There are games out there that have some amazing features and yet I feel due to mediocre scores or just being forgotten that we'll never see these in games again. I find that to be a real shame because they are often games that had a great idea but didn't quite work out and maybe developers don't want to take a risk in the future and like make another WoW clone for example.

Planetside.

Amazing mmofps that was so innovative for it's time and I played it today and it is still really fun, the only problem with it is SOE have not supported it in years and the playerbase continues to die because of it. With an mmofps like Planetside where the whole point of the game is to have giant fps battles of a thousand people in one area then you see the problem with having a low playerbase. Really the fall of Planetside was down to SOE not supporting the game, making stupid decisions and then letting it die. When you rush our an expansion made in 3 months that had no testing or stupid looking BFR's that were so overpowered then what do you expect your playerbase to do? Yeah leave the game. You have other mmo's out there like EVE Online which started with very few players but they put all the effort in over the years and look where it has gottten them. With Planetside however all that happened was SOE forgot about it like the game doesn't even work for Vista users without making tweaks to the client..... like who really but advanced users can work that out?

What makes Planetside so special to even this day is just the way the game is designed because sure you could make another FPS with thousands of people on the server but you might not all be together and could end up being like WoW with PVE and all that. What Planetside did was just throw you into a world where you join one of three factions and join player Outfits and just have massive scale battles for bases. I loved this design because it focuses on team play and tactics. At the same time however it didn't force you to group up and fight with people because you're fighting for a faction so you could just zerg it. For people who loved the whole outfit team play though they could organise a massive army at their home Sanc and then organise an assault on a base your factions are currently trying to take over and help solo players out or other outfits that are attacking.

What also made it great was the massive choice of weapons and vehicles. It isn't like Battlefield where theres only a few on the battlefield at any one time but you gain levels and buy certs to use to unlock vehicles and weapons for you to use. So you could see a massive zerg of hundreds of vehicles flying and driving about and you'd see these amazing giant battles happen that you just can't get in other games because they restrict it. What was amaizng is they done all this and the game never had any lag.

Shame of you SOE for dropping support and I just hope other developers see the potential in Planetside and make similar games.


Star Wars Galaxies.

This is another mmo that I really loved to play and like Planetside they rushed out stupid game breaking content and ruined it so everyone left and then just slowly started dropping support for it instead of admitting their mistakes and rolloing back to a previous patch. Like Planetside aswel this game was very different from everything else out there and the most similar thing you could compare it to was EVE Online but with Avatars instead of ships. What I mean by this was SWG was totally player driven and players could build their own Player cities and homes all seamlessly into the world. You could fight and destroy eachothers bases and NPC's in eachothers cities and have kool guild wars like that. The game had a harsh death penalty with wounds and decay but not too harsh to make the game unfun, it was really there to keep balance to everything and give purpose to professions.

What happened to SWG and why didn't it work? Well basically they had this fantastic player driven sandbox system but SOE/LA launched the game way too early, contentless and featureless so the game just sucked at launch and everyone quit leaving a smaller playerbase than wanted. They did however start to make a comeback by finally adding in vehicles and player cities but then they screwed it all up by adding a game breaking Alpha class called Jedi. Basically every patch after that became about fixing Jedi and the rest of the game was getting ignored so that broken professions stayed broken over the years and hardly nay new content was being added because Jedi constantly needed attension. Then SOE/LA launched the CU and then the NGE which players didn't want and broke the game so that everyone left. Instead of fixing the original game all they did was completly change it to some crap it is today.

However developers shouldn't be put off by this because SWG did fix problems like WOW and other current mmorpgs have today. See what WoW suffers from is a very static world players can't change and players can't own their own space and feel special. It lacks character customization and everyone not only looks the same but has the same skill because classes lock you into an army of the clones type thing. It also suffers from levels because what that does is makes 90% of the world completly useless and empty because it is below you level. Which then in turn forces you to grind 80 odd levels just to be able to play with your friends because a level 1 can't play with a level 80. It lacks crafting and it lacks any social content that brings players together and it becomes more like playing alone together.

What SWG did however was fix all these issues, however SOE and LA ruined it with their greed and complete lack of direction for the game. SWG had a profession system where there were over 30 professions with about 16 skills each and you have 250 Skill points to spend to mix and match professions and make your own class. This made everyone unique and special for those who wanted to be and everyone who wanted to play a cookie cutter one that otehr people have perfected then they could do that too. What made this so great aswel is because there were no levels, you could jump in and play with your friends straight away. The progression in SWG was all about giving you new skills to make you better at doing damage or whatever role you wanted. It didn't focus on making you have more HP or anything. Everyone looked unique with soo many kool clothes you could wear and how much customization you ahd on the character creation but also the image design profession in the game. It had a total player economy where everythine was player made and you sold the things you made in your own homes or guild malls and the great fun of that was going to other peoples malls and seeing how they decorated.

SWG also have social mechanics put into place like how every profession needed other professions to play the game. Meaning the death penalty would give you permanent wounds on your stats which you needed a doctor, medic profession or to be a TKM to remove. Also for mind wounds or Battle Fatigue you needed to go to a cantina and seek out player entertainers to heal them stats. So this kept everyone constantly talking to eachother with a need for other professions. It didn't just end here though because crafters needed merchants to put vendors up for them to be able to advertise and sell their goods over the bazzar. Crafters also needed resource gatherers and scouts and all that to get resources to be able to craft and also needed smugglers to slice and smuggle illegal goods like sliced weapons and spices. Even subtle thigns like having to wait 5 or 10 mins for the shuttle/staport made people duel and chat to eachother.

