Games that have lost their way

[votemarvel]

Comparing the mechanics of ME1 to the later ME3 is difficult. Most people say that ME3 is mechanically superior (Or even ME2 for that matter) and generally speaking I would agree.

That said, Bioware did take a step back in a few places (Such as using the god damn space bar for everything, or having to navigate the map with that stupid normandy replica rather than just clicking where I want to go and then going there...) I can appreciate the polish that went into the combat for the later ME titles (Though in comparison to other shooters it still isn't very good) but I don't believe for one moment that it was worth jumping the shark mechanically speaking.

I saw improvement in gameplay mechanics with each game, especially when I went back and played through all three. Mechanically I'd consider each to be better than its predecessor. It probably helps that I always perceived the series to be "action RPG" so I judged the games based on that perception. The only reason I don't consider ME3 the best in the series is because I love games with good stories, and in that regards ME3 shat the bed.

I genuinely don't get the dislike.

Personally I found the combat in Mass Effect 1 a more fluid experience. I was always doing something. Whether that was firing my gun, turning around and using throw, lift on the next guy and then using Warp on the enemy using Immunity. Then using Shield Boost so I could go charging in if I wanted.

All too often in the two sequels I found myself crouching behind a chest high wall waiting for a power to recharge or planning how I was going to get more ammo into my guns.

Visually the combat in the two sequels is much better but give me the mechanics of the first every time.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Downpour is a decent, fun game, and a masterpiece when you compare it to say Homecoming. The story sucks though. You can tell it wants to be SH2 just by looking at Murphy and the Bogeyman.

Agreed. I can't even so much as think about Homecoming without developing a twitch. I felt Downpour's problem was that it tried too hard to throw in various themes/situations that made the original Silent Hill's good without ever truly understanding the elements being used.

I didn't mind the story but I didn't care for the characters as I had done in the original 4 SH games. I thought the fact that you could ultimately influence whether or not Murphy was innocent was a nice touch though, a little different to SH2 where instead you influenced how James felt about his actions after the fact.

The Bogeyman however: too obvious, a blatant stand in for Pyramid Head and nowhere near as stylish in design. Essentially the same thing they did with The Butcher in SH:Origins. I'm also totally fed up with the trench coat/gas mask combo that the movie and Homecoming introduced as a recurring aesthetic. /rant

 

[sunsetspawn]

I genuinely don't get the dislike.

Personally I found the combat in Mass Effect 1 a more fluid experience. I was always doing something. Whether that was firing my gun, turning around and using throw, lift on the next guy and then using Warp on the enemy using Immunity. Then using Shield Boost so I could go charging in if I wanted.

All too often in the two sequels I found myself crouching behind a chest high wall waiting for a power to recharge or planning how I was going to get more ammo into my guns.

Visually the combat in the two sequels is much better but give me the mechanics of the first every time.

It actually depends on how you viewed the combat in the first place. If your reaction to the first Mass Effect was thinking that it was like a Bioware RPG except you actually initiated everything in real time, then you liked it. If your first thought was, "why isn't this action game behaving like all of the other action games," then you were going to have a bad time.

It still wasn't great though, because let's say you spec'd Wrex as a tank, you never could order him to charge the enemies (and therefore draw all of their fire) because both of your idiot squadmates took their movement orders as one. And if you spec'd yourself as a tank your asshole friends were never good at taking advantage of your drawing all of the enemy fire. In fact, the only real use you ever had for squadmates came from their powers.

To be fair, though, in 2 and 3 your squad wasn't much more useful.

I do prefer 1, but the combat isn't the complete reason. Mass Effect 1 felt epic, while Mass Effect 2 and 3 felt like you were running down corridor-shooting-galleries.

 

[ComradeJim270]

I genuinely don't get the dislike.

Personally I found the combat in Mass Effect 1 a more fluid experience. I was always doing something. Whether that was firing my gun, turning around and using throw, lift on the next guy and then using Warp on the enemy using Immunity. Then using Shield Boost so I could go charging in if I wanted.

All too often in the two sequels I found myself crouching behind a chest high wall waiting for a power to recharge or planning how I was going to get more ammo into my guns.

Visually the combat in the two sequels is much better but give me the mechanics of the first every time.

