How could they screw this up??? Favorite game series that just went to hell.

[TheGameXXVII]

the Pokemon series.

Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow were awesome, Pokemon Gold/Silver were awesome (just not as awesome), Pokemon Sapphire/Ruby were average (at best), after that it sort of went to shit with the addition of too many new (and mostly retarded) pokemon. Hell, in Pokemon Ruby it was impossible to get a Pidgey without trading! a PIDGEY!
the newer remakes are starting to lift the series up again, but mainly because of the fact they are remakes of when the series was good.

 

[Leviathan_]

Empire Earth (II and III were horrible)

Grand theft Auto (After San Andreas)

CoD (After CoD4)

Command and Conquer

Spyro series (After A Hero's Tail)

Pokemon (after emerald)

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald were the weakest entries of the Pokemon series, they removed so much from the previous generation. Diamond/Pearl brought a lot of those features back. Sure the stories are the same but who in their sane mind would ever play a Pokemon game for the story?

I personally don't care about those Gimmicks you get in generation IV, nor do I care about the pokemon introduced in diamond/pearl, Emerald is and stays the last good pokemon game imho.
(without counting the remakes)

 

[Mrhenners12]

Halo
Metroid
Zelda
Metal Gear Solid
Prince of Persia
Pokemon
Elder Scrolls
Final Fantasy
Mortal Kombat
Street Fighter
FALLOUT 3
C&C 3+4, Red Alert 3
Dawn of War 2

you have a very good taste in games

 

[Zarokima]

I think the final fantasy series was ruined long ago when they started to make sequels, just let it go square-enix, your flogging a dead horse.

This was what I came here to post. X-2 had no justification for even existing, 12 was absolutely horrible, and they even managed to screw up TA2. However, I did borrow 13 from a friend so that I could properly rail against it, and ended up buying it -- it's certainly no 9 or 6, but it's pretty good.

 

[Bato]

Command and Conquer 4 - For the last game of a well established and well beloved series, they decide to completely scrap the gameplay and the mechanics that were in from the first game. "But Jandau!" you might say, "Change is good! Games shouldn't stagnate!". While there is SOME truth to that, it only gets worse from there - Then they proceed to replace the original gameplay with crap. Pure, undiluted crap. Poor visual design of units, simplistic mechanics, clunky controls and interface, dumbed down overall gameplay. Terrible way to send off a legend of the genre.

Don't forget the absolutely horrible and extremely disappointing story! Where they 'explained' everything about Kane..
Some, no, many things were best left to the imagination.
Not to mention the cut scene sets were NOTHING like the past games. It's like EA just threw out all the props from previous games and got a few fake modern guns and military uniforms. And had the actors bring the rest of what they were wearing from home.

Napoleon:TW / Empire:TW - The Total War series started going downhill with Empire, but it was still decent. A ton of crappy design decisions, terrible coding, unfinished and buggy release and pants-on-head-retarded AI were still compensated by many positive moves, such as a better diplomacy system, revamped construction/economic system, etc. Then Napoleon shows up and guts the game, taking away the entire Macromanagement aspect of the series and leaving you with pretty much only the battles against the (still retarded) AI.

I loved the total war series and Empires seemed to be a step up, mechanically that is, but then they messed it up by putting it in the era it was in? Guns? That's boring! And as you said, Napoleon stripped it down to just battles. With guns, there's little tactics to guns.
Stand on a hill, shoot wildly, ???, profit!
Oh there might be a cavalry charge, so just stay in box formation 24/7.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - Elder Scrolls were always the forerunners in Open World RPGs, with Morrowind reaching cult status. Then they put out Oblivion, a game with atrocious controls that should have been scrapped after Daggerfall, zero story, atrocious writing, terrible voice acting, moronic mechanics, a cluttered and poorly designed interface and an open world more boring than a can of spam. They did make up for it a bit with Fallout 3, but I still fear for the Elder Scrolls series...

I thought Oblivion was awesome.. Until I played the past games. It's as if all the people that did the concepts, lore, and writing of the past games were just shot before making Oblivion.
None of any of it makes sense, lore wise.
They generic'd it up soooo much, it's just ugh.

 

[FolkLikePanda]

Crash Bandicoot, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED!

 

[mew4ever23]

Spyro the Dragon - This is the most painful example for me. It went from the insta-classic trilogy to fail to cannon-turfing-franchise-reboot.
Crash Bandicoot - It's painful to watch now.
Harry Potter the PC series - Let me say up front: Usually I want no part in movie tie-ins, but Harry Potter was the expetion.. until I loaded the 4th game. When will developers learn: If it ain't broke, don't fix it! What was so wrong about using the mouse to cast?

 

[Jfswift]

I think the final fantasy series was ruined long ago when they started to make sequels, just let it go square-enix, your flogging a dead horse.

I liked JRPGs before the advent of the PlayStation-era games. Now they're all about prepubescent boys and girls with neon ceramic hair. And they're all the same now - or so it seems.

I realize I'm just asking to get flamed, and to make it worse: I'm not a big fan of the direction Western RPGs went either.

what would you like to see developers move toward then?

 

[TheGameXXVII]

another one from me, i have to add the Smackdown! vs Raw series.

SvR was good, not the best, but good.
SvR 2006 was great, GM Mode was awesome, and the CAW mode was just as great.
SvR 2007 was ok, but they fucked up GM Mode something massive.
SvR 2008 was just...terrible. it was like everything that was good about the last games was made worse.
SvR 2009 was ok, except they removed GM Mode and PPV mode. they did add Create a finisher mode and an improved CAW mode, but it couldn't make up for the lack of GM Mode.
i haven't played SvR 2010 yet, but its a game i would like to try out.

 

[Abedeus]

Uhm, Neverwinter Nights 2 was pretty damn terrible. I regret pre-ordering it... I mean, for a game it's okay, but series has gone downhill ever since.

Oh, and Guild Wars. Loved it for 3 years, then the "add-on" with 6 hours campaign and recycled armor skins and boring missions + power creep to nth power came along.

The Hero system I think spelled the end of GW as people could do missions easily on their own which killed the need to have a party for a mission. So sad though as the best part of it for me was getting a party and doing it with them.

Hero system is what saved the game. I never felt the need to party with other people. All pugs so far were:

a) stupid
b) moronic
c) disobedient
d) unskilled
e) ALL OF THE ABOVE.

And yeah, e) is the most common option. After Nightfall, I never EVER had to join a PuG. Thank God. If not for the heroes, I would probably continue playing with henchmen till I got bored with the missions.

Well that is kinda the point as Heroes encouraged people to be more like this and not work together even more and killed the socil aspect of the game. Fair enough there are bad Pugs but there are plenty of good ones. Regardless of opinion on the matter it did spell the end of GW.

PuGs were never good, never will be. All of the good players play either in guild groups, alliance groups (rarely) or Hero/Hench.

But those really, really good players just don't play anymore because of boredom. The only reason I can see myself coming back to game if they give us 7 heroes.

 

[Master_Corruptor]

need for speed !
They utterly manglede that game. Everything up to Underground was great. With Need for Speed III as the top.

Everything after that was a dissapointment. New graphics and rubbish gameplay.

 

[JAY_RAD]

Sonic. Silent Hill. Nights into Dreams. Ultimate Alliance. Mortal Kombat. Prince of Persia.

I think Prince of Persia got better every time they made a new one.

please tell me you didn't know one came out for the xbox 360.

because the sands of time series where AWESOME, but the one for the xbox 360 was a letdown beyond repair.

Yeah, I forgot about that one. Let's just count that one out because I liked the first three and I think they got better every time.

 

[Oktanas]

Duke Nukem Forever it went straight to HELL even didn't stoped here on earth.

 

[Yureina]

I'd be uncreative and say Final Fantasy, but to tell you the truth I jumped away from that series when the games started getting a reputation for being bad without many redeeming qualities (aka, after FFX). Instead, i'll mention C&C: Red Alert for turning totally whacky when the first game took itself seriously and actually got my interest, Star Ocean to me turned into crap after 'The Second Story', and, most of all for me recently, the Hearts of Iron series. I sunk tons of time into HOI2. I played HOI3 for about... 6 hours at most before almost bringing myself to tears by how buggy that game got.

Ah well, at least there are still plenty of good games out there to replace these

 

[lwm3398]

Ratchet and Clank, with Deadlocked. Ratchet is not a space marine, nor should the graphics in a Ratchet and Clank game ever be so dark and gritty. Plus, there's not even that much Clank in the entire game. It's not a Ratchet and Clank game, it doesn't follow the correct formula, it's too dark and gritty, and it has no right to feature Ratchet as the protagonist.

Luckily, Insomniac has reclaimed themselves with the newer titles.

 

[psivamp]

I think the final fantasy series was ruined long ago when they started to make sequels, just let it go square-enix, your flogging a dead horse.

I liked JRPGs before the advent of the PlayStation-era games. Now they're all about prepubescent boys and girls with neon ceramic hair. And they're all the same now - or so it seems.

I realize I'm just asking to get flamed, and to make it worse: I'm not a big fan of the direction Western RPGs went either.

what would you like to see developers move toward then?

That's a good question and I don't really have a good answer.

 

[Mister Benoit]

Empire Earth (II and III were horrible)

Grand theft Auto (After San Andreas)

CoD (After CoD4)

Command and Conquer

Spyro series (After A Hero's Tail)

Pokemon (after emerald)

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald were the weakest entries of the Pokemon series, they removed so much from the previous generation. Diamond/Pearl brought a lot of those features back. Sure the stories are the same but who in their sane mind would ever play a Pokemon game for the story?

I personally don't care about those Gimmicks you get in generation IV, nor do I care about the pokemon introduced in diamond/pearl, Emerald is and stays the last good pokemon game imho.
(without counting the remakes)

Meh, the world was much smaller in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, Night/Day was gone a lot of the new pokemon felt uninspired although that can also be said for Gen IV also playing through the game just didn't feel fun.

What gimmicks are you talking about in Gen IV?

 

[Mister Benoit]

need for speed !
They utterly manglede that game. Everything up to Underground was great. With Need for Speed III as the top.

Everything after that was a dissapointment. New graphics and rubbish gameplay.

Hot Pursuit was really fun back in the day. /tear

 

[TheDustyBanana]

Donkey Kong. Or rather, the Country series in particular. DK64 was the last decent entry in the series and even then it wasn't as good as the SNES games. Not bad, mind you, just not as good. I don't even think they make real DK games anymore. If they do I haven't heard of/seen any.

 

[Jman1236]

Sonic and Star fox.