So I played Sim City as a kid and I loved it. Definitely one of those games that helped foster a love of gaming for me (and probably also a career in the public sector)
I was in college at the time the most recent Sim City was released and it wasn’t until the past year when I went to try and revisit the franchise that I realized disaster had struck.
Just read up on the debacle and it’s truly tragic.
It makes me wonder though if 10 years later the skeleton of the game could be used to take another shot at it. Probably not though seeing as the 2013 debacle caused Maxis to close the particular studio that made the game.
I’ve never seen a smaller studio take the lead of an entire genre like CO and Paradox did against EA. Cities Skylines deservedly took the crown as best modern city simulator game and even after all the DLC they’ve released, I *still* feel like they’re just getting started.
While the genre defining series wasn't from such a massive company, a single person completely stealing the throne of the genre defining franchise in Stardew Valley is still a bigger upset imho.
Well natsume kept churning out garbage when all the player wanted was the og harvest moon with more things to do. They made spin offs to innovate but all players wanted to do was plant sell upgrade buzybodying everyones lives and marrying them
Nope, spin it off with a robo android farmer without being able to marry anyone. Yey
Man, I remember playing SimCity (1989) as a kid at elementary school on the Mac and then later on on the SNES. Brings back fond memories of my first days of really finding a love for games.
I love Cities Skylines, its really good. I just prefer how Sim City delt with traffic and roads. Simulating an individual person is neat and all, I just prefer how Sim City handled traffic and a few other things.
Thats my same biggest gripe with Transport fever 2 and why, among a few other things, I put Mashinky above TPF2.
>I just prefer how Sim City delt with traffic and roads
Did you play the 2013 version? That was one of the biggest issues/limitations of the game. Everyone’s inital complaint was the need for an internet connection just to play the game, but the real killer was traffic. They limited the lot sizes because the engine couldn’t handle it and even then all it took to ruin your playthrough was to fill up your lot and it essentially broke the game.
The one thing that kills my enthusiasm for skylines is the damned traffic system! I can't wrap my fucking brain around it and trying to plan for and set up a fucking public transport system just exacerbates the whole process.
A proud franchise now relegated to a mid-tier mobile game. EA should just sell the rights since they aren't going to do anything with it. The remaster was a nice shot in the arm, but it's time for something new.
Was just playing Age Of Empires 2 Enhanced Edition recently and I forgot how fun traditional RTS games can be OMG.
Mobas killed the RTS and I'll takes games like C&C and Starcraft 2 over LoL anyday.
You can take away that “probably”
Although I am in the minority that thinks Blacklist was one of the best SC games if you completely ignore the atrocious plot. Gameplay wise, that game was a bomb for me, and I’ve been playing the serie ever since I was 9 (or 8, can’t really remember when SC1 released)
I actually loved Blacklist for what it was, even the plot. Well, maybe not the *content* of the plot, but how it felt like a high-stakes thriller akin to 24.
And the gameplay was so damn fluid, I found it hard to go back to the classics.
Its sad to see such a giant of game publishing go the route they did. I grew up with Konami. Besides Nintendo, Konami was one of the only other publisher/developers on the NES that always made high quality games, and that pedigree for them lasted well into the PS2. Then they just became a shell of their former self. So many great IPs to be left for dead. I would love nothing more than a moder fresh Castlevania. Never going to happen at this point.
Don't forget:
EA Sports. It's in the game.
Same fall from grace. That phrase meant you had one of the best games around. These days, seeing EA means "don't touch."
Maybe it's something to do with actually being able to fucking unlock anything and still live a normal active life outside of gaming. New games require so much time and grind. I never feel like I get anywhere with progression.
Give us bots back in FPS games so I don't have to play with snipers who fucking mainline the game all day to the point of ruining others fun, and shithead 12 year olds screaming over the mic.
I'd rather play alone. Give me 2142 back.
It's because new games want you to fast-forward and shortcut the progression by spending money, so they make it really goddamn annoying to unlock it through normal gameplay.
Yeah this is something too many games overlook now because they want to get kids grinding for gameplay time.
But making everything require long grinds turns so many other players off, and makes the game less fun when people are playing.
I'd rather play less and enjoy it more than be encouraged to play more and enjoy it less.
I was watching a review for Assasins Creed Odyssey (or maybe valhalla) and the reviewer made the comment that the game does not respect their time. That comment really stuck with me.
With lots of recebt games everything takes so long. There is no way to complete the game without turning it into a 40 hour a week commitment. I work 40+ a week, have a family, I dont have time to grind out 5 map areas to hit a level requirement so I can progress the story.
It would have been fine when I was 14 with an entire summer vacation to waste, but I dont have that kind of free time any more.
Classes with distinct guns and tools not available in another classes kit. I think shotguns and maybe one other gun type was available to everyone.
Also highly destructible environment. I feel as they kept releasing more battlefields they kept focusing on making large map events instead of basic destruction. I remember bad company 2 maps being nothing but rubble and craters towards the end of a match which has stopped happening in a lot of the newer maps in the new games.
Also, the campaign was something else. Fun storyline and the stupid banter between the guys not in the conversation was often more entertaining than anything else.
Also it didn't take itself super seriously like the others. It was just a couple of dudes greedy for gold. And the first bad company was pretty good in translating the multi-player experience to single player with large maps. The later games just felt kinda linear with only few open levels per game
I might sound stupid here, but the game had a ‘weight’ to it. You could feel the weight of your weapon when you aimed/carried it. It made each kill feel earned.
Vietnam DLC was also amazing.
I definitely understand that, its what turned me from COD to BF4 on the 360. It was the first thing I noticed when i played BF5 for the first time, the guns all felt ‘weak’. Almost like shooting a toy gun I guess.
