The Most Mishandled IPs/Franchises in Gaming?

Cheesepower5

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Front Mission. Great strategy series with challenging combat, cool/vaguely realistic mechs and great art by the guy who worked on Final Fantasy and Sandman? NOPE BETTER MAKE A TPS FOR THE X-BOX.
 

Generalissimo

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

[HEADING=1]TIMESPLITTERS[/HEADING]

Seriously, Escapists, how did this little gem of a game go unnoticed until 40+ posts in?
*bows down to you*

THIS MAN......HE IS JESUS OR SOMETHING.

OT:
i thing DoD has been pretty much shelved by valve. which is a shame, because it's a really good game, i'd say better than COD: united offensive.
 

Tdoodle

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Tiger Sora said:
Many of you may disagree, but as I said this isn't a case of screw up, it's letting it sit and go stale.
I'm not sure how new areas, Pokemon, abilities, moves, type combinations, triple battles and Dream World is sitting and letting it go stale, but each to their own.

On topic, Assassin's Creed is the big one for me. That they've only explored 2 characters/time periods over several games (not just including the main games, but the smaller handheld versions too) is a bit disappointing. I'm not a fan of the "Ones Who Came Before" plot either, seems like a forced attempt to up the stakes for Desmond and turn him into this ridiculous chosen one destined to stop the apocalypse - personally I much preferred that he was this coincidental everyman who was thrown into a secret war because of his ancestors.
 

bomber567

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Ok, for those who are saying Dragon Age, keep in mind that there have only been 2 games in the series so far. Maybe one of them was disappointing, but I don't think that qualifies it as one of the most mishandled franchises.

As for those who are saying Silent Hill....no argument against that. Completely true.
 

AT God

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Although I never played it, assuming what people say is true, the metroid other M must take the cake for misshandling a franchise.

TF2 is the other one that comes to mind, I had over 400 hours as the Scout in TF2 before they started the whole hat business, and now the game is an abomination that is just depressing. They should have kept it vanilla, all the old strategies are gone. Still makes my blood boil

Also, unless you played Duke Forever on PC you cannot judge, all the technical problems weren't on the PC, the load times were instant, controls were solid, framerate was fine, and it was at least something new.
 

Nomanslander

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pro_family_lover said:
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...
Ummm....

NO!

You do not speak for the Half Life fanbase with such awe-striking blasphemy. Next you'd be telling me that a Kirby game should get a dark and gritty make over or a Fallout game should tone done the gore or replace the pre 60 jingles with Linkin Park or Nickleback...

0o


Getting back to the OT...

Metal Gear Solid: I don't think I need to really explain just how stupid the series got after the first game.
 

Jhooud

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Nov 29, 2011
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Yassen said:
I'd say Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I know Star Wars doesn't have the best stories in the world, most coming down to Good VS Evil, but KotOR2 showed you CAN make a good story out of the setting if you tried.

FU didn't try. It just gave us a stupidly overpowered character with no personality, a romance that was somehow even worse than the one with Anakin and Padme, and was basically making all the significant moments in the prequels meaningless... and the sequel was somehow even worse.

I kinda like the Force Unleashed. Not so much the second one, but I thought the first was fun.
 

Icehearted

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Star Wars. There have been good Star Wars games like Knights of the Old Republic and Rogue Squadron, but the list of duds is much much bigger. I can't think of another IP that has ever been as misused, abused, and exploited as much as Star Wars, and even if one exists I can't think of anything that has as robust and rich potential as an IP.
 

D-Soul

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From me:

Def Jam series Def Jam: Vendetta was good even though it focused too much on wrestling moves more than brawling. Def Jam: Fight For New York was the best of the series that I think it's almost impossible to find a copy online or at your local Gamestop (for me it is). Def Jam: Fight for New York: The Takeover is just like FFNY but with probably worse controls since it was on the PSP but still good. Def Jam: Icon killed the series because it devolved into a straight up fighter with little innovation involved.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band Those two games over-saturated the rhythm genre to point that no more rhythm games can be made in other words, due to their overall success and Activision strategy of release the same game every year. they kill the only genre they were giants in.

