Hailed games, Terrible Legacies

Here are games that basically were hailed at the time, have left negative legacies that have hurt either the genre, the company, and the industry itself in the long run.

Gamespot selected.

Final Fantasy VII - Definitely, but not the reasons why Gamespot stated, but SquareEnix's inability to see the flaws while they whore the game has lead to the downfall of the quality of the series and their games.

Resident Evil 4- definitely almost killed the survival horror genre and took the series in a horrible direction. RE4 has lead to the disaster that was RE6.

My picks

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - well duh, its success led to the "annualization" of a shallow shooter franchise. and dumbing down the game industry.

Assassin's Creed II - basically became the formula for all Ubi Soft's big open world games, driving the series to the ground with annual releases, while killing the uniqueness of other titles with formula. UbiSoft is now about Far Creed: Watch Crew.

Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion - its a challenge what Bethesda game to pick, but the dumbing down started here. I give Morrowind a pass due to Daggerfall being plainly bloated, but Oblivion is the beginning of the downward slide for Bethesda. Skyrim may be more damaging though.

The Walking Dead Season One - overpraised and overawarded, Telltale basically stuck to the formula, never fixing the flaws, their engine, or expanding their gameplay. Result, they nearly choked to death their own rebirth of the adventure genre, while their games decline in sales.

Battlefield 3 - the chopping of content for DLC really started here, and lead to travesties such as Star Wars Battlefront.

@texasgoldrush: I agree with your choices

however final fantasy VII shouldn't be on there, the damage to the series started from XII.

square refusing to stick with anything that worked in the past is the downfall of the series, resulting in XIII being the worst.

Mass Effect- led to the stupid obvious speech selections and illusions that your choices actually matter.

Super Smash Bros. 4 - I know a bit early to say, but the "mind changes" of Sakurai, plus the addition of that ONE character is not promising a bright future for the series quality.

What character?

@texasgoldrush: I totally disagree with Final Fantasy VII.

I can talk all day why as an EX-FF fanatic. The downfall of FF series started with FF12 that felt like a really bad single player MMORPG than a classic FF title. So they expanded that formula with FF13 and theyll continue as it seems with FF15. Exactly the same crap happening with RE4 and its sequels after that.

FF7 .. no way! FF8 was good , FF9 was great and FF10 was good. It was after FF12 that FF series really hit bottom even if at the start critics and some gamers praised FF12 , exactly like what happened with RE4 .

FF12 felt so bad to me that was the very first FF game i never finished. It got me bored , not interested ..it felt bad in more than one way.

Same as RE4. I was a hardcore RE fan since the very first game. When i finished RE4 i was like "WTF i just played". Aside its level design and graphics and shit .. It felt BAD. But noo , critics , newcomers in RE series and half of fans were praising it again and again ... then RE5 continued the RE4 formula ..again like FF12 , was the very first RE i felt so bored with it after 3-4 hours in game and it felt so bad that i couldnt play thru it... I didnt even bothered with RE6. Yeah , and i was a super hardcore fan , i finished original RE like 15 times in order to be sure i saw all endings for example.

Anyways , both RE4 and FF12 reminds me of Wii. Successful and all but when time passed , they got exposed and aside their scores and popularity and sales ... they were actually the start of the downfall for their respective series. But FF7 , no way.

PSO to PSU but eh, if it were still live and free to play online in the US, I'd likely still play it today. :P

The original 2D Sonic the Hedgehog... I think that speaks for itself.

I'll give you a hint, from a series that became less associated with Nintendo by it's seventh installment that's getting remade and said game symbolised how bad Nintendo and third party relations got. And any criticisms of him being in the game are a heresy.

It has no terrible legacy, you're trying to create a bizarre controversy/persecution where none even exists. Get over yourself.

1. I DID say it was a bit early of me to say, did I? Sure it has no terrible legacy now (it did release just this gen after all), but I fear in time it will for the reasons I mentioned.

2. How the hell did I create the controversy when both Sakurai (even though he misunderstood it) and hell, even TVTropes Broken Base: Smash Bros page noted the criticism I'm talking about here? What do you think I created the criticism of Star Wars characters being in Soul Calibur, despite Namco acknowledging that too?

You mentioned no reason. You said it has Cloud, and that somehow means future games will be bad. Do you ever actually take a step back and try and see what mammoth leaps of logic you made?

