GameTrailers Does a Top 10 Breakthrough PC Games Video

[modeps]

Everyone loves a top ten list, right? Welp, GameTrailers has thrown together a new list released today that rocks the PC scene naming ten Breakthrough titles for the platform. Some of the choices are pretty darn obvious, but hey, at least it's well done. Thanks Idle Thumbs (http://twitter.com/IdleThumbs/status/2898831077)!

Click the headline to check out the ten minute, ten game video.

[modeps]

Whatcha think?
52509

[Steve_Erhardt]

Some of the choices are pretty darn obvious...
Well, that in and of itself would seem to go hand in hand with the idea behind the list, yeah? A breakthrough, almost by definition, should be pretty obvious. ;)

[Ebon Deth]

Doom is EASILY the most important PC game of all time. Hell, may be the most important GAME of all time. It basically created the 'M' rated game.

And hell, it's still fun!

[modeps]

Well, that in and of itself would seem to go hand in hand with the idea behind the list, yeah? A breakthrough, almost by definition, should be pretty obvious. ;)

Quiet you, I just meant they didn't go out on any limbs.

[JazGalaxy]

Doom is EASILY the most important PC game of all time. Hell, may be the most important GAME of all time. It basically created the 'M' rated game.

And hell, it's still fun!

Engh... can we really say that?

I mean, I loved and still love doom but it's really just a tweak of Wolf 3D with better graphics and direction.

[ElfShotTheFood]

And hell, it's still fun!

Take off the rose-colored glasses and say that.

[PopoWRX]

Engh... can we really say that?

I mean, I loved and still love doom but it's really just a tweak of Wolf 3D with better graphics and direction.

I'd say Wolf 3D was more important but Doom blew the doors down, so I guess that fits the "Breakthrough" notion.

Wolf 3D got me into PC gaming, Doom cemented it as a platform I'd play on for the foreseeable future.

[murpes]

Engh... can we really say that?

I mean, I loved and still love doom but it's really just a tweak of Wolf 3D with better graphics and direction.

Oh, I dunno, I'd say so; I don't think you can underestimate how influential it was. Doom was one of the first games to popularize network game play, established much of the vocabulary we use today (deathmatch, frag, etc.), sold tons of sound cards, encouraged an active modding community, modem support, heck an early version even supported triple-head monitors over a network. The textured ceilings and walls in Blake Stone was kind of a tweak, but the non-90 degree walls and fake 3D of Doom was a huge step forward. It was the largest and most successful pieces of shareware. It really established mouse look + WASD as a control standard (though I think it used the arrow keys, but same principal) and was tweaked to perfection.

[murpes]

Engh... can we really say that?

I mean, I loved and still love doom but it's really just a tweak of Wolf 3D with better graphics and direction.

Oh, I dunno, I'd say so; I don't think you can underestimate how influential it was. Doom was one of the first games to popularize network game play, established much of the vocabulary we use today (deathmatch, frag, etc.), sold tons of sound cards, encouraged an active modding community, modem support, heck an early version even supported triple-head monitors over a network. The textured ceilings and walls in Blake Stone was kind of a tweak, but the non-90 degree walls and fake 3D of Doom was a huge step forward. It was the largest and most successful pieces of shareware. It really established mouse look + WASD as a control standard (though I think it used the arrow keys, but same principal) and was tweaked to perfection.

For the most part, I think this list is spot-on. Yeah, nothing risky or controversial in it, but about as accurate as you can be. I'd maybe try to put WoW, NetHack, Tie Fighter and maybe Zork in there someplace, but I guess you can only have ten things in a top ten list. :)

[murpes]

Take off the rose-colored glasses and say that.

Download the Doomsday engine and some of the 3d models and Doom will suck you back in for a few nights. It's still fun after all these years.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/deng/

For a while I was making stupid videos of classic video games on WeGame. I was going to make one or two for Doom and ended up playing most of the game:
http://www.wegame.com/users/serumx/videos/

[BigBPlaya]

I would say that's a pretty fair list. All hail DOOM!

However, I think maybe MYST should have been included on the list.

Oh, and Scorch!

[Jotoco]

NO flight sims or racing games...

NO MYTH.

No Baldur's Gate...

[OmegaVader]

It seems id got two credits on this list for breaking technical barriers. A shame, becauase I think they suffer terribly from design issues in all their games...which is probably why Half-Life is on the list. It really blew away that blue/yellow/red key level design, to say the least.

