Quote:
Originally Posted by mcarlsonus
Earlier, "Sonarman" mentioned the old Microprose titles, "Silent Service," "Task Force 1942," and, "Red Storm Rising" as excellent examples of sims that succeed in immersing the player in the game. Having owned and played all those games, I emphatically agree! Matter of fact, "back in the day," whenever there was a party at my place, one would always find the 386SX - with VGA graphics (640x480), a HUGE 15" monitor, and 640K RAM - fired up and folks taking turns at the helm of an, "Improved Gato" in the Pacific or hammering away at an enemy task force 16 miles to the west.
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Don't forget that at that time, there was essentially not predecessor for these games, and those were the first of their kind. So they impressed with what I usually call "novel game idea/features", and were basically ground-breaking simulations. Though some, like TF1942, was ripped apart by casual gamer magazines and critics, and failed to make a huge commercial impact. But who could have expected both of that for a game that is biased to naval warfare enthusiasts -- they are just few.
Silent Service II, although much more of a step forward in terms of graphics from Silent Service as compared to the steps between SHIII->SHIV-SHV (which to me look very much alike, and have basically already converged on photorealism), also wasn't a big success. Why? I guess because the game idea was used up by then, and they did not add many new game features that would have lead to a very different game experience.
It is pretty much the same with many old games, which were so new and exciting ideas/concepts that they were embraced quickly: Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, etc. But only very developers added in sufficient new content to make the sequels look sufficiently different. In that case, only long time separations to the prequel make a "copy" of a game concept with but updated graphics look sufficiently "novel" as it appears.