And no shit there was criticism. There was also criticism when Fire Emblem characters were added. Or when the Ice Climbers were removed. Or when Snake didn't return. or when Sonic was added. Because a fighting game's roster, especially one as high profile as Smash Bros., will always have some people unhappy and criticize the additions/subtractions.That doesn't mean there is a controversy, or that somehow that tarnishes the legacy of Smash 4, because a) it has no f*cking legacy, the game is less than a year and a half old right now, and b) It is widely considered to be the best, most rounded game in the series, or at least second only to Melee. it is the game that the fighting game community was finally willing to accept after the bullshit of Melee, the game that continues to be a part of major circuits like EVO. This standing in the FGC, and the game's general sales and appreciation by its fanbase, are what will define its legacy, not some forum dwellers getting mad that Cloud got in over whatever character they thought should get in.

Get some perspective.

I definitely agree with Battlefield 3. The series went downhill from there.

Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam was spectacular. After that it had to become this big franchise because EA is obsessed with only going after the big money in the FPS genre. And forgot what makes a great game.

"You mentioned no reason."

I'm pretty sure I also mentioned Sakurai's "mind changes" in my first post and even though I was vague on that, that translates to things like his DLC usage. And several big names got worse and worse with that (Activision, Capcom, EA, you name it, unless you're Bethesda who already did their worst with Horse Armor).

BBC2 was awesome but i pretty much enjoyed BF3 without purchasing the DLCs.

I heavily disagree with Final Fantasy 7 and Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Final Fantasy didn't start getting bad until Final Fantasy 11 so none of that is part 7's fault. And Oblivion saved Elder Scrolls from extinction by modernizing the gameplay and Skyrim that came after is considered one of the best games of last gen.

Nope- your original post very clearly outlines that your issue specifically is with the inclusion of Cloud in the game, something that is made clear in your response to NathanDrakeSwag as well. This isn't about the game having a DLC policy that you're afraid would escalate to being out of control, this is just about you creating a bizarre mountain out of a molehill that is Cloud's inclusion, which is the kind of thing you've been known to do before.

FF7 shouldn't be on there. Say what you will about the series today but it was still a respected series after 7 and in fact 7 was huge for the series. Sonic has not made the 3D transition consistently which is disappointing.

Disagree heavily with Resident Evil 4. For some reason people just like to neglect the fact it is the reason why the series still exists. Prior to that, it was more or less on its deathbed because the traditional survival-horror formula just wasn't working out anymore. There was more thought and effort put in RE4 than any other title in the series, and it managed a near-perfect balance of action and survival-horror gameplay. Purists like to believe it was absent on the latter. when enemies like Verdugo and the regenerators were clear cut evidence to the contrary.

The supposed terrible legacy it leaves is a fault that lies entirely on Capcom and their incompetence, because it's clear they don't know what made RE4 an excellent game in the first place.

But Realm Reborn is gud.

Let's look at my original post again:

I said "plus the addition of that one character". Implying that Cloud isn't the only reason. And even as I say that, you still think this SPECIFICALLY about Cloud, even after I made a thread months ago calling Sakurai out on his changing his stance on DLC and called it flip-flopping (previous term: hypocrisy, which likely isn't right) which you also called me out on?

Batman Arkham Asylum: The Arkham style combat is kind of overrated and it is now being used a de facto combat system for a lot of action games.

World of Warcraft: This game sudden expansion of the MMO market with its higher accessibility led to a race to the bottom in terms of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Most modern MMOs feel more like normal MOGs and focus a lot less on community and player collaboration.

That was KotoR mate, of which Mass Effect one is almost a reskin of with a new story.

I didn't select it, gamespot did, for leading to games being more about cutscenes than gameplay.

XII is one of the better FFs for many people because Matsuno had a hand in it.

This, and Mass Effects dialogue system had a mostly positive effect on games (not Fallout 4 however).

Morrowind did very well, it was the breakthrough game for Bethesda. While oblivion was good, it started the dumbing down trend that Bethesda has employed. Skyrim is one of the most overrated games of last gen. Bethesda keeps repeating their flaws.

Think about this, none of the later FF's have been better than FFVI or FF Tactics for that matter. FFVII has flaws that they are repeating in later games, such as convoluted storytelling that hurts the game, such as the last third of VIII. FFXIII takes the cake.