No dislike, here. I enjoyed ME1. I've been playing it recently. My XBL picture is still the N7 from beating it on insanity. I have every achievement. I probably played through it six or seven times. But it had issues. Maybe it's because I played it for hundreds of hours (they say familiarity breeds contempt), but eventually a lot of powers started feeling redundant, useless, or so overpowered they make the game boring: it's hard to feel excited about combat when you can literally just pistol whip thresher maws to death. Different classes do have different playstyles, but not to the extent that they do in, say, ME3. On any difficulty lower than hardcore, my combat in ME1 doesn't feel like it requires as much thought as in ME3 (it's about on par with ME2 in my experience).

I'll make an exception for Adepts I suppose. Killing everything by tossing it around the room is hilariously fun and not really viable in later games since powers share a cooldown.

EDIT:

It actually depends on how you viewed the combat in the first place. If your reaction to the first Mass Effect was thinking that it was like a Bioware RPG except you actually initiated everything in real time, then you liked it. If your first thought was, "why isn't this action game behaving like all of the other action games," then you were going to have a bad time.

It still wasn't great though, because let's say you spec'd Wrex as a tank, you never could order him to charge the enemies (and therefore draw all of their fire) because both of your idiot squadmates took their movement orders as one. And if you spec'd yourself as a tank your asshole friends were never good at taking advantage of your drawing all of the enemy fire. In fact, the only real use you ever had for squadmates came from their powers.

To be fair, though, in 2 and 3 your squad wasn't much more useful.

I do prefer 1, but the combat isn't the complete reason. Mass Effect 1 felt epic, while Mass Effect 2 and 3 felt like you were running down corridor-shooting-galleries.

There's truth to that. I always saw it as "action RPG" or "shooter with heavy RPG elements", so when they cut out some RPG elements in ME2 I went "Oh! This is more streamlined without feeling dumbed-down and oversimplified... nice!"

The squad thing? Yeah, know what ME game lets you command them seperately? That'd be the third one. The fact they were mostly useful for their powers? That got better in 2 and 3 when they made various powers interact with each other (which you could kind of do with a lift/throw combo in ME1, but that's about it).

As for spending a lot of time behind cover, I wonder if people who make that criticism of ME1 ever played it on insanity, where many enemies will kill you in two seconds if you leave cover.

 

[MightyRabbit]

A lot of the comments here seem to be discussing a change in genre, which I don't think should be an automatic qualifier. Personally, I don't think Mass Effect, Dragon Age or Fallout lost the core of what they were about when they decided to ease up on the RPG aspects, because to me the core of those games is their world-building and lore. I do have some small problems with those series, but I'd say they've stuck true to what they originally were, or have changed in ways that don't detract from that original core.

However, I do agree that Final Fantasy has gone down the pan. The franchise seems to be trying to streamline & quicken everything and give it a shiny coat of graphics to make up for it. But when I play a JRPG, I want a game where I have to wait in combat and manage an entire group of characters, not just manage one and trust the computer to handle the rest. Final Fantasy has always shifted wildly in tone, setting & story, so it was always the mechanics that were the core of those games for me. Given that they've been shifting the focus of the mechanics towards simplicity & speed (not very well, in my opinion), it feels to me like Final Fantasy has drifted from what made me love it so much.

 

[ComradeJim270]

A lot of the comments here seem to be discussing a change in genre, which I don't think should be an automatic qualifier. Personally, I don't think Mass Effect, Dragon Age or Fallout lost the core of what they were about when they decided to ease up on the RPG aspects, because to me the core of those games is their world-building and lore. I do have some small problems with those series, but I'd say they've stuck true to what they originally were, or have changed in ways that don't detract from that original core.

However, I do agree that Final Fantasy has gone down the pan. The franchise seems to be trying to streamline & quicken everything and give it a shiny coat of graphics to make up for it. But when I play a JRPG, I want a game where I have to wait in combat and manage an entire group of characters, not just manage one and trust the computer to handle the rest. Final Fantasy has always shifted wildly in tone, setting & story, so it was always the mechanics that were the core of those games for me. Given that they've been shifting the focus of the mechanics towards simplicity & speed (not very well, in my opinion), it feels to me like Final Fantasy has drifted from what made me love it so much.

I disagree with you about Fallout. Fallout 3 did a very poor job of capturing what made Fallout... Fallout. Even by your criteria... it threw a lot of the world-building and lore under the bus, or just retreaded it in a wholly underwhelming manner. But then Obsidian came and went "No, no, no... if you want to do a first-person, real-time Fallout, it's supposed to be like this". They even made it infuriatingly buggy, just like Fallout 2!

