Alone in the Dark
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
During the golden age of arcades, SEGA wanted a side-scrolling beat-'em-up to compete with Capcom's Final Fight. The task was left an internal team called Team Shinobi led by programmer Makoto Uchida whose combined credits include Shinobi and Altered Beast. Released for the arcade in 1988 and later ported to the SEGA Genesis, this beat-'em-up utilized magic spells and mountable beasts for the player to use against enemies in a fantasy world reminiscent of the Conan the Barbarian films. Coupled with up to two players and a choice between a barbarian warrior, an Amazon, and an axe-wielding dwarf, Golden Axe became popular enough to receive two direct sequels exclusively for the Genesis. Some people would think that this solid beat 'em up series would just call it a good career when the trilogy ended in 1993. But that would not be the case 18 years later.
SEGA announced a new Golden Axe game for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 at 2006's E3 convention. While fans were initially exited, it died down when the game, subtitled Beast Rider, was turning out to be a single player hack-and-slash adventure modeled after God of War rather than a multiplayer beat 'em up the original games were known for. That was just the tip of the iceberg when Golden Axe: Beast Rider was released in mid-October 2008. Featuring the Amazon as the main protagonist with the barbarian and dwarf reduced to supporting NPCs, the game was plagued by a weak moveset, problematic defense mechanics, repetitive enemy encounters, and lackluster environments alongside the absence of a multiplayer mode. While it was true that the player could ride beasts with different abilities like in the original trilogy (after all, the game is subtitled Beast Rider), the stiff beast controls did not make the game much better either.
Bionic Commando
 |
| Left: Screenshot of Hitler no Fukkatsu. Right: Screenshot of Bionic Commando on the NES |
In 2008, Capcom released Bionic Commando: Rearmed, an enhanced downloadable remake of the original Bionic Commando for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the PC. The remake was developed by Swedish-based developer GRIN, whose best known credits by then include making two games under the title Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for Ubisoft. Thanks to additions not seen in the original, such as co-op and multiplayer modes, Bionic Commando: Rearmed did fairly well critically and commercially, especially among fans of the NES original. But this success also served as a precursor to a 3D reboot by the same developer a year later. This new Bionic Commando was, in a nutshell, the critical and commercial opposite of Bionic Commando: Rearmed. The problems didn't lay with the gameplay, which made new and creative uses of the bionic arm but was weak in the gun-play. Rather, they lay with the ironically restrictive level design, in-game advertising, and the protagonist, Nathan "Rad" Spencer, as an unlikable ex-con stereotype that players found difficult to connect to. As if the last part wasn't bad enough, what irked players the most was the plot twist near the end of the game revealing that Spencer's bionic arm was made from the biological components surrendered to his government voluntarily by his wife in order for it to function in perfect physical and emotional harmony with him...or something like that. All of this led to weak sales, which partially led to heavy layoffs and the eventual closure of GRIN.
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
SEGA's answer to Nintendo's Super Mario series from the NES era, Sonic the Hedgehog was created by programmer Yuji Naka, character designer Naoto Ohshima, and level designer Hirokazu Yasuhara for the Mega Drive aka the Genesis back in 1991, setting the foundations for the development team that would become known as "Sonic Team." With the core gameplay being high speed movement in various diverse colorful environments, the game launched a franchise that basically highlighted the SEGA Genesis's golden age and a three-generation console war with Nintendo, one of the most famous chapters in video game history. In those days, several well-received titles made by Sonic Team and otherwise for several of SEGA's consoles, including the Genesis and the Dreamcast, helped to establish the speedy blue hedgehog as one of the most recognizable video game icons of all time next to Nintendo's own Mario.
