In another thread, someone made the excellent observation that there haven’t been any good spaceship games lately (that didn’t involve trading or arcade style gameplay), and that got me thinking: there’s got to be a few PC game genres that are really overdue for a resurgence.
My personal vote is for WWI Air Combat flight sims. Proper ones, accurately modelling physics, aerodynamics, damage, etc and so on. The last one I can think of was Red Baron II, which was released in 1997 and updated by fans in 2004.
There were quite a few WWI games in the early days of 3D PC gaming- Knights of The Sky and the Red Baron games were two of the better-known ones, and there was also a Wing Commander style one called Wings of Glory too, IIRC.
Anyway, it’s always struck me as a genre that’s crying out to be done properly with modern computing capabilities, but so far it hasn’t happened yet.
What other PC Gaming genres do you think are long overdue for a resurgence?
Rise of Flight is a new WW1 flight sim with a fantastic flight and damage model. Over stress the wings in a turn and you can see them crumple and then tear off. A nearby flak burst can shred the fabric from your plane and see you lose lift and spin into the ground. The flying also feels real with the difference between some planes being huge. Take a Sopwith Camel up after flying some of the more forgiving planes and you will crash.
The only issue with Rise of Flight is that it is still a work in progress, with new features and planes being added as they are completed. They also charge extra to unlock planes beyond the four included in the base game. So the game can be very expensive if you want to have acces to all the aircraft.
I agree with needing a new Wing Commander/Freespace/X/Freelancer-ish type game. I love the whole space combat/sim genre, and we haven’t had any real new games in that genre for ages (other than EVE Online which isn’t really my thing. I hate MMOs)
The games I loved the most back in the day were “The Bard’s Tale” and “Wasteland.” I’d like to see that style of RPG come back without being a FPS-with-XP-and-HP á la “Fallout 3.” Not sure how that could be effectively updated, but I miss that style of simple turn-based RPG. I suppose “Final Fantasy VII” was vaguely similar, however there was still a lot of running around and linear gameplay.
Yeah, I’m surprised by the lack of space combat sims too… Even a remake of TIE Fighter or X-Wing would be better than the “Nothing” currently available.
Probably not, I’m afraid. I believe the last game that could be considered a “Text Adventure” was Starship Titanic (1998), and even that had pretty graphics but a text interface, IIRC.
Turn based strategy games. I am so sick of real time wargames that really only test your mouse clicking ability. While the Total Wat series is visually impressive it’s about as tactically deep as Candyland. Give me Panzer General with better graphics that’s easily modable and has a fantastic scenario editor.
Me too. For those that liked Elite, there is a great remake out there: http://www.oolite.org/
Oregon Trail 2010 would be great. I’d suggest using a Fallout 3/Oblivion type engine, and you have to get your wagon(s) down the trails, forage for food, defend from hostiles, etc.
Gimme an X-Wing remake. None of that “old republic” or “prequel trilogy” crap : X-wings. TIE fighters. In space. They fight crime. Well, mostly they fight.
In gorgeous, modern 3D, but with the exact same gameplay as before.
Yes. Better yet : fuck WW2. I want People’s General with better graphics. Or just People’s General that happens to run on XP…
Finally, bring on the Planescape. I’m sick to death of the formulaic Bioware RPG, with the karma meters, the dur dur Angel/Puppy-eating Daemon options and all the saving the Kingdom/world/Universe crap. I just want to get by and do my own thing amidst the surrounding chaos.
And bring some totally whacked out, alien, off-the-beaten-path universe to life while you’re at it. Try Deadlands. Or Earthdawn. Or Legends of the Five Rings. Hell, even a decent cyberpunk, Shadowrun-style RPG would be nice. Keep the morality grey-on-grey and the action movie clichés to a minimum, that’s all I ask.
You do know they’re up to HoMM 5 now ? (although most fans and I agree that #4 was crap, and #3 was better than #5 in every respect except graphics)
Last I checked, they were making a kind of HoMM-MMORPG : a persistent online, turn-by-turn game spanning an entire continent, in direct continuation to HoMM V’s storyline.
Then again, it’s been a while since I last played HoMM. So many games, so little time…
Well, maybe they can fix some stuff, too, like not being able to take down a Star Destroyer with a single Y-Wing. But otherwise, yes yes yes.
Even with a plot, I don’t need to do anything but be a space fighter pilot, thanks. See the original TIE Fighter game for how to do it.
X-wing would need more than a graphical overhaul, IMHO. I felt the overall gameplay was completely inferior to Freespace (Though it did have the advantage of having fewer controls, but then, you didn’t -have- to use any more controls in Freespace in than X-wing had, but you had the option to if you wanted.) with the lack of any sort of ‘afterburner’ speed boost, the goofy energy management system (The most effective way to charge your shields was to send your charge to your weapons and then manually ‘shunt’ energy to your shields, rather than just…sending energy to the shields.) the ridiculous TIE fighters with shields and tractor beams (That were best used by turning them off to send the sudden excess of energy to your other systems) and so on.
Not saying it can’t be good, but I am saying that the best thing it had going for it when it came out was being Star Wars and not terrible, so it should get more than a graphical update. (Don’t believe me? Grab DOSBOX and go back and play it.)
With regard to Turn Based Strategy, if you’re hankering for Heroes of Might and Magic, why not try out the new King’s Bounty, which is sortof a remake/inspired by version of the OLD King’s Bounty, which is basically what the original HOMM games ripped off. You move around the map in ‘real’ time (pauses and stuff are fine) but battles are on a turn based hex map.