[renzuko]

http://kotaku.com/#!...-and-true-crime

so yeah, activision getting rid of more franchises cuz they arent makin much money...wonder if they'll sue the studios if they keep making the games with another company like brutal legend?

[Keylime]

renzuko, on 09 February 2011 - 07:46 PM, said:

http://kotaku.com/#!...-and-true-crime

so yeah, activision getting rid of more franchises cuz they arent makin much money...wonder if they'll sue the studios if they keep making the games with another company like brutal legend?

It's activision, do you even have to ask?

[cidbahamut]

Was there really room on the market for two guitar simulation franchises to begin with?

[Zombuh]

Banking everything on CoD and WoW it seems.

[Velhart]

Where is a remake of this corny ass game?

[phunk]

I miss the game industry that use to take risks with their IPs...

Now the only "risk" they take is whether or not the game will come out for PC.

[Keylime]

phunk, on 10 February 2011 - 08:24 PM, said:

I miss the game industry that use to take risks with their IPs...

Now the only "risk" they take is whether or not the game will come out for PC.

Which is why I'm a sad PC gamer.

[renzuko]

so by axing the guitar hero people, they are also axing he dj hero people, kinda sucks for people who liked dj hero, cuz there isnt another company making that kinda game...until another company picks them up and activision sues that company

[fillerbunny9]

It certainly cannot have anything to do with flooding the market with the games, not to mention instrument bundles. There are at least a dozen iterations of Guitar Hero, most of which were released in the last four years. Six main entries plus Metallica, Aerosmith, and Van Halen versions roll off the top of my head, I wager there are a few I missed for the major consoles. Activision opted to just shovel these out the door, and wonders why sales have stagnated. And really, while we are at it, this is mother fucking "damn-I-wish-we'd-thought-to-charge-a-monthly-fee-for Call of Duty's-online-play" Activision! Who is really surprised?!

[Varizen]

phunk, on 10 February 2011 - 08:24 PM, said:

I miss the game industry that use to take risks with their IPs...

Now the only "risk" they take is whether or not the game will come out for PC.

Well. Sega keep trying, and they've only really delivered with Vanquish so far. And SE keeps releasing a bunch of mediocre IPs like Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery. The American devs aren't willing to risk millions, so it's sequel city here.

You guys watch Pach-Attack? If not, I'll post you some links, cause that man has the answers.

[What?]

Vanquish was made by Platinum, who made Bayonetta and Madworld previously. SEGA simply have a deal in place to publish their games, none of SEGA's staff actually make those games. SEGA itself is useless. SEGA is the reason the PS3 version of Bayonetta is the shit pile that it is and all they had to do was take Platinum's code and port it.

Platinum is mainly made up of ex-Capcom people (Clover studios, they made Okami and Viewtiful Joe) who were booted out by Inafune, but I can't remember why, either way it was a massive mistake. Platinum now has Shinji Mikami who made Resident Evil 4 so Capcom lost a lot of really good people. Then again if it wasn't for SEGA Capcom probably never would have let these people have the freedom they do, so it might have been for the best.

Sadly their games haven't sold too well despite being amazing, it's really shitty when the only studio with balls and talent isn't being recognised by modern gamers that only want dull, brown realism. Anarchy Reigns might do better due to it being more online focused and I'm hoping it does.

Oh right, Activision is cancer etc. etc. Thankfully I don't care about any games they put out so I'm doing my part by not giving them money~

[Banter]

What?, on 11 February 2011 - 07:03 PM, said:

Sadly their games haven't sold too well despite being amazing, it's really shitty when the only studio with balls and talent isn't being recognised by modern gamers that only want dull, brown realism.

Congratulations, Video games are now in the same league as Music, theatre and movies.

[treelo]

Quote

only really delivered with Vanquish

You mean that nasty Gears of War/Lost Planet 2 rip-off that was also incredibly reminiscent of Silent Bomber on the PS1? Besides, as mentioned above SEGA is a publisher these days, they haven't made a game in years.

Last year was pretty dire across the board, but it happens. There are a number of significant titles being released this year, mostly sequels (which I've never had a problem with to begin with, what exactly is the issue here?) that have been long overdue. I'm reserving judgement until they're out before I give up all hope on the gaming industry.

[Keylime]

Banter, on 11 February 2011 - 10:16 PM, said:

Congratulations, Video games are now in the same league as Music, theatre and movies.

I'd make a snarky comment about how you forgot literature, but I realized no one reads anymore. ):

[pathwriter]

treelo, on 12 February 2011 - 01:06 AM, said:

sequels (which I've never had a problem with to begin with, what exactly is the issue here?)

Sequels have a bad habit of stagnating both the industry and the franchise. In spite of some complaints regarding Nintendo relying heavily on Mario and Link to sell their platforms, one thing that can be said in their favor is that they generally try to do new things with their "sequels" to these franchises. On the other hand, when looking at Halo or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, we see that the equation remains very similar. Granted, lots of players enjoy having more of the same, but the problem comes with market saturation as has happened with the Guitar Hero franchise and its cloned competitors. Too much of the same thing all at once ultimately results in interest burnout and it gets really bad in a genre that has limited room for innovation. Halo may not have changed radically from game to game, but it does have tweaks and refinements (and a sufficiently drawn-out release schedule to both pique interest but not over-satiate).

And then there's the problem of story-heavy games. If you take a game that is heavily driven by or sold by its plot, the writer of that game often tries to find a satisfying resolution within one to three games, depending on the publisher's plans and whatnot. Bioshock is a rather good example here (especially because it doesn't even have multiplayer or alternate characters). Its story and atmosphere drove the action and was developed very carefully to be quite self-contained. But since it was such a huge success, a sequel was made that... just wasn't as good. The plot got convoluted and MacGuffin heavy and ultimately just couldn't integrate with the original story, in spite of trying desperately. The refinements on the gameplay were not bad, but Bioshock doesn't sell based on its hacking minigame.

Generally, I'm one of those people who, if I liked a game, I say, "I want more of this." I certainly said it after Bioshock. I have learned my lesson, though, in that more is not always better. When it comes to something like Guitar Hero, unless you absolutely must play Aerosmith tonight, having a choice of ~5 different discs (disregarding the task of getting it unlocked and whatnot -- it's a party game, for heaven's sake) becomes a burden rather than a pleasure.

An interesting and forum-relevant side topic would be to wonder how the franchise of Final Fantasy has fared. Almost none of the titles are sequels (there's X-2 and IV: The After Years and maybe one could count the expanded VII universe stuff), but a lot of the gameplay remains very static. In terms of how you really control them, there isn't a huge difference from FFVII through FFX, the only real differences are in the meta-gaming of how to develop (or don't) the characters. Actually, FFX isn't hugely different from the original Final Fantasy, as it is still turn-based combat. FFXII and FFXIII at least moved into something closer to real-time, marking the first legitimately major change in the primary mode of the franchise in about 20 years -- and both have been lambasted furiously by fanboys because of it. I haven't touched XIII, but I did actually enjoy the pseudo-programming Gambit system of FXII, so take from that what you will.

[What?]

Banter, on 11 February 2011 - 10:16 PM, said:

Congratulations, Video games are now in the same league as Music, theatre and movies.

I know they're in the same boat, that's not news to me. I still think it's a shame those guys haven't made a profit on any of their games though. I think games are lacking in diversity (Just my opinion, especially when I think about where games can possibly go yet still haven't, I don't feel the same way about the other mediums listed) so it's cringe worthy to see a game like Vanquish bomb as badly as it did. No one's going to attempt a first person shooter like that again unless it's ten times slower, uglier and grittier and has people cutting each other apart with chainsaws. Them going DD only I don't see happening until next gen when game development costs get truly disgusting but I hope they stick around long enough so they can actually make some money at that point. My concern is are these talented people getting paid and I'm concerned if diversity for high budget games will be lessed with such massive risks and failures, not about whether x type of game is more popular than y. Vanquish 2 might have happened if they made money, now it's off the table for good.

Final Fantasy and Metroid have been drawing some parallels for me lately. Other: M has been lambasted as the worst Metroid ever, which I'd agree with, along with XIII being often described as the worst in the series too (only because XIV doesn't exist). I managed to enjoy a number of things from Other: M and XIII and put them squarely in "good" territory as far as I'm concerned, but I'm in the minority. The majority of both fan bases want to be given something they know they'll at least partially enjoy, even if it's a retread. For a lot of people it seems Other: M and XIII were not enjoyable for them in the slightest, despite being long time fans.

It seems like both fans can identify when the series was commonly accepted as being good (Super Metroid : SNES/PS1 Final Fantasies) yet the developers have been toying around with the games since trying to make them different. Sometimes it works and lately it doesn't seem like it has been working, so generally I feel they should just give people what they think they want.
For Final Fantasy: an open world that can be explored, airships, towns and cities, mini games, turn based battles blah blah blah, we've heard it all before.
Metroid needs to avoid being linear like Fusion and Other: M and needs to be more like Super and Prime, open ended and non-linear. No in your face, offensively bad storylines (Fusion and Other: M again) and focus on isolation (ties into the gameplay design) with Samus having no personality or many/any spoken lines (I don't think she needs to be Link or Mario, but again, probably the minority). Super and Prime have managed to sell the most out of the series, who knows why they thought they needed to mess with the formula like they did.

