Biggest jump in Gaming?

FlukeRogi said:
PowerVR was terrible. Came with a racing game if I recall, that really wasn't that great. Bought one on release, and it didn't take me long to switch to 3DFX. Was also the last time I ever bought an issue of PC Format, who rated the PowerVR over 3DFX. Can even remember them saying something like 3DFX felt a bit dodgy because it clicked when you changed res.
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PowerVR was indeed terrible, but only because it took patching from here to hell to get any games to work.

When it did work it was on a par with 3dfx of the era and I remember getting Shadows of the Empire, my first real foray into hardware 3d, and (once I got it working!) being gobsmacked by the Hoth stage.

The Videologic Apocolypse 5d, promised so much but delivered so little :D
 
Half Life without a shadow of a doubt.

I started it in Software render mode, but then got my first 3D card, a 3DFX Voodoo of some kind, half way through. Remember being amazed by bilinear texture filtering! That was sort of irrelavent though, HL was polished, amazingly well programmed and its storyline was told convincingly using only the game engine (important as real life video was used extensively before for this for many story heavy games.)

The original Tomb Raider probably deserves an honourable mention as well, though I wasn't a fan.

But yeah HL pretty much moved gaming on to be an artform from whatever it was before then.
 
Doom was the main one. It woke the world up to 3D gaming. In the space of 24hrs people were all talking about the game, at a time when the internet for the average user was in it's infancy. Everyone was on about the game. Months later the clones began arriving in droves thanks to various new 3D engines and ever powerful CPU's from Intel. Cyrix CPU's at the time just didn't have the floating point power to handle them.

Descent, Terminal Velocity, Dark Forces, Outlaws, Rise of the Triad, and various Apogee titles utilised 3D engines heavily. Doom - and the fact that it was distributed as a Shareware title was it's main success allowing everyone to freely play the game.

Second to Doom, I'd agree with the OP about Unreal via 3Dfx's Glide. The flyby intro along with the music was just awesome back in that day. The engine was unmatachable in terms of features - both audio and visual. Prior to these games the PC platform had nothing but platformers and general rubbish with midi samples.
 
For me, in my small gaming time it would have been the jump from the graphics from fps's like bf2 and bf2142 then a big jump imo to cod4, from being a bf2 and 2142 nerd then seeing and playing cod4 it blew me away.
 
Original Quake when openGL was released or the release of Q2 and or Half Life. Amazing although at the time of Half Life I had a poo PC so had to wait to see it at my mates house who I believe had bought a Geforce2 at the time or something similar.

Having said that, most recently for me the most impressive game graphics on my PC has to be from Resident Evil 5. Looks absolutley mint. Hard pressed to think of a game that has looked that good. In my eyes at least.


Edit:- Jesus christ to those mentioning PowerVR cards, I ended up with one after mentioning graphics card to my parents. Wish they wuold have let me choose a Voodoo instead at the time :S
 
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A lot of what has been mentioned here is moments in games - not defining, changing game moments.

I mean when I first played Asherons Call on a 56k modem and then realising that all these people running around me were actually 'real' people that was a defining moment in gaming. It wasn't the graphics, the sound, it was a moment that meant, what I thought about gaming, was changed.

People walking around, talking, interacting, fighting, banding together, helping each other on quests, there has been nothing like that first experience since.

I remember, years ago, playing Dungeon Master, and remember the difference that made to gaming. You had 4 people to look after all who could do different stuff - the game was riddled with puzzles. It's just defining moments like that, that keep me looking optomistic to the future of games.



M.
 
Ultima Online - pretty much the birth of MMOs as we know them today, and yet no one has managed to replicate, or even come close to matching it's pure awesomeness!

Half-life - raised the bar in so many ways, from it's graphics, sound and multiplayer goodness, to the story and depth.

Not so much a jump in actual gaming, but still a big one out there I thnk: Steam - when it became possible to buy and download games within a few hours (depending on your net)

m4cc45 said:
I mean when I first played Asherons Call on a 56k modem and then realising that all these people running around me were actually 'real' people that was a defining moment in gaming. It wasn't the graphics, the sound, it was a moment that meant, what I thought about gaming, was changed.

People walking around, talking, interacting, fighting, banding together, helping each other on quests, there has been nothing like that first experience since.
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Yeah, this is pretty much what I mean about UO. When you end up outside the bank for the first time, and you realise that you're in a living breathing world, with it's own heros and villains, every person you interact with is a real person sitting on the other side of the world, it makes you stop for a second and think "wow", I remember when PC game or PC zone (I don't remember which) had a little news column every issue about what was happening on their UO server! These days everyone takes multiplayer games for granted, so I guess they don't get that same buzz =(
 
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When I first bought a pc, it was EF2000 and Janes' ATF - first time I played with textured 3d games and also ATF for it's sheer number of aircraft that were flyable. It was also my first time landing on a carrier too.
 
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