The two or three games I wish that should have made a bigger impact are:
a) Mirrors Edge
I still feel like we never got what the very first trailer promised. Just parkour. But they had to add some combat in the first one, and then doubled down on that in Catalyst, even added open world I never like and made the story into some implausible big rebellion. Less janky, but further away from what I initially dreamt of. Ghostrunner or Titanfall or Dying Light or Sands of Time (or coming Perfect Dark) or whatever isn't that either. So I am still waiting.
b) Metroid Prime
Backtracking done right, without feeling clueless of what is when possible now or only later, going aimlessly back and dorth. I feel like Bioshock and Dead Space would both have benefitted if they had tried to be like that.
Also being really solo somewhere is underused in games. Returnal does that too- or the kinda not really but somewhat similar Farpoint-, but its rogue shit is something I probably can't like ever.
c) Brütal Legend
People seemed to not get it, not at all. Sure, the demo was different, but also not. It kinda was ahead of its time with having MOBA style gameplay mixed with hack and slash. I don't even like metal, most of the soundtrack's songs annoy me after hearing them a third time, but I think most other people enjoy metal quite a bit and the soundtrack is objectively insanely packed. Most seemed to not be able to wrap their heads around the gameplay though. I wish more game would mix genres in new ways.
Also Remember Me which felt like an unpolished diamond, pretty much everything felt alright to good, nevertheless one of the best almost done right games in the PS360 era.
Maybe as a second honorable mention Alone in the Dark Inferno Edition, which kinda did what I think would be nice. GEt rid of true gaming in the game in some way. Not really QTE , not at all, but in it allowing to skip entire scenes, just act like a game is a videotape and fast forward whenever you like:
So in general I wish more QTE games/modes would exist. Even more than Asura's wrath actually is! ie the knife fight of RE4, some events of GoW etc but for entire games. For all sorts of things. Sports and racing classics, fighting games, action and strategy games etc. change the real outcome into making your team win, the underdog surprise even more, or let the hero die early like in Quantic Dream games, annihilate armies by ordering it, without micro manage it with thousands of clicks. As a focused no BS game or game mode, just interactive, barely game, for non gamers and gamers with time constraints. Still a notch above watching let's plays, while certainly less effort than trudging through often way too cluttered and huge shit we more and more get, with neverending seasons and bascially the credits goalpost moved. An option for the unsuccessful 10h game. Also offering experiences that could be done as a companion thing with TV or netflix stuff. Do alternate takes which are only accessible through the game, were some characters face a whole different fade if you choose and want to see it. Hard for high budget stuff in the near future, but making it for telenovelas and other rather cheap stuff, could work fine. 3D scanning, AI writing, AI actors might enable all sorts of stuff, soonish.
