Motion controls. PS Move and Kinect sold more than all VR systems put together and they disappeared completely. I definitely thought it was the future.
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Features that were supposed to be the Next Big Thing, but weren't
- Thread starter Phediuk
- Start date
Every generation I expect more games to have destructible environments and every generation I'm sad
It wasn't helped that Roc/Pterodactyl + Rope could solve nearly every puzzle.
Companion apps are a good example here.
Companion apps/sites/services can be an excellent idea. They're a great idea for extending the game from playing it on the TV onto something else, as an extra. Thinking of, like, Managing your online franchise in Madden or NCAA Football. It's not that the apps distract you from normally playing the game, which is still on a console, but it allows you to do something from your computer at work, your phone on the subway, etc, that is less convenient to do on a console, or connecting to your franchise to do some mundane task to "move it along" when other people are ready.
But, where companion apps are bad is when they try to compete for screen attention when you're playing the game on your TV/tablet/whatever. I remember in Madden they announced that you could connect an iPad or Surface or something to your game and get real time data about the game you were playing. It was probably a really smart idea back in 2011 or 2012 or something, but it just didn't work, it was slow, and it was pointless because even with all of that information it wasn't helping you make better decisions in the game. I think the example was that you could see this data around your opponent's play choices, which is a cool idea, live scouting your opponent, but it was so slow, so useless, it didn't matter, and just tracking that in your head against opponents was more fun than abstracting that away to something else.
Companion apps/sites/services can be an excellent idea. They're a great idea for extending the game from playing it on the TV onto something else, as an extra. Thinking of, like, Managing your online franchise in Madden or NCAA Football. It's not that the apps distract you from normally playing the game, which is still on a console, but it allows you to do something from your computer at work, your phone on the subway, etc, that is less convenient to do on a console, or connecting to your franchise to do some mundane task to "move it along" when other people are ready.
But, where companion apps are bad is when they try to compete for screen attention when you're playing the game on your TV/tablet/whatever. I remember in Madden they announced that you could connect an iPad or Surface or something to your game and get real time data about the game you were playing. It was probably a really smart idea back in 2011 or 2012 or something, but it just didn't work, it was slow, and it was pointless because even with all of that information it wasn't helping you make better decisions in the game. I think the example was that you could see this data around your opponent's play choices, which is a cool idea, live scouting your opponent, but it was so slow, so useless, it didn't matter, and just tracking that in your head against opponents was more fun than abstracting that away to something else.
Miyamoto & Co. seemed convinced that "sphere walking" was going to change the platformer genre forever, because it largely eliminated the challenges with the camera. It was almost something of an obsession for Miyamoto, the idea even pre-dating Super Mario Sunshine. They spent years and years refining it and didn't want to show it off too early because they were convinced everyone would copy them.
In the end, Super Mario Galaxy and Galaxy 2 were fun…but the series returned to plain old non-sphere walking afterward and many of the best parts of SMG and SMG2 weren't sphere-related at all.
In the end, Super Mario Galaxy and Galaxy 2 were fun…but the series returned to plain old non-sphere walking afterward and many of the best parts of SMG and SMG2 weren't sphere-related at all.
Yep, some people think that the golden age of gaming was 10 years ago, but we are so much better off right now. It's great being in a time with no/less gimmicks. Was getting so sick of almost every E3/conference being about the newest gimmick; motion controls, camera based games, 3d, nfc crap, etc. etc. It's nice to be back to the basics in a way.
Destructible environments?
Felt like it peaked 2 gens ago with Bad Company and Red Faction Guerilla, and all went downhill since then. Don't even recall any recent games trying it.
Felt like it peaked 2 gens ago with Bad Company and Red Faction Guerilla, and all went downhill since then. Don't even recall any recent games trying it.
100% agree, I'm so glad we're back to the basics. Just give me powerful hardware and controller based games.
Motion controls are definitely still the future. Not for everything, obviously. But VR games today are impossible without significant advances in motion controls that are both Wii-style (waving a controller) and Kinect style (body, hand, and object tracking).
