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7 Game Franchises They Drove Into the Ground
Via the ever-excellent Game|Life, a post on Games Radar that details seven destroyed game franchises, taken from us in their prime by callous game publishers. Running the gamut from the venerable Sonic (of whose decline we've already spoken) to the good-to-crappy-in-two-years Viewtiful Joe, these are all games that just deserved better. I personally lament the decline of the Tomb Raider series (number 7 on the list) the most. Her most recent outing was much better than previous iterations, and I definitely hope that Eidos can keep up the momentum. Are there any series that you feel have fallen from heights that should have made the list?
Aside from games that have fizzled, I lament the passing of both the Thief and System Shock series. Company (mis?)managment has probably killed most of the great gaming franchises that died in their prime. Hopefully Bioshock will make it to release and System Shock will kinda, sorta live again...
Remember that several game developers had their funding cut so Daikatana could see the light of day ( at a burn rate of $1,000,000US per month).
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Funny how he sees that the decline of Mega Man came with the Mega Max X series. When the first three games appeared while in high school, all of my friends and I were excited about them. And the easter egg that is Ryu's street fighting moves was a pleasure for all. Saying that the games were crappy seems to be a minority opinion, and possibly one based more on retrospect than on how one felt at the time of release.
What about those Kirby games? The last one I can remember is the N64 version, which was pretty bad, at least IMO. The only place you see that guy anymore is in the Smash Bros games.
Blerg.
These are apparently only console titles... If they included PC series driven into the ground, there are quite a few that would have topped the list. Command and Conquer I would call number 1, Generals very near sucked and didn't fit a C&C profile at all. I guess I'll just have to wait to see if EA comes back with a classic with the new C&C. Oh, and I know it's not a series, but I used to play Star Wars Galaxies, and SOE really killed that one with a passion.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Wing Commander - We should have had Privateer Online. Instead, EA dropped it for their new hotness over at Blizzard. Thus one of the greatest series of all time ended.
Command & Conquer - C&C was good. I mean, darn good. But then Westwood failed to deliver Tiberium Sun as promised, and gave us Red Alert instead. Ok, fine. A lot of people liked Red Alert even though it wasn't as good as the original. So we kept waiting for Tiberium Sun. 4 and a half years later, Westwood just kicked it out the door, merely a shadow of what it was intended to be. From then on out, C&C was nothing more than a "property" in which vaguely related games were released one after another, with no real connection to the gameplay that made the original famous.
Graphical Adventure Series - While not really a game series in of itself, the concept of Graphical Adventures has been mostly dropped by the industry, depsite the fact that it was a great way to tell a story. Nearly all the Lucas Arts games sold well, and never really showed a decline in the market. The concept just... fell into the ether, seemingly in favor of "more adult" gameplay. (Boo! Hiss!)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Star Control: good first game, fantastic second game, AWFUL third game by different developers, then Accolade dies and we're done. More than TEN YEARS LATER, the source code for the 3DO version of Star Control 2 is released and turned into a great open source game for multiple platforms. That's love.
I'm shocked that after terrible incarnation after terrible incarnation, and umpteen-million expansion packs of mediocrity that cause the whole series to fade into obscurity, and their development not being slowed one bit despite that, it didn't make the number one spot.
Sir-Tech's Wizardry
I greatly fear that on March 28th, C&C will be added to this list.
Am I the only one that doesn't really feel like I can trust that EA will do a good job on their follow-up of the Tiberian series?
Okay, alot of you probably think that EA already screwed C&C up with the release of Generals. However, that was a new idea anyway and it didn't really hurt the good memories of -in my case- Tiberian Sun. TS was my second computer game and I loved it! The feel, the atmosphere, story and gameplay. I occasionally take it off my shelf and have another go at it.
Anyways, I have a fear based on the fact that it is ever so popular to take hits and then just -destroy- them. Games and movies, the list can be made long. Had Westwood done it, okay... but EA?
I hope I'll be proven wrong.
Three rings for the Elven-kings in the sky
Starsiege: Tribes (Tribes 1) dominated my PC gaming time until everyone moved to Tribes 2, which was good (but was no Tribes 1).
