That game series/franchise you used to love, that you think have destroyed themselves?

[daftalchemist]

I've played very few series games, aside from the obvious Zelda and Mario games. I guess the only series I've given up on is Pokemon. The first two generations were awesome. Stadium was awesome. Pokemon Pinball rocked right up until I somehow magically lost my cartridge and broke my own heart. But Ruby was a mess, and Pearl...just ugh. It was a major disappointment. Now I don't even care when they announce new games.

 

[Ghostrick Dorklord]

I really used to be a hardcore Sonic fan but I honestly felt it went for the worst then Colors came around. Generations also feels like a step backwards. And this is coming from someone who likes Shadow, Sonic 06, and Unleashed. Seriously.

 

[zexxar]

The Shining series.

Since Shining Force III (the last game taht was developed by Camelot) the series went down.
They should either stop creating Shining games or make a SRPG or dugeon crawler likw those game that made the series famous.

 

[mjcabooseblu]

Call of duty. They should've stopped making games after modern warfare, and just kept releasing DLC for that. I've bought all the modern warfare DLC, and none of the sequels.

 

[Rocket Taco]

Well, nearly all series tend to stagnate over time (see Zelda) but there are definitely a few of my favorites that have taken actual steps backwards. Battlefield, which I once held on a golden pedestal as the king of the thinking man's multiplayer game, has degenerated into a twitch-reflex festival of frustration by trying to best CoD. Rainbow Six has lost all pretense of being a tactical simulator, and Harvest Moon has spent the last six or seven years cascading downward into mediocrity and abandoning the fun mechanics in favor of expanding the obnoxious ones.
Edit: Almost forgot Splinter Cell! It peaked with Chaos Theory, and everything since then has been getting simpler and easier.

 

[Sieg Firebrand]

Final Fantasy. What the fuck happened guys?

Seconded, i think X was the last good FF game and even that was a little iffy

 

[RoyalSorceress]

The Spyro series. They took a perfectly good series and tried to make it "epic" thus upsetting fans everywhere. (And don't get get me started on the upcoming game.)

 

[ChupathingyX]

Crash Bandicoot and Spyro.

And no it isn't just the nostalgia, the latest games really are shit.

 

[II Scarecrow II]

I would probably say Call of Duty, but I would like to exclude the Modern Warfare games from that, as they at least made an attempt to innovate and connect games across a series, unlike others which merely copy off others (looking at you Treyarch). Call of Duty 2, 4, 6 and hopefully 8 are good games, while the rest (made by Treyarch) are simply cheap knockoffs that are trying to capatilise on their success.

In addition, I would like to say that Halo Reach, while a good game has seriously strayed, and from all of the rumours, it would appear that Microsoft has finally corrupted the series to attempt a yearly release. I'm glad Bungie finally bailed on that series, as the originally trilogy was pretty damned good, but a yearly release schedule would devastate any sense of quality from the games.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Call of Duty, to some degree.
The early console spin-offs should never have been made, CoD 3 should have been CoD 4, CoD: WaW should've gotten a big Nazi Zombie DLC spinoff, and Modern Warfare 2 should be the new CoD game about to come out.

And then of course, Halo.
Halo CE was brilliant, but the others...

The horror...
...the horror...

 

[ShadowKatt]

Final Fantasy. What the fuck happened guys?

Can't believe this was post 7. SHould have been #2. Or 0, predating the OP because of the power of TRUTH.

Seriously though, XIII is getting two offshoots (Vs. and something else) AND a sequel, and no one will touch any of the decent ones except to remake them. With the same graphics.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Final Fantasy. What the fuck happened guys?

they fired sakaguchi thats what happened MISTWALKER FOR LIFE

Ninja'd, and Ninja'd!

Wayneguard, Here's what happened...

In the aftermath of the financial disaster that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Square placed the majority of the blame at the feet of Hironobu Sakaguchi (the original creator and godfather of the Final Fantasy series). Sakaguchi "resigned" from Square around the same time as the Enix merger. Enix was wary about the merger because of the Square's huge financial setback from The Spirits Within and it's been speculated that Sakaguchi's "resignation" from Square was a requirement for Enix to agree to the merger.

So the father of Final Fantasy left, Square became Square-Enix, and the core Final Fantasy series started to lose its magic FAST.

Sakaguchi founded his own studio called Mistwalker which has put out Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and a small handful of other games not yet released anywhere but Japan. I've played FFXII and FFXIII; XII was mildly disappointing, but still decent in my book, and XIII is the most disappointing game I've ever played in my life. I've also played Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey; both of these games are incredibly solid releases and feel more "Final Fantasy" than anything that Square-Enix has made.

Coincidence? I think not.

Seconded, i think X was the last good FF game and even that was a little iffy

Did I mention that the last core series game that Sakaguchi worked on was FFX? Technically he contributed to FFXI as well, but his contribution to XI was much smaller and most followers of the series don't count XI as a "main series" game.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

I've played very few series games, aside from the obvious Zelda and Mario games. I guess the only series I've given up on is Pokemon. The first two generations were awesome. Stadium was awesome. Pokemon Pinball rocked right up until I somehow magically lost my cartridge and broke my own heart. But Ruby was a mess, and Pearl...just ugh. It was a major disappointment. Now I don't even care when they announce new games.

Yeah...

I was all into Pokemon during the Red/Blue days. I played the game religiously, trained and maxed out TONS of uber-powerful level 100s to challenge my friends with. When Gold/Silver came out, they introduced some interesting new gameplay elements, brought a lot more balance to the different types to prevent Psychic-type domination, and did away with glitches. The new Pokemon were cool and felt like a natural growth for the series. Also, there were minimal compatibility issues between Red/Blue and Gold/Sliver, so all my master Pokemon from Red/Blue were still viable. I loved it!

Ruby/Sapphire is when the series hit the wall hard for me (and from what I understand, many other old-school Pokemaniacs as well). That's when I realized that they were just going to keep adding creatures game after game and that the creatures were just gonna get weirder and weirder and now there's well OVER FIVE HUNDRED CREATURES if you wanna "Catch 'em all" and there's an "ice cream cone" Pokemon or something?

I've got two words for that noise...

Screw. That.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

I'm going to have to say Warcraft. Well, not "destroyed" yet, but stagnating.

Now, don't get me wrong: I still enjoy playing. But their writing has been slipping for a while now. And I'm seeing hints of what look suspiciously like complacency.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

I'm still waiting for ME3 to confirm this view, but the more I replay ME2 the less I like it, so I may some day soon be saying that the Mass Effect series was ruined.

As for more concrete ruination:

Final Fantasy.

I literally grew up on this series. FF IX, VIII and VII were my gaming standards for five years. FFX was such a disappointment to me that it basically turned me off jRPGs entirely.

And a partial example:

Tomb Raider!

III was my first game ever, and I got II a while later. Revelation was not entirely awful and Chronicles was more bland than anything else, but certainly showing its age. I was one of the many who thought the series was dead with Angel of Darkness but I have to admit that I liked the reboot. Anniversary, Legend and Underworld reminded me not only of why I loved the old games, but also of why i got into gaming in the first place.

 

[Sharalon]

Super Smash Bros. First was actually good, second and third was just... ehhh..

 

[PixelKing]

Fable 3 killed me inside.

 

[Space Spoons]

Kingdom Hearts. The original game was Final Fantasy and Disney in equal parts; it borrowed many elements and gameplay mechanics from the JRPG genre while sticking to a decidedly Disney mood, never taking itself too seriously. Starting with Chain of Memories, the balance began to slide closer to Final Fantasy and farther from Disney, forgoing the lighthearted mood of the first game to focus on melodramatic plot twists involving the paper-thin characters original to the KH universe.

The series has now become completely unbearable to me, bogged down in metaphysical nonsense and character relationships that feel artificial and forced. I hate to use this turn of phrase, but it really is essentially a bad fanfic now. I feel like it's a vehical for fangirls and diehard Nomura followers more than anything, with less and less time being devoted to an actual plot and more and more time being devoted to long, confusing monologues about Darkness/Light/Hearts/etc.