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 [gamespot.com] will make it to release and System Shock will kinda, sorta live again...
Remember that several game developers had their funding cut so Daikatana [wikipedia.org] could see the light of day ( at a burn rate of $1,000,000US per month).
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...
Found it and bought it. I'd love to see some new glory come out in an old series though:-)
As an interesting aside, it appears from the install license that the games run using dosbox to emulate an older system. Chances are one could get them to run in multiple operating systems in that case (I know dosbox runs in at least windows/linux).
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.
No kidding, Megaman X (1) is one of my favorites in the entire series. It did some fresh things (namely the equipment upgrades) that differentiated itself from the main line.
Plus I cant get enough of the music, its one of my favorite SNES soundtracks.
It has definitely been going downhill, though. I dont think the X line has fared as well as the main line in the same number of games.
I really enjoyed Mega Man 2 for the NES. I tried the first in the series after that but was disappointed to see that it was the same game. Ditto for 3, 4, 5, 6... Then in Mega Man X you could hold down the shoot button to charge a shot. I've seen like 2 games worth of innovation spanned across how many games in the Mega Man series? 20?
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.
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.
By Generals, you meant Renegade, right? Generals restored my faith in the C&C franchise after playing Renegade. Even the behind-the-scenes videos that come with C&C: The First Decade barely mention renegade.
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!)
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.:(
Wing Commander is sorely missed and would indeed make an unbelievable MMO. Upgrading ships little by little would be sublime! I doubt we'll see that IP resurrected any time soon, unfortunately, due to the shitty movie and EA's stranglehold.
Graphic adventures are making a comeback in a huge way, though. I'll be especially interested to see how episodic gaming works out. I'm rather enjoying the new Sam and Max series, though it's so easy that the game is just an excuse to play the dialogue. That's oka
That's right. It's coming back to me now. It wasn't Westwood that was the problem, it was Ultima Online. EA decided that they'd rather sink the money into the Ultima series than into the Wing Commander series, which they felt hadn't been doing so well since they took over Origin. (Gee. Surprise, surprise.) So they killed Privateer Online in favor of doing the sequel (WTF?) Ultima Online 2. In the process, EA made a huge mess of things.
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.
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.
Other than the repressed memory that is The Sims Online, there has only been 1 true sequel to the game (the expansions don't really count, they were just added content). True, it has been rehashed onto the consoles, and the gameplay isn't the same (IMO, the PS2 version is better than the PC version. The PS2 version actually has goals to fulfill.) My two-bit commentary on games: Unless it is an MMO, completely open-ended games do not tend to hold interest for long. (And even with MMOs, if you don't have fr
You have noticed that of the top 10 selling PC games, five of them are related to the Sims, right? You may think it sucks (I thought it was alright), but it hasn't fallen. Not by a long shot.
Heres the data to back it up: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6164433.html [gamespot.com]
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.
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.
While its definitely better than any of the 3d sonics, I didnt like Sonic Rush much.
In the old 2d sonics (the Genesis ones, some of my favorite games ever), there werent pits to run straight into everywhere like there are in Rush. The bottomless pits all over the place are so annoying, especially since the game moves so quickly.
I'll probably pick it up and give it another shot (I purchased it when it came out), but next time I wont be expecting a Genesis-Sonic experience (maybe that was my problem going i
IMHO, 3D Realms drove Apogee's Duke Nukem into the ground. Apogee's Nukem was a really good platform series. 3D Realm's Nukem is a ripoff of the name just to make a 3D title with blood and porn.
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.
Do we really need Super Mega Hyper Extra Street Fighter 9 or something? I love to play the game, but Anything past SFIICE is just sort of overkill to me. Same for MK.
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...
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. I
Thats pretty much what EA does. It buys other people's good ideas, then defecates on them.
I prefer the beloved items of bullfrog IP remain buried, their graves undisturbed by EA...they would have just pumped out a couple half assed titles before dumping them anyway.
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 atta
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.
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.
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.
Ultima - Died thanks to EA who could'nt do anything right with it
Naw, Ultima died because every time technology advanced in capability by a factor of 2, Richard Garriot's ambitions increased by a factor of 5. In the end we were left with a tech demo.
Ultima 7 had to be split into two parts because it was too ambitious initially, but it was worthwhile. The program itself is notoriously hacky because of its custom memory management, but it mostly works. (And Exult means it works on modern machines, better than ever.)
Ultima 8 was too ambitious and while pretty, a lot was cut from the final game, including much of the fun.
Ultima 9 is almost the definition of an over-ambitious game. So much time spent on the tech that there wasn't much game left, and the story is just atrocious.
Ultima is almost the canonical example of why I don't really like the obsession with 3D; it becomes a design straitjacket. Anything you can't do in spectacular 3D isn't done at all. (My canonical example: Imagine a full 3D Nethack for the PS3, with no compromises whatsoever, full Nethack gameplay represented in glorious 3D. Good luck with that.) That really hurt Ultima because of all the details that were the spirit of it, most of which had to be cut in a full 3D world. Ultima 7 was the story apex, and Ultima 6 was the combat apex; combat was especially hosed by 3D. All solutions I've ever seen for running a full party of adventurers in 3D is a joke. (I haven't tried FFXII yet; waiting for a price drop while I play the many other AAA games I've missed. But in some ways I still bet it's a joke. Closest thing to an exception: Grandia 2 and 3.)
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.
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 [wikipedia.org] was nowhere the game its predecessors were. SC2 was possibly the best space exploration title ever released, better even than Starflight [wikipedia.org] 1 & 2, whereas SC3 was a lame duck pseudo-RTS with a terrible plot and spaceships populated by talking puppets. [scifi.com] Jesus wept.