Then came Tribes Vengeance. It stole most of the community and then killed it by being a horrible game. Now the Tribes and Starsiege franchises are completely dead.
Star Trek - Activision finally pulled Star Trek out of its gaming gutter with smash hits like Armada and Elite Force. Then Paramount drives the franchise into the ground, Activision sues, and we fans get no more Trek games. (Boo! Hiss!) I've heard that Bethesda Softworks is picking up the torch, but I'm not holding my breath. :(
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
What is junk for some is good for others..
Another one that would've made the list, had the oldest title on it not been Mega Man, would've probably been Valis...
Valis went from one of the first platformer games, pretty much the same age as Metroid with the first undisguised female lead to, in the past couple of years, a porn title.
... was fantastic - take a look a the reviews all around, it was an excellent evolution on the 2d classic that made things faster and more fluid than ever.
Please kindly add to that list every game released by EA in the last ten years.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Or is not considered dead until Forever comes out?
Duke Nukem.
I remember when enjoying Final Fantasy wasn't a euphemism for homosexual intercourse.
The Sims was never any good to start with. You could call it an extension of SimCity/Earth/Ant/Life/blahblah, but that's stretching it a bit, and that series is very much alive with Spore.
Thanks for driving another classic game series into the ground EA!
You suck.
King's Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest/SWAT, Gabriel Night, Earthsiege/Starsiege/Tribes, Front Page Sports, The Incredible Machine, Dr. Brain, Caesar, 3-D Ultra Pinball, Homeworld, Outpost, Freddy Pharkas, Betrayal at Krondor... Sierra practically defines this topic, and it's not even mentioned.
Most of the games reviewed in TFA are console games. What about PC games like Tribes, which was successfully augered into the earth by Vivendi/Universal with the stinky "Tribes:Vengeance"? Sure, let's release a game that has broken bits (like tournament mode) and then refuse to patch it. Ever.
First they started with a great game: Tribes 1. Then the obvious thing to do was to make a sequel, which came out horrifically different from the original in terms of gameplay and feel - not to mention it was broken in the box. Endless patches ensued, until eventually the player community wrote maps and patches to make it feel and play more like the original game. After that debacle, development began on T:V, which as mentioned above was also broken.
Thanks, guys. You took a franchise which could have flourished and just buried it.
I have long loved the Might and Magic series. Starting on the c64 and moving on to the pc, it was one of the better hack and slash rpg's that came out. I even adjusted to #6 that included a 3d engine...and from there it went down hill. The 7th was ok, but similar to 6....while 8 was a touch above bad...and 9. Lets just say, it sucked.
I did see a new one in an add, but I don't know if I even want to bother. Of course I'll probably get it in hopes it will be decent...
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
I loved Proving grounds of the Mad Overlord. I used to have all the mazes memorized!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Ultima
While others have said Wing Commander, it wasn't itself driven to the ground as more or less abandoned.
Ultima however I'd qualify as driven to the ground in its last release.
Fallout
So many games after Fallout 2 claiming the "Fallout" name that basically drove to the ground.
The only hope is that Fallout 3 (now being worked on) can reclaim some of what it was.
Other ones that I consider more "abandoned" the driven to the ground -
Wizardry
Mentioned already, but the last game was still a pretty good game. It wasn't driven as much as left alone.
Most of the Bullfrog IP
Dungeon Keeper, Syndicate, Populous
Abandoned when purchased.
For that matter, doesn't it seem like most of the good PC games were killed off by EA?
Every animated Disney flick ever made. I'm still anticipating the direct-to-video Snow White 2 any day now.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
1. Sly Cooper
The occasional side mission playing as one of the other characters was fine in the first game.
However, in the sequels, 2 out of 3 missions were non-Sly Cooper. The acrobatic, platforming perfection of the Cooper charatcer was replaced by one of two clumsy, annoying characters.
2. Xenosaga
After a great setup in the first game, they replaced the combat engine with one of the most hideous systems ever seen in an RPG. Basically, if you an eveny with anything other than the "correct" sequence of attack, you did about three quarters of a hit point damage. Add to that the fact that even the lowliest of baddies could boost their turn and constantly disrupt you desperate attempts to launch attack in the right order, and you had a bundle of frustration. I hear part 3 fixedd all that, but fuck 'em.
