So if YOU could make a video game ANY video game... (RAR)

[Zaune]

You need to be hunted down with torches and pitchforks for the good of all mankind, do you know that?

I mean, FATAL: The Videogame? Really?

[Jub]

Zaune, I'm not sure if I should kill you or thank you for linking to that review of FATAL. The review was great, but the world would be a better place if less people absolutely no one knew about this 'game' rape/piss/do vile thing simulator.

EDIT: I think reading excerpts of that thing's rules actually caused my English skills to decrease by a noticeable degree.

[InsaneTD]

Wow.... any one who manages to read that review in full is made of sterner stuff then me...

[Purple]

You need to be hunted down with torches and pitchforks for the good of all mankind, do you know that?

I mean, FATAL: The Videogame? Really?

Well sure, the game is not for everyone tastes. But it does have a fan base. And say what you want. But underneath the pointless lechery is an actually nicely well thought out simulation. Especially for a computer game which can do all the complex and tedious math for you. So even if you aren't like me and thus don't like all the supporting content you can still have a nice simulator.

This said, I wonder how many of the people who propagate the myth of FATAL have ever actually read the PDF like I have.

[Jub]

You need to be hunted down with torches and pitchforks for the good of all mankind, do you know that?

I mean, FATAL: The Videogame? Really?

Well sure, the game is not for everyone tastes. But it does have a fan base. And say what you want. But underneath the pointless lechery is an actually nicely well thought out simulation. Especially for a computer game which can do all the complex and tedious math for you. So even if you aren't like me and thus don't like all the supporting content you can still have a nice simulator.

This said, I wonder how many of the people who propagate the myth of FATAL have ever actually read the PDF like I have.

Why would you bother to run FATAL under the hood when, in this scenario, you could simply hire a dream team to make a custom system for your game?

I mean, it's a pretty bad simulation from what little of read of the poorly edited mess. One easy example is that the stats are random and hardly linked to each other enough to matter, or how about the fact that skills are also random and don't care for education background or intellect? How about the fact that they have 'retard strength' as an actual thing? Or the fact that the critical hit system makes no sense in the way that you can, somehow, hit internal organs with an axe, without damaging anything else around them?

The fact of the matter is, it's actually not that good of a sim and I'd bet you could find a game that does what FATAL tries to do much better.

Plus, any RPG player worth his salt would see that one of the lead creative designers of the game can be quoted as saying, 'The best part is that I would base it all off FATAL' and run the other direction. You would literally only sell to those that don't know about FATAL or those that will wonder how much detail you put into your rape simulator. If you actually ran FATAL, as written in the source material, your game would be more offensive than Rapelay.

Congratulations for showing us what a sick fuck you are Purple.

[Purple]

Why would you bother to run FATAL under the hood when, in this scenario, you could simply hire a dream team to make a custom system for your game?

Notice the part where I said: "even if you aren't like me and thus don't like all the supporting content you can still have a nice simulator."

Emphasis mine. I actually like the supporting content (to a limited extent, just because something is in the game as an option does not mean you have to play it out all the time) that comes with the system. But fundamentally you can strip it all away if you don't like it and play. It's kind of like how you can play Dwarf Fortress without ever making a dwarven daycare center, kitten farms, lava sacrifices to AMOK, glass chutes to desensitize your dwarves etc. But there are people who do. And who like it.

I mean, it's a pretty bad simulation from what little of read of the poorly edited mess. One easy example is that the stats are random and hardly linked to each other enough to matter, or how about the fact that skills are also random and don't care for education background or intellect? How about the fact that they have 'retard strength' as an actual thing? Or the fact that the critical hit system makes no sense in the way that you can, somehow, hit internal organs with an axe, without damaging anything else around them?

I find that when I say "good" simulator I mean fun, not realistic. There is something inherently entertaining about breaking someones spleen through his armor with your *spider silk sock*. (If you don't get the reference don't worry. It's a Dwarf Fortress thing)

As for retard strength and the like I quite adore those things actually. I mean hell, with all the new games constantly being about equality where basically the only thing that matters are the stats I actually want an unequal, baby eating, retard strength world to play in. That's why I play Dwarf Fortress where a mother can use her baby as a shield, I feed my fortress entirely with kitten farms and constantly find new ways to murder elves. And why I preferred to start as a mage in Dragon Age or a female in Mount and Blade. It's just more satisfying when the world feels more realistic and difficult overall.

