Cashing In On Big Names of Games

The Elder Scrolls, Dead Space, God of War, Gears of War, Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, Halo, and Call of Duty; these are some of the biggest names of video games. These are also some of the easiest games to sell...whether they're good or not. Don't get me wrong, for the most part these games are good, but occasionally terrible games are released with big names on them. Let's take a look at some games that did just that:

Call of Duty World at War
While this game did have arguable the best story of all the games the problems arose in multiplayer. Only a handful of decent maps, tanks that took way to many rockets to kill, and Mp40s plagued the multiplayer. Tryarch made no effort to fix these obvious problems because they were too busy enjoying the wealth that WaW made them from following hot on the heals of MW.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
We all remember the problems with the MW2 multiplayer; Unbalanced weapons, unbalanced kill-streaks, quick scoping, commando pro knifing, noobtubes, camping, ect. Following the failure of WaW people figured that Infinity Ward would be sure to make another cult classic stroke of genius. Unfortunately IW figured people would be expecting that and knew that they wouldn't have to make a decent game for it to sell based on their last success.

Call Of Duty Black Ops
While Tryarch hionestly seems to be attempting to fix this games problems, such as; lag, disconnecting parties, disconnecting game, inability to join parties, inability to join games, unsuccessful host migrations, ect. the fact that they released a broken game just proves my point. They didn't need to make the game perfect, like they should have, all Tryarch really had to do for this game was promise to fix the problems with MW2 and put the name Call of Duty on it and it hit record sales.

Halo 3 ODST
ODST was an interesting take on a Halo game. With it's open world style, less colorful and bright art design, and focus on story ODST was looking interesting. However it seemed like they didn't really polish what could have been a great game. With the lack of drivable vehicles (even though cars lined the street) the open world map just became a long trek from one end to the other. The story was ok, but ultimately felt lacking, and overall seemed to do absolutely nothing to further the Halo storyline. While it added some new weapons it left us to wonder why these weapons weren't in Halo 3. The main thing this game offered was firefight, which while extremely fun, seemed more like it should be a 10-15 dollar add on than the main reason to buy ODST. Including all the Halo 3 multiplayer maps was a nice idea, but most people who bought ODST already had all the map packs. So basically you were paying $60 for firefight and the chance to get Recon armor for Halo 3. There are few games I can say I was happy to finally be finished playing like ODST. It was interesting that Bungie took a new approach to Halo but the single player was just plain out bad. However it had the name Halo on it so it sold tons.

Deadspace Ignition
I'm honestly curious what Visceral was thinking making this game, and hope it doesn't reflect the quality of what Deadspace 2 would be. It was a comic book style story which I enjoyed however the gameplay was terrible. The controls were stiff and unresponsive and the puzzles just weren't fun. When your entire game is only puzzles that's bad. Fortunately I preordered with Gamestop so I received the game free instead of spending $4.99 on it.

These are just some of the games that had big names on them that were bad. Another thing that these big games do is that they will include Beta access or demos for their Triple A titles with games that would otherwise never get a second glance. Heres some examples:

Crackdown Including Halo 3 Beta
Crackdown is one of those games that no one thought would be good, but everyone bought for the Halo 3 beta. Ironically I actually enjoyed crackdown, but I know it was either Hit or miss with most people.

ODST including Halo Reach Beta
Most people who played ODST disliked it. They played it and than decided to sell it, or put it on the shelf and did not pick it back up. But one it was announced that everyone with ODST could get into the Halo Reach Beta the game began to sell again.

inFamous including the Uncharted 2 Beta
I speak of this one with personal experience. I was on the border line of getting inFamous, but once I heard that I could get an Uncharted 2 beta key I preordered inFamous

Medal of Honor including the Battlefield 3 beta
I don't need to say anything about how bad MOH was. To be honest I preordered the special edition but after playing the MOH beta I decided to cancel.

Finally we come to the newest company to do this. Epic games with Bulletstorm and Gears of War 3.
If you preorder Bulletstorm you get Early Access to Gears 3 Beta. This seems like a cheap cash in on the Gears name to sell an unimpressive game. I'm sure Bulletstorm will be fun but from watching the demos it looks extremely repetitive. Pull, kick, shoot. That's all they do in the demos. Yet with the Gears 3 beta tacked on Bulletstorm will probably double in sales.

we as gamers need to realize when companies are just trying to use the names of big games to swindle us. It seems to be happening more and more recently, and we need to say enough.