In your opinion, the franchises that went down hill this gen?

I guess since 4 was the most recent previous generation game. Really they all kind of suck in their own way except for 4. All the main, numbered entries at least.

From 4 - 6 is like going from eating the finest steaks and sushi to dumpster diving. Even if you didnt really like 1, 2, 3 they were on PSX/Saturn so yeah
 
Silent Hill has had two great entries in Shattered Memories (when played on the Wii) and Downpour, so I can't agree with people throwing that one out there
 
The mainline Mario franchise is the only one that I can think of where the quality has gone up this gen. All my other favourite franchises have deteriorated.

On the bright side, there have been quite a few new games and series that I enjoyed.

That said, within those new series, quality has often gone down within this gen.




Damn.
 
Listing the ones that didn't would probably be a shorter list...

But of the ones most dear to me:

Metroid
Final Fantasy
Dragon Quest
Castlevania
 
Pretty much any fighting game

There was a resurgence in good fighting games this gen, ushered in by Street Fighter IV. What are you talking about?

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition 2012
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
Mortal Kombat 9
King of Fighters XIII

All great games in existing franchises.
 
silent hill
resident evil
final fantasy
uncharted 3 was a step back in a few ways imo
splinter cell
assassin's creed is taking a disappointing direction too with revelations and 3
devil may cry (the new one looks god awful)

and i'm sure i'm missing a few others but these are the ones that come to mind.
 
Is the hate for how FF has gone just a western thing, or are the Japanese fans just as disappointed as most of us seem to be? Because I keep thinking "Well, at least once the whole XIII thing is done and out their system, there's a chance" but if it's just as popular over there, I doubt they'll have much motivation? How did xiii-2 sell in comparison to previous games? This is the first time in a long time I've even gave the FF series some consideration haha.
 
Indeed. And Devil May Cry.

Damn this generation was horrible, the worst moments of gaming I ever saw.

Devil May Cry 4 was good. DMC is not out, and therefore cannot be judged. I don't get this hate for modern gaming...
 
Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto and even God Of War III left me a little cold.

At least GTA and MGS look like they could be about to improve. Sadly GoW doesn't look that interesting to me at the moment.
 
Splinter Cell has been royally buggered this gen, even to the point where the previous gen version of Double Agent was excellent whereas the current-gen one was just a shell of it.
 

image.php
image.php
 
Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Final Fantasy
Unreal Tournament
Metal Gear Solid
Devil May Cry

Man, i went into this generation thinking "OH MY GOD IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITES" when it came to these franchises. Absolutely horrible how they all turned out.

MGO was immense, though.
 
Halo, Gears of War, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Megaman, Call of Duty, Counter Strike, Civilization, Devil May Cry, Bioshock, Dragon Age.

Bolded all the series that started this generation... They didn't exist during the PS2/GCN/x-box generation and thus couldn't have gotten worse since the last one ;)
 
Is the hate for how FF has gone just a western thing, or are the Japanese fans just as disappointed as most of us seem to be? Because I keep thinking "Well, at least once the whole XIII thing is done and out their system, there's a chance" but if it's just as popular over there, I doubt they'll have much motivation? How did xiii-2 sell in comparison to previous games? This is the first time in a long time I've even gave the FF series some consideration haha.

FFXIII-2 sold really bad I think
 
For me, I could only really say 3 big ones:

Final Fantasy (needs no explanation)
Silent Hill (needs even less explanation)
Ninja Gaiden - tricky. Ninja Gaiden II is good, in both versions. The situation with NGIII is all screwed up sadly.

I guess I could add Megaman. Not sure it qualifies though - does Megaman still exist?
 
Madden, SOCOM, and Call of Duty are the main ones for me. The first two franchises I mentioned were far superior on PS2 IMO, and what hurts the most is they had zero excuses to not release a quality product on PS3.

CoD I'm sure we're probably all on the same page.
 
Title says it all. What game franchises in your opinion have took a turn for the worse this gen? Off the top of my head resident evil and final fantasy for me.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy. There's really no contest. Other franchises already started their decline in the past gen but Final Fantasy.. LOL :/

Final Fantasy and Resident Evil are the two easiest answers.

Resident Evil
Final Fantasy
Silent Hill
Kingdom Hearts
Zelda

All my favorite franchises basically.

Final Fantasy started its downhill ride at the middle/end of last gen. Big ones to me this gen would be, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Bionic Commando, and Castlevania off the top of my head. I'll need to think about others, though on the flip side a bunch of other Franchises have improved a lot this gen.

This one wins by a country mile, if you ask me. I bought a PS3 in large part out of excitement for FFXIII and I ended up never even picking the game up... It's only gotten worse since.

Final Fantasy
Grand Theft Auto (still a chance for redemption though)
Metal Gear Solid
Hitman
Splinter Cell
Elder Scrolls
Fallout (redeemed through New Vegas)

That's all I want to list for now. It's depressing to re-live so many painful memories.

Yea, Final Fantasy. Previously a system seller for me.

yeah :( I just miss the magic of the past.

Final Fantasy.

Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Pro Evolution Soccer
Metal Gear Solid
Final Fantasy

Basically 5 of my favourite franchises going into this gen and they're all dog shit now (possible exception of MGS which I will still buy, play and hopefully enjoy with Ground Zeroes)

Final Fantasy. We went from 12 to... the 13 trilogy ;~;

Twilight Princess was great but man Skyward Sword was a massive disappointment.

FF wins hands down

Final Fantasy just because the plummet between FF12 and 13 is almost unreal

Many of them. Here are some of my favorites.

Final fantasy
Resident evil
Gran Turismo
Metal gear solid
Grand theft auto

And by favorites, I mean the people responsible for this gens games in the above franchises have damaged my childhood irreparably.

That said, they are still solid games for the most part.

Interesting choice, why would you say this?


Pretty much how I feel.

Dragon Quest (IX kind of sucks, and online jp only X...)
Final Fantasy
Super Monkey Ball
Resident Evil
Zelda
Animal Crossing (no NES ROMs?? WTF is this shit?)
Halo
Metroid

I'm going to cry...

Final Fantasy
Resident Evil
Zelda

Or, am I just getting old and jaded?

Final Fantasy
Metal Gear Solid
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

Final Fantasy - gone from a system seller to an IP I no longer have any interest in.

Final Fantasy
Silent Hill
Resident Evil
Tekken

Final Fantasy

Resident Evil

Pretty much any fighting game

For me i'd have to say:

Final Fantasy
Diablo
Silent Hill
GTA
Red Faction

FF.

Not much more needs to be said.
50 posts on the first page and exactly 25 of them mention Final Fantasy as a franchise that went downhill this gen.

I hope SquareEnix is looking and soaking this in. I hope other communities make a thread like this too. If poor sales figures aren't enough, it needs to be hammered home that they are destroying a once beloved franchise.
 
I'm laughing at all of the current generation series that people are listing.

50 posts on the first page and exactly 25 of them mention Final Fantasy as a franchise that went downhill this gen.

I hope SquareEnix is looking and soaking this in. I hope other communities make a thread like this too. If poor sales figures aren't enough, it needs to be hammered home that they are destroying a once beloved franchise.

Yeah FF used to be a tradition for me but after 13 and what they've been doing since then I'm hard pressed to think of a more worthless franchise now. It's completely dead to me now.
 
First post seems pretty representative of neoGAF as a whole, recently. It's annoying too, because I actually still like gaming.

I love gaming, as in playing good games. What I don't love is watching most of my favorite franchises being taken in shitty directions and streamlined for casuals. Unfortunately, that has been the case with the vast majority of franchises that extended into this gen.

Everyone has different tastes, but I don't see how anyone could argue against most of the nominations in this thread (FF, Splinter Cell, Hitman, Resident Evil, Silent Hill... etc.).
 
Portable Zeldas and Megaman X

well... Megaman X has been going downhill since the PS2 until it totally disappeared on this one :(
 
Halo starts it's new trilogy on the wrong foot
Diablo 3 took one step forward and two steps backward
Call of Duty went from phenom to Madden yearly update almost.
 
The Witcher
Persona
Mario
Starcraft
Halo

The Witcher didn't exist until this generation and only got better with 2.
There were no Persona games on console this generation.
Mario has gotten worse lately, but many would argue that Galaxy 1 and 2 were great.
There is nothing wrong with Starcraft 2.
The Halo series is fine (although I can't speak for Halo 4 because I have not played it).
 
Final Fantasy wins by a long long way, going from a game series that I would take a week off work to play to one that I just can't bring myself to play at all any more. It has developers fixated on how many pixels each strand of hair and zipper is and wank-fantasy emo characters with swimsuit DLC and legs going up to their armpits, rather than being RPGs that just allow you to explore a fantastical world at your own pace. From system-selling, gaming event of the year to something just embarassing, continually championing a nonsensical twisted story and lead character barely anyone cares about just because the director is in love with the protagonist he created. The best thing they could learn from this is restraint. Just because you can cook up several hours of cut-scene claptrap and characters with enough unresolved angst to last for three games, doesn't mean you should. The parties of every other FF mean far more to me and they only had one game each and a story you could write on the back of a coaster.
Star Ocean. The less said the better. Just... awful.
Dragon Quest. Online multiplayer for the loss of decent party NPCs? No thanks.
Front Mission. Not an SRPG any more, now a generic shooter. No thanks.

Ones I thought were about the same
Castlevania- Order of Ecclesia and Lords of Shadow are pretty good games. I know everyone loves SOTN, but that was 15 years ago, and there have been plenty of decent Castlevania games since. Lets just draw a veil over that Wii fighting game though. Castlevania is a series that still has a lot of potential.

In the interest of balance, ones I thought got better
Contra. Hard Corps: Uprising, Rebirth and Contra IV are worthy successors to the games of the 80s and early 90s.
Fallout. I'm sure plenty will disagree, but I found Fallout NV to be one of my favourite RPGs.
 
Fallout. Without a doubt.
I mean, Obsidian's attempt to fix Bethesda's mess was pretty good but still a major step down from the original games.
 
Top Bottom