Plus, any RPG player worth his salt would see that one of the lead creative designers of the game can be quoted as saying, 'The best part is that I would base it all off FATAL' and run the other direction. You would literally only sell to those that don't know about FATAL or those that will wonder how much detail you put into your rape simulator. If you actually ran FATAL, as written in the source material, your game would be more offensive than Rapelay.

Rapelay is that Japanese rape-porn game right? I am not a particular fan of that sort of stuff to say the least but I don't really see anything offensive about such things if they don't really hurt anyone.

But seriously, some times the best way to look at all the content in FATAL is as a monstrous parody of the middle ages and roll with it that way.

[Purple]

Missed the edit window. I'd just like to add one thing. The charm of FATAL to me is mostly that it's so offensively over the top that you can't physically take it seriously unless something is deeply wrong with you. And thus it ends up just being funny. And funny is good.

Plus, the question was what kind of game I'd want to make. Not what kind of game I'd want to sell to people.

[TheFeniX]

FATAL? Oh man, people still know about that? I read a fair chunk of the rule-set way back for reasons I can't begin to comprehend. It's not really that the writers had no understanding of pretty much anything or that they thought bloating up a game with tons of rules rather than just solving it with simple roll checks was a good idea, it's that many of the rules just didn't make any sense.

None of that would have mattered, but they kept going on and on about the "realism" of the system, even though it's easy to see how broken it is like 10 pages in.

I still think it was an elaborate troll back before that was a thing. Even if you cared to play that kind of a game, it's not even viable without ignoring large swaths of the rule-set. Has anyone ever met, or even heard of, someone who has played the "game?" It's like HoL if HoL tried to take itself seriously, at all. Which it doesn't because that would be fucking stupid. It's what you bother with when you're not in the mood for RPing and just want to laugh your ass off at the insanity. But FATAL doesn't even have that, because there's this creepy undercurrent that would keep me from even considering it for a blow-off night even if the rules didn't make it unplayable.

[Zaune]

Missed the edit window. I'd just like to add one thing. The charm of FATAL to me is mostly that it's so offensively over the top that you can't physically take it seriously unless something is deeply wrong with you.

It becomes a lot less funny when you or someone you're close to has been a victim of rape or indecent assault.

And that is going to be my last word on the subject because I don't like talking about it even if the details were any of this forum's business, which they aren't.

[Civil War Man]

I'd create a game based on the Incredible Hulk. It'd have big, non-linear levels based on real-life cities. The plot is that you are on the run from General Ross's forces, and the overall goal of each city is to lose your pursuers. Gameplay would switch between Banner and the Hulk. As Banner, it's a stealth game, sneaking around to avoid getting noticed (hiding in crowds would be effective, but staying in the crowd too long would raise your stress and risk an incident). Stress gets too high, and you turn into the Hulk. As Hulk, it's a beat-em-up with disaster porn levels of destruction physics. So you can lose your pursuers by avoiding them, or by beating them into a bloody smear. Difficulty ramps up by the pursuit becoming more relentless over time. There will be the occasional appearance by superpowered enemies, recruited by Ross to either bait Banner into coming out of hiding or subdue the Hulk if he's on a rampage. Rack up too high a body count, and even the superheroes start joining in to bring you down, up to and including the full Planet Hulk "exiled from the planet" treatment. Consistently take down the supervillains while limiting the damage, however, and those superheroes may even try to help you. The idea is to not necessarily try to avoid ever changing into the Hulk, but to trigger the change at the right moments.

The idea's sort of on similar lines as Ultimate Destruction, but I think it would be interesting if there was a game that could seamlessly weave stealth in between the rampages.

[InsaneTD]

That does sound interesting and I think if done well, could be a lot of fun.

[StarSword]

I'd create a game based on the Incredible Hulk. It'd have big, non-linear levels based on real-life cities. The plot is that you are on the run from General Ross's forces, and the overall goal of each city is to lose your pursuers. Gameplay would switch between Banner and the Hulk. As Banner, it's a stealth game, sneaking around to avoid getting noticed (hiding in crowds would be effective, but staying in the crowd too long would raise your stress and risk an incident). Stress gets too high, and you turn into the Hulk. As Hulk, it's a beat-em-up with disaster porn levels of destruction physics. So you can lose your pursuers by avoiding them, or by beating them into a bloody smear. Difficulty ramps up by the pursuit becoming more relentless over time. There will be the occasional appearance by superpowered enemies, recruited by Ross to either bait Banner into coming out of hiding or subdue the Hulk if he's on a rampage. Rack up too high a body count, and even the superheroes start joining in to bring you down, up to and including the full Planet Hulk "exiled from the planet" treatment. Consistently take down the supervillains while limiting the damage, however, and those superheroes may even try to help you. The idea is to not necessarily try to avoid ever changing into the Hulk, but to trigger the change at the right moments.