Activision these guys take good gaming ideas and milk dry to the point the only thing comes out is either air or blood over the last few years they had had interesting IP's but then killed them developers that made them. examples include
Bizarre Creations-Makers of Blur
Radical Entertainment-Makers of Prototype 1 and 2 which got axed by them recently.
 

Dfskelleton

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Something I discovered on my most recent Survival Horror binge, Clock Tower.
It's gone so far down the toilet after the original 2 games (the ones about the Barrows, I mean).
I think videos can explain it better than words.
Here's an encounter with Scissorman in Clock Tower:

And here's an encounter with Scissorman in Clock Tower 3:

So, within the course of 3 games, Scissorman goes from a hideously deformed and immortal serial killer, who introduces us to a style of horror now popularized by games like Amnesia... to what can only be described as "Gay Clown Team Rocket."
Yeah...
And I won't even mention "Lord Burroughs"...
 

Calibanbutcher

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Nov 29, 2009
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Shadowstar38 said:
Tekken- This may just be me but, everything that happened after 3 just became a blur of WTFs and why do I even care anymore

Devil May Cry- Seriously guys, how do you drop the ball on the first sequel? At least they redeemed themselves with 3. But they followed it up with 4 which couldn't reach the same bar 3 made. And now it's all going down hill with the new one.

Megaman-...seriously, wtf. We have a classic game on PSN every once in a while but where the heck is another Megaman X, or Legends, or ANYTHING.

Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dead Space, i.e EVERY SURVIVAL HORROR SERIES OUT THERE- With the first two, they are content with making way too many games and bleeding the franchises dry. Also, both RE and Dead space arn't even close to horror now.

Rayman- Make 3 solid platformers then go into nothing but mediocore spin offs for years. What the hell man?
Well sir, I encourage you to try the two tekken tag tournament games. They are glorious fun.
For the most part though, I agree with you, and even I have to admit, that Tekken 6 was not up to par.
 

Dark Prophet

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First would probably be C&C both Red and Tiberium universe, Red less though, because 3 was decent, I guess, and I imagine would have been better with co-op with a human player and I rather enjoyed Uprising despite its short length because they droped the bloody forced co-op. C&C 4 Tiberium Twilight on the other hand was a fucking train wreck of an unimaginable scale. What will become of Generals it yet to be seen.

NFS it started to go downhill with Underground and although 1st was ok the 2nd was unnecessary and sorta rubbish Most Wanted was really bad ProStreet totally killed the franchise and alienated most of the fans there was also Carbon somwhere in there and bunch of others but they were all around meh, new Hot Pursuit was not NFS it was Burnout with NFS stickers.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. how the hell do let something like that just die.
 

direkiller

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BloatedGuppy said:
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/08/11/ultima-9-ascension-finale/

Nothing else really comes close, that I can think of.
It started a game before that Black Gate was rage inducing.


OT:
Most MMOs handled by NC-Soft.
or things EA just sorta picked up in a buy
 

Vigormortis

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FelixG said:
Vigormortis said:
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?
I really hate to burst your bubble, but I dont want you to get your hopes up, Relic has said they would LOVE to do another homeworld, but they cant.

Relic is owned by THQ, while the rights to Homeworld is held by Sierra...who is owned by Activision.

And an Activision and THQ team up may well lead to the apocalypse with how rare it would be as they are both publishers who guard their IPs zealously. So the best bet would be if THQ crumbled apart and Activision snapped up Relic, then and only then might we see a Homeworld 3.
Lies and deceit. LIES AND DECEIT!!

. . .

Sadly, I knew most of this already. My original post was more a plead of desperation. Of hoping against hope.

