The Game of Your Dreams

Parvini · Post by **Parvini** » Wed May 31, 2006 22:50

Apart from those perfect fully realised games that exist already (e.g. the Baldur's Gate games, Civ, Super Mario World, Lucas Arts adventure games and Deus EX) - all my dream games are actually just fully realised versions of existing games. If all the wrinkles were ironed out, if they'd have taken the care to get everything right and remade it with passable 2006 graphics my dream game would be any one of the following:

Covert Action (1990) - with much better graphics, slightly less repetitive crimes and better sub-games, perhaps a bit of voice acting too.

Gangsters: Organized Crime (1998) - again with better graphics and a much better engine and layout. I'd have liked the crimes to be implemented better - something like the way you did them in The Clue! (1994) and maybe more detail on the individual gangsters. It was all a bit too abstract in the end - it was hard to see the effect your lawyer or accountant had and you felt removed from the gameplay. This is still a great game waiting to happen - I thought that would be Gangland (2004) but that was awful.

Imperium Gallactica 2 (2000) - without the annoyingly tacked on story. sadly this genre has emphasised macro-management in recent years and so has lost the intmiacy of games like this or Master of Orion.

Europa 1400: The Guild (2002) - with ALOT more polish and with more things to do. This game reaches so close to everything I could want in a game but it doesn't give it to me... There's a sequel coming out later this year - I'm ready to have my dreams crushed all over again - Jowood are a lazy German developer who have great ideas but execute them poorly. I WISH someone with talent would pick this game up and make it into what it should be - a work of genius.

The Movies (2005) - This game is very very addictive, but as a film buff I feel a bit cheated at how generic they made movies feel. Actors were judged on Looks and experience and nothing else - if it was a "genre fit" then you were fine - there was no such thing as "ability" in this game and that annoyed me a bit. The "Best Actor" award would simply go to whoever was in the biggest hit - critical and commercial acclaim were almost identical. I thought this was not only shallow but unrealistic. I'd love a sequel to factor in ability and few other things and to make more of a marked distinction between actors and directors. Also to tone down the micromanagement a bit - I got SO SICK of that woman saying - "A building requires maintainence" by the mid 1950s.

[NB. I've "ported" this over from OGC where it is destined to only attract spam - this is something I'm going to do more and more to the best threads (or at least the ones with the most potential) there. This is not really replicating OGC, just realising what could be there if it wasn't a spam trap.]

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 0:17

My personal dream game - and one that I've daydreamed of programming, if only I had the skills - is a translation of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly into a 3D shooter.

There'd be three main single player paths, one as each main character, Blondie, Angel Eyes and that guy whose name eludes me at the moment.

Tacked onto that, of course a multiplayer "deathmatch" game.

Each level of the game would be accompanied by one of the classic Enio Morricone themes, some of them souped up a bit. The levels would be fitted to the three different characters so they only touched upon each other occasionally, kind of like what was done in the Alien vs. Predator shooter.

Each character would have some unique levels, and play differently, depending on their dispositions (Angel Eyes would show no mercy ever, Blondie would have some non-fatal moves). Some levels would be the monastery where the Ugly dude's brother is a priest, the battlefield at the bridge (with your mission to blow it up, of course), and the great three-way showdown at the cemetery.

There'd be some classic western weapons, some implementation of bullet time for showdown duels, and clear differences in the way the three characters play. In other words, it would rock.

The closest thing to something similar in existence is, of course, Outlaws, which was a somewhat decent 3D western shooter from LucasArts. I'd want something with contemporary, "real" graphics, not cartoony like that game. In my mind, if this was done to perfection, it would be my dream game come true.

Eric · Post by **Eric** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 11:16

The game of my dreams would probably be an extension of the GTA series but;

1. With much better graphics
2. With real choices / cause and effect
3. A more active and real world feel to it rather than a pretend world.

A mixture of Oblivion, GTA, Godfather et al

My other dream game would need a groinal attachment.

Parvini wrote:just realising what could be there if it wasn't a spam trap.]

????? You're are a mod there in the OGC (or whatever it's called now) so do something. Posting for points (snice that's the system there) is one thing, spam is another. The indepth forum has been over run by off topic stuff, which was clearly against the rules specific to there (at the time) so there's really no excuse for it.

espenso84 · Post by **espenso84** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 19:40

I must say that I'm an RPG fan, and then I think about dragons and damsels in distress. But what I would REALLY like to see, is Fallout, in a full 3D and real-time world, kind of like Oblivion. Maybe it kind of takes away the meaning of Fallout, with turns and all that, but that would be a GREAT game, I think.... hmmmm....

Dizi · Post by **Dizi** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 20:48

It would have to be a never ending adventure game, challenging puzzles with a gripping story. If it was a long the same lines as say still life, the longest journey, dreamfall and monkey island it would be great. I would love it to be confusing and for it to have a lot of suprises, just when you think you have figured it out something is thrown in to it that makes you realise that you are on the wrong tracks. With a lot of humor along the way.

Railwaymodeler · Post by **Railwaymodeler** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 22:21

Mine would be a realistic railroad simulator, unlike Transport Tycoon, or Railroad Tycoon series, where you manage the system, rather than watch little trains zip around for the entire game.

