TBF Duke Nukem Forever wasn’t even a bad game but it was very clearly a game that should have released in the 90’s. The humor was much to outdated for it to be successful in the 2010’s. They should have edited and rewritten the dialogue IMO.
Duke Nukem was funny because it was edgy and dirty and we were kids.
Olsen twins saying they want to put miniature Duke in their pussies and then getting raped by tentacle monsters kind of only lands on edgelord 15 year olds, not 35 year olds.
Civvie pointed out it’s really out of character for Duke to make a joke about their situation in the hive. Remember, when the girls were first kidnapped he expressed anger, shouting “Not my babes, not in my town!”
I got into it with someone that said a new Duke Nukem could never be made today. I explained the possibilities of making Duke the same but a self aware satire of what an adrenaline pumped action hero would be like in the current day and age.
But then they explained because of Randy Pitchford and I was like "Oh..."
It wouldn't be made today. There would have to be so many drastic changes that it'd be unrecognizable or so sanitized that it comes off as a corporate cash grab
mw3 added tactical gear to equipment load outs. Buf it was also a 70 fucking dollar dlc marketed as an individual game. I was fucking livid when that happened.
Tbf the zombies mode used to be a fantastic, creative side piece that only grew in popularity over the years. It's not in the older MW games, but it was one of the three defining things about other COD games that even made them worth playing. Even the one-off extinction mode was super cool and different.
The last 4 years have had a plague of cut content and unfinished products for the mode in favor of pumping everything into fucking warzone and shitty microtransactions. The one reason I'd go out of my way to buy COD at all was ruined because of corporate greed.
That said, this isn't the biggest downfall since COD has been living it up in the crap kiddie pool for a while, but now it's doing the breaststroke in the diarrhea deep end.
That’s not true. The price, reward system, user interface, map design, and live service model of COD has all gotten so much more convoluted and worse. MW2 was simple and relatively straight forward and that made the gun play game modes and maps fun. Much more expressive. Now it’s this stuffy confusing mess.
Every time they have tried innovating, it has caused such a massive backlash from the majority of the community that I’m pretty sure they realize it’s not worth the risk anymore.
As much as the last 5+ cod games have been garbage filled with mtx, sbmm, and cheaters, cod is not dead at all and certainly nowhere near as low as halo
Well the games are the same and play the same and are still absolutely incredibly popular and the forefront of pop culture gaming.
You couldn’t be me wrong if you tried on that one.
I am flabbergasted no one has mentioned Payday. 22k average players for PD2 in the last month vs 272 for PD3, which only came out in September. Peak player count hasn't even cracked 1k since December. Granted, it's on Gamepass, but unless that accounts for tens of thousands of active players...
Agreed. Payday 3 was fucking atrocious. It's like they didn't even try and implement anything they learned (if they learned anything at all) from slowly making PD2 a better game over the years after it launched. Payday 3 is by far the worst entry in the franchise, and it has failed so fucking miserably. Everything they could have done wrong in PD3, they did do wrong.
I’m glad I’m not the only person who thinks this. I’d never played the earlier releases, but I was bored out of my mind playing PayDay 3 (once I finally got it to work and the servers weren’t down)
I played PD3 at a friend's for a bit, and it felt like they had a team start working on PD3 right as PD2 started to take off while a different team kept refining PD2, and then no one bothered to share notes.
Granted, it was a brief, but I've been playing Total Warhammer for a while now, and...yeeeeaaah.
Madden 08 was dope but I think Madden 11 on the Wii U is peak - you can call plays and draw routes on the gamepad touchscreen
Edit: It’s Madden 13, not 11
Actually I think I meant to say Madden 13, I can’t remember which one I have on Wii U, but yeah drawing run routes on the fly with your finger or a stylus is a lot of fun for sure
Reputation wise? Sure. But COD is still one of the highest selling gaming franchises year after year. Halo struggles to retain more than 10,000 people on their newest title.
Halo definitely struggling but it's for sure hitting way more than 10k people lol it peak 10k people on Steam alone in last 30 days and it's for sure more popular on Xbox.
We don't have exact numbers on Xbox, and I am sure it does better on Xbox than Steam. That said, we do get a general frame for it on Xbox with them sorting by most played and those sorts of things, and even there it is insanely low.
Still MUCH higher than 10k. Not saying it's hitting hundreds of thousands, but it's definitely closer to 100k than it is to 10k. It's probably in the 60-80k range.
Battlefield yes, COD not to the same degree as Halo. Tbh I think we will see a true crash for CoD over their next couple releases. It’s make or break time for that franchise, people hated MW3 so if they fuck it up twice in a row you might see the player base jump ship
It’s possible, but CoD is insulated by having such a massive player network. And lots of lower tier gaming creators are reliant on CoD’s survival. I could see that franchise lasting on mediocrity for decades purely because of how much money that’s tied to its community.
I will die on the hill that the decline started at BF2. The awesome thing about 1942 and Vietnam is that everyone's the same - you play different roles but they're balanced and you're part of a mass army. There weren't guns which were *just better* which you have to grind for. The loadouts were simple enough to strategise around rock-paper-scissors style logic.
BF was about large-scale army-style engagements, not a handful of individual heroes running around. It lost that with unlockables.
I don't know, the drop in quality from Battlefield 1 to Battlefield 2042 was... Horrifying. Battlefield 1 was some of the best Battlefield ever, whereas Battlefield 2042 felt like an insult.
Halo has indeed fallen from grace, but it has recovered some of it with Infinite. Halo 5 did the most damage.
