Games On Net :: Editorials: The Warp Pipe

The Warp Pipe - 19/07/09

By Matt Keller - Sun Jul 19, 2009 9:01am

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been on a major retro kick. This old game bonanza recently took a sharp turn to the world of point and click adventures of the LucasArts variety – just in time for the release of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (which is quite good) earlier this week. The first three Monkey Island games – Secret, LeChuck’s Revenge and Curse, are universally loved, but the fourth game, Escape, tends to be written off as a bad egg.

This week, The Warp Pipe will look at a number of factors which can and have caused popular game series to fall out of favour with fans.

A Wrong Turn

Making a video game into a major series or franchise is the dream of the vast majority of game developers and publishers. With the establishment of the above comes fame and fortune, but these two things can disappear much more easily than they can be found. Video game fans are fickle and difficult to please; sometimes a developer or publisher will feel the need to change things in order to make a game better or please the fickle vocal minority of the audience. Sometimes that can go right, and sometimes it can go very bad. We’re going to look at the latter case. Changing the core gameplay mechanics of a series is a divisive step, more often than not. The *Star Fox* franchise has not been the same since *Star Fox Adventures, which saw Fox and friends shoehorned into an existing adventure game under development by Rare. An attempt to get the series back on track came in the form of Star Fox Assault, but new ground play elements took the centre stage, taking focus away from the space combat which is the series main draw. Star Fox Command* put the emphasis back on the Arwings, but introduced a whole strategic layer over the top which just seemed to be more irritating than useful. *Ultima* fans are generally dismissive of *Ultima VIII* due to a greater emphasis on combat, some platforming sections, poor game balance and the loss of the party system, while fans’ hatred of *Ultima IX* could probably fill an article of its own. *Silent Hill: The Room* is often disregarded by fans due to its large shift in gameplay style, perhaps owing to the fact that it was not originally conceived as part of the series. Even minor changes can get fans knickers’ in a twist – the quarterback vision cone of *Madden NFL 2005, while realistic, reduced players’ focus on all receivers on the field, making it difficult to switch receivers in a bind. Thematic changes also draw the ire of fans. The Dino Crisis* series successfully changed its focus from survival to action when the *second game* was produced, but *Dino Crisis 3* went off the rails. The game ditched its popular main character, moved forward a couple of hundred years in the future, and shifted the setting to space – totally out of step with the rest of the series. Perhaps it would have been salvageable if the gameplay wasn’t so offensively bad. The *Tony Hawk* games gradually shifted to zanier, Jackass-inspired tasks after the third game, eventually causing the series’ sales to evaporate when the more serious *skate* hit the market. Who could forget *Prince of Persia: Warrior Within’s brand of generic angst and unnecessarily dark theme? Luckily, the series ended up back on track for the final game. Developers often see streamlining as a way to make a game more accessible to a wider audience, but it generally results in fans claiming that said game suffers from a loss of depth. The best example is Deus Ex: Invisible War, which dropped a lot of the customisation and RPG elements of the original game, and featured an interface and levels designed to be friendlier with the Xbox version of the game, despite the original’s PC heritage. Some System Shock* fans would argue that *BioShock* is quite shallow when compared to its spiritual predecessors. The *Elder Scrolls* games seem to defy the trend, as the game worlds get smaller and various skills and abilities are merged or cut, but the sales seem to increase in spite of fans’ complaints. Switching formats can occasionally cause a series to fall out of favour with the public. The *Oddworld* series was widely acclaimed and a great seller on the PlayStation family of consoles, but when *Munch’s Oddysee* jumped over to the Xbox, many fans refused to follow. Even though *Stranger’s Wrath* was a fantastic game, the hit in the series’ popularity caused by its predecessor resulted in a lack of marketing on behalf of EA, and the game failed at retail despite critical acclaim. *Resident Evil’s popularity was reduced following its move to the GameCube – each game was still successful, but not to the extent of the first three games. Fortunately, moving to a multiformat structure seems to have restored interest in the series. Transitions from 2D to 3D had a tendency to result in some game series losing popularity. It’s not quite as much of a factor now, but many games which had unsuccessful 3D adaptations have tended to stay in the 2D plane. Contra* attempted to move into 3D with *Legacy of War* and *C: The Contra Adventure* which fans hated. *Castlevania’s four trips into 3D have been received with mixed success, though anyone who liked Castlevania 64* at the time will have a tendency to deny it. The *Worms* series seemed like it would work well in 3D, but *Worms 3D’s terrible interface and poor terrain deformation made it difficult to enjoy. The Sonic the Hedgehog* franchise’s move into 3D has met with an increasingly poor reception with each subsequent release. In some cases, a misstep like the above can mean the end of a franchise – as much as we’d like to see it, there’s not going to be a new *Ultima, Oddworld* or *Dino Crisis* game any time soon. It’s never too late to salvage a series though – the damage can always be undone.	A drastic departure from a series core mechanics rarely ends well
	Warrior Within’s atmosphere was painful
	Invisible War’s streamlining drew the ire of many Deus Ex fans
	Could Stranger’s Wrath have succeeded if Oddworld never left the PS2 behind?
	Sonic just doesn’t work in 3D