A simple question, out of all the games you've played in your life, which one do you consider to be the most creative?
A simple question, out of all the games you've played in your life, which one do you consider to be the most creative?
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
Probably Undertale. From the unique art style to every single enemy being completely one of a kind and the story just playing with you in ways you don't expect, it's pretty creative from start to finish.
I mean, its old hat by now, but when I stop to think about Pokemon as a concept, I'm still astounded by it. Capturing monsters in RPGs might not've been anything new at that point, but raising them to evolve, trading them and battling with friends? Plus Second Gen adding a real time Day/Night Cycle the region from the previous game, AND an EX dungeon with the previous protagonist as a secret boss? God that's so cool!
I'll admit, I fell of the Pokemon Hype Train a decade ago, but I still think the franchise is really creative.
Returners Represent!
Aesthetically/musically: Journey
Story: Chrono Trigger/Cross
If I put RPG's aside, then Rocket League (or the original Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle-Cars).
Str8 Pimpin'
Recently... The Last Guardian
Magic: the Gathering would be my pick. It's coming up to 25 years of creating different worlds and stories.
Pokémon and Undertale are good calls!
Digimon World
It mixes pet raising with having to go around recruiting people for the city. And while that's going on, you're getting tidbits about what happened in the past. And everybody has there own schedule and some events only happen on certain days at certain times. And did I mention this is a PSOne game? Also they grow meat in the ground.
I don't think I can really call any game I've played the absolute most creative, they're creative in different ways (story, music, art style, gameplay, etc)
But I'll give a nod to Ar Tonelico. On the story/music side of things, they created a functional language for it (aka no random gibberish), then made songs in that language, all of which fits into the game very naturally, and have a pretty unique style to them too.
On the gameplay side, it's mostly pretty standard RPG-ish but with the unique twist of your front-liners protecting the songstress in your party who's singing to cast magic, with successful attack/defence empowering the magic. In the third game they went a step further and made the battle music change depending on the songstress/song magic too, along with a visualization of the music and a timing mechanic to the battle system (attack just as the visualization peaks, gain more song power).
It also mixes genres a bit, a fair chunk of time is spent in the soulspace of songstresses, where the game switches to a Visual Novel presentation including choices that may or may not throw you back out to the real world.
It's hard for me to pinpoint any singular games as most creative since a lot of games do pretty creative stuff within different genres. I liked the creative 4th wall breaking stuff in Metal Gear Solid for example, such as how it used the controllers vibration to make it seem like Psycho Mantis moved your controller with his mind. That blew my mind as a kid.
I've also been playing a lot of splatoon 2 lately, and I think it's a pretty creative way of blending the more cartoony and colorful aesthetic of Nintendo and mix it with online shooters. I feel like it's one of the most creative games of that genre despite its shortcomings.
There is also a lot of creativity in the indie side of things that I don't have much experience in. I feel like undertale would be on this list for me. Probably hotline Miami too based on watching other people play.
I think I will say Ico. It was such a well-crafted experience that was so unlike anything else I had played up to that point that it kind of blew my mind. Simplicity made beautiful.