By the year 2005, SEGA had long since withdrawn from the console manufacturing market following the discontinuation of the Dreamcast in 2001. With the focus shifted to making and shipping games, the company sought to give Sonic a fresh start in the 7th generation consoles, hence the reboot. In a press event held in September 2005, SEGA announced that the reboot would be made for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and shipped the next year as part of the celebration of the franchise's 15th Anniversary. "By harnessing the power of these new platforms," said Naoya Tsurumi, CEO of SEGA of America, Inc. and SEGA Europe Ltd. "we are confident that Sonic will once again raise the bar for action gaming in 2006 and beyond." Yuji Naka, SEGA's R&D Creative Officer at that point, was originally put in charge of that project. In confidence of the reboot's success, he stated that "[w]ith Sonic the Hedgehog, we have gone back to our starting point, more than 15-years ago, to reinvent the attitude and speed that made our hero a legend. The 'rebirth of Sonic' will offer an unparalleled sense of speed that is only possible using the processing power afforded by the new systems." At some point in the development process, Naka left SEGA to form his own development studio, Prope. After that, things went downhill for the reboot. Director Shun Nakamura and his team faced pressure from the Sega higher-ups to get the game out to meet the deadline without the key figures behind the franchise. When Sonic the Hedgehog was released for the Xbox 360 on November 14, 2006 and the Playstation 3 on January 30, 2007, it got lambasted by critics and fans alike. Unrefined gameplay mechanics, frustrating controls, unpolished graphics and textures, a troublesome camera, shoehorned supporting characters, excruciating load times, and a horrible story all lead to the fall from grace for SEGA's mascot. As icing on the cake, Sonic, an anthropomorphic hedgehog, was paired with a human love interest, a frighteningly uncomfortable idea to fans and casual gamers alike. This marked one of the saddest downfalls of gaming icons in history and the beginning of a long line of games bearing Sonic's name that ranged from mediocre to outright terrible, the most recent case being Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric on the Nintendo Wii U in late 2014.
 |
| "Furry fetishes should never be a central plot to a game. EVER!" - Stuttering Craig, Screwattack's Top 10 Worst Reboots and Remakes video (6/2/11) |
 |
| Top: Screenshots of the first Bomberman game, known as Bakudan Otoko (Bomberman) in Japan and Eric and the Floaters in Europe. Below: Screenshots of the NES port of Bomberman. |
In 1980, a Japanese technology store-turned-computer game developer called Hudson Soft created the first Bomberman game as a way to demonstrate their own version of a BASIC compiler (appropriately called Hu-BASIC). It was eventually released in 1983 later on a variety of computers throughout Japan under the title. Bakudan Otoko ("Bomber Man") and ported a year later to the ZX Spectrum and MSX computers in Europe under the title Eric and the Floaters. The game did not really take off until it was ported to the Famicom (known throughout the rest of the world as the NES) in the 1985 with much of the credit being given to Japanese programmer Shinichi Nakamoto. While the details are still unclear, it was said that Nakamoto conducted a 72-hour programming session while borrowing sprites from another Famicom game called Lode Runner (another Famicom/NES game which he also helped program). Regardless, Bomberman ended up selling over a million copies, effectively becoming Hudson Soft's flagship series for two decades. The game itself had players taking the role of a bomb-making robot from a top-down perspective. The goal was simple: lay out bombs to destroy enemies and brick walls inside a maze without killing themselves with a misplaced bomb in order to advance to the next level. While a simple mechanic in itself, it helped later Bomberman games become popular and memorable as fun four-player party games. On a side note, it also contributed to the creation of the term 'deathmatch,' which in turn would become a name of the multiplayer modes of other games that would become blockbusters in the future, most notably DOOM, Halo, and Call of Duty.
In May of 2006, Konami announced a new game in the Bomberman series at their E3 press conference. This game, titled Bomberman: Act Zero, that would take the series in a completely different direction with a dark futuristic setting in which humans are bioengineered and cybernetically enhanced to fight in explosive (pun intended) gladiatorial games broadcast across the world. Since it would be coming exclusive to the Xbox 360, it would use the online multiplayer capabilities of Xbox Live, allowing up to 8 players to compete. In addition, the single-player campaign would feature 99 levels of what promised to be a roller coaster rite of mayhem. The game was released in August, many players dropped a massive bombshell on everything about it. The repetitive level design, dull gameplay, bland environments, no save system, the absence of local multiplayer, and the generic gritty cyberpunk look as opposed to the colorful, cheery cartoon style the series has been known for (io9 went so far as to rank this at number 4 on the 11 Most Horrifying Redesigns of Childhood Classics) lead to Bomberman: Act Zero to be one of the most negatively reviewed games of all time; it received a 34 average score on Metacritic.