As much as I'd love to revisit the story-verse of Homeworld, I know it's so unlikely it borders on the ludicrous.

On a side note, you're the third person to say "I really hate to burst your bubble, but..." to me within the past two days.

As much as people seem to hate "bursting my bubble", they sure do seem to keep doing it anyway!
 

wadark

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Draech said:
The thing is if activision hadn't done it someone else would. Hence why others did. The market got flooded fast by more or less the same game from multiple sources. The genre itself collapsed on it self. The option of holding out the next release was never one Activision had with guitar hero. The genre was to easy to make and thus more people were ready to throw product out there.
You make a good point here, but I'm still inclined to lay the blame mostly on Activision's handling of Guitar Hero, specifically. Sure, you also had Rock Band, and a couple other published series putting out titles, but nothing compared to the flood that came from Activision. Comparitively, Rock Band put out a total of 6 titles over the course of 5 years (3 main games, 2 band-specific, and Blitz), while the "Hero" franchise (including DJ) has 24 titles to its name in 7 years. The ratio is obviously way different. I don't believe Activision was thinking much of the other, smaller published rhythm titles when they published a storm of Hero games. They were thinking, "This is a cash cow, lets just keep shoving em out there."
 

alphamalet

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wadark said:
Draech said:
The thing is if activision hadn't done it someone else would. Hence why others did. The market got flooded fast by more or less the same game from multiple sources. The genre itself collapsed on it self. The option of holding out the next release was never one Activision had with guitar hero. The genre was to easy to make and thus more people were ready to throw product out there.
You make a good point here, but I'm still inclined to lay the blame mostly on Activision's handling of Guitar Hero, specifically. Sure, you also had Rock Band, and a couple other published series putting out titles, but nothing compared to the flood that came from Activision. Comparitively, Rock Band put out a total of 6 titles over the course of 5 years (3 main games, 2 band-specific, and Blitz), while the "Hero" franchise (including DJ) has 24 titles to its name in 7 years. The ratio is obviously way different. I don't believe Activision was thinking much of the other, smaller published rhythm titles when they published a storm of Hero games. They were thinking, "This is a cash cow, lets just keep shoving em out there."
Yeah, I agree. I don't really see who else was doing what Activision did. You could say someone else would have, but that's pure speculation.

I never thought I'd be arguing whether or not Guitar Hero was poorly handled. Come on! They saturation the market!
 

CrazyCapnMorgan

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Tom Milner said:
*bows down to you*

THIS MAN......HE IS JESUS
*looks around* *sees millions of people wearing crosses*

KEEP AWAY FROM ME YOU SADISTIC MANIACS! *runs away frantically* AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-

OR SOMETHING.
.................I'll take the "OR SOMETHING" for $500, Alex.

OT: Must now mention the Mana series. The only way I see them mishandled is that they haven't come out with a new game in Mana Goddess knows how long! We need a new Mana game. Like yesterday.
 

generals3

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Hero in a half shell said:
I think Command and Conquer wins this contest (or should that be looses?)

Going from one of the genre-defining real time strategy games to what it is now, a Multiplayer centered, free2play, e-sports wannabe.

AH Westwood, how did it come to this?
I'm with ya buddy. I mean it's like EA purposely tried to ruin the franchise. And it's a real pitty, i used to be a huge C&C fan looking forward to any new releases (i even bought the collectors edition of C&C3, still regret that)

Dunno wheather to argue or agree with this... C&C from 1995 - 2008 was utter genius and I loved every minute of it (I even kinda enjoyed 'Renegade'). However, everything (including and) after Red Alert 3 has fallen short, for me Kane's Wrath was the end of an era... I heard C&C4 was so terrible I never even played it! Then, I hear about a new Generals game on the Frostbite 2 engine and I think this could be a real return to from! Then I heard it won't have a single-player campaign. Fuck. That.
Lucky you. I had the really bad idea to download and try the C&C4 Beta... Uninstalled it after 1 match. I was like: If i want to play Dawn Of War II i'll just buy that. And than i decided to go full masochist and watch the cutscenes on youtube... They literally slaughtered the story.
 