I decided since what I had in mind wasn't likely to hit the shelves soon, I was going to create the game myself in Visual Basic. I have gotten a time model written, the financial model mostly written, and some of the equipment intro dates done. Steam gets replaced by diesels, which are cheaper and require less crew to maintain. But, the flip side is that traffic is declining due to highways and airways, and unions strike due to laid off steam maintenance employees. I am making it so that you find it hard to stay afloat during the lean years of the 1970s, when real railroads were going bankrupt too. I am going for a management sim, not a game where you lay track youself and place your own trains- the President of a railroad had track layers build the track and car shop employees built the trains, so you have to hire THOSE employees to build your routes and maintain your trains.

OSH · Post by **OSH** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:16

I want to play a game like FRONTIER with stunning graphics, VERY large universe, multiplayer option, ability to land on planets (NOT ONLY on space ports/space stations), ability to make an conversation with others players etc. etc..
Could be possible, that such a game ever will be released??? I don't think so....

Post by **Chroelle** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 12:53

I am not sure what my dream game would be since I cannot seem to pick a genre.

I loved Europe 1400: The Guild that Parvini pointed me at some time ago in a thread not far from here. BUT I did hate that there were so little diversity in the game. It became repititive and then it became very repititive. And after playing for 9 generations the city hadn't changed a bit.... That was kind of weird. Also the gamemap was FAR too small. I played in Paris for example, and I could follow my man crossing Paris almost within one screens height and width. That could have been done ALOT better.

When we have to look at other genres, then I am a total football manager buff, and I love Championship manager and the Total Club Manager series. Unfortunately for both games they each have some lovely features but they both lack eachothers strengths. One has nice training and lots of good financial features to play with. But it has no personification and therefore no attachment to players at all. The other has too many financial options and as such you loose interest in keeping an eye on it. It promises a fusion gameplay where you can play on the field and that way help get the achievements you long for, but it is poorly implemented.
I think the best football manager game would give you the option to play on the field in a proper way like the old fifa 99 and 2000 would do, and then afterwards let you adjust which things you want to be a part of controlling. In my world Total Club Manager gets an inch ahead of Championship manager, but then you look at editors and Championship manager evens out.

Adventure games should all be like Monkey Island (or Nelly Cootalot) but last longer and be released only few months apart! Nothing more to add. I was not disappointed by the last Monkey Island and I, very likely, wont be disappointed by the next one - if ever there is one.

Real time strategy games has always had a special place in my heart, but I must say that I really hate the fact that you always start over and you always end up restarting your entire civilization in each level(/mission - whatever). Warzone 2100 took care fo that for me, but it lacks the polish that alot of other games have. If it had been more like Starcraft or The Age of Empires series (not the last installment) I would have been happy. But the tanks were all to similar to even care if they were not the same ones. I really want something in the line of Empire Earth where you can grow from tribesmen, but with the option from Warzone 2100 to let the gamemap expand instead of starting from scratch each mission.

The one game I return to all the time is Stronghold Crusader. It has the kind of gameplay I like, but lacks more mission-play. The line you can follow in the game to succeed is good, but also has the flaw that if you survive the beginning of the level (where there is almost always a rush, a fire or lack of food) you will most certainly win. The enemies have far too low AI, and have the tendency to follow the same path of attack every time, making it easy to build up defenses along that route and letting everything else stand wide open, since they wont figure out to go another way, than were you placed 200 crossbowmen in 20 towers with ballistae.
Also the population limit kills my gamejoy a bit. It has a tendency to do that, which is one of the reasons why I like the Cossacks (and later American Conquest) series. It gets harder to get a HUGE population but you can! I hate when I am suippose to be ruling an empire and the game only lets me create 50-75 units. VERY EMPIRISH. "HA HA - Here I come with my army of.... a handfull".
I also loved the amount of studies and upgrades you could do in these games, and the firefights are just amazing (and amusing). There is nothing better when having a rough day than to run American conquest and let the indians attack your lines of hundreds of riflemen.

When it comes to first and third person shooters, I loved the story and feel of Freedom Fighters, where the story was nothinhg short of epic, and teh gameplay was fittingly loose and shifting to keep your interest. Unfortunately it wasn't very long. The option to control other freedom fighters during gunfights, was simply a good idea, but it does not equal Halflife (1 and 2 with additions) and surely not the GTA series. It just had a different feel that made you think you were playing something else than a 3rd person shooter.
I love the GTA series, so a game with a gripping story in that line of play, with more hours crammed in, and a "free-er" gameplay. I hate that things stay the same until you do some quest, and then things are all of a sudden changed forever. You should be able to make things shift less abrupt. And you should have the possibility to go to a map point just by a click if the journey was not important to a quest or something. Also I would like there to be a less annoying save-system. Many times I have been late for something (dinner or a bus) and just had to drive across an entire island to get to a savepoint... And then getting someone upset at me for being late. I hate that.

When it comes to turnbased strategy I prefer Medieval: Total War. I actually didn't care much for the realtime battles (which is all the hype is about in this game) but I loved the map-sequenses, where I could build an empire and move armies around. You can imagine my disappointment when Rome came out...No big emphasis on the map. I am afraid to dig into Medieval 2 since I might be disappointed again.
I always played Colonization until my game suddenly cannot execute on my new PC. So that was the end of an era right there. The keyboard gets screwed over everytime I run the game. That was propably the closest thing to my perfect game ever.

I propably forgot a lot of games and why they should be on this list, but I couldn't go on ranting any more, since then I would never stop. IT really is hard to pinpoint THE PERFECT GAME. (Especially if you dont know what genre to go for.)