While you’re at it, why not make it massively multiplayer, with dynamically generated AI conversations, and procedurally destructable objects and buildings … ?
I’d like to see a futuristic Zelda game with laser weapons and RPGs. Ganon would be a giant robot, and Link would ride around on a hovercar instead of a horse.
I want an action/role playing game based on “24” where your game play is timed out and you have to stop the baddies in real time.
Now you’re talking!
I can’t wait until games get to the point where a shootout in a grocery store means that every jar of mustard, every watermelon, is destructable. I want the condiment aisle to explode in goop and flying glass as we blast away at each other.
I also think a multiplayer first person shooter called Backyard would be good. You’d play as kids in a suburban neighborhood. Your ‘gun’ would be pointing your finger like a pistol and grenades would be water balloons. When you’re hit you freeze for thirty seconds. You’d have to face hazards like running through the mean dog’s and the cranky old neighbor’s yards and . It would be like playing army was when we were kids.
A game set in a totally alien world- The laws of physics are different, things look bigger the farther away they are, other characters communicate you through a soundless stream of geometric solids in code with its own syntax.
A realistic crime solving game. You can examine the scene, question witnesses and perform tests. There’s no storyline. No events to force you on a certain course.
Talisman- The classic Games Workshop boardgame
Suikoden 2, an RPG from Konami and one of the best games ever made, has an Iron Chef-style mini-game. One of the characters you recruit is a ronin chef who’s adventuring to escape some dark scandal in his past. If you have him in your adventuring party, he uses a ladle and a meat cleaver as his weapons. If you leave him back at the castle, he’ll make dishes (which you can use as powerups) using items you find out in the wild.
Periodically, rival chefs come into his restaurant and challenge him to a battle, which is a cooking mini-game where you decide the menus (again, using ingredients you’ve found in the wild) based on the preferences of the judges (who are other characters you’ve recruited). As you win the chef battles, you learn more of the character’s back story.
It’s just awesome.
Heck, how about an FPS that doesn’t need a level designer – i.e. one that generates each level randomly, a la Rogue or Nethack.
Master of Magic 2. They wouldn’t really have to do anything different to get me to buy it. Update the graphics engine and add some interesting new spells, steal the best stuff from Civ 2 and 3 (Master of Magic was essentially Civilization with magic spells and tactical combat), and program some decent AI opponents.
Fallout 3 is also on my must buy list.
I’d like to see a game based on the Excel Saga anime. It would be a different game type on each level, complete with Koshi Rikdo’s authorization to change the game type. I’m seeing a “stealth” level with Hyatt (who would die upon being discovered), maybe a couple of sports levels, and of course a dating-sim level (Put it in!) And of course The Great Will of the Macrocosm resetting things when you screw up.
GTA: Online. With many different cities, and the business-buying aspect of Vice City. The gang-respect factor (like in GTA2) would help a lot. The gang leaders and higher-ups could create missions. I see a lot of possibility here.
… and set in the Forgotten Realms.
That’s what I really would like as well. We’re gettign closer to that. The new
Samurai Warriors has that function for castle based levels.
Here’s my game design credo, expressed in the middle of a review of the mediocre PC game Rune:
Already been said, but Call of Duty is the perfect example of why the PC will always -always- own any console that comes down the pike.
It didn’t have the GTA element, but there’s a classic old-school shooter called Outlaws from LucasArts that was a fantastic game, at least by the standards of 1997. I lost my copy years back, so haven’t played it in forever. Don’t know if it holds up, but it’d be worth the price just to hear the excellent Ennio Morricone-inspired soundtrack.
Since I have no interest in shooters, and not much more in role-playing, I’d go for one based on MASTER OF THE FIVE MAGICS by Lyndon Hardy. Each branch of magic has its own rules and procedures, and enables its own effects. Work out the techniques of each branch, combine them with stuff from other branches to accomplish a task, and proceed with your quest.
Imagine a 3rd person 3D fighting game (picture Starseige:Tribes graphics maybe). Include maybe five levels in the game, but make them immensely detailed and interactive. I’m picturing a theatre where you can unhitch the light grid from the wall and ride the rope all the way up, leap over balconies, operate trap doors on the stage down into the dressing rooms into the basement, and snipe from the lighting booth. You could operate a spotlight from the top of the house and blind a guy trying to take aim at you from the stage. For one example.
This would be a fighting game, primarily, and not a shooter, with cool moves from the old pulp stories (think all the cool stuff that Indiana Jones does in the movies).
It’s on the Mac, too.
This’d be cool…although, sadly, it’ll probably be 25 years before the technology will be available.
What I’D like?
•SimEarth 2000
Combine the best parts of the old SimEarth and SimLife games, leaning towards SimEarth. Then, add a HELL of a lot more to it, a lot more depth to the simulation. The old games strained my old 33Mhz 68040 CPU…I want a new one to start to strain my 800 Mhz G4—and just with sheer number crunching, not with fancy graphics. I’d want the ability to modify anything about a planet, just to see what would happen. Like if, say, I wanted to have a planet half the size of Earth but with three times the mass, 3 AUs from an F-type star, and with a biosphere supporting a species of chlorine-breathers who have an industrial infrastructure generating alarming amounts of Helium pollution. And with a generous plugin and editor system allowing the users to hack the simulation engine to any number of extremes.
Which means, of course, that Maxis will never produce anything but “The Sims” expansion packs from now on. sigh
•A “Total War” (or “Myth” style, maybe) style game based in a fantasy-style setting…that’s going into the industrial revolution. High Fantasy clashing with Steampunk. Musketeers and Dragons and Steam Mecha, oh my!
But…few, if any, “Bug hunt” levels. I don’t play a strategy war game just to fight wave after waves of mindless werewolves, or giants spiders, or stuff like that.
•A FPS verison of “The Shadow.”
It’d interesting to see if you could make a game where “Notarget” was basically built into the gameplay. And literally laugh at your enemies.
•A FPS set in the suburbs, or a small town, or something.
Anyone remember that South Park FPS from the N64? That was fun…no isolated secret bases, no high-tech labs…just suburbs. Kind of like the Coloradan “Freedom Fighters” game or the “Dawn of the Dead” game suggested above. But with little or no “fancy” weapons…I’m thinking bolt action rifles; level or break-action shotguns; molotov cocktails, etc.
•A Mad Scientist game, a Supervillain game, or a Supervillain henchman/minion game.
Luckily, we have “Dungeon Master,” “Goldeneye: Rogue Agent,” and I think even a Supervillain/Mad Scientist game coming up. Unfortunately, none of them are on a system I own. Blast.
I’ve mentioned this idea here before, but here it is again:
a fantasy version of x-com.
I was going to suggest Call of Duty for the Russian campaign as well. Though I seem to be a little late. It is accurate and well worth playing. You really get a feel for the desperation and harsh realities that the soldiers went through.
Plus, you get to retake Stalingrad and capture Berlin. Great, great game.
I’d like to see a American Civil War or American Independance FPS. Oh, and a Deus Ex 2 that didn’t suck.