3. Silent Hill
Enjoyed 1 through 3, but something happened in 4. They did something to the control scheme that made it very frustrating.
Particularly I'm thinking of the goldbox series of games.
I was a huge fan of the Buck Rogers series. Too bad that died.
The X-COM series (actually, just the first two, IMHO) was probably the best strategy game I have ever played. Sometimes I even think it was the best game I ever played. It's a shame they ruined it starting with the third installment in the series.
:)
UFO: Aftermath, Aftershock (and soon, Afterlight) are pretty cool games but they're nowhere near the coolness of X-COM: UFO Defense (or, for those of us in Europe and other parts of the world, UFO: Enemy Unknown) and X-COM: Terror From The Deep.
Those were the days...
On the PC you can't forget Masters of Orion. Versions One and Two were great, and then they waited several years before coming up with a crappy version 3.
Talk about a sweet series that had a lot of potential!
Ultima - Died thanks to EA who could'nt do anything right with it
Wing Commander - Died again thanks to EA, not sure why they had to let it
Command & Conquer (however a TRUE new C&C is coming down the pipes)
Mechwarrior - so deserving of a new one
Descent - Loved the first, and apparently Freespace was pretty good
Duke Nukem - what more can be said?
x Quest Series - Good job Sierra
2D Sidescrollers - I hope Nintendo sees the success of New SMB and makes more 2D based Mario games.
I haven't read the article ("games" blocked :-P) but if they didn't mention the Turok series then they've overlooked one of the biggest losses to gamers in history. (If they mentioned Turok then sweet.)
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil for N64 set new standards for console FPS games in terms of both graphics and weapon design. In my opinion, Turok 2 is yet to be outdone by any FPS as far as hardcore weapon lineups are concerned. Sure there is the occasional gem like HL2's gravity gun, but nothing has had as many great hurting machines as the Turok games.
Those first two games rocked. Great levels, awesome bosses. Turok 2 even had a half-decent multiplayer.
I don't know what went wrong after that, but the games just underdelivered in every way possible. There was Turok: Rage Wars which was the dumbest thing ever because when you have Perfect Dark (or Goldeneye) on your console, like heck you're gonna care about a multiplayer-combat-oriented Turok game. Whoopee. And it just went downhill from there.
They're trying to resurrect this franchise nowadays, so we'll see what happens. But my expectations at this point are quite low.
I like basketball!!1!
I'm an adventure game fanatic. The Tex Murphy adventures Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive and Overseer had a very nice three-dimensional interface that was ahead of its time back then. So MS (yes there they are again) bought Access Software who made the Tex Murphy adventures, and we've never heard of a new Tex Murphy adventure again. Thanks, MS. Chris Jones, the produces and codesigner of the adventures, who also plays Tex in the FMV versions of the adventures, would love to make a new installment of the famous series, but adventures games are going through a difficult time these days, so he hasn't gotten the opportunity yet.
-- Cheers!
Ultima. 1-7 (including 7 pt.2) got progressively better, until finally reaching what I consider one of the best RPGs of all time. 8 was a letdown, 9 was a nightmare, X was cancelled. Killed by EA in order to focus on Ultima Online.
is keeping the Theif franchise alive. And it's damn good
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Mortal Kombat jumps to mind when speaking of franchises driven into the ground. While fighting games were evolving and becoming more complex and nuance the MK series failed to adapt. Now its not even mentioned in the same breath as Virtua Fighter and Tekken. Street Fighter is also guilty of this, although some of the "Vs." games (Marvel vs Capcom in particular) were pretty good. One many may disagree with is Gran Turismo. Its still selling a lot of copies but the game's physics model hasn't taken a significant step forward since GT2 (and here we are coming up on GT5). Instead Polyphony Digital is obsessed with better graphics and more car models. Which is fine, but most people don't care whether they can drive a 1982 Daihatsu or if they can have 50 Skylines with different paint schemes. I thought Megaman was a interesting franchise because I feel like it was languishing right around MM3 or 4. When X came out it was just different enough to get me interested again, but then they started the same pattern of rehashes with the X series too. That guy left out Megaman Legends which I thought was fairly innovative and fun. Had they developed that concept better it could have done wonders for the series.