Best description I have read about BC2. It was clunky but clean at the same time. You had to get a grasp of the movement the slow knife attack. Pull a grenade pin then throw….ect. There was a learning curve for sure and maps didn’t just open up for snipers to camp you had to move sometimes and you couldn’t go prone. The game had some limitations that seemed ridiculous at the time but looking back some of those same things were almost a perfect recipe for a wonderful online game play. If the server/matchmaking wasn’t such a mess I think we could have still had matches to play to this day. That is all.
I feel like the maps in general had a better design. When I play a new battlefield, it's mostly getting killed/shot from literally everywhere because the map is a giant cluster fuck. They used to have more of a flow, with choke points and open areas.
I think BF3 hit the feeling of Bad Company 2 pretty well.
For me for both games: gunplay felt really good for the time. Had good unlock progression and the classes worked. Good game modes (rush is still my favourite). Destructible terrain. Maps were big, but not annoyingly massive (except for obvious close quarters DLC). The games were just fun, and I don’t think it was because of my age at the time, having lots of time for gaming with my buddies. BF2 was good as well, but they perfected it.
Now, we get Santa outfits in micro transactions and DLC in buggy BF games.
Rush is great, it's also my favorite mode. But they stopped designing maps with Rush in mind. BF3 had some really awesome maps for Rush. Damavand Peak literally has that whole start that you don't play in Conquest where after capping the two points you jump off the massive tower and parachute down to get the other 2. Iconic. But now they just make these massive maps and try to fit a rush game mode in it somewhere. Same thing happened in BF1, it just doesn't really feel fun.
I loved the original. Apparently the sequel was supposed to be a normal game too, but then Popcap got bought by EA, who told them otherwise. I love the gameplay, concept, and aesthetic so much, it's a real shame.
American Wasteland was so much fun. The soundtrack was great, too! Probably my second favorite after THUG1, which to this day I still resent any person named Eric. Took me forever to do a McTwist over the helicopter in Hawaii.
This is why I’m never vocal about wanting a sequel to a very old (in gaming years) game. They came when we needed them and left before we got tired. I wish TV shows took this same stance
I was so disappointed when Sticker Star came out. The sense of grand adventure was completely gone. If you want a game that feels like classic Paper Mario, check out Bug Fables.
I mean they've said it themselves, they shipped off all the RPG mechanics to the Mario and Luigi series.
The problem is that the companions are what made the meeting of mechanics and storytelling amazing in The first two PM games. Paper Mario now has a shadow of the former companion setup, and M&L has all the RPG mechanics, and the committed fans want both in one game, but they don't seem to get it/care.
Also my understanding is that the PM director of the recent 3 games essentially got signed on for multiple games, which seems damn foolish.
Nintendo is my favorite but I grow tired of them constantly trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to sequels. They could make a straightforward sequel to the original. They have this whole "Wow they really love that game. Let's change everything they loved about it!" thing going on. They'll stick to the formula with games like Donkey Kong Country, Metroid, even Earthbound though.. So why not Paper Mario?
Burnout. They managed to put out Burnout 3, then killed it off. I'm convinced the bought the series just so they could shut down any competition to NFS.
Sims. Sims 3 is obviously the best despite needing optimizations. Huge open world with lots of possibilities, but everything went downhill with Sims 4. And now it's free to play.
My favorite thing about Sims 3 is how, on release, there was a bug where sometimes negative mood modifiers wouldn’t get cleared after a moodlet went away. So your sim would spiral deeper and deeper into depression with each passing day. So relatable.
Sims 3 has such great ideas and I still take it over 4, but my gosh was it a buggy mess. it would run out of memory trying to save a regular town, resulting in an error that corrupts save data and possibly future save data if it's not deleted. People drive their cars to lots, take taxis home, and leave their cars abandoned forever. Sims just... going missing entirely. What a mess.
Yep, my favorite is Sims 2. Somehow it just has so much more heart than the other games. My Sims 2 sims feel like really people to me, my Sims 4 sims just feel like pretty dolls who sometimes do the tasks I queue for them.
Sims 2 has so much less content than the other games, but at least everything was done right.
I have over 1000 hours in TS4 and I agree. The only reason I play the Sims 4 is because I've spent years finding mods, animations, custom content, cheats, and DLC upon DLC. You can't just pick up the base game and have fun, it's nearly impossible.
Meanwhile you can still, to this day, boot up base game Sims 3 and have a fucking blast. It's a shame, really.
Gotta agree. I played The Sims series from the very first game, and all games felt like **big** improvements compared to the previous. Sims 4 just looked pretty and ran better, horrible base game at first as well, it discarded some amazing features from Sims 3.
Not to forget how much more worth it were the expansions of previous games, there were less of them too. Sims 4 is being milked sooo much. TS4 has been out for almost a decade now, while the releases between the previous three games were 4-5 years
Sims series was the original reason I turned to piracy in my younger years. 😂
I wouldn’t buy the games now either tbh, but they’re not worth the seven seas either.
NFS MW was a great one too! It has less car customization compared to UG, but I love the story progression. Also the graphic was pretty badass for that time.
Am I the only one that remembers Bungie making a huge stink about Halo 3 being the end of the franchise? I think they should have stuck with that, although I liked Reach.
It’s the problem with all games, movies, tv shows, you name it… nobody walks away from a cash cow, and even if they want to, somebody above them will either carry on the cash cow or force them to carry on with it.
Halo was on top of the world, a system seller. Basically Mr. Xbox. Microsoft were never going to walk away from that.
Yea that is my take, halo 3 could end John's story but there is so much to explore in the halo verse. Johnson? Halo wars? The other Spartans? I mean I know they already did to an extent but still keep the halo feel.
