Gaming Franchises you have checked out of

[Catnip1024]

Total War. Was ruined when they became obsessed with this General / Army / Garrison focus. I liked being able to split armies. I liked being able to customise what was in a particular garrison. I liked being able to have more than 2 armies and a building without the entire population starving and my armies dying off.

All they had to do was give me Medieval 2 in a different setting. How can you even screw that up so badly?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Far Cry. I had always grinded through the awful gameplay because I like running around exploring the wilderness, but with 4 I just stopped seeing the point. There are now games with equally interesting environments, and much better gameplay where running like a maniac around killing things isn't the only alternative to dying.

Tomb Raider. I always enjoyed the exploration and puzzles, but with the reboot they basically eliminated both. Sorry Lara, I'm done.

 

[Yoshi178]

Halo because Bungie stopped making it and 343 turned it to shit

 

[StatusNil]

I'm going to be original here and say Assassin's Creed. Because of the way they so completely misplaced the overarching plot, and because it seemed they increasingly came to view what were the weaknesses of the game (such as wonky traversal) as just the thing to build arbitrary gameplay "challenges" around between cinematics. "100% Synchronization: Run in a straight line without getting snagged on random objects for 20 seconds." Much fun!

And Mass Effect... what is there left to say? Never imagined someone could achieve that thorough a betrayal in the humble medium of video games.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Pokemon - Just lost interest really. Plus I thought it got really stupid when you had dual type Pokemon they nullified the elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. The introduction of Mega-Evolutions did nothing to rekindle my interest.

Mass Effect - Because I developed an intense hatred for EA and refuse to buy any game published by them. Also I was turned off Mass Effect 3 by the trailer that looked more like a trailer for a Call of Duty game.

Dragon Age - Same reason as Mass Effect, refusal to buy any EA published game

Kingdom Hearts - It just became too bloody convoluted. I played the first 2 'main' games and Chain of Memories, but I haven't bothered with any of the other spin offs.

Final Fantasy - Simply lost interest.

Warcraft - I loved the RTS games althogh I never did finish WC3, I sampled WoW. However from what I hear the Lore has become really convoluted and they've introduced time travel. Once you start fucking around with the canon via time travel I really lose interest.

 

[happyninja42]

Final Fantasy because I apparently do not have the stomach for JRPG's, apparently FF 10 broke me of that.

Hitman, but then to be fair I was never really big in that series.

Those are the only franchises that are still ongoing, that I have checked out of. Most of the franchises I liked, died off for one reason or another. So it's not me leaving them, but them fading away.

 

[WindKnight]

Halo after reach. Four having you fight the covenant AGAIN after 3 ended the war felt like a step back and a refusal to give up the comfort blanket.

Dead Space. Semi noped out after the 'Your mom hates dead space" ads, when I got 2 in a sale the eyepoke machine made it so I NEVER wanted to replay it to avoid having to go through that again, and the microtransactions, gun toting enemies, and using some new dude instead of the established female character for co-op made m give up on 3 after the demo.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

On top of what I said previously, I also want to say almost anything AAA. Between micrtransactions, pre-order crap, shitty DLC, season passes, and promotional material that out and out lies I don't really want to have anything to do with that side of the industry.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I liked the first two Ass Creed but AC3 didn't captivate me in any way and AC4 was alright for the first half-hour but it didn't do to me what it did to everybody else.

Bioshock 1 was great and 2 was fine but Infinite was just unplayably bad for me. It felt...wrong somehow.

2D Mario games: I'm not going to say NSMBU was bad but I just got burned out after going through NSMB2, NSMB Wii, and NSMB U to the point that I just couldn't bother to go half-way through New Super Luigi. I really liked NSMB2 and Wii but the Wii U one just sucked something out of me that hasn't reformed yet. I feel like I can blame NSMBU for my not having finished Yoshi's Woolly World or DK-Tropical Freeze yet, two games that I would say are actually pretty excellent.

I played Resi 5 but for me I stopped caring about Resident Evil after the third. I haven't tried Code Veronica yet but I couldn't get far enough in Resi 4 to have met the President's Daughter. It's just not engaging for me.

Fighting games in general. The last one I played for any length of time was Injustice (or Smash 4 Wii U/3DS if you count that). I recall being hugely disappointed by Mortal Kombat 9 back on the PS3 and I played a couple of hours of Street Fighter IV Ultimate which was fine while it lasted but I have no drive to go back into it. I'll feel the need to pop in Marvel v Capcom 3 or Smash or Shaq Fu every few months but I'm just not really into fighting games like I used to be back when I was a kid (not that I was ever good at any of them).

 

[Yoshi178]

Pokemon - Just lost interest really. Plus I thought it got really stupid when you had dual type Pokemon

There has literally always been dual type Pokemon since Gen 1 though...

 

[Joccaren]

Mass Effect - Two started its stumbling, three it fell head over heels over a cliff. Not gonna claim 1 was perfect, but in classic Bioware fashion rather than fix the problems, they reinvent the wheel. 3 tried to fix the problems with 2, but it didn't go quite far enough, and in the story department... Lets just not go there.

Dragon Age - I'm on the border. More and more reinventing the wheel. The series needs to figure out what it is, then deliver on that. As is, its a shitty half action half isometric RPG that does neither well, with a new gimmick each game thrown in to try and keep attention. Use DA:O system for levels and combat and that, upgrade the visuals and increase the speed of the turn timer to make it feel more responsive. Done. Use level design from Origins and Awakening as well, with more planned out, pre-placed encounters, with terrain and obstacles and traps designed to influence the fight. Not a lot of work required, but Bioware has lost a lot of faith from me over the last few years.

Ubisoft - anything from Ubisoft. They hate PC players. We get it. No more sales for you. Plus, their formula is stale as hell at this point. No matter which game it is, its the exact same game. That's just... Mix it up, please.

Warcraft - Loved RTS, hate MMOs. WoW? Nope, 'nough said.

Total War - As another poster said, just needed to give us Medieval II with a new coat of paint. Instead, its a mess of systems that aren't that fun anymore. Exception being Shogun II, I do love that game.

Arkham series - After city I just lost interest. Too similar to the Ubisoft formula, and going bigger and bigger doesn't make the game more interesting. Hell, it did the opposite for me where it took too long to get everywhere so I lost interest.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Pokemon - Just lost interest really. Plus I thought it got really stupid when you had dual type Pokemon

There has literally always been dual type Pokemon since Gen 1 though...

Thank you, I'm aware of that. I have played Red through SoulSilver. However it was only in the later generations did it seem, to me at least, to fuck up the elemental rock-paper-scissors.

 

[Rangaman]

Pokemon. There's only so many times I can go after those little bastards.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Kingdom Hearts is the biggest offender for me.

The first one was a MASTERPIECE. Slightly wonky story, but overall great. Gameplay was tight and had some real replay value. Picking different options at the start really changes things up. Try Taking the Staff and Leaving the Shield. You become a goddamn magic sniper who dies in two hits, but can instakill those giant shield guys with like two spells.

The second was...Alright, but nowhere near as tight. The options you pick for your "class" at the start barely have an impact on the game. It's more based on grinding "forms" until you have all the special abilities, which kills some replay value. :s

The various spinoffs fluctuated in quality (Birth By Sleep would have been perfect if I got to spend a little longer with each character, the game ended just as each one JUST got great in gameplay terms) and I just found myself going "Come on, gimme 3 already! That's half the reason I bought this PS3!"

...Then, they announced it was gonna be a PS4 exclusive.

And then...I played Dream Drop Distance, which jumped the shark with some weird wacko twisting plot threads that basically amounted to "LOL, every win you had was pointless anyway, Now the REAL game begins!" And rather than delve into some previous plot material to help resolve things, they LITERALLY foil the villain's plot with LITERAL RANDOM CHANCE.

Spoiler: I wish I was kidding. THIS is the moment that made me give up on the series entirely

Oh no! The Hero is forcibly asleep and is (somehow) being used as a vessel for a fragment of the villain's soul as he does some time travel BS! The anti-hero who for like the 3rd time in the series got over his Darkness/Redemption arc AGAIN is unable to help! What will save the-

*donald and goofy use the Shooting Star thing that randomly sends you to a random place in a random world, and they literally fall on top of the villain, disrupting his concentration*
Donald: Were we supposed to do that?

*Villain's plan is shattered, the whole time travel things unwinds, everything goes ok, everyone's favourite double crossing anti-villain gets a keyblade, more hints that the 3rd game will involve a bullshit Deus Ex Machina trope*

Seriously, that's just atrocious. The series went on for WAY too long with no real resolution and got ruined as a result. :s

It's just tragic. The series used to be so good.

 

[RJ 17]

Count me among those who gave up on AC...I made it to ACIII then said fuck it.

Haven't played an Final Fantasy since X-2 (which was rented and returned 30 minutes after getting home)...if I've any cash left over after Christmas I might pickup 15...then again my brother's been getting me games for Christmas for the past few years so there's a chance he might just get it for me.

 

[Kingjackl]

This is a bit of a sob story, so strap in.

I went from disliking the Witcher series (when I first played Witcher 2), to thinking it was okay but overrated (when I finished Witcher 2), to loving the shit out of it (when I started playing Witcher 3) to...fucking hating it (when I finished Witcher 3).

It's purely a personal thing; I invested a lot of time in the Witcher 3, I compulsively sought out every side quest, filled in every question mark on the map (except Skellige because I can only put up with so much bullshit). I went and bought both expansions before I'd finished the main story because I was convinced I'd want to go straight onto it. And if you finished the game and are aware of it's endings, you probably know where this is going but...I got the bad ending. After 114 fucking hours I ended up with the worst ending where nothing I did mattered and it all ended on a disappointing anti-climax.

I don't think I've ever felt more fucked over by a game than when that happened, and this is from someone who took a character all the way through the Mass Effect trilogy. But I think the Witcher 3 upset me more because I'd invested so much time in it without any idea that I was headed for the bad ending. Because the choices that influenced the ending were so under-stated, I had no idea I was doing anything wrong until the very end, after I went trawling through the walkthroughs to see what the hell happened.

It was too smart for it's own good. The only other series I can think of that have such subtle variables for different endings are Silent Hill and Metro. But the difference between those games and Witcher is a) Silent Hill and Metro are both depressing stories, so getting the bad ending feels thematically appropriate and b) they're both linear adventure games that can be finished in under 20 hours, so replaying them to get the good ending isn't a daunting undertaking.

So yeah, after a lot of "will they won't they" tension, and romantic false starts, I briefly fell in love with The Witcher, only for it to break my heart. I've got two expansion sitting in my GOG library that I'll probably never play, so hooray for that waste of money. I have a save file from around the point where choices start mattering, but even so I'll have to replay a lot of shit just to fix my playthrough, and even then it probably won't feel the same.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Ignoring all the big name stuff, I will list some niche stuff I simply checked out on

Neptunia: Commissioned fanart, fantasized crossovers but ultimately left after I felt it was responsible for the glut of terrible JRPGs are at the time. Since then I became quite vocal about my dislike of the series.

Age of Empires: When I was in my teens I thought this game was awesome, but when I got older and tried it again, I realized just how the game mechanics are utterly archaic, specifically the resource gathering system. KISS principle in full effect here.

 

[Kyrian007]

Just like everyone else, Assassin's Creed. Black Flag seemed to be a decent game to leave on. Since I don't buy games on day 1, I saw Unity's problems and have not bothered since. A big plus there for not buying games on day 1. Final Fantasy, I was there for the US releases from 1 to 10. But I haven't played one since. Mass Effect, there's only so much window dressing you can stand around a basic cover shooter.

 

[BrawlMan]

I started at the very beginning of Devil May Cry with #3, and defeating the very first boss was the final straw. The ice-cerebrus so graciously accepts defeat by becoming a weapon, but that doesn't stop Dante from being a grotesquely obnoxious douche-monger. Whenever I read DMC fanboys complaining about DMC2 or reboot, I can't help but feel ill that they put so much emotional stock in the alleged "coolness" of such a character.

That was kind of the point. You see him gradually grow out of it and build up to a better person. Whatever flaws DMC3!Dante has is nothing compared to DmC!Dante. Ninja Theory was so try hard about their version being a 13-year-old's idea of "cool" and "edgy" that he comes off almost as a total tool. I can tolerate this iteration of Dante now, and Kat (who I like the most of this game), but everything else about the game I can't stand. It does not help that Ninja Theory were no better in the asshole department by insulting the fan base, while trying to please them at the same time. That bit them in the ass so hard, backpedaling was imminent. And it came in the form of DmC: Definitive Edition.

Crash Bandicoot - I stopped playing when I found that Naughty Dog wasn't making the games anymore. That said, I am excited for the Remaster Edition of the first three games. It's hypocritical I know, but I have some faith that it might turn out well.

Assassin's Creed - It was the same thing after Brotherhood, and plot just got more convoluted and stupid as the series went on. Also, fuck you big time Ubisoft; you killed Rayman! I boycotted them after that. And speaking of another Ubisoft franchise...

Far Cry - 2 I didn't like, and we are never getting another game like Far Cry Instincts again. The best Wolverine FPS ever made.

Pokemon - The games got boring when I got to Crystal. I did not even finish it. The anime was getting on my nerves too.

Final Fantasy - The series has gotten over bloated and far up its own ass. Plus I don't have time for traditional RPGs in general anymore.

Mario - After New Super Mario Bros.2, I realized there is not much left for Mario to me. Each game is just some new power-up here and there. What doesn't help was that Rayman Legends showed the gaming world how a modern 2D platformer should and can be done. Legends is the 2D best platformer of the 7th to 8th generation transition. Bar none.

Sonic - I hate to say this, but all of the shit Sega pushed out made me stop caring for Sonic mostly. I know Mania will most likely be great, but that won't make up for all the damage Sega did. They have to do more than that. Being more consistent with quality control would be a start. Next, bring back your good franchises and don't make them piss poor. You know which ones.

Street Fighter V- After the multiple messes Capcom has done, the only way they can get to my good graces is by making a complete edition of the game and pricing it $14.99. Not only that, but publicly apologize for shitting they had one from now, all the way back to in 2006 when they dropped Clover Studios. Then again, we wouldn't have the awesomeness that is Platinum games.

Dead to Rights - When they made the sequel a prequel, I knew Namco wasn't going to anything else with their stillborn franchise. The Gears of War reboot clone nobody asked for was the final dump in everybody's face that like the original game.

Anything by EA, end of story.