Occasionally a game comes along that become the standard to which subsequent games of the same style or genre will be compared too for a period of time.

So two question, first what are some games that you think of as "yardstick" or "benchmark" games? and second what is the oldest game that you can think of that is still acting as a yardstick today?

For me the x4 Space Empire games comes to mind. Hands down the all of these games that are released today are held to the standard set by MOO2. For a game that came out in 1996 that is a long time to be a standard for a genre.

Half-life

Commandos
AOE 2
C&C Red Alert 1 (fits your oldest query)
X-Wing/Tie Fighter (or is this older than RA1? How should I know, it'd 3 am here!)

DOOM is the standard for most FPS games. Only in-depth FPS games like Thief or System Shock 2 are not measured by it.

To cheat a bit, I would go with Super Mario All-Stars+World as a benchmark for platformers.

Ultima 7
Fallout
System Shock

and the oldest one: NetHack

For me its Splinter Cell. Fair dunkum. I still play games now and think to myself "Why the hell can't I bloody [whatev] I mean I could bloody to that way back in Splinter Cell!" etc. Yeah. I swear at the TV quite a bit. I'm working on it.

as we were just discussing in another thread: Ultima 9 for it's detailed, highly interactive open world.

later: Morrowind, for the same reasons. massive open worlds had been done before (Daggerfall, Arena) but not with this kind of detail and hand-crafted design.

Call of Duty. changed the face of the 1st person shooter and pretty much established the most popular subgenre today. is not measured by Doom standards, which is an accomplishment in itself.

Crysis. for obvious reasons.

GTA 3. the first game to simulate an open city that could be explored on foot as well as by car. people still look back and compare current games to it.

Delta Force. established a new standard in the quality of massive outdoor environments. even today games set in massive outdoor environments don't look as natural as Delta Force's VoxelSpace engine.

I almost said Doom and yes it was revolutionary but I just don't think it can be credited with being a yardstick. Has anyone actually playd it recently, it just doesn't hold up and if other designers didn't quickly (very quickly!) move to improve on it the FPS may have died right then and there. It's like saying Pong is a yardstick just because it was first. Fact is, Pong sucks, and everyone who played it when it first came out said it sucked. I know. I was there. Kind of.

Anyway for FPS I'd give the nod to either Duke 3D or Half-Life because those games set the standard. Doom was "Hey look at this thing we can do." Duke and HL were, "Hey, look at this REALLY COOL thing we can do!"
Am I making any sense or do I need coffee? Hmmm....

I would say Myst was a yardstick for open exploration and adventure.

I am of the opinion that DOOM has held up much better than Half-Life, and generally more important. DOOM is one of the first games to introduce network multi-player, and it spawned a sizable community of map-makers. This essentially created the foundation of future games to come. There are not many games that can be said to be equal to DOOM's gameplay and level design, which are still fun to play.

Half-Life is somewhat important in that it popularized FPS games that are more cinematic and somewhat less about running and gunning, but I think there are plenty of games that are superior to Half-Life, in terms of fun, mechanics, and so forth. Some of which predate Half-Life, such as System Shock which was released the year after DOOM.

Some yardsticks:

World of Warcraft
Diablo
Doom
C&C
Minecraft
etc.


To find out what a yardstick is, follow this formula:

"It is just a [insert-title-here] clone"

I would have to say Zelda or God of War. Even today, games are emulating what these to (albeit non-PC games) are doing.

I hated Zelda but I'd say it definitly deserves mention, big time.

With regard to Metroidvanias, how about Metroid.

Wizardry 6 and 7.