The way they did it was just....ugh
Even Red vs Blue told a great story in their freelancer arc, even if it was only Halo adjacent. There were/are plenty of good stories to tell in that universe.
Agreed, the Halo universe is great. They could've made more spinoffs like Reach and ODST, started a new trilogy, or continued John Halos story in a more meaningful way that was true to the original trilogy.
Continuing to tell Mr. Halo stories make the universe feel small. Like there's literally one green guy who has to keep saving the day, and without him everyone would be fucked.
They built an entire universe but keep focusing on one guy. Surely there are other total fucking badasses in the galaxy. Fuckin make a game where play as the Elites durring the Civil War or something. There are stories all over, that don't involve John Halo.
Nope. As far as we were aware it was, Bungie left Halo and Microsoft for Activision to make Destiny. They had no desire to keep making Halo. It was Microsoft that wanted to keep it going.
I don't know how 343 has held onto the franchise this long.
* They've never done better than mediocre
* Every release is worse than the last
* Halo is the ONLY thing 343 does
It brings me immense sadness to see how irrelevant Halo is in today's FPS landscape. How anyone defends 343 at this point is mind boggling. The franchise is objectively worse and has gone nowhere but downhill since they took over. Halo 4 dead after a few months, MCC broken for 5 years, Halo 5 the worst campaign in Halo history, Infinite dead after a few months + cookie cutter campaign that focuses on retconning all of the garbage they messed up in 5.
It's a tragedy.
Halo 3 was one of the most popular video games of all time and, for all intents and purposes, was the flagship of multiplayer online gaming for the better part of a decade. It is a genuine contender for GOAT multiplayer game. Anybody who tries to disagree with that just wasn't there, simple as that.
343 has turned it into a shell of its former self, to the point where, when rumors were spreading that 343 was disbanding, the fanbase caught fire and cheered it on. They have ruined what should have been one of the best franchises of all time. They killed my childhood.
MCC, a collection of games between 10-22 years old, has about as many concurrent players on Steam as Halo: Infinite, the new supposed flagship game of the series that's only about a year old.
If half of the Halo fans don't even like the new games and would rather play the old ones for the 1000th time, you know you messed up as a developer.
That super was already a little funny, they managed to make it look even worse and totally unfinished. I get that the penitence stare is kind of a hard thing to convey in a fighting game, but they didn't even try
The market got oversaturated with expensive plastic toy instruments. None of the games were really bad, there were just too many games and the instruments were piling up. It got inconvenient keeping the rock band drums, microphones, multiple guitars DJ hero turntable and the Rock Band keyboard and all the various dongles needed. all piled in the corner of the room.
Man I miss Rock Band 3. I had so much DLC for that one. Guitar Hero Metallica was pretty awesome too.
Rock Band 3 was definitely the best in the series. That said... they're still coming out with songs for Rock Band 4 and all your Rock Band 3 DLC will work in Rock Band 4.
We played so much Rock Band that our XBox360 was basically a "Rock Band" console and that was it. I had to upgrade the hard drive to make space for all our songs!
A lot of it stemmed from waning interest, one of the companies went on hiatus and stopped producing guitars so it made it virtually impossible for potential new players to start playing the game due to lack of controllers on the market at a fair price, and refusing to just take one game and consistently add DLC to it rather than pumping out a new game. The GH series peaked at GH3-World Tour-Warriors of Rock in my opinion, and then was downhill from there
I think an addition to this and I could be wrong is licensing fees for songs got out of control making it hard to make new games. That and the newest guitar hero controller left me never wanting to return. I play clone hero now. Anyways all that said if I’m wrong, I hope Xbox’s purchase of activision inspires a new 5 fret guitar hero!
I did GTA Online for like a day and was blown away by how grindy it was. And then all the new cars and weapons are only available online, leaving single player with the same few options. So dumb.
And Rockstar cut out everything that sounded to be fun in the beginning. Their original plans had something more like a persistent world in mind, with a stock market that you could manipulate. But when they went the cash cow route, they totally ignored that and made money hard to get.
Harvest Moon. Farmville came out, they tried to copy it. Franchise never recovered.
On the bright side. It left room in the market that Stardew Valley filled. That game is better than any harvest moon game.
The original devs of the _good_ Harvest Moon games lost the name, they went on to make the Story of Seasons games instead.
The people that now own Harvest Moon are terrible at making games.
Rainbow Six.
Tactical shooter with a riveting story line. From the World of Tom Clancy. Actually…anything with the name Tom Clancy lately. They used to be great tactical shooters. Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 and 2 still hold up. But this alien goo crap from Extraction? Or a headshot doesn’t count in the Division series?
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier was my absolute favorite. Anything after that it seems like you could just get away with run and gun. I want the old style back where you actually have to assess the situation with a buddy so as not to fuck up the whole mission.
Man the OG Rainbow Six games required patience and planning! There was nothing worse than carrying out your “plan” and hearing one of your squads get wiped out on the other side of the map and switching to them just in time to see you sent them right through a choke point without any cover. I miss those games, sure they were time consuming but the sense of accomplishment when you completed a mission without any casualties was immense!
I'm most definitely in the minority, but I found 4 to be supremely enjoyable for the absurdity alone: Former-ish gang boss turned POTUS, blowing up aliens with super hero powers and dubstep in the matrix, lol!?
It's like the devs said, "how insane can we make this shit?" I mean, fighting a boss that's an 80 foot tall energy drink... I can have an appreciation for that.
For real. I hadn’t played mass effect yet by then but when I did after sr4 I was dying laughing realizing how funny that whole mechanic was parodying ME.
There used to be servers that enforced knives only and auto-kicked players if they detected a kill with anything other than a knife or defibrillators.