SF2 came out. It was great. It had quarters lined up nonstop on the bottom of the screen. Then there was the apostrophe SF2 (Champion edition) and then Turbo. Those weren't too bad. They fixed some issues, gave us the four bosses, and gave our favorite girl a fireball.
After that it went completely downhill. All the extra characters, the new insane moves, and then there was the attempt at 3D. It killed what SF2 originally was and Capcom just DROVE THAT FRANCHISE INTO THE FRIGGIN GROUND!
that the game was "good" to begin with. I'm not trying to troll here but I can honestly recall a lot of people hating this game from it's initial release. Most of the people I knew considered it a novel idea but a grand waste of money and not worth more than an hour or two of game play.
And to be clear, I was often mocked for actually enjoying the original.
This article focuses only on console games, ignoring the similarly-large range of PC franchises torpedoed by bad decisions or greedy publishers.
Star Control III was nowhere the game its predecessors were. SC2 was possibly the best space exploration title ever released, better even than Starflight 1 & 2, whereas SC3 was a lame duck pseudo-RTS with a terrible plot and spaceships populated by talking puppets. Jesus wept.
Thief 3 was another PC title that fell far short of its predecessors, though a lot of the game's problems stemmed from compromises made in adapting the game for XBox, especially the division of levels into extremely small zones.
Star Fox is still best played on the N64. Starfox adventures was 20hrs of beautifully rendered boring fetch quests with a good 18 seconds of real starfox action in between each area. Then they made this crappy multiplayer starfox game that was riddled with control issues. When will we get our beloved on-rails shooter back?
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
I did not like FF8, FF10, FF10 1/2, FF11, or FF12. FF9 was an anomaly in the decline. The series seems to have gone way downhill, and it looks to me that an exclusivity contract with PS3 for FF13 will be the end.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Don't you mean Westwood.
When EA bought Westwood Studios, they killed Origin's in-development Privateer Online in favour of Westwood's "Earth and Beyond". Most of the developers that were on the Privateer team left Origin when the project was cancelled and formed the Sony Austin Studio which gave us Star Wars Galaxies.
Freespace: 2 awesome games that filled in the gap left by a non existent wing commander. Vanished into thin air.
Allegiance: Another space combat / strategy game by MS. Most fun I've ever had in an online game. Wish they'd re-release this on X-Box arcade.
But i'm gonna add another PC game, a mod actually, Counter-strike. There I said it. Valve bought the rights to the mod, and then promptly split the community and actual game itself into 3 different (although similar) games, then they killed off the old server infrastructure making playing the original mod (non-valve IP) impossible.
What you have currently is 3 different types of "games" based on the same mod, CS, CS:Z, and CS:S, CS and CS:S cannot be played together, and I think CS:Z is only backwards compatible. And they are different, any fan of a particular "game" will tell you how much the other "doesn't feel right"/sucks, etc...
Not to mention dropping thrid party support for anticheat tools, and constant (almost weekly) "tweaks" to "improve gameplay" that make playing a standard game a near impossiblity..
I tried to play CS:S the other night on one of the varible pricing servers (were prices fluctuate due to demand) and it was quite frustrating.. how do I make my choices of what gun to buy when i have no idea how much it costs in relation to other guns without spending every week going over the pricing? I couldn't even buy armor and helmet without forking over 4500 bucks?!?! (sorry bit of a rant there).
My main gripe is that I used to be able to just jump in a game and play for a few hours, knowing the maps, knowing what my money would buy, knowing what equipment was available.. with source this is pretty much not possible.. it seems like Valve wants to kill it off completely.
The old sierra-style ones: Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory (formerly Hero's Quest), King's Quest, etc.
However, the new Sam'n'Max game is perhaps still somewhat along these lines, and perhaps the episodic model will breath some new life into an old genre. I'd love to see a well done new version of the Space Quest series...
Not that i dont enjoy them (on the very contrary!) but franchises should never last past 3 or 4 games because they always get worst each time.
