Ben-DutkaOver the years, many enduring franchises have changed. Some for the better, some for the worse.
Which is the one series that changed significantly – from a gameplay perspective – that you really wish hadn't? And it's too easy to just say Final Fantasy ; we all know that went to hell, so it's too easy. Pick something else.
I've got a few. I'll definitely mention Parasite Eve ; the original was one of my all-time favorite games on the original PlayStation. It blended real-time and turn-based combat into something that was very special, in my estimation. Then they went and turned the sequel into a Resident Evil clone, and that PSP installment ( Third Birthday ) was just a third-person shooter. To be clear, I'm not saying either of the aforementioned titles were bad. In fact, both were quite good (and who can forget that shower scene in PEII?).
That's not really the point, however; the point is that the series changed for the worse, in my opinion. I'd also like to add a few more and they're being included for the same reason: Sonic and Castlevania . I know there have been some decent 3D installments in each, but I'm sorry, these games belong in the 2D realm and that's that. Nobody will disagree that each franchise's very best titles were basically all 2D (with the exception of that one Sonic entry on the Dreamcast, which was good).
What are yours?
Drakengard, loved the first but there was something about the second that just seemed off…although i have high hopes for the third installment coming up next month
I am about to play through these games, starting with Drakengard 3 as it is meant to be a prequel. I'm really looking forward to them as I still regard Nier as one of my top games this gen.
The 2nd was actually a different group or something. No one really liked it, but the third is back to it's violent twisted roots.
Heavenly Sword, it shouldn't have ended at one game 🙂
I'm playing Lightning Returns side by side with FFX HD. It's amazing, even graphically FFX is better. I just can't fathom how that went south so fast.
Something else? Ummmm. Silent Hill! Downpour was an honestly good attempt but we need some genius infusion into that series to make it great again.
Medal Of Honor. The first few on PS2 were fun. The two most recent, however, were buggy and did nothing to stand out. A total letdown two times.
You know I just got done talking with a buddy of mine where we were talking about franchises that went south and Medal of Honor was one of them. It sucks too because back in the PS2 era where they had: Medal of Honor Frontline, Rising Sun, and European Assault. All three I had enjoyed. But the current medal of honor games definitely went south, they should have kept the series in either a world war 1 or world war 2 setting.
I agree fully, the D-Day opening level in Frontline was just amazing! but the whole game was just top quality, i'd really play FPSs on PS2 but that was one I loved. Also that mission where you have to dress up as the enemy and you can enter their bar, just so much fun.
I don't know if I can think of a series that changed in a way I didn't want so much as a series that kept going after I think it finished itself fairly well, to the point that further entries were at least pointless and at worst harmful. Halo would be one. Reach ended it so well, it needed to end after that. God of War finished up perfectly with 3, no further entries needed.
Thinking outside the box, I have to say Valkyria Chronicles. The second game was better than the original in many ways, but the move to PSP wasn't good for it. And then the third never got out of Japan.
Should have stayed on PS3. Should have kept coming West.
SPYRO THE DRAGON! wtf happened there?
I'd say it was due to the Insomniac company moving onto other things… but if I am honest I do not like Spyro 3 on the PS1 much either. I didn't like how they forced all these new generic playable characters on you, I just never wanted to use them and get back to Spyro at all times.
I kind of liked it, except the monkey, the monkey pissed me off he sucked.
On second thought I'll go with Rise of the Kasai. Mark of Kri was so, so so so excellent. Rise of the Kasai kinda threw away what made Mark of Kri great and replaced it with really terrible AI.
It also has the distinction of the worst bug I ever encountered in a game, which left me to navigate a maze-like upper level of a dungeon without any visible walls or structures. I had to navigate based on the lamps hanging on (now invisible) walls and other cues. Took me an hour to clear out one room.
Mark of Kri deserved better.
Jak and Daxter. I just really preferred the more straight forward, gunless, platformer heart of the first one.
On the bright side games like Jak2 and Jak 3 helped shape the Naughty Dog we have today. I'm about 60% of the way through the astonishingly good The Last of Us.
Fully agree, Jak & Daxter was an amazing platformer with an open world structure and good heart. But as soon as Jak 2 copied Ratchet & Clanks formula it became just a 3D action game, it is decent but it really doesnt feel like a platformer. Both Ratchet & Clank and Jak 2 really caused the platforming genre to suffer from then on due to guns.
I honestly was a huge wrestling fan back in the ps2 era..their wrestling games they had were pretty top notch and had so many different modes to play. But something happened to that THQ corporate ladder that screwed everything up with developers. It just sucks now..really the only good wrestling game out of all the years they put out a game, WWE 13 has been the best out of them all..
