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Alright, fine. Let's call it 'the first truly commercially viable half-smart 3D game' and call it a day. Fucking Alpha Waves? Give me a break.
Time to ride the crazy chair!
I voted for Metal Gear Solid, though it's not even the best game of 1998. I have no idea how you could call it the "first half-smart 3D game" considering the large number of PC games that used the third dimension intelligently. 95% of MGS could be done strictly 2D with no changes. That doesn't strike me as smart use of 3D. Thief is a great contemporary example that does take advantage of the third dimension in its level design. But for years before that, PC games used 3D smartly. Look at Ultima Underworld. Or Alpha Waves. Or fucking Mercenary.
Alright, fine. Let's call it 'the first truly commercially viable half-smart 3D game' and call it a day. Fucking Alpha Waves? Give me a break.
Last edited by YellerDog; 18 Sep 2015 at 05:16 PM.
Originally Posted by Razor Ramon
You know this forum is mainly console-centric...
Time to ride the crazy chair!
And now you're repping soccer, of course. Why don't you get back to Belgium with that shit?
Time to ride the crazy chair!
(I tried to find an image of a hockey goal being moved but came up dry.)
Attaboy.
As to your 'could have been done in 2D' point, I really don't think that's the case. There's a really nice element to the sneaking that comes through the use of 3D that wasn't there for MSX Solid Snake; your radar gets obscured from time to time (and isn't even there on the higher difficulty levels), which makes it about looking around corners and observing your surroundings much more so than the 2D games could allow before. Beyond the graphics, the stereo sound comes into play for determining if something is coming up on the left or the right, which was still a pretty new concept! The ideas of the previous games really get taken to their logical extremes, which is how you'd want a 2D to 3D transition to go.
There's a notion that the 'first person rocket' weapon is the only real 3D innovation, and I'm saying I don't think that's the case at all; if you take the training wheels off, you really do get a game that couldn't be done the same way in 2D.
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Conversely, your 'Ultima Underworld' is a first person 3D in the 'Wolfenstein' vein, you're not really dealing with the physicality of your character in any sort of way, you're playing as a camera with arms attached to it. I'd argue that UU doesn't have to be in 3D at all, there's nothing gained by the POV.
Last edited by YellerDog; 18 Sep 2015 at 06:25 PM.
The Underworlds are the most appealing games in the Ultima series to me in part because of the perspective. They wouldn't be remotely the same in 2d.
You could do that same game with a fixed isometric POV or a behind-the-back camera. The first-person 3D is a great gimmick, but I don't think it's essential to how the game is played, the stuff you're doing is still very 2D minded: you're looking for things, you're picking things up, you're pushing switches. There's no real physicality in that game that requires you to address your character's shape in 3D outside of just being a camera with a sword taped to it, it might even be a better game combat-wise if the perspective was pushed back and you had to address that.
Last edited by YellerDog; 18 Sep 2015 at 06:37 PM.
You could do most 3d games in 2d isometric form but they wouldn't be the same experience. Underworld has multi-floored levels, jumping in 3d space, looking up and down, etc.. It has all the main mechanics one would expect in a modern 3d game. The physicality of the character is clearly noticeable when falling or jumping.
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