America has a habit of creating new media and then getting completely surpassed in the use of that media by other countries.
Rock & Roll was invented in the US; the greatest Rock & Roll band of all time? The Beatles, a bunch of Brits. Oh, you don’t like the Beatles? Who would be your number one? The Rolling Stones? Black Sabbath? Led Zeppelin? Queen? The Police? Cream?
America invented animation but ghettoized it into nothing but kiddie fare; other countries like Japan took the medium and did incredible things with it.
America invented video games, and while America has produced many fine video games, other countries like have taken this ball and run like crazy with it.
And this is the subject of today’s Name That Game!
None of the following ten games were conceived of or developed in the United States. Can you name the games, and even better, their countries of origin?
1. This first-person shooter, a welcome throwback to the brainless fun of game like Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM, had you fighting hordes of enemies in exotic locals. The game is completely crazy – early in the game you fight enemies with bombs for hands.
2. This seminal third-person action-adventure game combined excellent level design and fiendish puzzles with some slightly-frustrating combat. It also had one of the first major female protagonists.
3. This action-adventure game resurrected a long-moribund series by updating it with 3D graphics and gameplay and adding an excellent feature that allowed you to manipulate time. This acted as both a wow-factor and an excellent anti-frustration feature.
4. This incredibly sprawling RPG was based on a series of successful books. It had an interesting combo-based combat system, systems to both craft potions and upgrade your weapons, tons of quests and sidequests to complete, and the ability to bang a whole bunch of different women.
5. This slightly more realistic take on the third-person stealth-action genre spawned a host of sequels. It combined excellent gameplay with an interesting plot and excellent voice acting. And silent takedowns. God, I love silent takedowns.
6. This action-adventure game combined Zelda-style gameplay and a few stealth sequences with a surprisingly deep plot despite its cartoony presentation.
7. This strategy-sim game series starts you with a single ship and tasks you with finding an unoccupied island rich in resources and building a thriving colony. As the game progresses you’ll have to manage multiple colonies on multiple islands, using shipping lanes to ferry needed goods from one island to the next to keep all colonies successful.
8. This first-person shooter series is famous for having incredible physics and graphics that will make even the best computers melt trying to keep up. The actual gameplay quality has also improved as the series progressed.
9. This is the most popular puzzle game in the world. Bar none.
10. This series of cerebral, historical games combines turn-based action on a larger map with real-time strategy in individual battles. It’s also notable for being pretty darn hard, thus it has a fairly rabid fanbase.
Good luck! If you win, I’ll name the next country I found after you!
1. Serious Sam, Croatia
2. Tomb Raider? England
3. Prince of Persia Sands of Time, Canada?
4. Witcher, Poland
5. Splinter Cell? Canada?
8. Crysis? Germany
10. Total War, England
I guess this one was too easy. All correct!
Relatively easy for me since most of these games are a) PC, and b) released after ~1995. I suck at NTG for older, classic games since I lacked the means to play them when they were released. I find it very challenging to play most of old games if I didn’t play them at the time they were ‘hot’, being so mercilessly spoiled by eye candy and convenience of modern games. But as I recently discovered, thanks to let’s plays and speedruns I can still enjoy all those games even if I failed to have fun by actually playing them.
7. Anno, Austria
9. that should be Tetris, Russia
6 is the only one i can’t really pinpoint
alright, just gonna go out on a limb and say
6. Beyond Good and Evil, France
Correct! The list is now complete! To recap:
1. Serious Sam, Croteam, Croatia
2. Tomb Raider, Core Design, UK
3. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Ubisoft Montreal, Canada
4. The Witcher, CD Projekt, Poland
5. Splinter Cell, Ubisoft Montreal, Canada
6. Beyond Good & Evil, Ubisoft Monpellier, France
7. Anno 1602, Max Design, Austria
8. Crysis, Crytek, Germany
9. Tetris, Russia
10. Total War, The Creative Assembly, UK
Looks like I got 6/10 right before looking at the answers in the comments. I must comment that you confused me a bit by calling Beyond Good & Evil “Zelda-style”, given that “Zelda-style” for me evokes Link to the Past and the original NES game.