7 Failed Videogames That Were Too Ahead of Their Time

video games underperform commercially all the time due to being bad boring or released for the nintendo wii u hey with a switch release on the horizon we'll finally get to find out if skyward sword is any good [Music] sometimes however video games fail not because they're bad but because they're just way too ahead of their time with technology gameplay or mechanics that would kill if only they'd come out a bit later when the world was ready for them here are seven games that were done dirty by the linear nature of time enjoy [Music] there's no turning back now but it'll all be worth it sure everyone's heard of the big numbered resident evil games with their tyrants and nemesis and tall vampire ladies but there's one lesser-known resident evil game that could have been something really special if it had come along just a bit later i am of course talking about resident evil gaiden for the game boy color just kidding i am in fact talking about resident evil outbreak released in 2003 for the playstation 2. set during the same general time period as resident evil 2 and resident evil 3 resident evil outbreak is a cooperative game starring eight new characters who have to work together to escape raccoon city before it gets destroyed by a massive bomb designed from the ground up to be a cooperative multiplayer zombie game for four players resident evil outbreak predates the hugely successful left for dead by five years and included a lot of things that would later become staples of online co-op including characters having different complementary abilities objective based scenarios and quick emote-esque responses to convey things like requests for help or thanks listen the problem was that in 2003 the internet was to use the scientific term bad broadband adoption was still low and even if you did want to get your ps2 online you needed to buy an adapter and register for an account then hope that enough people have done the same in order for you to get into a game and that's if you lived in north america if you're in europe or australia you couldn't even try to get online because it wasn't supported leaving you to play alone with ai bots as your teammates all of whom would score significantly below the zombies if given an iq don't give test did you find anything also there was no voice chat so good luck communicating anything beyond help or thanks or thanks for the help i guess thank you very much despite poor reviews and mediocre sales outbreak did get a sequel of sorts called outbreak file 2 which added some new scenarios but really due to the limited technology at the time resident evil outbreak was a good idea in theory but a bad idea in practice kind of like fancying a tall vampire lady by 1989 international genetic technologies had succeeded in their design to genetically recreate the dinosaurs it was an unprecedented accomplishment the pinnacle of 20th century science a work to rank with the achievements of galileo or einstein jurassic park trespasser was originally conceived as a digital sequel to jurassic park 2 the lost world back in that golden age when a jurassic park sequel was something to look forward to rather than punishment from an angry god in trespasser you play as anne the only survivor of a plane crash on isla sauna dino cloning company ingen site b and has to escape from the island using only her wits her guts and her health system which is for some reason a tattoo on her chest gotta stay alive long enough to get that thing lasered off i guess prior to release the developers of trespasser claimed it would revolutionize pc gaming with a perfect seamless world brimming with intelligent dinos unfortunately for them and us the technology of the time meant that this was a lot easier said than done the planned dino ai for example which was supposed to have the dinosaurs cycle through different emotions that would interact with the emotional state of other dinosaurs never worked properly which the developers fixed by just having the dinos be at maximum anger all the time to be fair i'd probably feel the same way if i were in jurassic park trespasser there are still some groundbreaking ideas in the final game it was one of the first games to have an open environment full of trees the first game to use ragdoll physics and the first game to use an ai based behavior and animation system called inverse kinematics it also allowed you to interact with the world in a wholly new way with the use of anne's right arm which you could use to pick up objects wave them around and throw them at things however the waggly arm action too proved to be a problem since it was awkward to control and often ended up looking a bit weird so weird in fact it's been cited as a source of inspiration for both octodad and surgeon simulator and if you've played either of those you suspect this is not what trespasser was aiming for eventually thanks to many compromises the developers managed to get the game into a state where it could be shipped and sold to people for money not many people sadly as thanks to bad reviews and poor word of mouth it only sold about 50 000 copies what a great idea i guess the developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they should they didn't stop to think if they could classic mistake [Music] body harvest released for the n64 in 1998 was an early game from dma design who would go on to become