Many games experimented with ambitious ideas and gameplay concepts that we wouldn’t see popularized until years later. Here are some cool examples.
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0:00 Intro
0:18 Crysis
1:54 Eternal Darkness
3:03 Nier
4:26 Demon’s Souls
5:39 Planescape: Torment
6:44 Shenmue
7:51 Live a Live
9:27 Super Mario 64
11:04 System Shock 1
12:40 Trespasser (Jurassic Park)
Every once in a while a game comes Around and just changes everything it Shows us something completely new and it Takes forever for everyone else to catch Up hi folks it's Falcon and today on Game ranks 10 games that were ahead of Their time starting off at number 10 With crisis now 2007 was an all-time Great year for games we have Bioshock Modern Warfare Mario Galaxy Halo 3 God Of War 2 The Orange Box and crisis and Just looking at these games you can tell That one of these things isn't like the Others because crisis was just light Years ahead of everything else visually At the time now maybe in art Direction You might like some of the other games I Said a little more but in purely Technical terms crisis Was A Cut Above Like compare it to 2006's Elder Scrolls Oblivion and it is no contest Oblivion Looks downright decrepit compared to Crisis the game had Dynamic lighting and Shadows HDR rendering Dynamic Environments real-time clouds and a lot Of new effects it took four years before The game was able to be ported to the Xbox 360 and PS3 and even then they had To cut out a massive level of detail Because just too much for systems to Handle in general those ports were Severely compromised versions of Crisis And we wouldn't get a decent console Version of the game until the next
Generation now of course with all these Fancy Graphics effects it meant you Needed a beast of a PC at the time to Actually play it there's a reason can it Run crisis became such a meme that it Was a question people were legitimately Asking for years after the game came out In gameplay terms there's not a lot Going on here that wasn't done in the Original Far Cry outside of the Nano Suit Powers but graphically this game is So far ahead of its time it's almost Hard to describe Reinforcements And number nine is eternal Darkness now Compared to crisis graphically Eternal Darkness is definitely nothing to write Home about and that's not a huge Surprise considering it was originally Meant to come out on Nintendo 64. before Development moved over to the more Modern but still early 2000s GameCube Console what makes this game so ahead of Its time isn't the graphics but the Ideas the game's most impressive feature Is how it plays tricks on the player Using the sanity meter as your character Gets exposed to the Lovecraft ask Horrors looking around the sanity meter Slowly drains as it gets lower and lower The more likely you are to experience Hallucinations at first they're Relatively harmless strange noises Blurry vision but when the sanity meter
Was low you get fourth wall breaking Stuff like the game making it look like The console crash the TV disconnected Some of the nastier tricks are are like Things where you think the controller Wasn't working and your save files are Erased or whatever it's kind of stuff That had been done in isolation in other Games before but the way it turned Darkness mess with players but was just Entirely original and it was the Originator of a lot of the fourth wall Breaking tricks we see in so many games Today At number eight is near which was Released in April of 2010. now niera saw Some pretty mixed reviews most of the Complaints focus on the game's ugly Visuals and not particularly exciting Gameplay and it really didn't get the Kind of attention it deserved regarding The interesting things the game did Regarding its story uh like joystick Which is now defunct give the game a Literal 0 out of 10. like reviewers Mostly did not like this game and sales Weren't high but in the past 10 years The game's gotten a major critical Reevaluation for its innovative and Mature storytelling the gameplay still Isn't great the original version of the Game is pretty stiff to control uh the Remake in which they made it handle a Little bit more like Platinum Games near
Automata yeah way better even if not Perfect still but the reason why it's so Ahead of its time is so obviously how it Presents its story instead of everything Simply ending after beating the game you Given the option to play through it Again but this time with new scenes they Give greater context to what you're Doing certain events become completely Different after multiple playthroughs Too which is strange enough but the game Also isn't afraid to go in weird Tangents like this the entire section Where you're in Choose Your Own Adventure game it's a game that just Marches to the beat of its own drum and A lot of creators credit it as a major Inspiration for their games Number seven is Demon Souls now back When the original Demon Souls came out The gaming landscape was just a really Different place pretty much everything About the game went against conventional Wisdom at the time the game was hard When games were becoming more accessible It was obscure in a time where Everything had unskippable tutorials That explained every single aspect of The game it had a major focus on boss Fights when boss battles were being De-emphasized well that's really cool But not exactly ahead of its time I mean King's field was a markedly different Game but it wasn't so far removed from
