9 Games That Were Ahead of Their Time

5. Clock Tower

Clock Tower was a point and click horror title first released in 1995. The unique angle that Clock Tower took was that you had to use your wit and nerves to survive being caught by Scissorman: a deranged, shears wielding maniac who will happy prune you of your vital organs.

Clock Tower was heavily inspired by the works of Dario Argento and has a haunting atmosphere about it. The game hasn’t aged very at all, searching for items, backtracking and just getting around the mansion is difficult, despite all this however Clock Tower is still worth playing for its atmosphere and its influence on modern horror games. A spiritual successor called NightCry was released in 2016.

 

6. Battle Arena Toshinden

Battle Arena Toshinden was the original Playstation fighting game darling. Sony pushed Toshinden as their own Virtua Fighter beater which was at the time was the king of the 3D fighting game and sitting proud on the Sega Saturn.

Sadly for Toshinden, the Playstation quickly became the go to console for fighting games with Tekken, Street Fighter Alpha and Marvel vs Capcom all appearing on the console during its life and sadly, Toshinden was seemingly pushed to the wayside. But it really shouldn’t be. I’ll be the first to admit that in 2016 Toshinden isn’t the best fighting game you’ll play, but it had a minor feature which many other PS1 fighters didn’t have, the ability to move around the 3D space. Most games appeared 3D, but the fighting took place on a 2D plane, a-la Tekken and Street Fighter EX, while Toshinden allowed you to dodge attacks sideways or move around your opponent to gain yourself a sneaky ring out, especially if you were losing.

 

7. Driver 2

Driver was such a lovely little game, putting you in the shoes of undercover cop John Tanner which in turn is put into the car of John Tanner and saw you tearing around various cities in what felt like a Bullitt simulator.

Driver 2 took the series to its next logical conclusion and gave you the ability to step out of your car and do your business on foot. Doesn’t sound like a major deal, but on the PS1 it was a massive deal. The on foot sections weren’t smooth and actually made things pretty awkward at times as Tanner’s collision detection could be rather ropey, but it’s important to remember that it wouldn’t be until a couple of years later and an upgrade to the Playstation 2 before we’d be able to escape the confines of the car again in GTA 3.

 

8. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines had so much potential. Created by Troika Games, who were the first external team to use Valve’s Source engine. The engine was picked due to the facial expressions possible on characters, important for bring the World of Darkness universe to life.

Unfortunately the engine wasn’t finished so Troika had to write their own code to make Bloodlines, but this code worked poorly with Source. Bloodlines was behind schedule so Activision gave the development team a deadline to finish Bloodlines and suddenly released it early to hit the market before Christmas 2004. The game landed smack bang in the middle of the likes of Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Halo 2. Bloodlines was horribly unfinished and with most of the development team being let go overnight, it would remain that way.

However it reviewed very well for a broken game, the character models and voice acting was superb and the gothic/urban/FPS/RPG all worked well together. Ten years of fan patches later and Bloodlines is well worth a look.

 

9. Syndicate

The year is 2096. It’s raining. The neon lights from the billboards affixed to buildings belonging to various corporations shower their neon light onto the sidewalk, mixing their colour with the slick wetness of the downpour. Looking left at my fellow agents numbers 1,3 and 4, our coats buttoned up to our necks.

We watched the innocents walking through the streets sedated to the real world around them, chips in their necks feeding them all the ignorance they need. Sudden I caught sight of a shadow of someone approaching. They pull a gun. 3 and 4 both attempt to pull their own, 3 takes a hit direct to the head and 4 is clasping his pistol when he took a round full force in the chest. 1 fires off a shot before taking a shot to the thigh, he drops, he’ll bleed out soon. I run, sole survivor of the group, pull my persuadertron, zapping any civilians I can, turning them to my cause. I’ve lost them. We loop back around and my new associates grab the weapons of my fallen colleagues. We get the drop on the killers in an alley, we take them from behind, my new friends are just cannon fodder, in a few seconds it’s over. They’re dead. I’ve won.

That’s what it felt like playing Syndicate back in the day. A Blade Runner-esque city and your squad of badasses. You versus the world. Few games of this style have ever drawn me into the world quite like the original Syndicate. Its sequel Syndicate Wars is also well worth looking into and in 2015 a spiritual sequel called Satellite Reign was released on PC.