Ten most influential video games
Video games for 2014 have been announced, The Red Ledger’s Cameron Stapleton has reviewed the most anticipated ones of this year.
November 12, 2013
10. Call of Duty (2003)
Even though Call of Duty is now a huge multi-million dollar company, in 2003 it was just a humble WW II first person shooter running only on a PC. In 10 years, the game has spanned World War II, Vietnam, the Cold War, World War III, a future cold war between America and China, and a desolate post-apocalyptic world. Ten main games have been released, with countless other spin offs, with the entire series selling more than 100 million copies. The first Call of Duty game paved the way for loads of innovations in first person shooter games and adding to the huge spike of WW2 games.
9. Fallout 3 (2008)
Fallout 3 was a turning point in the Fallout series. At this point, no Fallout games had been released in 11 years, and the highest technology used had made the game a third person shooter with a primitive turn based combat system. When Bethesda Softworks bought the rights to the Fallout series from the bankrupt Interplay, they revamped the entire series. Fallout’s graphics turned from pixels to beautiful and intentionally drab textures and the gameplay turned into an First/Third person shooter game with truly hard moral choices. Fallout 3 earned 8 Game of The Year awards and is on numerous “Best Game of the Decade” lists.
8. The Legend of Zelda (1986)
The Legend of Zelda was first released in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System. For the next 20 years, The Legend of Zelda series dominated the gaming industry and defined more than a few childhoods. The classic story of a valiant hero saving the princess shown in the Legend Of Zelda has since become the basis for many games.
7. Pokemon Red/Blue (1996)
Pokemon Red and Blue, as they are known as in the U.S., set the precedent of what would become a multi-million dollar game series. Almost every kid grew up with Pokemon. Cards, video games, and other merchandise were a huge part of every store. Nothing has really changed. The Pokemon universe has expanded from 151 Pokemon to more than 700 in the last 15 years. Pokemon Red/Blue was truly the start of an era.
6. Doom (1993)
In 1993, the horror first person shooter Doom was a huge hit. The game carried just enough blood, gore, and story to become an instant classic. This linear First Person Shooter features around a lone space marine stationed on Mars, fighting off waves of Demons that the scientists have summoned from Hell. Doom, like Wolfenstein 3D, paved the way for the modern shooters we know today, such as Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Medal of Honor.
5. Grand Theft Auto (1997)
The original GTA game was absolutely nothing like the GTA gamers know and love today. Grand Theft Auto 1 was a primitive open world genre game that paved the way for the beast of a game that is Grand Theft Auto 5. The GTA series has defined the open world genre and the sandbox genre as whole, helping give gamers countless other games in the process.
4. LA Noire (2011)
LA Noire is a beautiful and gritty police drama set in the late 1940’s. It’s the first game to use facial recognition software and makes use of it beautifully. The game was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, the first time a game was ever shown at a film event. LA Noire made face recognition software in the industry known, leading later to greats such as this years Beyond: Two Souls.
3. Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Metal Gear Solid was one the first stealth games ever released. Released solely on the PS1, the developers used the best technology available to bring us the amazing story of Snake on his quest to save the United States from nuclear destruction.
2. Wolfenstein 3D (1992)
Wolfenstein was the game that defined WW II shooters and the FPS genre in gaming. All of the FPS games that followed Wolfenstein 3D used mechanics and graphics engines that were similar, almost identical even. The WW II game craze that followed Wolfenstein still hasn’t died out. PC gaming is now mostly FPS based thanks to Wolfenstein 3D’s innovations on early home computers in 1992.
1. Bioshock (2007)
Bioshock was by far the best game of 2007- b. The undersea utopia of Rapture was brought to life by amazing story and the best graphics 2007 had to offer. Brutal and gritty, Bioshock is a great combination of story and action. Your choices during the game effect the ending, and the flood emotions you feel as your 12 hour trek of horror is over. Bioshock makes the player feel like no other game does.
GC • Nov 13, 2013 at 11:16 am
For the most part, this selection is pretty spot on. A good grouping of games to title influential, but you didn’t really describe why they were influential. For example, you said Call of Duty was influential because it spawned a massive franchise and caused the storm of WW2 games after it. Not necessarily, yes, those are big impacts, but that’s not everything. Cal of Duty was the original twitch shooter, the first big game to implement iron sights and regenerating health opening possibilities for new ways to design shooters.
Zelda all you really mentioned was it’s existence. Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask were both immensely important because of Ocarina being the first really effective venture into 3D adventure games. It had solid controls, a great combat system and the gameplay elements in general all complemented the 3D environment very well. Majora exhibited the ability to create a dark narrative without really telling you a whole lot outside of what you absolutely needed to know. The amount of horrific symbolism in that game rivals even Silent Hill.
And Metal Gear Solid’s gameplay was immense because it implemented stealth mechanics aside from stay out of the enemy cone of vision. The different forms of distraction like magazines and chaff grenades, hiding in things like lockers and the box and general subterfuge really helped the stealth genre evolve. MGS was also a ridiculously convoluted and exciting story that spanned games that the american audience has never even had available to them until they were bundled with MGS3 Subsistence, allowing the interest in the story to keep going and definitely helping Konami in deciding whether or not to keep releasing the series in the west. Since then the games have only done more and more for stealth in gaming.
I doubt anyone will see this post, much less read it, but I just wanted to give my two cents.