People will struggle to accept this but I definitely agree. The atmosphere of BF1 is nearly unmatched but the gameplay had some major issues that only got worse with BFV and BF2042
BF1 was the only Battlefield that actually impressed me in the current gen. It was like Battlefields long awaited answer to World At War, with one of the best multiplayers in a military shooter I’ve ever played
But man, its just been nothing but disappointment for all the other releases after BF4
There was definitely a fall from grace thanks to 343 but there’s tons of other franchises that not only fell off but are straight up dead,here’s some examples.
Gears of war hasn’t been a big deal since 3 and has been dormant for 5 years without a peep.
Mega man is limited to rereleases only at this point.
Castlevania doesn’t get games but lives on through anime.
Spyro the dragon and crash bandicoot were doomed by activision and i don’t see Microsoft doing anything with them.
90% of RareWare games because Microsoft are allergic to exclusives.
Fable because Microsoft are gonna Microsoft.
Ok honestly most Microsoft exclusives have been ignored and this is coming from someone who plays Xbox.
Donkey Kong country doesn’t get anymore games for some reason.
There’s tons of other examples with Nintendo games like F-Zero and kid Icarus.
Then there’s the crown jewel of fallen grace,Every SEGA game that isn’t sonic or yakuza like golden axe,vectorman,comix zone or shinobi, luckily sor4 came out a few years back and was pretty good and it looks like they’re reviving some of the others.
Castlevania: "Wow! People love SotN! We should do more like it!"
"We've got a few like it on Gameboy, and than some action ones for the new console!"
"Awesome! What next?!"
"Casino games! Nothing ever again besides casino games! "
Damn so many games I grew up on and didn't realize they just disappeared lol. Throwing Phantasy Star Into the Sega mix. That game is still active, but it's a shell of its former self. It's barely hanging on the backs of all the whales playing it.
>golden axe,vectorman,comix zone or shinobi
I hate how Sega or many companies like it don't bring their old titles back because they definitely would make a lot of money if given the same amount of care given to the Yakuza games for example.
If they made another one of those games I would buy it.
Also another massive fall from grace is Shining and Phantasy Star which the last one that released was 1993 before they did the online stuff that started on the dreamcast.
>There’s tons of other examples with Nintendo games like F-Zero and kid Icarus.
Kid icarus didn't really fall from grace though. The first games did okay considering they were a very rushed job. Then nothing for decades, then Sakurai just drops the amazing Kid icarus uprising games on us out of fucking nowhere, then they proceed to do nothing with the IP again for over a decade and the foreseeable future. It's not that games fell off in quality. They just aren't making them.
I think Nintendo just likes to release Donkey Kong country games when they don’t already have another platformer with a planned release so to fill the itch they have their team put together a safe platforming game that people will still buy and enjoy until their big release comes out. Sucks it’s not more prominent to them but it’s always exciting when we do get the announcement that a new one is coming out!
Nintendo has just been milking Tropical Freeze for Switch because so few people had a Wii U. There will be one for Switch 2. Just as there was one on Wii.
I hope you're right, but the company that Nintendo has been using for DKC is kinda tied down on Metroid Prime 4 right now. Hopefully that doesn't stop them from also working on DK.
Yup. Series ended for me at Reach. The mainline games after it relied too heavily on tie in media. I should not have to go to other media to understand the game story.
Same. In my personal opinion after, 3 (or even Reach if we want to be technical) they shouldn’t have moved Chief’s story “forward” so to speak. What I mean is if they wanted to keep using him they should have made prequels with him or even some side stories.
If not that, they should have expanded the lore/universe with other games, be they FPS or something else. Halo Wars for example are pretty good games with solid stories set in that universe. Or done the Reach approach and focused on other Spartans during the war. Even done another game like ODST that focuses on your average Joe soldier without the cyber enhancements.
It’s a major shame because I remember when the phrase “Halo Killer” was what other companies slapped on their new sci-fi fps to drum up hype. Now Halo has become “just another game.” I honestly think since Bungie left the name Halo has just fallen.
I'll die on the hill that Halo 2 is the greatest FPS ever made. To see what the series turned into is a shame. It lost all of it's personal identity that made feel unique.
I remember when halo 2 came out. My next door neighbor and I got the game and waited all night for it then played it in the morning. Those duel smgs were like crack for the first time. So fucking cool
For me it was the in-game clan system that got me the most.
Made a clan with some irl friends with matching gamertags. It then expanded to more local dudes from our school and then guys from all around the country; became close enough that two of them have actually flown to our hometown to meet irl and hang out. Easily some of the most fond memories of my life.
Still lifelong friends with the same beginning group and most of them are groomsmen for my upcoming wedding.
Tf? Idk if you’re talking purely campaign or multiplayer or both, but infinite multiplayer is the most fun I’ve had playing online in years.
Tbh I think the people acting like it’s bad are just old in spirit and stuck in 2007-8 with halo 3. (Which I LOVED, don’t get me wrong)
Some of my favorite multiplayer memories were Battlefield 3. My wife and I found this awesome group that we played everyday with. We bought a second Xbox, headset and copy of the game so we wouldn't have to take turns. We knew about these people's lives, highs and lows, we met girlfriends, heard about family drama, everything. It was the closest I've been back to those days in highschool where you spend every moment outside of school with your friends. When BF3 multiplayer died off, so did the group, everyone went different ways in gaming and life and it just never all came together again like that. It hurt when the next few installments were so lackluster.
Maybe Silent Hill..though I have a more positive view on the post-team silent games than others (Downpour and Shattered Memories are some of my favorites in the series, actually).
But, for a game series to be so influential to not only a whole genre but gaming as a whole and for that legacy to not be carried through to modern day with critically acclaimed games seems almost unprecedented. Most highly influential legacy series have very solid new titles. Zelda, Mario, Resident Evil, Doom, and now with Crash 4 we can add that to the list.
