Jimquisition: A Game By Any Other Name

[Casual Shinji]

The problem with certain of these titles is that they create an expectation, especially if they're horror games. And in regards to Silent Hill, the issue isn't "it's called Silent Hill" or even "it's being developed by Americans", but that the new games can't create an identity of their own. They're constantly calling back to the actuall good SH games by putting in Pyramid Head and the sexy nurses with a mentallity that just screams, "Look, look, see, it's still Silent Hill." That footage you showed during this episode of this new SH entry again featured Pyramid Head lumbering around, and I just can't help but sigh at the sight of him.

Resident Evil 4 was a huge departure, but it stood on it's own two feet and formed its own unique identity. And because of this it's one of the best games ever made.

And the new Devil May Cry is going to be shit untill proven good since Ninja Theory is developing it, and they couldn't create good gameplay mechanics to save their lives.

 

[The Deadpool]

I'm not so sure the Fallout 3 complaint was that it was different per se, just that it went from a story focused RPG to a shooting focused RPG.

It would be the next Killzone going from good first person shooter into crappy third person shooter... But good exploration.

 

[Worgen]

The name of a game is important because of what we expect that game to be, we expect silent hill games to be scary or at least attempt to be scary, we expect cod games to be full of set pieces and first person shooting, we expect... well we hope that xcom games would be strategy games and not just more first person shooters.

 

[mik1]

I agree completely.

EXCEPT WITH BANJO AND KAZOOIE NUTS AND BOLTS
That aren't any true collectathons left. And that game was the standard for collecathons!!!!
Because of the wide open level design and the really good controls for just walking around as banjo I have reason to believe that game was started as a true successor to banjo tooie. Playing nuts and bolts is just torture because makes me wish I could be playing the unmade banjo threeie instead.

 

[LazyAza]

Somehow I think JonTron would disagree with Jim's example of Banjo Kazooie Nuts n Bolts lol.

I'm generally all for spin offs and new ideas myself but past experiences have taught me that most of the time drastic changes = bad game so I'm always skeptical at best. I was with DMC despite actually being a fan of Ninja Theory's past titles but upon seeing sufficient gameplay footage I was fine with the game because it does look like a bundle of fun. That said their was absolutely no guarantee NT weren't going to fuck it up.

 

[brazuca]

Max Payne 3 Jim? Forgot about that?

 

[Griffolion]

Thank You Jim another good video as usual, I was hoping you would address this issue as I love Devil May Cry and i'm looking forward to DMC, but the insane fan purists are really starting to annoy me with their crys of RUINED FOREVER just because Dante doesn't have white hair anymore and no matter how much you tried to reason with them, they don't listen and apparently I'm not a true fan in their eyes.

Thank God for you sir

I like the new look, to be honest. Sure, original Dante will always have a place in my heart, but the new one seems kinda cool. There's not many characters who can pull off a frat boy douchebag persona, but he seems to.

 

[Jack and Calumon]

We've got a number of games provoking this reaction. Devil May Cry and Silent Hill for one, but Metal Gear Rising has also been getting this reaction, to a lesser extent though. As for direct games that aren't said to be spin offs, there are still plenty of modern examples, with recent grumbly man Max Payne getting a similar reaction of "It's a great game, but not a great Max Payne game." Brothers in Arms is also getting this treatment from fans in that one, single, alone trailer that came out and the game was never heard from again.

It's funny, I'm playing Alan Wake's American Nightmare on Steam sales, and this game couldn't be more different in tone from Alan Wake. Alan Wake was tense and atmospheric, with dread around every corner that some yokel will come around telling you about the local fauna in a demented voice while brandishing an axe. American Nightmare is so goofy, camp and over-the-top that I think that my brain exploded by the time I crashed a satellite down from space by listening to Kasabian and flickering some lights. Despite this change in tone, I'm loving the game, and see no reason to call the game out on it. It's a spin off, it's different and it's great.

Got to take this into moderation though. Change can be good and bad, and we mustn't be afraid to call them out when the change is bad. If things change for the bad, everyone must know about it. Everyone. That way no-one will be able to justify copying that game.

Calumon: And that's how internet people justify screaming about things they don't like.

 

[Callate]

Well, but, here's a question. Would we have gotten the "truer-to-its-roots" Firaxis XCom game if reaction to the FPS 2K XCom hadn't a) been fairly critical and b) shown that there was still a strong fanbase for the original, top-down strategy bits and all?

Yeah, I agree, rabid fanbases can be quite unreasonable. And in the case of Silent Hill, at this point, I rather feel they can do whatever they want to the motherf@#$%r, a corpse is beyond hurting. But particularly with certain genre shifts, one can reasonably ask if something is lost. When something like Syndicate is dropped, bounces twice, and lays still, it becomes a real question if the executives who greenlight major games aren't going to say both "Well, let's never visit that world again" and "I guess the fanbase for Syndicate-style games isn't what the market research had suggested". Never mind that they didn't actually make what players of the original would qualify as a "Syndicate-style game"; it's the genre they abandoned that's likely to take the hit, not FPSs.

I readily admit I was overly worried about Fallout 3 myself, but my concerns had more to do with Bethesda seeming not to have a good record for grasping the myriad ways players might approach a problem than the change from third-person semi-turn-based to first-person. I was glad to largely be wrong on that account. (Largely. The Pitt DLC reminded me how irritatingly "strain everything down to a minimal number of paths" Bethesda can get at its worst.)

 

[Jonny49]

Am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with the Silent Hill HD Collection? Did I just happen to pick up the one copy in the whole world that wasn't a complete mess? It seems fine to me.

Maybe my standards are just low...

 

[5ilver]

I'm okay with devs making different games but then they should sell them under different names. If I went and bought something called "sausage" and instead receive a vegetable, that's not ok with me. Unless they make it really, *really* obvious, I suppose.

 

[Weasker]

You were so wrong from the begining of the video.
And to add insult to injury: Godwin's Law.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

I pretty much agree.
I LOVED Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. A departure from "normal" series but it was a great little spin-off title. One which I enjoyed a lot more than the more recent Tomb Raider games. It felt like a Tomb Raider without being one in terms of perspective and in the way you play it. It kept all the little nuances that make a game feel like a Tomb Raider but in a whole new package.

Also, I haven't quite understood the rage of having Dante's hair brown. (nor really the decision to change it unless there's an important and telling story arc which explains/justifies it) because the game is obviously still going to be typical DMC game.

Syndicate on the other hand was stupid. With no plans to resurrect the original franchise, it couldn't be called a spin-off and bar the odd weapons the FPS only used the name of the original to lure people to it. It used no game mechanics or ideas from the original game. It used nothing from the old game to it's advantage.
If it had been called something else, no one would have been the wiser about it's "origins". They turned that franchise in to something massively run-on-the-mill and average. The reasons for it being glaringly obvious and I'm sort of happy it didn't really work well for them. (except for the dev studio lay-offs. That sucked). I'm glad they didn't get the message: Take old games name. Turn it into a typical FPS because "that's what sells". Mindless FPS buying sheep will buy. Profit.
Now that was weak.

 

[MB202]

You know what video this reminds me of? Metroid: Other M. It's not a spin-off, and it's a disgrace to everything previously established about the Metroid series.

 

[idodo35]

"dont be a nazi"
indeed words of wisdom oh great one!

 

[Scrustle]

"Because a new game is trying something else, it doesn't destroy what came before." Not exactly the best wording that could have been put in but wise words nonetheless. This is something people should always try to remember. When a new version of something people love comes out and it doesn't look exactly how they want it to they act like everything that came before is some how corrupted and they'll never be able to experience the old games again. Obviously, it's nonsense.

But there is something to a game's name. In a perfect world quality would be completely separate from the name, but we don't live in a perfect world. A title does unfortunately colour people's expectations about a game, and any new game in a series will be judged against those expectations. It becomes somewhat of a metric to judge how good a game is. We see how well other games in the series did the same things and compare. Sometimes new things come in or old things get taken out, but it's still all judged by this over-arching expectation we have.

Of course that doesn't mean there should be no such things as spin-offs, or that franchises can never change away from one select idea. Although I think an important part of the appeal of survival horror games is their mood and tone. When people feel they want to play Silent Hill or Dead Space it's because they want to be immersed in the atmosphere that those games create. The mood created by the style of game of Book of Memories is in complete conflict with the mood of the rest of the series, so much so people see it as an affront to what people want from the series. That doesn't necessarily mean Book of Memories will be bad, or that it shouldn't exist or be called a Silent Hill game, but I think it makes the complaints of the fans somewhat valid.

The title of a series comes to represent what that series is and what it's about. Book of Memories is not what Silent Hill is about, and is therefore technically not a good "Silent Hill" game. It does a bad job of living up to the title that it's been given. As much as it sucks that this is part of how people judge a game's qualities, it just is. We associate certain things with certain names, and if a certain game cannot give us what we associate and want from the name it has it's understandable that people will judge it harshly. It doesn't mean the game will be bad purely as a game, but it does mean that it's a bad Silent Hill game.

P.S - When I mention that Book of Memories is or will be "bad" I'm talking in a hypothetical sense. I have no idea how good the game will be, and I have no interest in the game or the Silent Hill series. I'm just making a point about the identity of a game and people's expectations of a name.

 

[Darknacht]

I'm not so sure the Fallout 3 complaint was that it was different per se, just that it went from a story focused RPG to a shooting focused RPG.

The problem with Bethesda's Fallout 3 isn't just that it wasn't like the older ones but that it did keep a Fallout 3 that was more in line with the old Fallout games from being made.

 

[Bobic]

Jimmy , I fucking hate the intro song , please change it

Jimmy(?), I fucking love the intro song, please keep it for a decade. Then it might get old, so change it.

 

[Cat of Doom]

The problem with many franchises, especially those will long suffering and loyal fanbases, is that people begin to too narrowly define what makes a games in the series ). To be honest publishers are a little to blame here, often shoe-horing an unrelated game into a series for name recognition (Halo-Wars anyone?). Honestly a LOT of spinoff games do suck BUT the example you have here is of a community very obviously just vomiting hate on a new and different idea.

You know if people are going to ***** so much about modern Silent Hill games sucking donkey dicks then maybe they should give new ideas a shot?

What was wrong with halo wars :O.

OP
unfortunately, Dragon age 2 got this kind of treatment. I absolutely loved origins it was a gem, and in this case its slightly worse because dragon age 2 was a direct sequel, But I Really, Really loved DA2, despite its flaws. Was origins better, yes I think so, but DA2 was still a very good Bioware game.

Also, Seeing as Bioware are planning a trilogy, starting with DA 2, doesn't that make origins the spin off. Not quite, but I think the game was intended to lay the ground work and tell a separate story, than the trilogy is going to. Also for this reason I expect proceeding games in the DA franchise will be similar to DA2