Dungeon Keeper Mobile
Created by Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog Productions in 1997, Dungeon Keeper is a real-time strategy PC game set in a fantasy setting. Instead of a hero conquering a dungeon like in most fantasy games, the player takes on the role of a force of evil whose goal is to conquer the realm of heroes by having imps dig underground dungeons. With mined gold at their disposal, players had the ability to set up traps, cast spells, and build rooms used to store treasures, train minions, feed them, and keep them in line. Since very limited control over the minions was granted, players had to pick them up with the mouse in order to place them at various locations to reinforce the dungeon walls and guard against heroic attackers. The tongue-in-cheek humor of being an evil boss helped Dungeon Keeper build a strong following among PC strategist fans and sim management enthusiasts; it was enough to warrant a sequel two years later with the addition of 3D graphics.
A few months after the release of Dungeon Keeper 2, Bullfrog and their IP rights, including those to Dungeon Keeper, had been bought by Electronic Arts. In the time that had passed since then, there was no word on whether or not there would another Dungeon Keeper game. After around thirteen years, EA released one as a free-to-play game for mobile phones and iOS devices. While the basic resource management elements of the original were left intact, the way in which they were implemented disgusted and angered many Dungeon Keeper fans and gamers. As part of the freemium model, imps worked incredibly slow to dig out the tunnels and rooms necessary for the dungeons, forcing players to wait for 4 hours to dig out the soil and 24 hours to dig out the rocks. In order to speed up the processes, players had to use in-game gems which are bought with real-world money as in-app purchases or microtransactions, ranging from $5 to $100. The reboot's heavy use of microtransactions implemented by developer Mythic Entertainment its parent company EA ignited an Internet firestorm in February of last year with the flames bursting in the form of various news articles including those written by International Business Times, BBC, and Kotaku. The United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority even went so far as to ban an ad for the game that misled customers by not informing them of the mandatory micropayments. To make matters worse, players who rated the game at 5-stars were directed to the Google Play Store and those who rated it anywhere below 5-stars were made to confront requests for feedback, rendering low rankings on the Google Play Store next to impossible. And to top it all off, EA Mythic's Jeff Skalski said in an interview with the Tab Times responded to the negative criticisms by saying that "it was designed [from the ground up] to be played in short bursts and that everything can be accessed without [having to spend anything]." In short, players were being told that they were not playing the game right. The negative reception of the Dungeon Keeper mobile reboot led to negative review scores and increased negative attitudes towards the free-to-play business model in games.
Shadowrun
 |
| Left: Box cover for the Shadowrun tabletop game. Center: Shadowrun on the SNES. Right: Shadowrun on the SEGA Genesis. |
The second game was developed and released for the Sega Genesis in 1994 by BlueSky Software Inc. Players can briefly hire party members, upgrade their stats with Karma points earned through combat, and hack into the Matrix like in the first game but the similarities end there. Taking on the role of a man investigating his brother's death on a shadowrun, players can select to be a samurai, a decker, or a gator shaman, character classes that specialize in combat, cyberspace, and magic, respectively. The Genesis version was played from a top-down view and the gameplay became more action-oriented than the SNES version. In addition to the absence of the point-and-click mechanic found in the first game, the Genesis version of Shadowrun delivers a more fast-paced action RPG experience in contrast to the more slow-paced story driven SNES version. Meanwhile, a Japanese game company called Compile released their own version of Shadowrun on the SEGA CD in early 1996. Unlike the two 16-bit counterparts, the SEGA CD version is basically a hybrid of Japanese adventure games and turn-based RPGs similar to Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, and Shining Force. Since Shadowrun on the SEGA CD was never released outside of Japan, it never got as much attention as the SNES and Genesis versions released by Western countries in other parts of the world. Other than that, the series as a whole went silent for over a decade.
In 1999, FASA Interactive, a subsidiary of FASA Corporation, was bought by Microsoft and converted into FASA Studio. The studio got its start with the Mech Commander series, three incarnations of MechWarrior 4 and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. Microsoft then put FASA Studio to work on making a new Shadowrun game for the Xbox 360 and Windows PC in 2004 after filing a trademark for the title. The new game was going to be a first-person shooter similar to Halo and Counterstrike emphasising online multiplayer, which would be the only feature once it was released to the gaming public on September 12, 2007 with less than average review scores. The Shadowrun reboot bared little resemblance to the 16-bit RPGs from the 1990s. In fact, there were no RPG mechanics, no cyberpunk-based features, no plot and no single player campaign. What the Shadowrun multiplayer had to offer was, to put it mildly, barebones. Unlike the multiplayer modes of more popular games like Halo and Call of Duty, there were no stat tracking or leaderboards. To make matters worse, the servers were so glitchy that they went down for a full year. These failings led to the closing of FASA Studios a few months after the game's release. On a positive note, the Shadowrun reboot was the first game to cross-platform gaming between the Xbox 360 and Windows. This feature would later be implemented to enable cross play functionality between the Xbox One and Windows 10 for some of Microsoft's games.
