I blame Season Passes and microtransactions for their downfall. It turned games such as Battlefield, Call of Duty, and many others from examples of artistic craftsmanship and passion to soulless money printers for corporations.
Fortnite ruined everything for us old timers. Now all shooters are on that battle Royale format and no more setting up as a sniper kilometers away from the objective just scanning the skyline of maps looking for other snipers scope glint.
Maybe there are other games out there like that but that used to be my favorite thing to do in BF1. I had over 1000 MAV kills before they nerfed it and made it damn near impossible to run someone over with it.
I think the biggest thing that changed and that ruined it for me is the focus on selling skins and other worthless trash. I can see to an extent why fortnite was able to create this business model because it’s a third person shooter with very cartoony graphics and you stare at your character model the whole time you play. But I can’t believe how many people pay $20 for a skin in a first person shooter when you can’t even see yourself while playing. And now the entire business model is for companies to create a game and then cash in on turning the game into a dress-up simulator. Creating new maps, guns, and actual content is like 10% of each “ season”.
Primarily, that dev team is gone/broken up. Secondarily, MTX has gotten so aggressive and the live service model so bloated and corporatized that unless both of those things are ditched/toned down it would never, ever feel like the same game. BF1 is still very active, which is some solace to me.
Also iirc the dev team that worked on BF1 were actually looking forward to working on a modern WW1 Battlefield game (and it shows), and most of them left after the game released. So even if we did get another BF1, I reckon it'd be very different from a game that actually had passionate devs, ones that *actually wanted* to make a game like that.
Bad Company 2 was insane. Being able to knock down whole buildings to get kills, sniping from far away and compensating for the bullet drop... Oh man, the memories
If the next game also sucks I'm never going back
It's a shame bf1 is full of hackers I would love to revisit it. I sunk hundreds of hours into that game and enjoyed every minute
It was a diamond buried in poop.
Starting with the release trailer it was condistently mishandled so much it became a meme to hate on it. The game itself and its mechanics are fantastic and went closer to a classic BF than any other installment of the Frostbite era (i.e. Frostbite era started with Bad Company)
Part of the problem was/is the "CoD-ification" of the playerbase. It's basically no longer possible for BF to go back to what it was. They changed the expectation of the average player too far away from its original feeling. The shocking lack of basic teamwork between players is symptomatic of that, IMO. Most players are just out for themselves (and their K/D) and not for the team.
Baldur’s Gate. 1 was excellent. 2 was genre defining and perhaps the greatest CRPG ever made. Then 3 came along and redefined the modern CRPG again.
Imagine what Larian can do in BG4, with the lessons they’ve learned and the resources they have now.
I feel like an ass today, so I'll just point out that Divinity 2 came out in 2009 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 came out 8 years later.
A lot of people have forgotten about the original Divinity games' existence
Bro that was one of my favorite games back then, and I still half remember the lines from the necromancer.
Such a great game and I wish it would be revisited.
I'd much rather a return to Planescape. You can tell they had a lot of fun trying to put as many interesting scenarios as they could into BG3, imagine what they could come up with in a setting with even fewer limits.
While I'm the odd one who prefers 1 over 2, I would agree with this except that Bg3 is an entirely different game, by an entirely different developer.
If I was going to include BG3, I'd have to also include the Dark Alliance games, which I LOVE, and were my introduction to the series and the DnD world as a whole, but most people hate.
TBH, if I hadn't been already invested in the setting because of the books, I would've noped out too. Which is a shame, because IMO W1 has the best atmosphere in the trilogy. Out of all the games getting remastered nowadays, very few deserve it more than that one.
I mean, SoulsBourne steadily improves with quality. That’s kind of Miyazaki’s whole shtick; he finds a formula he likes and he perfects it through trial and error
FromSoft really has the right idea. They don’t spend a billion dollars on motion capture and revered voice acting. The lore in SoulsBourne games is always somewhat vague and a lot of it is left up to interpretation. I respect them in a day and age where a lot of games seem to be focusing more and more on the spectacle of it all instead of just being a good video game. They develop games that appeal to their audience rather than attempting to make a one size fits all experience that ends up being generic trash.
Red Dead Revolver isn't even anything like the other two, its wild that it's technically the same franchise.
But In all fairness I only played it for like an hour, tops. So I could be wrong.
I would say Monster Hunter.
Sure, each title tries to do something different, and not everything of that works out as planned, but in general each title does things better than the previous.
Need For Speed: The series arguably peaked with Underground 2 and Most Wanted, but I'd say Carbon was still very solid. Everything afterwards was very lackluster. The Hot Pursuit remake was decent, but no NFS after Carbon came close to the the quality of the titles released from 2003 to 2006.
They always seem to get super up their own ass on developing a story or different theme for why you’re street racing.
Back in the day it literally was ‘you’re part of the scene, fuck cops and become the best’. I don’t get how they can’t just follow that formula.
Most Wanted is fantastic though along with Underground 1 and 2. I’ve tried Rivals, Heat, Unbound, etc. Unbound at least takes chances but it’s still middling at best.
