back on dreamcast
That #1 shout out is the closest thing those devs will get an award for that game.
I'd say the 1992 Alone in the dark was pretty ahead of it's time, deserves an honorable mention, also POPULOUS and Sim City both came out 1989. I never heard of like.. seven out of the ten games you guys mention in the video. Making top-ten lists is getting kinda difficult now that there are literal millions of games for dozens of systems (over 50 or so years, depending how you count.)
I think "ahead of its time" is meant as "the world wasn't quite ready for it yet, that idea would be developed better in following years but started here". What you mention is more like "milestones". Most of the games in the video are not particularly good for a reason or another (even just because they were impossible to play for the average user), and their innovations would be recognized only later.
Fallout new Vegas should definitely be on part 2 of this list. It’s my all time favorite fallout game.
👍🏼 part 2. Thanks for your suggestion
How is New Vegas ahead of its time, really? Don´t get me wrong, it´s a great game, but by no means ahead of it´s time.
@@gameranxTV Red Fraction has to be on the list
@@thatrandomcrit5823 Mostly environmental storytelling imo. It's still at the very top in that regard.
@@Tibovl Environmental storytelling is present in pretty much all Fallout´s. What sets New Vegas environmental storytelling apart from the others?
I hope gameranx makes another one of these videos and Shadow of the Colossus makes it on there
It's cool to see certain games get recognition years later
You guys might have covered Doom 3 in some other similar video but damn.. those level of details in a game and at that time were just unbelievable! I couldn't even run that game for a long time until I got a decent enough PC.. Good times! ♥
now im playing it on a switch lite. 😅
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was way ahead of its time graphically and the lighting and ambient sound engine were impressive as well. First game to my recollection that had rag doll physics as well
What about battlefield 2042?! That game is crazy for an early 2000's game 😂
You mean 1942 right? Cause that was great! :)
Those jurassic park physics are impressive for 1998. Those old cpus were probably cranking out all the heat.
I had already played a few PS1 games when I played Mario 64, if felt like the first big revolution in gaming that I remember. The jump to 3D polygons was amazing. The only time I've gotten a Whoa! factor like that from gaming since then, was my first time playing VR on my Oculus Rift S.
Great list! Surprised that Portal didn’t make the list for its puzzles and gameplay. Also Gears of War for its 3rd person controls and ammo reload system
The Ancient Art of War pc game from Broderbund back in 1984/85. Probably the very first rts strategy game. on one floppy disk. One 5 1/4 inch floppy. Had a map and scenario creator. You could even write your own intro to the map you created. Cga graphics, the works. Ah good old days.
You should do me a big favor and reply to this comment so that I can come back to this suggestion once I have access to my PC. I definitely need to check that out.
@@TheKingOfRooks No problem, mate. I will reply all you want.😁
@@Tasla1 haha thank you so much, when I get the chance to check it out I'll lyk what I thought
You've just described a small penis size with that description of that floppy disk's dimensions.
Great list! Although, you missed Elder scrolls 2: Daggerfall
The shrek 2 game was miles ahead of its time me and my sister played that everynight when we were little
I'm missing Black & White in which you could control everything by mouse gestures and your creature had learning AI.
The original XCOM and a really old one called sundog
I never heard of black and white just sounds like the pokemon games
@@KB________ Because you're too young. It was released in 2001, way ahead its time.
@@istvanromai9603 My god the number of hours I spent with this game... Miracles system, pet system... it was an amazing game!
Surprised Shadow Of The Colossus wasn't on this list. The game was optimised beyond what the PS2 could even handle 😅
I feel like Garry's Mod deserves a spot here. That game is so timeless it wouldn't surprise me if it would still be played 15 years from now.
How is Resident Evil 4 not on this list? It invented the 3rd person over the shoulder camera with the red dot aiming that every single 3rd person action game has used since. It also was the first game to actually do QTE the right way
Definitely agree with this one!
What about race and chase? That game was truly ahead of its time. That’s the origins of GTA. Also Battlefield was modern before call of duty BF2 2004 MW 2007…
I have Nier for the Xbox 360 still, and have the Remake for the PS4....Great Game