How Far Can A Franchise Push You (Before You Just Quit)?

[cjacks]

There was a time (around 2006) when I would have been insanely excited to hear about a new Resident Evil game, but I am sad to say that effective immediately I am no longer a fan of the franchise.

RE has been on thin ice with me since 5 was such a disappointment, but tonight I played the RE6 Demo and I was completely disgusted. I could launch into a rant about the game's problems, but I think we can all guess what they are. Instead let me just say that remembering all the fun I had with the early titles and with RE4 made me feel sickened and ashamed the whole time I was playing.

The point is that I will never buy another thing branded Resident Evil again. I am just done, and it is because of this game. I was prepared for it to be bad, but something about this demo just made me completely lose interest in any future movies, games, or media of any kind.

Now I'd like to hear from all of you:

Have you ever given up on a franchise you admired because of one horrible experience? If you haven't what would it take to make you react this way?

 

[yuval152]

Call of duty, 1(UO too)+2 were good, 3 was horrible, 4 was amazing, 5 was meh, 6+ dead for me.

 

[Tazzy da Devil]

Well, I've stopped being excited at new Kingdom Hearts games now. That'll probably change when Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out, but I haven't bothered getting RE: Coded or Dream Drop Distance.

 

[Suijen]

Call of duty, 1+2 were good, 3 was horrible, 4 was amazing, 5 was meh, 6+ dead for me.

Don't forget the United Offensive expansion for COD. That was awesome.

 

[krazykidd]

Final fantasy . I liked them all except X-2 . When i heard about XIII-2 i was like " fuck not again , i'm going to have to buy it even though i know it's gonna be shit ". And i was right , first FF game i failed to finish because i found it horrible . Then SQUARE-enox announces XIII-3 . I was a fan since the original Final fantasy . But no more . Hell if they hadn't announced XIII-3 , i would have bought the FF complete collection ( 400$) even though i have them all . But now , they aren't getting a penny out of me .

 

[Tdoodle]

I thought I'd given up on the Halo franchise after Reach, I was close to the highest kill multiplier medal (I think I was on 8) and had the last two in my sights when some gimp drove in front of my tank shot in a fully loaded warthog, meaning I got a triple betrayal and a swift boot. Was single-handedly defending the last objective and they went and did that. I traded it in for Cooking Mama 3 the next day.

But my friend is moving to Canada and pretty much all he plays is the Halo series, so it'd be a good way to keep in touch without the awkwardness/expense of long-distance phone calls.

 

[Jason Rayes]

Final fantasy . I liked them all except X-2 . When i heard about XIII-2 i was like " fuck not again , i'm going to have to buy it even though i know it's gonna be shit ". And i was right , first FF game i failed to finish because i found it horrible . Then SQUARE-enox announces XIII-3 . I was a fan since the original Final fantasy . But no more . Hell if they hadn't announced XIII-3 , i would have bought the FF complete collection ( 400$) even though i have them all . But now , they aren't getting a penny out of me .

FF and Square have been going downhill for years. It used to be that I would greet a new release with excitement, over the last few years with uneasiness, now I can't even muster any feeling at all. Oh, Final Fantasy XIII-3. Square made a third game in a failed series? I guess that dead horse isn't whipped enough yet. *Goes and plays something else*

 

[Padwolf]

Kingdom Hearts. I loved 1 and 2. I loved those games so much that the news of the sequels used to fill me with great joy. I bought a PSP with Birth By Sleep in mind. I naively thought that they will bring out the official Kingdom Hearts 3 one day. Now I have to buy a 3DS to keep up. Well. I have drawn the line. The one on DS wasn't that great at all. The one on PSP was alright. Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix has never come out in the UK. My heart just can't take this much pain over this game!

Silent Hill was another. Silent Hill 1, 2, 3 and even 4 were good. Though I don't think 4 really counts that much since it wasn't going to be a Silent Hill game anyway. Then I got Silent Hill Origins on the PSP. Things started to go downhill there. But I thought it's ok, that's just 1 game out of them all so far that's a bit bad. Then Silent Hill Homecoming came out. That's where my heart broke. I got my hopes up with Shattered Memories, I thought it was pretty decent all in all. I haven't played Downpour yet, but my hopes are not high for that. Neither are they high for the multiplayer one that's coming out.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Well I was enjoying Mass Effect right up until the ending of 3.

Then I just gave up. I occasionly play the multiplayer sometimes, but not often. It's dead to me.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Guitar Hero, when it did the ridiculous amount of games in one year.

