My favorite game is Diablo 2. I think other games could stand to learn that a healthy amount of RNG can go a long way toward adding longevity to a game.
From Alan Wake I wish most AAA developers would learn that people are interested in slow paced slow burning games. Not every game needs to be a high paced action experience.
But alas Alan Wake didn't perform very well sales-wise, so little will be learnt from it. :(
Ape Escape. There should be more monkeys in video games, and life in general I feel. Also it's nice to have an action game where you don't really kill anything.
@rejizzle: I don't know man, every time I hear there should be more monkey's debate I point to that Connecticut woman who had half her face bitten off by a chimp and the 1996 film, "Dunston Checks In".
I do agree with you that the first Ape Escape was pretty cool. I really liked how each monkey had their own personality to them and you kinda destroyed that bit when capturing them.
In Mario 64, if you are running in a direction then quickly pull the stick the opposite way, Mario will due a really tight 180 degree turn. This phrase is now cliche and means nothing but Mario really does Turn On A Dime.
If you are a 3D game and have movement, I want that. Most of the time anyway.
from Elder Scrolls i wish more rpg developers would appreciate that the game world is more important than any pre-determined story.
and i'd like Elder Scrolls to adopt a hardcore mode that incorporated food, sleep, and permadeath options, like traditional roguelikes, and also a much broader base-build system, a little like minecraft.
From Tokyo Xtreme Racer/Enthusia more racing games should have abstracted gamey mechanics like health bars, Instead of just being either Arcadey or Realistic, there are more possibilities than just those. Or that Ridge Racer offshoot game that had mid-race dialogue/story stuff.
From bioshock I wish devs would learn that it doesnt matter how much you are working on building a world if it lacks the atmosphere. The vintage atmosphere that these games had was too good. Some of them learned(hence the witcher and metro mainly) but not all of em. Also they need to be more open to steampunk, the genre is pretty much unexplored regarding games.
Silent Hill 2, I want another psychological horror like this. Every time I play it I get freaked the fuck out because it plays with your mind and you don't know when you are going to expect an enemy. Most horrors now a days are run away's (AKA 'survival horror'), shooty shooty everything (Action horror) and BOO scared ya (jumpscare horror). Nothing can come quite as close to a perfect horror as Silent Hill 2, some have tried, some have come quite close being great games, but if someone took the same aspects as SH2 and re-named it I would be a happy clam.
I'd like for more large games to tread the halls of political theory and philosophy in a manner more akin to Alpha Centauri. SMAC was far from perfect, but it was infinitely preferable to not treading those halls at all. The Marathon Trilogy did similar things with science fiction and metaphysical concepts, so I suppose I'd include those too.
Mine is more a series than a specific game. I'd like to see more developers completely change the systems they use even within the same series as seen in Final Fantasy. That series has it's highs and lows but it seems to be overlooked that with each new game a lot of the mechanics are thrown out in favour of whole new systems. In this world of increasingly risk averse developers giving us sequel after sequel I'd like to see them change up the systems more often. I'd happily play every new Assassin's Creed if each one offered something completely different from a gameplay perspective instead of just iterating on systems.
Clearly this is never going to happen but that doesn't stop me from dreaming
I dunno... My favorite game is Skyrim buy my favorite genre is Japanese character action, so... Every game should have hyper fighting sword dragons in an open closed world environments with orchestral butt-rock soundtracks?
I seriously don't know; even when thinking about what Skyrim can take from other games since I'm more of less content with how most games are overall.
I wish more games would try to convey the serious message through artistic abilities without being pretentious. One of the most influential games for me (because i experienced the theme myself irl) does this amazingly - Papo and Yo.
@raspharus: pretty sure the witcher was developed at the same time as bioshock, and the metro guys were used to making atmosphere heavy games ad they developed stalker shadow of Cher nobly, which came before bioshock,but otherwise I agree, atmosphere is something some of us really appreciate.
Fallout 2. Witty dialogue and serious in-game choices that don't seem like choices until the end. Basically, the entire New Reno area of the game.
Speaking of Fallout. One other thing I find myself thinking back to time and time again when it comes to other rpgs is also one super smart mechanical design that the Fallout games have used, and more recently Pillars of Eternity.
The armor stats, having not only damage resistance but also a damage threshold for difference types of damage is just such a good design. It's one of the things that made power armor so bad ass in those classic games and feel so limp in 3.
A common thread among all my favorite games, such as Descent II, is that they have amazing, memorable soundtracks.
These days most non-indie games stick to the silly hollywood soundtrack convention that states that music shouldn't be noticed by the viewer, because their attention shouldn't and couldn't be divided between the events and the musical backdrop. And that's fucking dumb. Not only do I think that's not true for movies, but even if it was, video games are an entirely different medium where you'd have to work really hard if you wanted to take the player's attention away from the game, since they're an active participant instead of a passive viewer.
I think modern games should learn that music can be something notable and memorable again.
My fav game is Tales of Symphonia and I wish that most modern Jrpgs would do dungeons and puzzles at least half as good as that game. Most of them don't have any puzzles at all anymore and feature really boring dungeons. ~~~
One of the best games I played in the last years is Spec Ops: The Line.
It is a game that did a lot on the narrative sense, including branching story lines integrated seamlessly on the gameplay (without prompts), characters that progressed through the story (both in personality and physically), and overall, presenting a story that has been adapted a lot (Conrad's Heart of Darkness), with a development that can only be presented with the language and tools of games.
I wish more games would take those lessons to heart. There are a lot of games that believe emulating movie narrative tools is the way to go, that use movie language and scripting techniques, that take control of the camera during narrative sections and reduce the player interaction to failable prompts, instead of working on involving the player on the narrative.
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