Syndicate
Developed for the PC market by British-based Bullfrog Studios in 1993, Syndicate was set in a futuristic world where capitalism runs rampant and large mega-corporations, known as Syndicate, have more power than any nation. As a marketing director (hit man) for one of these Syndicates, players command a team of four cybernetically-enhanced agents in real time from an isometric perspective similar to take industrial espionage and hostile takeover to ultimate extremes against competitors, including infiltration, assassination, search and destroy, and "persuasion" (using a mind control device called the Persuadertron) to capture civilians, scientists, and even enemy Agents via mind control. As players complete each mission (under either the default name EuroCorp or their own name), they acquire territories from rival Syndicates, effectively gaining financial resources from the population through taxes. Players use these resources to purchase additional weapons and cybernetic upgrades for more effective Agents as well as to fund research into developing more advanced technology for those weapons and upgrades. After an expansion pack sub-titled American Revolt and numerous console ports to the Sega Genesis, Sega CD, and Super Nintendo, Bullfrog Studios made a sequel for PC titled Syndicate Wars in 1996 with 3D graphics, the option to play as either the EuroCorp Syndicate or the Church of the New Epoch, and an increased focus on action. After a port of that game for the Sony Playstation a year later, the series was not seen for another 16 years.
In 2007, Electronic Arts (EA), the publisher of Syndicate and current owner of the IP, commissioned Swedish-based Starbreeze Studios (known mostly for first-person shooters The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness) to reboot Syndicate for the 7th generation consoles and the PC under the codename Project RedLime. A year later, Richard K. Morgan, a science fiction author known for novels such as the Takeshi Kovacs series and Market Forces, was brought on board to write the game's story. It wasn't until 2011 that EA officially revealed the existence of a Syndicate reboot. As it turned out, it was going to be a first-person shooter set in the corporate-run dystopian world where players would control Miles Kilo, an Agent representing the EuroCorp Syndicate. This shift in direction from a unique strategy game to another first person shooter did not please fans of the original Syndicate. In an attempt to address the controversy, EA and Starbreeze made attempts to assure them that their reboot would revitalize the series as a whole. Fans of the original game were not exactly thrilled by this direction in spite of EA's assurances that it is the best step in the right direction. The Syndicate reboot was eventually released to the public on February 21, 2012 with solid to decent reviews. On one hand, it was phrased for its stylish graphics, unique guns, rich writing, and a few unique mechanics that employ a neural implant in Kilo's brain stem called the DART 6 chip. One mechanic involved hacking as a means to disable shields, use turrets against enemies, interact with a few environments, briefly stun enemies by blowing up their guns, getting enemies to commit suicides with grenades, and briefly getting them on the player's side before committing suicide with their guns. Another would allow players to briefly slow down time, deal additional damage to enemies, and take less damage themselves. On the other hand, the graphics rely a little too much on the use of lens flares, the hacking mechanics were too limited, there were a lot of missed gameplay and story opportunities, and the overall plot was dry despite the efforts of Richard Morgan and the writing team. Perhaps the feature that most closely resembled the original Syndicate was the online-only four-player co-op campaign that played similarly to Left 4 Dead and had a mission structure that had players upgrade their Agents and arsenal. Regardless of the positive qualities it had to offer, the reboot could not find a hold in a saturated FPS market dominated by Halo, Call of Duty, and EA's own Battlefield. As a result, only 150,000 copies were sold, leading EA to admit that they took a risk that "didn't pay off" and Starbreeze CEO Mikeal Nermark to admit that it "was a lost battle from the get-go."
SimCity
 |
| From top left to bottom right: SimCity for the Amiga (1989), SimCity for MS-DOS (1989), SimCity for Macintosh (1989), and SimCity for the SNES (1991). |
After the release of SimCity 4 in 2003, the series has not had a major release for some years save for a few spin-offs bearing the name albeit not as memorable. But on March 6, 2012 at the annual Game Developers Conference, EA announced a new SimCity title for the PC market featuring 3D graphics, a radical departure from the 2D top-down perspective of the previous games. The new SimCity game would be utilizing the power of the GlassBox simulation engine developed at Maxis, the very company that Wright and Braun founded which had since became a subsidiary of EA after the latter bought the former in 1997 for $125 million. When fans became aware of this, hype for the game built up and the presentations earned it 8 E3 awards and a Gamescom award for "Best PC Game." But with the hype came a large concern raised by several Reddit users: the new SimCity would require an always-online Internet connection in order to be played. Lucy Bradshaw, Maxis' general manager, responded to these concerns by saying that "the always-on connection is necessary because there's an enormous amount of cloud computing required to power this game, billed as the most advanced in SimCity's history." Defenses such as this would not hold up when the SimCity reboot launched on March 5, 2013. A vast majority of players eager to buy the game at Origin, EA's virtual store, ran into crowded servers forcing them to wait before even downloading it. Players with physical copies fared no better either as they had to enter product keys upon installation. These problems stemmed from the always-online feature and that was not the end of it. Since the reboot was a multiplayer-only game unlike the older single-player ones, the constant crashing of the servers left some players unable to even play the game in single-player, let alone connect with others. To add insult to injury, players were given plots of land that dwarfed those of the original games in comparison to size. The whole issue caused initial critical acclaim to drop significantly. On launch day, the Metacritic average was a 91; a week later, it was a 66. In summary, the final version of the SimCity reboot was nothing like the demonstrations given in the year prior. EA and Maxis scrambled to fix the crashed servers and, more or less, resolved the issues. An offline mode was added a year later, but the damage inflicted by one of the most disastrous launches in video game history was already done. Even Will Wright, the original creator of SimCity who left Maxis in 2009 for other projects, weighed in on the reboot's failed launch by calling it "inexcusable."
Turok
From 1954 to 1981, Western Publishing released Turok: Son of Stone, a comic book series staring two pre-Columbian Native American brothers who found themselves in an isolated land populated with dinosaurs (which they referred to as 'honkers'). Since the early 1990s, publishing rights have been passed to Valiant Comics (1993-1996), Acclaim Comics (1998-2002), Dark Horse Comics (2010), and more recently, Dynamite Comics (2014). It was during the Acclaim Comics era that the Turok series received video game adaptations in the form of first-person shooters and side-scrolling action platformers published by Acclaim Entertainment. Out of those games, two first-person shooters developed by Iguana Entertainment for the Nintendo 64 received the most recognition and critical acclaim: Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and its sequel Seeds of Evil. In addition to the wide enemy variety (consisting not only of dinosaurs, but also human hunters, tribal warriors, cyborgs, aliens, hulking brutes known as Pur-Lin, and dinosaurs with cybernetic enhancements), large distinctive worlds, and simple yet deep mission structures, the arsenal of weapons helped set the two games apart from other shooters with two of the most memorable being the Tek Bow that shoots explosive arrows and the Cerebral Bore that shots insects that home in on enemies' heads and bores into their skulls before exploding. But the series began to diminish with the release of Turok: Rage Wars and it seemed to end with Turok: Evolution on the sixth generation consoles in 2003.
After Acclaim Entertainment went bankrupt in 2004, Buena Vista Games (originally known as Disney Interactive and would later be known as Disney Interactive Studios) acquired the Turok licence in 2005 and commissioned its subsidiary, Vancouver-based Propaganda Games (founded by former EA Canada employees), to work on a reboot for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the PC. It would be revealed in an IGN interview two years later that the reboot would have players in the role of Joseph Turok, a former member of the Wolfpack mercenary group who joins a squad of space marines traveling to a dinosaur-populated planet in pursuit of the Wolfpack's leader and Turok's former mentor and Roland Kane. On January 31, 2008, Turok was released to the public with mixed reviews. Common complaints included the less-than-impressive visuals (made worse on the Playstation 3), the generic space marine storyline, the mediocre AI, the linear level structure, and the overreliance on the combat knife that sometimes rendered the other weapons, which overall paled in comparison to the first two Turok games, useless. While it did sell a million copies, it never made much of an impact on the FPS genre or any genre featuring dinosaurs. A sequel was planned but it never came to fruition due to creative conflicts between Propaganda Games and Disney.
