Who did it better: Rare vs Blizzard

[Mnementh]

Azzanation said:

Mnementh said:

Nope, Rare never dominated FPS.

1997 (Goldeneye release year) had Quake II, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Hexen II, Shadow Warrior - all superior games in regards to used gameplay mechanics. You may also note that this list includes a lot of II, so more importantly all these mechanics were already developed before. Even Shadow Warrior is using the tech from Duke Nukem 3D.

Perfect Dark came 2000, in the same year on PC the FPS made massive progress, while Perfect Dark basically is still gameplay wise a Quake like game. In 2000 though came games like Deus Ex and Counterstrike, which moved FPS in new territories. Genre-defining Half-Life already released in 1998.

Don't get me wrong, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are good games and Rare made good work. And certainly it was new to bring FPS to console. But if we look at the FPS genre as a whole, not only at the console side of things, then these games are good games, but not outstanding.

Blizzard basically defined major templates for two genres with Warcraft/starcraft in RTS and with Diablo in action RPGs. Games today still work off the design choices made with Diablo and Starcraft.

I disagree with you on the FPS front. Rare defined FPS for consoles, maybe not on the PC but what Rare did for games like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were the most innovative. It was the first time enemy AI was implemented in such a way that even FPS of today's standards don't match what those games did. In Goldeneye you can shoot at limps of an enemy, and they all died in different ways, and they were clever. PD added in shooting out all light sources, turning a stage in complete darkness and only further improved the AI, no game came close to Perfect Dark's AI system in its day. Goldeneye went on to sell 7m+ for the N64 and PD sits on a staggering 97 Metacritic, none of the FPS games you mentioned reviewed as well as PD, tho Half Life sits on a 96. For console shooters, Rare were the best at it and even put some PC shooters to shame. This was all before Halo to.

Yeah, as I said for console that might've been a big step. And I don't deny these two games are good. But games like Starcraft and Diablo are reference for games that come out even today. That can't be said about these shooters.

I don't think Meta is a good comparison for older games, especially PC. Some of the PC games I mentioned don't even have a single review on Metacritic.