[JazGalaxy]

NO flight sims or racing games...

NO MYTH.

No Baldur's Gate...

I wouldn't say sims would be fair game for breakthrough titles. I mean, they WERE PC Games back in teh day. There was nothing for htem to break through.

If one took off now I would call it breakthough...

I agree with Bauldurs Gate, though, seeing as how the Bioware Model is basically the standard for RPGs these days...

[JazGalaxy]

It seems id got two credits on this list for breaking technical barriers. A shame, becauase I think they suffer terribly from design issues in all their games...which is probably why Half-Life is on the list. It really blew away that blue/yellow/red key level design, to say the least.

I disagree.

I think Half Life is just simply another type of game entirely.

I mean, I just bought the Orange Box recently to sit down with Episode 2 becaus I hadn't played it yet and I was bored to tears. I wanted to spend my friday night with a first person shooter and instead I was just standing by listening to peopel talk, trying to look in the right direction, and doing following instructions given by NPCs.

Yes HL2 is a great game and its fun for what it is, but hwen you want an FPS, you don't want Half Life, you want Doom or Quake.

[CSargeP]

Take off the rose-colored glasses and say that.

I just played through Doom 2 with my friends a few days ago. Had a blast.

[Sarconix]

Download the Doomsday engine and some of the 3d models and Doom will suck you back in for a few nights. It's still fun after all these years.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/deng/

For a while I was making stupid videos of classic video games on WeGame. I was going to make one or two for Doom and ended up playing most of the game:
http://www.wegame.com/users/serumx/videos/

Seconded. Doomsday makes a great oldie like Doom fun even today, no rose-colored glasses here. I think Quake should have made room for something else on that list, like Baldur's Gate as suggested here, but overall a pretty good list.

[Raw]

If i had to choose a 11th place...

BF1942: made large scale FPS battles possible, and most important, very very fun.

[monkey13]

So you can bunch together all the game in the "sim...." franchise together even though some of them are quite different games but Doom, Quake and Half-Life all get their own entries.

Half-life was not a breakthrough game, FPS were already established this is just one of the best.

Also no Dune 2, Carmageddon (remember the headlines about that!), Syndicate or GTA.

There is a lot more to PC gaming that FPS.

[Ulysses]

Yeah some of these aren't breakthrough titles, just good ones. I thought for sure Dune 2 would have been on there.

[Stonevulture]

I guess it all depends on how you define "breakthrough". To me, it means a game that either popularized (which is not always the same thing as being the first in) an entire genre or brought a whole bunch of new people to PC gaming.

By that definition, I don't think King's Quest, Alone in the Dark, or Half-Life really qualify, and Quake is a pretty iffy inclusion - was taking the first-person shooter genre to 3D revolutionary, or just evolutionary? By the same token, Dune 2 is a great game and in many ways a first-of-a-kind multiplayer RTS (but not THE first-of-a-kind multiplayer RTS, that would be Command HQ), but Starcraft really exploded the genre, so I understand the omission of Dune 2/inclusion of Starcraft.

Following that logic, I'd replace King's Quest with Zork, which really established the adventure genre on PCs (though King's Quest did popularize graphical front-ends for them). I'd replace Alone in the Dark with a later-gen 3rd-person action game that's had a bit more cultural impact - Tomb Raider. Instead of Half-Life, I'd select Diablo, because that game was practically a public health menace with the amount of people who got carpal tunnel as a result of obsessive playing. And instead of Quake... well, as much as I wouldn't play it myself, it's hard to argue that The Sims didn't bring a ton of people to PC gaming that wouldn't otherwise be there - I don't believe it should be lumped into the same category/genre as SimCity, because it's really quite a different animal.

Just my $0.02.

[dirtbag]

I agree with Bauldurs Gate, though, seeing as how the Bioware Model is basically the standard for RPGs these days...
I fully agree. I remember reading articles in the late '90s about how the RPG genre was dead, and then BAM - Baldur's Gate brought it back to life.

If only someone would do that with the space sim genre now . . .

[MacD]

@Raw: no, that would be Tribes(2) which did that :)

And in the same vein as monkey13, I'd add DungeonKeeper and Civilisation.

I'll watch the vid now :P

[F3nyx]

@Raw: no, that would be Tribes(2) which did that :)


Thank you. I loathe people who credit BF1942 for inventing gameplay that was entirely inspired by Tribes.