I just received the latest Game Informer magazine in yesterday's mail and it had a cover story on what the editors there are feeling will be one of the next big games. Now, for the life of me, I couldn't tell you what the name of the game that they were hyping is or will be, but I can tell you for sure that they likened the game to being a cross between a couple of games, and one game that I'll talk about specifically here: Diablo, the {gaming} world changing game that was released nigh on 10 years ago.
No, it's not the anniversary of the release of the game, or even the follow-up expansion pack that came out for it, at least not that I know of, or that I could find documented over on Wikipedia. Just the mention of the game, nearly 11 years old at this point, as being the type of game that some new game would be reminded me of just what a ground breaking game the original Diablo, and it's spawn (if you'll pardon the pun) was.
Blizzard, the creators of the Diablo game series, are also the creators/publishers of the Starcraft gaming series, and it too is another ground-breaking series which still draws comparisons and seems to be a standard bearer for the type of game that it was. Of course there was the not too long ago major announcement that Starcraft II was finally under development, so that game is perhaps more fresh than Diablo is at this point, but the point that I would make here is that both of these games were ground breaking and are now -- wait for it -- Legen-dairy! (Bonus points for readers if you get the reference there).
Diablo was a great game. Actually not just great, but awesome. As I said above, legendary. I still have incredibly fond memories of Diablo and it's successor. There were things I hated about the game (player killing among them), but there was sooooo much to like about the games too and so many hours of pure gaming enjoyment derived from same.
Of course Blizzard is also known as the creators of the Warcraft and World of Warcraft (MMORPG) series, and they continue to enthrall gamers with those creations, as well as Diablo II, and Starcraft. Some people have never stopped playing those games, and others continue to pick the games up as new players to help replace people like myself that grew bored with those games over time. Much like players of Galactic Civ, and it's successor, and even some of the games that GalCiv II is compared to, there's a continuing allure to gamers that like to play these games that have helped them become the best sellers that we still see held up as standards for comparison today.
Perhaps you have some other suggestions of games you think think were standard setters. Games you still see new games being compared to. There are obvious choices like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and the like and the many spawn that followed them including games like Duke Nukem 3D and later the Halo series, as well as Quake and Unreal. Some of those later games have become the new standards of measure (especially Unreal with the Unreal engine that is the power behind games like Bioshock).
Anyway, if you have some thoughts on games that fit the description here, please add those thoughts in reply below.
