Other Games. Playing, Getting & Tribute - All Discussion thread

[Vallux]

The previous games' writing was terribad at points. Some of the metaphors seemed forced by some, but it had it's moments. The criticism with 3 is that it's good.

[Zerim]

1 and 2 had cheesy writing done on purpose. I'm sure 3 doesn't fall too far away from that, but the... how do I put this... the density and taste of the writing seems off. All the cheesiness absolutely WORKED in the original. And even in the second one. The dialogues were well-written and atmospheric to boot. Max Payne 1 was like eating really high quality bitter chocolate. This 3rd game appears to still taste like chocolate, but this time it's the cheap stuff that's filled with artificial sweeteners and rancid seed oils.

[-=fox=-]

My first impressions so far (after 4 hours) are that Max Payne is still Max Payne but the games' atmosphere is a bit lacking the air of mystery, or cheesiness if you will. It's a more like Tropa de Elite feat. Max Payne. It's not heavy handed enough and too fast paced. I miss the graphic novel sequences and I'd rather have a keyboard+mouse then the xbox-pad. Not really unhappy so far, though.

[nomotog]

Has anyone seen star command? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=MBXT6-eYneo It's coming out on the phone first, but they intend to do a PC version too.

[Ashpolt]

Yeah, Star Command looks pretty great, I've been keeping an eye on it for a while (and in fact noted it as one of the 5 games I'm looking out for this year) but the release keeps slipping. I have a feeling they're slaves to perfection, and keep pushing it back to just add one more thing, tweak this, polish that. Hopefully that means it'll be great when it comes out, but...Duke Nukem Forever.

[FrankCSIS]

I know I'm plastering this like a mad spammer, but I couldn't pass under silence a project I hold so dear. We've been fighting for 14 years to get this thing off the ground, including an epic battle to regain the legal properties of the series.



The original team is in place, the rights are secured, and the planets are aligned for the return of one of the greatest sci-fi/film noir/dystopian game series of all times, the Tex Murphy series. Their pitch video alone is worth a 15$ pledge!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...project-fedora

[Ashpolt]

I need your help here, guys.

I'm writing an article about gaming brand abuse, and I'm looking for some more examples of really bad reboots / "updates". So far I've got:

XCOM (the FPS one, not Enemy Unknown, which looks great)
Syndicate
Brothers in Arms: Furious ing Four (I really, really hate this - more than I ever disliked anything I heard about DXHR)
Splinter Cell Conviction
Shadowrun
Bomberman Act Zero
Space Raiders (Space Invaders)
Fallout 3 / New Vegas (Good games in their own right, terrible Fallout games)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
Command and Conquer: Renegade

Anyone got any more to add to this list? In particular, have I forgotten any "let's make it an FPS!" reboots? I swear I have, but my mind's gone blank.

Cheers in advance guys!

[m G h m u o s]

On a DX forum I thought Invisible War would be on your list for all the hate it gets. I also heard Dragon Age II was step back from the original in terms of not only RPG gameplay but even art style. How about delving into the whole Resident Evil franchise too? With the films being of the typical action genre and that devs comments that 'survival horror doesn't sell' and stuff.

Are you going to reflect on it at different levels? You'll usually find fans of original games always complaining about sequels. ME3 and ME2 are generally well recieved but I've seen some Mass Effect fans (though I'm not really sure if they're fans or what lol) really hate how they moved away from the RPG elements and such. And the hate BF3 gets from BF2 vets on their forums is mind numbing.

You going into the whole expectations vs appreciation of brand titles and try to define what makes a "bad" sequel or is it more of a catalogue of f**k ups? XD

[Ashpolt]

Originally Posted by m G h m u o s

On a DX forum I thought Invisible War would be on your list for all the hate it gets. I also heard Dragon Age II was step back from the original in terms of not only RPG gameplay but even art style. How about delving into the whole Resident Evil franchise too? With the films being of the typical action genre and that devs comments that 'survival horror doesn't sell' and stuff.

