Which games killed their series?

[ReepNeep]

Video killed the.... wait, what? Oh.

Oblivion killed the Elder Scrolls.

- J

I wouldn't say that it killed it, it just threw out all the boring and annoying crap from Morrowwind and made it more up-to-date.

(boring and annoying crap is what real RPG players are interested in)

Action gamers shouldn't try to raid our genre and turn it into 'leet lewtz and killin stuffz'. Stick with your FPS games and we can all be happy.

 

[Evan Snow-Wolf]

Final Fantasy VII

C'mon, you fanboy pansies. Bring on the hate. I can feel it swelling in you now.

 

[mesh]

Two Worlds was both the birth, and the death of something I pray NEVER becomes a series, need I say why?

 

[Piemaster]

Bomberman: Act Zero. I wouldn't say it killed the series exactly, because no one would be stupid to make another Bomberman like it, but it was really, badly un-Bomberman like. It replaced Bomberman with some freaky Master Chief/Venom hybrid thing, had crappy gameply, no offline multiplayer and even had pretty bad graphics. Luckily every game critic hated it, and rightly so.

 

[richasr]

Despite it being the last of only two games, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 ruined those two games as a story. It just felt like no effort had gone into it all, with almost the same graphics, exact same gameplay, barring the sprint feature, and most of the same bugs with a lot more added into the fray. Ruined what was a brilliant first game, though now i'm just playing terrorist hunt, as frustrating as it is, i like killing terrorists.

The latest couple of Pro Evo games have ruined what brilliant games 5, 4 and beyond were. No difference between them, you would have thought the consistent improvements would last through 6 and 7 but you'd be wrong.

 

[magicmonkeybars]

monkey island 4, "escape from monkey island" this game really killed the serie for me. some games should never go 3d and this was one of them

kotor2 the last 1/3 of the game was a real wtf moment. talk about being blind sided on an idle tuesday.

Gothic3 aka "how to destroy an entire game series in the first 5 minutes." epic fail.

TES4: Oblivion, now with even less rpg then morrowind.

 

[Charley]

Final Fantasy VII

C'mon, you fanboy pansies. Bring on the hate. I can feel it swelling in you now.

/Sigh... FF7's still the one that makes me think that all the others "just aren't 7", I think that it more forced the series to peak, although technically none of them apart from X-2: Cosplay Fantasy X are sequels or anything, so that's a moot point.

However - Metal Gear Solid 2. There, I said it. Don't send a bishounen to do a man's job.

 

[end_boss]

Ummm...I believe they said, It WOULD NOT be Oblivion with guns. At least thats how I herd it.

They did? I'll have to check that out then, that would get my hopes up at least a bit. Thx for pointing out.

[edit]
Checked it out. Too bad, seemingly the developers are calling it "Oblivion with guns", however they seem to feel it's not fully descriptive of the game. Here is an excerpt of an interview that supposedly is from the March issue of the Official XBox Magazine:

"When we started this, we would go to great lengths to explains the differences from Oblivion," explains Fallout 3's executive producer, Todd Howard. "If you're talking to an enthusiast, there are so many differences, and we feel it's under-selling the game to say it's Oblivion with guns. But when we started talking to more consumer-oriented magazines, we'd have, like, two seconds...and we'd say, 'it's like post-apocalyptic Oblivion with guns.' And they're like, 'Awesome!' To Joe Public, it's mainly first-peron, wide-open game and you get to do what you want. The game it's closest to is Oblivion. So now when someone asks, 'Is it Oblivion with guns?' my main answer is, 'in all the best ways.'"
The truth is, the list of comparable titles is pretty short. As Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo puts it, "How many massively single-player role-playing games are there?"

Link to source [http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41454]
So, basically they're saying it is "Oblivion with guns" with some differences, I guess. My hopes are down again.

 

[Ultrajoe]

Final Fantasy is a linear RPG, making it a mumorpger is like making Kirby into a railshooter or Contra into the next DDR.

hold that thought...

is this restricted to game series?

'the series of unfortunate events' books... i got stuck reading the first three on a really long train trip and then felt obliged to read the final 10...

the final 2... so much potential... all gone to waste... *sniff*

 

[CommanderCool]

Doom 3 was pretty, but lame. Definitely killed that one.

Quake Arena was a cheap copy of Unreal Tournament, and killed that series.

Q3 was not a copy of UT (although it did lack an actual story driven SP campaign), and D3 was the best damn one in the series. So shut the hell up.

Metal Slug 4 killed the series. Like ElArabDeMagnifico said, series' being continued by a another company always ruins a good series.

 

[mwhite67]

Half Life 1 killed the half life series because those games have always sucked.

 

[ReepNeep]

Doom 3 was pretty, but lame. Definitely killed that one.

Quake Arena was a cheap copy of Unreal Tournament, and killed that series.

Q3 was not a copy of UT (although it did lack an actual story driven SP campaign), and D3 was the best damn one in the series. So shut the hell up.

Metal Slug 4 killed the series. Like ElArabDeMagnifico said, series' being continued by a another company always ruins a good series.

Best one in the series? I thought it was the worst game id ever made (this statement includes the games they only had a hand in like Castle Wolfenstein and Voyager Elite Force). It put all it's emphasis on being atmospheric and scary and it only occasionally worked. Granted, when it did work it was quite good at freaking me out: specific instances include the early game when the voices and scripted sequences outnumber the monsters, the first appearance of the lost soul (that scene will stick with me for a LONG time) and the start of the delta labs when you spend about 15 minutes just jumping at shadows. What it threw out were the best parts of what made Doom, Doom: the blazing fast run-and-gun gameplay, the colorful and varied environments, the huge groups of opponents, guns that didn't suck goat balls. The only id game thats arguably better than Doom 1/2 in my opinion would be quake 3.