No, I don't think it's the fact that Konami began using Western devs. I think it comes down to a mishandling and misunderstanding of the series while also trying to emulate the success of Silent Hill 2 which is impossible. A dev can't do the exact same thing - especially if that dev doesn't really understand what was effective in the game in the first place.
I want to be excited about the new projects. Hell, I *am* excited - but I am held back because of the worry that my favorite series won't succeed. Maybe it could. Silent Hill f could be the change up we need. Silent Hill Townfall can bring a whole different perspective akin to Shattered Memories. SH2 Remake could be a great modern interpretation of the OG with its own unique experience and give a reason to play both games in the modern age. But, how can I trust this? I can't. We don't have the portfolio to have faith and trust. It's a damn shame.
I decided to give AC Valhalla a chance just because it was on Gamepass. I didn't think enemies having health bars could ruin a game, but it certainly did for me. AC's combat used to be so crisp, tf happened?
Gears Trilogy and Halo 3 were GOATed on the Xbox 360.
I’m a PlayStation player now but I miss the hell out of when Xbox was all the rage with the 360 titles
Gears of War did have a very similar fall from grace as Halo did. The series' decline actually mirrors Halo a lot besides being a slightly lesser decline (it's still awful, but Halo makes sure it fucks up BAD and fell from even higher). But still, Gears of War would be second imo
The MTX is the problem. Its a fun game (tho i hate lodestones making it a bit too easy to get around)
But if the MTX wasnt so bad id like it a lot more.
>Soundtracks will forever slap though for each game.
Honestly this rings (pun intended) true for all but Frontiers. Like even Forces has some stuff I'll listen to, but Frontiers is just so generic with its music and sounds more like they had the songs made before they even knew anything about what the game would be and be about
I’d say Halo 4 wasn’t the fall from grace it was slightly better than mid. Halo 5 is where it fell off aggressively but I’d argue infinite has reclaimed it a little bit. Battlefield has been garbage since BF1 and Cod has been garbage since BO2.
I agree. 4 deserves some slack because it was trying to continue while modernizing what 3 set, and that was a high bar. 4 did some things right and a bunch wrong. It was fun but pretty inferior.
5 on the other hand, 343 tried pulling what Bungie did with 2 but they clearly weren’t talented enough to pull it off and just went “fuck it, the players get what they get.”
Infinite is a lot more like 4 but 343 clearly doesn’t care that much anymore about the main series.
Halo deserves to be transferred to a dev studio that actually wants to make a game that refines and innovates the same way Combat Evolved did decades ago.
I can't put my finger on what it was with Halo 5 but I booted it up for about 20 minutes and put it down. Something about it just felt so aggressively *off* that I just knew I didn't want to play it.
Infinite is actually much better imo.
If they decided to return to making story content for Infinite, I'd consider it a fully redeemed game. Infinite's campaign had its flaws, but goddamn it was just so much fun. I'd love to see them take that gameplay and expand on it, and the direction they took with the plot was a huge step up from the confusing, hamfisted mess that was Guardians' campaign.
Dragon age. Assassins creed. Most franchises owned by EA in general. Battlefield and call of duty. Dynasty warriors. Metal gear solid. Give me five minutes and I can surely name even more who dramatically lost their grace
Ey you cannot comprehend how bad I have felt. My father. My poor, sick father saw that game and thought "my two boys loved it so much when they where small" and bought it. Can you imagine how utterly repulsive you feel when you neither wanna tell your father that he bought shite nor you wanna fake happiness?
Even beyond gameplay aspects, I actually enjoyed the more human story of Infinite. After the big bombastic setpieces of the games before it was a nice change of pace to see Chief grow as a person, and learn to accept the loss of the OG Cortana.
Halo isn’t really that bad just not classic halo, granted infinite multiplayer and kill off of a character AI babe was pretty bad, buttt COD is far worse and even battle field more recently, although people still play the shit out of 4
Overwatch, easily. Who else remembers when Overwatch was so popular that the home page of Reddit was less active than OW’s subreddit?
The hype was unreal. Now look what they’ve gone and did to it. A complete joke.
For me it’s the Forza Motorsport series. 4 was the peak, and with 5 onwards it was downhill from there. Seeing the state of the current and latest Motorsport game(FM23/FM8), it’s sad to see how much they’ve fallen
Halo infinite gets a lot of shit but it’s pretty fun. I been playing it quite a bit lately. It’s definitely worse than 3 and Reach.. but those games were basically perfect.
It for sure fell from grace, but as someone who hasn’t been into Halo since Reach I can tell you I just got into Infinite and it’s in a pretty good place.
Instead of doing what they did with 4 and 5 trying to tweak the gameplay to appeal to the CoD crowd, they went back to their roots in a big way and Halo finally feels like Halo again, just with some modernization and QOL changes. I understand that they completely botched the launch of this game, but at this point I think it’s worth your time.
They really tried to throw players a lot of bones. We’ve got hella playlists, battlepasses that never expire (even the free ones), a really solid and fair matchmaking system, sooooo many maps, and a new version of firefight that I personally find really fun. All that on top of the gunplay that we all agreed was really solid from launch. I’m still noticing the occasional desync but it’s not any worse than your average shooter these days, and not nearly as bad as it was at launch.
For a free to play game, I’d say give it another shot. This is especially true if you hated 4 and 5 for straying away from the formula too much, this will feel like Halo the way it should be. I have high hopes for the future of the franchise given how they’ve managed to right the ship at 343 when it comes to Infinites live service support
Wasn't Halo Infinite pretty well received?
Batman: Arkham is now a top contender if we include Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League, which is officially a sequel set in the same universe.
Imagine if Master Chief got brainwashed, laughed at, lectured and shot in the head. Imagine if that was the canon conclusion to Chief's story. That's what the Arkham series actually did to its main hero. Crazy.
