As a programmer, what game is the most impressive youve seen?

#61 Everquest
A giant diverse world that in my opinion perfected questing, grouping, raiding, tradeskills, fighting, levelling and all other aspects of mmorpgs and rpg's. The realism and variations of the different zones and continents in EQ is awesome. The atmosphere of the different areas in the game really pull ya in and make ya feel like your there.

#62 Dark and light.

25,000km square seamless world...no loading screens.

Indoor and out door enviroments.

50,000 connections at once...

one "world" (cluser server backend)

/drool





Comparison list of some worlds to get a sense of the scale.

Total area (square kilometers):
Dark and Light - 40,000
SWG (all worlds) - 2025
Horizons - 1024
WoW - 950
AC1 - 576
EQ1 - 144
UO - 49

How many times each world fits into Dark and Light:

Dark and Light - 1
SWG (all worlds) - 20
Horizons - 39
WoW - 42
AC1 - 69
EQ1 - 278
UO - 816

What % of Dark and Light does each world make up:

Dark and Light - 100 %
SWG (all worlds) - 5 %
Horizons - 2.6 %
WoW - 2.4 %
AC1 - 1.4 %
EQ1 - 0.4 %
UO - 0.1 %

#63 I would say the AI in FEAR, until I read that it was mostly the work of level designers and scripts, heh. Great example of how level design can make the AI 'smarter' though.

and of course Tribes (1) due to the large outdoor areas + amazing netcode.

#64 Id Software and John Carmack - hot programming! They obviously rocked 3D gaming and the entire FPS genre but also networking, shareware, open sourcing, openGL ... a leader many are only trying to follow!

Torque - don't meant to sound like a brown tongue crawler but I'm impressed by it. Doesn't need the world's hottest hardware but it delivers!

Naughty Dog - wrote their own LISP/Scheme compiler "GOAL" for PS2 then put together over a million lines of code for each Jax and Daxter game.

I really enjoyed playing Halo for the overall game play experience, story, characters, music ... but I can't see any ground breaking programming in there, did I miss something?

Tools like 3d Studio Max, Maya, Blender, Flash are also mighty impressive (scary) programming wise.

Cheers
-Alex

#65 I'd have to say the Quake engines, pioneering in every way.
Gameplay-wise, definately Warren Spectors games. SShock, Deus Ex, Ultima Underworld, Theif trilogy. Something good doesn't need to have the latest technology, but shouldn't have to rely on Creative Tricks to get working right.
Morrowind was good, open and fun, you could sit down, find a cave and kill Ancestoral Ghosts at any time without buggering through Quests or Missions. GTA is good, but it gets a bit overkill after a while.
Postal 2 is just fun to release that pressure valve!

#66 I wouldn't pick a game, I'd pick an engine. The RE engine is amazing and in the time they created it is quite a feat. The visual warping and shadow effects are very nice and for a next gen engine they were able to keep costs to a min... too bad Unreal bought them.

#67 Cavedog - Total Annihilation :)

#68

Quote:too bad Unreal bought them.

Actually, Epic is the company, Unreal is the game. I don't see why its bad that Epic bought RE, it's the way the industry moves, and the only programmer was the type of guy Epic were looking for in an engine programmer. It wasn't "Epic turning into M$ eliminating competitor" it was "Hey, this programmers AMAZING! He's just the guy we've been looking for, lets contact him and see if he's interested in working for us"

#69 Yeah - I know it's Epic Games, Unreal is there main title and everyone knows them as Unreal - I mean too bad because now the engine is no longer being sold and it was MUCH cheaper then Unreal 3 Engine. I just wonder what indie developers could have done with it. Pandora Studios bought the engine with the money made from the Make Something Unreal contest, there game (free) is looking great. Can't wait till it's release.