Demon Souls that you can't see the DNA Between them and that's from like 1994. From software goes back ways what was Trailblazing about Demon Souls was Actually the asymmetrical multiplayer Component you could team up with other Players you could fight them you could Leave messages to offer Clues and look At people's blood stains see how they Died it turned what is I mean Technically a pretty lonely experience Into a weirdly communal one it's a Really brilliant feature that's been Copied by so many games at this point That it's hard to keep up now Demon Souls is famous for its unrelenting Gameplay but the thing that really makes It ahead of its time is that multiplayer Component and number six is planescape Torment like near planescape torment Isn't ahead of its time because it's Some gameplay features or technical Wizardry but storytelling in terms of Story this game was simply A Cut Above Everything else in 1999 and this was a Time when stories were evolving rapidly Like Final Fantasy VII came out 97 Metal Gear Solid came out in 98 and those Games were absolutely revolutionary in Not only how mature their stories were But how they told them that said torment Was still something very different What's unusual about the game is that The goal isn't to stop some great evil
Or change the world it's much more Personal you're the nameless one an Immortal being with no memories of who He is or why he's even Immortal in the First place all the RPG Staples are here There's some combat but in comparison to Baldur's Gate or Fallout there's much Less a focus on fighting here like You'll be spending far more time talking Than you will be fighting in this game Only recently have we started to see Games that use more RPG mechanics Everywhere but aren't primarily about Killing enemies like this goes back much Further And number five is shenmue now you can't Do this list without mentioning the Granddaddy of all the open World Games In comparison to Grand Theft Auto 3 Shenmue seems like a game that came from Another planet rather than being about Creating a large world and filling it With potential for arcade action shenmue Is about building a small but believable Slice of Life and that did not always Translate into fun gameplay but just the Simple fact you could open every single Drawer in ryu's house felt like a huge Step forward in interactivity in video Games instead of just throwing you right Into the action the game is more about Building a mood and letting you get to Know your neighbors and friends it's Almost closer to a life simulation game
Than an open world action game there is Some combat eventually but the real meat Of the game is in the mundane you can Buy toys play Arcade games get a job all Things that at the time people were not Playing video games for it now you can Make a video game about literally Anything you can do farming Trucking Even playing arcade games but shanmu was The first game to do any of that At number four is live a live the West This game was relatively unknown until 2022 when it got a remaster but now that It's out uh of Japan you get to see how Unique and forward-thinking this Seemingly inessential RPG really was There's a lot that's unusual about it uh It's an RPG but instead of being in a Fantasy world it's set on Earth and each Of the seven playable characters comes From a different moment in history There's RPG mechanics like turn-based Battles but there's a lot that's unique About the game as well like the Twilight Of Edo Japan chapter where it's possible To play through without killing anyone It's much easier said than done requires A lot of trial and error and puzzle Solving but it is possible this section Has been cited as the direct inspiration To the creator of undertale and it's one Of the first games to have a legitimate Non-violent gameplay option that's Actually worth doing probably the most
Unusual chapter in the game is the Distant future which stands out in that It's almost entirely combat free this Section also contains maybe the first Instance of the unkillable stalker that Pops up in a lot of horror games Nowadays like the only way to survive is Just avoid the creature run away years Before that mechanic popped up and like Amnesia the Dark Descent or alien Isolation those are two examples of the Ways that this game was ahead of its Time but they're far from the only ones It was basically an experimental RPG That's probably a little too weird for The us back in 94 but its influence can Be seen pretty much everywhere oh yeah And while we're talking about survival Horror influences Sweet Home is another Game that basically invented the Survival horror genre but it has random Battles rather than an unkillable Stalker And number three is Super Mario 64. like Hughes didn't see this one coming like It's easy to take for granted though to Be fair how much Mario 64 is a step Forward in video games as a whole while Every other third-person game had a Fixed camera and unwieldy controls Mario Controlled like a dream and had what is Probably the first actual third person Camera in a video game it took years for Any other developers to quite match what
