Gaming Franchises that were ruined

CiDeRmAn

I have Black Flag for the WiiU and yet to play it.
Just don't have time!

Potential-Monke

Bomberman. Simple games done right. And while i haven't played anywhere near all of them, when i played Act Zero, it ruined Bomberman for me! Don't think i've played any of them since!

Ten of Swords

Bioshock 3 is a serious decline in quality compared to the first 2

Don't know what the hell EA were thinking with C&C and Red Alert but it sure wasn't Westwood's original vision. The RTS games got progressively worse and they abandoned the FPS spin-offs. C&C Renegade was meh (but still fun). Renegade 2 was cancelled and finally in 2008 they cancelled Tiberium (which looked really good).

Total War for me is a mixed bag, I don't really like the new recruitment mechanics but I do like the tech tree and the multiple settlements per province.

Max Payne 3, Rockstar failed and failed badly on that in my opinion

CiDeRmAn

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Bomberman. Simple games done right. And while i haven't played anywhere near all of them, when i played Act Zero, it ruined Bomberman for me! Don't think i've played any of them since!

The SNES and Megadrive games are great, the Saturn version probably the best.
After that it all wobbled downhill, though the Switch port is pretty good, getting better with the updates and support multiple players via an array of controllers.

Stone Deaf 4evr

shygal wrote: »

The older need for speeds were great fun, simple formula. Newer ones just didnt work, for me at least.

Used to love rally games like wrc, v rally and colin mcrae stuff. The new ones are poor with not much cars to choose from

Gran turismo. Used to love the grind, the licences, the prize cars for winning competitions, the choice of tracks. The new ones, though good, took all that away from me.

Try dirt rally, it's outstanding. The dark souls of driving games if you will. Very difficult but very rewarding.

Skylinehead

Ten of Swords wrote: »

Max Payne 3, Rockstar failed and failed badly on that in my opinion

Max Payne 3 is brilliant!

Turtyturd

aaronjumper wrote: »

Four was still an enjoyable addition to the series.
They lost it with 5 though, the campaign is only fun to play with friends and the multiplayer is very meh and forgettable.

I hated 4 initially but did a play through of 1-4 prior to the release of 5 and enjoyed it a lot more. It's a good story about humanising Chief. It's just a shame that they completely abandoned it in 5 and focused on Locke.

Multiplayer on 4 will always be a ball of sh!te though and 5 was a major return to form although a long way off the peaks of 3 and Reach.

Mickeroo

The multiplayer in 5 was great I thought, if it wasn't for the fact Overwatch and R6:Siege came out I'd probably still be playing it.

Interested Observer

I'm yet to play FF15 but the FF series has been ruined a bit in my opinion. I loved the 7/8/9 style games. Tactics is imo one of the best games ever, while 13 is one of the least enjoyable games I've ever played.

Sephiroth_dude

cml387 wrote: »

Assassin's Creed not mentioned yet.

I disagree personally, I think Unity, syndicate and black flag are all fine games in there own right.

degrassinoel

troyzer wrote: »

Rome II Total War has ruined Total War for me. I'm not even interested in Warhammer.

That's a shame, Rome II was cack alright but Warhammer is a masterstroke, easily the best TW game since the original Rome. Worth at least reading the reviews for it.

Turtyturd

Mickeroo wrote: »

The multiplayer in 5 was great I thought, if it wasn't for the fact Overwatch and R6:Siege came out I'd probably still be playing it.

Would still be one of the main games I play online. The additions to it like the thrusters, ledge climb, and slam attack actually add something to the game and work within it much better than the COD inspired power ups. Although it does suffer from peopl spamming the run and punch attack, and the sh!tty radar.

I really hope they don't deviate too much from 5 with 6.

IR1SH RANG3R

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

I disagree personally, I think Unity, syndicate and black flag are all fine games in there own right.

I think the AC2 trilogy was great except for the last one which was good but a dip in quality. Out of the rest, Black Flag was amazing, Unity was piss poor (I mean they removed all the good mechanics for stealth kills WHY CAN'T I WHISTLE!!!!:mad:) and then Syndicate was decent again. Very up and down series!

Jamiekelly

The Fight Night franchise was ruined by their non existant developers

Retr0gamer

Interested Observer wrote: »

I'm yet to play FF15 but the FF series has been ruined a bit in my opinion. I loved the 7/8/9 style games. Tactics is imo one of the best games ever, while 13 is one of the least enjoyable games I've ever played.

FF13 was the only bad one though (well FF2 on the Famicom is a bit **** as well). Not sure why everyone writes off the FF series just because of FF13. Even the FF13 sequels were excellent, FF13-2 was a lot of fun and FF13-3 is a contender for secret best Final Fantasy game.

Final Fantasy also changes totally with each iteration so it's hardly a game series stuck in a rut, if anything due to how it changes so radically it's perfectly poised to reinvent itself with each release.

gimli2112

Think I'm in the minority for liking FF X. Played the hell out of it. Probably spent more time playing blitzball than any other game that year but FF X2 was god awful, imo.
Couldn't get into FFXIII at all. Think I quit the first time I died and never went back.
Really want to pick up 12 at the moment but there's too much happening.

Retr0gamer

A lot of people like FFX. I'd say myself it's one of the weakest entries in the series. It was the first decent RPG on PS2 and it looked gorgeous but after replaying it it's very limited. The battle system is boring for random encounters but works well for boss fights and the post game content is rushed and quite frankly awful.

I hated FFX-2 at the time as well but going back to it now it's a far better game than FFX was. The story is silly but then FFX is no masterpiece there but mechanically it's far better than FFX ever was and the job system works far better than anything FFX did. My only real issue is a lot of the content is missable so you need a faq and the requirements to 100% the game are absolute bull****, although that's entirely optional thankfully.

I'm playing FF12 now. Hated it originally but loving it now. It's still a poor mans Xenoblade but the additions to the Zodiac Age edition make the game so much better.

gimli2112

Getting the ultimate weapons in X is horrible. Anytime I play it I dread getting the main character's sword (Cloud or whatever he's called in this one). Racing the chocobbo is a painful experience.

keane2097

Would be interested in hearing more about your FFXII playthrough as I played a good bit of it when it came out but never ended up finishing it.

There was something where you set up sort of scripts for the combat IIRC?

ShadowHearth

I am gamer for a while and we all know good old titles that got ruined or lost their way.

Resident evil franchise was ruined, but at least last installment kind of brought it back.
Sonic games... just let it die already.
Silent hill were such amazing games, that dod not diserved it.


From very recent franchises that got completely ruined by corporation and stock holders was Dead space.

I really really loved first one, even second one was fantastic with one of the most amazing enemies in horror video game history and a increadible addition of dead space 1 story and setting added, that I did not expected at all.

Tried 3... I honestly did. Even played with buddy co op, but it was just not the same. It was so bastardised by EA and stock holders templated of what games should do to make profit, that they forgot they making a game in the first place. To make it even worse they killed franchise and I doubt we will see more of it.

Digital Solitude

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Sonic games... just let it die already.

I hear the new Sonic is fantastic!

Retr0gamer

keane2097 wrote: »

Would be interested in hearing more about your FFXII playthrough as I played a good bit of it when it came out but never ended up finishing it.

There was something where you set up sort of scripts for the combat IIRC?

Yeah it still uses that gambit system where you are basically programming the in game AI. I'm taking my time with the game and enjoying it a lot more. It still has issues like how slow the game is in the beginning when you don't have gambits and how obviously rushed the end game is. However the new Zodiac Job system fixes a lot with the original game. Instead of everyone having the same license board so can use all the same weapons and have access to every spell in the game, you have to choose between 12 different license boards, each with their own speciality. You are then able to take a second job. You can create some interesting combinations, some very broken ones as well. It means characters are very specialised and you experiment more with commands that would normally get ignored. It just makes the combat so much more enjoyable.