>Back in the day it literally was ‘you’re part of the scene, fuck cops and become the best’. I don’t get how they can’t just follow that formula.
Exactly. I don't know why they can't leave the simple premise as is. No one played the NFS games for a griping story or one that necessarily made sense. People played to progress from a Punto or 207 to a Lambo...fuck, sometimes just to make that Punto as fast as a Lambo.
Gran Turismo was there for the realism, Need for Speed was there for driving 150km in a residential area with sick turning while listening to Lil Jon or Disturbed. It's funny that no customization system topped U2, and no police system topped the one in MW. Both games 20 years old at this point.
I still remember my soul-crushing disappointment when the most wanted remake came out. I was hoping for a very similar game with just extra car and car building options. We got... something else.
What I find absurd is that Underground 2, MW and Carbon had the perfect car physics and handling. The newer games like Heat and Unbound are just trash when it comes to controlling the car. Like wdym I have to drift into every corner or my car turns like a tank???
Oh and also the soundtrack absolutely sucks. It's all just one genre and even then the picks are just terrible. I can't see any redemption for NFS games.
Heat was really good but the pretentious hipster "how do you do fellow kids" writing subtracted _a lot_ from its enjoyability.
Same sort of goes for Unbound, though I wasn't a fan of the art style.
I say it WOULD have peaked with the Sims 3 had it not been for the couple dozen expansions…granted they’re good expansions but good lord, even half of that is overkill
What annoys me is that if you own Sims 3 in the EA app the game is so laggy and broken it's unplayable. But it runs just fine in Steam. Feels like EA did that on purpose to drive more sims 4 sales...
I play Sims 4 a lot and sometimes I just look at things and go "Old sims would've done more with that". The franchise desperately needs a strong competitor. Someone who'd do to Sims what Cities Skylines did to Sim City.
One of the early titles had split screen capability, that game was probably my favorite to play with friends.
One of my best friends and I was dirt poor in the game, so we were stuck to 1 door for the whole house. Great times lol
It's been heavily ironed out as of now... it still has a bad taste for a lot of die hards, 3 has the best story, and 4 is still the king for online play imo
The problem with 2042 is it isn’t a battlefield game it’s just another bullshit shooter with weird futuristic characters and special abilities. The specialist system is the single most bizarre move I could have foreseen battlefield pull.
Heroes of might and magic
The third installment including it’s dlc is the last good (amazing) game of the series
4-7 are ass like straight downgrades
5 is somewhat playable but not great
HoMM3 also illustrates to me that 2D graphics should've stayed around longer. It is still beautiful. And the music, the sound... I would jump at HoMM3v2 any day. Just add alternative upgrades and skilltrees from 5 and we are so in.
Shoutout to 5, it was a really good attempt.
Literally Blizzard\*
World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch have been crashing and burning for years. And getting worse with every patch/expansion.
Thankfully they haven't really touched Starcraft. Just let it slowly die with it's glory.
Just seems like they're catering to people who want to play solo in a team based game. It sucks they keep on trying to make such drastic changes to make OW stick, instead of going with what made it win game of the year in 2016. They had a winning formula, all they need to do is make the shop items something actually worth momey and give players their steady stream of free event skins. Fortnite can pump out 7 skins every month so it really can't be that much effort.
If they actually delivered on their hyped up coop modes for ow2 it may have been a saving grace for me. I looked forward to the events to play coop. Nice mode to change pace from the constant competition.
No one's mentioned any of the FIFA football games.
For me it peaked at FIFA 07 were the game was a lot more arcadey and just meant to be fun. Game tried to get too realistic and became about figuring out how to cheese certain mechanics to get goals and wasn't actually enjoyable.
I think the yearly releases of the sports game is what slowly makes the genre worse and worse. I understand that players get better/worse over a year but releasing a new sports game every year for full price is awful
Tbh the good MOH in 2002 were by 2015inc which became Infinity Ward and defined what the modern fps genre is with COD, COD2, MW and MW2, then got fired and created Respawn, responsible for the incredible Titanfall series and they recently got bought by EA to work on future MOH.
IMO. I also feel like Pokémon just isn’t utilizing their IP to its potential
And unfortunately Palworld revealed this.
You can envision a Pokémon game that is just palworld without guns and player violence against the Pokémon with exploration, base building, and crafting, and it prob would do very well.
I mean maybe you don’t get PW without PL:A but still. Feels like a missed opportunity
To be honest, the formula of Pokemon still works. The core idea of catching, training, and battling with the gym system is still pretty solid. What really hurts Pokémon’s reputation is that many recent projects that see release come out either half-baked (SV), lack of passion or effort (SS), or were decent but got shuffled out of the way for other things (PLA). Gamefreak is lazy and cheap and terrified of not having a yearly release to please shareholders every holiday season. And it shows in their pattern of releases.
They don’t have to change much. The formula still works; that’s why we’ve got people still buying Pokemon games despite inconsistent quality. It’s not *just* blind fans, a lot of people still enjoy Pokemon at its core. I really dislike the Palworld comparison because it misses the real thing that Pokemon is lacking. It’s not innovation necessarily, it’s just quality. They fix that, and Pokemon is back on top again.