Thief 3 [wikipedia.org] 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.
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.
- 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.
More have died... (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that several game developers had their funding cut so Daikatana [wikipedia.org] could see the light of day ( at a burn rate of $1,000,000US per month).
Re:More have died... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Sierra Style Quest Games (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
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As an interesting aside, it appears from the install license that the games run using dosbox to emulate an older system. Chances are one could get them to run in multiple operating systems in that case (I know dosbox runs in at least windows/linux).
Re:More have died... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Mega Man ruined? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think they just don't like the MM:BN games, and I admit, they do get repetative eventualy, however I still really like them.
The MM:Zero games (GBA) were wonderful for a new line in the series (Currently playing ZX on my DS)
MM:X were exactly like the old school megaman games, just with more stuff to do (always a plus in my book)
So I admit, I don't get it.
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It did some fresh things (namely the equipment upgrades) that differentiated itself from the main line. Plus I cant get enough of the music, its one of my favorite SNES soundtracks.
It has definitely been going downhill, though. I dont think the X line has fared as well as the main line in the same number of games.
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That Fluffy Pink Guy (Score:3, Interesting)
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What about PC series (Score:3, Interesting)
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My Picks (Score:5, Informative)
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!)
One More! (Score:2)
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yegods, I can't figgure out if I want to salivate or laugh my ass off.
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Graphic adventures are making a comeback in a huge way, though. I'll be especially interested to see how episodic gaming works out. I'm rather enjoying the new Sam and Max series, though it's so easy that the game is just an excuse to play the dialogue. That's oka
Re:Blizzard? (Score:5, Informative)
That's right. It's coming back to me now. It wasn't Westwood that was the problem, it was Ultima Online. EA decided that they'd rather sink the money into the Ultima series than into the Wing Commander series, which they felt hadn't been doing so well since they took over Origin. (Gee. Surprise, surprise.) So they killed Privateer Online in favor of doing the sequel (WTF?) Ultima Online 2. In the process, EA made a huge mess of things.
Parent
Star Control (Score:2, Informative)
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What, no Sims? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to have a pedestal to fall off of (Score:2)
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My two-bit commentary on games: Unless it is an MMO, completely open-ended games do not tend to hold interest for long. (And even with MMOs, if you don't have fr
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Heres the data to back it up: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6164433.html [gamespot.com]
Starsiege: Tribes (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
RE: Not all that universal... (Score:2)
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.
Sonic Rush for the DS... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
In the old 2d sonics (the Genesis ones, some of my favorite games ever), there werent pits to run straight into everywhere like there are in Rush. The bottomless pits all over the place are so annoying, especially since the game moves so quickly.
I'll probably pick it up and give it another shot (I purchased it when it came out), but next time I wont be expecting a Genesis-Sonic experience (maybe that was my problem going i
Duke Nukem? (Score:2)
Re:Duke Nukem? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Can you say Sierra? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can you say Sierra? (Score:4, Insightful)
They didn't drive any of those franschises into the gound, they just droped all their old titles
Parent
Hello? Tribes? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Do we really need Super Mega Hyper Extra Street Fighter 9 or something? I love to play the game, but Anything past SFIICE is just sort of overkill to me. Same for MK.
Layne
Might and Magic (Score:2)
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...
Driven and abandoned .. (Score:2, Insightful)
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. I
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I prefer the beloved items of bullfrog IP remain buried, their graves undisturbed by EA...they would have just pumped out a couple half assed titles before dumping them anyway.
Not a videogame, but deserves mention: (Score:2)
My picks (Score:2)
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 atta
AD&D games? (Score:2)
I was a huge fan of the Buck Rogers series. Too bad that died.
X-COM (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Masters of Orion (Score:2, Informative)
My pics (Score:2)
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.
Re:Ultima (Score:4, Insightful)
Ultima 7 had to be split into two parts because it was too ambitious initially, but it was worthwhile. The program itself is notoriously hacky because of its custom memory management, but it mostly works. (And Exult means it works on modern machines, better than ever.)
Ultima 8 was too ambitious and while pretty, a lot was cut from the final game, including much of the fun.
Ultima 9 is almost the definition of an over-ambitious game. So much time spent on the tech that there wasn't much game left, and the story is just atrocious.
Ultima is almost the canonical example of why I don't really like the obsession with 3D; it becomes a design straitjacket. Anything you can't do in spectacular 3D isn't done at all. (My canonical example: Imagine a full 3D Nethack for the PS3, with no compromises whatsoever, full Nethack gameplay represented in glorious 3D. Good luck with that.) That really hurt Ultima because of all the details that were the spirit of it, most of which had to be cut in a full 3D world. Ultima 7 was the story apex, and Ultima 6 was the combat apex; combat was especially hosed by 3D. All solutions I've ever seen for running a full party of adventurers in 3D is a joke. (I haven't tried FFXII yet; waiting for a price drop while I play the many other AAA games I've missed. But in some ways I still bet it's a joke. Closest thing to an exception: Grandia 2 and 3.)
Parent
Turok (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Not just console games (Score:3, Insightful)
Star Control III [wikipedia.org] was nowhere the game its predecessors were. SC2 was possibly the best space exploration title ever released, better even than Starflight [wikipedia.org] 1 & 2, whereas SC3 was a lame duck pseudo-RTS with a terrible plot and spaceships populated by talking puppets. [scifi.com] Jesus wept.
Thief 3 [wikipedia.org] 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.
I know i'll get punished for it (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
A couple more... (Score:3, Insightful)
- 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.
Dear God.... There is another like me? (Score:2)