I think Versus is looking pretty good but they need to find something that works and stick with it because like you said, up until X it was all pretty much the same thing with a different coat of paint. If Versus XIII is a success commercially and critically that's great, they can work on another game like Versus. But at the same time I don't see any reason why they shouldn't try and attempt to "go back to their roots" and make something distinctly old school in design and scope, if nothing else to see how it fairs. That's more or less what's been happening with XII and XIII anyway, those were risky games, except the old school game design with a modern twist will actually address what people have been asking for instead of giving them stuff they never wanted. Less risk, higher chance of satisfying fans. When you keep trying to innovate in order to not be viewed as a stale franchise, yet your brand quality is diminishing rapidly in the eyes of fans and gamers, you need to go back to what works.

This post has been edited by What?: 12 February 2011 - 06:36 PM

[Velhart]

The only real bad thing about Other M was it's first person mode feature. Really inconvenient to switch around. Besides that the game was fine, I wasn't expecting a class A story, Team Ninja isn't known for that. I don't like looking at Samus from that perspective, the only dramatic experience Samus should ever have is none. She is depicted as a badass bounty hunter who listens to no one and kicks alien ass, then we get this... The gameplay was solid though and was a great way of getting Super Metroid into 3D form. I didn't enjoy the story, but I did enjoy what is most important about Metroid, it's gameplay. I don't need to talk about FFXIII, you can find a hundred other threads in here that have me talking about it, but Path pretty much summed it up for me.

Guitar Hero going away doesn't surprise me. It is basically like MySpace was to Facebook.

[renzuko]

they did kinda lay the groundwork for the adam samus thing in fusion, every new elevator ride you take, samus reminises about adam, cuz the computer reminds her of him

[fillerbunny9]

they laid some groundwork that wasn't essentially "I need your approval, daddy!" if the story of Other M hadn't been so batshit retarded I might have finished playing it. the basis of "I need Adam's approval to use the various functions of my suit" was stupid, particularly when you're taking heat damage because daddy didn't say you had permission to use your Varia suit. I'd rather have some random de-powering that barely suits the game than voluntarily slamming my dick in a door because the narrative demands that the strong willed solo bounty hunter is now a wet paper bag with father issues. in Fusion, Samus chafed at the authority, and respected Adam. in Other M she pretty much begged to suck the semen from the font of his almighty awesomeness. it's all the more insulting considering that as far as the series timeline is concerned, Other M precedes Fusion, the "latest" in the timeline.

[What?]

Just mentioning Other: M and XIII gets people talking, it's amazing how polarising those two games are. That further enforces my opinion that they should have just made a rehash/reboot/throwback style game and deal with a few people complaining about them being too similar to past games instead (like how Twilight Princess is OoT2 don'tchaknow). Most gamers apparently like to place more emphasis on changes to the setting, story and graphics instead of gameplay and level design. Galaxy 2 gets ridiculed as being a "cash in" or "expansion pack" despite changing and adding many things with it's gameplay, level design and setting (but because there's still a tiny bit of space it's a cash in) yet Call of Duty is fine when it comes out every single year and just changes the setting with some minor gameplay tweaks and fixes. (Treyarch games not InfinityWard). Expansion pack? Goodness no.

Guitar Hero tried to change superfluous things about it in terms of looks with its various tie-ins but that came off as gouging its consumers and more oversaturation. They couldn't change the gameplay or it'd become something entirely different. Its death is unique compared to regular games but the exact same thing would happen if WiiFit was crapped out multiple times a year.
Would CoD die the same way if it was put out multiple times a year? Sad to say but I don't think so and soon enough we'll find out, there's 5 whole development teams on CoD as of right now. It's not like FPS players only play one FPS a year, whereas Guitar Hero would have been a once a year thing at best.

When it comes to games like Final Fantasy they could easily get away without trying to reinvent the wheel every time and just change up the settings and stories while keeping the gameplay familiar, like they did before and what people enjoyed. I don't know why they don't do that and make small changes instead of massive sweeping ones that aren't needed and annoy long time fans.
Then again I've never complained about sequels before so I obviously don't get it. From the developers standpoint I can't see how some people complaing about stagnation yet still buy the game (e.g. Pokemon) is not infinitely better than people who complain the game changed too much, is in their opinion completely awful and as a result don't buy the game at all (e.g. Other: M, XIII)