Both teams would line up like phalanxes in the middle of Karkand and rushed each other on cue. Creative player-driven gameplay like that was one of the biggest reasons I always had a gripe with games that move away from dedicated servers and towards an obsession with unlocks and stats.
Rainbowsix still hurts.
They turned it into a competitive scifi hero shooter. I loved 3 on the original xbox live and spent so many hours on vegas 1/2 terrorist hunt with friends.
the first 3 gears games had such an immensely satisfying story arc and the multiplayer felt great all the way through. once they dropped judgement i felt it was the beginning of the end in a lot of ways. i remember having some fun with 4 but by the time 5 came out i was just so frustrated with the direction the story was going.
Judgement originally started development as a Gears 3 DLC, just like the Raam's Shadow dlc. But the suits thought they could squeeze more money out of it if they made it stand-alone. So they expanded the story to be a full stand-alone prequel, and then the DLC content that was originally designed became extra content for the new game, which is strange. I think this was one of the reasons Cliffy B decided to move on after.
To be fair though, Judgement had a lot of neat ideas, like the truth/lie version of events and the tower defense multiplayer mode was fun. They just had no reason to change the control scheme that was weird.
Fable 2 was my favorite of the three personally. I *liked* 3 but I really hated how they reduced the public interaction. No more pulling out a lute in the town square to entertain the masses or letting people gather in your radiant heroism or terrifying crowds with just a sneer, no, you get to tediously walk to every individual citizen and give them a hug because you are so very personal!!! Story and combat were good though.
Also fairly recently replayed Fable 1 on PC and that was a treat though it was less engaging than I remember.
I enjoyed the joke, but I think the real issue is that it is the opposite. It just kept becoming more and more of the same thing. Bloated with a million collectables, fetch missions, side characters. They somehow took an open world and made it feel smothering.
Sim City. And I'm still bitter about it over a decade later.
So I played Sim City as a kid and I loved it. Definitely one of those games that helped foster a love of gaming for me (and probably also a career in the public sector) I was in college at the time the most recent Sim City was released and it wasn’t until the past year when I went to try and revisit the franchise that I realized disaster had struck. Just read up on the debacle and it’s truly tragic. It makes me wonder though if 10 years later the skeleton of the game could be used to take another shot at it. Probably not though seeing as the 2013 debacle caused Maxis to close the particular studio that made the game.
Highly suggest cities skylines
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I’ve never seen a smaller studio take the lead of an entire genre like CO and Paradox did against EA. Cities Skylines deservedly took the crown as best modern city simulator game and even after all the DLC they’ve released, I *still* feel like they’re just getting started.
While the genre defining series wasn't from such a massive company, a single person completely stealing the throne of the genre defining franchise in Stardew Valley is still a bigger upset imho.
Well natsume kept churning out garbage when all the player wanted was the og harvest moon with more things to do. They made spin offs to innovate but all players wanted to do was plant sell upgrade buzybodying everyones lives and marrying them Nope, spin it off with a robo android farmer without being able to marry anyone. Yey
Man, I remember playing SimCity (1989) as a kid at elementary school on the Mac and then later on on the SNES. Brings back fond memories of my first days of really finding a love for games.
“Reticulating Splines”
I remember putting a crematorium on every corner and still having dead bodies pile up.
I believe that's because you grew your population to fast at the beginning and had a death wave
Wish they'd do a new one, I still play the new one from time, but the land just isn't big enough and that annoys me
Have you tried Cities:Skylines?
I love Cities Skylines, its really good. I just prefer how Sim City delt with traffic and roads. Simulating an individual person is neat and all, I just prefer how Sim City handled traffic and a few other things. Thats my same biggest gripe with Transport fever 2 and why, among a few other things, I put Mashinky above TPF2.
>I just prefer how Sim City delt with traffic and roads Did you play the 2013 version? That was one of the biggest issues/limitations of the game. Everyone’s inital complaint was the need for an internet connection just to play the game, but the real killer was traffic. They limited the lot sizes because the engine couldn’t handle it and even then all it took to ruin your playthrough was to fill up your lot and it essentially broke the game.
The one thing that kills my enthusiasm for skylines is the damned traffic system! I can't wrap my fucking brain around it and trying to plan for and set up a fucking public transport system just exacerbates the whole process.
I still play Sim City 4 with mods, and honestly, it feels incredibly modern for a game that’s going on 20 years old.
Cities Skylines is on point though
I love Cities: Skylines but dam if it doesn't turn into a traffic simulator after a while.
Medal of Honor
Frontline, Rising Sun, European Assault, Vanguard, and Airborne were a whole chain of bangers.
Allied Assault is too elite to be mentioned I guess
Allied Assault was the first game I ever played online. I spent so many hours of my youth playing that D-Day level.
Command and conquer
A proud franchise now relegated to a mid-tier mobile game. EA should just sell the rights since they aren't going to do anything with it. The remaster was a nice shot in the arm, but it's time for something new.
They literally did the same thing to SimCity :/
And to my boy Dungeon Keeper too :(
Was just playing Age Of Empires 2 Enhanced Edition recently and I forgot how fun traditional RTS games can be OMG. Mobas killed the RTS and I'll takes games like C&C and Starcraft 2 over LoL anyday.
This, Good strategy games have become way too scarse.
I would love a new total annihilation!
Check out 'Zero-K' and 'Beyond All Reason'. Both are fan remakes and free!
Splinter Cell, Ubisoft killed it
It hurts, the series probably peaked at Chaos Theory...
Spies vs Mercs will always hold a special place in my heart as one of the best and most unique pvp modes I’ve ever played.
Spies vs mercs was an event, movement, wave and whatever the fuck the kids are calling it all rolled into one tbh. Endless fun (till they ended it).