Are you going to reflect on it at different levels? You'll usually find fans of original games always complaining about sequels. ME3 and ME2 are generally well received but I've seen some Mass Effect fans (though I'm not really sure if they're fans or what lol) really hate how they moved away from the RPG elements and such. And the hate BF3 gets from BF2 vets on their forums is mind numbing.

You going into the whole expectations vs appreciation of brand titles and try to define what makes a "bad" sequel or is it more of a catalogue of f**k ups? XD

I've actually got 3 parts to my list: "good" updates / reboots / modernisations, average ones, and bad ones. It's only the last list which I really need help with. Dragon Age II is currently on my "average" list: it at least stays vaguely in the realms of being the same genre as the original, it just makes it worse. Games like XCOM and Syndicate are completely different genres to their predecessors.

That being said, I can't even begin to imagine how I forgot about Invisible War. Good call! That's kind of halfway between average and bad: it's still a FPS/RPG, and makes an attempt at being an immersive sim, but it stripped out so much of what made the original special that it doesn't quite deserve to be in the "average" section.

The Mass Effect and Battlefield series may be debatable in terms of quality, but they're all pretty true to their predecessors in terms of their goals. They don't even really count for the purposes of this article, they're pretty much just straight sequels. Battlefield Bad Company might be interesting to talk about though, as it added a story mode to a previously multiplayer / bots only title.

As for the Resident Evils...Resi 4 is really hard to call. It was undoubtedly a fantastic game, but quite a departure from the predecessors....but on the other hand, the changes didn't affect the "feel" of the game as much as you'd expect. Resi Remake (on the GC) was just a flat out improvement over the original in basically every way. Still one of my favourite survival horror titles to this day. That definitely goes on the "good" list.

(Note: exact composition of the various lists won't be in the article, this is just to help me get my thoughts together.)

Thanks for the help! Anyone got any more?

[nomotog]

Saints Row the third.... Maybe. I just know I want to complain about how badly they screwed everything up so quickly...

[Reven]

Just look at any long running series and you will be sure to find a bad reboot or rebranding attempt.

Alone in the dark 2008

Spyro the dragon and other early ps1 and 2 era mascots like crash have been sold around for years now.

Castlevania has a reboot and a rebrand or two laying around somewhere during the ps2 era as well as one during the later years of the N64's life.

The new devil may cry reboot but the jury is out on this one.

And maybe a few final fantasy games could be seen as a rebrand and attempt to change the series.

Also i would remove New vegas from the list and replace it with brotherhood of steel which was unlike NV a very very bad game.

And as above saints row 3.

[Ashpolt]

Most of those games at least try to stay in line with the ethos of the originals though, they just do a bad job of it! I'm more looking for games which have completely changed their franchises, like Syndicate and the XCOM FPS.

But I'm pretty much done with the article now anyway, so thanks for your help guys!

[Reven]

Well if you are looking for extreme and illogical gameplay/genre leaps then I think you have most of them down. The only other one besides Brotherhood of steel I can think of is this supposed Populous FPS "Populous 4: The Hand" but a cannot tell if it was a hoax or if they are serious about this.

[Ashpolt]

Originally Posted by Reven

Well if you are looking for extreme and illogical gameplay/genre leaps then I think you have most of them down. The only other one besides Brotherhood of steel I can think of is this supposed Populous FPS "Populous 4: The Hand" but a cannot tell if it was a hoax or if they are serious about this.

Hah, Populous 4 was definitely a hoax. In fact I think it was an April Fool's joke, IIRC.

[Reven]

That's what I had thought at first but it would have to have been one of those reddit/anon hoaxes since the only news I could ever find of it was from September 12 2011. Either way whoever came up with it was making a nice bit of commentary on the current state of the games industry and it's rebranding attempts.Whatever next ? Treasure island dizzy ultra realistic hard boiled fps?