The idea's sort of on similar lines as Ultimate Destruction, but I think it would be interesting if there was a game that could seamlessly weave stealth in between the rampages.

So, kind of like Prototype but with the Hulk?

[TheFeniX]

Which is hilarious considering Prototype is basically Hulk UD reskinned.

[Oskuro]

I've thought a lot about a similar concept... A sandbox city game (read: GTA clone) where you are some sort of super-powered monster, and everything is destructible.

Then I realized I was fantasizing about a modern sandbox version of Rampage.

[Crossroads Inc.]

So going back to thinking about using this for truly EPIC video games…

Remember SPORE?
Remember the PROMISE of it? The dreams we believed?
A game from the primordial Sea to the vastness of Space that was to span the test of time?
And then, the heartbreak and utter, utter disappointment…

SPORE Was at it's core supposed to be three big games.
Dawn of time to sapience,
"Civilization" and city phase,
And then "Space" phase, which was supposed to be the "Real game" phase.
Well what we got was basically a couple of boring "Mini games" and then a really REALLY broken "main game"

So, what if we gave the game the love, care, and EPIC-ness it deserved…
Lets start off by making the three game phase, THREE GAMES.
Game one:
EPOC: The Dawn of Time.
Basically similar to spore, Start off as a Microbe and evolve to Sapience and into the stone age.
But make the whole thing much MUCH more in-depth.
Have an "Ocean phase" Where you go from Microbe, to multi cell organism, to fish, and THEN to land.
Being able to put more specific attributes into your creature, able to breed with others for mutation and species changers.
Have a much larger "World" Not just walking around, but you can zoom out to different continents, send your creature to other places to see it evolve differently or gain better attributes.
A "pre-cave man" phase just before Sapience (the end of the first game) which would decide a lot of your 'culture' burial rights, primitive art, etc.

EPOC2: The Rise of Civilization
Basically this would be "Civilization" to a certain extent.
Instead of other historical races however, there would be randomly generated other versions of your species. Instead of the static "Money, Religion, Military" groups in SPORE there would be Nations with procedurally generated cultures and religions and such based upon dozens of individual aspects from existing historical nations, governments and cultures.
Using a system similar to Civ's "Policies" You would slowly shape and mold your own civilizations cultural, religious and government polices.
You can "Win" through the normal, either conquer everyone. Through being elected "World Leader" or by building the first Interstellar Spaceship.
On the "Spaceship phase" unlike Civ, where building the ship is like building any other Wonder…

There will be a Dedicated "Space Race" phase, where you build primitive spaceships units, and go from primitive Mercury rockets, through Apollo like capsules, and then Research more advanced aspects of spaceflight until you are able to construct a ship that can carry people to colonize another planet in your system.
Unlike SPORE and Civ, how you design the ship will matter in how successful it is. Also what things you have to build the ship will be guilder by the polices you have adopted over the course of the game. Weather it will be more militaristic, more exploration, etc.
Once you HAVE colonized another planet…

EPOC3: The Final Frontier.
The "Real" game that everyone wanted.
Basically a X4 Master of Orion style space civilization game.
This game would have its own phases.
"System Stage"
"Steller Stage"
"Sector Stage"
"Galactic Stage"

Each stage unlocks new new tech and new ships and new policies.
(This was something we discussed in another three you can check out HERE

So THREE Separate games.
Each one of these you are able to "Upload" your creature from the previous game (or make a brand new one if you want to start from scratch)
All of the various choices and decisions you make will actually matter at the end. How you played, how you evolved and what sort of government or culture you adopt will in time make a difference as you expand out into the stars!

How does that strike ya?

[InsaneTD]

Like I said in that thread, sounds awesome and would love to play it. Why are we not funding this?

[Simon_Jester]

The biggest problem I perceive is in making a game this elaborate balanced and interesting on multiple levels. You need there to be many viable ways to develop your species so that it can survive, thrive and function in the 'civilized' and 'space' phases. Strategies that are workable at one stage should be supportable by gameplay decisions in the others. If intelligent carnivores or hive-mind insects are practical IN SPAAACE, then they need to be able to build a planetary civilization to get into space, and they need to be capable of evolutionary success prior to the rise of civilization.

Conversely, if it turns out that hairless monkeys always nuke and pollute themselves to death in the late Civilization Epoch, then it's going to severely disappoint people who coaxed them up from slime and through the Stone, Iron, and Steam Ages to get there.

This is especially tricky if the game is released in phases. Imagine that creating a species of big tiger-people, which looks like a great and popular way to do well in the 'evolution' phase, but then it turns out that big tiger-people suck in the later phases of the game. A lot of customers will be disappointed, reviews will be poor because one of your big draws is "use your first-stage creatures in your second-stage game!" Without that, you basically just have another Civ clone, only with a MOO II-style race customizer tacked on... and one which applies to everyone in your game.

I suspect that worries about this sort of problem may have helped to make Spore less of an impressive game than it might have been...

[Crossroads Inc.]

Well that IS The big question isn't?
How do choices in the Primordial Soup give you advantages as you are Conquering the Galaxy?

My current thought on it goes along this...
Most Space Civ games have different races with different special things. Some have Bonus to research, or production, or to any number of different qualities.
Most of these games have a "Customize Race" function that lets you pick and choose.
Say, take 4 points out of "Spying" to put into "Faster growth" or something.
My thinking is that there would be certain bonuses that you could ONLY get from going through certain stages in the Animal and Civ games. Likewise you would be able to acquire far more "Points" for your abilities.
Someone making a customized race in the Space game may have, say 200 points to customize with.
But if you played from Animal to Civ to Space, your race has ended up with say 300 points, and maybe some ability or two that you can't get otherwise.
That would certainly spur you on to play all the games.

As far as making something that "Works" in each different stage.. Well things Evolve.
Your Big Tiger people that worked so good in the Evolution phase, well in the Civ phase their "Brains" evolve. Maybe they aren't as smart as another species you are fighting against, but they do good in war, you can conquer and survive, and then later on go through a stage of mental growth where they can change in ways that will make them eventually better in SPAACE.

I THINK that could work...

[Starglider]

FATAL is just utterly awful in every way and should not ever be used for anything. Certainly it is worse than useless as a starting point for a computer game engine.

While it is tempting to specify some billion-dollar uber-project combining the gameplay of Mass Effect, Just Case, GTA and Freelancer (etc etc), the reality is that something so wildly ambitious would be a development nightmare that would probably produce a broken incoherent mess if not collapse under is own weight. Roping in numerous industry greats is likely to cause an ego duelling slapfight more than joint brilliance.

As such I would stick with making a really good Ace Combat game. It would have four eras - early cold war, late cold war, contemporary and futuristic (AC3 style spaceplanes etc). Each era would have 20ish missions, with branching story and bonus stages taking the total to 100ish. Gameplay would be AC classic (4/5/0/6 no DFM bullshit) with a touch more realism than usual in the flight model (decent altitude, slightly longer ranges). You would select characters for your squadron from a roster, RPG style, and they would have mild special abilities. Instead of a plane with 100 missiles you would have four planes with 30 missiles each and the ability to switch at any time (as I did in my game). Gunship, bomber, recon and helicopter sequences would be in but less annoying because you could switch in/out of those aircraft at any time. Characters would act mostly professional AC4 style not whiny moralising pacifists, but there would be some AC5 style geopoltical intrigue tying together the wars you fight in. World would be a rebooted strangereal, each time you move forward an era the rookie characters from the current era would become the senior pilots, and the previous senior pilots would become grizzled mentors / support staff. The first era would start gritty realistic and more fanciful stuff would come in towards the end. AC Zero style characterisation of enemy aces and squadrons would definitely be in, but the 'ace style' stuff toned down. All the coolest Ace Combat superweapons would of course be back in reimagined form, and plenty of references although not shoehorned in. Battles would be big and actually simulated, so that player actions affect the flow of units on the ground, and not just in a checkpointed way. Ally support would be back but more organic, e.g. free up a task group and its SAMs become free to start shooting at enemies chasing you, so later you can lure enemy squadrons into the area and have them shot down for you. Every real-world plane you could reasonably want would be in, including prototypes, flyable bombers and helicopters, with AC5 style unlocking of advanced versions plus AC-X style customisation (although a little more realistic). A full set of silly superplanes will be available for New Game+ with sufficiently hard Ace difficulty to give the an in-game purpose. Since the budget is infinite there might as well be the ability to wander around Sand Island / the Kestrel carrier / your hijacked Aigaion flying fortress / etc between missions, look in the hangers and talk to characters Mass Effect style. That stuff can be farmed off to a separate dev team, allows some characterisation without unrealistically forcing it into mission dialog (or forcing players to do it). I care more about single player so that would be the focus, but sure all the AC Infinity multiplayer can be in as well. Would be released for XBone, PS4 and PC and support Occulus Rift.

