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Realistic driving games don't seem to have far left to go in terms of innovation either. When Metropolis Street Racer gave us accurate map of real cities to race around it could well have been one of the final boundaries that these games could reach. Yes we'll see progression in these real environments, and they'll become ever more impressive, but will we see much in realistic driving games we haven't seen before? I doubt it.
The Kart style racers don't seem to have changed a great deal since Mario Kart began it all, but it could be a Nintendo game that finds something new here. Donkey Kong Racing could be one of two things. Either a standard cartoon racer, but with animals instead of karts, or a refreshing type of racing game, that involves training your animals, and a choice of routes through a race depending upon the animals you have to use. It's certainly a game to keep an eye on.
3D adventures seem to have evolved from 2D platformers, but can they go any further than they already have? There is so much potential when given a huge 3D environment to explore, it will just take someone being brave enough to try something different.
Horror games seem to have an enormous amount of potential over the coming years to grow into some of the most outstanding games we have ever seen. Horror games have the benefit of being more effective if they look and sound better. If the aim of the developer is to frighten the gamer, then it's going to be more likely if the enemies youo face are fearsome, real horror-show like.
Not only will the graphics and sound play a part, but developers also seem keen to take the horror into refreshing and new games.
Devil May Cry sounds outstanding, for one game, with Capcom moving away from the simply survival horror idea that Resident Evil was built on.
'The Thing' looks to be adding some really amazing features too. The paranoia that this game could contain could be amazing! You won't know who the enemy is, or who to trust. You'll have to make sure that your team continue to trust you, or they'll shoot you, and whilst you're coping with this there are little aliens scuttling across the floor, maybe exploding out of dogs too, it really could be awesome, and very different.
Eternal Darkess also offers a different twist on the horror genre, with the 'sanity' meter, and the haluciations insanity can cause. You can't run, or you'll go mad, so you're forced to face the enemies!
So it looks like 'horror' could be the boom genre of this generation of machines. There's too much history behind the other genres, it seems, and developers are afraid to break out of these moulds made back in the 80's and 90's.
I've looked everywhere...
Other developments such as games running in real time, such as majora's mask are only the earliest starting points of these innovative new approaches.
Of course, some new ideas bomb, remeber that mega cd game where you had to watch all the security cameras in a house, or where you had to make videos for dodgy pop act criss-cross, but in these instances it's clear for everyone to see that the games dived because they were utter pants, not because they were new and unfamiliar to the playing audience.
As for the future, if it was so easy to predict new directions to take games in, we'd have thought of, and probably already implimented them. Thus all the obvious developments have been made, but it's a little premature to say there is nothing new simply because we've not been able to think of them ourselves.
Despite being made by another company (although Capcom are very reliable), it looks very good and Zelda like so far.
I'll have to play on it when he goes to bed...
I'm going to buy Oracle of the Ages soon.
Ordered one of those new Zelda GB games today. Link's Awakening was superb, and these are supposed to be better.
For example, the new MGS2 game is breaking the mould in the old action genre (or stealth, whatever) with ideas such as mini-cameras, shooting weapons/radios, etc. Also, as much as I hate to admit it, the Zelda game will probably contain some pretty innovative stuff, whatever it may be.
That's a point actually - Have Nintendo announced any col ideas in the Zelda game yet?
>3D adventures seem to have evolved from 2D platformers, but can they go any further than they already have? There >is so much potential when given a huge 3D environment to explore, it will just take someone being brave enough to >try something different
Surely Shenmue advanced the 3D adventure genre with its mix of epic story spread over 9 chapters, detailed exploration, Virtua Fighter style fighting, Quick Time Events, changing weather conditions, arcade mini games, not to mention the consistently superb graphics? Yes, no, maybe?
Another question is though do we want it to change? I mean we do and we dont, we all want a new challenge in games but we dont want no drastic changes to a genre, we still want to keep the same formlae.
Anoter thing, Blast Corps on the N64 was a new original idea that didn't get the attention it so rightly deserved, an example of why develepors dont want to change in fear of failure?