Nintendo did with Mario 64. hell games Today still struggle to match how Natural Mario feels to control in this Game with this game they basically Invented the 3D platformer and for a First go it is a remarkably complete Game the camera is probably the biggest Issue the mechanics behind it are Revolutionary but the actual camera Controls were not great Oh The moments that the camera did work However are incredible though and that Comes down to the way the game would Combine a controllable camera that would Switch to on Rails camera at certain Moments this sort of thing is seamless These days and while it didn't take long For developers to at least approximate Movement in a 3D space it was a long Time before the mix locked and free Camera controls became standard the Technology used for the game was also Ahead of its time in many ways like the Way the game would switch between High Poly and low poly models depending on The distance among other things Um it was just a highly influential game And it took a long time before anybody Really cracked what made it feel so good To play like pretty much every single 3D Game today owes something to Mario 64. At number two is the original System Shock uh you don't get a lot more ahead
Of its time than System Shock it was Released in 94 and at that point most Fps's were just trying to be doomed System Shock though way more way way More ambitious basically like a a Sci-Fi Dungeon crawling System Shock like Introduced a lot of Staples and games it Would be lumped together as quote Unquote immersive Sims this game lets You explore collect items read logs Which expand your understanding of the Story and place and you get popped into Some scenarios in multiple ways you Upgrade your character I mean compared To other FPS games that were out at the Time this was Moody mysterious and Immersive and it came out before Doom 2. Like to say this game was influential Would be a ridiculous understatement Games like Thief Deus Ex Bioshock Dishonored prey all these games owe a Huge debt to this game for all the ideas It introduced to the gaming landscape Foreign Feature of the game that was actually Even more ahead of its time is all the Ways you can change the difficulty which Are actually similar to accessibility Options in modern games like you can Change the combat difficulty puzzle Difficulty story difficulty uh which Affects the time limit that you have to Do certain things like the mini game Difficulty and all these things have
Separate sliders and System Shock came Out 20 years before those things became Commonplace And finally at number one trespasser Jurassic Park so up until now uh every Game on this list is at least pretty Good right most of them are great this One it's a mess it is unfinished it's Super buggy it's incredibly awkward to Play at times but it was also Beyond Ambitious the people making this game Clearly wanted to make something Revolutionary but the technology to do What they wanted to do just wasn't there Yet like so many featured this game were Revolutionary there was no HUD except For this weird heart tattoo on your Character's cleavage you could look down And see how much health you had with but Beyond that no HUD when using guns there Were no ammo pop-ups instead your Character would say how much ammo was Still in the weapon eight shots Heavier than I thought And like at the time this type of stuff Was just unheard of but we're starting To see more fps's nowadays kind of get Away with this hudless setup it's Generally more story oriented fps's but Still also the dinosaurs in this game Had Advanced AI routines that were meant To control how they behaved but we're Basically just all set to aggressive Because the developers couldn't actually
Get them to work and this can game had a Fully functional physics simulation in 1998 six years before Half-Life 2. the Size of the island was also impressive For the time too as well as the Environmental storytelling that was Surprisingly mature for a game where you Look down at your boobs to see how much Health you have trespassers again that Swung for the fences and fell flat on His face it was so far ahead of the time That there just it wasn't possible to do What they were trying to do and when it Came out the game was just considered a Total disaster I do like to think of it As a noble failure though because I mean The stuff that they came up with people Were doing eventually anyways that's all For today leave us a comment let us know What you think if you like this video Click like if you're not subscribed Now's a great time to do so we upload Brand new videos every day of the week Best way to see them first is of course A subscription so click subscribe don't Forget to enable notifications and as Always thank you very much for watching This video I'm Falcon you can follow me On Twitter at Falcon hero we'll see you Next time right here on game ranks