What puts me off is the controls. ever since they started incorporating the analogue sticks for grapples it just became less fun. But I think also wrestling was at its peak with the 'Attitude Era' so I think it is partly due to the content of the business too.
Sega's SHINING SERIES. Nuff said.
I don't care what Mr. Nuff said!
Actually despite XIII's sequels I don't feel S-E is in such a pitfall as everyone else.
Silent Hill: As soon as Team Silent abandoned the franchise the series has suffered probably the worst. The games now lack identity, are generic and poorly made. homecoming as glitchy and looked graphically worse than the PS2 titles. People were beginning to claim the old style of horror games was clunky – something I think Silent Hill avoided as in 2 & 3 you could change the control so when you press left the character faces left, no tank controls.
Resident Evil: Another horror franchise, which at first looked like it was changing the horror series for the good. Resident Evil 4 was a decent game. Not as scary as 1-3 but it had its moments. But RE5 Just became a grizzly action game (With one of the most stupid ending encounters I have ever seen). Then there is RE6, I bought it for 5 pounds (just over 10% of the original retail price) and still felt ripped off. The game was clunky, headshots never killed anything, so you just had to fire a fist full of bullets and the game just had an identity crisis overall.
Tekken: Tekken 1-3 were just superb, but from T4 there series began to add a lot more story into the game and due to bad writting, ruining the characters from then on. The story of conflict with the devil gene was a brilliant set up for the franchise and the limited opening and ending clips gave me a vague sense and let my imagination build the rest. Then the combat, it just went too over the top, mainly as in T5/6 you can juggle a player from one side of the map to the other, it just got silly.
I totally agree with you in regards to resident evil. What was frustrating is that I liked how five played but hated just about everything else. I haven't bothered trying to finish the sixth one. It just feels broken every tone I play it.
impossible to choose one, all the classic franchises have changed for the worse, well besides the few that had the grace to die young and avoid being whored out worse than the freaking mustang!
resident evil, silent hill, alone in the dark, spyro the dragon, all the infamous classic RPGs.
its not restricted to old generation titles either.
allot of classic but not so old franchises built in the ps2 days like prince of persia and ratchet and clank were whored out and hung to dry in the ps3 era.
its not restricted to established franchises either, almost every single new IPs of last gen have been whored out to the point there barely recognizable anymore!
army of two, assassins creed, dead space, infamous, crackdown, mass effect, dragon age, saints row.
the only new IPs of last gen who still have their integrity, like their classic counterparts, are the ones who had the grace to die young.
enslaved, heavenly sword, haze, just a few of them saved from the disgrace because they were lucky enough to end after just one title.
as the saying goes, burn half as long, but twice as bright!
how very apt to have a saving quote from one of the very games which got whored out and hung to dry.
exactly why im going into this gen really wanting to savour and enjoy every new IP experience i get, because your pretty much guaranteed that eventually it will turn into the next dead space!
one game no more, move on, give us new amazing experiences.
we dont need to add to the hall of disgraced shamed beloved franchises plaque, i think its full enough thank you very much!
Haze was a disgrace from the beginning, all that hype for such a terrible game… I don't know how you can call Haze a classic and say infamous and mass effect have become awful. Also if every franchise stopped at one, we wouldn't have Uncharted 2 which is widely considered to be the best game of the generation and one of the best of all time.
its amazing how many people cannot understand english these days!
Said the guy who despises capitalization, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and the use of paragraphs….
Assassins Creed
Seriously assassins as pirates really i mean really… Then ship battles instead of land battles. I enjoyed the original, AC2, & Brotherhood from there on the assassins creed games are boring. Hopefully Assassins Creed unity is more like Ac brotherhood then AC4: Black Flag.
I miss the focus on assassinations there was in the first title.
Dead Space. Loved the first one, it was like taking part in the movie Alien. Definitely one of my top 5 games of last gen. Second one was good, but a huge step down from the first. They turned it into a plain old shooter: walk down the hall, get to the room, shoot the monsters there, repeat 200 times. Story was rubbish too, just backstory filling you in on what happened between the two games. It had absolutely no impact on what you were doing in the game.
I didn't even play the third one, they turned it into some online co-op shooter. Some woman who I'm sure is a senior executive VP at EA now came out and said that she wouldn't want to watch a horror movie alone with the lights turned out. She'd only watch a horror movie in a crowded theater with her husband sitting next to her. And they put her in charge of making a horror game. Just shoot me now.
First one sold 3.75 million, second 3.03 million, third 1.71 million. Franchise has apparently been cancelled now. Thanks EA. You guys are freakin' geniuses.
Well, there,is a few For me i can't just choose one. But I can do 2 and they are, Burnout and God of War.