Also if Assassin's Creed hadn't changed protagonist this time I would've given up on it, but thankfully it did.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Were it not for the Desmond sections I'd have probably walked away from Assassin's Creed Revelations. They're gonna need to shake things up a bit in AC3 or else I won't be buying it.

 

[Kalikin]

I'm pretty much the same as you so far as Resident Evil is concerned. I won't go as far as to say that I will NEVER buy an RE game again, but I highly doubt I will ever get 6.

I actually had a lot of fun with RE5, but that was because I had a friend locally who was always keen to play. The Wesker fight is particularly good, having to co-ordinate one person baiting him and the other sneaking around his back so you can actually hit him. Only played about an hour and a half with the A.I partner, and... Screw that. What I didn't like is 5's obvious foreshadowing in the series becoming a "full" action game, what with the gun-toting zombies and ridiculously bad cover-based shooting sections.

As for what it actually takes to be put off a series, there are a couple of things. The games could stray so far away from what I originally enjoyed, without providing anything new to get excited about (like the RE series), but another one is if I reach a gap in the story. This can happen by games being exclusive to a platform I don't own (like many Kingdom Hearts games), or if I just don't want a particular entry (which happened with Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood).

The reason I haven't been put off the Final Fantasy series despite strongly disliking XIII (but able to appreciate certain elements) and LOATHING XIII-2 is that it doesn't matter if I don't like a certain entry - they are all differentiated, yet admirably retain a core which is familiar and distinct. Well, maybe not XIII-2. God I hate that game.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Were it not for the Desmond sections I'd have probably walked away from Assassin's Creed Revelations. They're gonna need to shake things up a bit in AC3 or else I won't be buying it.

Revelations was the equivalent of a somehow polished turd.

An improvement, but still a turd.

More interesting than Brotherhood in every respect, but ultimately still based on Brotherhood, which -while being functional- ended up being boring and stodgy (except for parachute jumping).

The only two games that have escaped my 'never sell/trade any games ever again, because you'll want to play them again as soon as you trade/sell them' policy; still enjoyed them, but nowhere near as much as the first two.

 

[Muspelheim]

Call of duty, 1(UO too)+2 were good, 3 was horrible, 4 was amazing, 5 was meh, 6+ dead for me.

Hear, hear. CoD 4 was such a breath of fresh air, I remember. It's funny, really.

As for Blizzard, well... I hung around Azeroth for about six years, but honestly, one day it just wasn't worth paying for anymore. I think worldwide flying mounts (In effect, one man airliner trips everywhere, or lvl ?? enemies raining down from the sky to gank you) and the boring, unengaging Derpwing main plot certainly didn't help... But you also get rather tired of tab-hotkeyspam combat in half a decade.

 

[PurePareidolia]

Well, Mass Effect was already on shaky ground after the ludicrous terminator baby in #2, but after 3/s ending, I'm done. Not just with Mass Effect, but with Bioware entirely.

 

[dimensional]

I tend to just look at the games rather than the franchise now so they dont die for me as such its just I ignore them for the moment and may pick them up again later usually after a long gap (if they are still going) dosent matter if it continues the story or not.

When I used to buy every game in a franchise I used to get burnt out pretty bad the one I remember was Tekken I liked the first one the second was amazing 3rd was ok (bit dissapointed) 4 and Tekken tag were was so bad I swore that was it. Then I went to Japan and Tekken 5 was everywhere so I ended up getting that and hardly playing it despite it being pretty good and that was it. Now 7 years or so later I think I may get TTT2 as ive had a break from it. So I suppose it wasnt dead for me its just that I was completely uninterested in the franchise for 7 or so years.

 

[Easton Dark]

If L4D3 gets released before the next generation of consoles are out, I'm done with that.

They basically inundated my day 1 ($50) purchase of L4D by putting all of it in L4D2 ($5). I'm not having that again so soon.

Fool me once, y'know.

 

[Wanderer787]

Halo. I loved the first, was ambivalent about 2 and 3, and only mildly enjoyed ODST. Reach felt like the first one, so I enjoyed it more.

Part of it was that after the first game, the series never lived up to the hype. I used to be a die-hard Bungie fan when I was younger (I played Bungie games since the first Marathon) but it felt like their sense of innovation was being replaced by a corporate list of requirements, and the quality of Bungie's gaming community took a steep nose-dive in my opinion.

So yeah, won't be touching Halo 4.