Submitted 2 months ago by ApollosArrow@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
I was trying to think of which games created certain mechanics that became popular and copied by future games in the industry.
The most famous one that comes to my mind is Assassin’s Creed, with the tower climbing for map information.
First thing that came in to my mind was Gears of War with its specific third person view and hiding behind covers. I don’t think it was the first game with that mechanic but the most influential one
Operation WinBack from 1999 is considered the first third person cover based shooter.
This game is a broken buggy mess but in a good way
The term I refer to is “hiding behind cover” singular - so when I hear “hiding behind covers” I think of the COG seeing locusts, getting scared, and wrapping themselves up in blankets. Lol
when I hear “hiding behind covers”
Operation Blanket Fort
Third person view was first seen in the first Lara Croft game, I think?
I think you need to be more specific than just “third person”. Third person view was in Pong, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Centipede, etc. It’s the default for most games.
First person was probably introduced with Battle Zone.
Which, I don’t mean to sound pedantic, I just literally don’t really know what you mean here.
If you are attempting to ask which game popularized 3d, third person shooters, then yes, the original Tomb Raider is probably the most early, widely popular game that popularized this.
Battlefield 1942 always stands out to me as the one that popularized large scale online battles on big maps with vehicles. At the time it was revolutionary in online gaming.
Command & Conquer: Renegade came out around the same time as well, with similar features. I kinda wish that game had a sequel as well.
Another gameplay feature that comes to mind is the exclamation/question mark above NPC characters for quests. I remember it first from WarCraft 3, but I think it really kicked off with World of WarCraft to get adopted by many more games.
Was it the first to allow you to look on the map to choose where you respawn, specifically on teammates?
Battlefield 2 intruduced that one.
I don’t remember being possible to spawn on teammates in BF1942, but definitely remember it as a first to select spawn points on map like Battlefield always did.
Renegade was some of the most fun I ever had in a shooter. Truly a unique experience
I’m not sure I’ve ever had more fun with any game than I did with BF1942. It was just so much fun. There were games with smoother play and deeper mechanics and better graphics, but none were as fun. The dumb mechanics made it amazing, like being able to lie down on the wing of a plane and snipe people while your buddy flew, or dive bombing and parachuting out at 10ft above the ground to capture a point, or shooting the main cannon from a tank into a barracks that has 15 people spawned inside it, or piloting a goddamn aircraft carrier and running it aground to get to a spawn point safely. It was so stupid but so fun.
Donkey Kong (1981) popularized having different levels in a game to progress a storyline. Until then, you would have the same level over and over with increasing difficulty
Ocarina of time, 3d, lock on, one enemy attacks at a time. So much of modern gaming pulled from ocarina of time
The fact they used Navi to do the targeting really demonstrates how the devs felt they needed to explain the new mechanic and not just use it ‘because game.’
I know the “hold a button to lock-on to an enemy” was in Mega Man Legends, but in the first game you had to stand still for the lock to work. On MML2, you could lock and run around freely, but that game came after OoT
Oh wow, did Zelda really make this popular? I wouldn’t have guessed. I’ve play it a ton.
Though it was used in a few games before, a Quake tournament and Half Life 1 cemented the use of WASD controls.
ESDF is the superior keybinding
It’s such a pain remapping controls on every. single. new. install.
But it’s worth it. Fuck wasd
Asdf is just better for general key availability imo
I am glad I am not alone!
Been RDFG since about 2002. One of my roommates in college was in the top thousand on Unreal Tournament. He talked me into it. God, I get good at that game playing against him.
I remember using wsad on an ascii graphics game I played back in 85 or so. I think it was called dungeons and dragons, but was not made by tsr. Learn, hack, and Moria were all similar games but I did not play those until later.
yeah HL definitely was the one popularized it as default. quake players changed the bindings for it; i know because i played that game with old-school doom/duke controls
Bullet time was popularized in max payne.
And perfected in The Specialists!
Maybe cheating a bit but there are several genres of games that are named after the games that answers your questions such as roguelikes/roguelights, souls-like, metroidvania
Minecraft for the fully breakable/buildable procedural open world.
Minecraft is far more responsible for the survival crafting genre that followed in its wake.
Minecraft Hunger Games, although a mod, is responsible for the Battle Royal hype aswell.
So Minecraft caused Fortnite twice - once as a survival crafting and building game and then as a Battle Royal retaining some of these elements
Mario 64 definitely paved the way for most of the 3D platformers of the 21st century
I’d give that to Tomb Raider but both are exceptional.
I don’t think it’s just “being 3D”. Mario 64 put a lot of R&D into particulars of how jumping should work, the camera should work, and what the player’s goals should be. Quite a few games unintentionally copied them, while you could see some games not following their lead early in the 3D days that felt very janky to play. Tomb Raider could arguably be among them with the tank controls, though of course it has its own more niche appeal.