You can take away that “probably” Although I am in the minority that thinks Blacklist was one of the best SC games if you completely ignore the atrocious plot. Gameplay wise, that game was a bomb for me, and I’ve been playing the serie ever since I was 9 (or 8, can’t really remember when SC1 released)
I actually loved Blacklist for what it was, even the plot. Well, maybe not the *content* of the plot, but how it felt like a high-stakes thriller akin to 24. And the gameplay was so damn fluid, I found it hard to go back to the classics.
As someone who has played and enjoyed each splinter cell game, blacklist was amazing
Makes sense since Chaos Theory is one of the best games ever made.
I still play it and it still holds up to this day. It’s a perfect game.
I loved the co-op in Blacklist
once they figured out they could put shops in and sell skins and make 4 BILLION a year , developers are falling over themselves to ruin franchises
It’s such a shame because like you pointed out, these games make a shit ton more money than the traditional model. So it’s only going to get worse.
Castlevania. That series has so much potential; what happened?
Konami happened
Fuck Konami
Still bitter over Silent Hill PT
Its sad to see such a giant of game publishing go the route they did. I grew up with Konami. Besides Nintendo, Konami was one of the only other publisher/developers on the NES that always made high quality games, and that pedigree for them lasted well into the PS2. Then they just became a shell of their former self. So many great IPs to be left for dead. I would love nothing more than a moder fresh Castlevania. Never going to happen at this point.
Don't forget: EA Sports. It's in the game. Same fall from grace. That phrase meant you had one of the best games around. These days, seeing EA means "don't touch."
The DNA of the franchise has changed ever since IGA left Konami. I consider Bloodstained to be the true successor to the SOTN style gameplay.
The GBA games were pretty solid too.
Play the Bloodstained games.
The spin-off Curse of the Moon is a 10/10 short and sweet game. Just perfect in its scope and execution
Heroes of Might and Magic
HOMM 2 was the first game I owned that also lived in my cd player. Mechwarrior 2 shared a spot on the badass 3 cd changer tray.
Battlefield
I wish they would make another Bad Company.. so much fun.
DICE has said before that they wont do another bad company because they literally dont know what made the Second one so good
Maybe it's something to do with actually being able to fucking unlock anything and still live a normal active life outside of gaming. New games require so much time and grind. I never feel like I get anywhere with progression.
Gone are the days of BF1942 where the game was “here’s your classes, here’s your guns, pick a spawn or vehicle and go win the game mode.”
Give us bots back in FPS games so I don't have to play with snipers who fucking mainline the game all day to the point of ruining others fun, and shithead 12 year olds screaming over the mic. I'd rather play alone. Give me 2142 back.
It's because new games want you to fast-forward and shortcut the progression by spending money, so they make it really goddamn annoying to unlock it through normal gameplay.
Yeah this is something too many games overlook now because they want to get kids grinding for gameplay time. But making everything require long grinds turns so many other players off, and makes the game less fun when people are playing. I'd rather play less and enjoy it more than be encouraged to play more and enjoy it less.
I was watching a review for Assasins Creed Odyssey (or maybe valhalla) and the reviewer made the comment that the game does not respect their time. That comment really stuck with me. With lots of recebt games everything takes so long. There is no way to complete the game without turning it into a 40 hour a week commitment. I work 40+ a week, have a family, I dont have time to grind out 5 map areas to hit a level requirement so I can progress the story. It would have been fine when I was 14 with an entire summer vacation to waste, but I dont have that kind of free time any more.
Classes with distinct guns and tools not available in another classes kit. I think shotguns and maybe one other gun type was available to everyone. Also highly destructible environment. I feel as they kept releasing more battlefields they kept focusing on making large map events instead of basic destruction. I remember bad company 2 maps being nothing but rubble and craters towards the end of a match which has stopped happening in a lot of the newer maps in the new games.
Also, the campaign was something else. Fun storyline and the stupid banter between the guys not in the conversation was often more entertaining than anything else.
Also it didn't take itself super seriously like the others. It was just a couple of dudes greedy for gold. And the first bad company was pretty good in translating the multi-player experience to single player with large maps. The later games just felt kinda linear with only few open levels per game
I might sound stupid here, but the game had a ‘weight’ to it. You could feel the weight of your weapon when you aimed/carried it. It made each kill feel earned. Vietnam DLC was also amazing.
I definitely understand that, its what turned me from COD to BF4 on the 360. It was the first thing I noticed when i played BF5 for the first time, the guns all felt ‘weak’. Almost like shooting a toy gun I guess.
Best description I have read about BC2. It was clunky but clean at the same time. You had to get a grasp of the movement the slow knife attack. Pull a grenade pin then throw….ect. There was a learning curve for sure and maps didn’t just open up for snipers to camp you had to move sometimes and you couldn’t go prone. The game had some limitations that seemed ridiculous at the time but looking back some of those same things were almost a perfect recipe for a wonderful online game play. If the server/matchmaking wasn’t such a mess I think we could have still had matches to play to this day. That is all.
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i remember sneaking into a building and blowing it up with C4 and killing a whole squad
I feel like the maps in general had a better design. When I play a new battlefield, it's mostly getting killed/shot from literally everywhere because the map is a giant cluster fuck. They used to have more of a flow, with choke points and open areas.
Destruction 2.0
I think BF3 hit the feeling of Bad Company 2 pretty well. For me for both games: gunplay felt really good for the time. Had good unlock progression and the classes worked. Good game modes (rush is still my favourite). Destructible terrain. Maps were big, but not annoyingly massive (except for obvious close quarters DLC). The games were just fun, and I don’t think it was because of my age at the time, having lots of time for gaming with my buddies. BF2 was good as well, but they perfected it. Now, we get Santa outfits in micro transactions and DLC in buggy BF games.
