Games that have lost their way

[The White Hunter]

I'd say the Sonic series can safely be added to the list.

The last few have been really good actually. Everything between Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic Colours is pretty bad though...

*ahem* Advance Trilogy. Possibly also Rush, but Advance Trilogy definitely.

OT: Serious Sam seems to be this way. The original game went somewhere between realistic and cartoony in order to deliver on its over-the-top action. SS2 retains most of the original's action, but since it's really a sequel to the Xbox game, it adds a lot of things that people playing the PC versions would find to be a bad thing, such as lives or going even further towards the cartoony side. SS3 tried to move further towards realistic, but went a bit too far. It gets better after the warship battle, but still not as good as the originals.

Then again, I haven't played Jewel of the Nile, so.

I apologise for excluding the exquisite advance trilogy, though my favourite of those is easily the first, then the 3rd and the second is the weak link for me. Advance 1 is actually probably my third or fourth favourite game, my favourite being 3 & Knuckles (favourite game of all time), then probably 2 and 1 tied for second. The Rush games are pretty good in my opinion. Both Adventure games are very over rated, the first is fun but the second is easily the second worst 3D sonic game I've played after that 2006 abomination. Shadow the Hedgehog is playable but it's far from good. Heroes is okay but the dodgy grinding, extremely long levels and the fact every story has the same levels in the same order detract from a decent experience (brilliant music though, one of my favourite Sonic OST's). Unleashed is... good, but it requires already knowing the levels in their entirety to not die constantly to your own sub-godly reflexes. Colours and Generations are brilliant. Need more 3D from them though.

Sonic 4 is appalling and I will not forgive Dimps for it.

Secret Rings is dreadful.

The Black Knight... y'know, it would have been good if not for the terrible control? The waggle is atrocious, I'm no motionc ontrol hater but Black Knight would have been much better with a gamecube or classic controller or just an ATTACK BUTTON rather than relying on the standard wii remotes imprecise shaking.

Almost all of the Sonic games have a saving grace in having brilliant soundtracks though.

 

[Jesse Billingsley]

I agree with Dead Space because I didn't play any of the other games you listed. I too noticed how it went from 96% Horror 4% Shooter, to 50% Horror 50% Shooter, to 4% Horror 96% shooter based on the demo I saw where a Walker came stubbing out of a snow storm only to get cut down by a fully automatic machine gun. Big name developers don't seem to understand that the more fire power you give a player, the less frightening the game itself becomes. Indies seem to get that a lot and usually plop the player into a dark basement with nothing more but the clothes on their characters back.

You say dead space 1 was 96% horror and then say that more fire power you give a player the less scary a game is. That seems kinda contradicting since the plasma cutter is pretty much the only weapon you need while ammo for it is plentiful. I still haven't fully completed dead space 1, but I still remember that my strategy was just cut the legs and curb stomp. The game was never scary, they just took a shooter and attached some cliches to it.

Didn't say it was always scary, but there were parts that scared me, man.

I only used the Pulse gun, and I couldn't find ammo for that thing anywhere, so things got freaky when I only had one mag left and a room full of the undead hiding out somewhere.

 

[Zen Bard]

I hate to say this but; The Elder Scrolls. I still enjoy the games a lot(300+ hours logged on Skyrim just to give you a rough idea)but Bethesda keeps removing more and more RPG elements with each instalment, what some people might call streamlining others might call dumbing down, and I'm inclined to agree with the latter.

Totally agree with this. Seems they're following the Peter Molyneux model with the Fable series.

Which is another example of a really good action oriented RPG that continuously stripped away its role playing elements with each iteration until it's become a barely serviceable kiddie action game.

All this in the name of "Accessibility"

 

[The White Hunter]

I agree with Dead Space because I didn't play any of the other games you listed. I too noticed how it went from 96% Horror 4% Shooter, to 50% Horror 50% Shooter, to 4% Horror 96% shooter based on the demo I saw where a Walker came stubbing out of a snow storm only to get cut down by a fully automatic machine gun. Big name developers don't seem to understand that the more fire power you give a player, the less frightening the game itself becomes. Indies seem to get that a lot and usually plop the player into a dark basement with nothing more but the clothes on their characters back.

You say dead space 1 was 96% horror and then say that more fire power you give a player the less scary a game is. That seems kinda contradicting since the plasma cutter is pretty much the only weapon you need while ammo for it is plentiful. I still haven't fully completed dead space 1, but I still remember that my strategy was just cut the legs and curb stomp. The game was never scary, they just took a shooter and attached some cliches to it.

They also dowsed dead space in blood. Not what I'd call survival horror. Resident Evil 4 is closer to it than Dead Space and was a nice hybrid between Survival Horror and Action (and that Merchant...).

Then there was Resident Evil 5....

 

[CriticalMiss]

Final Fantasy has lost it's way, as many others have said. So much so that some of the games look more sci-fi than fantasy, maybe Square wanted to 'blur the line' or something? Not every game has been too bad, I'm thinking more along the lines of 7,8 and the 13s. Yes they have magic but they also look far too industrial compared to what I expect of a 'fantasy' game.

 

[Ieyke]

Assassin's Creed 3 got a lot of things wrong, but the series is far from actually having lost its way.

Castlevania and Casltevania:Lords Of Shadow are two different series. Lords Of Shadow isn't Castlevania "losing its way", It's just a different interpretation of the base story concepts.
You could say Symphony Of The Night was Castlevania "finding its way", since it was EPICALLY better than all the games before it, but clearly a very different path.

Sonic The Hedgehog.....I can't say precisely WHERE it first went horribly wrong, but clearly it has. There's one thing that has always been clear to me about Sonic - the Archie Comics version is the only good overall canon for Sonic.

Final Fantasy hasn't lost it's way....it just sucks ass. Always kind has, post-SNES. The only good Final Fantasy game is Final Fantasy Tactics(/War Of The Lions), and that doesn't even count because it's not even meant to be the same type of game.

Fallout....I can't say it "lost" its path, but it sure as hell changed to a completely different path. I'm willing to admit that the new format is probably an improvement, since I want little more than Arcanum:Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura 2 to be done in the new Fallout/Elder Scrolls style - essecntially making it the exact same transition from one game type to the other.

Megaman X....after X4 things started to get stupid. Luckily, the most recent game, X8 was sort of an improvement over X5-7.
The X series lost its way in ways that probably only make sense to people very familiar with the series. I'd certainly say it was a turn in the wrong direction.

Diablo 3 - There are so many things wrong with that game... It LOOKS great and feels solid....but everything is implemented all wrong, and the game world is just an unimaginative retread of Diablo 2.
Taking one of the best game series and making it...."meh"...is clearly NOT staying to the correct path.

Pokemon - Clearly I'm not the only one who looks at a lot of the more recent Pokemon and goes "What the hell is this bullshit???"
But I don't think it's so much lost its path yet as it's just...stumbling along the path.

Resident Evil should've probably stopped at 4.

Dead Space may have lost its way (I dunno, never played any of them) but all I know is that all three games look awesome, and 3 is the one that has me most convinced to start playing the series *shrug*

Sidescroller Mario games - They're on the path. They refuse to deviate AT ALL. Somehow, they've become souless and boring despite being technically competent in every way. The imagination and whimsy is just...missing. The 3D Marios and Paper Marios all appear to be doing great though.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Metroid. Though that just ties in with just how much Nintendo sucks. They sucked with Prime Hunters, nobody cared about Prime Pinball, and Other M speaks for itself. How hard would it have been for Nintendo if they just did what Konami did for Castlevania, and used their GBA games' formula, except with better graphics? How easy would it have been to take my money, Nintendo, and yet, you continue to stagnate, fapping to the pile of money Mario has made and will make, instead of taking risks and expanding your horizons.

The Prime Trilogy was amazing, then what came after... Not so much. I honestly think they should get Retro to make the next game on WII U, wonder what would happen then.

You mean what happens when Nintendo finally gets their heads out of their asses and tries to make a non-Mario/Zelda IP not suck?
http://www.digital-ink.co.uk/Sites/Animated%20GIF/Skypig-250-128-ANI.gif

Essentially, yes. That would be a hammer meet nail moment.

 

[The Nossa]

Pokemon, Mario and Need for speed ring a bell.

 

[Nimcha]

Surprised nobody's mentioned WoW yet. But I guess that's more a personal view, since for me it has been declining in quality since the second expansion while others thought it required too much time to play properly.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I think in some cases it's a case of technology making things even more complicated to develop than they were back in the PS2 era (which Yahtzee also points towards as a possibility). There are larger teams, more complicated game engines, and more time consuming art assets than there used to be back in the early 2000s.

