I've been dipping back into the Mafia remake that was released in 2020 just because I never finished it and I wanted something story driven and relaxing to play. A lot of people didn't like it but I think it's a perfectly serviceable story game, with some really nice aesthetics and music. Sure the driving and shooting aren't the best, and there are a lot of kind of boring sequences where you're just walking around or driving through the city to some destination (the open world has basically nothing to do in it) but some of the shootouts can be tense and satisfying (others are frustrating) and the cut scenes and performances are above average. It's a perfect example of the problem that not enough people want a "fine" single player experience to justify the cost of production. There's just too much out there to play, and paying full price or close for a solid 7.5 action adventure game seems like a tough ask.
But while I was playing and enjoying Mafia I couldn't help but think of another game. L.A. Noire. The two games have somewhat similar themes of crime in California towards the middle of the 20th century (though Mafia is based in San Francisco during the depression and L.A. Noire is in...L.A. and is a post-war game) and both feature somewhat empty cities where you drive around and listen to old timey radio and talk to your companions. Other than that they're very different, with Mafia being a driving and shooting game and L.A. Noire being about investigations. But L.A. Noire left such a strong impression that it's impossible to play any game in that time period and not think of it. It's a singular, fantastic, game that there's nothing really like almost 15 years later. The dialog system, the intricacy of the environments, the way it blended so many elements from adventure game sleuthing to fistfights.
It was so expensive and delayed that despite being a hit it closed down the studio that made it, but it still left an indelible impression, and remains meme fodder all these years later.
There are other benchmark games for me too. I can't play an open world arcade driving game without thinking of Forza Horizon. That series just defines the genre for me and everything else operates in its shadows. Like a lot of people I compare every superhero game to the Arkham series. Every 3D platformer reminds me to some degree of Mario Galaxy and its varied delights.
I'm not talking about foundational games that defined a genre here, the way that every FPS game reminds old people like me of Doom, or how Metroidvanias always raise the specter of Symphony of the Night, but rather high watermarks in some genre or subgenre that haven't been surpassed yet. I also think that for a game to be a benchmark it needs to have some age on it. Sure, every 2D platformer will be compared to Super Mario Wonder for now, but that game is new and was fantastic so there's a lot of recency bias there. I think probably 5 or 10 years have to pass to give other games the chance to learn the lessons of the benchmark but fail to meet them.
What are some of your benchmark games in various genres or aspects of implementation?
Log in to comment