Given the hate Mindseye is getting for omitting water interactions entirely, what are some 3D games that have solid or interesting water/land player-character interactions?
Obviously every GTA after San-Andreas, and every Zelda since OoT but are there many others?
The first was probably Duke Nukem 3D, released January 29th, 1996:
https://dukenukem.fandom.com/wiki/Water_mechanics_in_Duke_Nukem_3D
If you consider their hacky approach to 3D cheating (they didn’t support one part of a level to be above another, and implemented looking up/down by just distorting the image, so all corners were too pointy), then you’d have to wait a few months for Quake.
The first actually 3D first person game was Quake, released June 22nd, 1996, and it let you swim:
Super Mario 64.
Marathon 2 (1995) let you go underwater.
Man, I’d forgotten how utterly baller that theme is.
Fond memories of drowning in Quake {1996}
Lighting Gun.
Those with 3D accelerators had transparent water and could see people under the surface and kill them.
Those without got screwed.
Tomb raider
Half-Life 2 always stands out in my mind for this due to it being such a physics playground.
I usually hate water areas in games, though 😂 Especially the Zelda ones.
All of the Assassin’s Creed games… AFTER the first one.
The first one was notorious, if you so much as got a toe wet it was instant death. LOL.
Me jumping on dock posts praying that Altair doesn’t decide to do a sudden 90 degree turn into death water:
I blamed it on Altair growing up in the desert. Not a lot of opportunities to learn how to swim. :)
Haha that’s the kind of thing I love!! the developers that stopped water being a limitation and turned it into some kind of feature
For example, in the infamous games, you’re an electric man so waist high water kills you, and shallower water conducts your electricity. If an enemy also stands in that water, it’s an instant kill on them
Made up instantly for the fact you couldn’t swim lol.
My evil run in Infamous, I would just find a group of people next to a puddle and just walk right onto it. Then I’d just watch as people would panic and run right into the water. Fun times.
Morrowind (2002) not only let you swim, there were spells that could extend your breath and let you walk on water.
You could levitate and so many of the caves and dungeons in that game had straight up secret areas you could only get to by levitating.
There’s a side quest that you can only get if you levitate up to a ledge at the very bottom of a Daedric ruin.
Subnautica is majority underwater :)
subnautica still scares the shit out of me. I went back to get the last couple achievements in the original and below zero but something about the original is just more scary.
Watched a guy playing it on a Steam Deck on the train: caught my interest. Would play if I had a Steam Deck. Might see if I can play it on an RP5 running Linux
It’s probably too much for a Raspberry Pi, but it runs perfectly fine on Linux
Tbf, everything looks sick when you’re watching a random person watch/play something. Or maybe that’s just me
Everblue 2 for the PS2 is one of my all-time favorite games. I play it about once a year. The original was an EU only release thst I didn’t get to play until a few years ago. It also had a sort of spiritual successor with Endless Ocean 1 & 2 for the Wii, made by the same developer. However, the first one didn’t have any of the treasure finding mechanics and there was no real threat to the player at any time. Neither series really let you walk on land, so to speak. The Everblue games do have above water parts, you return to the island between dives to talk to people, sell treasure, sleep and such, but they’re prerendered images that are more like a point and click adventure. There were a couple pc games I played around the same time that were made by independent developers that never really took off.
DK64 comes to mind.
I think tomb raider let you swim underwater.
Also, Wave Race 64 (1996) is sort of entirely based on that… but the water physics were pretty cool at the time, and there were even parts where you could take a jump and dive under obstacles.
Blood/Duke Nukem 3d or other Build engine based games allow underwater swimming.
Certainly not the first by any means, but I was really impressed with the way that the Ori games handled diving. The omni-directional controls are 🤌