If you want to talk about “how do I get up there” in a 3d environment, Doom did it before TR.
Mario 64 figured out applying analog control to 3d platformers which changed the whole genre, though.
The original XCOM is the source of grid based inventories.
Star Control 2 is the first RPG that did the standard dialogue interface where you talk to someone and choose from multiple replies.
Idk, I think this game already had a grid base inventory: …wikipedia.org/…/Das_Schwarze_Auge:_Die_Nordland-…
April 1992.
Man, that’s some good memories.
Yazinda, Durin, Arva von Harben, Tjalf, Melina and Caldrin, I miss you guys.
SC2 did (or did the first mainstream) implementation of a bunch of things, but I’m surprised it was the first for this.
CoD and Assassin’s Creed popularised selling the same fucking game 20 times
FIFA: those are rookie numbers
Sports games have been doing it faaaar longer. Madden started in 1988, released a sequel in 1990, then hasn’t missed a year ever since. The baseball and basketball counterparts existed just as long.
Kinda wild to see nobody mention System Shock, the game that invented audio logs. It may seem quaint in retrospect, but at the time all shooters were in the vein of Doom, and story in a shooter was considered “like story in porn.” System Shock was not only the first to communicate the plot and next steps to the player through found audio logs, but it also filled the player in on side stories and provided characterization to the survivors on Citadel station.
The game recently got a remaster, and despite very few gameplay changes, still holds up really well in 2024. You can really see the bones of later games in it, such as story focused shooters like Bioshock or F.E.A.R. and I’d really recommend it to anyone interested in playing a great retro game.
They also said popularized, though. System Shock never really got beyond cult classic status, so while it invented them, I’d say BioShock popularized them.
I think Spyro was the first mainstream game to standardise achievements, you could do random stuff in-game and it gave you a little pop up, carried over to Ratchet and Clank and now every game has official achievements
I think Spyro was the first mainstream game to standardise achievements, you could do random stuff in-game and it gave you a little pop up
Which one did that?
I believe the very first one had skill points that unlocked and extended ending and game art.
Mortal Kombat for the Genesis did that though. Every once and a while on good hit, little dude would pop into the corner and call out, “Toasty!!”
Really makes you feel like you achieved something great
Batman: Arkham Asylum’s free-flowing combo system was copied by many future games.
And unfortunately, not one of them did it better.
The Spider-Man games come close, but that first Arkham game was just so well done
i think Shadow of Mordor did actually. the system was pretty similar but it didn’t feel as magnetic, which is an improvement.
I always feel like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time got there first.
Assassin’s Creed and the Open World Gameplay design. It definitely existed before then, but after AC came out, it felt like every RPG switch to this style of gameplay.
I feel like GTA planted that seed waaayy before that. I remember open world games being followed by “like GTA”. Assassin’s Creed was no exception.
Valid point. I forgot about GTA since that was one of the few banned games in my household.
I feel like Elder Scrolls was the model being followed for open world RPGs. Assassin’s Creed didn’t even have RPG mechanics until the later games.
There have been "open world" games since the 1980s. Just of course, memory limited how big that world could be, and how much you could do in it. The genre as a whole is ancient.
For sure. AC just popularized it.
Quake revolutionized fps games
Ape Escape was the first PS1 game to utilize the dual shock controller
I’d argue that quake did far more for 3D graphics then it did for FPS. Like Doom is what got FPS into the spotlight even though Wolfenstein 3d came first. Like quake is pretty much what made real 3D possible and doable on the hardware of the time thanks to everything going on under the hood
Absolutely, we didn’t even have any special graphics cards at the time for 3D, I believe? I remember that started some time around Quake 2 but I am not sure, I might remember wrong.
And then there was the Quake 2 engine which gave us Deus Ex, American McGee’s Alice and then (through the modified GoldSrc version) Half-Life, Counter Strike and countless others! The family tree of 3D engines is really interesting.
That may be what I was thinking of. I actually never played Quake, I just knew it was groundbreaking
For first person shooters (mix of first introduced and popularised):
Doom: started and popularised the genre. Also started and popularised rasterized 3d graphics for gaming (though the game itself was still 2d). Also first fps multiplayer and modding
Quake: various game modes (Deathmatch, capture the flag), as well as being the first true 3d fps. Popularised multiplayer and modding.
Team fortress (quake mod): Different specialist characters.
Goldeneye 64: popularized multilayer console fps, taught character size can be a significant advantage/disadvantage, depending on if you got Oddjob or Jaws.
Half-life: started horror fps genre, (mostly) seemless world
CS: customizable loadouts instead of search for guns each time you spawn, more game modes
UT: AI bots
Perfect dark: secondary fire for weapons
Deus ex: rpg fps
Halo: finally figured out a decent controller control scheme (one stick looks, one moves, button for grenades rather than needing to select grenade from list of guns). First fps I remember vehicles in, too.