[Simon_Jester]

Well that IS The big question isn't?
How do choices in the Primordial Soup give you advantages as you are Conquering the Galaxy?

My current thought on it goes along this...
Most Space Civ games have different races with different special things. Some have Bonus to research, or production, or to any number of different qualities.
Most of these games have a "Customize Race" function that lets you pick and choose.
Say, take 4 points out of "Spying" to put into "Faster growth" or something.
My thinking is that there would be certain bonuses that you could ONLY get from going through certain stages in the Animal and Civ games. Likewise you would be able to acquire far more "Points" for your abilities.
Someone making a customized race in the Space game may have, say 200 points to customize with.
But if you played from Animal to Civ to Space, your race has ended up with say 300 points, and maybe some ability or two that you can't get otherwise.
That would certainly spur you on to play all the games.

What you really want is for your gameplay in the Space Epoch to be shaped by your choices in the Planetary and Evolutionary Epochs, right? So if you load your tiger-men from the Evolution game into the Civ game, it will have some kind of direct impact on how you play the game. There are strategies you can (or should) pursue in the Civ game when playing as tiger-men that you would not pursue if you were playing giant collectively-conscious insect hives. There are things that the ants can do and the tiger-men can't (say, work laborers to death building a massive irrigation project, without provoking a civil war), and things the tiger-men can do that the ants can't (say, send isolated individual explorers out into the wilderness to locate new resources quickly). A third species (hairless apes!) might be able to do both, but not as well in either case.

Ideally, the Civ game would be so flexible and customizable that if you replay the game twice with two sufficiently-different species, it's almost like playing two completely different games. Not just "ho hum, this time around I get a +2 to research that every faction on the continent/hemisphere/planet happens to share because we're all the same species." It'd be more like:

"OK, I have to pursue a strategy of carpeting the planet with individual cities this time, spreading out slowly because my units and cities fail to thrive when not thus surrounded. The hardest stage of my gameplay was the beginning when I had to scramble to keep a city going without neighbors to harmonize with."

"Last time my population was mostly semi-nomadic and wandering around and between the "watering hole" cities that evolved into commuter workplaces as technology took off. They couldn't care less how far apart the cities were.

"The time before that, I played a race of obligate carnivores whose brains go into low-energy mode when not engaged in frequent conflict. I actually deliberately provoked a religious civil war in my own cities just to spur the research boost that got me into the Atomic Age... and boy was dealing with the aftermath of that fun.

"Maybe next time I'll play a bunch of hairless apes; they seem to be pretty generalist. I wonder what the 'real' rules of this game are, and which ones are just a function of what sort of species I play."




EDIT:

The space game might actually have more unified gameplay (i.e. pretty much every species in MOO II does the same things in more or less the same way, just with different specializations). There, the 'completely different game' aspects might hinge more on what you did during the Civilization epoch. Did your faction have a lot of internecine wars? That is reflected in the probability of such wars breaking out now that the species is a 'unified' empire. Did they have a history of absorbing and assimilating other cultures from their own species? They'll be more likely to get along with the reptile-beasties of Zabriska IV, then.

[The Vortex Empire]

I'd have Obsidian make a Knights of the Old Republic 3, and give them all the time they need to actually finish it so another Restoration Mod won't need to be made. Jesus christ, the writing in KOTOR 2 was great.

[Simon_Jester]

Ghetto edit to previous post:

The big challenge is, as I said, balancing the game across three different phases. You have to have each phase have real consequences in the next phase. But at the same time you have to make sure that each game tracks enough relevant variables that it CAN influence your gameplay experience in the next phase. And that you don't accidentally create a situation where good gameplay choices in one phase become crippling in the next.