This was funny to me because it's such a weird thing to balance:
1) it's too easy to do, so why not just make that default reload speed and not have the prompt for it since you're just wasting the player's time otherwise
2) you make it too hard, players get frustrated and hate it, endless YT videos about "this features KILL Gears for me!!"
3) you make it somewhere in the middle but not as effective, which... again, see 1
It's not a bad idea on paper, but having some way to modify reload speeds in general (Destiny does this with weapon perks and mods) is a more interesting system, in the end.
The Mario games practically change playstyles with every game. Galaxy 2 is an exception/anomaly, not the norm, so I don't think it's a "return" to non-sphere so much its doing something different like they've always done and will keep doing
I disagree, I'll take half baked gimmicks over what we're getting now a hundred times over. There were more new gameplay ideas in Nintendoland than basically the entire 10 years that followed.
It actually is used, just not for gaming. Business models are between $3500 and $5200 per unit.....so not so gaming-friendly. They have a $21 billion contract with the military alone.
There's some kerfuffles going on, though, as MS partnered recently with Samsung for a different headset and a bunch of Holo-people left the company. Rumors were that Holo3 was scrapped, but MS pushed back on that last month. It might be more like "replaced" (and compatible with) the new team model. Time will tell.
But it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. Mixed-reality is more than likely here to stay, especially with Apple getting into the mix. It's not so isolating and can have a ton of useful purposes long-term.
When I'm playing Mass Effect 3 on my Xbox 360 and I'm home alone yelling at my Kinect to make Garrus throw a grenade but he just swaps weapons.
SpongeBob - I'm Feeling Like A Total Barnacle Head!
I DON'T OWN THIS. ALL RIGHTS GOES TO VIACOMCBS.
youtu.be
It's pretty fucking great to witness it in action.
The sheer variety they attached to it is impressive and Monolith paired it with some top quality visual presentation/camera work.
If anything the game(s) it was attached to is what made it less remarkable.
There's plenty of innovation and freshness in the software itself, I really don't care for the extras personally.
VR and Motion Controls
Although I've been hearing they're the next big thing for over a decade now ... technically we're also not in a "post-implementation" world for either. So at that in-between phase. We'll get there.
Although I've been hearing they're the next big thing for over a decade now ... technically we're also not in a "post-implementation" world for either. So at that in-between phase. We'll get there.
Nah. Now is better than ever. Motion control era was a low point for the medium.
Incidentally I've recently started using Voice Attack with a few games on PC and having a fucking blast.
Turning on your space ship on and off, setting instrumentation on and off and switching targets on the fly with a quick voice command is exhilarating.
Same with controlling your Mount & Blade armies yelling (well, whispering, actually) commands at them.
Flight Simulator uses it for world-wide weather simulation
Warframe and AC Odyssey use variants of the Nemesis system.
Still waiting for WB to make a Batman game where you accidentally turn goons into supervillains by ruining their lives
Still waiting for WB to make a Batman game where you accidentally turn goons into supervillains by ruining their lives
Different strokes for different blokes. There's a reason all those gimmicks made so many new players.
I had largely fallen out of gaming during college, because all the games I was playing were just prettier versions of games I'd already played. Then the Wii and DS came along an invented whole new genres and sucked me back in, it was fucking beautiful.
Take a look at our first page, it's like 50% Elden Ring, which is like the 5th time FromSoft has made this same game lol. This is not a healthy indicator for the industry. Even Nintendo is doing it, with the Switch just being a standard box (which is why 95% of its library is old ports), which is an even worse indicator of the health of the industry.
Microsoft never really said if any of the cloud computing stuff ended up in Crackdown 3 but it's pretty clear it didn't, to be honest.
The only real place in the game where you'd see was the Wrecking Zone online multiplayer mode, which has destruction. That being said, everything seemed to be running off the consoles power and not any sort of cloud computing because it affected the performance of the game when things were falling apart.
I still think cloud computing has a future because what the weather system in Microsoft Flight Simulator does with it is pretty fucking impressive.
Returnal and Guardians of the Galaxy used it recently. Seems like its making a comeback.
Zapping system in Resident Evil 2. I'm surprised no game has even attempted it with just how successful it was.
I feel there was a time when pressing the right analog to attack in said direction was considered revolutionary and an upcoming trend, but I haven't seen that. After Halo came out the right analog basically was for camera with very few games deviating (God Hand being the only one, which mapped dodge rolls to the right analog)
Not necessarily a feature, but I want to say micro consoles.
There was a brief period around 2015 where lots of different manufacturers tried to make set top boxes the next big thing in gaming. This included the OUYA, PSTV, FireTV gaming, Google Nexus, GameStick, etc. I remember reading articles that these would appeal to the casual gamer and replace home consoles.
Most of them just ported mobile games to the TV and the market clearly did not care for it. Now today Apple, Google and Amazon are doing something gaming related with their set top devices, but not to the expectations that many companies had 7 years ago.
There was a brief period around 2015 where lots of different manufacturers tried to make set top boxes the next big thing in gaming. This included the OUYA, PSTV, FireTV gaming, Google Nexus, GameStick, etc. I remember reading articles that these would appeal to the casual gamer and replace home consoles.
Most of them just ported mobile games to the TV and the market clearly did not care for it. Now today Apple, Google and Amazon are doing something gaming related with their set top devices, but not to the expectations that many companies had 7 years ago.
Companion apps and the Nemesis system were definitely the things that came to mind when seeing the thread title, so I'm not surprised they have already been mentioned (with the Nemesis system on the OP even XD). Kinect and 3D screens as well.
Motion controls aren't quite in this category: They are still in use to this day after all (and not only on the VR space or on Nintendo platforms: Epic just recently added Gyro aiming to Fornite on PC and PlayStation for instance), but we are pass the point where they are shoe-horned on every game, even if they don't need them or benefit from them in any way and we are definitely better for it.
On the other hand, I think some peripheral based games might fall in this category: Things like the guitar/musical instrument accesories from Guitar Hero/Rock Band and the Toy-to-Life figurines.
Also, wasn't there some game engine released a few years ago that was supposed to be the next big thing but never caught on? Was it Amazon Lumberyard? I don't quite remember.
Motion controls aren't quite in this category: They are still in use to this day after all (and not only on the VR space or on Nintendo platforms: Epic just recently added Gyro aiming to Fornite on PC and PlayStation for instance), but we are pass the point where they are shoe-horned on every game, even if they don't need them or benefit from them in any way and we are definitely better for it.
On the other hand, I think some peripheral based games might fall in this category: Things like the guitar/musical instrument accesories from Guitar Hero/Rock Band and the Toy-to-Life figurines.
Also, wasn't there some game engine released a few years ago that was supposed to be the next big thing but never caught on? Was it Amazon Lumberyard? I don't quite remember.
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I loved the Gambit system in Final Fantasy XII. It's not very friendly at first, but once you get the hang of the basics you can set up your AI companions with very interesting strategies and behaviors so you never have to care about them for the rest of the game (unless you want to switch or modify strategies).
I thought this was going to be the future of RPGs but I don't recall seeing any other game do something similar, not even in games from Square.
I thought this was going to be the future of RPGs but I don't recall seeing any other game do something similar, not even in games from Square.
Me either. I didn't die very often though in that game since it was pretty easy to escape unwinnable battles, so I didn't experience it to its fullest. I guess I should have died more?
Geo-Mod.
While some basic levels of environment destruction popped up here and there in years since, I legitimately though when I was 13 years old that we'd find it everywhere... but it turns out it was very difficult to accommodate for in every game.
While some basic levels of environment destruction popped up here and there in years since, I legitimately though when I was 13 years old that we'd find it everywhere... but it turns out it was very difficult to accommodate for in every game.
