Ready to feel old? 2001 was a watershed year for videogames, with powerful 3D consoles and classic games that laid the groundwork for the modern era of gaming. It was also 20 years ago, and all those games are now two decades old. We’ve invited Larry Charles of Striking Distance Studios to help us through this sad realization by celebrating five unforgettable games from the now-distant past, after which we’ll talk about Street Cleaner, the return of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game AND Lucasfilm Games, and your New Year’s gaming resolutions for 2021.
Question of the Week: What’s a mostly dead or obsolete game genre you wish would see a resurgence?
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QOTW: I miss tough stealth games that punish inattentive and careless players. Series like Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid, and Thief popularized this with games that rewarded patience and careful planning in a medium that tends to shy away from it. Replaying missions over and over to learn fast and sneaky routes, KO the fewest guards and shoot out the fewest lights, and satisfy all the optional objectives for the best rating.
Outside of Hitman, the “hardcore stealth” game is all but dead. While it’s fun, it doesn’t scratch the same itch as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory or Thief 2.
Hi mate. I just heard your comment on this week’s show and would highly recommend Shadow Tactics if you’ve never played it. Not fully 3D like Splinter Cell or MGS but it definitely gave me that brutal stealth fix that rewards planning.
wow, GBA was 20 years ago, geez thanks for making me feel fucking old (bit younger than you guys, but still old AF).
I’m a sucker for chill puzzle games like the Adventures of Lolo or Kwirk. Specifically, I’d love it if we could find a way to convince Capcom to revive the Zack & Wiki franchise. I find puzzle games like these are a great way to bring non-gamers to the couch for some coop play.
QotW : I really miss the weird sci-fi sports game genre -Mutant League Hockey or Football, Basketball Nightmare, Super Baseball 2020 – and my favourite Base Wars, a game where you can destroy your robotic opponents to take a base. They remade Mutant League Football in 2018 with a Kickstarter, but I need more ridiculous sports games in my life – especially with how bad EA has treated their sports games as of late.
QOTW:
I feel like Real Time Strategy games are pretty much dead. All that remains are Paradox published 4x games and Blizzard’s reanimating Starcraft and Warcraft corpses. Maybe I am wrong, but the last new RTS I played I think was Dawn of War III.
I don’t know what caused these games to die out, so much of our modern gaming world has spun off from these games custom mods (DOTA, League of Legends, World of Warcraft, World of Warships), and yet unless you put TOTAL WAR in front of it, you will likely not get any RTS experience, and even those games are a 4x strategy game with semi-optional RTS battles. Games like Command and Conquer and Company of Heroes have just vanished from the gaming landscape; replaced with turn based strategy games and 4x grand strategy games.