Honestly, while you might be able to release the game phases separately, you couldn't really playtest them separately. Not unless you want to lose the selling point of "play in Phase 1 affects Phase 2 in ways more subtle than giving you access to the unlockable content." Balancing Phase 1 is hard enough in a standalone game- but you also have to balance its consequences for 2 and 3, you see. Hard to do that without having a playable alpha version of those phases in hand.

[InsaneTD]

FATAL is just utterly awful in every way and should not ever be used for anything. Certainly it is worse than useless as a starting point for a computer game engine.

While it is tempting to specify some billion-dollar uber-project combining the gameplay of Mass Effect, Just Case, GTA and Freelancer (etc etc), the reality is that something so wildly ambitious would be a development nightmare that would probably produce a broken incoherent mess if not collapse under is own weight. Roping in numerous industry greats is likely to cause an ego duelling slapfight more than joint brilliance.

As such I would stick with making a really good Ace Combat game. It would have four eras - early cold war, late cold war, contemporary and futuristic (AC3 style spaceplanes etc). Each era would have 20ish missions, with branching story and bonus stages taking the total to 100ish. Gameplay would be AC classic (4/5/0/6 no DFM bullshit) with a touch more realism than usual in the flight model (decent altitude, slightly longer ranges). You would select characters for your squadron from a roster, RPG style, and they would have mild special abilities. Instead of a plane with 100 missiles you would have four planes with 30 missiles each and the ability to switch at any time (as I did in my game). Gunship, bomber, recon and helicopter sequences would be in but less annoying because you could switch in/out of those aircraft at any time. Characters would act mostly professional AC4 style not whiny moralising pacifists, but there would be some AC5 style geopoltical intrigue tying together the wars you fight in. World would be a rebooted strangereal, each time you move forward an era the rookie characters from the current era would become the senior pilots, and the previous senior pilots would become grizzled mentors / support staff. The first era would start gritty realistic and more fanciful stuff would come in towards the end. AC Zero style characterisation of enemy aces and squadrons would definitely be in, but the 'ace style' stuff toned down. All the coolest Ace Combat superweapons would of course be back in reimagined form, and plenty of references although not shoehorned in. Battles would be big and actually simulated, so that player actions affect the flow of units on the ground, and not just in a checkpointed way. Ally support would be back but more organic, e.g. free up a task group and its SAMs become free to start shooting at enemies chasing you, so later you can lure enemy squadrons into the area and have them shot down for you. Every real-world plane you could reasonably want would be in, including prototypes, flyable bombers and helicopters, with AC5 style unlocking of advanced versions plus AC-X style customisation (although a little more realistic). A full set of silly superplanes will be available for New Game+ with sufficiently hard Ace difficulty to give the an in-game purpose. Since the budget is infinite there might as well be the ability to wander around Sand Island / the Kestrel carrier / your hijacked Aigaion flying fortress / etc between missions, look in the hangers and talk to characters Mass Effect style. That stuff can be farmed off to a separate dev team, allows some characterisation without unrealistically forcing it into mission dialog (or forcing players to do it). I care more about single player so that would be the focus, but sure all the AC Infinity multiplayer can be in as well. Would be released for XBone, PS4 and PC and support Occulus Rift.

I think I'm in love. I love the ace combat games and would adore this.

[Oskuro]

Another idea I had, that is similar to the "different epochs as different games" approach, came to me playing HAWX.

In the game, there is a mission where you support a Ghost Recon squad on the gorund. In-game, they are just an icon that moves around while you fly by.
This made me think that it could be feasible to have very different military action games (flight, tank, infantry, naval...) interfacing with each other only in ways relevant to each other.
In other words, a player running an Infantry client could be performing ground level missions, with all the buildings and details it entails, while a player running the Flight client would see the infantry players represented as icons, see a simplified battlefield, and focus on air missions... So on and so forth.

[TheFeniX]

There's a mission like this in MW3 and it's a damn shame there aren't more like it. One player ran an AC-130 gunship while the other was in the ground doing the legwork.

The model you're talking about is essentially what Battlefield 1942 was and may still be (I don't know, there series died for me after 2). You can man destroyers and shoot other ships, submarines can blow up destroyers and get depthcharged to death by destroyers. Ships have flak guns to shoot down planes. And of course, there's tanks and jeeps and all other kind of stuff.

DICE really put forth an awesome game and the modding community made it either better or just "modern" with Desert Combat, depending on your idea of fun.