Battlefield: large scale multiplayer
Socom: fps game that isn’t first person, online console multiplayer
Call of duty: using gun sights to aim
Far cry: open world fps
Doom 3: used lighting (or lack thereof) to bring fps horror to a new level.
Crisis: famous for pushing hardware and people caring more about the benchmark results than the game itself (I tried the second one, it was ok but I didn’t really get into it)
Call of duty: zombies (and other alternate game modes), kill steaks, online progression (unlocking guns and attachments as you level, prestige levels)
HL2/portal: brought physics and its involvement in fps games to a new level
TF2: f2p, microtransactions (though not predatory or p2w so the game isn’t remembered for this)
Borderlands: loot-based fps rpg
Metro 2033: fps survival
Halo reach: custom maps
Destiny: MMORPG FPS
Overwatch: hero-based, and hero roles (dps, tank, healer)
Pub bg: battle Royale
Alien Resurrection on PSX was the first game to use the dual-stick control scheme. Halo came out more than a year later.
Funnily, it was reviewed poorly at the time: Image
Game journos have always been a joke.
i disagree with a lot of this
Which game popularised the now household mechanic of being shut down after a couple of years?
Iirc Halo was the first to use left joystick as forward/backward and left/right strafe; and right joystick as look up/down and pivot left/right.
I even recall articles counting it as a point against the game due to its ‘awkward controls’ …but apparently after a tiny learning curve, the entire community/industry got on board.
Rogue for the rogue mechanic. Progressing in a game as far as you can until you die, then using some form of enhancement mechanic be harder faster better or stronger to go again.
The first RTS is an obscure Japanese game called Herzog Zwei,
Westwood studios then made Dune 2 and Command & Conquer which basically polished and popularised the genre for the rest of the world.
Pretty much every RTS that followed took at least some inspiration from how those games worked
Street Fighter 2 popularized and pretty much set to stone what a tournament fighter game should be. Mortal Kombat came first, but its single-player progression was this weird “tower” with some gimmick fights thrown in, like you vs 2.
Thinking about it, I’d say Mortal Kombat popularized the “REALLY fucking cheap sub boss/final boss” that many other fighting games have (looking at you, SNK) - I mean, good luck getting close to Goro in the first place.
I wonder which korean mmo could be considered as the one that de facto popularized pay-to-win as an integral mechanic.
Diablo hands down popularized not only the action RPG genre, but also having enemies as loot mystery boxes. One lucky kill and you could get your hands on a really great piece of equipment. The amount of clones speaks for itself.
I think Gran Turismo popularized the “carreer mode” of racing games.
Skyrim for the horse armor dlc.
Jurassic Park: Trespasser invented physics engines in fps games as we know it. The game itself was a mess and a financial disaster. However, they did have the basics of a very good physics engine, and Valve took a lot of their ideas and incorporated it into Half Life 2.
Gears: cover shooter
Prince of Persia: realistic animations with weight. also popularized a platformer subgenre, which was called cinematic platformer but unfortunately the life of the subgenre was cut short due to the advent of 3d.
Diablo: ARPG genre, and even more so loot rarity system (especially the four tiers common/rare/epic/legendary) and affixes in loot as well.
Half-Life: a lot of good things, sure, as pointed out by other comments, but I will also never forgive valve door popularizing the game not fucking starting for ages.
Rogue and maybe more so Nethack: roguelike mechanics.
some really obvious ones are Tetris: falling block puzzles and Sokoban: pushing block puzzles.
also now pretty much obsolete but Overwatch: loot boxes. they existed before, but Overwatch made them an industry standard.
I don’t know what game first came up with it, but Super Mario RPG was the first time I saw timed hits for attack and defense in a JRPG. While the mechanic isn’t exactly ubiquitous it has popped up in a handful of other games over the years and it always reminds me of that game.
Spacewar! was a F2P PvP game with no microtransactions and no battle pass. Although it’s hard to quantify exact player numbers (it precedes Steam charts), for a while it was the most played videogame in the world.
Its real-time graphics and multiplayer combat were very influential, and widely copied by many other games.
Pacman was the first to simulate a real life mechanic, of munching pills, listening to repetitive music, and running from multicoloured ghosts.
… Or was that just me?
Oblivion popularized fucking DLC, holy fucking shit I hate DLC so fucking much I pirated any games that has DLC I don’t mind expansion but DLC can crash and burn in a pile of dogshit
Timecircleline@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Slay the Spire spawned a ton of deck builder roguelites.
SpraynardKruger@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Without which we wouldn’t have the only true deck builder roguelite, Rogue Light Deck Builder.
youtu.be/FC0QczcuFX0?feature=shared