Seven modern games that mattered. A short list

@Ravenlight said:

The racing genre seems absent here. Is that just because you're not really into racing or because no recent game has really made any changed in the formula?

I don't really have any suggestions as I'm one of the people who only causally plays racing games but I'd like to hear some opinions on the subject :)

that's because racing games, like rts and simulation games, are, in large part, fairly niche these days. compared to first person shooters and third person shooters, anyway.

Demon's Souls is really an odd choice for this list, though, because so far as I can tell, that game hasn't influenced anything, and is too hardcore for the mainstream gaming audience. Maybe the op really really liked that game.

Interesting list.

I have trouble calling RE4 and God of War modern games.

I love Demon's Souls to death, but a niché thing that most people still think is only loved because loving it makes people feel big doesn't belong on a list of influence next to World of Warcraft and Gears of War

I'll agree to this , but I think Halo should be in there as well...

@Karkarov said:

I love the opening comments on this thread. You guys think God of War which is nothing but another action/combo game that had already been done many times by the time it came out (maybe not quite as well as GoW did it admittedly) deserves to be on the list but games that actually tried to and successfully innovate don't?

The games I don't see making sense on the list first off is Bioshock. Be honest popular does not equal game changing or important, it was a really good FPS/RPG hybrid other than that there was nothing to it. Maybe if it was the first FPS/RPG to ever exist I could throw it more weight or if it redefined the genre, but it didn't. Also as you can guess by now, God of War. For all of it's being better than other action games at the time it was still just another action game in the vein of Devil May Cry, do you really think those other games didn't have crazy bosses too? It didn't change enough to feel "different" it isn't a new genre, it was just the most popular game of it's genre.

RE4 did start up a whole subgenre of survival horror which is now more popular than actual... survival horror. So it being there seems okay to me.

I thin the thing with Bioshock is that is was revolutionary in terms of setting, story, and subject matter; not in gameplay. It proved that games can explore deeply philosophical subjects and provide insight that other forms of media can't do, specifically: letting you interact directly with a theoretical world. Letting players see the possible consequences of a city built on the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand is a pretty incredible thing for a game to be able to do.

@Ravenlight: I play racers fanatically! :) The reason for not putting any game in my list is because I think that only two racers could qualify to enter such list: Out Run and Gran Turismo, but they are pretty old. In the 2000 decade I can't think of a racer that was revolutionary, influential, or extremely popular. Two honorable mentions could go to: Racedriver Grid that introduced the "time rewind" feauture, and the Burnout series that popularized the "car destruction-racer" sub-genre.

@Axxol said:

The layout of your blog is odd. Also, your avatar looks like Serious Cat, so I'm going to follow you.

Hahaha! Thanks! I didn't know about Serious Cat. I should have picked SeriousCat_1 as a nickname. It was impossible to change the blog's messed up look, so after many tries I quit.

I'm in camp "Half-Life 2 over Demons' Souls", and I kinda really dislike Half-Life 2. I think that game is extremely significant, though.

Alternatively, whichever game made moral choices the be-all, end-all of this generation should probably be here over Resident Evil 4, one of my favorite games ever.