A good recipe for a game only works for so long then you need to whip out a new one. I know there are are franchises that just won't die like mega man, dynasty warriors and Final fantasy but then I have to remind you that these games now don't provide nearly as much fun as they did when they began. mind you, FF did evolve with its latest installment.
I've read elsewhere tho that some franchises died too soon, like Wing Commander, or privateer...
please! make a privateer mmog (and don't fuck it up the way turbine fucked dungeons & dragons! or the way sony fucked star wars)
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Hello, Zonk? On Slashdot there are probably more PC gamers than console players. How about ONCE publishing an article relevant to us?
One great franchise that performed well on the market but died off for no reason was Jumping Flash. A great platformer before even Mario 64, fun to play and fun to control even if it didn't use analog sticks.
Commander Keen, Wonder Boy, Streets of Rage, Road Rash, Splatterhouse, oh.. there are so many that I wish they would bring back in full force.
Twinstiq, game news
It was a great "murder simulator"/tactical shooter. But after Rainbow Six 3: Ravenshield the focus shifted to console games destroying the whole Rainbow Six concept that worked so well.
The reason the new Tombraiders are better are because SCI took over from Core Design as the developer. Core Design is a shell of the company it once was anyway, and I'm not going to discuss that here. You're about to see some other old favorites pop up at new developers from Fallout at BethSoft to another old favorite I can't comment about. =)
My point is -- it helps to have a new design and development team to take a fresh approach if the orginal team has faultered.
I'll join the Wing Commander chorus here. Blasting Kilrathi in the later years just wasn't what it was in the beginning... there's only so many times you can be called a "hairless ape" before you get desensitized to it. And you'd think after a single human pilot wipes out 10,000 of their fighters and a couple of hundred of their capital ships they'd know better than to kill his woman or attack his homeworld.
I'd also like to toss out Mechwarrior (downhill after 2) and Gunship (2000 was outstanding, Gunship! not so much).
I am a hardcore gamer, yet I only recognized 3 of the seven series mentioned.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
They could have easily done more with the series.. come on now, only 1 race in the whole universe, the kilrathi? granted wing commander had advanced space travel, I cant believe they would'nt have threw in a parrallel universe with maybe another evil race.. Or let 2 last kilrathi excape just for insurance storylines for future games.. beyond all that I enjoyed all PC wing commanders. They even made a few for super NES that were pretty damn good. I played it all the way up to WC 4. I did'nt get into prophecy much, but I still have the original game CD and will brave it someday. for some reason i had problems running the older WC's on my newer system. R.I.P wing commander
The Wing Commander series started going downhill as soon as they switched to live action cut scenes. Wing Commander I and II (and their corresponding sets of expansion packs, "Secret Missions" and "Special Operations") as well as Privateer (but not the live-action Privateer 2) were awesome in that they had a compelling storyline and excellent game dynamics, but as soon as Chris Roberts started fancying himself to be a movie director instead of a game designer, the gameplay and storyline simultaneously went down the crapper.
The difference in gameplay was surprisingly dramatic. In the early games, fighting even small numbers of enemies was fairly challenging, and running like hell when things got too hot was a perfectly acceptable option (though doing it too often tended to affect the storyline in a way that would make things more difficult for you later; these games had several possible endings depending on which battles you won or lost in the course of the campaign). In the later games, the gameplay became more arcade-like, with your character going up against dozens of enemies on every single mission, and the plot became strictly linear; failing a single mission generally resulted in the game ending immediately.
In the end, I think Chris Roberts (and probably many others at Orion) simply fell in love with all the bells and whistles they were able to put into the later games as technology improved, causing them to forget about the reasons why people liked the Wing Commander games in the first place. It's a classic example of the eye candy vs. gameplay dilemma that affects many (if not most) major game companies nowadays.
cp /dev/zero ~/signature.txt
Having played the SNES Starfox minigame on Wario Ware, I'd just like to say that if Nintendo would like to release a proper Wii Starfox then they will own the world.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It's like George Lucas baptized the developers with a mixture of Jar Jar's saliva and Anakin's emo tears. That's the only way I can explain how bad it's gotten.
