6 ms·
I'm not sure I remember anyone cloning Doom with a setting of a Mars base infested by fireball-throwing demons, a marine as main character, puzzles consisting o
by caf 5y ago
I'm not sure I remember anyone cloning Doom with a setting of a Mars base infested by fireball-throwing demons, a marine as main character, puzzles consisting of brightly-coloured keys opening corresponding doors, the same slate of weapons and a red mist descending over the screen when your die. If they had, I feel like they would have been laughed out of the room in those days. (I don't know if this legal claim has a leg to stand on, but it does seem to be copying different in degree if not in kind from the Doom example).
(The Settlers and Syndicate were near-contemporaries of Dune 2 in that genre, perhaps also responsible for some of the genre conventions?)
- p1necone 5y agoI can't think of other games set /on mars/ and /with demons/, but the broad weapon archetypes (shitty single shot pistol/rifle, shotgun, bigger shotgun, high fire rate chaingun type thing, 'BFG' esque super weapon) and doors with keys thing were both aped by a lot of games. And there were certainly other FPS games with demonic themes. Regardless, 'Scavenged Present Day Military Equipment on Island' is a much less distinct theme than 'Demons on Mars'. ... I think calling the Settlers and Syndicate RTS games in the same vein as Warcraft or Command and Conquer is a stretch. If you compare the latter two to big RTS titles released even years later (Age of Empires, TA/Supreme Commander, Dawn of War 1 are some examples I can think of that weren't made by the same studios as Dune/C&C/Warcraft) you'll see all the core mechanics are still the same - base building, unit training, economy, UX conventions. The Settlers and Syndicate are lower case real-time strategy games, but they aren't 'Real Time Strategy' games.
- caf 5y agoDidn't Syndicate originate the "unit training" type mechanic in the RTS context, where you upgrade individual units?