Haha I loved when they did stuff like mess with your TVs volume bar or pretend to turn the TV off just to mess with you. Agreed, super unique.

Starfield has a time travel mission like that actually haha. You can’t travel in real time though you travel at set points. And it’s more like traveling to alternate realities. Also Dishonored 2 has some really creative missions that have a similar vibe.

Darksiders 2 literally copied the portal gun but it’s way more limited.

Rocket League basically copied soccer haha. But I get what you mean, combining a sport with a car game.

Rest in peace Volition

LOL. My parents would have killed me if I had them get random death threats to the phone line without a disclaimer. I was still living at home the first couple years of college. The game was super immersive. I liked the story too. They made that whole fake game company that supposedly made the game and then had them collapse and be behind the conspiracy. Super cool. Back when EA stood for innovation instead of destroying smaller companies that it acquires.

It was pretty nuts. I didn’t have a blackberry so I couldn’t use the blackberry feature. And our printer worked as a fax machine but we didn’t have a dedicated phone line for it cause it was also the dial up modem line haha. So I got kind of a watered down version of the game because I couldn’t use all of the features.

Agreed, that was so dope. It’s so stylized though that it would be hard to a, have a good project to do it in, and b, not feel like a rip off. Maybe an indie title could pull it off.

The game I’d kick this off with is an EA game called Majestic from 2001. I remember playing this when I first started college and the internet was young and it blew my mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game)

This game was like being wrapped up in a real life conspiracy. You would browse obscure web pages, get faxes (which believe it or not was still a thing back then, haha), get phone calls, early blackberry texts, emails, and even a very rudimentary ai chat system over AIM. All while trying to uncover an online conspiracy.

I remember being super excited for each new episode and was really bummed when it got discontinued a year later. I seem to remember the writing wasn’t all that great and the acting was old school FMV bad, but IMO that added to the charm.

I feel like this game concept was way ahead of its time. Can you imagine a similar thing using AI tech from 2023? That feels like it would have so much potential.