Ultima is a series that was dragged through the mud in gruesome fashion.
The original was pretty good. Ultima II was about the same. Ultima III kicked butt for its time frame. And from there, it went downhill.
The last was Ultima 9, and it was awful. Ultima Online has its fans, but it wasn't even close to the same game, so it doesn't count.
For another, Bard's Tale was 3 great games, and then a really stupid release of a non-related game with the same title nearly 15 years later. I still don't understand that one, other than a money grubbing rip-off using a legendary title. And if it has been a real Bard's Tale 4, I would have spent the cash on it.
I didn't like their list. It was all console games, and they could have found a lot more than 7 titles to pick on. Throw PC titles in there, and you could hit 25 easy.
The Starfleet Command series of games was excellent until Activision killed the franchise by forcing Taldren to abandon the Starfleet Battles (Amarillo Design Bureau board game) roots that made it magic.
It is unfortunate that the original publisher Interplay died.
Interplay: By gamers for gamers.
Activision: By marketing bean counters for brain dead kids.
RIP Starfleet Command.
I finally get a full set of USB CH gear to play MW4 with and...
MS stopped making them.
Where's MW5?"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Sometimes, when I play the orignal Blood Omen, or Soul Reaver, I sometimes forget that the other sequels even existed and wonder what the next game will be like. Then I remember that they went ahead and beached the good ship Kain on the shimmering, yet arid beaches of Higher Definition and Lower Content Gaming.
The primary problem with the modern game industry is that graphics designers are still working the the art world equivalent of assembly code. Efficeintly, intimitly and above all slowly. Budgets are being burned on giving Raziel and Kain anatomically correct eyelids when what was actually needed was more game.
May the Maths Be with you!
forgetting the greatest game of all: Big Rigs - Over the Road Racing. This had the potential to be a huge franchise with it's revolutionary graphics and gameplay, but they decided only to make the one game.
I can't believe noone has mentioned Freespace! Absolutely fantastic game series that just seemed to die after two games and right in the middle of the story. Oh well. At least it still lives on in the OSS community: http://scp.indiegames.us/news.php
I don't want Karma, I just want to be a smart ass. All in favor, mod me up.
The original Carmageddon was genius. A no rules driving game, with no penalties for not sticking to the course. If you wanted to complete a race by chasing checkpoints, you could. Alternatively, you could win by destroying all your opponents or killing all the pedestrians, having fun by destroying the scenery. Race after race of carnage. MaxCam and DiannaCam were funny as well.
:)
Carmageddon II introduced missions after every 3 races, which sort of took the edge of the free-for-all play. However, there were only 10 missions and 30 races so it was still good. Plus the pedestrians were polygon-based rather than sprites, so a tap with your car would cause them to lose a limb but not kill them
Carmageddon TDR 3000 was where is all went wrong. Every other race was a mission and on the proper races you didn't get as generous a time bonus for killing pedestrians, forcing you to actually race and hit the checkpoints to increase the time available.
If someone would produce an update of the original with improved graphics, Sims 2-like pedestrians and reinstate MaxCam, I'd be the first in line to buy it.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
Wow, what console-focussed cack. What about Ultima, going from the birth of the graphical RPG to the most respected franchise of the 80s/mid 90's only to choke to death in the birth of 3d with U8 an U9? or Star Control, wrested from Toys for Bob after the godly and never-bettered Star Control 2 and turned into a retarded retread/ofshoot in SC3, only to linger in development hell forever after? or even Prince of Persia, PC rooted, console raped of every last gasp of integrety. Lets remember the roots and not just the last 10 years of consoles, people!
Devil bunnies! I snort the nose! Lucifer! Banana! Banana!
- Madden -- Or the rest of the EA Sports' yearly rename-a-thon games.
- Everquest -- Once the reigning champion of MMORPGs, now relegated to a small niche of faithfuls.
- Star Trek -- Not that there was ever a good ST game.
- Command & Conquer -- It may have launched the RTS genre, but they cranked out some fairly lackluster titles until Generals was released.