 

[dmv]

no, you are actually right.

this might be due dead space's "success".

red faction armageddon proves this.

it started as a fps with destructable enviroment (red faction 1)
to a dumbed down generic shooter with not much destructables (red faction 2)
to finally a open world shooter with massive destructables (Red Faction: Guerrilla )
to a dead space 2 rip off with some destructable enviroments(Red Faction: Armageddon)
and a incredibly stupid story.

goddamn i ran trough red faction armageddon feeling like a retard since i could just repair everything and ergo the destroyed terraformer.

but nope, lets play the dumb guy,release a bunch of monsters that kill everything on sight, get hated and almost killed by everyone and lose a really, really, really hot girlfriend in the process for procrastinating in just repairing the damn thing in the first place.

Well heres to hoping LP3 delivers. I really like what I've seen so far, it doesn't seem to be relying too heavily on jump scares.
And as much as I want to hate RF:armageddon, I can't. It allowed me to fire a rainbow death laser out of a baby unicorn's arse.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Mass Effect (went from RPG to action)

I've played all three Mass Effect games, and I'm kind of surprised people defend the RPG aspect of the first one so vigorously. I mean, if I had to choose between a simpler, yet more accessible, gameplay that had a greater focus on action, and gameplay that emphasizes "RPG elements" that just come off as obtuse and unnecessary , I'm pretty sure which one I'd choose. Personally, I don't think the "RPG elements" have EVER been that great in the ME series, but at least the last two didn't feel like shoving that shit down your gullet.

Thank you. While I like the first games story etc, the gun play and stats were rubbish. Here you are, Commander of an elite squad and you still need training/more stats to aim straight? Or to even be able to aim with some weapons? I get how they were trying to restrict weapons to classes, but still giving some access to weapons, like the sniper rifle and not being able to look through the scope was utter horse shit.

The irony being that even while the Sentinel is more support-focused than it is any actual combat, I can easily take down even a Geth Colossus with my Sentinel. And all I've got is a pistol(no extra weapons training as of yet). Pistols are beyond broken in ME1. Although my biggest problem is why give us access to guns we effectively couldn't use to begin with? Sniper rifle has a targeting reticle that covers the entire screen. You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Literally. Assault rifles also have a far larger reticle than necessary and Shotguns are worthless at anything other than close to point-blank range.

That's one of the better changes(among others) in ME2. Our weapon screens aren't cluttered with weapons we couldn't use if we wanted to. As far as I'm concerned, from a storyline point, ME1 is much better than ME2. But ME2 is vastly superior to ME1 at a gameplay point of view. Especially considering the ridiculous number of bugs you encounter ALL THE TIME in ME1.

I haven't had more than an hour with ME3 so I have no comment on that one.

 

[White_Lama]

Call of Duty went from a good WWII shooter with tanks, to a game with no tanks and then it just went downhill from there.

Hasn't been good since United Offensive.

Only CoD 2 had tanks for what 1 mission, and that mission was so poor anyway

Clearly you didn't play United Offensive.
As I said, it hasn't been good since that one, because they were stupid enough to remove the tanks from certain multiplayer maps, along with my beloved .30 cal.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Devil May Cry: It's a shame cause it pretty much hit the nail on the head by the 3rd game and just died from then on.
Metroid: Will we ever get another one? Was Other M, the ONLY truly bad game in the series, really its demise? Please Nintendo prove to me I am wrong and make another one.
Dead Space: Self explanatory.
Resident Evil: Also Self explanatory.

May we now pray they return to glory. One day...

 

[SD-Fiend]

Pokemon, Mario and Need for speed ring a bell.

Excuse me but how has pokemon lost it's way? And don't say its because the new pokemon designs are bad since that's "just your opinion man"

 

[xshadowscreamx]

masse effect gets a pass, it was always meant to be more action, have you actually tried ME1, its a clusterf33K of RPGness. everything is a chore.

 

[Michael Rogov]

Dragon Age. Went from fucking masterpiece to trying to emulate Mass Effect..... I cry a little every day for the series.

 

[Johnnydillinger]

I'm quite baffled how nobody mentioned Black & White. It started as a one-of-a-kind god-simulator that looks like an RTS and plays completely differently. Then, after the first island it turned into an RTS. I was so disappointed that I uninstalled it after the second island.