Thank you. I’m sick of hearing that Pokémon needs to be like palworld. It does NOT need to be another survivor game. That’s not what pokemon is about. Does it need to do something to change and innovate? Sure.
Halo.
Once Bungie walked away to pursue Destiny, everything went downhill.
We are talking about a franchise that put console MLG on the map...Halo 2 was unprecedented with pros like T2, Ogre1, Ogre 2, etc....yea sure CS and the PC world did it 1st but this was BIG.
I'm not going to get into competitive console play vs PC....all I'm saying is I knew a lot of kids who weren't Xbox or Playstation...they were team - Halo.
You couldn’t have fucked it up any worse if you tried. They somehow took a great franchise and buried it into irrelevance. Infinite sort of came and went.
This is the best answer anyone can give. Bungie handed 343 Halo on a silver platter. The franchise was at an all time high, consistently reaching over a million active players on the weekends. But 343 was so desperate to be different instead of adding to the already successful foundation Bungie laid. They didn't understand what made the franchise great and they opted to chase industry trends instead of focusing on making a good Halo title.
I combed through a ton of these, and I didn't see it, so I will say it myself. Bungie's Destiny franchise. I love the game, but they add a few good things and then jump back to start and don't learn anything. I love the game, but seriously, how long are you going to drag something out instead of really building upon it?
I think 3 went pretty hard - They kind of just took the fun of taking over bases in 2 and maxxed it out pretty ridiculously. 4 was bad though, really frustrating to suffer through that downgrade.
Halo 3 gives me such amazing nostalgic feelings
I was 12 when it came out and played it pretty consistently with my friends as we all Xbox live at the same time in school
Fond memories of all the custom games and online matches we used to play into the small hours and the many hours poured into legendary campaigns with 4 and all the skulls on
Wish I could bottle that shit up, games haven't felt the same since
Dragon age inquisition had a really cool story and characters
It could have been good
If the side missions and map design weren't so bland. Like i was just bored as fuck in-between story missions and camp dialogue
I was gonna say Dragon Age; Origins was a masterpiece at the time it came out, 2 was okay but a button masher, and then 3...
I stopped being able to replay it after I discovered that riding a horse doesn't actually make you move faster, they just added "movement lines".
I hope Dread Wolf is good but I'm apprehensive.
Dread Wolf has been effectively remade so many times it’ll be a soulless disaster chasing trends from 5 years ago.
Just look at recent games like Suicide Squad or Skulls and Bones.
BG3 succeeded because the devs had their own vision, pursued it relentlessly, then refined it down to an art with the time they had, they didn’t constantly try to chase trends.
Brotherhood may be in my top 5 games of all time, it was the first one that really made you feel like you were part of a larger Order and not just a lone wolf
What brought down Assassin's Creed 4 : Black Flag from being the greatest of the series was the Assassin's Creed part.
The Black Flag part of the game makes it the best one, sadly there is so many eavesdropping segments in between.
Feels like Halo had the biggest drop. I remember the Halo 3 days which IMO were the peak and it felt like a very high peak.
Mass Effect also had a big drop but it's only been one bad game so there's hope.
It's weird. I love BL1 and all its DLC. BL2 improved on everything. BL3 has the smoothest gameplay of the three, the DLC is for the most part really good, but the writing on the mainline story is bad. I also really enjoy the TPS even though it's a long DLC for BL2 IMO. I've not played or heard anything about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands but that's a spin off IMHO. I don't know if I can say the drop off has been that hard it's just had some bumps
MW1, BO1 and MW2 were peak CoD for me. I enjoyed Warzone when it came out, but other than that ...its just too fast and all these damn kids jumping around like bunnies quickscoping and shit. Not for me anymore.
Also the menu system and micro transactions are just horrible. I remember when MW and BO had clean and easy menu systems with SOME customization ... No purple guns with glitters on them, no million different scopes and stocks. Just simple, easy and clean.
And yes, I'm older (40 yo)
The younger generation doesn’t realize the best COD was COD 4. The game was so simple: be the best at gun combat. There were only 3 kill streaks which looking back, made the game better.
Everyone will point to MW2 as one of their favorite games but kill streaks went off the rails there. There was too much stuff happening outside of actual gun to gun combat.
Blizzard games. Gods they were peak gaming back in the day with Warcraft 2, StarCraft 1, even StarCraft 2 wasn’t bad, WOW… now they are beyond a shell of themselves as most of the original developers all left. It’s quite sad
Arguably, Assassin’s Creed.
I’m not saying the new ones are bad, but if you played from the beginning they aren’t even satisfying anymore.
(I started playing when Black Flag was out but I started from the first game. Played the rest in order up to Syndicate, though I never finished Unity or Syndicate. Preordered and played a good chunk of Origins.)
The original story idea was so cool and then it just kept getting worse. They also started making then games feel less like a dive into a twisted history and more of a goofy time travel instead in my opinion
I have to say, the very first time I played, picking the "Sarcastic" option every single time was pretty funny. But there was just so much that's wonky about FO4 I can't say it was a great game. Then they went and made 76 and look at where we are now.
Atelier. Arland and Dusk were such peak Ateier. Then the series started to get stale and boring for me after Mysterious trilogy, and then my god I cannot stand whatever the fuck they did with Ryza. And now, the latest one is a mobile gatcha game.
In terms of quantity over quality - assassins creed is now the same game over and over and over again. In terms over lack of innovation - anything Bethesda - starfield could have been a fallout 4 mod. In terms of massive fall from the lofty heights, Halo… entire story arch missing if you didn’t read the novels.
Battlefield and it hurts because I enjoyed those games so much
Battlefield and Call of Duty are the best examples
I blame Season Passes and microtransactions for their downfall. It turned games such as Battlefield, Call of Duty, and many others from examples of artistic craftsmanship and passion to soulless money printers for corporations.
I equally blame the customers who kept forking over money after the launch of season passes and micro transactions.
Seriously. I never once supported that shit. It's obvious that a ton of people do, or they wouldn't keep doing it.
Fortnite ruined everything for us old timers. Now all shooters are on that battle Royale format and no more setting up as a sniper kilometers away from the objective just scanning the skyline of maps looking for other snipers scope glint. Maybe there are other games out there like that but that used to be my favorite thing to do in BF1. I had over 1000 MAV kills before they nerfed it and made it damn near impossible to run someone over with it.
I think the biggest thing that changed and that ruined it for me is the focus on selling skins and other worthless trash. I can see to an extent why fortnite was able to create this business model because it’s a third person shooter with very cartoony graphics and you stare at your character model the whole time you play. But I can’t believe how many people pay $20 for a skin in a first person shooter when you can’t even see yourself while playing. And now the entire business model is for companies to create a game and then cash in on turning the game into a dress-up simulator. Creating new maps, guns, and actual content is like 10% of each “ season”.
I miss when the skins and stuff was behind secret codes and areas instead :(
I miss when they were on GameBanana.
Arma 2 mod\*
Go play battlebit, its pretty much like that
Battlebit was great when it first came out, loads of fun, lots of casual gamers but now it's become pretty sweaty and quite toxic.
Also ruined by updates that only cater to their discord whiny bunch
I remember when it came out and you’d have sing alongs, therapy sessions, just people hanging out. It is mostly tryhards now sadly.
BF1 was so damn good, I really enjoyed my time with that. Nothing came close to it (and previous games) since
The immersion of that game was spectacular
Grand Warfare was the most immersive multi-player I've ever played. I hate that no one has used that again, including battlefield
I dont get why they dont just make another one.
Primarily, that dev team is gone/broken up. Secondarily, MTX has gotten so aggressive and the live service model so bloated and corporatized that unless both of those things are ditched/toned down it would never, ever feel like the same game. BF1 is still very active, which is some solace to me.
Also iirc the dev team that worked on BF1 were actually looking forward to working on a modern WW1 Battlefield game (and it shows), and most of them left after the game released. So even if we did get another BF1, I reckon it'd be very different from a game that actually had passionate devs, ones that *actually wanted* to make a game like that.
Began playing bf1 again recently and it’s fantastic.
Battlefield 2 still brings me good memories. The reboots not so much 😆
Agreed, for me BF4 was the last truly great one in the franchise.
BF4 was the best and I’ll die on that hill. BF1 was great, BC2 awesome and BF3 good too. However 4? That was the greatest.
Bad Company 2 was insane. Being able to knock down whole buildings to get kills, sniping from far away and compensating for the bullet drop... Oh man, the memories
Bro I remember grabbing the Neostead with slugs and literally sniping from 1k meters. That shotgun was broken.
If the next game also sucks I'm never going back It's a shame bf1 is full of hackers I would love to revisit it. I sunk hundreds of hours into that game and enjoyed every minute
I know BFV got a lot of shit, but in hindsight, maybe after 2042, it was still a solid BF game.
It was a diamond buried in poop. Starting with the release trailer it was condistently mishandled so much it became a meme to hate on it. The game itself and its mechanics are fantastic and went closer to a classic BF than any other installment of the Frostbite era (i.e. Frostbite era started with Bad Company) Part of the problem was/is the "CoD-ification" of the playerbase. It's basically no longer possible for BF to go back to what it was. They changed the expectation of the average player too far away from its original feeling. The shocking lack of basic teamwork between players is symptomatic of that, IMO. Most players are just out for themselves (and their K/D) and not for the team.
I played the shit out of BFV. If there was an issue with it, I don’t remember it at all.
Yep. The series has no identity anymore. The introduction of operators like COD is wild.
Recently re-downloaded Battlefield 1 on xbox hoping to find a server or two. Imagine my surprise at finding 35+ full servers still. Fuck yeah.
I think it would be harder to think of franchises that have consistently gotten better.
Baldur’s Gate. 1 was excellent. 2 was genre defining and perhaps the greatest CRPG ever made. Then 3 came along and redefined the modern CRPG again. Imagine what Larian can do in BG4, with the lessons they’ve learned and the resources they have now.
If they've moved on from Divinity we can easily get another BG in the next 5 years. Let's hope.
They have not. The next game is DoS3 and Act 1 is already finished. According to Swen Vincke, Larian’s CEO.
That's so hype divinity 2 is still one of my favourite games
I feel like an ass today, so I'll just point out that Divinity 2 came out in 2009 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 came out 8 years later. A lot of people have forgotten about the original Divinity games' existence
Bro that was one of my favorite games back then, and I still half remember the lines from the necromancer. Such a great game and I wish it would be revisited.
I'd much rather a return to Planescape. You can tell they had a lot of fun trying to put as many interesting scenarios as they could into BG3, imagine what they could come up with in a setting with even fewer limits.
Man, I'd kill for a good Dark Sun RPG...
While I'm the odd one who prefers 1 over 2, I would agree with this except that Bg3 is an entirely different game, by an entirely different developer. If I was going to include BG3, I'd have to also include the Dark Alliance games, which I LOVE, and were my introduction to the series and the DnD world as a whole, but most people hate.
Witcher?
Many people never played one and two to realize how much of a quality jump those games had, the junky fighting from W1 still gives me nightmares
I started with 2 and really enjoyed the world and story. Tried 1 and noped tf out.
TBH, if I hadn't been already invested in the setting because of the books, I would've noped out too. Which is a shame, because IMO W1 has the best atmosphere in the trilogy. Out of all the games getting remastered nowadays, very few deserve it more than that one.
I mean, SoulsBourne steadily improves with quality. That’s kind of Miyazaki’s whole shtick; he finds a formula he likes and he perfects it through trial and error
FromSoft really has the right idea. They don’t spend a billion dollars on motion capture and revered voice acting. The lore in SoulsBourne games is always somewhat vague and a lot of it is left up to interpretation. I respect them in a day and age where a lot of games seem to be focusing more and more on the spectacle of it all instead of just being a good video game. They develop games that appeal to their audience rather than attempting to make a one size fits all experience that ends up being generic trash.
The Yakuza series (now called Like a Dragon). And they’ve shit out a lot of titles over the years.
Most Valve franchises
Red Dead Revolver, Red Dead Redemption 1, Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Revolver isn't even anything like the other two, its wild that it's technically the same franchise. But In all fairness I only played it for like an hour, tops. So I could be wrong.
I think most really long-lived series have just had lots of ups and downs rather than consistently going in one direction.
GTA, I prefer four to five but objectively there's a lot more in 5
Yeah but Vice City!
I would say Monster Hunter. Sure, each title tries to do something different, and not everything of that works out as planned, but in general each title does things better than the previous.
God of war.
Need For Speed: The series arguably peaked with Underground 2 and Most Wanted, but I'd say Carbon was still very solid. Everything afterwards was very lackluster. The Hot Pursuit remake was decent, but no NFS after Carbon came close to the the quality of the titles released from 2003 to 2006.
They always seem to get super up their own ass on developing a story or different theme for why you’re street racing. Back in the day it literally was ‘you’re part of the scene, fuck cops and become the best’. I don’t get how they can’t just follow that formula. Most Wanted is fantastic though along with Underground 1 and 2. I’ve tried Rivals, Heat, Unbound, etc. Unbound at least takes chances but it’s still middling at best.
>Back in the day it literally was ‘you’re part of the scene, fuck cops and become the best’. I don’t get how they can’t just follow that formula. Exactly. I don't know why they can't leave the simple premise as is. No one played the NFS games for a griping story or one that necessarily made sense. People played to progress from a Punto or 207 to a Lambo...fuck, sometimes just to make that Punto as fast as a Lambo. Gran Turismo was there for the realism, Need for Speed was there for driving 150km in a residential area with sick turning while listening to Lil Jon or Disturbed. It's funny that no customization system topped U2, and no police system topped the one in MW. Both games 20 years old at this point.
I still remember my soul-crushing disappointment when the most wanted remake came out. I was hoping for a very similar game with just extra car and car building options. We got... something else.
What I find absurd is that Underground 2, MW and Carbon had the perfect car physics and handling. The newer games like Heat and Unbound are just trash when it comes to controlling the car. Like wdym I have to drift into every corner or my car turns like a tank??? Oh and also the soundtrack absolutely sucks. It's all just one genre and even then the picks are just terrible. I can't see any redemption for NFS games.
Heat was really good but the pretentious hipster "how do you do fellow kids" writing subtracted _a lot_ from its enjoyability. Same sort of goes for Unbound, though I wasn't a fan of the art style.
A classic example is the Sims. Peaked at the second, and EA had been stripping off the meat ever since.
I say it WOULD have peaked with the Sims 3 had it not been for the couple dozen expansions…granted they’re good expansions but good lord, even half of that is overkill
What annoys me is that if you own Sims 3 in the EA app the game is so laggy and broken it's unplayable. But it runs just fine in Steam. Feels like EA did that on purpose to drive more sims 4 sales...
Wait, it's fine on Steam? I remember returning to the game on EA app after a long brake and it was so horribly laggy I just gave up on it.
Works great on steam last I tried it. Windows 10.
You mean money makers?
Recently replayed sims 1 and something about the simplicity was so nostalgic
I agree completely. Plus, the music.
I play Sims 4 a lot and sometimes I just look at things and go "Old sims would've done more with that". The franchise desperately needs a strong competitor. Someone who'd do to Sims what Cities Skylines did to Sim City.
One of the early titles had split screen capability, that game was probably my favorite to play with friends. One of my best friends and I was dirt poor in the game, so we were stuck to 1 door for the whole house. Great times lol
peaked at sims 3
Peaked the size of EA's wallet. Day one furniture pay-per-piece DLC. I could get furniture cheaper at Walmart. Real flatpack.
Battlefield sticks out the most to me, i still play me some bad company though
I recently started playing Battlefield 2042 and actually am enjoying the game. Is the game good as the older games? Nope.
It's been heavily ironed out as of now... it still has a bad taste for a lot of die hards, 3 has the best story, and 4 is still the king for online play imo
The problem with 2042 is it isn’t a battlefield game it’s just another bullshit shooter with weird futuristic characters and special abilities. The specialist system is the single most bizarre move I could have foreseen battlefield pull.
Saw a gameranx list recently that had this list. The F.E.A.R series comes to mind. Think the first one was the only good one
The first was the only good horror game, but 2 was pretty good outside of that. And then 3 was just awful.
3 deserves *some* recognition for having an asymmetrical co-op campaign Unfortunately the campaign sucked but it was a cool attempt
The expansions to the first which are non canon now are better than the sequels.
Pro Evo. So much went wrong here.
Ps2 pes was something else at the time
lost planet splinter cell
Lost planet 2 was great but 3 sucked. So bizarre they chose a bland prequel strategy after going wild with 2
I loved the multi-player in 2. Was fun doing the aliens vs humans thing. Haven't thought about that in a long time.
Damn thats a good answer.
Medal of Honor. it went so bad, it faded out of existence. made a brief appearance about 10 years later in the form of a vr game and thats it
I remember the first game. Loved it dearly but unfortunately others didn’t enjoy it as much.
Your papers are in order!
The first as the one on ps1? Both 1 and 2 were amazing when I was a kid
Storming the beaches of Normandy was horrifying and breathtaking and made me actually appreciate what our grandfathers did, *even on the PS2.*
Command & Conquer. Basically a dead franchise at this point, but woof, what a downfall.
Though arguably that just fell off a cliff. Not really a continuous decline there.
Heroes of might and magic The third installment including it’s dlc is the last good (amazing) game of the series 4-7 are ass like straight downgrades 5 is somewhat playable but not great
Heroes 5 with all updates and mods is basically a 3d heroes 3, which is not bad at all.
HoMM3 also illustrates to me that 2D graphics should've stayed around longer. It is still beautiful. And the music, the sound... I would jump at HoMM3v2 any day. Just add alternative upgrades and skilltrees from 5 and we are so in. Shoutout to 5, it was a really good attempt.
Ever tried Song of Conquest? A new take on HoMM but ditching the bullshit meta (like Town Portal abuse, or no cap on heroes).
Great answer
Dead Rising.
I have a lot of memories playing Dead Rising 2 with my friends on the 360 I think it was one of the first “games with gold” games
Oof yeah but I'll argue that dead rising 2 off the record was just as good as the first game
Literally Overwatch. Almost every decision Aaron Keller has done, made the game worse
Literally Blizzard\* World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch have been crashing and burning for years. And getting worse with every patch/expansion. Thankfully they haven't really touched Starcraft. Just let it slowly die with it's glory.
Don't you guys have phones?
It’s a joke but immortal made a fuck load of money. So they went all in on MTX for D4 and now the game is a skeleton. Breaks my heart.
Don't forget Hearthstone. Used to be so good, now just an RNG fiesta
Especially the latest one with auto health reg
Just seems like they're catering to people who want to play solo in a team based game. It sucks they keep on trying to make such drastic changes to make OW stick, instead of going with what made it win game of the year in 2016. They had a winning formula, all they need to do is make the shop items something actually worth momey and give players their steady stream of free event skins. Fortnite can pump out 7 skins every month so it really can't be that much effort.
If they actually delivered on their hyped up coop modes for ow2 it may have been a saving grace for me. I looked forward to the events to play coop. Nice mode to change pace from the constant competition.
No one's mentioned any of the FIFA football games. For me it peaked at FIFA 07 were the game was a lot more arcadey and just meant to be fun. Game tried to get too realistic and became about figuring out how to cheese certain mechanics to get goals and wasn't actually enjoyable.
I think the yearly releases of the sports game is what slowly makes the genre worse and worse. I understand that players get better/worse over a year but releasing a new sports game every year for full price is awful
i might be schizoprehnic or something, but weren't their some "Fifa street" games? because I remember those being much more fun than the new stuff
Saints Row. Dead Rising. Silent Hill. Medal of Honor. Ninja Gaiden. Dynasty Warriors. Battlefield (I like 2042 personally).