Final Fight: Streetwise
Originally conceived by developers at Capcom as a sequel to the first Street Fighter, Final Fight became one of the most recognizable and influential beat'em ups of all time. The plot focusing on three distinct fighters was fairly straightforward: In the fictional Metro City, a notorious gang known as the Mad Gear Gang seeks to blackmail Mike Haggar, the mayor of Metro City and former professional wrestler, by kidnapping his daughter Jessica Haggar. Unwilling to give in to their demands, he teams up with Cody, a martial artist and Jessica's boyfriend, and Guy, a ninja and Cody's rival, in order to bring her back and save the city from the Mad Gear's clutches. As one of those three fighters, each with their own distinct fighting styles affecting speed and strength, one or two players strolled through the Metro City streets, subways, parks, and various districts battling against waves of various Mad Gear thugs consisting of knife-wielding acrobats, arsonists armed with Molotov cocktails, and hulking wrestlers. The success of Final Fight in the arcades justified ports, albeit with missing features, of a few computers and home consoles, most notably the SNES and SEGA CD. The popularity that came with it encouraged various competitors to emerge, most notably SEGA's Streets of Rage series. After a few subsequent sequels on the SNES and an unsuccessful attempt at a fighting game for the arcade and SEGA Saturn, the Final Fight series went silent for a good number of years.
During the 6th console generation era, an American studio under Capcom known as Production Studio 8 was working on a new Final Fight game for the Playstation 2 under the subtitle Seven Sons. That game was going to feature 3D cel-shaded graphics and a gameplay feel similar to that of the old arcade and SNES games. But when Capcom executives saw the prototype build, they told the team that, "The game while fun to play, is visually not suited for it's core audience." Apparently, it was taken to mean that the new Final Fight had to be something that would resonate with American players; something with a mass urban street theme. So Capcom Production Studio 8 had scrapped Final Fight: Seven Sons and ended up making what would be known as Final Fight: Streetwise, an open world 3D brawler starring underground fighter Kyle Travers, brother of Cody from the original Final Fight. The final product was meet with less than mediocre reviews since it launched for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox on February 6, 2006. While the beat'em up mechanics in a 3D plane can be decent at times, the small open world filled with urban city life stereotypes and cliches, the forgettable storyline involving Kyle trying to save Cody from some sort of drug that turns addicts into crazed zombie/demonic abominations identified by glowing green eyes and veins, dumb AI, boring and uninteresting mini-games, the dull brown-and-gray visuals, and one of the worst cameras ever made in a video game have hampered the reboot overall. The original arcade that was featured as an unlockable bonus did not win over fans either since it was poorly emulated.
Medal of Honor
While working on the classic World War II film Saving Private Ryan in 1997, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg believed that the realism and historical authenticity he was trying to achieve in his work could also be done in a video game. He brought this idea to Dreamworks Interactive, a video game division for his studio Dreamworks SKG, at it evolved into a first-person shooter (FPS). At the time that game was being developed, shooters like Wolfenstein and Doom were mainly sci-fi and fantasy on the PC. By the time it was released on November 10, 1999, Medal of Honor took a different route as a historically accurate World War II FPS exclusively for the Playstation. Rather than moving down waves of Nazis, supersoldiers, and Mecha Hitlers with a chaingun, players took on the role of an OSS (Office of Strategic Services) operative named James Patterson as he undergoes missions involving infiltration and sabotage armed with authentic weapons from both sides of the war. This realistic approach helped cultivate the World War II genre, garnering a slew of additional titles for Medal of Honor and competitors like Ubisoft's Brothers in Arms and Activision's first Call of Duty games.
By the early 2000s, the World War II genre became saturated and stale. In 2007, Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare took the world by storm with its modern setting and its revolutionary approach to multiplayer. That same year, Medal of Honor: Airborne was released in spite of the fact that the World War II genre had already gotten stale. Consequently, sales had paled in comparison regardless of what it had to offer in terms of gameplay. Thus, EA decided to take the franchise in the same direction that Call of Duty took by getting out of World War II and into a modern combat scenario. Originally subtitled Operation: Anaconda, the company decided that the reboot should take place in Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror in keeping with the series' reputation of taking place in realistic settings. The development was twofold: Danger Close Games, a studio rebranded from EA Los Angeles (responsible for the original Medal of Honor series), was tasked with making the single-player campaign using a heavily modified Unreal Engine 3 while DICE, an EA subsidiary known for their work on the Battlefield series, was assigned to develop the multiplayer mode using the Frostbite engine. From a game development perspective, making a game using two different engines for different modes was something unheard of, perhaps even unconventional. Regardless, the Medal of Honor reboot did fairly well when it was released in October 2010 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the PC. It received fairly average reviews while selling around 6 million copies. Of course there have been complaints about the campaign being too short, the not-exactly unique multiplayer modes, and the game being overall too similar to Call of Duty. But these criticisms were constructive when compared to those received by the reboot's sequel Medal of Honor: Warfighter two years later. Developed exclusively by Danger Close using the Frostbite 2 engine, Warfighter looked visually impressive, but failed to mask the problems that were in many ways worse than the initial reboot. The story presentation was awkward to the point of the uncanny valley, the FPS gameplay was too simplistic and by-the-numbers, the enemy AI did not pose much of a challenge, and the multiplayer features did not see much improvement or additions. These problems, coupled with even more comparisons to Call of Duty, contributed to lower review scores and total sales being one-third of those made by the initial reboot. This negativity lead EA to take the Medal of Honor series "out of rotation" in January 2013, admit that the overall reboot "didn't meet quality expectations" in February, and shut down Danger Close Games in June.
Space Invaders: Invasion Day (aka Space Raiders)
Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in Japanese arcades by Taito in 1978, Space Invaders placed players in a defence turret shooting down endless hordes of invading aliens as they slowly descend towards the bottom of the screen. Since the turret could only move left or right, players had to time their shots to destroy the aliens while keeping themselves alive by using barriers that get slowly destroyed in the process. Since there was no end to it, there were only two ways for the game to end: either the player dies or gives up. Regardless of the outcome, the player would walk away with a high score. It got off to a slow start for a few months but became a major sensation in Japan, even causing a shortage of 100 yen coins. When Midway distributed Space Invaders in arcades across America, its popularity spread in the country and beyond. That success prompted the American game company Atari to acquire a licence for making a port for their VHS console, more famously known as the Atari 2600, in the US. With such success, Space Invaders became one of the most important video games in history in several ways. It pioneered the shoot-'em-up (Shmup, for short) genre. It inspired several clones, remakes, and other games that use shooting as a basic building block in game design. It also set the standard for the arcade market, home console ports of arcade games, and the video game industry in Japan and beyond for years to come. In short, it was the beginning of the golden age for video games.
As of this writing, it remains a mystery as to who exactly at Taito came up with the idea of a Space Invaders reboot since it was announced in mid-2003. Other than the fact that Taito was responsible for its development and publication, details of who exactly was involved in it are sketchy at best. Perhaps it was known that after its initial release in Japan on December 19, 2003 for the Playstation 2, several foreign companies had made ports at various later dates. European companies Bigben Interactive and Sammy were involved in porting the reboot in Europe under the title Space Invaders: Invasion Day in September 2003. American companies Mastiff and Tommo Inc., had a part in porting it to the Nintendo GameCube in North America under the title Space Raiders. The GameCube port arrived in Japan on January 9 2003 and North America on April 19, 2004. Whatever was happening during all of this, the fact remains that Space Raiders/Space Invaders: Invasion Day received an overwhelmingly large negative reaction among fans, newcomers, and critics everywhere. In an attempt to replicate the original Space Invaders gameplay in a 3D space in the style of a third-person shooter, the game was greatly bogged down by shallow gameplay, terrible graphics, unfit controls, and a story that tries to be edgy and mature in the worst possible ways.
