Gaming

The HUD being at the back of your car rather than in the corner of the screen in Split/Second. It feels like a no brainer that the important information is where your eyes are already focused, but I've never seen another racer do this.

Dragon's Dogma Pawn system

Everyone has a Pawn, an NPC companion you create. The other two party members are also Pawns, but downloaded from other players.

Need a mage that knows a fire spell to fight a Griffin? Pop online and download one. One of your pawns too squishy? Download one with better armor.

The cool thing about this system is pawns retain knowledge from what they see and have done. If someone has finished a quest you haven't, they will help lead you to the next location, or call out an enemy's weakness.

Pawns also take back what they have learned to the player who owns them. And when you return a pawn, you can give it an item that goes back to the pawn's owner.

It's a great way to help other players in a single player game.

Simultaneous sound and light meters in Splinter Cell. Yes, some games have the enemies respond to fast/slow walking sounds differently, but having an actual volume readout was next-level.

The entirety of Death Stranding. The whole thing works perfectly but nobody has dared to copy it

WB's nemesis system.

Tribes: Ascend for me

I'm surprised more race games haven't looked at something like motorstorm apocalypse with ever changing tracks because a skyscraper collapsed on the track or something. You'd thyink with more powrful hardware it would be a slam dunk.

Wind-based quest markers - Ghost of Tsushima

Driver San Francisco, a game where to can instantly take control of any car of the traffic, and there's that 2nd person mission too.

The Getaway games didn't have a mini-map, so instead you had to find your way using your car's turn signals (they started blinking to show which turns you had to take on the road). It could be a pain sometimes, but it was pretty innovative at the time.

Does black & white count here? The god game where you could be good or evil? I could be out of the loop but have there been similar games after b&w 2?

There's splitgate but that's about it.

The car turn signal is your compass in The Getaway. I liked that game mechanic.

I’m not sure if other games have done it, but I don’t really recall any off the top of my head: guiding lights like in Left 4 Dead. The reason you know where you’re going in L4D almost subconsciously is because they use lights to tell you the general direction of your path. Be it a street light, hall way light, or just a brighter lit area, your brain automatically and instinctively draws you towards to help you navigate with zero map or compass.

Teardown feels like a tech demo for a sequel for this, but Red Faction Guerilla. And on the same note, Blast Corps.

Shadow Of The Colossus. The sheer scale, physics and art direction. I'll never forget the innovative stamina grip meter and how it tied in so neatly with grabbing on to the colossus' hair / fur. It was very rewarding and natural how you got stronger as you progressed. Sure the game took off but, correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure someone will) I've never seen it copied.

Savage: The Battle for Newerth by S2Games

It was an FPS/RTS crossover. Had great combat and systems. Instead of building on their success they attempted to go FPS/MOBA on the sequel. Never seen anyone try it since.

Impossible Creatures; the jig of it was that each unit was a comb-/abomination of 2 animals and you could design your own army with what features you wanted this way. Then some wacky steam&dieselpunkish tech and vibrant colors it was pretty fun.

The ring menu in Secret of Mana.

Ogre Battle 64's real time map movement and party engagement system in combat.

Evolve

I fucking love the idea of being this big ass monster fighting alone against a team of players but sadly people didn't like it and it shut down

I played it a lot again after it got a semi revival when devs gave out keys so people played it again but because the game is discontinued it just didn't have much staying power for me

I did put a solid amount of hours in tho and i just wish someone would reattempt it

The game I’d kick this off with is an EA game called Majestic from 2001. I remember playing this when I first started college and the internet was young and it blew my mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game)

This game was like being wrapped up in a real life conspiracy. You would browse obscure web pages, get faxes (which believe it or not was still a thing back then, haha), get phone calls, early blackberry texts, emails, and even a very rudimentary ai chat system over AIM. All while trying to uncover an online conspiracy.

I remember being super excited for each new episode and was really bummed when it got discontinued a year later. I seem to remember the writing wasn’t all that great and the acting was old school FMV bad, but IMO that added to the charm.

I feel like this game concept was way ahead of its time. Can you imagine a similar thing using AI tech from 2023? That feels like it would have so much potential.

The combat system in valkyria chronicles... I would kill for more games like that

Fuckin shootmania. A movment arena shooter that you can play only using wasd and mouse with 2 buttons is a surprisingly good idea

Surprised Rocket League hasnt been copied.

Time Travel mission in Titanfall 2 surprised there hasnt been a game thats copied it.

Also the Portal gun is unique

I think the standard wsad keyboard lay out really took off after half life, but i'm not sure.

I feel like Nintendo does this for every Super Mario game. Makes a flying raccoon suit and never shows it again (at least for a while). Make a hat for Mario to walk through walls and then never see it again. Give Mario a cape but don’t use it again. I could go on and on.

The memory alteration in Remember Me, most of the game was just pretty shit combat with there only being like 3 or 4 of these sequences in the game.

Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor

Given that logic puzzles are hard to make and it'd be for a relatively niche audience, I'm not entirely baffled by no one ripping it off, but I'm surprised we haven't had at least one developer copying Return of the Obra Dinn.

The slide from tachyon. I'm still waiting 20+ years later.

Mount and Blade. It took of itself just fine, so good that they even released its sequel, no argument there.

But i've never seen some other developer team trying to do the same not even in different setting. ONLY thing i could think of is that other games copied mount and blade style map movement in games like spaz 2 or starsector. Or some others directly copied combat section of it like those multiplayer-only, gunpowder & musket games that I see on youtube, can't remember their name, there are few of them. One of them even was direct standalone mod version of mount and blade iirc.

Only one i know is: Freeman guerilla warfare and it tried to do the same on both accounts with firearms but failed miserably. And now there is some other project on early access, total conflict or something with the same concept but it's on early access so i don't how it will turn out yet.

To this day it's still amazing to me that this type of gameplay loop in mount and blade is not copied and applied to other games by developers. I dont think the game is that niche, not by a large margin.

The "Text Wheel" from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

It was so easy to write messages instead of having to rely up the on-screen keyboard to type. The fact it never caught on is criminal!

Nemesis system from the Of Mordor games

Counter operative mode from the original Perfect Dark.

Also bot behaviors. Also from Perfect Dark.

I kinda want to say the nemesis system from the LoTR shadows of Mordor games, but that’s because WB are being aholes about it. Supposedly the upcoming Wonder Woman game is supposed to have it?

Mount and blade