rockstar games the developer behind the grand theft auto series in fact at this point dma had one grand theft auto game under their belt but it was a top-down driving game that brought little resemblance to what the series would become apart from the fact that you spend a lot of time running people over in fact it was body harvest that really planted the seed for what would go on to become the most successful video game series of all time despite having what i think we can all agree is an objectively terrible name in body harvest you play as a genetically engineered soldier who must stop the body harvest of the title which is where aliens show up once every 25 years and nick everyone's dna to do this you have to use a time machine to travel to various eras throughout history that the aliens visited to stop them doing that these eras include greece during world war one java in the 1940s the us in the 1960s siberia in the 1990s and the far-flung future year of 2016. what made body harvest so ahead of its time though was the fact that it was basically the blueprint for modern sandbox games allowing you to go anywhere you wanted hijack vehicles and fire weapons while driving and generally cause mayhem and chaos on a scale previously unseen in video games despite positive reviews body harvest failed to set the world on fire on release and is now mostly forgotten today it didn't help that due to a publisher switch after original publisher nintendo pushed back on the game's violent themes the game was delayed by almost two years making it seem outdated as soon as it hit shop shelves still maybe it's for the best at least it means we're not all enjoying the cowboy themed body harvest redemption just the worst name in history remember me alex whenever the conversation starts about the best survival horror games of all time the same names keep cropping up resident evil silent hill maybe fatal frame if you're a hipster what won't crop up much despite absolutely deserving to is eternal darkness sanity's requiem a 2002 game for the gamecube that remains one of the most unsettling horror games in history you play as alexandra roivas returning to her family's estate to investigate the murder of her grandfather as you explore the old house you also get the chance to play through the past experiences of people connected to the power that killed your grandfather and also get jump scared a lot eternal darkness biggest unique feature was its inclusion of a sanity system looking at horrible things for too long would lower your sanity level and the lower your sanity level the more likely you were to experience hallucinations flashbacks and horrible visions the darkness is coming some of these scares were straightforward but some went further and started messing with the fourth wall including making it look like your pressure save data was being deleted this isn't really happening to put it another way eternal darkness was doing a sanity system a full eight years before the hugely successful amnesia the dark descent and had a character living through the historical past experiences of people connected to her half a decade before the first assassin's creed game and yet a total darkness is all but forgotten now that's not for lack of critical success the game reviewed extremely well it just sold worse than these cold cakes i'm having trouble shifting can't figure it out anyway eternal darkness sold fewer than half a million copies worldwide or maybe it just looks like it sold that few copies because the developers looked at too many scary skeletons i guess we'll never know this can't be [Music] happening surprisingly few people have heard of the 1994 game marathon which is strange considering it's a first person shooter made by bungie the studio responsible for halo and destiny set on the titular colony ship the marathon marathon sees you as a security officer trying to repel an alien invasion by punching shooting and exploding anything that looked vaguely spindly and insect-like compared to other early 90s first-person shooters however marathon was definitely ahead of its time including features that we take for granted now but were real innovations back then these include friendly npcs and an actual story told through terminals a precursor to the audio logs seen in games like bioshock or halo which was a marked departure from the story of games like doom which well here's the entirety of the story of doom added to this marathon included the option to dual-wield weapons and alternate fire modes for some of the guns and add to that the mind-blowing feature of free look which get this lets you look up and down as well as side to side i know [Music] a big part of marathon's appeal was its multiplayer options which were way more advanced than anything else available at the time thanks to a much easier system for networking local players together the inclusion of voice chat more players than seen in other games and a variety of multiplayer modes like team deathmatch and king of the hill marathon was a moderate success at the time and spawned two sequels but the biggest problem it faced was that it was exclusively available for the apple macintosh back in 1994 slap bang in the middle of the period when apple computers were being absolutely crushed by the rise of the pc still marathon did eventually get ported to the pc 17 years later in 2011 so finally pc players got to see what they'd been missing