The Harkinator

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Jun 2, 2010
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Tdoodle said:
Tiger Sora said:
Many of you may disagree, but as I said this isn't a case of screw up, it's letting it sit and go stale.
I'm not sure how new areas, Pokemon, abilities, moves, type combinations, triple battles and Dream World is sitting and letting it go stale, but each to their own.

On topic, Assassin's Creed is the big one for me. That they've only explored 2 characters/time periods over several games (not just including the main games, but the smaller handheld versions too) is a bit disappointing. I'm not a fan of the "Ones Who Came Before" plot either, seems like a forced attempt to up the stakes for Desmond and turn him into this ridiculous chosen one destined to stop the apocalypse - personally I much preferred that he was this coincidental everyman who was thrown into a secret war because of his ancestors.
This metaphor I am about to use is going to be quite convoluted.

Pokemon is like a cake, the sponge and cream and jam its gameplay and premise at the basic level. The pokemon and their moves etc is the icing on the cake (and very delicious icing it is too) and just for good measure there are some cherries on top of the cake because this is an extra nice package.

Then somebody takes the cake and decides to keep going with it. They add more icing and sprinkle some sugary treats but they use sponge cream and jam from a while back. This is perfectly fine, with more cool additions that people wanted.

Then somebody thinks that the cake can last longer if it gets more additions, suddenly the whole thing is drowned in chocolate coating and has some of those shiny edible ball bearings on it (just go with it, I'm not deleting my post) but the sponge is the same one used on the last two cakes, it has been around for a while and is much too samey, if anything worse than before.

Then somebody decides that this super successful cake should be coated with new icing every year and sent out to make money. They can't just do the same thing they did before if people are going to buy it so they get an old cake and cover it in more over-sweet stuff that is starting to smack of uncreative decision making. The icing and extras may be nice but underneath at the very heart of the cake is a stale sponge, rancid jam and cream that went off a while ago.

Then after much deliberation we are getting a miserable old cake covered in shiny shit as somebody desperately tries to tell us the aforementioned shining excrement is the new great thing but some of the fans of the old cakes can see they are talking absolute Trubbish.

Ok, that got even more complicated than I would have hoped but my point is Pokemon hasn't been adding anything meaningful, all the extra stuff is just toppings to what was once that game everyone had.

Now then, I completely agree with you on Assassins Creed. I'll list a few settings I would love:

Victorian London.
Ancient Egypt.
Imperial Rome.
Ancient Greece.
Feudal/Middle Ages Europe.
Revolutionary France.
The Spanish Inquisition.
The Holy Roman Empire.
The Golden Horde.

Ok and what have they done? The Crusades, Renaissance Italy and Renaissance Constantinople. All would be on my list but in four games they have explored three settings (two close to each other in time period) and the fifth (but actually third main one) is getting advertised as some freedom and liberty thing in the American Revolution, though I don't think that is what the final product will be like since AC has always gone for much more complex things than that.

To end, different people in different time periods and cultures fought differently which allows AC combat to be different in several time periods and the architecture is different in different cultures too which allows for a variation in free running and other forms of transport.

EDIT: I almost forgot, my personal choice for a mishandled IP/Franchise is anything involving Spider-Man. All that Web of Shadows stuff and all the things Spider-Man 3 onwards have been poor. Sometimes I just wish the games could learn from Spider-Man, no not the movie game but the PS1 game, that made you feel like Spider-Man, swinging between rooftops, wall crawling, beating up thugs and having fun boss fights. If you could combine that kind of feeling with the web slinging of Spider-Man 2 (I am talking about the movie games this time) then you achieve what every superhero game needs to do, make you feel like the hero you play as The Batman games from Rocksteady make you feel like Batman, if they didn't nobody would play them.