 

[dmv]

no, you are actually right.

this might be due dead space's "success".

red faction armageddon proves this.

it started as a fps with destructable enviroment (red faction 1)
to a dumbed down generic shooter with not much destructables (red faction 2)
to finally a open world shooter with massive destructables (Red Faction: Guerrilla )
to a dead space 2 rip off with some destructable enviroments(Red Faction: Armageddon)
and a incredibly stupid story.

goddamn i ran trough red faction armageddon feeling like a retard since i could just repair everything and ergo the destroyed terraformer.

but nope, lets play the dumb guy,release a bunch of monsters that kill everything on sight, get hated and almost killed by everyone and lose a really, really, really hot girlfriend in the process for procrastinating in just repairing the damn thing in the first place.

Well heres to hoping LP3 delivers. I really like what I've seen so far, it doesn't seem to be relying too heavily on jump scares.
And as much as I want to hate RF:armageddon, I can't. It allowed me to fire a rainbow death laser out of a baby unicorn's arse.

i'm sorry, i also dont want to offend you, but you have really low standards.

if i make a half assed game with a retarded and contradicting story to the lore and reduce one of the key aspects of a franchise to a lower extend, you are ok with it as long as you get a weak gimicky weapon you can only unlock/find later in the game, hidden behind a wall or get unlocked after you sit throught the pain inducing and brainmass reducing story?

okay..

now i know what is holding back franchises. damn gimicks.

You can modify your save files. I couldn't stand certain parts of red faction so I replaced mine with someone who had the fortitude to finish it. I enjoyed the magnet gun and the unicorn anus-laser.
Considering I got the game for like 10 bucks on a steam sale, I feel I got my moneys worth.

 

[ExileNZ]

ORIGINAL POST

While I actually agree with your point whole-heartedly, there are a couple of places where it makes sense.

I never played Mass Effect, but the first one seemed to run like a more "fluid" version of KOTOR. After that it only got more fluid, so I can see the logic, but without playing it my opinion on it's not worth much.

More to the point tho, look at Resident Evil. I've played the original, the Gamecube remake, and some of RE 2 and 3. In all honesty they controlled HORRIBLY and while the survival horror aspect was great, it remained so because of some glaring inconsistencies with the control scheme. Namely, headshots. When you can occasionally take down a zombie with a headshot, that's great. When you have so little ammo that you rely on headshots to conserve any ammo, that's good survival horror. But when you include a headshot system and you make it almost impossible to lose, it's just frustrating.
RE4 was great fun, and I stand by it being the best of the series, but it was also really quite silly. There surely must be some middle ground between "nononoHEADSHOTDAMMIT!" and "Is that a mutant midget Napoleon?", but the fact remains that in spite of that it was still the best one - because whatever trade-off you made in the story department (and I'm usually pretty story-obsessed), the controls were FAR more wieldly than they'd ever been in previous titles, which led to an overall much less frustrating experience.

Haven't played Dead Space yet, but I do also agree on the FF front. FFXIII was pretty... linear. Maybe it gets better after the first 20 hours, but if it's not worth playing that far in the first place it's not gonna get a lot of love.

 

[TJC]

I'm quite baffled how nobody mentioned Black & White. It started as a one-of-a-kind god-simulator that looks like an RTS and plays completely differently. Then, after the first island it turned into an RTS. I was so disappointed that I uninstalled it after the second island.

That's because if a game is only good for an hour until it's not fun anymore, it's not a good game. So Black & White didn't lose its way, it's just shit in general.

Metroid: Will we ever get another one? Was Other M, the ONLY truly bad game in the series, really its demise? Please Nintendo prove to me I am wrong and make another one.

In general, I'm blaming Ninja Theory for that one. Seriously, I think they could've handed Philips the franchise like they did with Zelda and it wouldn't have been such a disaster. Here's hoping that if Nintendo decides to ditch another of their franchises, they'll choose at least a decent studio. (can't go wrong with Retro Studios)

OT:
There are many franchises that lost their way after a few games. A lot of them don't exist anymore because of that: Spyro the Dragon is what comes to my mind. From cute collect-a-thon to mediocre 'adult' breath 'em up. OH EDGY! Now he's a collectible himself at best.
Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Dexter are also victims though in their case it might be more "selling out" than losing their way.

For me personally it's the Mario RPG franchise (not the handheld ones, aside from Partners in Time, which was only 'good' the others are awesome). It started to feel flat with Super Paper Mario but now we have Sticker Star and it's just... UGH... no charm, no spark, even the humor feels just... token at best.