I think this is a huge problem plaguing the industry and many game franchises. Technological advancement doesn't always make things better and sometimes it can make things worse.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

Mass Effect of course, from game 2 on,
Ratchet and Clank, which has finally managed to kill itself forever in my eyes.
Jak and Daxter, which got entirely retarded during Jak X, and got WORSE with Lost Frontier
Kingdom Hearts: afflicted with FFVII's own problem, though not as severely. Some hope still remains.
FFVII: everything released in this series after the first game has been progressively shittier.
SSX: Blur was a misstep in every way, and SSX 2012 was good, but had several new problems, most seriously the lack of real multiplayer and the awful shop system
Assassin's Creed: 2 made the game less "boring", but starting from then on, the games became more stupid as well, culminating in 3 which is a failure in nearly every venture
The Elder Scrolls: hasn't lost its way exactly, but definitely needs to bring back some older design choices, and the dedication to story seen in older games.
There are more, but I think that's enough bitching for now

 

[sXeth]

Castlevania: (I loved the old platforming Castlevanias, and thought that Symphony of the Night was brilliant. Why do we now have a God of War clone)?

They made Lord of Shadows and changed some names to make it Castlevania later, 'cause we don't need no stinkin' new IPs in the 2010s.


Final Fantasy - Tactical RPG into Interactive Movie
Kings Quest : Adventure/Puzzle Game into First Person Shoot/stabber
Ultima - A bit of an odd ride in the first couple games before landing onto a party rPG, then abruptly turned into a third person action-platformer.
Warcraft - Fantasy RTS into MMO

 

[dimensional]

I'd be quite surprised to see a Soul Calibur 6. Lazy design, trying to turn the thing into a JRPG with fighter-controls, replacing mainstay characters with teenage anime cliche versions, crappy multiplayer, etc

What id love to see a Soul Calibur 6 granted 5 was crap in new characters and single player modes but the online multiplayer was very good and the fighting itself was the best since the first SC in my opinion (although it never reached the heights of that game) if anything its slowly finding itself again, shame they dont seem to want to give it the time and money it needs to actually develop itself properly instead just relying on Tekken which despite a good recent showing seems struggling to remain relevant a bit like Virtua Fighter despite their credentials.

Also how is it becoming a RPG of any description in anyway? because it had a terrible story mode that used to be just part of arcade mode?

I don't see any sort of pattern. And FFVII wasn't really very open at all, most FF's have a world map but very carefully restrict the places you can go on that world map and drive you in a linear direction.

No FF game has been open they all tell a linear story and ferry you along but there is some sort of choice in most even if its only a couple of places to choose between and only one would advance the plot (only XIII got rid of this for most of its duration) heck in the early ones like 1,2 and 3 in particular they would stick stupidly powerful monsters in areas they didnt want you to go often very close to low level areas so if you wondered over an invisible line you died because you couldnt escape the battle or hurt the monster.

Also, in Final Fantasy, you went from controlling parties of 3 to 5 (there were parties of 5 in some FF games, right?) to controlling one person and making suggestions that the CPU should follow I guess. They look great sure but, you might as well just watch Advent Children again.

Its been a while but I have played all the main Final Fantasy titles (MMOs exception) and quite a few spin offs and never remember playing a party of 5 its has always gone between 3 and 4 with 4 being the traditional size, I think it was 7 that first switched to parties of 3. I dont think just changing party sizes and how you control them constitutes losing its way especially when they change things up between each title anyway some for better and some for worse.

Final Fantasy, through and through. I havent played much of the series, but reading up on them, I understand why the series was so beloved from I to VII.

You havent played much of them but have read about them and so have knowledge of what made the early games great? well I have played the early games, seriously play them and then see if you still think they are great FFII in particular is a horrid broken mess with a laughable plot and characters while one has almost zero plot and zero character development, III is I but better and V is III but better (its all about the crystals). IV tried something different and IMO was pretty damn good so was VI and VII the series overall has been very up and down I cant see how a series like FF with its massive inconsistencies can be said to have lost its way some of its games are terrible some are ok and some are great.

Series that spring to mind for me are Sonic (as has already been said) DMC (lost it after the team switch i.e DMC 2 onwards) CTR (seriously WTF happened here oh yeah they sold it to someone else) Guitar Hero (thought it was a license to print money rather than a series that needed to be handled like any other) COD is going the same way as well its now just about purely for the huge money it has been bringing in but it seems to be slowly dying thanks to how it is being abused.

 

[TheDuckbunny]

I hate to say this but; The Elder Scrolls. I still enjoy the games a lot(300+ hours logged on Skyrim just to give you a rough idea)but Bethesda keeps removing more and more RPG elements with each instalment, what some people might call streamlining others might call dumbing down, and I'm inclined to agree with the latter.

I'm inclined to disagree with you. I think recent Elder Scrolls games are still amazing achievements at offering the amount of freedom and vastness that you saw in their older titles. While its list of features has slowly been shrinking I think what makes an Elder Scrolls game is not the depth of its game systems but the sense of exploration, world building and freedom that all games in the series have had (barring the 'Elder Scrolls Adventures' titles) and what other game series have largely been unable to do.

 

[Jumendez-sama]

Halo has gone from an Arena shooter to an Arcade shooter, though this change only really came when the developers changed with Halo 4 so I would say that most of the blame should fall on them. Arguably, you could say Halo started its descent into Arcade shooting with Halo Reach through load-outs, though I would argue that this system retained enough of an Arena feel that it didn't seem like the next game would go full-blown Arcade.

And that's just gameplay wise, I don't even want to talk about when you finish the game by QTE killing Darth Forerunner with a nuke, let alone the existence of that thing, as well as making Cortana a damsel-in-distress getting all hot and bothered over MC (though I suppose seeds of that were in Halo 3, though I don't think Halo 4-Cortana would've handled this situation [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzKCZazUJ-A&t=7m25s] like the Cortana we all knew in the first three games).

Also I'd like clarification on how Pokemon has lost its way; sure the Pokemon designs don't seem as nice and simple as you remember the 1st gen being, but even in the 1st gen there was an emphasis on battling and properly raising your Pokemon, which the newer games definitely have paid attention to. I'd say that the games today are only a natural progression from what the games originally were, or at the very least were the games that the people who paid attention to the online metagame wanted, who arguably are the true fans of the game.

 

[LadyTiamat]

I hate to say this but; The Elder Scrolls. I still enjoy the games a lot(300+ hours logged on Skyrim just to give you a rough idea)but Bethesda keeps removing more and more RPG elements with each instalment, what some people might call streamlining others might call dumbing down, and I'm inclined to agree with the latter.

yes and no, in parts its improving like not having to choose a class at the very belonging and sticking with if all you have to do is change you playstyle and train that way. But the conservations are too linear , cannot choose to bribe/taunt/intimidate whenever its chosen for you, no key stats like strength or luck to influence your gameplay. Also the world is a bit disconected from your character - no bite like in fallout 3 where choices mattered to the world.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Both Adventure games are very over rated, the first is fun but the second is easily the second worst 3D sonic game I've played after that 2006 abomination. Shadow the Hedgehog is playable but it's far from good. Heroes is okay but the dodgy grinding, extremely long levels and the fact every story has the same levels in the same order detract from a decent experience (brilliant music though, one of my favourite Sonic OST's). Unleashed is... good, but it requires already knowing the levels in their entirety to not die constantly to your own sub-godly reflexes. Colours and Generations are brilliant. Need more 3D from them though.

The inherent problem with 3D Sonic is that trying to not just run straight into obstacles is harder when you have to move from side to side as well as up and forwards. Trying to do it without resorting to something like the quickstep is even more difficult. It can be done, but I don't really know if it has yet.

Sonic 4 is appalling and I will not forgive Dimps for it.

Secret Rings is dreadful.

Haven't played either.

The Black Knight... y'know, it would have been good if not for the terrible control? The waggle is atrocious, I'm no motion control hater but Black Knight would have been much better with a gamecube or classic controller or just an ATTACK BUTTON rather than relying on the standard wii remotes imprecise shaking.

I haven't played Black Knight, but I know that the accelerometer, while fine for detecting how tilted it is (Super Mario Galaxy requires you to tilt the Wiimote a few times), falls to pieces with actual movement - especially if it's required in a specific direction. The biggest example of this is Warioware: Smooth Moves - there are some games that are just impossible due to dodgy detection.

Almost all of the Sonic games have a saving grace in having brilliant soundtracks though.

Agreed. And arguably, the final boss' music was the ultimate insult of Sonic '06 - imagine if that had music had been in a good game...

 

[Spearmaster]

A better question would be which games have not lost their way, these days all the delicate points that make a game successful get filed to a dull lump for the next installment to "reach a broader audience" which translated to corporate means "we will destroy this IP if it means more profit".

I remember when new installments sold better because they went further with the things that made the game unique, not because they removed them for online multiplayer or a more action based game play.

 

[Squilookle]

Grand Theft Auto, anyone?

What started out as a fast paced kill-crazy zany city runabout with guns has now become a dreary, fun=bad dull as ditchwater mope around an oppresive grey metropolis simulator.

Thank god for Just Cause 2, The Saboteur and Saint's Row.