out on of course by that point there were five halo games they could be playing instead so almost no one did still good to have hope you've been enjoying your leisure time kid cause it's time to take that thumb out of your ass hallelujah don't get too excited the other blade runners are all jammed up blade runner is a 1997 game based on the movie of the same name and set in the nightmarish dystopian year of 2019. so close you guys just one year out from the once in a generation global catastrophe developed by westwood studios better known for the command and conquer series this was a beloved point-and-click adventure that perfectly replicated the tech noir tone of one of the most beloved sci-fi movies that doesn't include laser swords the game's plot began shortly after the plot of the movie begins and while actors sean young james hong and joe turkle returned clearly hollywood megastar harrison ford wasn't going to be available so instead you took control of new hero ray mccoy how did eisendoller's moomoo fit in yeah you know company rules only apply to the lesser mortals ford's character decard was active in the game's universe but frustratingly you'd never actually meet him instead you'd get occasional updates as to what he was doing which is a bit like definitely having a harrison ford only wouldn't know him because he goes to another school as i explained to mr deckard earlier i've given the nexus 6 model a past where the game differed from every other point-and-click adventure was that it was never exactly the same twice the game offered up 15 suspects but only two of them were always secretly replicants androids designed to perfectly resemble humans the other 13 suspects replicant status was randomized and the way those characters act in any given playthrough changes depending on whether they are human or not lavishly ambitious and something we're not convinced has ever been attempted on the same scale since initially blade runner enjoyed healthy sales and was critically extremely well regarded but its complicated bespoke engine meant that for years it simply refused to run on more modern pc hardware as a result it's a forgotten gem that very few modern gamers have played or even heard about a more widely compatible version was eventually released by gog.com which will work even on your current pc hardware though it took until 2019 a full 22 years after the original game see 2019 not all that bad [Music] yo you see the city san farrow lots of craziness lots of opportunities lots of choices but only when it matters be a somebody or being nobody on paper apb sounded absolutely brilliant vast open world massively multiplayer more customization options than the work room on drag race [Music] but you know what also sounded good on paper batman vs superman dawn of justice apb was a project headed up by a man called david jones who was one of those minds at dma design behind the original top down grand theft auto this game was designed along similar lines to that series as an open world crime sim the difference being it was a grand theft auto with multiplayer support a gta online if you will you got a name and a street rep thank you somebody now right apb's players were split into two factions enforcers and criminals with one side attempting to complete an objective and nearby players of the opposing faction summon to stop them you're outnumbered and you're gonna need help the game launched in 2010 with an admirable level of quality stable servers and a huge playground full of automatically generated missions to cause chaos in the problem was in a game about shooting and driving neither the shooting nor the driving were actually any fun to do maybe they should have made it a game exclusively about being an awesome tattoo artist game of the year material sadly apb bombed hard much to the chagrin of developer real-time worlds and publisher ea who between them had spent a staggering 100 million dollars on developments which would buy you one grand theft auto iv still if you're in any doubt that apb had the right idea just look at to pick a random example wildly successful online multiplayer game grand theft auto online a title so popular they can sell an imaginary credit card loaded with 8 million imaginary dollars for 100 actual dollars and some people will buy it let's try and come out of this with all of our ears and a bit of santa believe it or not after a brief period where the game was shut down entirely apb returned from the dead as apb reloaded and can still be played today on your xbox you know if the gta online servers go down temporarily or something all that matters is making your mark [Music] so there you go those were seven failed video games that were too ahead of their time did we miss your favorite drop your suggestion in the comments and for more videos like this subscribe to outside xbox even better hit the bell icon on the bottom right of the screen to get a notification when we've got a new video thanks for watching

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 660,806

Keywords: outsidexbox, andy farrant, jane douglas, mike channell

Id: tMUBoD3trBw

Length: 17min 16sec (1036 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/NotACyclopsHonest]

I wish Andy hadn’t recycled the script for Jurassic Park: Trespasser word-for-word. I thought I was going nuts until I realised I’d heard Jane using the exact same phrases in an earlier video.