When did a game franchise you loved stray too far from what made you like it?

My pick would be Max Payne 3, but not for everyone else's nitpicky reasons. In terms of the story and Max's journey, the drug and alcohol addiction, kidnapping chase, and shift to Brazil all make sense in a way that could likely happen later in Max's life, but the way it was executed just felt very identifiably Rockstar, and the sly self awareness of Remedy's previous games was replaced by mass cynicism.

There's nothing wrong with Cynicism, but there needs to be a balance. Too much of it, and you get my least favorite Grand Theft Auto (GTA V), while the Red Dead Redemption games, and GTA IV, hit that balance perfectly, where it felt like a believable world you were in and not just a caricature in poor taste.

What about you? When did a series you used to enjoy change too much for your liking?

Tekken 7

Just going to repost this from What Game Do You Wish didn't Receive a Sequel? thread back in march-

Tekken should have stopped at Tag Tournament 2.

Tekken 7 is heavy tweaked to compensate and attract the larger 2D Fighter market who never played Tekken. Side steps got heavily nerfed to the point of novelty, and those super moves are really stupid and goes against Katsuhiro Harada sans previous statements on the mechanic.

I don't dislike people who play it, just for the fact Namco sold out to tarnish what they had prior. Which was a deeper and far more rewarding system. Tekken 7 was made to sell towards a more easily assumed market, and in that regard was successful.

Tekken 7 is basically 2.5D. It's glamor over function and that annoys me, considering TTT2 is a glorious masterpiece. But no one bought that gem, only did mildly well in arcades. . so here we are.

Battlefield and Medal of Honor they basically turned into COD clones but before that there was Battlefield 2 and Medal of Honor Allied Assault easily the best in the series IMO. Also adding F.E.A.R. 2&3 and the Crysis sequels to the list they became generic and dumbed down compared to the first games.

Final Fantasy 13 strayed too far. I am biased towards FF so can enjoy FF13 story fine but gotta admit some changes it made quite mind boggling for me when I first played the game. Fake towns, cannot talk to npc (they will auto play dialogue when u get near them) and one very long coridor to end boss. FF10 & FF12 tbh did some of these first but they still felt like FF.

Front Mission. Last two games, Evolution and Left Alive are nothing like its first 5 installments.

Fallout. The original was one of my favorite games and I also loved Fallout 2.

When it went to 3rd it lost its charm and I was extremly disaponted with Fallout 4. Come to think of it I got so annoyed I haven't played it in years. No fun characters, story, clever writing, discoveries, etc. I'm constantly overloaded and having to go back and put stuff away or go around trying to fetch junk to build these stupid settlements.

I just want to customize my character and roll play as someone and have funny dialogue and cool stories as well as combat. I don't want to try and find materials to build a fence in a settlement that's being attacked.

This.

Although I didn't even play 4, as I knew Bethesda is incapable of making a good FO game/proper RPG.

PTO IV strayed too far from the original games.

The original games were turn based combat and gave you free roam of the Pacific Ocean. IV gave you sections of map and ships in battle moved in real time. The early games were better.

Goldeneye when it was sold to EA.

Mortal Kombat....when it became insane violent. (I like the earlier games more).

TLOU2

:D

Fallout, but I never played 1&2. I'm talking more about the transition from 3 to 4.

In three there was plenty of fun role playing, dialogue, exploration, zany characters and even the weapon/armor degradation system created more use for spares. But in Fallout 4, it's just shoot everyone that moves and collect LOTS AND LOTS of material. [In my second playthrough, I actually used a console command to give me a massive backpack but it still didn't have the charm that Fallout 3 had.]

Even though I never played Tekken 7, I went from 4 to 5 and it just wasn't for me. Guessing that's where the franchise went downhill anyway?

@speeny: Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was after Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion. Which itself on console release saw a lot of backlash for a tacked-on story mode no one asked for and was horrible, to put bluntly. The arcade fighting was the best the series saw up to that point but it was shadowed by a forced story mode. Only those playing on cabinets played Tekken 6 as intended.

Tekken 4 and 5 are not exactly highlights of the franchise, but Tekken 5 was an improvement over 4 and Dark Resurrection fixed a lot of problems with Tekken 5.

In my view Tekken 7 is just too different, it's a sign that the studio didn't want to make Tekken games anymore (making the same games since 1994 will do that I suppose). And honestly that mentality could be felt as far back as Tekken 6. TTT2 was the last of proper Tekken game; without the needless padding, or change of direction to alienate fans.

*Nothing against those playing and enjoying Tekken 7, it's just fundamentally a very different game, and personally not why I put hundreds, if not over a thousand hours into the series prior.

Almost all the Tom Clancy games by Ubisoft. Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell. All three have no ties to earlier games that made them popular. Rainbow Six omitted its single player campaign and even took out most multiplayer modes in favour of 2 modes. Ghost Recon used to be a sniper stealth game (describing the first word of the title ‘ghost’) and now it’s just an open world quest based game. And Splinter Cell turned into a balls out gun game.

@Zuon:

I'd definitely have to say: Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. The 1st one was the most disappointing one though. And I'm generally disappointed that throughout the trilogy, Lara learned very little and they never fully utilized her abilities. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was the closest it got to returning to its former glory.

Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, and this generation's Gran Trusimo.

Though to be fair I love the Crash and Spyro trilogy remakes.

Diablo 3. In a weird way I admire them for having enough guts to make such big changes - from visuals to core mechanics. But virtually none of those changes work for me. Ranking them, the #1 disappointment is the changes to leveling - you "level up" constantly, and by eliminating stat customization and making all "skills" swappable at any time, they have effectively removed the RPG element entirely.

Now, I can hear the objections already but bear with me: because the game autolevels character stats, your only way to customize then is via equipment. Because the skills can be swapped at any time and primarily interface with stats you don't control except through...equipment, they become an extension of the stats and thus an extension of equipment. In other words, all "builds" are really the equivalent of swapping guns in Unreal Tournament. Ok, that's a bit hyperbolic, but... Kinda true in a strict sense. Basically the RPG component has been reduced to discovering what gear combo you like in any action game, but smeared with a thick vaseline layer of numbers and screen visuals to obfuscate that.

Now why is the leveling up constantly a problem? Well the "strategy" has been pushed from traditional RPG stat and skill trees to experimenting with weapon combos (physical in the form of actual gear and virtual in the form of "skills"). But by continually leveling it discourages a rich experimentation process, because you always have something new to try. In my experience, the most thought comes about late in the game or on a replay, when no new skills are coming and NOW you can take stock of your arsenal in its totality and assess combos that work best for you.

Now, it's not the end of the world. I've beat it several times now and it's fun. But it's not Diablo. I recently replayed Diablo 1 (GoG) and that game feels constrained in many ways and YET is more atmospheric and forces you to make decisions with ramifications.