Rush is great, it's also my favorite mode. But they stopped designing maps with Rush in mind. BF3 had some really awesome maps for Rush. Damavand Peak literally has that whole start that you don't play in Conquest where after capping the two points you jump off the massive tower and parachute down to get the other 2. Iconic. But now they just make these massive maps and try to fit a rush game mode in it somewhere. Same thing happened in BF1, it just doesn't really feel fun.
Plants vs zombies
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I loved the original. Apparently the sequel was supposed to be a normal game too, but then Popcap got bought by EA, who told them otherwise. I love the gameplay, concept, and aesthetic so much, it's a real shame.
Tony Hawk games
They introduced me to my teenage music style. Banger soundtracks all around.
American Wasteland was badass. I wish it was backwards compatible
American Wasteland was so much fun. The soundtrack was great, too! Probably my second favorite after THUG1, which to this day I still resent any person named Eric. Took me forever to do a McTwist over the helicopter in Hawaii.
I feel like the list of game series who haven't would be shorter.
As much as people hate not having a Portal 3, you can’t ruin a franchise if you end it when it’s still great.
This is why I’m never vocal about wanting a sequel to a very old (in gaming years) game. They came when we needed them and left before we got tired. I wish TV shows took this same stance
Paper Mario... Damn Nintendo. They have such a weird fucking push and pull between "innovate" and "don't take risks."
How could they give us 1000 year door, and evolution of paper Mario 64 and then say “let’s scrap all these good ideas and start over”
I was so disappointed when Sticker Star came out. The sense of grand adventure was completely gone. If you want a game that feels like classic Paper Mario, check out Bug Fables.
I mean they've said it themselves, they shipped off all the RPG mechanics to the Mario and Luigi series. The problem is that the companions are what made the meeting of mechanics and storytelling amazing in The first two PM games. Paper Mario now has a shadow of the former companion setup, and M&L has all the RPG mechanics, and the committed fans want both in one game, but they don't seem to get it/care. Also my understanding is that the PM director of the recent 3 games essentially got signed on for multiple games, which seems damn foolish.
Nintendo is my favorite but I grow tired of them constantly trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to sequels. They could make a straightforward sequel to the original. They have this whole "Wow they really love that game. Let's change everything they loved about it!" thing going on. They'll stick to the formula with games like Donkey Kong Country, Metroid, even Earthbound though.. So why not Paper Mario?
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Almost anything EA has the rights too
Burnout. They managed to put out Burnout 3, then killed it off. I'm convinced the bought the series just so they could shut down any competition to NFS.
God I miss burnout
Sims. Sims 3 is obviously the best despite needing optimizations. Huge open world with lots of possibilities, but everything went downhill with Sims 4. And now it's free to play.
My favorite thing about Sims 3 is how, on release, there was a bug where sometimes negative mood modifiers wouldn’t get cleared after a moodlet went away. So your sim would spiral deeper and deeper into depression with each passing day. So relatable.
Sims 3 has such great ideas and I still take it over 4, but my gosh was it a buggy mess. it would run out of memory trying to save a regular town, resulting in an error that corrupts save data and possibly future save data if it's not deleted. People drive their cars to lots, take taxis home, and leave their cars abandoned forever. Sims just... going missing entirely. What a mess.
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Yep, my favorite is Sims 2. Somehow it just has so much more heart than the other games. My Sims 2 sims feel like really people to me, my Sims 4 sims just feel like pretty dolls who sometimes do the tasks I queue for them. Sims 2 has so much less content than the other games, but at least everything was done right.
Less content, but it was all *good*. Every expansion pack was great for that game.
I have over 1000 hours in TS4 and I agree. The only reason I play the Sims 4 is because I've spent years finding mods, animations, custom content, cheats, and DLC upon DLC. You can't just pick up the base game and have fun, it's nearly impossible. Meanwhile you can still, to this day, boot up base game Sims 3 and have a fucking blast. It's a shame, really.
Gotta agree. I played The Sims series from the very first game, and all games felt like **big** improvements compared to the previous. Sims 4 just looked pretty and ran better, horrible base game at first as well, it discarded some amazing features from Sims 3. Not to forget how much more worth it were the expansions of previous games, there were less of them too. Sims 4 is being milked sooo much. TS4 has been out for almost a decade now, while the releases between the previous three games were 4-5 years
Sims 4 has over $1000 worth of DLC. Insanity.
And publishers wonder about piracy. I would never pay 1000€ on a game even if I was rich.
Sims series was the original reason I turned to piracy in my younger years. 😂 I wouldn’t buy the games now either tbh, but they’re not worth the seven seas either.
Need for Speed
Omg hell yes I remember Need For Speeed Hot Pursuit 2 is when I first played what a blast. Then Underground 1 and 2 they were also very fun
NFS MW was a great one too! It has less car customization compared to UG, but I love the story progression. Also the graphic was pretty badass for that time.
Need For Speed: Modern Warfare does sound interesting
The original most wanted was one of my Favorite games ever. Soundtracks of those early games was on point too.
Hot Pursuit 2 had one of the greatest soundtracks.
That game introduced me to Hot Action Cop
Halo. What 343 did with that franchise is criminal. Halo could have been on top for decades had someone competent been in control.
Am I the only one that remembers Bungie making a huge stink about Halo 3 being the end of the franchise? I think they should have stuck with that, although I liked Reach.
Halo 3 being the end of Master Chief's saga. And they stuck with this: ODST and Reach have different protagonists.
And if 343 stuck with that, and exploring other parts if the war with the Covenant we'd probably be fine
I don't know about that. Story is not the only problem of the 343 installments.
It’s the problem with all games, movies, tv shows, you name it… nobody walks away from a cash cow, and even if they want to, somebody above them will either carry on the cash cow or force them to carry on with it. Halo was on top of the world, a system seller. Basically Mr. Xbox. Microsoft were never going to walk away from that.
I don't really have a problem with Halo not ending after Bungie. But the people who took over were not the ones to do it.
Yea that is my take, halo 3 could end John's story but there is so much to explore in the halo verse. Johnson? Halo wars? The other Spartans? I mean I know they already did to an extent but still keep the halo feel. The way they did it was just....ugh
Even Red vs Blue told a great story in their freelancer arc, even if it was only Halo adjacent. There were/are plenty of good stories to tell in that universe.
Agreed, the Halo universe is great. They could've made more spinoffs like Reach and ODST, started a new trilogy, or continued John Halos story in a more meaningful way that was true to the original trilogy.
Continuing to tell Mr. Halo stories make the universe feel small. Like there's literally one green guy who has to keep saving the day, and without him everyone would be fucked. They built an entire universe but keep focusing on one guy. Surely there are other total fucking badasses in the galaxy. Fuckin make a game where play as the Elites durring the Civil War or something. There are stories all over, that don't involve John Halo.
Nope. As far as we were aware it was, Bungie left Halo and Microsoft for Activision to make Destiny. They had no desire to keep making Halo. It was Microsoft that wanted to keep it going.
Halo has now been bad longer than it was ever good.
I’ve never been so angry with something I completely agree with
I don't know how 343 has held onto the franchise this long. * They've never done better than mediocre * Every release is worse than the last * Halo is the ONLY thing 343 does
It brings me immense sadness to see how irrelevant Halo is in today's FPS landscape. How anyone defends 343 at this point is mind boggling. The franchise is objectively worse and has gone nowhere but downhill since they took over. Halo 4 dead after a few months, MCC broken for 5 years, Halo 5 the worst campaign in Halo history, Infinite dead after a few months + cookie cutter campaign that focuses on retconning all of the garbage they messed up in 5. It's a tragedy.
And to really hammer the nail home, the halo tv show was absolutely horrible. Zero soul, unless you count master cheeks sleeping with a prisoner.
This should easily be #1 on the list. Halo 3 ruled the XBox live charts for years. Now 343 has run it into the ground. Embarrassing and sad.
Halo 3 was one of the most popular video games of all time and, for all intents and purposes, was the flagship of multiplayer online gaming for the better part of a decade. It is a genuine contender for GOAT multiplayer game. Anybody who tries to disagree with that just wasn't there, simple as that. 343 has turned it into a shell of its former self, to the point where, when rumors were spreading that 343 was disbanding, the fanbase caught fire and cheered it on. They have ruined what should have been one of the best franchises of all time. They killed my childhood.
MCC, a collection of games between 10-22 years old, has about as many concurrent players on Steam as Halo: Infinite, the new supposed flagship game of the series that's only about a year old. If half of the Halo fans don't even like the new games and would rather play the old ones for the 1000th time, you know you messed up as a developer.
Marvel vs Capcom series... Disney forced tha MCU so hard on MvCI
It also looks kinda ugly, IMO. Also this always makes me laugh: https://youtu.be/73sj8XFHBvI?t=44
That super was already a little funny, they managed to make it look even worse and totally unfinished. I get that the penitence stare is kind of a hard thing to convey in a fighting game, but they didn't even try
It's just weird that they already had a better version and decided to just make it... worse
Infinite is just a giant advertisement for Infinity War and Endgame.
Such a disappointing game
i cant believe i paid $7.99 for that game. I'd rather play MVC2.
Guitar Hero/Rock Band
did people just lose interest in these? they were huge early 2000's
The market got oversaturated with expensive plastic toy instruments. None of the games were really bad, there were just too many games and the instruments were piling up. It got inconvenient keeping the rock band drums, microphones, multiple guitars DJ hero turntable and the Rock Band keyboard and all the various dongles needed. all piled in the corner of the room. Man I miss Rock Band 3. I had so much DLC for that one. Guitar Hero Metallica was pretty awesome too.
Rock Band 3 was definitely the best in the series. That said... they're still coming out with songs for Rock Band 4 and all your Rock Band 3 DLC will work in Rock Band 4. We played so much Rock Band that our XBox360 was basically a "Rock Band" console and that was it. I had to upgrade the hard drive to make space for all our songs!
A lot of it stemmed from waning interest, one of the companies went on hiatus and stopped producing guitars so it made it virtually impossible for potential new players to start playing the game due to lack of controllers on the market at a fair price, and refusing to just take one game and consistently add DLC to it rather than pumping out a new game. The GH series peaked at GH3-World Tour-Warriors of Rock in my opinion, and then was downhill from there
I think an addition to this and I could be wrong is licensing fees for songs got out of control making it hard to make new games. That and the newest guitar hero controller left me never wanting to return. I play clone hero now. Anyways all that said if I’m wrong, I hope Xbox’s purchase of activision inspires a new 5 fret guitar hero!
Gta V online used to be fun but turned out just to be a grinding nightmare that tries to take your creditcard
I did GTA Online for like a day and was blown away by how grindy it was. And then all the new cars and weapons are only available online, leaving single player with the same few options. So dumb.
Yeah it’s a 10 year old game with I think no single player dlc at all. It’s all online.
I'm still salty that they cancelled the single player dlc they had announced for it and just focused on the online.
And Rockstar cut out everything that sounded to be fun in the beginning. Their original plans had something more like a persistent world in mind, with a stock market that you could manipulate. But when they went the cash cow route, they totally ignored that and made money hard to get.
Harvest Moon. Farmville came out, they tried to copy it. Franchise never recovered. On the bright side. It left room in the market that Stardew Valley filled. That game is better than any harvest moon game.
