Grace_Omega said:
Stavros Dimou said:
It's happening everywhere.
PERFECT DARK ZERO played nothing like PERFECT DARK.
DUKE NUKEM FOREVER played nothing like DUKE NUKEM 3D
WOLFENSTEIN 2009 played nothing like RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN
DUNGEON KEEPER MOBILE plays nothing like DUNGEON KEEPER 1,2
PREY 2 looked nothing like PREY 1
And the list goes on...
OCARINA OF TIME played nothing like A LINK TO THE PAST*
METROID PRIME played nothing like SUPER METROID*
MARIO 64 played nothing like SUPER MARIO WORLD
GOLDENEYE played nothing like WHATEVER CRAPPY JAMES BOND GAMES CAME OUT BEFORE IT
RESIDENT EVIL 4 played nothing like EVERY PREVIOUS RESIDENT EVIL
Franchises and series have to depart from their roots, otherwise those properties become stagnant. Many of the most acclaimed games of the modern era came about because developers weren't afraid to step out of the shadow of the past and do something different. We would never have gotten Mario 64 if Nintendo listened to opinions like this. And sometimes updating a classic franchise goes horribly wrong- believe me, I'm a Silent Hill fan, I know all about that. But people still have to try.
If they didn't we'd just get an endless cycle of the same thing over and over again, with slight variations in story and gameplay. Not only would customers get bored with this eventually, the developers themselves would get tired of making them. That's something a lot of people often seem to forget, just because you want something doesn't mean developers have to make it.
Hell, in at least two of these examples you're making comparisons with games that came out well over a decade ago. I would hope a modern incarnation of a franchise wouldn't play much like something that came out when PCs were still using floppy drives.
There's only one real criticism you can lay at the feet of all of those games you listed: they're all terrible. And they're terribly because they're *bad games*, not because
*(Some people are probably going to take issue with a few of these, and while it's true that OoT and Metroid Prime held onto a lot of gameplay structures from their 2D predecessors, there were enough changes made that the experience of playing them still felt very different)
You wrote some good examples of games that changed in comparison to the older games of their series and weren't bad.
The thing is,all of the games you wrote where the first that were 3D in their respective series.
Unavoidably going from 2D to 3D meant change,and because the 3rd dimension of depth added realism it brought something we had never found on games before: suspension of disbelief and immersion. So mostly,for the games the change of a game going 3d from being 2d was considered evolution and improvement.
The games I wrote down on my list though weren't changed because of huge technological improvement. Their older installments were already 3D,and there wasn't like a big technological advancement that they made use of and made them different.
What made the games I wrote about different was that the developers didn't cared about the crowd who played the prior games of the series,but tried to capture new audiences by adopting gameplay features of other games that broke the GAMEPLAY FORMULA of the respective series.
Even though OoT has changed a lot from Alttp,there is still the same Zelda formula in both games that is recognizable to the fans,so there are some 'core features' that shape up what someone expects from a Zelda game to be or to do.
You still go through dungeons,open doors with keys that you find by exploring,cut the grass to find rupees etc. There are still things working as you would expect them to.
The same goes for Metroid Prime and Super Metroid too. Sure its graphics are different,and there are new things added like the scanning device that tells you about enemies. But on its core Metroid Prime still plays how you would expect a Metroid game to play. It still have large areas that you can go back and forth,still has secret places with things to unlock,still you open doors by shooting them with various kinds of beams,still you save in a special save room etc.
You see,the difference in games like those you mentioned is that while a lot of things changed,the basic mechanics that shape up the gameplay experience one gets from a game are still there.
Goldeneye is the exception,as not only Bond games,but generally the vast majority of movie licensed games are awful,and it just happened to be the only game ever that was based on a movie license and won 'GOTY' awards.
When it comes to games like those I wrote on my previous post though,what happened was rather different. There wasn't technology improvements that resulted perhaps in adding or evolving some of the pre-existing features of these games,like what's the case for the majority of the games you noted. Instead for the games I wrote what happened was that the developers decided that there is no "gameplay formula" behind them that they should stick to or improve,and instead moved forward on to copying features of other games (like Halo and Call of Duty) thinking that this way they would capture Halo and Call of Duty fans and failing to do so,and making the games loose their own originality and character,which made the fans of these series disappointed. I'm not saying that Call of Duty is bad here - what I am saying is that if I want to play COD,then I'll play COD,not another series that decided to imitate COD. But if I'm told to buy a game of a certain series because it has a specific name on its title,then that game that carries this name should better have the standards and features associated with that name.
Because games are experiences.The reason we like them is because we like the experience they give to us,how we feel when we play them.So if I say that I like Prey,it's because I liked the experience I got when I played it. I liked being hunted by evil aliens that see me as food and getting away by opening portals and moving through them,solving puzzles,and using supernatural spiritual powers to beat my enemies. That's what Prey was,and what it's experience was.Perhaps not everyone might like it,but that was what Prey was all about. Now if Prey 2 has no portals,and no puzzles,and no supernatural powers,and instead its parkour walking from point A to point B,then it's not Prey any more. It might be a good game,but it doesn't have what made Prey be Prey,it is a completely different experience that might be good or not,that for some reason shares a name with another game that played differently.
And you know what ? There would be absolutely no problem if the creators were honest and were just saying "These games are not part of the main series but spin-offs and parodies",because that's what they really are.
Instead it's like you have this action movie,300,and instead of the producers making a sequel to that movie like the actual true sequel "300: Rise of an Empire",they released "Meet the Spartans" as the true sequel to the original movie!
300 is though a 'serious' action movie,but Meet the Spartans is a satiric comedy. Sure both movies have Spartans,but if Warner was making 'Meet the Spartans' and marketed it as a "sequel to 300",and you would expect everyone who liked 300 to just give up the franchise and hate on Warner. Yet Warner is clever enough (unlike many game developers) to not do such foolish things. Some game developers have the bad tendency though to make products that are on a different genre,feel different,and play different,and name them parts of something completely different.
And all that because of the same wrong thinking "We will rip off another game and stick a random pre-used name to it because A we can't have the same name as the game we rip off,and B some fools might buy our game judging by its name,even if it's completely different than what this name is associated with".
And there you have it: The market is full of COD clones because 90% of other FPS series that could have some originality and do their own thing decided to copy COD,and the result is people who played COD keep playing COD because it's the one they already know and got familiar with,and those who for some reason don't like COD stick to playing decade old games or give up the FPS genre entirely and become RPG fans.
What copycats fail miserably to see though is that by copying COD,they are essentially marketing COD and make it stronger.Because people value originality and generally the opinion for an original thing is better than that for an imitation.