The moral of the story is that nothing trumps gameplay. Not narrative, not graphics, not sound or level design, NOTHING. If the core gameplay isn't fun the game is a failure. I remember a quote atributed to Jon Carmack from the Doom era which I am now going to paraphrase horribly 'Story in games is like story in porn. You expect it to be there but you really don't pay much attention to it.' The games id has made that broke with this philosophy have been the worst. At least in FPS games, he is absolutely right.

As far as a series 'jumping the shark', aside from Doom 3 I would pick Ace Combat 5. It was a pretty big step back from 4 in that almost all of the planes felt exactly the same, it was much easier (nothing beats the challenge of fighting yellows in a mid-game plane), it had that god-awful story pasted onto a game that shouldn't have one and none of the missions were even remotely as cool as Stonehenge or Monolith. Yeah, the graphics were a bit better but see the above points.

 

[corronchilejano]

I think by definition, games that killed the series are games that DID kill them, no one has released them since then! I gave the F Zero case as an example of what cannot be topped.

Examples of games that HAVENT killed the series:
Sonic the HedgeHog: God... why didn't it? Why do they keep releasing them? This is the reason why a serious story should NEVER be given to ANY Nintendo game. Sega tried, and look at Sonic now.
Halo 2: Halo 3 came out, sold millions. People still remember the name "Arbiter".
Final Fantasy VIII: X came out with it's same style, X2, XI, XII... hell, XIII looks the same. I said X because the old style died in Final Fantasy IX. Now it's all about stupid over the top characters that all look alike, think alike, there's just nothing new to see in there.

Examples of games that did:
King's Quest 8: Right after this, what the hell was Williams supposed to do? Answer: Sell the company and pray everyone forgets it ever came into existance.
Yoshi's Story: Such a beautifull franchise, all forgotten.
Pit Fighter for consoles: ... I HAD to say it. Come on, I KNOW someone thought about it.

 

[Irrok the Wide]

TiredInuendo convinced me that oblivion is an abomination, When compared to Morrowind. The diverse landscapes, incentive to explore, and consequences. He said it all. I did beat Morrowind and all the expansions. And it's my favorite game of all time. But, By it self, Oblivion is still fun and I makes me want more elder scrolls.

Sonic Adventure was awsome, they should have stuck with that format.

Actraiser 2 killed Actraiser. Actually I haven't played enough of it.

Doom 3 pissed me off so bad, why couldn't it be in an outside setting with purples and greens?

Mortal Kombat 3 left the series in the sun too long...

Street Fighter 2 alpha king turbo warrior same as above.

Dead or Alive 3, It was SO AWSOME that I over played it.

Killer Instict 2 made ultra combos boring (Cinder and Riptor could have saved it though).

Ready to Rumble 2 Killed a game with alot of potential.. ALOT


I just hope that Yoda and Darth Vader can keep the Fighting genre alive, may the force be with them.

 

[babyblues]

I'm assuming you're a girl. That would explain your fondness for what I like to call "Final Fantasy: Shoujo Edition". =]

Erm, pretty much every FF is FF:Shoujo Edition. Where've you been the entire time?

As far as series-killing goes, the first thing that comes to mind is NWN2.I WANT to like Obsidian. I really do. But they just make it so hard for me.

Then I would say Thief 3. Not that Thief 3 killed it in a bad way, I just think there's nowhere else to go from the end of it. Though, I suppose I'll keep an open mind if Thief 4 is ever officially announced.

Soul Calibur died after the second installment. I am, of course, talking about SC and not Soul Blade and all that.

I would say Sly Cooper 2 was the end of that series, but I suppose the third one wasn't THAT bad. I had fun, it's just that I was annoyed with all the needless new gimmicks.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

[PhoenixFlame]

I have to go with Dynasty Warriors. I really like the whole concept of a game that is basically Final Fight on steroids. The games are usually fun to play through - but the lack of innovation and the same battles rehashed with no difference aside from more unique looking general-type characters really hurts the idea of buying another in the series. Samurai Warriors is no better in this regard. Sure, going into other series with the same engine is probably poor idea (anyone remember that awful Gundam game with the Dynasty Warriors engine?), but sticking with the exact same historical period in China and Japan is extremely repetitive after the third game in the series.

It'd be great to move forward or backward in history, but perhaps history after or before these periods is not marketable enough to make a beat-em-up around it.

 

[Evilbunny]

That'd be like adding Cloud Strife because Final Fantasy was once upon a time on the Nintendo console.

That actually sounds like an awesome idea to me. Anyone else agree?

 

[babyblues]

That'd be like adding Cloud Strife because Final Fantasy was once upon a time on the Nintendo console.

That actually sounds like an awesome idea to me. Anyone else agree?

No. Ten thousand times no.

 

[wesdabigman]

Double Dragon 5 killed the Double Dragon series. It took a series that was fresh off of Super Double Dragon and then killed it. So many mistakes. First, Street Fighter 2 was a great fighting game, everyone whos ever played will most likely agree but formatting Double Dragon, a beat-em-up by nature, to fit the same style was lazy programming. Second, sucking at aforementioned fitting the Street Fighter 2 ripoff genre. Third, basing it off the crappy, dull as dishwater, animated tv show. Nuff said. Four, making it mainly playable for THE ATARI JAGUAR!!! Most people have probably never played this and god bless you for it, but I hate Double Dragon 5 for killing off one of my favorite franchises as a kid.

And Shadow the Hedgehogand Sonic the Hedgehog, although have not killed the little blue Sega mascot, have managed to put him on life support, and i dont want to be a pessimist, but the odds at this point at about 33%, if not half-and-half, that the new Sonic RPG is going to be the Hedgehog last step into the grave.

 

[Jrod]

WoW. They killed all of the history of that series.