DmC: Devil May Cry
Devil May Cry, a classic on the PlayStation 2, was originally intended as the fourth sequel in Capcom's survival horror franchise Resident Evil. Game director Hideki Kamiya, who previously directed the critically acclaimed Resident Evil 2, had strayed far from the series' roots in the development process since he was more of a fan of action than horror. While this would normally spell disaster by industry standards, the first version of Resident Evil 4 ended up being so good that series creator Shinji Mikami would convince Capcom executives to allow it to be rebranded as its own game under the title Devil May Cry. Released in Japan in mid-2000 and internationally in late-2001, players controlled Dante, a demon hunting mercenary who inherited demonic powers. Critically acclaimed for its high-octane action, stylish combat system, and challenging difficulty, Devil May Cry inspired the hack-and-slash genre, giving rise to competitors like God of War. While its initial sequel faltered, later Devil May Cry installments would expand upon the series' trademark combat mechanics.
By the time Devil May Cry 4 went on sale for the PC, PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 in 2008, Capcom felt that the series was at risk of getting stale. While that game sold well at 2.7 million units, they were around half of those made by the first two God of War titles on the PlayStation 2, each one seeing around 4 million copies sold. Seeing this, Capcom executives decided that the next Devil May Cry title should be made with Western audiences in mind. They ended up hiring Ninja Theory, a UK-based independent development studio previously known for the PlayStation 3 exclusive title Heavenly Sword and were at the time developing a multiplatform 3D action adventure title Enslaved: Odyssey to the West for Namco. When Capcom announced at the 2010 Tokyo Game Show that Ninja Theory would be making a reboot titled DmC: Devil May Cry and aired a teaser trailer for it, it marked the beginning of one of the most divisive controversies in the history of gaming. Note: I've written several posts on my original blog, The Voice of Heard, covering that controversy while voicing my own opinions from August 2011 till August 2012. Rather than going over the whole thing again, I think it would be best to feature links to all of my articles covering the issues regarding DmC: Devil May Cry here:
The Devil May Cry Reboot: The Backlash and A Potential Failure for a Video Game Franchise
Information Regarding DmC: Devil May Cry: An Update
Devil May Cry: Reflecting On The Points I Have Made With YouTube Videos
Recent Updates on DmC: Devil May Cry at TGS 2011
Updates on DmC: Devil May Cry: Would That Game Be Worth The Money?
How the Discussion and Judgement of DmC: Devil May Cry is Clouded by Speculation, Opinions, and Sensationalism
Ninja Theory: A Brief History of A Famous/Infamous Video Game Developer
The Latest Update on DmC: Devil May Cry and My Suspicious Impressions
The Latest Info on DmC: Devil May Cry, My Latest Thoughts, and My Conclusion on the Game
When DmC: Devil May Cry was released in January 2013 for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, it was met with positive reviews from professional critics but a negative reception among fans, a division caused by the controversy. For instance, the Xbox 360 version of the game received an average score of 86 on Metacritic. The User review average on the same site, on the other hand, was initially a 2.7, then a 3.5, and now currently stands at a 5.1. Critics and players were split on many things making up DmC: Devil May Cry, mostly regarding the way Ninja Theory portrayed the series' established characters, the story, the combat mechanics, the arsenal, and the difficulty. Perhaps it was this division of opinion, coupled with the way Capcom and Ninja Theory marketed the game in ways that antagonized the established fan base, that lead to sales that were initially less than Capcom predicted, with numbers reaching less than 2 million by late 2016. While a Definitive Edition was released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2015 that catered more to the original fanbase, DmC: Devil May Cry did not make much of an impact on the hack-and-slash landscape as Ninja Theory went silent on the whole issue.
In Summary
The video games featured in this list were once groundbreaking and innovative. Originally created by game designers seeking to defy strongly entrenched conventions, these games invented new genres, made creative additions to time-tested gameplay, pushed boundaries of what can be done in video games, and gave birth to franchises in ways that defied old guard expectations. Overtime, ownership of those IPs had changed hands. These new IP owners felt that the franchises they hold should be rebooted to compete with large AAA blockbusters in order to retain success. Some attempted to have those reboots be something like Halo killers or Call of Duty slayers by almost completely replicating the formulas of those franchises. Others tried to retain fans of the original games and bring in new ones by designing the reboots in order to appease them all. Some even went so far as to remove everything that made the originals successful, including gameplay, story, art direction, etc., and replace them with those they think appeal to the lowest common denominator. A few of them even employed marketing strategies in ways that alienated fans and discouraged customers who would rather be spending their money on something else. In summary, these are just some of the ways in which a reboot of a classic video game can go wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment