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[CamHostage]

I agree Insomniac's Spider-Man is probably the best Spider-Man game but Treyarch delivered big time with Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man. Even Beenox when not tasked with the horrible movie games made an incredible one in Shattered Dimensions.

Oh, that's right, I forgot that Treyarch actually took over the series after the successful PS1 Spider-Man by Neversoft and then Spider-Man Enter Electro by Vicarious Visions.

Spider-Man 2 by Treyarch is my north star. Not necessarily the best Spider-Man (it's the one I like most, but my memories are tied up in the times,) but the one that I judge all other Spider-Mans against. And I like hearing people's arguments for what games came up that are better (I unfortunately didn't play most of them more than a demo or watching a friend play, even PS4 Spider-Man is still in shrinkwrap on my shelf because I'm so behind,) but I calibrate all superhero games and also all swing-mechanic games through that lens.

BTW, in that time (and especially in the time when the Spider-Man games got rough,) the Game Boy and DS games were IMO always fun. Technically, those were mostly by Vicarious Visions again so those don't count here, but there was that unsung developer working away on games that people didn't know were good.

I feel like that happens a lot in portables, where a game that couldn't advance to be its best on consoles gets a second life. Not a lot is coming to mind of a developer taking over though (and a lot of these are Japanese games, where they call it the same studio but you never know who's actually involved in what.) And then the portable studio rarely inherits the franchise and/or ever brings it back to consoles under their control. I would say that Rockstar Leeds' GTA Vice City Stories is my most memorable and enjoyable GTA; technically it doesn't fit this description since Leeds didn't take over the franchise (and also lots of normal Rockstar brass helped out to make it an authentic GTA experience) but if I ever play a full GTA again, it'll probably be this one, and I wish Leeds/Mobius was still actively making its own titles rather than now being just part of the big anonymous megateam.

 

[Astral Dog]

imo Retro Studios surpassed Rare with Donkey Kong Country, maybe not always art/atmosphere but i thought they were more fun games

 

[Soleil rouge]

Red Dead Revolver. Although I'm not sure we ever got footage of what it looked like before Rockstar took over.

 

[TexMex]

Some of you are out of your goddamned minds.

 

[Fess]

Some of you are out of your goddamned minds.

Lol my thought as well, I don't think there is any example of this. Definitely not Metroid, Dread was close but in the end there was too much hand-holding for exploration, Super Metroid is still my all time #1. And the Prime games aren't even close.

 

[Chukhopops]

Not exactly taken over since the original dev was involved but Team Ninja made a way better action-oriented Final Fantasy game than anything Square attempted so far.

Not only is Stranger of Paradise excellent gameplay wise but it's also faithful to the license in terms of classes, enemies etc (I won't say anything about the characters and story).

 

[Player Respawn]

GTA

wat? DMA Design is Rockstar North. no developer change.

 

[MrA]

Outrun! The original 1986 arcade game was great, and Outrunners is frankly an even better followup. But when Sumo Digital were tasked with Outrun 2 in 2003/Outrun 2006, they made the originals look like garbage. Not only does it have the best visuals in the series but gameplay wise it expands a lot on the outrun formula, with a campaign, heart attack mode, more indepth physics, a shop to buy newer faster cars, all while still keeping the formula of the games intact. You can tell Sega were glad with the choice they made as they basically just got them to make the Sonic and All stars Racing games in 2010 and 2012.

Am2 made outrun 2 and 2006c2c digital sumo handled the home ports

 

[anthraticus]

Fallout

This better be sarcasm....unless you're talking about Obsidian making New Vegas.

All you need to know about Beth's Fallouts and their lead writer on it

 

[IDKFA]

MercurySteam made the greatest Castlevania of all time with Lords of Shadow.

 

[Robb]

From the top of my head;

RETRO Stuidios with Metroid and Donkey Kong

SEGA with F-Zero

Insomniac with Spider-Man

Next Level Games with Luigi's Mansion

 

[PJX]

Am2 made outrun 2 and 2006c2c digital sumo handled the home ports

Shhhh ..let him live in his ignorance bliss.

 

[Connificent]

 

[emmerrei]

You're entitled to your opinion.

I loved Crash 4

Crash 4, one of the most unpleasant game i've played lately. Get the trilogy, and make everything worse.

 

[anthony2690]

Killer instinct reboot, where is the sequel?!

Halo infinite - even if content updates are SEVERELY lacking and leaves a lot to be desired, gameplay wise, it's the most I've enjoyed halo and already my most played halo game, now hurry up and add some more content and a proper progression system, so much potential here!

Gears 5 is probably my most played game ever, I love it, granted I'm not playing anymore as I'm waiting for the next game, but I put 67 days playtime into that game.

 

[adamsapple]

DeckNine made the better Life is Strange games (Before the Storm, True Colors).

Spoiler

the first one is still the best one

 

[64gigabyteram]

Am2 made outrun 2 and 2006c2c digital sumo handled the home ports

Holy shit, I did NOT know
I actually thought sumo digital were responsible for the game
This makes my post misinformation ;_;

 

[Makoto-Yuki]

GTA

GTA never changed studios or developer.

The main games (1-3) were made by DMA Design who Take Two bought then renamed to Rockstar North. It was still the same studio in Scotland that went on to make GTA 4, 5, and currently working on 6.

Staff might have changed over the years but still the same studio. Alright, GTA got really popular with III but it's not like they were unknown before that. At least here in the UK it was one of the most popular games and Nintendo was actually looking to buy them.

 

[64gigabyteram]

Am2 made outrun 2 and 2006c2c digital sumo handled the home ports

I REFUSE, I must be educated

 

[MrA]

I REFUSE, I must be educated

Am2 did the original arcade and 2sp, sumo wrapped them both into coast2coast , they did add the bonus features,
Annoyingly the download able 360 ps4 version released just months before ms upped the Xbox arcade limit from 350mb to 2gb so the port had to be barebones

 

[lovetalkgames]

Mario Odyssey had almost no direct involvement from Miyamoto and it's pretty much the greatest Mario game ever.

 

[RyRy93]

.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Ninja gaiden the thread?

 

[Walter Matthau]

_

 

[Y0ssarian]

Dark Souls 2 is the best Soulsborne game and it wasn't made by Miyazaki

 

[Banjo64]

Sakurai taking over Kid Icarus for Uprising.

 

[Elysion]

wat? DMA Design is Rockstar North. no developer change.

GTA never changed studios or developer.

The main games (1-3) were made by DMA Design who Take Two bought then renamed to Rockstar North. It was still the same studio in Scotland that went on to make GTA 4, 5, and currently working on 6.

Staff might have changed over the years but still the same studio. Alright, GTA got really popular with III but it's not like they were unknown before that. At least here in the UK it was one of the most popular games and Nintendo was actually looking to buy them.

Ah, they were just renamed? Didn't know that. Though from what I understand, all the founders of DMA left after Take Two took over, and the the Housers were put in charge.

 

[Shut0wen]

Red Dead Revolver. Although I'm not sure we ever got footage of what it looked like before Rockstar took over.

From what i remember from magazines from years ago rockstar mostly made the maps smaller thus making more levels for the game and also redone the whole combat the rest was capcom

 

[Shut0wen]

Mario Odyssey had almost no direct involvement from Miyamoto and it's pretty much the greatest Mario game ever.

No but koizumi was a producer so who is basically miyamoto 2.0

 

[Walter Matthau]

_

 

[SpokkX]

Spider-Man, Insominac

Metroid, both Retro and Mercury

Luigi's Mansion, Next Level

City of Heroes, Paragon Studios

These are all good picks (dunno about city of heroes)

Would add Fallout to Bethesda and Wolfenstein to machine game

 

[Closer]

MercurySteam made the greatest Castlevania of all time with Lords of Shadow.

Some of you are out of your goddamned minds.

 

[killatopak]

Itsuno > Kamiya > Ninja Theory > Itsuno.

Itsuno is simultaneously the best and worst DMC director. To be fair though, he had to take over director duties from someone else in the last six months of production of DMC2.

And yeah DMC was passed around multiple internal Capcom dev studios so it kinda counts.

 

[OmegaSpirit32X]

Retro - Donkey Kong.
Wolfenstein - Machine Games.
The team that did Sonic Mania - Sonic Mania
Crystal Dynamics - Tomb Raider (keep in mind Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness was trash).

Disagree on DK and Sonic. I feel the Rareware games had much more charm than the Retro Studios Games and I'm sick of the whle "fans do Sonic better than SEGA" crap when Mania just felt very rehashed.

 

[Georges Chiellins]

From the top of my head;



SEGA with F-Zero

How did it take so long for F-zero GX to be mentioned?

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

Retro Studios did great with Metroid Prime, not "better" but as good as Super Metroid which is still my favorite Metroid.

 

[MAtgS]

Disagree on DK and Sonic. I feel the Rareware games had much more charm than the Retro Studios Games and I'm sick of the whle "fans do Sonic better than SEGA" crap when Mania just felt very rehashed.

Mania definitely could've used more new zones but the returning zones with new elements added was a welcome feature (except for Oil Ocean, was meh on that one).

 

[GametimeUK]

Disagree on DK and Sonic. I feel the Rareware games had much more charm than the Retro Studios Games and I'm sick of the whle "fans do Sonic better than SEGA" crap when Mania just felt very rehashed.

You're free to disagree and that's fine. I originally meant Tropical Freeze by Retro made the Donkey Kong mainline games better than where Rare left it with Donkey Kong 64. However I also think Tropical Freeze is the best DKC game too full stop.

Also I think the "fans do Sonic better than Sega" crap you refer to isn't aimed at the classic games. But yeah, I do think Sonic Mania is the best Sonic game ever made too beating out Sonic 3 and Knuckles by a whisker. Sonic Mania is certainly a step up from Sonic 4 I know that much.

 

[bender]

This is only a personal opinion and will upset a lot of Black Isle fans, but Bethesda when they bought the Fallout franchise, but that's because i prefer 1st person and 3rd person view over isometric, and like the BGS gameplay a lot more, they use to be very anti Beth on the old old forums and would nag anyone to play Fallout 1 and 2 a lot.

 

[PonyStation4]

Capcom and 2D Zelda

 

[TGO]

MercurySteam made the greatest Castlevania of all time with Lords of Shadow.

I see people laughing at this but Lords of Shadows is my favourite Castlevania.
But Kojima Pro was involved with the first and we know what happened after with the sequel

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Some bad taste in this thread but also some straight facts.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Fallout 3 over Fallout 1/2.