"You Are There": Verisimilitude in Gaming

[Dolemite]

Oh, and No One mentioned Silent Hill 1-3, and to a degree I agree with him, but the amount of streets/etc that are artificially cut off from exploration curtails that "real" feeling a bit.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Another example is Shadow of Destiny on PS2. Not the greatest game ever...

I'm not so sure it isn't!

[bVork]

Ultima V was one of the first game to do this to me. The day/night cycle was pretty amazing for the time, and the way your visibility was heavily reduced when traversing the overworld at night made such journeys a risky proposition. One of my most vivid memories of the game was wandering around totally lost at night, and coming across a lighthouse. The lighthouse was sweeping beams of light across the landscape, making it incredibly visible. I naturally guided my party there. The lighthouse keeper hadn't gone to bed yet (Ultima V's NPCs follow schedules) and so I talked with him using the simple parser interface - and learned an astonishing amount. This was all done with 2D art that couldn't even stack up to the worst of the NES, but man, it really did FEEL like I was struggling through rainy wilderness, came across a bright beacon of shelter, and had a long evening talk with a wise old man.

[Yoshi]

Ultima V was one of the first game to do this to me. The day/night cycle was pretty amazing for the time, and the way your visibility was heavily reduced when traversing the overworld at night made such journeys a risky proposition. One of my most vivid memories of the game was wandering around totally lost at night, and coming across a lighthouse. The lighthouse was sweeping beams of light across the landscape, making it incredibly visible. I naturally guided my party there. The lighthouse keeper hadn't gone to bed yet (Ultima V's NPCs follow schedules) and so I talked with him using the simple parser interface - and learned an astonishing amount. This was all done with 2D art that couldn't even stack up to the worst of the NES, but man, it really did FEEL like I was struggling through rainy wilderness, came across a bright beacon of shelter, and had a long evening talk with a wise old man.

This is where I really feel I missed out on old computer games except the Aimga. I know I couldn't go back today, so it was really a missed opportunity, due in part to only having an Apple IIgs as our home computer at the time.

edit: It came out on Apple II, so I was just too busy playing Batman and Mean 18 I guess.

[Diff-chan]

Assassins Creed 3 - the game's presentation of colonial-era America is pretty much flawless. Soon enough we'll be like Lisa watching who Genghis Khan eats.

Project Gotham 4 - extremely detailed graphics and a perfect sense of scale with smartly overlapping tracks - I feel like there are dudes in the towers watching the races.

[Joust Williams]

Duke Nukem 3D really was the best example for the first time I had that feeling at all. I don't know any one better. The beginning of Omikron was cool.

[Diff-chan]

The beginning of Omikron was cool.

It was. Too bad the rest of the game was goat poo.

[Will]

Pretty much all of the games sleeve mentioned in his initial post.

I'd also nominate Red Dead Redemption as well.

[Frogacuda]

Duke Nukem 3D really was the best example for the first time I had that feeling at all. I don't know any one better. The beginning of Omikron was cool.

I didn't play it until maybe a year after I played Duke 3D (even though it came out before), but Tek War actually did it very well too. Not a very good game, I don't think, but that aspect of it was very impressive. You got from place to place on the subway, and the levels were populated with NPCs that went about their business. It was pretty ambitious stuff for 1995.

[Frogacuda]

Oh, and another that was a big one for me: The original Driver. Before GTA went 3D, having this big, fairly realistic open world based on actual cities was pretty mind-blowing for me. That game was really good for the time.