VictorViper wrote: ↑04 Mar 2019 16:01I'm not suggesting it as an appropriate alternative, DC UT would also be an absurd nomination. Halo belongs in the BGE, but not here, and hot DAMN sure not through to round two.
Yes, neither
Super Mario 64 nor
Halo belongs in round two. They each did something interesting enough to get nominated, but when faced with the other stellar, genre-inventing, rule-twisting nominees in this category, they've got to take their seats.
Poll 1 of 5
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013, Multiplatform)
Demon's Souls (2009, PS3)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (2010, DS)
Katamari Damacy (2004, PS2)
Return of the Obra Dinn (2018, PC)
Sid Meier's Civilization (1991, PC)
Super Meat Boy (2010, Multiplatform)
Demon's Souls is a no-brainer here, again, for transforming stale old multiplayer traditions into a completely new way of interacting with other people and actually blending it into the universe of the game.
As much as I love
Brothers, my second vote goes to
Civilization. The game didn't just firm up grand strategy, but it also innovated in the sense that it had win conditions other than just crushing your opponents' armies. (This was further expanded upon in the sequels, but the seeds were already there in the original.)
Poll 2 of 5
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992, PC)
Gradius (1985, Arcade)
Herzog Zwei (1989, Genesis)
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (2015, Multiplatform)
Metal Gear (1987, MSX2)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000, N64)
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (2007, DS)
It's funny to see
Herzog Zwei, which arguably created the real-time strategy genre, and its successor,
Dune II, both doing well in the same poll. I'm voting for the former as well as
Keep Talking, which has a great spin on asynchronous cooperative multiplayer. It uses all the tools available to create an immersive puzzle-solving game.
Poll 3 of 5
Beat Saber (2018, PC/PS4)
LittleBigPlanet (2008, PS3)
Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen (1993, SNES)
Pac-Man (1980, Arcade)
Papers, Please (2013, Multiplatform)
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991, Multiplatform)
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981, PC)
I nominated
Ogre Battle for this category for a couple reasons. One is the odd not-quite-real-time strategy paradigm it uses on console to great effect. Another reason is the hidden alignment system it uses, where unnecessary killing and brutally outmatching your opponents skews your reputation and changes the way various NPCs interact with you. It was an elegant system, partly because its mechanics were buried and inscrutable (in other words, the game didn't blare rules in your face).
All that said, I'm not voting for it in this field.
I'm going to stick with
Pac-Man.
For my second vote, I find myself becoming very stringent...
Papers, Please is great in the sense that it forces you to make compromises based on incomplete information. At its core, it's a visual adventure game like
Shadowgate and
Uninvited, though.
Even though
Wizardry is more or less a translation of existing P&P RPG mechanics to a new medium, what we're measuring here is innovation in video game mechanics, and Wizardry did indeed set the stage for how our medium interpreted an existing type of game. It gets my vote.
Poll 4 of 5
Guitar Hero (2005, PS2)
Pikmin (2001, GCN)
Portal (2006, Multiplatform)
Rock Band (2007, Multiplatform)
Super Mario 64 (1996, N64)
Super Mario Kart (1992, SNES)
Zork: The Great Underground Empire (1980, PC)
Portal is a no-brainer here. It goes above and beyond by not simply relying on its mechanical brilliance, but instead delivering a great story and well-designed, engaging puzzles as well. It's a masterpiece.
Even though I wasn't a huge fan of
Guitar Hero itself, it did help to launch and popularize the idea of playing licensed music with your friends as a game.
Poll 5 of 5
Crypt of the NecroDancer (2015, Multiplatform)
Doom (1993, PC)
Halo: Combat Evolved (2001, PC/XB)
Rogue (1980, PC)
Splatoon (2015, Wii U)
Superhot VR (2017, Multiplatform)
Wolfenstein 3D (1992, PC)
Rogue is probably the biggest no-brainer in this whole competition so far. Not only did it create a whole genre (Roguelikes), but it crossbred a whole other genre with platformers (Roguelikelikes or Rogue-lites)—its mechanics have essentially been abstracted into the very language of video game design where they can be transplanted almost at will.
For my second pick, I'm choosing
Wolfenstein 3D for its excellent use of pseudo-3D and adoption of first-person dungeon-crawling in real-time combat.