[68_pie]

Bad:

Fallout: POS
Baldurs Gate: DA
Oblivion
CS:Source (subjective)

Good:

VtM:Bloodlines

[Stellazira]

Oblivion as in the Elder Scrolls? How is that a reboot?

[nomotog]

Streets of sim city. I just remembered that one. Takeing sim city and turning it into a car combat game must count.

[68_pie]

Originally Posted by Stellazira

Oblivion as in the Elder Scrolls? How is that a reboot?

How is it not brand abuse or a betrayal of the tenets of previous Elder Scrolls games?

[Ashpolt]

Originally Posted by 68_pie

How is it not brand abuse or a betrayal of the tenets of previous Elder Scrolls games?

It still did the same stuff as Morrowind and its predecessors, it just did less of it and less well. It's not a great sequel by any means, but it's hardly one of the worst. It's certainly not in the same league as Fallout 3, Syndicate, XCOM etc.

[68_pie]

Originally Posted by Ashpolt

It still did the same stuff as Morrowind and its predecessors, it just did less of it and less well. It's not a great sequel by any means, but it's hardly one of the worst. It's certainly not in the same league as Fallout 3, Syndicate, XCOM etc.

Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just a crap sequel that I feel strongly about.

[Stellazira]

I had only played Morrowind and its expansions previously, so I thought Oblivion was great... except for the horribly flawed levelling system. Skyrim just seems really boring now, but I really hate Bethesda games because they never seem to work on any PC I play them on, and almost ever other PC game I've ever played has had next to no issues. I hate the games because they never want to work for me, so I've given up on Bethesda. I have better things to do with my time then restarting Skyrim every five minutes.

[Zakka]

Originally Posted by Ashpolt

I need your help here, guys.

I'm writing an article about gaming brand abuse, and I'm looking for some more examples of really bad reboots / "updates". So far I've got:

XCOM (the FPS one, not Enemy Unknown, which looks great)
Syndicate
Brothers in Arms: Furious ing Four (I really, really hate this - more than I ever disliked anything I heard about DXHR)
Splinter Cell Conviction
Shadowrun
Bomberman Act Zero
Space Raiders (Space Invaders)
Fallout 3 / New Vegas (Good games in their own right, terrible Fallout games)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
Command and Conquer: Renegade

Anyone got any more to add to this list? In particular, have I forgotten any "let's make it an FPS!" reboots? I swear I have, but my mind's gone blank.

Cheers in advance guys!

Thats not cool man, not cool. Renegade was fun!
Brothers in Arms furious four made me furious too. What the hell man.

Anywhere, here is my list:

Bioshock maybe as a spiritual successor to system shock?
Prince of Persia. The one where it was impossible to die during platforming Actually, all which came out after sands of time were pretty bad.
Rayman 4
!!!!COMMAND AND CONQUER 4 (worst, strategy game, ever...) They really went overboard with this one.
Supreme Commander 2 (fugly)

[m G h m u o s]

I think XCOM and syndicate are actually the only examples of titles completely changing formats for the worse, though there might be a bunch of titles that didn't do so well with the transition from 2D to 3D.

[TrickyVein]

Unreal Tournament 3 wasn't a tournament. Though it's meant for online play, it's still a pretty resounding flop when it comes to single player. The community felt pretty let down. Even though EPIC claims that they will never not be making Unreal games, and we have to wait for UE4 to see another one, UT3 really sent the franchise/series into a hole. I think Unreal was the resounding king of tourney shooters, especially after UT2k4, and there was no reason to not expect anything else in 2008. The hype around the game was generated so early, ultimately I think fans were fed false information (especially with regards to the grandiosity of the WAR gametype). The demo cemented in many people's minds I think that the game would not satisfy expectation.

It's an interesting case, I think because it doesn't necessarily abuse the Unreal title. The gameplay is solid, and it's great for online play. But it threw Unreal off of its pedestal into the dust. It certainly isn't what people thought it would be. I have to wonder why EPIC hasn't given us a UT3.5 in the same way they 'corrected' UT2003 to give us UT2004.