Burnout Paradise is not only the best Burnout game ever, it's the best arcade racer ever. You cray cray.
I'm with ya on Burnout! Granted Paradise was fun and a great arcade racer. But why did they take out the intersection crash challenges? That was some of the most intense, tricky and fun parts of the PS2 installments! Showtime anywhere just didn't cut it.
Because they replaced it with Showtime, which is better IMO.
Shining Force from Sega. Turn-based strategy turned into ARPG. Sigh.
SOUL CALIBUR!!!
Soul Calibur 5 really disappointed me. One of the things I enjoyed most about the Soul Calibur series , the intricate and detailed story, was simply disregarded. Having a single story mode that followed only two characters was not at all as satisfying as having a comprehensive story to discover that can change depending on who you play with.
Also, besides things for characters you can create , there was no real extra content to unlock: no bios, no concept art, no endings to replay, nothing!
And why were there no bios??? If you didn't look up character information online or pre-order the collector's edition, you wouldn't have known anything about the characters save for what little the story mode gives.
Also,the characters! There was no need for 3 mimic characters. It was an interesting idea to have a character that mastered all male styles (Kilik) and another female(Elysium) but if Edge Master has everyone's styles;the other two aren't even necessary. Were they not mimic characters they could have been a lot cooler: especially Elysium, being the personification of Soul Calibur.
Some of the characters that were removed had okay replacements but there was no clear or in-game explanations as to why they left. Some characters were not replaced though (Zasalamel, Yun-Seoung, and Talim)and have no explanation for being absent.
A game like Soul Calibur that has done so well with stories in past iterations should not have abandoned them. I sincerely hope that they refocus on what made soul calibur 2 and 3 so enjoyable. Because Soul Calibur V did not feel, in all respects, complete without it.
Test Drive.
Test Drive has become a horrible mmo wannabe with disgusting physics imo. K, I may be too harsh, but Test Drive Unlimited should be like a spin-off, not the main entry and future direction. Or at least fix the physics.
you know what i am actually struggling here cos i'm not a JRPG veterean or guy or a survival horror guy or veteran cos they be worst off but one of my favourite genre platformers haven't changed but they've been pushed under the rug except for rayman and knack and rachet and clank there isn't much left cos their used to be alot.
happy gaming =)
I will say that while I still love the sequel, I do not like dark souls 2's level design so much. Lots of great views, but there isn't nearly as much to explore. I also didn't think that the areas and the characters associated with them were tied together very well, or maybe I should say not well enough. I hope the trend doesn't continue to progress. To reiterate though, still love it.
like what was said above dead space, loved the first game and the second one was good, but you could see that it was headed away from the gameplay and horror that made the first a classic. me and a friend played 3 together but we had two televisions in the same room together. i liked how the two characters experienced different things and hallucinations but, like i said i only saw that because we were in the same room. whoever decided that couch co-op wasn't cool anymore needs a kick in the head. my problems with the game are that there is barely any horror anymore, i jumped once or twice, and what happened to the telekinesis i loved picking up random objects and throwing them at the necromorphs now you can barely pick up an arm spike it's ridiculous plus the game is far too easy on hard mode. sorry about the rant but, dead space 3 is a shadow of the franchises strength.
I'm going to have to go with Resident Evil. I loved the first two games, as well as the first outbreak game immensely. However, while 4 is a great game, I really do miss the old locked-camera, and creepier vibe of the original resident evil games.
I'm going to go one farther than just a franchise and go with an entire genre. And for me the genre I really dislike the direction it went in is the horror genre.
Maybe it's just me, but horror games used to legitimately scare me. When I played Resident Evil 2, the voice when you start the game that said "Resident Evil" just made me uncomfortable because I knew what was coming. I would be uneasy and jumpy.
Silent Hill 2 had the atmosphere down to a science. It was oppressive and lonely and frightening. I never felt like I would just barrel through things and shoot something in the face if it came at me.
Now, maybe I got older, more jaded, and things like games just don't scare me because I'm so much more mature and worldly and learned. Or maybe, just maybe, horror games got lame. Now a horror game consists of a muscled up dude or scantly clad lady with guns a-blazing and a whole lot of jump scares. It's to the point now where if I am walking down a hall and I see a section of vents, lockers, doors, windows, etc. I know something is going to bust out when I draw near or get just past the area. It's all too predictable and just not scary.
I will go on record as saying that Outlast brought back some of that shear adrenaline pumping fear. No guns, no defense, not knowing what is going to pop out, stay put, ignore you, or go berserk. That one gives me the willies.
Final Fantasy…
Mass Effect, no question. The first game was an awesome action/RPG adventure, dumbed down into an action adventure and then just another FPS multiplayer shooter.
Worst evolution from game to game I can remember.