General Discussion Forum

I'll get around to writing silly review number 3: Game Manuals sometime soon, promise. I tend to write spur of the moment, so planned things usually get held off until i'm done vomiting opinion. As always, this is just my opinion, and not all of it is meant 100% seriously, so sit back and relax as we reminisce about five franchises i'd love to see brought back, and five that I want to stay dead, in no particular order.

5. Bring Back: Road Rash

Forget Vigilante 8, forget Twisted Metal, Road Rash was the epitome of motorsports violence. I'm aware that some sequels were made for the N64 and PS1, but I won't count those as they were, well, shit. This game, and it's sequel Road Rash II, utterly blew me away, I had no idea that you could combine motorsports and violence and not only come out with a playable game, but one that was better and more interesting than just a plain racing game like Super Hang-On. The concept was simple, illegal street racing for a cash prize, and no rules. You could steal weapons from other riders, knock them off, or send them careening into a passing car, you could even beat up policemen. I had so much fun with this, and still do occasionally. What we need is either a remake, or a sequel, that follows the original format without changing it too much beyond what it is. As much as I liked bikes in PGR4, what we really need is Road Rash.

Don't Bring Back: The Adams Family:

God the games associated with this franchise were awful. From Festers Quest to Pugsley's Scavenger hunt, i've never played an Adams Family game that I liked, or even enjoyed for a short while. Often poorly programmed, with terrible design choices and overbearing levels of difficulty. Aside from that, you have to wonder, just how exactly do you introduce this family to the videogame world? They don't seem all that suited to being anywhere near videogames in the first place. I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if we never saw this franchise again in any format, be it television, film or videogames.

4. Bring Back: Shenmue:

Ok, not so much 'bring back' as 'finish it, or so help me god i'll hunt you down' The series really needs to be completed. However, while we know almost for certain now that the series never will be completed, as it's creator no longer works for Sega, or something like that, and Sega have said many times they do not plan to ressurect the series, that doesn't mean I can't want for it. I need to know what happens, dammit.

Don't Bring Back: Yu-Gi-Oh

I'll admit, shamefully, that I once enjoyed the card game itself quite a bit, I was a succesful tournament player in my region and even placed well nationally. However, every single videogame adaptation of this with the exception maybe of one of the GBA games, has been utterly atrocious. I guess the major problem here is that the developers needs to change up the gameplay in order to differentiate itself from the physical card game rules so that people will buy it. This just leads to incomprehensible rules and unbalanced games, when you combine this with incredibly slow gameplay and terrible (or abusive) AI you definately have a loser on your hands. Why continue to attempt to compete with the physical card game? I mean, it's still making tons of money, and the company responsible for the games is the same company, so stop trying to compete with it and simply divert the cash into making more money from the card game itself. Simple.

3. Bring Back: Dark Forces:

I'm not a huge Star Wars fan at all, but like KOTOR, Dark Forces being a high quality game, I loved it. I didn't love it as much as Doom or Duke Nukem granted, but I still loved it and i'd play it over some of the more modern FPS games (if I had the choice, I don't own the game anymore) and for an FPS, the Star Wars universe is one that provides some quite unique situations, enemies and weapons to play with. I honestly feel the franchise should be brought back with a vengeance. I'm aware that what we got out of this franchise was in fact the adventures of Kyle Katarn in Jedi Knight and eventually Jedi Academy, but those didn't resonate as well with me as the original Dark Forces did.

Don't Bring Back: Alone in the Dark:

The original series was ground breaking for it's time, and highly enjoyable well-crafted games. But the previous two attempts to ressurect the series have not succeeded. Firstly, we had The New Nightmare, a literal mashing together of Resident Evil and Silent Hill with an incomprehensible storyline and overly difficult bordering on punishing gameplay. The characters were difficult to care about, the plor hard to follow, the game itself difficult to play and while it managed to be pretty damned creepy for the first two thirds, as always with these kinds of games the run up to the end was just plain weird, not creepy or clever.

Then we have the Atari remake Alone in the Dark for Xbox 360 and PC (and later, and hopefully much improved, Inferno for PS3) which was very poorly recieved. While the game had a lot of ambition, some really great mechanics all but wasted by the poor level design. Much of this games ambition and technical achievement was put to incredibly poor use which really is a great shame, I mean the game achieved a lot of things, environments that could burn realisticly, entire levels being animated in one of the greatest cinematic action sequences ever seen in a videogame, and more. The level design however, the plot, the characters, utterly abhorant. Impossible to care for any of the characters, and what I onestly feel is one of the worst, rip-off endings ever seen in any media format. And I havn't even touched upon the bugs or terrible driving sequences. Alone in the Dark for 360 was 100% wasted potential, and in my opinion the final nail in the coffin of a once great series. Leave it alone now.

2. Bring Back: Oddworld

Both of Abe's adventures in Oddworld were classics, the following games in the series not so much. But despite the failings of Munch's Oddysee and Strangers Wrath (even though I quite enjoyed Strangers Wrath) I still feel the franchise would be perfectly at home generating side scrollers like the originals, or adventure games for episodic content or DS/PSP releases. Theres so much lore there, and so many unique characters and environments to put te player in, I honestly don't think we've seen many franchises quite as unique as Oddworld and it needs to rise from the ashes like a pheonix. Apparently Oddworld Inhabitants are working on something new, but we've not seen or heard anything in quite a long time now.

Don't Bring Back: System Shock:

This one is going to be controversial, but I am very confident that the current right holders (EA) would make a stink of it. To start with, interest in the franchise from EA was only reinvigorated upon the release of Bioshock, and while I loved Bioshock, I do not want a knee jerk reaction from EA resulting in a Bioshock clone set in space. But illogical reasons like that aside, i'm seriously fed up with the business practice of shitting all over fans of a classic series in order to make money from a name people are curious about because they have heard great things, but don't want to, or cannot play the originals. We've seen it with Fallout 3, FarCry 2 and others, and we're going to see it with Deus Ex 3, the Monkey Island remake, and more. I'd rather they make a new game, under a new name, especially considering any new project under the name of System Shock would not include any of the original talent, and that doesn't sit well with me just as it didn't in the other examples.

1. Bring Back: Discworld:

This is the second franchise on the list that while I want brought back, in all likelyhood will never ever happen. I'm deeply saddened by Terry Pratchetts diagnosis of Alzheimers a couple years ago now, as my favorite author and a great man I was very upset to hear this. I own both the PS1 discworld adventure games, and Noir on PC. While Noir didn't fare so well, I still think that the previous too games are a fantastic example of the genre, and contain some great comedy moments and superb voice acting from comedy legends such as Rob Brydon, Eric Idle and Tony Robinson. I honestly think that if it were revitalised, and you could get hold of some equally good voice actors and get a clever script and puzzle set written, that the fanchise could put out an adventure game to rival that of Grim Fandango or Starship Titanic in greatness. (Incidentally, Starship Titanic features John Cleese as a voice actor)

Don't Bring Back: Duke Nukem:

I'm a massive fan of Duke Nukem, but lets face the truth here, his first and last truly great game was Duke Nukem 3D, a game that not only was brilliantly constructed and immense fun, but gave the FPS genre that final kick it needed in order to be fully realised after Doom had proven to everyone that it was a legitimate player. But since then, we've had multiple ports of Duke 3D, side scrolling platformers, terrible third person games, and several cancelled games. Not to mention the whole fiasco with Duke Nukem Forever. DNF? More like DNR. Duke's an old man now, and need to be layed to rest, even if he were brought back, in all the flashy glory he's known for, three quarters of todays gaming population wouldn't even have a clue who he is, just let the man rest, I think he deserves it after being strung out all these years.

Well that's it for now, this is just the compilation of this mornings thoughts really, what do you guys feel? Any franchises you'd like to see brought back? Or ones you feel strongly should remain dormant for ever?

I really wish they'd make a new Monkey Island game one day. :(

....OH WAIT!!

@Death_Unicorn:

Shit I totally forgot Republic Commando, that games ending pissed me off so much. It need a sequel almost as badly as Shenmue, I just have to know what happened ;_;

Rollcage. 'Nuff said.

I'd love to see a Duke Nukem game that takes place in the future, where all the men have become feminine and homosexual, and when an alien force threatens life on earth, they must un-freeze Duke Nukem, because he's the only tough guy left on the planet.

Roadrash would be perfect as an XBLA game. Give that thing a nice, basic engine, have it run at 80fps, have it priced at 400MS points.

They should bring back Tetris Attack. 

@The_A_Drain:

I played the original some time last year and I'd say if it was to be released it would need to be remake. Not emulation, the 400 was me being dreamy, but I would love to have the game remade, everyone buys it and then 40 man races (that would be INSANE). The 80fps is just me saying the game does need to be eye bleedingly smooth.

I wouldn't support or buy a port in any way shape or form, leave that to the Virtual Console.

I totally agree with Oddworld. The PS1 oddworld games are some of my favourite ever. They are fantastic.

I'm also one of the crazy folk that will never stop wanting Shenmue III.

Congratulations on not saying Sonic, I was planning on this being a very generic post. You have proven me wrong.

Im gonna say bring back Jedi Knight.  That Academy one was gay because of that Rosh asshole.  But the best part of those games was the lightsaber fighting.  I still cant fucking believe they release games like the movie tie in of episode 3, and a big offender, star wars the force unleashed and have the lightsaber combat be as lame as it is.  In Jedi Knight you could kill anyone normal in one hit, jedi, sith and robots.  Would it not piss you off to have a lightsaber in your hand and realize its only as good as a club that emits light

You know what, they should bring back System Shock, regardless of what you say. Other than that, great list. I want a next-gen Oddworld!

Yeah I want a new, GOOD Star Fox game with the original voice actors.

Bring Back: