10 Next-Generation Franchise Comebacks

JamesO writes "Pro-G has posted an article which looks at their top ten most wanted next-generation comebacks. By this time next year there should be three next-generation consoles on store shelves. Games like Halo, Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, Super Mario and GTA are certain to appear at some point in the lifetime of these consoles, but what about older franchises we'd like to see again?" From the article: "Few games have scared people as much as System Shock 2. Developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios, it's another great game that was released by EA that hasn't seen a sequel in years. Set onboard the Tri-Optimum starship Von Braun, you played a UNN soldier who is part of the crew on the Rickenbacker....When Looking Glass studios went into liquidation the future of the series became very uncertain, with a true sequel now looking very unlikely. A spiritual successor, in the form of BioShock from Irrational Games, is due in 2006." Any games you want to see resurrected?

Comments

Chrono Trigger

[n1ywb]

Nuff said.

Re:Old franchises

[syrinx]

Was going to post for more Star Control. I say just ignore SC3, it never happened. A real sequel to SC2 would be amazing.

Nintendo

[MajikMan]

Maybe it's just me, but several of the games they listed aren't really in comeback position, as they've already done so. I'd love to see a new Punhcout game made...I loved the first two.

Also - I want another Earthbound! I'm not an RPG player generally, but I spent hours playing Earthbound.

Re:Old franchises

[RogueyWon]

Hmm... I disagree completely here.

In terms of gameplay mechanics, Freespace was closer to the Wing Commander school than the X-Wing. I always preferred the X-Wing style of combat. It was slower, needed more tactical thinking and more careful use of your wingmen and simulated large battles involving multiple capital ships better. After the original X-Wing game, it was very rarely a case of "your ship against the entire enemy fleet". In TIE Fighter and XW:Aliance, you're usualy going into battle with friendly capital ship support. You needed to use every system on your fighter well to beat the harder missions and power allocation was something that needed to be tweaked constantly. The battles felt far more organic than any other space-flight sim's and there was a much greater degree of background detail in the missions, when they occur in a busy area of space. Having unrelated freighter convoys passing through the area, docking and even fighting each other while you're involved in another fight adds a real level of immersion.

Wing Commander combat had always been faster and shallower, from the original game through to Prophecy. The afterburner feature, along with the very high rate of fire on the guns, contributed to a style of dogfighting that was much more spray and pray than X-Wing's more considered dogfighting. In terms of gameplay, there isn't much to set Wing Commander Prophecy and Freespace 2 apart. Both of them feel and look almost identical. Power allocation etc only need to be tweaked from the default settings on a very few missions. The only real differences between the games were that Prophecy had better cutscenes/plot (and yes, I actually quite like the whole FMV-cutscene thing), while Freespace's capital ships fired big lasers at each other (with little real effect on gameplay). On balance, I'd take the cutscenes.

Re:It's clear

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's going to be a Tomb Raider style game, I'd much rather it be a new Prince of Persia
(although hopefully with a better overall design than the last one).

Icarus

[Ian_Bailey]

Well, you're not the only one waiting for it...

We need a new Wizards & Warriors.

[FifthDream]

I've been waiting for a current-gen Wizards & Warriors game for years. The NES games were great. I want another.

Magic Carpet, Freespace, and my additions

[WidescreenFreak]

"Magic Carpet" is still one of the best games around. Fully-deformable terrain with terrain morphing, topology that was actually made of rolling hills and valleys, instead of boring polygonal plains with suddenly-jutting mountains, full 640x480 resolution (which was astounding for its time since there was no 3D acceleration), almost totally dynamic gameplay, difficult puzzles, reasonable AI particularly when your opponents decide to gang up on you ... even the fun of the hokey "Magic Eye" 3D stereo effects and the red/blue anaglyph 3D effects. My God, that game was just incredible. And sadly, there really has not been any game like it. I specifically built a 350 MHz system running PC-DOS 7.0 and SloMo earlier this year in order to play the game again. (Windows 3.1 with Netscape 4.07 and full TCP/IP connectivity with DHCP just for the hell of it, too. Laugh all you want, but it's f**king FAST!!)

I don't understand why the Bullfrog team, who went to other projects after EA dissolved the company, didn't try to continue their game series, even if they were under different names to avoid copyright issues. Bullfrog was to the 486/Pentium gaming world what Epyx and Activision were to the C64 world - almost every game could be considered an instant classic.

I also have to agree with "Freespace". "Freespace 2" did have its weaknesses, but when it came to graphics and gameplay, it was a great game to play, especially over a LAN.

A few that were left off the list:

• "Sam and Max". Okay, game companies. Lucas doesn't own the rights to it any more. Will someone PLEASE talk to Steve Purcell about getting a "Sam and Max" sequel out?!
• "Max Payne". I confess -- "Max Payne 2" isn't all that old, but I loved both games. Even of there are no extra functionalities to a third release, I'll still buy it in a heartbeat.
• "No One Lives Forever". Fun to play. Great level design. Babe who has no problems kicking ass. A hell of a lot of funny lines. What more needs to be said?