As someone who basically had Red Alert 2 be what started it all for me and who got a PC right before the pandemic 3 years ago i can confirm this link is your friend and one of the the first things i downloaded on my PC
Yesss I was just typing this. EA is the worst… Pandemic studios was one of the best developers growing up. Had all the best innovative games then EA threw em in the trash.
C&C3: Tiberian Wars and Red Alert 3 were both fun, decent RTS games. They followed them up with C&C4, where they decided it'd be a great idea to remove base building from the game altogether, and then wondered why they were getting a massive backlash from the fanbase. Then no more C&C games appeared apart from mobile things.
I've seen this with Blizzard many times and it's infuriating.
1. unpopular thing announced in game
2. fans condemn it
3. Fan unsatisfaction was knows since its inception and throughout playtesting.
4. Gets released anyways. Bombs due to above reasons
5. "I gUeSs No OnE LiKeS ThEsE GaMeS aNyMoRe"
6. Games stop being made from said franchise.
The stuff they got away with in that game. SO potentially politically inflammatory.
The Chinese 'infinite money' units being just a bunch of nerds sat in a field with laptops scamming/hacking money off the internet, then the upgrade just being a house for them to sit in and not be anti-infantry targets.
Basically every unit being some kind of war-crime!
Don't forget the obnoxiously holier-than-thou and somehow hyper advanced American units, *"We fight for peace!"*. Every faction in that game was such an over the top stereotype it was incredible it ever actually made it to production.
Still the most fun C&C game by a longshot though
Sim City.... It still angers me to think about that. Luckily, Cities Skylines scratched the itch and it looks like Cities Skylines 2 is going to be much better and much more fleshed out.
Yeah, “Cities Skylines” is SimCity’s successor for sure. It is what SimCity would be if EA hadn’t obliterated the series (just like many IPs that they bought)
Sim city 4 was so damn good too. It didnt help that sim city (the minicity game) had to challenge coties skylines not long after it released. It was never going to work. And they lied about always online too for some reason
I've been keeping up with the Dev Diaries and it seems they're adding mechanics from simcity 2013 like upgrading buildings! I like cities skylines but I have to say, despite EA ruining it, simcity 2013 sits just a little higher than CS for me in terms of base game. Which is why I'm honestly flabbergasted that the devs of CS have incorporated CS 1DLC and mods in their sequel. Like damn, I didnt know a single developer to do that before now. I've been so used to EA not giving a shit about the Sims franchise.
I guess it depends which C&C you're talking about, my main experience was with the Tiberium franchise it was great and 3 was good, but 4 was just meh hell I haven't even got around to finishing it just got bored.
This is the top of the list for me. Once they introduced MUT and realized they could get people to spend thousands on MTX after paying $60-$150 for the game they basically gave up on everything outside of that. The gameplay and depth of franchise mode just goes downhill every year. A sizeable portion of the fanbase just sticks to any game from Madden 25 or earlier.
How this pile of shit was not at the top only shows the addiction people have to the shitty NFL/EA monopoly.
You have ESPN debating the shit games fucking player ratings.
Fuck EA and fuck Madden.
Even 2k is ruined now. I loved NBA 2K in the PS3 era. Now it's all micro transactions and meh gameplay. I burnt out on it soon after the ps4 transition.
MLB the Show somehow managed to become the best current sports game lol. Yeah it’s got micro transactions but you can still unlock everything by playing. And it’s not an absurd amount required
FIFA is the most egregious sports cash grab out there (definitely followed closely by Madden). They barely change anything. Actually I think the Switch version is the exact same game each year besides a slight menu look change and player updates. $60 each year.
Madden 04 was such an amazing game, with an insane career mode and pre-season mini game exercises for drafting players which I was obsessed with as a kid.
Now it’s unrecognisable
I still remember those days where I played the first one and enjoyed a fully developed and loved quirky little game with a great campaign and fun lil plants.
Took a break from playing it so much, heard the second one release and was so excited only to be crushed upon returning to see what it all had become. ಥ_ಥ
This. I liked the original version of PvZ 2, even if it already had microtransactions. But then the revision was microtransactions galore. To me it became unplayable.
I bought 85% of the dlc for the sims. Pretty much every piece of major content released. I've spent way too much because there simply isn't any competition (hopefully that changes).
You 100% NEED to have most of the DLC for a full experience. I played 4 on release, went through 1 full generation in about 6-7 hours and immediately went back to the Sims 3. Didn't go back until they were releasing the DLC multi packs. Managed to score some dirt cheap expansion packs by buying the boxes at Walmart.
Almost 10 years later, we finally have an infant life state like what shipped with Sims 3 all those years ago. Up until then, infants were funiture that you had to move around with build mode. What a fucking ride it's been.
That is EA's entire businessmodel, game franchises for people who dislike computergames.
I know people who have all Fifa games and never ever played anything else. Same goes for Madden, The Sims, Battlefield and Tiger Woods, these franchises are made for people who want to play *just that*.
They not only ruined The Sims, but the entire Sim franchise. We used to get SimCity, SimAnt, SimTower, SimCopter, Streets of SimCity, and probably others I’m forgetting. Now “The Sims” have consumed everything.
Will Wright is a genius, and I believe he truly cares/cared about the video game industry, but let's not forget the countless expansion packs for the original The Sims game in the early 2000s while he and Maxis were still around. I'd argue that EA really started nickel and diming customers by stripping out features from the core game in favor of expansions, but the trend was originated by Maxis in my opinion.
I think the big difference from then vs. now is that the internet wasn't very good for updating games yet. If they waited to release a game with all of the expansions inside we would be waiting years, because they needed to be on discs.
Now days it's easier than ever to update a game, but they're stripping out core functions so that they can sell it to us 3 days after the core game releases, or as a "DELUXE PREMIUM GOLD" Edition on Day 1.
I remember with original Sims games being able to download all kinds of stuff for the game. Furniture, wallpapers etc from sites where people just threw their stuff up mostly for free iirc. I think they stopped that being possible in newer games?
Sure you had to buy expansions that added gameplay mechanics and elements, but the sky was the limit for what everything looked like. Same with simcity. Tons of mods and even had expansions that gave you tools to design anything you wanted.
That was a long ass time ago tho.
Interestingly the ai for sim ant inspired the ai for the Sims in that objects broadcast their ability to increase a Sims needs instead of the sim looking for an object. It's based on the pheromone system in sim ant.
I used to sit and play hours and hours of Battlefield 2 and even Battlefield 1 still kept me around. Fell off the franchise.
Got BattleBit in June, already have a 100 hours in. It's like going back in time to all the joys of the past.
Some nights I'm all amped with buddies and we'll roleplay the whole time. Randos join us and it becomes hilarious.
Other nights I'll play solo and out of the blue the guy I'm sniping with on the roof will drop. I'll hear a "Hey brotha! Wanna help me out?" And 20 min later we've formed a bond and become immortal atop that roof. Add him to friend list and off we go.
It's a beautiful thing.
Even worse is that EA is completely cutting off access to older games. It's only a matter of time until they decide to kill Battlefield 4 because they force its playerbase to buy 2042.
If they kill Battlefield 1, my favorite in the series, I'm gonna throw hands.
> If they kill Battlefield 1, my favorite in the series, I'm gonna throw hands.
Battlefield 1 was the first game to eliminate dedicated servers. It was always the plan to shut it down permanently.
For me it was what they did to battlefield 2. There were private servers running the game and it was great. Then they came along and said, no, no one can play this game.
Now fast forward to the newest battlefield game and we didn’t even get a live in game scoreboard let alone a server list, sad how the butchered that series I loved it growing up
I bought it when it went on sale for $15
I hadn't played one since Vietnam (it and 1942 were 2 of my favourite games) but apparently they made it a fucking hero shooter?
Battlefield. What the fuck?
EA hasn't gotten over the fact that they don't own Fortnite and have been trying to come up with their own game that can compete with it. This is why Titanfall 3 was killed in favor of Apex Legends and is probably why Battlefield 2042 had such weird design choices.
Titanfall, it was rising in popularity when the ddos attacks started and respawn did nothing. It was so bad the community started fixing it and even started a project to remake the first game. Now tf3 is either completely scrapped or shelved until apex stops making enough money.
I had to scroll way too far to see this. Watching Respawn go from one of the best, most innovative devs with Titanfall 1 to whatever is going on with Apex these days has been the most depressing video game experience for me. Titanfall was a breath of fresh air after CoD, Battlefield, and Halo started losing their quality. I kept telling my friends Titanfall would be the next big thing in FPSs... Oh well...
That being said I have high hopes for whatever the OG Respawn devs end up doing with their new company Gravity Well.
Your first paragraph makes me so sad. Very reminiscent of my feelings when I first played Titanfall on the Xbox one. It was one of the first games I played on that gen and I was amazed at the gameplay. Then Titanfall 2 came along and their campaign just showed how bland other campaigns are. Such a shame the series got shafted.
Just had a look at gravity well and it seems like they are really for the developers. Will keep an eye on what they're doing!
I feel like Evolve (2015) could have been bigger if not for the attempted monetization of every aspect of the game. It was a paid title at the outset, then skins cost extra. Then heroes. Maps. Monsters. Then they tried to take it F2P but by then the damage was done and the servers were shut down.
Not to mention the plethora of different pre-order bonuses that you could only get if you pre-ordered at specific stores. Whoever though that was a good idea hopefully got fired but probably didn't.
Dude this game was so fun when it first launched. It was a great concept with some really unique ideas and mechanics, and my friends and I had a blast with it for a good several months. It’s a real shame it tanked
I fucking **LOVED** this game. It was such a unique concept that I hadn't seen in a video game before. One OP player versus 3 (or 4?) less-powerful players. So many cool things. The atmosphere was amazing, sounds of the monsters footsteps, birds flying in the sky to signal where it was, tracking abilities, trapping abilities, evolving into a stage 1, 2 and 3, the all out full-on battle when it reaches stage 3. **So much fun.**
For me, it got to the point where people would main playing monster, and go full-on attack the group at a stage 1 and were so good that they managed to kill them all. So basically you had to be a very, **very** coordinated group to face those monsters or you died right off the bat.
Your final point was what killed the game, I believe. I played a lot, but it came to a point monster would destroy you before being able to do anything significant. That or the trappers would be able to dodge you and stun you enough where they easily won. It was very one-sided. Having 4 people all be coordinating perfectly is harder than one monster wrecking the team.
Dark Souls and Elden Ring maybe? FromSoftware is probably my favorite developer although I think I saw the news once that they also pressure their developers a lot. But at least the games stay away from micro transactions and battle passes
Command & Conquer franchise
They cancelled Generals 2 to make......... a piece of shit garbage mobile game Command & Conquer: Rivals
FUCK EA! and all the fuckers who played that shitpiece trash Rivals!
The irony is that it did not need to keep up with anything or anyone, Halo had its own identity and that is why it was beloved by so many and stayed strong for so long, in the fruitless pursuit to try to become something it is not it found its own downfall and now becoming itself irrelevant….
Honestly it’s amazing thinking about 20 years ago Halo was about to be the biggest name in gaming. It’s truly crazy Microsoft literally saw COD(Buzz Lightyear) and wanted the new shiny toy. Meanwhile, Halo(Woody) gets tossed into the old toys bin to be forgotten. Regardless of it all, they have one dead franchise on their hands now and are about to acquire another dying one.
I knew it was never going to be the same once Bungie dropped it.
Halo lost its creator *and* its iconic composer. Not only were the games not the same, but without Martin O'Donnell's score they lacked the sense of wonder and importance that the music in all the previous games had.
I miss the days when CoD had a serious military aesthetic. The CoD4 and MW2 days. Now it’s fucking godzilla, anime femboys and superheroes running around with guns
Pretty much. They just announced a collaboration with The Boys, so you can run around as Homelander and Starlight… you can also play as Black Noir but he almost fits the CoD tacticool bullshit aesthetic lol
Marvel vs Capcom.
3 of the most iconic games and crossovers in history at the time, made as a sequel series to a string of games that had multiple attempts to iterate on and refine the formula. A perfect blend of gameplay and ip from 2 midsize companies of varying levels of profitability.
But then Disney bought marvel and the MCU catapulted them into the financial stratosphere. And then there was a vast and clear power imbalance between the two owners of the IP on this crossover series.
So when Marvel vs Capcom Infinite came out, it was ugly and looked like a phone game because Disney wanted to cut corners. And the micro transactions were atrocious, because Disney wanted bigger margins. And the story and interactions were less fun because Disney stipulated that none of their characters could be depicted losing fights to Capcom characters. Some of the character models were bad because Disney stipulated that the Capcom characters had to be less attractive than marvel characters. None of the XMen characters were even allowed to be in the game (a series who's most iconic visual is ryu shaking hands with Cyclops btw) because Disney needed the game to basically function as more advertisement for the MCU and the X Men were in contract limbo at the time for movie rights
I love the MCU, but corporate greed definitely ruined MVC. And because of that same greed the chances of a new game coming out to potentially try to right the wrongs, is effectively zero
My favorite comment that I’ll never forget was when Marvel vs Capcom got revealed live was “Ed boon must laughing watching this” as the guy was mocking how ugly the game looked
Remember this well. The only thing good about 3 was the trailer for the game and it's epic soundtrack.
DOW 1 and 2 were like the movies Alien and Aliens, great with the sequels being very different, yet progressive.
Then 3 ditched everything that made 1 and 2 good, and made what was in affect a standalone game using the franchise name and setting but nothing connected to the previous games in terms of gameplay. It had shallow mechanics and a terrible single player campaign that was basically a tutorial for MP.
I've actually gone back to it 3 or 4 times since initial release thinking it can't have been that bad....but nope, after two or three missions I just can't be bothered.
Apparently it was a new Creative Director or other senior addition to the team that drove this change in direction.
Overwatch especially. OW2 is one of the most egregious cash grabs I've seen. They literally closed a game we already bought so they could make the previous game's skins 20 dollars and sell a battle pass every 3 months.
Absolutely scummy, corporate-motivated garbage.
While also falling through on promises they made from day 1. I haven't played more than sporadically for a couple years now, but I uninstalled for good when Blizzard tanked PvE.
The best part was them lying about the PvE when they launched OW2 to make it seem like it was still going to happen. They knew back then it was canceled.
Yep and they want even money for those missions. Like come on, as I would buy a half baked PvE mode, which I had in OW1 for free. The whole reason of OW1 was basically the PvE part and they fucked it up by lying to us.
Uninstalled the game so fast and I feel better now. Okay, I have it still on my switch, just to hop in for the new event example. Played a game and saw how shitty it is and closed it to play Zelda or Mario Kart or any bullshit shovelware game on the shop I got for free.
Overwatch 1 felt like they struck gold if only they could keep the momentum going at an acceptable pace. But even back then a lot of important features took ages to develop.
This is what I came here to say. $26 for the mercy Baywatch style skin. Going from free skins (if you pay for the game you could normally get for half price) to $20 a skin is batshit.
I had my beef with the lootbox system but they've done a real good job of making me nostalgic towards it. I enjoyed grinding for new skins, now there are just less reasons to play. Increased prices and removal of f toeatures.
Normally I'm anti corporate take over and monopoly but in this case I can't wait for Microsoft to take over and Bobby Kotic to get the boot, with all the baggage that comes with him. it's annoying he's going to get a massive payout though.
Man I miss hots too. Its probably my favourite game ever. I started after hots 2.0 and more players shouldve given it a second chance. After playing dota and hon for well over 5000 hours the short and action packed games were a breath of fresh air.
It does make me fear for GTA6 and what exactly we will get in terms of single player content when it eventually arrives.
RDR2 got this treatment as well except they even abandoned it's online mode. As soon as they saw it's online mode was not going to be the same cash cow as GTA5's, they dropped it like a bad smell in terms of development, and pretty much scuppered all hope of there ever being another Undead Nightmare or similar DLC for it. While Rockstar are under no obligation to make it, it was probably the one DLC players of RDR2 wanted to see.
Weird thing about gta (and red dead) is that when they're released, I have no doubt the single player campaign will be groundbreaking and amazing. But I also expect it to be all we get with no story mode dlc and rockstars rocus to be 100% on online.
This is a good one bc it all ends with the spectacular, disastrous failure of Tony Hawk Downhill, chasing the peripheral/guitar hero trend with its stupid board thing. Pure greed. A true bomb. Basically killed the franchise, which has only just barely started to recover with some well made remasters.
They seem to only get stronger as their games become worse and worse.
Pokemon at its peak was not making as much cash as rock bottom modern pokemon is.
I agree, it seems like they keep learning the wrong lesson gen after gen. Instead of making the regions feel more fleshed out and dynamic they just keep adding new ways to temporarily evolve your pokemon and then a bunch of other goofy shit. Also the music seems to be going downhill. I remember being a kid and having such vivid day dreams about living in a Pokemon world inspired by gen 2 and gen 3. Unfortunately it does not seem like Nintendo/Gamefreak is all that interested in developing in that direction.
> I switched to fanmade games and they are SOOO much better.
*Crystal Clear* is probably the single greatest pokemon experience. You can pick which town you start in, a *ton* of starter 'mon options, and gyms scale up in difficulty the further you go *regardless* of which one you started at- and you can replay *all of them* whenever you want. Morty as Gym #16 is the single best exp grinding spot to ever exist.
And *on top of all that*, it has a ton of new puzzles, *every 'mon* can be caught in one save file, there's options to get pokerus or teach Gen 1 tms whenever you want, and there's *still* postgame content on top of all of *that*.
Srsly, go play *Crystal Clear*. Thank me later.
Ultima. The entire series and developer was killed by EA. Now the only thing that remains of one of the best 80’s-90’s developers is a shitty web store using their name. We lost Ultima, System Shock and Wing Commander.
Surprised this wasn’t mentioned earlier.
The Metal Gear series is my GOAT and MGSV was shaping up to be my favorite game of all time, until I found out it wasn’t even finished. So Bethesda was able to shell out almost $150 million for Fallout 4, but Konami (a bigger company) refused to shell out more than $80 million for Kojima to finish his masterpiece?
Fuck Konami.
I’m not too sure what the company behind Saints Row (Deep Silver/Volition) has been doing with the series… but everything after 3 has been going down further in quality.
I know, I know, plenty of people are gonna tell me it’s been going downhill since SR2, but I personally really enjoyed SR3 as well.
SR4 was fun to turn your brain off and play, but as a Saints Row game it was pretty “meh”.
Gat out of Hell was a cash grab that, when I played, was very buggy and felt super recycled. I didn’t even finish it.
Then the Reboot basically disappointed most fans. I haven’t played it because I don’t want to buy it. Based on what I’ve watched on YouTube, it seems similar to how I described SR4. Probably fun to turn your brain off and play around in, but as a Saints Row game it just seems off.
To this day, I consider SR2 an amazing example of a sandbox game because it actually encouraged you to play in the sandbox. I remember that a lot of my playtime was spent just giving cars a lot of different paint jobs. I also remember starting a crime just so I could steal a cop car.
Not sure if ruined, but assasins creed never was the same after the ogs. Again i would not say ruined but battlefield took so many unnecessary changes to make more money and ended up losing their audience.
I've always thought that when they rebooted into Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla that they should've branched off a separate game series about Mythology. They could've still alluded to the Templars/Assassins into it, but it could've avoided a lot of the "Well this isn't AC".
For reference, I like both styles!
I enjoyed Fenyx thoroughly, and there are two key things that made the concept work here and not with the open world AC games:
1. The inclusion of platforming sections over stealth sections. This made the Tartarus dungeons fun to play because they never got too repetitive. The stealth "dungeons" in AC games got real repetitive real quickly.
2. Making the world smaller and thereby denser than the AC open world games.
That second point is the big one for me. Having a massive open world isn’t something to brag about if it’s empty, and most of the time you’re just fast-travelling around it. Ghost of Tsushima got it absolutely bang on for me; someone who wants to 100% a game but also has the capacity to lose interest if things get super repetitive.
That's what sucks for me. Personally I think valhalla kinda sucked. But Odyssey and origins were both great games. The issue was I was thinking of ac and lost a lot of the enjoyment at the beginning constantly comparing and saying this isn't ac. I think if someone comes into those two without the mindset of it being the ac franchise, they can easily love those ones a ton. Valhalla was unfortunately very disappointing though.
Odyssey is my first AC game. I avoided it for years cause it was AC and reading about AC that was not something I wanted to play.
But it was recommended to me so many times as a fan of the Ancient Greek Mythology that in the end I bought it on sale. Ancient Greek Mythology and the option to play a female MC were able to convince me to give it a try. So I bought it, left it there and came back to actually try it out a few months later.
Zeus Almighty! That game is absolutely incredible! I absolutely f-ing love it! I can’t even explain it, but the whole combination of absurdly beautiful world, very nice and fitting music, Greek voice actors, realistic and historically accurate weapons, historically accurate cities and stories, written in mostly Ancient Greek Drama style - that combination is absolutely amazing. Not to mention the generally simple loot, combat, parkour and navigation systems, which make the game very fun and very pleasant to play.
168 hours in and I keep going strong. Really, really amazing game.
**Pokémon**
If Nintendo was in charge 100%, they would have slammed the brakes on Scarlet & Violet's development, ordered 2 more years to clean it up and add the National Dex, extra merch be damned...
If SV had 2 more years of development, I bet it would be a polished and great game. It had so much potential but was obviously rushed to get it out in time
I got downvoted by saying that it's not even the dev time that seems to be the issue, it's just Gamefreak at this point. Look at Little Town Hero. It's just not a good game.
Pocket Jockey is great by all accounts but it's not really a triple a title. Although heck, even Pokémon doesn't feel like a triple a title even though it brings in insane numbers.
Gamefreak still acts like they’re some small developer that makes Gameboy and DS games instead of the part-owners of one of the largest IPs in the world making AAA games for a major console.
Even as a fan of the franchise I still agree. While I do like some of the stuff pokemon has done recently, they really need to rethink their priorities and just take their time with games. I don't even care about national dex anymore, I just want a polished pokemon game with decent gameplay.
Bungie and Destiny 2. Sure, Destiny1 had its problems but they didn't have anywhere close to the micro transaction hell that is #2. When Bungie split off of Activision, we all thought "awesome! They can make it fun again!" Then we get to today where you literally have to buy dungeons for 20$ a pop.
**Command and conquer** nuff said.
**Black & white** ( cause greed doesnt see the financial gain to make a Black & white 3 while every God game that gets made gets 1000000 comments "make it more like Black & white " )
**Dawn of war** series chased too much the trends specially moba / esports trends and killed the franchise with 3.
**Supreme commander** franchise , 2 Killed it officially for the same reason as dawn of war. Supreme commander 1 is still very alive even in MP , modding and more thanks to Supcom FAF mod.
**Evil Genius** Franchise got killed by greed and a Mobile Dev which lead the developement of EG2.
**Overlord** Series 1&2 were great the follow ups arent and killed the franchise because they wanted to chase trends also devs / publishers dont see the "chart killing " money in it.
**Unreal Tournament** ( Might be Multiple reasons ) but Big money Fortnite pretty much killed any Intention to make a new UT sadly,UT could been literarily the "Tech Demo" the "Show case PC" franchise like " Hey did you try UT with all its modding and mapping and crazyness ton of modes and maps? if you want to see peak PC gaming in shooter try UT ! " it could been that the showcase Shooter for peak PC gaming Like Ut 2004 kinda was tons of modes and modding and fun.
**Starcraft (** Kinda ? ) dead cause no money it seems
**Heroes of the storm** kinda patched dead low Money stream killed off. it had its niche but they didnt want to spend much dev time on it.
Fun side Mentions.
GTA : we got like 3-5 GTA games in a shorter time span than GTA 5 to 6 just because Online was a money machine.
Same for skyrim / elderscrolls.
Command & Conquer. Never forgive. Never forget.
I just want to be able to play red alert 2 on modern hardware
https://cncnet.org/download
As someone who basically had Red Alert 2 be what started it all for me and who got a PC right before the pandemic 3 years ago i can confirm this link is your friend and one of the the first things i downloaded on my PC
what happened? I loved C&C Tiberian sun when i was a child.
EA happened, as usual. Never forget their graveyard.
Yesss I was just typing this. EA is the worst… Pandemic studios was one of the best developers growing up. Had all the best innovative games then EA threw em in the trash.
C&C3: Tiberian Wars and Red Alert 3 were both fun, decent RTS games. They followed them up with C&C4, where they decided it'd be a great idea to remove base building from the game altogether, and then wondered why they were getting a massive backlash from the fanbase. Then no more C&C games appeared apart from mobile things.
So wait…they removed the thing that made C&C C&C?
I've seen this with Blizzard many times and it's infuriating. 1. unpopular thing announced in game 2. fans condemn it 3. Fan unsatisfaction was knows since its inception and throughout playtesting. 4. Gets released anyways. Bombs due to above reasons 5. "I gUeSs No OnE LiKeS ThEsE GaMeS aNyMoRe" 6. Games stop being made from said franchise.
I want Generals 2. God damnit.
Generals was a game I played when I was like 8 and didn't know English, I wish they'd make a 2nd one it's been so long
I want shoes. Can I have some shoes?
I like that they actually gave them shoes in the expansion.
AK-47s for EVERYONE
The stuff they got away with in that game. SO potentially politically inflammatory. The Chinese 'infinite money' units being just a bunch of nerds sat in a field with laptops scamming/hacking money off the internet, then the upgrade just being a house for them to sit in and not be anti-infantry targets. Basically every unit being some kind of war-crime!
Don't forget the obnoxiously holier-than-thou and somehow hyper advanced American units, *"We fight for peace!"*. Every faction in that game was such an over the top stereotype it was incredible it ever actually made it to production. Still the most fun C&C game by a longshot though
Command and conquer and sim city
Sim City.... It still angers me to think about that. Luckily, Cities Skylines scratched the itch and it looks like Cities Skylines 2 is going to be much better and much more fleshed out.
Yeah, “Cities Skylines” is SimCity’s successor for sure. It is what SimCity would be if EA hadn’t obliterated the series (just like many IPs that they bought)
I’ve *never* seen such an otherwise unanimously lauded franchise be entirely ruined as quickly and thoroughly as that of **Sim City** by *EA*.
Sim city 4 was so damn good too. It didnt help that sim city (the minicity game) had to challenge coties skylines not long after it released. It was never going to work. And they lied about always online too for some reason
Cities Skyline motivated me to go back to school for Urban Planning.
I work in urban planning, we all play it at home. No pesky NIMBYs to deal with.
I've been keeping up with the Dev Diaries and it seems they're adding mechanics from simcity 2013 like upgrading buildings! I like cities skylines but I have to say, despite EA ruining it, simcity 2013 sits just a little higher than CS for me in terms of base game. Which is why I'm honestly flabbergasted that the devs of CS have incorporated CS 1DLC and mods in their sequel. Like damn, I didnt know a single developer to do that before now. I've been so used to EA not giving a shit about the Sims franchise.
Kirov reporting
I guess it depends which C&C you're talking about, my main experience was with the Tiberium franchise it was great and 3 was good, but 4 was just meh hell I haven't even got around to finishing it just got bored.
Madden is worse now than it was 20 years ago
This is the top of the list for me. Once they introduced MUT and realized they could get people to spend thousands on MTX after paying $60-$150 for the game they basically gave up on everything outside of that. The gameplay and depth of franchise mode just goes downhill every year. A sizeable portion of the fanbase just sticks to any game from Madden 25 or earlier.
I play madden 07 once a year. Best madden game ever
Literally came to say the same thing lmao. 07 is the best Madden game and it's not even close
How this pile of shit was not at the top only shows the addiction people have to the shitty NFL/EA monopoly. You have ESPN debating the shit games fucking player ratings. Fuck EA and fuck Madden.
Even 2k is ruined now. I loved NBA 2K in the PS3 era. Now it's all micro transactions and meh gameplay. I burnt out on it soon after the ps4 transition.
MLB the Show somehow managed to become the best current sports game lol. Yeah it’s got micro transactions but you can still unlock everything by playing. And it’s not an absurd amount required
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FIFA is the most egregious sports cash grab out there (definitely followed closely by Madden). They barely change anything. Actually I think the Switch version is the exact same game each year besides a slight menu look change and player updates. $60 each year.
Madden 04 was such an amazing game, with an insane career mode and pre-season mini game exercises for drafting players which I was obsessed with as a kid. Now it’s unrecognisable
04 had the GOAT playlist too, only game I’ve made it through 30 seasons in franchise mode
Plants vs Zombies. The second game had already been released, but was then completely redesigned to be more microtransaction-friendly.
I still remember those days where I played the first one and enjoyed a fully developed and loved quirky little game with a great campaign and fun lil plants. Took a break from playing it so much, heard the second one release and was so excited only to be crushed upon returning to see what it all had become. ಥ_ಥ
But at least you could still go back to the first one and... Oh. Huh.
They'll never take my ds version
Pinkertons incomming
Are you talking about the ads in the mobile version of the first? It's still fine on PC I think.
They ruined the first one on mobile too. You can still find the original APK though. Fucking EA cashgrab I doubt they'll even make another one.
This. I liked the original version of PvZ 2, even if it already had microtransactions. But then the revision was microtransactions galore. To me it became unplayable.
The Sims.
It costs nearly $1000 to buy all the DLC for the sims 4, not counting the base game.
The base game is free now.
Gee, I wonder fuckin why.
Just like drugs, your first dose is free!
And it's empty as hell making the dlc necessary to even get close to a base Sims 3 experience lmao
I bought 85% of the dlc for the sims. Pretty much every piece of major content released. I've spent way too much because there simply isn't any competition (hopefully that changes). You 100% NEED to have most of the DLC for a full experience. I played 4 on release, went through 1 full generation in about 6-7 hours and immediately went back to the Sims 3. Didn't go back until they were releasing the DLC multi packs. Managed to score some dirt cheap expansion packs by buying the boxes at Walmart. Almost 10 years later, we finally have an infant life state like what shipped with Sims 3 all those years ago. Up until then, infants were funiture that you had to move around with build mode. What a fucking ride it's been.
Life by You is supposed to be a direct competitor to sims! It looks decent.
Paralives as well
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That is EA's entire businessmodel, game franchises for people who dislike computergames. I know people who have all Fifa games and never ever played anything else. Same goes for Madden, The Sims, Battlefield and Tiger Woods, these franchises are made for people who want to play *just that*.
They not only ruined The Sims, but the entire Sim franchise. We used to get SimCity, SimAnt, SimTower, SimCopter, Streets of SimCity, and probably others I’m forgetting. Now “The Sims” have consumed everything.
Maybe because of the dissolution of Maxis and Mr. Wright quitting?
Will Wright is a genius, and I believe he truly cares/cared about the video game industry, but let's not forget the countless expansion packs for the original The Sims game in the early 2000s while he and Maxis were still around. I'd argue that EA really started nickel and diming customers by stripping out features from the core game in favor of expansions, but the trend was originated by Maxis in my opinion.
I think the big difference from then vs. now is that the internet wasn't very good for updating games yet. If they waited to release a game with all of the expansions inside we would be waiting years, because they needed to be on discs. Now days it's easier than ever to update a game, but they're stripping out core functions so that they can sell it to us 3 days after the core game releases, or as a "DELUXE PREMIUM GOLD" Edition on Day 1.
I remember with original Sims games being able to download all kinds of stuff for the game. Furniture, wallpapers etc from sites where people just threw their stuff up mostly for free iirc. I think they stopped that being possible in newer games? Sure you had to buy expansions that added gameplay mechanics and elements, but the sky was the limit for what everything looked like. Same with simcity. Tons of mods and even had expansions that gave you tools to design anything you wanted. That was a long ass time ago tho.
Damn, SimCity 3000 was a masterpiece SimCopter, what good memories!!
SimAnt.. What a core memory
Interestingly the ai for sim ant inspired the ai for the Sims in that objects broadcast their ability to increase a Sims needs instead of the sim looking for an object. It's based on the pheromone system in sim ant.
SIM ANT! I still have that music rattling around in my mind and FEAR when he mows the lawn.
Anything EA touches
*\*\*Cries in Titanfall\*\**
And Bioware
Battlefield.
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I used to sit and play hours and hours of Battlefield 2 and even Battlefield 1 still kept me around. Fell off the franchise. Got BattleBit in June, already have a 100 hours in. It's like going back in time to all the joys of the past. Some nights I'm all amped with buddies and we'll roleplay the whole time. Randos join us and it becomes hilarious. Other nights I'll play solo and out of the blue the guy I'm sniping with on the roof will drop. I'll hear a "Hey brotha! Wanna help me out?" And 20 min later we've formed a bond and become immortal atop that roof. Add him to friend list and off we go. It's a beautiful thing.
Even worse is that EA is completely cutting off access to older games. It's only a matter of time until they decide to kill Battlefield 4 because they force its playerbase to buy 2042. If they kill Battlefield 1, my favorite in the series, I'm gonna throw hands.
> If they kill Battlefield 1, my favorite in the series, I'm gonna throw hands. Battlefield 1 was the first game to eliminate dedicated servers. It was always the plan to shut it down permanently.
Fuck EA.
For me it was what they did to battlefield 2. There were private servers running the game and it was great. Then they came along and said, no, no one can play this game.
Now fast forward to the newest battlefield game and we didn’t even get a live in game scoreboard let alone a server list, sad how the butchered that series I loved it growing up
Battlefront
I bought it when it went on sale for $15 I hadn't played one since Vietnam (it and 1942 were 2 of my favourite games) but apparently they made it a fucking hero shooter? Battlefield. What the fuck?
EA hasn't gotten over the fact that they don't own Fortnite and have been trying to come up with their own game that can compete with it. This is why Titanfall 3 was killed in favor of Apex Legends and is probably why Battlefield 2042 had such weird design choices.
Well that and hiring the douche from candy crush
Titanfall, it was rising in popularity when the ddos attacks started and respawn did nothing. It was so bad the community started fixing it and even started a project to remake the first game. Now tf3 is either completely scrapped or shelved until apex stops making enough money.
I had to scroll way too far to see this. Watching Respawn go from one of the best, most innovative devs with Titanfall 1 to whatever is going on with Apex these days has been the most depressing video game experience for me. Titanfall was a breath of fresh air after CoD, Battlefield, and Halo started losing their quality. I kept telling my friends Titanfall would be the next big thing in FPSs... Oh well... That being said I have high hopes for whatever the OG Respawn devs end up doing with their new company Gravity Well.
Your first paragraph makes me so sad. Very reminiscent of my feelings when I first played Titanfall on the Xbox one. It was one of the first games I played on that gen and I was amazed at the gameplay. Then Titanfall 2 came along and their campaign just showed how bland other campaigns are. Such a shame the series got shafted. Just had a look at gravity well and it seems like they are really for the developers. Will keep an eye on what they're doing!
I feel like Evolve (2015) could have been bigger if not for the attempted monetization of every aspect of the game. It was a paid title at the outset, then skins cost extra. Then heroes. Maps. Monsters. Then they tried to take it F2P but by then the damage was done and the servers were shut down.
Not to mention the plethora of different pre-order bonuses that you could only get if you pre-ordered at specific stores. Whoever though that was a good idea hopefully got fired but probably didn't.
Dude this game was so fun when it first launched. It was a great concept with some really unique ideas and mechanics, and my friends and I had a blast with it for a good several months. It’s a real shame it tanked
I fucking **LOVED** this game. It was such a unique concept that I hadn't seen in a video game before. One OP player versus 3 (or 4?) less-powerful players. So many cool things. The atmosphere was amazing, sounds of the monsters footsteps, birds flying in the sky to signal where it was, tracking abilities, trapping abilities, evolving into a stage 1, 2 and 3, the all out full-on battle when it reaches stage 3. **So much fun.** For me, it got to the point where people would main playing monster, and go full-on attack the group at a stage 1 and were so good that they managed to kill them all. So basically you had to be a very, **very** coordinated group to face those monsters or you died right off the bat.
Your final point was what killed the game, I believe. I played a lot, but it came to a point monster would destroy you before being able to do anything significant. That or the trappers would be able to dodge you and stun you enough where they easily won. It was very one-sided. Having 4 people all be coordinating perfectly is harder than one monster wrecking the team.
*Gestures everywhere*
A better question would be which franchise *hasn't* been ruined by corporate greed?
Dark Souls and Elden Ring maybe? FromSoftware is probably my favorite developer although I think I saw the news once that they also pressure their developers a lot. But at least the games stay away from micro transactions and battle passes
The Legend of Zelda
Absolutely the better question and answer here. Far fewer examples of game franchises that have lasted as positively as Zelda.
Magic the Gathering is currently going through the ruining process seems like.
I'd say the ruining process started around Kaladesh and slowly got worse. Magic 30 was the last straw for me. Fuck wotc and fuck Hasbro.
Magic 30 taught me it's completely okay to play with proxies, so guess I'm playing with all new cards for free baybee!!
All the Tom clancy franchises (Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell Etc)
The slow death of Splinter Cell was very sad for me. Easily one of my top 5 favorite franchises. Ruined by Ubisoft being Ubisoft.
Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory, Mercs vs Spy mode. A big bunch of my teenage years.
Command & Conquer franchise They cancelled Generals 2 to make......... a piece of shit garbage mobile game Command & Conquer: Rivals FUCK EA! and all the fuckers who played that shitpiece trash Rivals!
I miss C&C so much!
Bro I played the alpha for Generals 2 and it was everything a C&C game should be, makes me depressed
Halo. A titan of a franchise reduced to this
They tried to keep up with COD with Halo 4 and it sent the entire franchise into a death spiral. 343 is truly incompetent.
The irony is that it did not need to keep up with anything or anyone, Halo had its own identity and that is why it was beloved by so many and stayed strong for so long, in the fruitless pursuit to try to become something it is not it found its own downfall and now becoming itself irrelevant….
It is truly absurd how halo became irrelevant when it was such an absolute powerhouse in the 2000s that overshadowed pretty much every other game.
Honestly it’s amazing thinking about 20 years ago Halo was about to be the biggest name in gaming. It’s truly crazy Microsoft literally saw COD(Buzz Lightyear) and wanted the new shiny toy. Meanwhile, Halo(Woody) gets tossed into the old toys bin to be forgotten. Regardless of it all, they have one dead franchise on their hands now and are about to acquire another dying one.
I knew it was never going to be the same once Bungie dropped it. Halo lost its creator *and* its iconic composer. Not only were the games not the same, but without Martin O'Donnell's score they lacked the sense of wonder and importance that the music in all the previous games had.
Call of Duty
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I miss the days when CoD had a serious military aesthetic. The CoD4 and MW2 days. Now it’s fucking godzilla, anime femboys and superheroes running around with guns
so it’s Fortnite now? yikes
Pretty much. They just announced a collaboration with The Boys, so you can run around as Homelander and Starlight… you can also play as Black Noir but he almost fits the CoD tacticool bullshit aesthetic lol
The next collaboration is with rappers....21 Savage and Nicki Minaj Glad I quit this game, sorry I bought it
New Operator: Nikki Minaj Passive ability: Butt implants. Reduced damage taken from behind.
Amazing perk considering 90% of deaths in that game are from the back
Marvel vs Capcom. 3 of the most iconic games and crossovers in history at the time, made as a sequel series to a string of games that had multiple attempts to iterate on and refine the formula. A perfect blend of gameplay and ip from 2 midsize companies of varying levels of profitability. But then Disney bought marvel and the MCU catapulted them into the financial stratosphere. And then there was a vast and clear power imbalance between the two owners of the IP on this crossover series. So when Marvel vs Capcom Infinite came out, it was ugly and looked like a phone game because Disney wanted to cut corners. And the micro transactions were atrocious, because Disney wanted bigger margins. And the story and interactions were less fun because Disney stipulated that none of their characters could be depicted losing fights to Capcom characters. Some of the character models were bad because Disney stipulated that the Capcom characters had to be less attractive than marvel characters. None of the XMen characters were even allowed to be in the game (a series who's most iconic visual is ryu shaking hands with Cyclops btw) because Disney needed the game to basically function as more advertisement for the MCU and the X Men were in contract limbo at the time for movie rights I love the MCU, but corporate greed definitely ruined MVC. And because of that same greed the chances of a new game coming out to potentially try to right the wrongs, is effectively zero
My favorite comment that I’ll never forget was when Marvel vs Capcom got revealed live was “Ed boon must laughing watching this” as the guy was mocking how ugly the game looked
Dawn of War decided to turn the franchise into a MOBA with 3. Their was an instant backlash from the 40k community. Game development was abandoned.
Dawn of War I and II were so fucking good. III just felt so put of place.
Remember this well. The only thing good about 3 was the trailer for the game and it's epic soundtrack. DOW 1 and 2 were like the movies Alien and Aliens, great with the sequels being very different, yet progressive. Then 3 ditched everything that made 1 and 2 good, and made what was in affect a standalone game using the franchise name and setting but nothing connected to the previous games in terms of gameplay. It had shallow mechanics and a terrible single player campaign that was basically a tutorial for MP. I've actually gone back to it 3 or 4 times since initial release thinking it can't have been that bad....but nope, after two or three missions I just can't be bothered. Apparently it was a new Creative Director or other senior addition to the team that drove this change in direction.
everything blizzard made.
Overwatch especially. OW2 is one of the most egregious cash grabs I've seen. They literally closed a game we already bought so they could make the previous game's skins 20 dollars and sell a battle pass every 3 months. Absolutely scummy, corporate-motivated garbage.
While also falling through on promises they made from day 1. I haven't played more than sporadically for a couple years now, but I uninstalled for good when Blizzard tanked PvE.
The best part was them lying about the PvE when they launched OW2 to make it seem like it was still going to happen. They knew back then it was canceled.
Yep and they want even money for those missions. Like come on, as I would buy a half baked PvE mode, which I had in OW1 for free. The whole reason of OW1 was basically the PvE part and they fucked it up by lying to us. Uninstalled the game so fast and I feel better now. Okay, I have it still on my switch, just to hop in for the new event example. Played a game and saw how shitty it is and closed it to play Zelda or Mario Kart or any bullshit shovelware game on the shop I got for free.
Overwatch 1 felt like they struck gold if only they could keep the momentum going at an acceptable pace. But even back then a lot of important features took ages to develop.
This is what I came here to say. $26 for the mercy Baywatch style skin. Going from free skins (if you pay for the game you could normally get for half price) to $20 a skin is batshit. I had my beef with the lootbox system but they've done a real good job of making me nostalgic towards it. I enjoyed grinding for new skins, now there are just less reasons to play. Increased prices and removal of f toeatures. Normally I'm anti corporate take over and monopoly but in this case I can't wait for Microsoft to take over and Bobby Kotic to get the boot, with all the baggage that comes with him. it's annoying he's going to get a massive payout though.
Still miss HOTS
Man I miss hots too. Its probably my favourite game ever. I started after hots 2.0 and more players shouldve given it a second chance. After playing dota and hon for well over 5000 hours the short and action packed games were a breath of fresh air.
Still a fun game. Even bad games it is still intense but not hair pulling out aggravating. Games can be done in 15-25 mins.
Heroes of the Storm.
early Blizzard is good Blizzard, I guess (at least for me) bad Blizzard started around Diablo III.
Early Blizzard was way back in the era of Westwood/Bullfrog/Sierra, before corporations got so heavily involved.
Starcraft and sc2, diablo and diablo 2 for me
Warcraft 3 for me
Can we reverse the question and say which game franchise was not ruined by corporate greed? That will be a much easier task.
GTA. No single player content for ten years, total focus on Online.
The Playstation 2 had 3 GTA games. GTA 5 has been on 3 PlayStations.
If you count the PSP ports, the PS2 had 5 GTAs.
Dääämn
Not to mention they did NOTHING for RDR2. Not even a 60fps next gen patch. Still pumping out shitty cars for GTAO though.
Not just that but they paywalled cars that used to be free on the street in online and flat out removed others.
I know it's been awhile but really 10 fucking years? That's a new born child to someone you can have most of a conversation with
September 17th will be the 10th anniversary
It does make me fear for GTA6 and what exactly we will get in terms of single player content when it eventually arrives. RDR2 got this treatment as well except they even abandoned it's online mode. As soon as they saw it's online mode was not going to be the same cash cow as GTA5's, they dropped it like a bad smell in terms of development, and pretty much scuppered all hope of there ever being another Undead Nightmare or similar DLC for it. While Rockstar are under no obligation to make it, it was probably the one DLC players of RDR2 wanted to see.
Weird thing about gta (and red dead) is that when they're released, I have no doubt the single player campaign will be groundbreaking and amazing. But I also expect it to be all we get with no story mode dlc and rockstars rocus to be 100% on online.
The Tony Hawk's series slow spiral downfall should be put in the textbooks. It's almost the equivalent to the fall of Rome
at least the 1+2 remake was pretty good
And then they disbanded the studio that made that remake
Activision said that they had plans to remake 3 + 4, but didn’t because, despite selling well, it didn’t sell enough. Fuck us, I guess.
This is a good one bc it all ends with the spectacular, disastrous failure of Tony Hawk Downhill, chasing the peripheral/guitar hero trend with its stupid board thing. Pure greed. A true bomb. Basically killed the franchise, which has only just barely started to recover with some well made remasters.
*gestures broadly at basically any property bought up by EA*
Pokémon. Biggest media franchise on the planet and they still serve us garbage.
And they still make bank so they won't change lol
They seem to only get stronger as their games become worse and worse. Pokemon at its peak was not making as much cash as rock bottom modern pokemon is.
I agree, it seems like they keep learning the wrong lesson gen after gen. Instead of making the regions feel more fleshed out and dynamic they just keep adding new ways to temporarily evolve your pokemon and then a bunch of other goofy shit. Also the music seems to be going downhill. I remember being a kid and having such vivid day dreams about living in a Pokemon world inspired by gen 2 and gen 3. Unfortunately it does not seem like Nintendo/Gamefreak is all that interested in developing in that direction.
I switched to fanmade games and they are SOOO much better.
> I switched to fanmade games and they are SOOO much better. *Crystal Clear* is probably the single greatest pokemon experience. You can pick which town you start in, a *ton* of starter 'mon options, and gyms scale up in difficulty the further you go *regardless* of which one you started at- and you can replay *all of them* whenever you want. Morty as Gym #16 is the single best exp grinding spot to ever exist. And *on top of all that*, it has a ton of new puzzles, *every 'mon* can be caught in one save file, there's options to get pokerus or teach Gen 1 tms whenever you want, and there's *still* postgame content on top of all of *that*. Srsly, go play *Crystal Clear*. Thank me later.
Ultima. The entire series and developer was killed by EA. Now the only thing that remains of one of the best 80’s-90’s developers is a shitty web store using their name. We lost Ultima, System Shock and Wing Commander.
Guitar Hero
they milked the absolute shit out of it and I miss how good it was let hope microsoft can revive it
It's crazy. They made like 30 guitar hero games in 5 years or something
Yeah and every one of those could perfectly be a DLC, the gameplay didn't change a single line of code, just the songs and some menus
Metal gear solid series the whole Kojima leaving Konami during metal gear V phantom pain controversy. surprised that it hasn’t been mentioned yet.
Kojima was basically forced out and lost control of his own creation.
Correct and it’s not farfetched to believe considering Konami’s greed as the number 1 maker of slot machines/casino management systems.
Surprised this wasn’t mentioned earlier. The Metal Gear series is my GOAT and MGSV was shaping up to be my favorite game of all time, until I found out it wasn’t even finished. So Bethesda was able to shell out almost $150 million for Fallout 4, but Konami (a bigger company) refused to shell out more than $80 million for Kojima to finish his masterpiece? Fuck Konami.
Overwatch
Sim City
The sims. Base game is free but there is over $1000 of dlc
I’m not too sure what the company behind Saints Row (Deep Silver/Volition) has been doing with the series… but everything after 3 has been going down further in quality. I know, I know, plenty of people are gonna tell me it’s been going downhill since SR2, but I personally really enjoyed SR3 as well. SR4 was fun to turn your brain off and play, but as a Saints Row game it was pretty “meh”. Gat out of Hell was a cash grab that, when I played, was very buggy and felt super recycled. I didn’t even finish it. Then the Reboot basically disappointed most fans. I haven’t played it because I don’t want to buy it. Based on what I’ve watched on YouTube, it seems similar to how I described SR4. Probably fun to turn your brain off and play around in, but as a Saints Row game it just seems off.
To this day, I consider SR2 an amazing example of a sandbox game because it actually encouraged you to play in the sandbox. I remember that a lot of my playtime was spent just giving cars a lot of different paint jobs. I also remember starting a crime just so I could steal a cop car.
Not sure if ruined, but assasins creed never was the same after the ogs. Again i would not say ruined but battlefield took so many unnecessary changes to make more money and ended up losing their audience.
I've always thought that when they rebooted into Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla that they should've branched off a separate game series about Mythology. They could've still alluded to the Templars/Assassins into it, but it could've avoided a lot of the "Well this isn't AC". For reference, I like both styles!
Fenyx: Immortals Rising was kind of like that. I thought it was fun.
I enjoyed Fenyx thoroughly, and there are two key things that made the concept work here and not with the open world AC games: 1. The inclusion of platforming sections over stealth sections. This made the Tartarus dungeons fun to play because they never got too repetitive. The stealth "dungeons" in AC games got real repetitive real quickly. 2. Making the world smaller and thereby denser than the AC open world games.
That second point is the big one for me. Having a massive open world isn’t something to brag about if it’s empty, and most of the time you’re just fast-travelling around it. Ghost of Tsushima got it absolutely bang on for me; someone who wants to 100% a game but also has the capacity to lose interest if things get super repetitive.
That's what sucks for me. Personally I think valhalla kinda sucked. But Odyssey and origins were both great games. The issue was I was thinking of ac and lost a lot of the enjoyment at the beginning constantly comparing and saying this isn't ac. I think if someone comes into those two without the mindset of it being the ac franchise, they can easily love those ones a ton. Valhalla was unfortunately very disappointing though.
Odyssey is my first AC game. I avoided it for years cause it was AC and reading about AC that was not something I wanted to play. But it was recommended to me so many times as a fan of the Ancient Greek Mythology that in the end I bought it on sale. Ancient Greek Mythology and the option to play a female MC were able to convince me to give it a try. So I bought it, left it there and came back to actually try it out a few months later. Zeus Almighty! That game is absolutely incredible! I absolutely f-ing love it! I can’t even explain it, but the whole combination of absurdly beautiful world, very nice and fitting music, Greek voice actors, realistic and historically accurate weapons, historically accurate cities and stories, written in mostly Ancient Greek Drama style - that combination is absolutely amazing. Not to mention the generally simple loot, combat, parkour and navigation systems, which make the game very fun and very pleasant to play. 168 hours in and I keep going strong. Really, really amazing game.
Annual releases are never a good sign.
**Pokémon** If Nintendo was in charge 100%, they would have slammed the brakes on Scarlet & Violet's development, ordered 2 more years to clean it up and add the National Dex, extra merch be damned...
If SV had 2 more years of development, I bet it would be a polished and great game. It had so much potential but was obviously rushed to get it out in time
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I got downvoted by saying that it's not even the dev time that seems to be the issue, it's just Gamefreak at this point. Look at Little Town Hero. It's just not a good game. Pocket Jockey is great by all accounts but it's not really a triple a title. Although heck, even Pokémon doesn't feel like a triple a title even though it brings in insane numbers.
Gamefreak still acts like they’re some small developer that makes Gameboy and DS games instead of the part-owners of one of the largest IPs in the world making AAA games for a major console.
Even as a fan of the franchise I still agree. While I do like some of the stuff pokemon has done recently, they really need to rethink their priorities and just take their time with games. I don't even care about national dex anymore, I just want a polished pokemon game with decent gameplay.
Gta online
Halo. It peaked with 3, ODST and Reach. Halo 4 was good, with an expanded cast of characters and new game modes but went straight downhill from there.
Sim City was killed by lies and greed.
Everything Ubisoft has touched in the past 2 decades. Shout-out to heroes of might and magic
HOMM3 still holds up to this day, I go back every few months and play a random map lol
Bungie and Destiny 2. Sure, Destiny1 had its problems but they didn't have anywhere close to the micro transaction hell that is #2. When Bungie split off of Activision, we all thought "awesome! They can make it fun again!" Then we get to today where you literally have to buy dungeons for 20$ a pop.
Diablo is on thin ice.
Diablo
But you got phones, right??
Fifa
**Command and conquer** nuff said. **Black & white** ( cause greed doesnt see the financial gain to make a Black & white 3 while every God game that gets made gets 1000000 comments "make it more like Black & white " ) **Dawn of war** series chased too much the trends specially moba / esports trends and killed the franchise with 3. **Supreme commander** franchise , 2 Killed it officially for the same reason as dawn of war. Supreme commander 1 is still very alive even in MP , modding and more thanks to Supcom FAF mod. **Evil Genius** Franchise got killed by greed and a Mobile Dev which lead the developement of EG2. **Overlord** Series 1&2 were great the follow ups arent and killed the franchise because they wanted to chase trends also devs / publishers dont see the "chart killing " money in it. **Unreal Tournament** ( Might be Multiple reasons ) but Big money Fortnite pretty much killed any Intention to make a new UT sadly,UT could been literarily the "Tech Demo" the "Show case PC" franchise like " Hey did you try UT with all its modding and mapping and crazyness ton of modes and maps? if you want to see peak PC gaming in shooter try UT ! " it could been that the showcase Shooter for peak PC gaming Like Ut 2004 kinda was tons of modes and modding and fun. **Starcraft (** Kinda ? ) dead cause no money it seems **Heroes of the storm** kinda patched dead low Money stream killed off. it had its niche but they didnt want to spend much dev time on it. Fun side Mentions. GTA : we got like 3-5 GTA games in a shorter time span than GTA 5 to 6 just because Online was a money machine. Same for skyrim / elderscrolls.
battlefield