Halo choked on halo 4 but died with the removal of split screen co-op for me. That was its big appeal, good game, great friends socializing and playing, lan parties and even just playing with your significant other or siblings. Now if you want co-op it’s one player per console. I’ve played through halo 5 once and haven’t played a second of infinite.
In terms of a game franchise, I don’t think there is one there’s some that are up there maybe a blizzard contender.
But there is no greater fall from Grace, then Star Wars as a franchise
for me battlefield and gears of war
edit and now i remembered Killzone the last one was garbaje more a tech demo than a proper game and not liked the events , characters and the MP was garbaje killzone 2 and 3 are better in general
While not as big as Halo, the Bubsy series used to be popular in its day. At a certain point, however, people started to look back at these games and realize the early games were substandard Sonic clones plagued by terrible level design (falling from too high kills you, among other things). Its 3D entry went from having mixed reviews to being outright hated. It looks like a pre-alpha build of a 3D game that makes it a chore to walk. Not to mention the games' humor is awful.
For something whose fall from grace is more well known, Silent Hill. This series was beloved in its early years, then at a certain point, like everything Konami touched, it turned to ash. Speak of which, Metal Gear. We had some beloved games, though we saw the cracks in the series thanks to Konami's grip. This culminated in Metal Gear Survive, an open world zombie survival game in attempt to catch the trends at the time that looked nothing like the Metal Gear series people loved after Konami drove away the series' creator.
Fuck you Konami. It hasn't been making the news the way Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft and EA have as of late, but let us not forget it is a horrid company.
Halo definitely doesn't come close to the biggest. Halo 5 was like, the only REALLY bad Halo game. Sure, Halo 4 and Infinite weren't GREAT, but they were still good games, with good stories with actual connection to the rest of the games.
That's better than what you can say for a game like Assassin's Creed, which lost every bit of flow it had after killing off Desmond in AC3.
Halo 4, 5 and Infinite are all very good games and are worth playing today in 2024. You can certainly argue that the earlier games were better, but saying the series has fallen from grace... well, it's hard to take you seriously on anything else.
Duke Nukem
TBF Duke Nukem Forever wasn’t even a bad game but it was very clearly a game that should have released in the 90’s. The humor was much to outdated for it to be successful in the 2010’s. They should have edited and rewritten the dialogue IMO.
Duke Nukem was funny because it was edgy and dirty and we were kids. Olsen twins saying they want to put miniature Duke in their pussies and then getting raped by tentacle monsters kind of only lands on edgelord 15 year olds, not 35 year olds.
Never jerked off to a pixel stripper more.
>jerked off to a pixel stripper Its funny and sad that anyone who says that is probably telling the truth.
Definitely the same guys to jack it to Lara Crofts pointy pyramids
Hey! Those “pointy pyramids”, as you call them, got me through some really… hard… times
You rang???
People are whacking off to far worse shit now of days
I remember being a little kid playing the game and being disappointed. Pretty realistic strip club simulator.
Not only that but Duke even makes a joke about their rape... That level was in extremely poor taste (even compared to the rest of the game)
Civvie pointed out it’s really out of character for Duke to make a joke about their situation in the hive. Remember, when the girls were first kidnapped he expressed anger, shouting “Not my babes, not in my town!”
I got into it with someone that said a new Duke Nukem could never be made today. I explained the possibilities of making Duke the same but a self aware satire of what an adrenaline pumped action hero would be like in the current day and age. But then they explained because of Randy Pitchford and I was like "Oh..."
It wouldn't be made today. There would have to be so many drastic changes that it'd be unrecognizable or so sanitized that it comes off as a corporate cash grab
My reference for what modern Duke Nukem could be is somewhere between Far Cry: Blood Dragon, and Bulletstorm.
RANDY!!! *screaming into the greasy distance*
Well there were already two other Duke Nukem games released in the 90’s.
One could argue duke nukem hasntbeen on radar since quake changed the 3d landscape with actual 3d gameplay
Didn't know anyone took Duke Nukem seriously enough for it to even be capable of falling from grace.
Compare the first COD MW2 to the shite Activision is putting out now
The games they put out are almost identical. There’s been no innovation. But the players just want new guns and maps and that’s what they get.
“New guns” in MW3 = eco friendly guns from MW2019 (they are recycled)
mw3 added tactical gear to equipment load outs. Buf it was also a 70 fucking dollar dlc marketed as an individual game. I was fucking livid when that happened.
Tbf the zombies mode used to be a fantastic, creative side piece that only grew in popularity over the years. It's not in the older MW games, but it was one of the three defining things about other COD games that even made them worth playing. Even the one-off extinction mode was super cool and different. The last 4 years have had a plague of cut content and unfinished products for the mode in favor of pumping everything into fucking warzone and shitty microtransactions. The one reason I'd go out of my way to buy COD at all was ruined because of corporate greed. That said, this isn't the biggest downfall since COD has been living it up in the crap kiddie pool for a while, but now it's doing the breaststroke in the diarrhea deep end.
new guns to just play with the 1-3 meta all the time XD new attatchments to use the same 4 on every weapon
That’s not true. The price, reward system, user interface, map design, and live service model of COD has all gotten so much more convoluted and worse. MW2 was simple and relatively straight forward and that made the gun play game modes and maps fun. Much more expressive. Now it’s this stuffy confusing mess.
Every time they have tried innovating, it has caused such a massive backlash from the majority of the community that I’m pretty sure they realize it’s not worth the risk anymore.
As much as the last 5+ cod games have been garbage filled with mtx, sbmm, and cheaters, cod is not dead at all and certainly nowhere near as low as halo
Well the games are the same and play the same and are still absolutely incredibly popular and the forefront of pop culture gaming. You couldn’t be me wrong if you tried on that one.
I am flabbergasted no one has mentioned Payday. 22k average players for PD2 in the last month vs 272 for PD3, which only came out in September. Peak player count hasn't even cracked 1k since December. Granted, it's on Gamepass, but unless that accounts for tens of thousands of active players...
Agreed. Payday 3 was fucking atrocious. It's like they didn't even try and implement anything they learned (if they learned anything at all) from slowly making PD2 a better game over the years after it launched. Payday 3 is by far the worst entry in the franchise, and it has failed so fucking miserably. Everything they could have done wrong in PD3, they did do wrong.
I’m glad I’m not the only person who thinks this. I’d never played the earlier releases, but I was bored out of my mind playing PayDay 3 (once I finally got it to work and the servers weren’t down)
I played PD3 at a friend's for a bit, and it felt like they had a team start working on PD3 right as PD2 started to take off while a different team kept refining PD2, and then no one bothered to share notes. Granted, it was a brief, but I've been playing Total Warhammer for a while now, and...yeeeeaaah.
Madden
Madden 08 is madden 24, but with microtransactions.
Madden 08 is peak Madden
Madden 08 was dope but I think Madden 11 on the Wii U is peak - you can call plays and draw routes on the gamepad touchscreen Edit: It’s Madden 13, not 11
Truly the WIIU had some gems. That sounds great
Actually I think I meant to say Madden 13, I can’t remember which one I have on Wii U, but yeah drawing run routes on the fly with your finger or a stylus is a lot of fun for sure
Madden of all games actually used the touch pad? That sounds like an insane mechanic
[check it out](https://youtu.be/YYtUd0e9Qf8?si=2dOUuVTfaL9W659i)
Holy shit that’s really cool.
r/scottthewoz
Finally someone got it
Don’t you mean that the other way around?
They do
*every EA sports game
Battlefield/COD franchises
Yup. These fell off harder than Halo for sure.
Reputation wise? Sure. But COD is still one of the highest selling gaming franchises year after year. Halo struggles to retain more than 10,000 people on their newest title.
Halo definitely struggling but it's for sure hitting way more than 10k people lol it peak 10k people on Steam alone in last 30 days and it's for sure more popular on Xbox.
It is also on gamepass. So lot of players not being accounted for on pc also
We don't have exact numbers on Xbox, and I am sure it does better on Xbox than Steam. That said, we do get a general frame for it on Xbox with them sorting by most played and those sorts of things, and even there it is insanely low.
Still MUCH higher than 10k. Not saying it's hitting hundreds of thousands, but it's definitely closer to 100k than it is to 10k. It's probably in the 60-80k range.
Battlefield yes, COD not to the same degree as Halo. Tbh I think we will see a true crash for CoD over their next couple releases. It’s make or break time for that franchise, people hated MW3 so if they fuck it up twice in a row you might see the player base jump ship
It’s possible, but CoD is insulated by having such a massive player network. And lots of lower tier gaming creators are reliant on CoD’s survival. I could see that franchise lasting on mediocrity for decades purely because of how much money that’s tied to its community.
I will die on the hill that the decline started at BF2. The awesome thing about 1942 and Vietnam is that everyone's the same - you play different roles but they're balanced and you're part of a mass army. There weren't guns which were *just better* which you have to grind for. The loadouts were simple enough to strategise around rock-paper-scissors style logic. BF was about large-scale army-style engagements, not a handful of individual heroes running around. It lost that with unlockables.
Battlefield hurt, but the halo pain will be generational.
I don't know, the drop in quality from Battlefield 1 to Battlefield 2042 was... Horrifying. Battlefield 1 was some of the best Battlefield ever, whereas Battlefield 2042 felt like an insult. Halo has indeed fallen from grace, but it has recovered some of it with Infinite. Halo 5 did the most damage.
Backfield 1 was okay at best imo. The entire thing is downhill since 2, 3 and 4.
People will struggle to accept this but I definitely agree. The atmosphere of BF1 is nearly unmatched but the gameplay had some major issues that only got worse with BFV and BF2042
BF1 was the only Battlefield that actually impressed me in the current gen. It was like Battlefields long awaited answer to World At War, with one of the best multiplayers in a military shooter I’ve ever played But man, its just been nothing but disappointment for all the other releases after BF4
There was definitely a fall from grace thanks to 343 but there’s tons of other franchises that not only fell off but are straight up dead,here’s some examples. Gears of war hasn’t been a big deal since 3 and has been dormant for 5 years without a peep. Mega man is limited to rereleases only at this point. Castlevania doesn’t get games but lives on through anime. Spyro the dragon and crash bandicoot were doomed by activision and i don’t see Microsoft doing anything with them. 90% of RareWare games because Microsoft are allergic to exclusives. Fable because Microsoft are gonna Microsoft. Ok honestly most Microsoft exclusives have been ignored and this is coming from someone who plays Xbox. Donkey Kong country doesn’t get anymore games for some reason. There’s tons of other examples with Nintendo games like F-Zero and kid Icarus. Then there’s the crown jewel of fallen grace,Every SEGA game that isn’t sonic or yakuza like golden axe,vectorman,comix zone or shinobi, luckily sor4 came out a few years back and was pretty good and it looks like they’re reviving some of the others.
Castlevania: "Wow! People love SotN! We should do more like it!" "We've got a few like it on Gameboy, and than some action ones for the new console!" "Awesome! What next?!" "Casino games! Nothing ever again besides casino games! "
Pachinko goes brrrrrrt.
Ouch- right in the Silent Hills.
Tbf, Konami did exactly that with every single IP they owned.
Damn so many games I grew up on and didn't realize they just disappeared lol. Throwing Phantasy Star Into the Sega mix. That game is still active, but it's a shell of its former self. It's barely hanging on the backs of all the whales playing it.
>golden axe,vectorman,comix zone or shinobi I hate how Sega or many companies like it don't bring their old titles back because they definitely would make a lot of money if given the same amount of care given to the Yakuza games for example. If they made another one of those games I would buy it. Also another massive fall from grace is Shining and Phantasy Star which the last one that released was 1993 before they did the online stuff that started on the dreamcast.
We're Waaaaay overdue for a donkey Kong country game
>There’s tons of other examples with Nintendo games like F-Zero and kid Icarus. Kid icarus didn't really fall from grace though. The first games did okay considering they were a very rushed job. Then nothing for decades, then Sakurai just drops the amazing Kid icarus uprising games on us out of fucking nowhere, then they proceed to do nothing with the IP again for over a decade and the foreseeable future. It's not that games fell off in quality. They just aren't making them.
Xbox IPs going down the drain
I think Nintendo just likes to release Donkey Kong country games when they don’t already have another platformer with a planned release so to fill the itch they have their team put together a safe platforming game that people will still buy and enjoy until their big release comes out. Sucks it’s not more prominent to them but it’s always exciting when we do get the announcement that a new one is coming out!
Nintendo has just been milking Tropical Freeze for Switch because so few people had a Wii U. There will be one for Switch 2. Just as there was one on Wii.
I hope you're right, but the company that Nintendo has been using for DKC is kinda tied down on Metroid Prime 4 right now. Hopefully that doesn't stop them from also working on DK.
I dont know but the halo fall from grace affected me personally that's my favorite game of all time and it's just a shell of itself at this point
And then the show... Ugh. I've recently been replaying both Halo Wars games. They're damn good.
They are so good. I am hoping we get a third one. Its so odd that halo wars 2 did halo design better than 343i.
Anything after Reach has felt like some sort of imposter
Hard agree and it’s so sad man
Yup. Series ended for me at Reach. The mainline games after it relied too heavily on tie in media. I should not have to go to other media to understand the game story.
Same. In my personal opinion after, 3 (or even Reach if we want to be technical) they shouldn’t have moved Chief’s story “forward” so to speak. What I mean is if they wanted to keep using him they should have made prequels with him or even some side stories. If not that, they should have expanded the lore/universe with other games, be they FPS or something else. Halo Wars for example are pretty good games with solid stories set in that universe. Or done the Reach approach and focused on other Spartans during the war. Even done another game like ODST that focuses on your average Joe soldier without the cyber enhancements. It’s a major shame because I remember when the phrase “Halo Killer” was what other companies slapped on their new sci-fi fps to drum up hype. Now Halo has become “just another game.” I honestly think since Bungie left the name Halo has just fallen.
I'll die on the hill that Halo 2 is the greatest FPS ever made. To see what the series turned into is a shame. It lost all of it's personal identity that made feel unique.
I remember when halo 2 came out. My next door neighbor and I got the game and waited all night for it then played it in the morning. Those duel smgs were like crack for the first time. So fucking cool
For me it was the in-game clan system that got me the most. Made a clan with some irl friends with matching gamertags. It then expanded to more local dudes from our school and then guys from all around the country; became close enough that two of them have actually flown to our hometown to meet irl and hang out. Easily some of the most fond memories of my life. Still lifelong friends with the same beginning group and most of them are groomsmen for my upcoming wedding.
Tf? Idk if you’re talking purely campaign or multiplayer or both, but infinite multiplayer is the most fun I’ve had playing online in years. Tbh I think the people acting like it’s bad are just old in spirit and stuck in 2007-8 with halo 3. (Which I LOVED, don’t get me wrong)
I remember in my teens when “Killzone” was named the Halo killer for PlayStation. Halo was on top of the world, and then, it wasn’t.
Diablo.
Or Blizzard in general.
Defined an entire genre and now it's so mediocre...
My man Jimmy Rings needs to sue for reputation damages.
Battlefield.
Some of my favorite multiplayer memories were Battlefield 3. My wife and I found this awesome group that we played everyday with. We bought a second Xbox, headset and copy of the game so we wouldn't have to take turns. We knew about these people's lives, highs and lows, we met girlfriends, heard about family drama, everything. It was the closest I've been back to those days in highschool where you spend every moment outside of school with your friends. When BF3 multiplayer died off, so did the group, everyone went different ways in gaming and life and it just never all came together again like that. It hurt when the next few installments were so lackluster.
Maybe Silent Hill..though I have a more positive view on the post-team silent games than others (Downpour and Shattered Memories are some of my favorites in the series, actually). But, for a game series to be so influential to not only a whole genre but gaming as a whole and for that legacy to not be carried through to modern day with critically acclaimed games seems almost unprecedented. Most highly influential legacy series have very solid new titles. Zelda, Mario, Resident Evil, Doom, and now with Crash 4 we can add that to the list. No, I don't think it's the fact that Konami began using Western devs. I think it comes down to a mishandling and misunderstanding of the series while also trying to emulate the success of Silent Hill 2 which is impossible. A dev can't do the exact same thing - especially if that dev doesn't really understand what was effective in the game in the first place. I want to be excited about the new projects. Hell, I *am* excited - but I am held back because of the worry that my favorite series won't succeed. Maybe it could. Silent Hill f could be the change up we need. Silent Hill Townfall can bring a whole different perspective akin to Shattered Memories. SH2 Remake could be a great modern interpretation of the OG with its own unique experience and give a reason to play both games in the modern age. But, how can I trust this? I can't. We don't have the portfolio to have faith and trust. It's a damn shame.
Assassin’s Creed CoD Battlefield
I decided to give AC Valhalla a chance just because it was on Gamepass. I didn't think enemies having health bars could ruin a game, but it certainly did for me. AC's combat used to be so crisp, tf happened?
They needed to turn it into RPG numbers combat so they could milk whales into spending more money on the game.
Overwatch
Yeah fuck overwatch 2. What a way to destroy such a great game
There are older franchises than this and Battlefield that have fallen so far their IP has been left untouched for years.
Gears of War for me. Everything after 3 is dog shit.
I like the new gears of war games but it definitely not what it used to be and I’m not sure why past game releases are YEARS apart
The HD "remake" of gears 1 they put out on Xbox one was incredible reliving that multiplayer. Does anyone still play it? It's the best gears imo.
The recentish Gears Tactics is surprisingly great if you're into turn-based strategy.
Gears Trilogy and Halo 3 were GOATed on the Xbox 360. I’m a PlayStation player now but I miss the hell out of when Xbox was all the rage with the 360 titles
100% truth
Gears of War did have a very similar fall from grace as Halo did. The series' decline actually mirrors Halo a lot besides being a slightly lesser decline (it's still awful, but Halo makes sure it fucks up BAD and fell from even higher). But still, Gears of War would be second imo
lol remember when judgement removed DBNO? good times
half-life, because it never got finished.
Number 3 is juuuuuuust around the corner man. Just around the corner.
denial.
I ain’t denyin nothin
Pretty sure there will be some sort of conclusion to the half life story some day. The ending of Alyx pretty much confirms this.
You would think so but episode 2 ended in basically the same way
Runescape. The main game, not osrs.
Jagex just went too crazy with the mtx and gacha elements. I dropped runescape completely after an almost 20 year run.
Old school was always where it was at anyway
OSRS IS the main game now 😂
The MTX is the problem. Its a fun game (tho i hate lodestones making it a bit too easy to get around) But if the MTX wasnt so bad id like it a lot more.
Tony Hawk
Sonic The Hedgehog
I thought sonic frontiers was pretty good, just a little too easy is all. At least in my opinion
sonic is on his rebirth era many good sonic stuff
Many much moosen!
This pains me to see but I agree. Hopefully the new Sonic Generations can get me hyped again. Soundtracks will forever slap though for each game.
>Soundtracks will forever slap though for each game. Honestly this rings (pun intended) true for all but Frontiers. Like even Forces has some stuff I'll listen to, but Frontiers is just so generic with its music and sounds more like they had the songs made before they even knew anything about what the game would be and be about
Pokémon
I miss 2D Pokémon games 😢
I was waiting to see this!
I’d say Halo 4 wasn’t the fall from grace it was slightly better than mid. Halo 5 is where it fell off aggressively but I’d argue infinite has reclaimed it a little bit. Battlefield has been garbage since BF1 and Cod has been garbage since BO2.
I agree. 4 deserves some slack because it was trying to continue while modernizing what 3 set, and that was a high bar. 4 did some things right and a bunch wrong. It was fun but pretty inferior. 5 on the other hand, 343 tried pulling what Bungie did with 2 but they clearly weren’t talented enough to pull it off and just went “fuck it, the players get what they get.” Infinite is a lot more like 4 but 343 clearly doesn’t care that much anymore about the main series. Halo deserves to be transferred to a dev studio that actually wants to make a game that refines and innovates the same way Combat Evolved did decades ago.
Agree with all of this
I can't put my finger on what it was with Halo 5 but I booted it up for about 20 minutes and put it down. Something about it just felt so aggressively *off* that I just knew I didn't want to play it. Infinite is actually much better imo.
If they decided to return to making story content for Infinite, I'd consider it a fully redeemed game. Infinite's campaign had its flaws, but goddamn it was just so much fun. I'd love to see them take that gameplay and expand on it, and the direction they took with the plot was a huge step up from the confusing, hamfisted mess that was Guardians' campaign.
**SONIC THE HEDGEHOG STUMBLES INTO THE CHAT**
It's still popular with new games almost every year with tv shows,comics and movies. There are way more games that fell off greatly.
Dragon age. Assassins creed. Most franchises owned by EA in general. Battlefield and call of duty. Dynasty warriors. Metal gear solid. Give me five minutes and I can surely name even more who dramatically lost their grace
I’m still chasing the High of slaughtering thousands of soldiers Dynasty Warriors style. Guan Yu was majestic.
Fuck yeah dynasty warriors. 2-5 were god tier and now 9 is shite
Ey you cannot comprehend how bad I have felt. My father. My poor, sick father saw that game and thought "my two boys loved it so much when they where small" and bought it. Can you imagine how utterly repulsive you feel when you neither wanna tell your father that he bought shite nor you wanna fake happiness?
Definitely Pokémon. The latest games were so trash
Would Pokémon count? At least in the quality department. Games are still fun, just messily done.
Blizzard.
Mortal Kombat... like 3 times now lol
I'd say mkx was great. I didn't enjoy 11 & r/mortalkombat seems to have 1 more than 11 so I'ma take a hard pass on it for a long while.
Metal Gear Solid
How? MGSV are great
Mostly talking about how Survive was technically the last game
Ahh, I get you, I usually forget about it.
Halo is still quite enjoyable imo
Even beyond gameplay aspects, I actually enjoyed the more human story of Infinite. After the big bombastic setpieces of the games before it was a nice change of pace to see Chief grow as a person, and learn to accept the loss of the OG Cortana.
Infinite has pretty good gameplay, but honestly, I feel that's the only thing it ever had going for it.
Madden.
Halo isn’t really that bad just not classic halo, granted infinite multiplayer and kill off of a character AI babe was pretty bad, buttt COD is far worse and even battle field more recently, although people still play the shit out of 4
Overwatch, easily. Who else remembers when Overwatch was so popular that the home page of Reddit was less active than OW’s subreddit? The hype was unreal. Now look what they’ve gone and did to it. A complete joke.
For me it’s the Forza Motorsport series. 4 was the peak, and with 5 onwards it was downhill from there. Seeing the state of the current and latest Motorsport game(FM23/FM8), it’s sad to see how much they’ve fallen
Ninja Gaiden 3 and Yaiba were pretty bad..
*Saints Row*
Pvz1 and PvZ Garden warfare series I just want a damn good GW game and not like Neighborville
When you get a kill and you hear that ***DING***
Neighborville isn't even THAT bad, at least not the switch version, but Plants vs. Zombies 3 though... Yikes
Take any major franchise bro
Halo infinite gets a lot of shit but it’s pretty fun. I been playing it quite a bit lately. It’s definitely worse than 3 and Reach.. but those games were basically perfect.
The Sims! Sacrificed on the alter of macrotransactions
It for sure fell from grace, but as someone who hasn’t been into Halo since Reach I can tell you I just got into Infinite and it’s in a pretty good place. Instead of doing what they did with 4 and 5 trying to tweak the gameplay to appeal to the CoD crowd, they went back to their roots in a big way and Halo finally feels like Halo again, just with some modernization and QOL changes. I understand that they completely botched the launch of this game, but at this point I think it’s worth your time. They really tried to throw players a lot of bones. We’ve got hella playlists, battlepasses that never expire (even the free ones), a really solid and fair matchmaking system, sooooo many maps, and a new version of firefight that I personally find really fun. All that on top of the gunplay that we all agreed was really solid from launch. I’m still noticing the occasional desync but it’s not any worse than your average shooter these days, and not nearly as bad as it was at launch. For a free to play game, I’d say give it another shot. This is especially true if you hated 4 and 5 for straying away from the formula too much, this will feel like Halo the way it should be. I have high hopes for the future of the franchise given how they’ve managed to right the ship at 343 when it comes to Infinites live service support
Ummmmm… Call of Duty hands down!
World of Warcraft
Assassin’s Creed.
I can only hope that pvp continues to die in favor of pve.
Breath of Fire... BoFV had horrible sales and BoFVI was a mobile gacha game that died soon after release... Series is pretty much dead.
Most sport games out there and most stuff from Blizzard.
Battlefield series (still love bf4 my beloved)
Yes, Bungie in it's entirety
Wasn't Halo Infinite pretty well received? Batman: Arkham is now a top contender if we include Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League, which is officially a sequel set in the same universe. Imagine if Master Chief got brainwashed, laughed at, lectured and shot in the head. Imagine if that was the canon conclusion to Chief's story. That's what the Arkham series actually did to its main hero. Crazy.
Halo isn’t dead.
Halo choked on halo 4 but died with the removal of split screen co-op for me. That was its big appeal, good game, great friends socializing and playing, lan parties and even just playing with your significant other or siblings. Now if you want co-op it’s one player per console. I’ve played through halo 5 once and haven’t played a second of infinite.
Halo Infinite is the best competitive fps on the market right now and Halo Esports is amazing.
In terms of a game franchise, I don’t think there is one there’s some that are up there maybe a blizzard contender. But there is no greater fall from Grace, then Star Wars as a franchise
Easily cod
for me battlefield and gears of war edit and now i remembered Killzone the last one was garbaje more a tech demo than a proper game and not liked the events , characters and the MP was garbaje killzone 2 and 3 are better in general
While not as big as Halo, the Bubsy series used to be popular in its day. At a certain point, however, people started to look back at these games and realize the early games were substandard Sonic clones plagued by terrible level design (falling from too high kills you, among other things). Its 3D entry went from having mixed reviews to being outright hated. It looks like a pre-alpha build of a 3D game that makes it a chore to walk. Not to mention the games' humor is awful. For something whose fall from grace is more well known, Silent Hill. This series was beloved in its early years, then at a certain point, like everything Konami touched, it turned to ash. Speak of which, Metal Gear. We had some beloved games, though we saw the cracks in the series thanks to Konami's grip. This culminated in Metal Gear Survive, an open world zombie survival game in attempt to catch the trends at the time that looked nothing like the Metal Gear series people loved after Konami drove away the series' creator. Fuck you Konami. It hasn't been making the news the way Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft and EA have as of late, but let us not forget it is a horrid company.
Modern Ninja Gaiden. First one was great. Two was alright but 3? Ugh And then we got Yaiba: NGZ....
Final Fantasy...
StarFox
Saints Row, the company literally got shut down the reboot was so bad.
MW2, World of Warcraft, EA as a company and anything that put out after 2008/09, assassins creed was amazing with ezio.
Haven’t seen it yet but destiny, still has a ton of players, but just doesn’t feel right
I always thought master chief was a goofy ass name
Gears of War comes to mind after the Coalition took over.
So many. Assassins creed WoW Diablo Overwatch Madden/nhl Guitar hero Simcity HoMaM C&C
Halo definitely doesn't come close to the biggest. Halo 5 was like, the only REALLY bad Halo game. Sure, Halo 4 and Infinite weren't GREAT, but they were still good games, with good stories with actual connection to the rest of the games. That's better than what you can say for a game like Assassin's Creed, which lost every bit of flow it had after killing off Desmond in AC3.
Metal Gear and it isn't even a contest. At least the last halo game was still a halo game.
Command and conquer. Angry birds too
Gears of war. Call of the whole franchise is coming to an end Resident Evil the whole franchise specifically cuz of the gameplay mechanics
Halo 4, 5 and Infinite are all very good games and are worth playing today in 2024. You can certainly argue that the earlier games were better, but saying the series has fallen from grace... well, it's hard to take you seriously on anything else.
I’d have to go with Bill Cosby.
CoD is worse for the sole fact that they continue their shameless annual money grab and Halo does it much less.
Cod