What games popularized certain mechanics?

ApollosArrow@lemmy.world to Games@lemmy.world – 214 points –

I was trying to think of which games created certain mechanics that became popular and copied by future games in the industry.

The most famous one that comes to my mind is Assassin’s Creed, with the tower climbing for map information.

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For first person shooters (mix of first introduced and popularised):

Doom: started and popularised the genre. Also started and popularised rasterized 3d graphics for gaming (though the game itself was still 2d). Also first fps multiplayer and modding

Quake: various game modes (Deathmatch, capture the flag), as well as being the first true 3d fps. Popularised multiplayer and modding.

Team fortress (quake mod): Different specialist characters.

Goldeneye 64: popularized multilayer console fps, taught character size can be a significant advantage/disadvantage, depending on if you got Oddjob or Jaws.

Half-life: started horror fps genre, (mostly) seemless world

CS: customizable loadouts instead of search for guns each time you spawn, more game modes

UT: AI bots

Perfect dark: secondary fire for weapons

Deus ex: rpg fps

Halo: finally figured out a decent controller control scheme (one stick looks, one moves, button for grenades rather than needing to select grenade from list of guns). First fps I remember vehicles in, too.

Battlefield: large scale multiplayer

Socom: fps game that isn't first person, online console multiplayer

Call of duty: using gun sights to aim

Far cry: open world fps

Doom 3: used lighting (or lack thereof) to bring fps horror to a new level.

Crisis: famous for pushing hardware and people caring more about the benchmark results than the game itself (I tried the second one, it was ok but I didn't really get into it)

Call of duty: zombies (and other alternate game modes), kill steaks, online progression (unlocking guns and attachments as you level, prestige levels)

HL2/portal: brought physics and its involvement in fps games to a new level

TF2: f2p, microtransactions (though not predatory or p2w so the game isn't remembered for this)

Borderlands: loot-based fps rpg

Metro 2033: fps survival

Halo reach: custom maps

Destiny: MMORPG FPS

Overwatch: hero-based, and hero roles (dps, tank, healer)

Pub bg: battle Royale

Alien Resurrection on PSX was the first game to use the dual-stick control scheme. Halo came out more than a year later.

Funnily, it was reviewed poorly at the time: