The Most Mishandled IPs/Franchises in Gaming?

[ffs-dontcare]

I'm going to go ahead and say Command & Conquer and Call of Duty.

The former for obvious reasons.

The latter because there is a LOT of wasted potential there.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

I'm surprised that after the mentioning of SW:Battlefront, no one seemed to mention

Spoiler: The other FPS that got royally shafted

[HEADING=1]TIMESPLITTERS[/HEADING]

Seriously, Escapists, how did this little gem of a game go unnoticed until 40+ posts in?

 

[alphamalet]

Silent Hill
Fatal Frame
Silent Hill
Dragon Age
Silent Hill
F.E.A.R. (major fuck up)
Silent Hill
Tony Hawk
Silent Hill
Guitar Hero

Oh, and I forgot to mention Silent Hill

 

[Vigormortis]

Based on their previous posting history, I seriously doubt that it's sarcasm.

Well....okay, you got me there. You have a point.

I guess I just find it hard to believe that someone actively supports the idea of turning such a story-driven shooter into a "rinse-and-repeat", twice a year online frag fest. I know die-hard Call of Duty dude-bros who would think that's a dumb idea.

And then to lambast two of (what many consider) to be the best entries in The Elder Scrolls series, when in reality they are all very similar (and would result in either liking them all to some degree or disliking them all)...

It just sounded like a joke.

------------------------------------------------

Anyway, I've thought of two more series that have been woefully mishandled.

Tron - This is a series that just screams "This material could make for incredible game experiences". Sadly, besides the very simple arcade games of old, we've only had one decent Tron game. Tron 2.0.

Homeworld - Okay, now, don't get me wrong here. I friggin' love the hell out of this series. Homeworld 1 still remains not only my favorite RTS but one of my favorite video game stories.

However, Relic dropped the ball on the campaign in the sequel. At least, when compared to the first game. Even worse, they ended the series on that note.

I sincerely hope, now that they have plenty of cash floating around and are getting a bit tired of rehashing Warhammer 40k and Company of Heroes games, perhaps they'll return to Homeworld. Who knows?

 

[xplosive59]

If there is any game that has completely gone of the deep end its Final Fantasy, Every game since 9, disregarding spin-offs and remakes, has been piss poor and yet they think that it is a good idea to pump out sequels for one of the worst recieved game in the franchise?! Especially when people are still waiting for a Final Fantasy 7/6 remake whcih would make a shit tonne of money.

Megaman as well, actually the majority of Capcoms games have gone down hill eg Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Dead Rising (Who would buy the same game twice?!) etc but at least they didn't get screwed out of development like Megaman did, a few years ago there was like 4 games in the franchise in deveopment, all of them scraped.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Dragon Age because of DA2
Mass Effect because of ME2 and 3 and whatever the next game that bastard Hudson is in charge of
Final Fantasy post FFIX

Having never played many Doom or Quake I can't agree but I can agree with those three. My opinion would deviate a bit though with Final Fantasy which I thought was still alright up to number 10. They didn't screw the combat until 12 and, the made 11 unplayable for me by making it an MMO.

---

I've said this a million times in a million threads and I'm going to say it again:

Ya know what really killed this franchise? The fact that it wasn't an anthology series! Lucasarts could have given us a series of games about overly powered Sith Lords and Jedi Knights from all eras; Old Republic, Clone Wars, Rebellion, Yuuzon Vong, Re-emergence of the Empire, with characters like Freedon Nadd, Exar Kun, Darth Bane...but no. They chose to clone fucking Starkiller, the blandest human in the Star Wars Galaxy. Starkiller was fine for the first outing as a sort of place holding character but cloning him for a second game was the worst possible idea to come out of Lucas-Arts. I refuse to acknowledge FU2 as being part of the canon in any way, shape or form. FU2 is my One More Day.

 

[Legion]

Gears of War springs to mind. If you delve into the back story and books they had the potential for an incredibly deep and meaningful series, but they decided to go for the 'action movie' route and turned it into one of those clichéd "dark settings with childish yet with fratboyish humour" kind of games.

Halo is similar to Gears of War as it has incredible lore, and amazingly detailed back stories, but the games pretty much ignore all of it. Instead we get somewhat lazy stories told almost entirely in cutscenes, and the games "evolution" is pretty much a few new weapons and vehicles and briefly duel-wielding before going back to how the original game worked.

Both of these had the potential in their stories, but they were never properly used, so when people call them shallow, it's not really that surprising, because you shouldn't need to read the books of a game to get a decent story.

Obviously I still like them, but they could have been handled much better.

 

[Fasckira]

Need for Speed. Now they've dropped Black Box for its arcade title in favour of Criterion, its only set to get more clone from here on out.

 

[bliebblob]

How about the worms games?

It's pretty much the best example you'll ever see that sometimes, a game series can hit a point where it's fine the way it is. And all it ever needs from that point on is tech updates, graphic updates and some new weapons (or whatever) to keep it fresh.
Fail to recognize this point, and you'll end up making games like worms 3D and worms forts. (Though to be fair, it was an easy mistake to make. 3D was all the rage at the time and the notion that 3D doesn't necessarily improve all games just didn't exist yet.)

Thankfully team17 finally seems to have caught on to this, as evidenced by worms revolution. Because it's just worms with a graphics update, fluid mechanics and some new weapons.

 

[Slitzkin]

Metal Gear Solid. As far as I'm concerned there are only 4 games in the MGS series; not counting Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 as a part of the MGS series of course.

Continuity porn.

Portal Ops? Peace Walker? Ground Zeroes? Revengeance? AC!D? Burn in hell Kojima. At least you left Zone Of The Enders untouched.

 

[Suave Charlie]

Adding on to kingdom hearts: Final fucking mixes.
I mean why would Europe want extra content in the game? Nah let's just keep it as a JP only release..

 

[woodaba]

Half-Life: Wasted potential. Valve could have reached AAA status had they made this game more multiplayer focused and released sequels every year or two. Instead we're still waiting for a third sequel. Seriously...

This attitude is everything that is wrong with the industry.

 

[Fasckira]

Need for Speed. Now they've dropped Black Box for its arcade title in favour of Criterion, its only set to get more clone from here on out.

You are saying that changing to Criterion is a bad thing? I dont understand what you mean by "its only set to get more clone from here on out."

IMO Criterion taking over Need for Speed is the best thing to happen to the series. Criterion are the BEST arcade style racing game makers. No one even comes close to how good they are.

Criterion so far have pushed out Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted - both remakes of classic NFS titles by simply taking Burnout Paradise and changing a few minor parts. They lack any form of creativity to push out an NFS arcade title worth stumping cash up for. Granted, HP's multiplayer was fun and I have no doubt that MW will have a similar multiplayer vibe but when you consider that part of the NFS franchise has been its abiltiy to weave an albeit cheesy storyline round a racing genre, Criterion just dont have that flair.

Criterion are good at making racing games, not NFS games.

 

[Fenra]

DJ Hero... yes yes I know its a "X-Hero" game so I shouldnt have got my hopes up, plus activision plus it had two games but... I dunno it felt like after that they just wanted to sweep it under the rug and say "oh that? we didnt make that"

When I adored it, was something refreshing in the music game scene and the controler (once you got the hang of it) was really fun to use, a little more support is what I wanted I guess, more DLC tracks n stuff instead of just dropping it like a stone because it lacked broad appeal that guitar hero had and (if my knowledge is right) didnt sell too well

I guess I should take comfort in that it didnt get beaten to death like the guitar hero series

 

[Agente L]

Megaman after mega man X5 (aka when capcom started ignoring Inafune)

Final Fantasy FF13 era.

 

[Volstag9]

Half-Life: Wasted potential. Valve could have reached AAA status had they made this game more multiplayer focused and released sequels every year or two. Instead we're still waiting for a third sequel. Seriously...

Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall was great, then Morrowind was meh, Oblivion was phenomenal...but then Skyrim. What the fuck went wrong? They could have made this epic monster of a game, but instead we got a boring "Every dungeon looks the same" style game.

I'm sorry but I couldn't disagree more. But hell, we're all entitled to our own opinions. So I don't wish to start a pointless internet argument.

I think mine would be...

Syndicate: The latest in the series wasn't well received so I think the series is done.