Games that died with their successors...

[Archaic Thought]

As for the death of a franchise.. I'd say NWN2 pretty much caused it's own demise, buggy, unfinished and lacking components that made the first an innovation and a classic. By the time the expansions came along that were 'supposed' to fix it (and it took TWO expansions to get close) few people gave a shit and because of that I doubt a 3rd game would have a tenth of the original's audience.

I disagree with that one, I rather liked NWN2 and its singleplayer component is far superior to the original NWN's, especially when the expansions are also taken into account. I also prefer small squad management over controlling a single character, which is all you could do with NWN 1. People also tend to forget that when NWN was first released, it was incredibly buggy and flawed as well. It's only with two expansions itself that it really became the game we all know and love!

Anyway, that aside I'd have to say... hmm...

Deus Ex: Invisible Wars. True, there's a new game for the series coming out in the future which looks like it might have promise, but its by an entirely new team creating their vision of the Deus Ex universe, not that of the series original creators. No, they Ion Storm went down with Invisible Wars, and not even Thief 3 could stop the demise they spelled for themselves with that game. Invisible Wars was just such a disappointment to so many people that Ion Storm lost their good will and even Thief 3, which while not brilliant was certainly a solid entry into the Thief series, could bring that back.

Gotta agree there. Invisible war, as a standalone game, would have been great. As a successor to Deus Ex, it was seriously lackluster.

About it's only shining point was it's endings and how, no matter whether you view the Illuminati or Helios endings as good, both had a sense of being more Grey than out and out good.

 

[SpireOfFire]

i wouldnt say "died" but it will be difficult for castlevania to rebound from that mutant offspring known as lords of shadow.

 

[General_Potatoes]

Resident evil 5. Need i say more?

 

[Aeriath]

Mass Effect. #2 is just such a fucking disappointment that I am considering not even bothering with #3. I am just praying that #2 does turn out to be the mediocre middle child but its disgrace is lessened by having awesome brothers.

Oh yeah, totally this. They fumbled so badly with Mass Effect 2. Before it, all Bioware games were immediate pre-order but now, especially after seeing all the horribly disappointing changes they're making to Dragon Age, I'm going to take their products with a serious grain of salt.

Just out of curiosity, because I thought that on the whole ME2 was an improvement, what did you guys dislike about it?

As for me, I really disliked Metroid Prime 3. There was a lot more combat than the first 2, and I didn't enjoy the controls for the combat so I just gave up on the game.

 

[Archaic Thought]

Mass Effect. #2 is just such a fucking disappointment that I am considering not even bothering with #3. I am just praying that #2 does turn out to be the mediocre middle child but its disgrace is lessened by having awesome brothers.

Oh yeah, totally this. They fumbled so badly with Mass Effect 2. Before it, all Bioware games were immediate pre-order but now, especially after seeing all the horribly disappointing changes they're making to Dragon Age, I'm going to take their products with a serious grain of salt.

Just out of curiosity, because I thought that on the whole ME2 was an improvement, what did you guys dislike about it?

As for me, I really disliked Metroid Prime 3. There was a lot more combat than the first 2, and I didn't enjoy the controls for the combat so I just gave up on the game.

My only gripe(s) with ME 2 was that they cut out the inventory and armor mods, forced ammo on the weapons, and reduced it to RPG-lite status, and made you feel incredibly weak by having your shields and health go down in a snap outside of cover, and side quests were a bit lacking i n terms of contents and Paragon/Renegade choices.


Past that, ME 2 was an amazing game, the Story and characters were well fleshed out, some of the new or upgraded powers were pretty awesome (Maxed out Adrenaline, anyone?, and the overall moral ambiguity of it. In ME 1, Renegade Shep was a dick, plain and simple while Paragon Shep was, well, a paragon of everything that was good and nice in the world. Glad to see them mixing it up a bit in 2, I.E., punching Zaeed in the face as a paragon interrupt.

 

[dark-amon]

Resident evil 5. Need i say more?

RE5 is more like fading away again after being revived with cpr (RE4).

 

[Bullfrog1983]

Dragon Age 2. It's just destroying everything that I liked about the original game by inserting a conversation wheel and a single playable douchebag named Drake.

Also The Old Republic. A new MMORPG that is ruining one of my favourite RPG series by turning it into an MMO.

 

[Ultress]

i wouldnt say "died" but it will be difficult for castlevania to rebound from that mutant offspring known as lords of shadow.

They'll just make another 2-D title and everything will balance out.

OT:Wild Arms series, a underrated series that went horribly horribly wrong once they started this Hex bullshit in Wild Arms 4.Everything that made the series cool was dropped and replaced with cliche.Gone were clever puzzles and fun characters,instead we got Jude with his need to vocalize every god damn jump and platforming sections.The awesome tools everyone had were paired down to a stick,a sword,and weighted orbs. Good God this game was terrible.

 

[Sacman]

Deus Ex died after the sinking of Ion Storm... actually before that... after the release of the first game... and if Human Revolution convinces I may just scream like a little girl... again...<.<

 

[JourneyMan88]

Time Splitters and Champions of Norath series.

 

[cahtush]

the only thing good about ra3 is the tower defence custom maps, those are realy fun

 

[The Night Shade]

Medal of honor,Metroid,Megaman,Castlevania,Alone in the dark and Deus Ex

 

[TheRaider]

People will LOL at this but World of warcraft as this makes warcraft 4 a lot less likly.

 

[Dr. Awesome Face]

Crash Bandicoot is a perfect example of this, the original games on the PlayStation were great but IMO everything after the Wrath of Cortex was just garbage, and the most recent entry was pretty pathetic.

 

[The Madman]

People will LOL at this but World of warcraft as this makes warcraft 4 a lot less likly.

If anything WOW makes a Warcraft 4 more likely. There WILL be a Warcraft 4 now that the Warcraft series is so well known... it's just not likely to happen any time soon what with WOW still going strong. Give it about ten years or so and you'll see Warcraft 4, on the plus side it'll be awesome. Still... ten years. >.>

 

[Aeriath]

My only gripe(s) with ME 2 was that they cut out the inventory and armor mods, forced ammo on the weapons, and reduced it to RPG-lite status, and made you feel incredibly weak by having your shields and health go down in a snap outside of cover, and side quests were a bit lacking i n terms of contents and Paragon/Renegade choices.


Past that, ME 2 was an amazing game, the Story and characters were well fleshed out, some of the new or upgraded powers were pretty awesome (Maxed out Adrenaline, anyone?, and the overall moral ambiguity of it. In ME 1, Renegade Shep was a dick, plain and simple while Paragon Shep was, well, a paragon of everything that was good and nice in the world. Glad to see them mixing it up a bit in 2, I.E., punching Zaeed in the face as a paragon interrupt.

I suppose those are fair gripes. I thought the game flowed better without the inventory system, but I do miss the loot that went with it. I did like the old system of upgrading weapons with mods better than the upgrade system in ME2, but I suppose that too was a casualty of the inventory system being removed.

I was conflicted over thermal clips at first, but I eventually conceded that I prefered the overheat system. In ME2 I have to use the SMG uncomfortably often (playing Inflitrator) because I kept running out of ammo (for the Carnifex Hand Cannon and Widow Sniper Rifle) in large fights. It's annoying, but I can work with it because the shooting mechanics overall were tightened up so I don't feel like I was wasting shots (as I sometimes did in ME1).

I didn't notice that the sidequests in ME2 were lacking, but when I think back the DLC are the only side-quests I remember actually doing. I never noticed at the time probably because my ME playthrough took 22 hours, whereas my ME2 playthrough was at around 56 hours (having done everything in both).

Thanks for the post Archaic, it was interesting reading your thoughts on the games.

 

[GothmogII]

Dragon Age 2. It's just destroying everything that I liked about the original game by inserting a conversation wheel and a single playable douchebag named Drake.

Also The Old Republic. A new MMORPG that is ruining one of my favourite RPG series by turning it into an MMO.

It's Hawke. And I just adore your powers of precognition, wish I could know a game was going to be an utter failure just by looking at some trailers, screenshots and doomsaying forum posts.


Anyway: Dungeon Keeper 2 for me. I don't know, a lot of people say this is their favourite DK, personally I felt the creatures were un-interesting and the whole game just seemed to lack the charm of it's predecessor. And of course, it seemingly wrecked the chances of there being a DK3.

 

[repeating integers]

Wow, not one mention of Halo 2 thus far! Amazing! And awesome!

Mass Effect 2 got brought up though... Shame.

I think I'm gonna nominate Homeworld here, which Relic have abandoned after Homeworld 2 for some reason. Why, I'm not sure (though one idiot employee came out and opined that HURRDURR TOO COMPLEX FOR MOST PEOPLE!!!1!), Homeworld needs to continue. HOMEWORLD 3 NAO PLZ, etc.

 

[Aeriath]

For me it all just felt off. I missed having an inventory (Not necessarily the inventory from ME1, but i'd rather have one then none at all), and them making skills completely useless irked me too. In the first game, you needed to put points in your skills if you were going to make it through. Now it's not even very difficult to just ignore skills and finish the game.

It also didn't help matters that their touted "Decisions matter and will carry over" was completely illusory and made no difference whatsoever. I understand it would've been insanely difficult to carry over decisions in a meaningful way, but if they're going to brag about it they should've at least done a good job on it.

As much as the shooting felt better, they sacrificed a lot of the environmental depth to do it. All the areas became smaller and filled with chest-high walls. I'd walk into a room and know immediately that whatever dialogue I was intending to have was inevitably going to end with me shooting things.
Everything just felt less like the RPG I wanted to play and more like the shooter I got bored with last year. If I wanted to play Gears of War, i'd play that.

Well that went on longer than i'd intended, but on the other hand i've thought of another OT game.

Fear 3 looks like a bag of ass. Why they dropped Monolith in favor of the people who did their crappy ports is something i'll never understand.

As I said in my above post, I miss the stuff that came with having an inventory rather than the inventory itself. I can't comment on abilities, as the Infiltrator appears to have gotten lucky in that I didn't notice any negative changes.

I think the descisions you made in ME2 will carry over in a more meaningful way as they don't have another game to make after this. I only got the games recently, so I didn't have the hype buildup (I imagine I would have expected more from the descision involving the Destiny Ascension if I had played ME1 when it first came out, for example) but I can see why you'd be dissapointed about that.

While I did notice the chest high walls more than in ME1, I thought the areas were still fairly diverse and of a decent size. Sure, I don't remember anywhere as large as Ilos that didn't have interconnecting doors but they were still sizable. I'm not tired of the chest high walls gameplay, but given how much fighting there is I can see how it would start to grate on you if you were.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Just so I don't go too far off topic, I really didn't like the phonecalls and drab atmosphere in GTA IV. I'm willing to give it another go, but at this moment in time I didn't enjoy it as much as Vice City or San Andreas.