CiDeRmAn

Digital Solitude wrote: »

I hear the new Sonic is fantastic!

Sonic Mania is superb.
If people haven't played it, they really should, it's pretty much the best Sonic title since the Megadrive.

Foxhound38

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Sonic Mania is superb.
If people haven't played it, they really should, it's pretty much the best Sonic title since the Megadrive.

Agreed - as someone born at the second half of the 80's and who grew up with a megadrive by the TV, I am frankly having a stupid amount of fun with Sonic Mania. It's the first Sonic game since the 90's that seems to actually treat the franchise with respect and you can see the amount of love that went into the game design here.

In terms of ruined franchises:

Final Fantasy - FFX was the last decent one as far as I'm concerned. FFXII seemed to have a decent story but it got bogged down in faulty game mechanics I think. The rest were either MMORPGers or bogged down in melodrama featuring far too many irritating androgynous pre-teens.

Metal Gear Solid - the story got crushed underneath the weight of its own silliness in my opinion. With that said, the Phantom Pain was an excellent game as far as its mechanics went, but it was clearly unfinished due to political reasons between Konami and Kojima - it's a shame he wasn't given the extra time and resources he needed, because the underlying skeleton of a masterpiece is plain to see in that game.

Mass Effect - I LOVED the original trilogy - excellent storytelling, excellent visuals, excellent voice acting. I pretty much loved playing every second of ME1, 2 and 3. Which is why it saddens me so much to see how much Bioware and EA dropped the ball with MEA. They had a decent, self contained story with the original trilogy - they should have left it as it was. They didn't need to dig it up again with this monstrosity.

On the Mass Effect thing - it has definitely damaged my opinion of Bioware. I am genuinely concerned that between themselves and EA are going to gut my other favorite franchise Dragon Age next (even though they still haven't managed to recapture the magic of DA Origins, DA 2 and Inquisition were not bad games by any means in my opinion). I really couldn't give a balls about Anthem tbh.

cherryghost

Flatout.

1 and 2 were amazing games. Then this Total Carnage GFWL 'sequel' which was just FO2 except shiner, ran like ass and required GFWL. Then the piss poor PSP Head On (again a port of 2). The devs then sold the rights onto some useless devs and the devils spawn that is Flatout 3 is created. One of the worst games I've played, period. Flatout 4 is somewhat better but the reputation of the franchise has been buried already.

Street Fighter V is complete ass too, driving the IP into the ground.

Azza

Street Fighter V was a mess at launch but its gotten better with plenty of additional content has being added over time, but really the franchise should of been handled a lot better to begin with.

Whether long term damage has been done to the franchise remains to be seen, but at the moment its maintaining its competitive scene.

Sieghardt

Shining Force
Valkyria Chronicles
Front Mission
being a SRPG fan is suffering

fergus1001

Half life need I say more

wotzgoingon

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Dead Space went downhill from 1 to 2, could be accepted as a change of pace. I personally liked 2, but Jesus Dead Space 3 was some crock of ****e, let's turn a creepy sci-fi horror set in confined dark places, to fighting people in the snow. Meh.

I enjoyed 3 but I get where you are coming from it was totally different than 1 or 2.

ancapailldorcha

Mass Effect: As time went on, the choices seemed to matter less and less until ME3 which was just messy and largely unfulfilling as a result.

Resident Evil: 4 was an excellent re-imagining for the series while 5 was just mindless entertainment which seems to have degraded in 6 though I've not played that. I did enjoy revelations though.

Total War: Not sure if it's "ruined" given that Warhammer seems to be doing well. I've only played Rome, Medieval II & Empire and the latter is definitely the weakest while being enjoyable in its own right.

Devil May Cry: I enjoyed the reboot far more than I thought I would but the magic is well and truly gone. Similar story with MGS.

I actually think that Final Fantasy got better over time as SE seemed to be more willing to experiment with it rather than sticking to the old strategy of trotting out the usual tropes again and again, though in fairness some of those tropes were exceptional.