With the recent release of the long awaited Metal Gear Solid V, a sequel to the critically acclaimed Metal Gear Solid first released on the PS1 in 1998, I ended up coming away from my experience with the exact same summed up response I have after playing many sequels of old school franchises.
“It’s a Good Game but it Should Have Been a New IP”
This isn’t an article designed to talk about Metal Gear Solid V and its long list of problems the newest game in the series suffers, flaws which many reviews failed to talk about because that’s another blog post for another day. No. You see this recent release of a sequel to an old franchise added to a pile of other old school critically acclaimed franchises which today have fell from grace whether it’s a good game or not. Quality of the game is not the issue I'm going focus on within this blog post, for me it’s about if these old franchises which still get sequels today should have really been new IPs instead of using the brand we are all so used to seeing.
Let us start with Metal Gear Solid V first, when the original game came out in 1998, it shot to fame for being a third person stealth game which was character driven and was known for its many unique boss fights along with its long, mind twisting story. Today with Metal Gear Solid V we are left with an open world, third person stealth, action game. Yup that’s right, that’s it. The recent release is not character driven, the story, for a MGS game is lacklustre, Snake has been devolved as a main character and it’s basically filled with a collection of repetitive side missions. In the end it’s kind of hard to defend the game and say that the game is “true to its roots” as a MGS game. Now does this mean that Kojimas last MGS game is terrible? That it’s horrible? Or even riddled with bugs/glitches? No. No it’s not. So I’m guessing your thinking what’s the problem?
Well just because the game is solid doesn’t mean that the game can’t be criticized, in fact it feels like a love for a franchise such as this one clouds one’s own judgement so they can’t realise that despite how good the game is on its own the game it just doesn’t match up to the old games. Now I don’t know about you but as a gamer and a lifelong fan you deserve much better, hell the franchise it’s self deserves better. Now obviously with Metal Gear Solid V we have the special exception with the strange going ons at Konami and the fallout between them and Kojima, resulting in the possibility that people might have used this and become a little lenient with Kojimas newest game because they wanted to support him after what went on but I don’t think we can use something like that to not pass proper judgement on a game. In the end it was a good game but in no way this was a good Metal Gear Solid game, especially Kojimas high standards he's always brought to past MGS titles. This could have been Kojimas new IP he’s always wanted to go after but instead he’s been tied down to an old franchise which, let’s be fair, didn’t really need another game. Did we all desperately need to see another story featuring “Big Boss”, Snake Eater was necessary to understand his legacy leading into Metal Gear Solid 4, which played a vital theme within the games story but with the story featured in MGSV it wasn’t something we were screaming out for.
Anyway let’s move on from Metal Gear Solid V, like I said this isn’t really to call a games flaw and make a big deal out of them but to show you how sequels to these games are really a shadow of their former self’s.
Let’s take Tomb Raider for out next example, released on the PS1 and Sega Saturn back in 1996, Tomb Raider wowed fans with its third person, puzzle solving gameplay and small shooting elements. Fans would explore locations riddled with traps and hazards as they dwelled deeper into the level to search for ancient, lost relics. Now fast forward to 2013 with the Tomb Raider reboot and you’ll see a very different thing entirely, a third person, over the top action shooter with a huge focus on gun play, shooting and jumping into cover to hold off wave, after wave of enemy attacks. Now going by those brief summaries of both games you can clearly see they are very different to one another and again it asks the question “Why was this not a new IP”. You could take the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider, about a young Lara Croft trying to survive when she is shipwrecked and call it “The Island” or even something simple like “Survive”. Yes, these are not the best alternative titles for the game but my point is this game could have been called anything else and for a lot of people would have been a much more enjoyable experience because there wouldn’t be an old franchise to live up to. It doesn’t help in the slightest that CD decided to make the game an awful like another game out there, I won’t say it as I don’t want to go into that but you should already know what game I’m talking about. Now does this once again mean the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider was a bad game? Of course not it was pretty good in its own right but nothing about the game, or even viewing a lot of viewing material for its sequel shows you that it deserves to be called “Tomb Raider”. Like before this is a new IP, not a sequel.
You’re probably thinking by now “Well it’s called evolution”, I’m sorry but I disagree, an evolution of a franchise would be taking the core aspects of the game and evolving them correctly with new, up to date elements but also staying true to itself and what it was known for. When a game like Tomb Raider for example turns from a third person platforming game with a huge focus on puzzles, avoiding traps and exploring Tombs into an over the top action shooter which focuses heavily on gun play and picking off enemies one by one then you have mutated the franchise into something completely differently where it doesn’t even look like it’s good old self.
Let’s move onto another franchise, Resident Evil. The problems this franchises faces are more known and criticized mostly because unlike Metal Gear Solid and Tomb Raider the new games we have in the Resident Evil franchise are not really that good, of course this is a matter of opinion but majority of people know by now that Resident Evil is not what it once was. Like before we have had a game about survival, skill and horror being now turned into another over the top action game, with co-op, hand holding and dumbed down gameplay, not to forget the ridiculous story we now have. The same can be said for even a last gen game, Dead Space, which managed to copy Resident Evils downfall in one trilogy. The first game being Resident Evil 1-3, the sequel being Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space 3 being Resident Evil 5-6. Dead Space being a game which shows you that franchises don’t have to be that old to turn into a shadow of their former self’s.
The last game I want to use as my example is Final Fantasy. This is an excellent example in my argument because the franchise is the longest one out the main games I want to talk about, going back to the NES in 1987. From there Final Fantasy has had countless of releases on a number of platforms however when it got to Final Fantasy VII on the PS1 in 1997, a whole decade later, it actually evolved in the correct way. Instead of turning the game into something else where it could have been shrugged off as a new IP in disguise, the game actually evolved into something old but new, which is why Final Fantasy VII is regarded as an all-time favourite in the entire franchise. It shows you that franchises can evolve in the correct way then being mutated into something completely different. From Final Fantasy VII, the franchise enjoyed being on top of the world until the release of FF12 in 2006 which started to show how fatigued the franchise had gotten. However it wasn’t until Final Fantasy 13 that the series hit rock bottom and turned into something completely different from what it original was. With Final Fantasy 13 it basically took everything which made a Final Fantasy game, a Final Fantasy game and either dumbed down or removed it. Now if you take Final Fantasy 13 and think of it as its own game then it would have probably done better with fans then it has today.
In conclusion it’s becoming apparent that developers would rather use old franchise names to push new ideas they would have original included in new IPs just to breathe fresh air into the franchise but in the end this can often fail when the game, whether it’s good or bad turns into something completely different. Now of course these games do well in sales but that usually leans towards the games hype, the respect the studio has behind it and how big the franchises name is itself. I just hope in the far future developers will stop using old franchises to experiment on and will instead take risks in creating new IPs while leaving the old ones to catch their breath from fatigue. As long as the franchise returns in the future with the game being true to its roots and not forgetting the elements of the game which made us fall in love with them many years ago then I would patiently wait and I hope you’d too.
Teravision Games has released its second title, Orcs Must Die: By The Blade, and our review finds a solid VR experience.
Windows Central: "We caught up with incoming CEO Asha Sharma and newly promoted CCO Matt Booty to learn about what the future holds for Microsoft's gaming operation."
Technically, they've never brought it back. It's been downhill since Xbox One, which was its zenith. It hasn't 'gone back' since nor did it decline in such a fashion before.. We're dealing with a single peak company here, not multiple.
Only Nintendo can “bring it back”. WiiU to SW and SW2 is a crazy turnaround.
Sony and Microsoft have just been going more and more downhill.
When? Xbox to Xbox 360?
They’ve been pretty much on a windy slope since the Xbox One reveal but even then s*** started to hit the fan with TV, Sports and Kinect at the end of the 360 days.
CCG writes - "If you enjoy murder mysteries, visual novels, or the Ace Attorney series, you’ll want to look into The Real Face of a VTuber. Just make sure you're okay with the moral issues before buying this game. The asking price of $11.99 is reasonable and will keep you entertained for roughly nine hours."
my guess foxtrot is you are over the age of 20. what many ignore is games don't always need to cater to the older gamer and will use familiar ip's to try and attract new users while still trying to keep the old. sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
you look at the reaction to the newer episodes of star wars (which are actually older episodes in the series) that george lucas did. the flack he got was ridiculous. i am not for a minute going to defend those movies because they were not nearly as good but you can see how so many can't let go of nostalgia. the pressure on the new movies is astronomical and you know there will always be that one guy (maybe you) who will dissect the new movie to death. we want to be transformed back to how we were when we were younger. that new experience of being blown away.
the same thing happens with games. the older generation becomes harder to please and often can't get that experience they had when they were younger. games are smarter, bigger, better looking, more modes, access to online players around the world at any time. we are so spoiled now and all we want to do is complain. if you want to play games like they used to be then go play them. the market adapts and gamers want more action. it's that simple. i guarantee if you went back and played the original tomb raider you'd get bored. those games are not nearly as good as you think they are now. same with metal gear before they hit the playstation. try playing them now. what i will defend is the remake of devil may cry. it is actually a pretty fun game but so many want to remiss on how the others were without giving the new one a chance. they also want to talk about how rude the developers are even though the community feedback was far worse.
That's precisely how I view the upcoming Battlefront title; not necessarily that it's going to be good but rather it should have been a new IP. And similarly to how you feel, not because there's been any sort of evolution, but a devolution in gameplay.