What I loved though and what really is the symbol of SWG for me though is being able to go up into a 8 player ship into space with your friends and walk around in it and have a party in space in your ship. That you could decorate with items like your homes on the ground and look out seamlessly into space and see whats going on around you. Then at the same time they could mount turrets and fight the enemy while the pilot flys the ship and other people could just be sitting there and hoping you survive. Then you all land at a place like Avatar and do that dungeon together which results in everyone having to quickly run out because it is exploding and then you jump into your ship and fly about and go back to a planet and land.


So I hope Star Wars Galaxies and all the amazing potential it had will not go forgotten. I know it lacked content and I know it had lots of bugs but if only SOE/LA focused on that like EVE Online has done over the years instead of trying to make it into a WoW clone and completly change it, driving everyone away then who knows nearly 4 years later sicne the NGE and 6 years since the launch, what the game could have been. Instead now the new Star Wars game will sadly probably be another WoW like game but with more focus on solo play by the looks of what they are trying to focus on. Such a shame for mmorpgs because Age of Conan tried to focus on single player and really do you want that in a multiplayer game? No I want to play with my friends straight away.


Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

This one is going to be short because theres one thing this game did really well and that was First Person fantasy/melee combat with a great multiplayer mode. It never became popular because that game had so many tech problems that most people couldn't even run it and it never had a windowed mode option. What was great about it though was you joined a game and had to pick your class and the more kills you got the more XP you gained allowing you to buy upgrades for your weapons or magical abilities. However unlike other fantasy games we've seen like this it used FPS combat that was just so fast and fun. Like Bow and Arrows were in real time and you could spend your skill points on upgrades to fire like 3 arrows at a time or flame arrows.

It was just how I wish'd fantasy mmorpgs would have their combat like because they nailed melee combat so perfectly well. I just hope developers again arn't put off by the tech issues which caused it to be a forgotten game that had great ideas.


Joint Operations.

This game to me was a better than Battlefield game just needing polish. The problem with it was that NovaLogic or whatever they're called were never known for their polished products and they basically used the Black Hawk Down assets to create what felt like patterned made levels and just poor art, just very rushed. However what made this game so great was the gameplay and while having 150 players online isn't great for most games like Battlefield suffers because of it, Joint Operations had the mechanics to back it up and make it work. See In joint Operations every vehicle doesn't have a main turret the driver users but only has passenger guns like the Black Hawk. So the vehicles were never overpowered because you needed team play to use them, unlike Battlefield where everyone kills eachother for them. Also the maps were so large that you needed transport to get to places and everyone was giving eachother rides which was just amaizng for me. To respawn and have a Black Hawk Pilot waiting there for people to get in and transport us all. Then you'd have people who would just be the pilot the whole time and constantly fly backwards and forward trying to dodge RPG fire.

Other things I loved about it were the day and night cycles so you could just hide in the bushes at night with night vision and take people out which was a blast. No other FPS I can remember had day and night cycles giving it a more organic feel. I dunno Joint Operations just felt like one big team play sandbox and it worked so well all because the vehicles wern't east to take down but at the same time wern't overpowered so it didn't effect the foot combat. So what you found was because the maps were so large you'd have this main front of a battlefield over some mountains and cliffs for a base on the high ground or in towns. You'd have people giving eachother lifts from other islands on the map all to this one location and instead of owning eachother with vehicles, you'd get on the ground and have these giant zerg like battles for bases. All the vehicles were used for were transport which was just amazing.

Joint Operations just felt persistent becuase of all these features which you can't get from anyother online FPS game that feels very death matchy. I hope developers reconize how great the gameplay really was, just a shame about the polish.


Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

I know the Orange Box did well and the game was perfect but I just wanted to give a shout out for this overlooked game. Which I feel like it was overlooked because people want the next big Half-Life game and not these small episodes and it was packaged in with the Orange Box and overshadowed by TF2 and Portal.

However I jsut want to say that Episode Two combines everything that was greta about all previous Half-Life games and condenses them into a smaller 6 hour package and then improved upon them. I thought this was a largely overlooked game considering what it done. I loved everything they added too like the east egg achievements of trying to carry the Gnome throughout the game and fire him into space or the whole Lost scene easter egg. I loved the new cinematic way of story telling and the open world type bit at the end. The gameplay was constantly changing and no other FPS on the market does this today.

See most FPS games are boring and just stick to throwing you down a corridor and just shooting enemies non stop with some crappy storyline in a series of kill rooms. Killzone 2 when I played the Demo reminded me of this as it done nothing to improve upon the genre since the PS2 days. However Half-Life adds platforming, puzzles, story and switches up the gameplay all the time and just does new and fresh things.

Maybe that is why COD4 was so popular aswel in the Single Player because it changed it up all the time with the chernobyl level and the helicopter one where you were bombing people. However what Half-Life does to go one step further is brings all this change up into one long seamless story driven gameplay. Not only does it change things up all the time but it innovates and is the only FPS out there that tackles platforming really well.


Black and White.


I quickly wanted to add this in because I am fed up of RTS games that make you use the keyboard and you sit behind this giant UI instead of looking at the battle. What Black and White tried to do is come up with an RTS style of gameplay but instead of using the keyboard to issue commands, you interacted with the world using your mouse which was like a God hand. I would love to do this in more RTS games where instead of just using hotkeys to do things I could just use the mouse to interact with the world.