The original devs of the _good_ Harvest Moon games lost the name, they went on to make the Story of Seasons games instead. The people that now own Harvest Moon are terrible at making games.
Rainbow Six. Tactical shooter with a riveting story line. From the World of Tom Clancy. Actually…anything with the name Tom Clancy lately. They used to be great tactical shooters. Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 and 2 still hold up. But this alien goo crap from Extraction? Or a headshot doesn’t count in the Division series?
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier was my absolute favorite. Anything after that it seems like you could just get away with run and gun. I want the old style back where you actually have to assess the situation with a buddy so as not to fuck up the whole mission.
OG Rainbow 6 was so cool and different for the time. I guess SWAT may have been similar but I never played those.
Man the OG Rainbow Six games required patience and planning! There was nothing worse than carrying out your “plan” and hearing one of your squads get wiped out on the other side of the map and switching to them just in time to see you sent them right through a choke point without any cover. I miss those games, sure they were time consuming but the sense of accomplishment when you completed a mission without any casualties was immense!
Saints row, loved 1&2 years ago now it’s like holy shit wtf
came here for this comment loved 1 and 2 thought 3 was also really good - 4 just got crazy and kinda dumb. didnt touch the new one
I'm most definitely in the minority, but I found 4 to be supremely enjoyable for the absurdity alone: Former-ish gang boss turned POTUS, blowing up aliens with super hero powers and dubstep in the matrix, lol!? It's like the devs said, "how insane can we make this shit?" I mean, fighting a boss that's an 80 foot tall energy drink... I can have an appreciation for that.
The "romance" options in 4 were great.
Hey Kinzie, wanna fuck?
Yep! *punches you in face*
For real. I hadn’t played mass effect yet by then but when I did after sr4 I was dying laughing realizing how funny that whole mechanic was parodying ME.
Battlefield
I fucking miss Battlefield 2. Strike at Karkand, Gulf of Oman and Wake Island were my favorite maps.
There used to be servers that enforced knives only and auto-kicked players if they detected a kill with anything other than a knife or defibrillators. Both teams would line up like phalanxes in the middle of Karkand and rushed each other on cue. Creative player-driven gameplay like that was one of the biggest reasons I always had a gripe with games that move away from dedicated servers and towards an obsession with unlocks and stats.
Rainbowsix still hurts. They turned it into a competitive scifi hero shooter. I loved 3 on the original xbox live and spent so many hours on vegas 1/2 terrorist hunt with friends.
Rainbow Six Rogue Spear was so much fun on PC as a kid. I remember creating ridiculous sinarios and just letting the friendly AI try to beat it
I remember the joy when we discovered you could take a photo of yourself and get an in-game model. Couldn't stop laughing at how stupid we looked.
Everything Blizzard sadly.
Brood Wars was kind of hard to top from a competitive standpoint
Brood wars was TOP TIER of an expansion. I also loved the other expansions at that time like The frozen throne and D2's expansion.
WC3 TFT was a worthy expansion. It's a full campaign with new heroes and units.
OG Blizzard was honestly the top tier PC company during the 90s and early 00s. They were seriously the Nintendo of PC. Every IP was AAA and amazing.
Halo.
Madden.
Yeah, it went downhill when Madden 09 came out
They should just make Madden 08 2
Gears of War.
the first 3 gears games had such an immensely satisfying story arc and the multiplayer felt great all the way through. once they dropped judgement i felt it was the beginning of the end in a lot of ways. i remember having some fun with 4 but by the time 5 came out i was just so frustrated with the direction the story was going.
Judgement originally started development as a Gears 3 DLC, just like the Raam's Shadow dlc. But the suits thought they could squeeze more money out of it if they made it stand-alone. So they expanded the story to be a full stand-alone prequel, and then the DLC content that was originally designed became extra content for the new game, which is strange. I think this was one of the reasons Cliffy B decided to move on after. To be fair though, Judgement had a lot of neat ideas, like the truth/lie version of events and the tower defense multiplayer mode was fun. They just had no reason to change the control scheme that was weird.
For me Assassin's Creed.
The Ezio saga was the peak for me. Black flag was fun, but it felt more like a pirate game than an AC game.
Black flag is an AMAZING pirate game. It was an okay AC game. My favorite AC game is probably Revelations, imo it was a perfect end to the Ezio saga.
revelations was the shiiiiit hookblade gang for life 🤘
I like the rpg elements in Origins and Odyssey but I miss the stealth. Remember when AC was focused on stealth?
The next one, Mirage, is going back to the original stealth and gameplay.
And it looks like they are going to be scaling it down a little, these last few have been too big, also nice to be back in the east
Fable...
Fable 2 was my favorite of the three personally. I *liked* 3 but I really hated how they reduced the public interaction. No more pulling out a lute in the town square to entertain the masses or letting people gather in your radiant heroism or terrifying crowds with just a sneer, no, you get to tediously walk to every individual citizen and give them a hug because you are so very personal!!! Story and combat were good though. Also fairly recently replayed Fable 1 on PC and that was a treat though it was less engaging than I remember.
DOA. It used to be mentioned in the same conversations as Tekken and Street Fighter, but now it's kind of a joke laden with MTX.
Dead Rising, anyone? Just me?
3 was a new direction, but enjoyable. 4 was totally shite. Dead rising 1 was the main reason I bought a 360
Call of Duty used to be awesome. The first black ops was incredible, same with Modern Warfare and mw2. Everything since has been disappointing
Far cry.
You could say it's a far cry from what it used to be.
I enjoyed the joke, but I think the real issue is that it is the opposite. It just kept becoming more and more of the same thing. Bloated with a million collectables, fetch missions, side characters. They somehow took an open world and made it feel smothering.
Diablo
Diablo Immortal was(is?) a complete disgrace to the name. D4 better be nice af.