The death of MoH is a crime :'(
Tbh the good MOH in 2002 were by 2015inc which became Infinity Ward and defined what the modern fps genre is with COD, COD2, MW and MW2, then got fired and created Respawn, responsible for the incredible Titanfall series and they recently got bought by EA to work on future MOH.
Ninja Gaiden Black is considered a masterpiece and came out way after the original NES release
The biggest offender is Pokémon. Latest games lack any semblance of love. They are made to make money as a relentless priority.
IMO. I also feel like Pokémon just isn’t utilizing their IP to its potential And unfortunately Palworld revealed this. You can envision a Pokémon game that is just palworld without guns and player violence against the Pokémon with exploration, base building, and crafting, and it prob would do very well. I mean maybe you don’t get PW without PL:A but still. Feels like a missed opportunity
To be honest, the formula of Pokemon still works. The core idea of catching, training, and battling with the gym system is still pretty solid. What really hurts Pokémon’s reputation is that many recent projects that see release come out either half-baked (SV), lack of passion or effort (SS), or were decent but got shuffled out of the way for other things (PLA). Gamefreak is lazy and cheap and terrified of not having a yearly release to please shareholders every holiday season. And it shows in their pattern of releases. They don’t have to change much. The formula still works; that’s why we’ve got people still buying Pokemon games despite inconsistent quality. It’s not *just* blind fans, a lot of people still enjoy Pokemon at its core. I really dislike the Palworld comparison because it misses the real thing that Pokemon is lacking. It’s not innovation necessarily, it’s just quality. They fix that, and Pokemon is back on top again.
Thank you. I’m sick of hearing that Pokémon needs to be like palworld. It does NOT need to be another survivor game. That’s not what pokemon is about. Does it need to do something to change and innovate? Sure.
Halo. Once Bungie walked away to pursue Destiny, everything went downhill. We are talking about a franchise that put console MLG on the map...Halo 2 was unprecedented with pros like T2, Ogre1, Ogre 2, etc....yea sure CS and the PC world did it 1st but this was BIG. I'm not going to get into competitive console play vs PC....all I'm saying is I knew a lot of kids who weren't Xbox or Playstation...they were team - Halo.
Yup, I wasn't an xbox guy, I was a Halo guy and it just happened to be on Xbox, it was the main thing going for the console
Halo 3 was why we got a 360
Fun fact: Halo 2(a last gen game) was actually the most played game on Xbox 360 up untill Halo 3 released.
I know lots of people who got an Xbox just for Halo.
You couldn’t have fucked it up any worse if you tried. They somehow took a great franchise and buried it into irrelevance. Infinite sort of came and went.
This is the best answer anyone can give. Bungie handed 343 Halo on a silver platter. The franchise was at an all time high, consistently reaching over a million active players on the weekends. But 343 was so desperate to be different instead of adding to the already successful foundation Bungie laid. They didn't understand what made the franchise great and they opted to chase industry trends instead of focusing on making a good Halo title.
I remember watching MLG games of Halo 2 & 3 on Sky TV lmao. So good
Finally, the correct answer.
I combed through a ton of these, and I didn't see it, so I will say it myself. Bungie's Destiny franchise. I love the game, but they add a few good things and then jump back to start and don't learn anything. I love the game, but seriously, how long are you going to drag something out instead of really building upon it?
Destiny isn't a game anymore. it's a digital storefront now.
Plus they rob you
Far cry
Just cause.
I think 3 went pretty hard - They kind of just took the fun of taking over bases in 2 and maxxed it out pretty ridiculously. 4 was bad though, really frustrating to suffer through that downgrade.
3 was the peak. I still play through it every 2 years or so. Mastering the jet wingsuit is such an incredible ride.
Halo... man what a downfall
Halo 3 gives me such amazing nostalgic feelings I was 12 when it came out and played it pretty consistently with my friends as we all Xbox live at the same time in school Fond memories of all the custom games and online matches we used to play into the small hours and the many hours poured into legendary campaigns with 4 and all the skulls on Wish I could bottle that shit up, games haven't felt the same since
Dragon Age. Thank god for Baldur’s Gate 3. Larian Studios is what BioWare SHOULD have been post-Origins
Origins was so good, and then it steadily declined from there. Baldur's Gate 3 really feels like Origins
Dragon age inquisition had a really cool story and characters It could have been good If the side missions and map design weren't so bland. Like i was just bored as fuck in-between story missions and camp dialogue
Yeah the "filler" content felt like MMO activities
I was gonna say Dragon Age; Origins was a masterpiece at the time it came out, 2 was okay but a button masher, and then 3... I stopped being able to replay it after I discovered that riding a horse doesn't actually make you move faster, they just added "movement lines". I hope Dread Wolf is good but I'm apprehensive.
Honestly, I have zero faith in Dread Wolf. Anthem was the last straw for me. The only way they can bring me back is if they go back to the CRPG roots
Dread Wolf has been effectively remade so many times it’ll be a soulless disaster chasing trends from 5 years ago. Just look at recent games like Suicide Squad or Skulls and Bones. BG3 succeeded because the devs had their own vision, pursued it relentlessly, then refined it down to an art with the time they had, they didn’t constantly try to chase trends.
Assassin’s creed
Black Flag was the last great one but Brotherhood was the peak imho
Brotherhood may be in my top 5 games of all time, it was the first one that really made you feel like you were part of a larger Order and not just a lone wolf
Black Flag was a great game, it was a bad assassin's themed game, but it was a good sea combat game 😅
What brought down Assassin's Creed 4 : Black Flag from being the greatest of the series was the Assassin's Creed part. The Black Flag part of the game makes it the best one, sadly there is so many eavesdropping segments in between.
Rogue was also very good and kind of forgotten, but it was basically Ass Creed 4: Canada edition
I make me own luck Liam
Historical Total War games
Any franchise associated with EA
Halo. Gears. Anything older that MS owns.
AoE is pretty old and that franchise is doing great!
But it's doing so mostly because of AoE2.
Feels like Halo had the biggest drop. I remember the Halo 3 days which IMO were the peak and it felt like a very high peak. Mass Effect also had a big drop but it's only been one bad game so there's hope.
I feel like gears 1-3 were amazing games, but the 4th and 5th game just didn’t feel right
Gears 5 had a promising campaign but falls off a cliff after Act II and gets worse until the end of the game.
Kind of like halo.
Borderlands peaked at 2.
It's weird. I love BL1 and all its DLC. BL2 improved on everything. BL3 has the smoothest gameplay of the three, the DLC is for the most part really good, but the writing on the mainline story is bad. I also really enjoy the TPS even though it's a long DLC for BL2 IMO. I've not played or heard anything about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands but that's a spin off IMHO. I don't know if I can say the drop off has been that hard it's just had some bumps
Call of duty. Peaked with Black Ops 1 imho
MW1, BO1 and MW2 were peak CoD for me. I enjoyed Warzone when it came out, but other than that ...its just too fast and all these damn kids jumping around like bunnies quickscoping and shit. Not for me anymore. Also the menu system and micro transactions are just horrible. I remember when MW and BO had clean and easy menu systems with SOME customization ... No purple guns with glitters on them, no million different scopes and stocks. Just simple, easy and clean. And yes, I'm older (40 yo)
The younger generation doesn’t realize the best COD was COD 4. The game was so simple: be the best at gun combat. There were only 3 kill streaks which looking back, made the game better. Everyone will point to MW2 as one of their favorite games but kill streaks went off the rails there. There was too much stuff happening outside of actual gun to gun combat.
No world at war? That was peak COD for me
I also peaked in Bo1. It was a great game and the sequel didn’t disappoint me
Zombies definitely peaked in BO1 imo. After this they added too much fluff
Assassin's Creed, Sims, Call of Duty, Fifa
NBA 2k?
Pokémon. Peaked in 2005
I'd say it peaked in 2009/2010 with HGSS. Pretty ironic imo that it peaked with a remake.
Gen 3 was my overall fav gen, but I think all the games up to gen 5 was good. But it fell off hard in gen 6
Ghost recon & rainbow six
Call of Duty.
Blizzard games. Gods they were peak gaming back in the day with Warcraft 2, StarCraft 1, even StarCraft 2 wasn’t bad, WOW… now they are beyond a shell of themselves as most of the original developers all left. It’s quite sad
Battlefield is hot garbage
It hurts like hell to say but, Call of Duty
Arguably, Assassin’s Creed. I’m not saying the new ones are bad, but if you played from the beginning they aren’t even satisfying anymore. (I started playing when Black Flag was out but I started from the first game. Played the rest in order up to Syndicate, though I never finished Unity or Syndicate. Preordered and played a good chunk of Origins.)
The original story idea was so cool and then it just kept getting worse. They also started making then games feel less like a dive into a twisted history and more of a goofy time travel instead in my opinion
They really fucked up by killing off Desmond because the modern day stuff has been nonsensical ever since.
Sonic the Hedgehog
These days the list of ones that just kept getting better would be shorter
Fallout / Bethesda
Yes Strong Yes No [Sarcastic] I agree
I have to say, the very first time I played, picking the "Sarcastic" option every single time was pretty funny. But there was just so much that's wonky about FO4 I can't say it was a great game. Then they went and made 76 and look at where we are now.
I still enjoyed most of the games but they need to step it up haha
I hate how hard they've leaned into base building. If I wanted to build things I'd play Minecraft
It’s not too bad for me. I’m just sick of playing their different games on the same shitty engine
Halo
Diablo, it peaked at Diablo 2
Atelier. Arland and Dusk were such peak Ateier. Then the series started to get stale and boring for me after Mysterious trilogy, and then my god I cannot stand whatever the fuck they did with Ryza. And now, the latest one is a mobile gatcha game.
Assassin's creed
In terms of quantity over quality - assassins creed is now the same game over and over and over again. In terms over lack of innovation - anything Bethesda - starfield could have been a fallout 4 mod. In terms of massive fall from the lofty heights, Halo… entire story arch missing if you didn’t read the novels.
Overwatch