And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head.https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Totally buggy and didn't fit the back-story at all. I think WC3 was actually the best of the series, the movie-based cut-scenes were generally well done and not overbearing. The original Privateer was definitely one of the best games of that era, I'm still disappointed that Origin killed the Privateer Online project, although after Privateer2 I have a feeling it would have been butchered anyways so perhaps it's a good thing.
Full parties in 3D have been done, and done well by several games: Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dungeon Siege, and Freedom Force, just to name a few on PC.
- Oni - a quasi-anime third-person shooter/fighter game with a story. Hell of a lot of fun. Made by Bungie right before MS bought them; the sequel and network support they were working on were killed.
- Mechwarrior - Microsoft killed the franchise when they bought them. They had a good thing going with MechWarrior 2, but the gameplay in 3 and 4 got progressively less challenging, refined, and balanced. Ditto for the Mech Commander games, which were medicore at best to begin with. They could do a lot of awesome stuff with this franchise right now, if they did it right. Mechwarrior MMORPG, anyone (ala Mechwarrior Merc on a trans-global scale)?
- Privateer/WingCommander series - with the technology we have today, why haven't we seen this world continued in the old tradition? It was great.
- Duke Nukem - OK, so where the hell is Duke Nukem Forever? Duke3D was great fun, then the release of a couple mediocre side-scrolling games for platform and PC, and we're still waiting for DN4R, which has been in the works for like... 7 years, now?
- Descent - Descent 1 and 2 were great, and 3 was medicore at best in terms of single and multiplayer gameplay. Heck, Descent 1 and 2 are still fantastic to play with d2x and modern textures. The games were way ahead of their time technologically, as well, introducing physics systems, true 3d, and lighting in 1993, for cryin' out loud. And then they just kinda stopped making Descent IV.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Have you tried the free games, Gemini Gold and Privateer Remake (an expanded version)?
Those games will soon have multiplayer releases (probably later this year).
NBA Live.
Anyways moving off-topic:
Can software companies (more specifically - game makers) be sued for selling defective products? Like advertising a feature of a game but when it reaches the stores turns out to be buggy or even nonexistent.
Do consumer rights group target such business malpractice? Or at least force companies to put a large label/warning on their products saying something like - "Government Advisory: Software needs heavy patching." And legally force companies to fix said problems or should call all their products back.
I know it's virtually impossible to release a bug free game, but there should be a standard/group that tests/rates these games and forbid or at least label them as faulty when it crosses a certain line of unplayability.
Oh and, are there already some groups that are making effort towards something like this?
I miss MDK -- a shooter with a decent sense of humor. Too bad it was driven into the ground and died.
Moderation is for Monks!
luckily, i own the original cart for the genesis. Seriously, there is a reason that retro gaming is making a comeback. Thats because "Awesome game XVI" isn't as good as "Awesome Game." I think we will see a rise in indie game development not only because theyr'e getting better, but because people are tired of sequel after sequel running the series into the ground.
But it was an amazing and totally unique system. And it featured giant robots. For many years it was one of the most popular franchises in Japanese arcades and on consoles too. There was tons of swag, including toys, models, fan books and magazines, costumes, vending machine prizes, you name it.
The first game was so strange and ambitious, with it's 2nd person 3d gameplay. The strategy could get amazingly complex, as you and your opponent would try to feint the other into committing, then calculate the right angle to avoid their attack and counterattack without getting counter-counter attacked... but all super fast, and going from long-range shooting to close-up swordplay in a flash.
But the high point (to me) was the sequel, Virtual On : Oratorio Tangram (gotta love that name) which was a super-fast version of the original, but with amazing graphics, a dozen variant ways to fire each weapon, improved close-combat and an extreme freedom and fluidity to the control scheme.
And then, they made a wierdly ambitious but kind of lame 4-player sequel (Force) and then an incredibly lame console-only single player game (Marz) and now it's embarassing to even talk of this franchise.
I'd say both its success and downfall can be traced to its unique control scheme, which allowed for an unmatched (IMHO) control of movement in a true 3d way, but required twin tank-style joysticks to operate properly. thus all arcade machines were totally custom and an expensive peripheral was required to play at home.
The game also had an extremely steep learning curve.
there is only the door, the door, the door.