I agree with all of your choices, especially Walking Dead. Could not see what the hype was about, completely boring movi- I mean game. And yeah, Modern Warfare just murdered actually good gunplay.

@texasgoldrush: I admit that if one plays Final Fantasy 7 now, you would see how horribly outdated it is and how lousy the story was written. I learned that lesson from playing a digital copy on my PS Vita. Today, I've played literally dozens of JRPG'S that put Final Fantasy 7 to shame but for its time it was a great game. The combat system stayed true to traditional Final Fantasy standards and there weren't any convoluted level up systems with a 2 hour learning curve. It was simple, the music was excellent and the story was unique enough to keep me interested. I would say that Final Fantasy 7 is on par with 6 but 6 aged more gracefully because it wasn't made in 3D.

I love Final Fantasy 6 but the over simplicity of its story makes it weaker than 7 by a few smudges. For one thing, it was easy to get lost in Final Fantasy 6 and forget where you need to go. While Final Fantasy 7 guides you thoroughly and leaves reminders along with an easier to follow world map. FF 8 was great story wise but I hated the level up system and the draw cards crap and you know where it goes from there....

I do remember Morrowind though. It was a big eye opener to Elder Scrolls games to me but it felt too PC-ish to keep my attention. And either way if Bethesda continues to get sooo much praise for Oblivion and Skyrim and whatever comes next then I'd say they're doing something right. Abandoning old fans to earn many more new ones is a fair trade. I felt the same way you do but with the new Tomb Raider. So much praise for a mediocre copycat is unjustly! But hey, at least I still got 12 Tomb Raider games to remember the good 'ol days. Sucks being left behind though. :(

You do realize that games like Life is Strange wouldn't have come out at all without taking heavy inspiration from Telltales successful new formula?

Here is how Final Fantasy VI is better than VII. The story simply put, is more elegant and works better, and VI's story has also aged better. The problem with FFVII is that it was more than the writers can handle, and at points, it conflicts with itself, especially thematically. FFVI took a much better balance, and correctly put the lore in the background, only driving the story when it needs to be. This allowed the story to be more about characters and their motivations instead of how lore concepts work. FFVII damaged the series in this regard due to the ridiculous lore and how convoluted it made the game. Due to the games sheer popularity, Square failed to notice the flaws, and doubled down on many of them.

Final Fantasy VI also doesn't hold your hand, especially in the World of Ruin. FFVII is more linear in this regard.

And FFVI clearly has a much more positive legacy than FFVII.

However, Bethesda's formula is starting to wear thin. Fallout 4 has been the most criticized Bethesda game for failing to leave the formula and lost to The Witcher 3 in most GOTY awards. And just because it gets so much praise because they are doing something right doesn't mean they aren't doing something terribly wrong that does damage in the long run.

However, Life is Strange fixed the flaws of the Telltale formula and expanded the gameplay, delivering something new. Nevermind they also took major influence from games like Gone Home.

Second, The Walking Dead has hurt Telltale in the long run. While it did not do industry damage, it has done the company damage. Life is Strange basically outsold on Steam; Tales From the Borderlands, Game of Thrones, and Minecraft Story Mode combined. Life is Strange also is on pace to outsell The Walking Dead Season One and has passed Season two and The Wolf Among Us.

Metroid: Other M, the worst of the franchise with horrible plot, uninspiring environments, and awkward controls with only having a good concept of gameplay and of course Sakamoto F*cking up a lot of back stories in Metroid, including the origins of the Space Pirates.

hsurdlogsaxet!

Did it work? Has he been cast back to the depths that spawned him?

@mems_1224: Mass Effect 3 is probably the only game in the series where choice and consequence don't matter as much as the game claims they do. 1 and 2 were solid in that department, as well as in dialogue choices. Criticising ME3 for what it got wrong is perfectly fine, but criticising the entire series retrospectively is just unfair.

The whole promise of the series was that choices you make would have an meaningful impact from game to game. They failed spectacularly. ME3 was supposed to be the payoff for the series and it was a giant wet fart instead.

@mems_1224: You're exaggerating a bit, but yes, ME3 did not deliver on its promise. That's ME3's issue- which is exactly my point. If you look at ME1 and 2 as self-contained games- and why else would you look at them any other way, unless you REALLY want to just go after the series?- they fulfilled their promise of choice and consequences. Both ME1 and 2 did their job in that regard perfectly.

I'm not saying ME3 delivered on those promises as well, because it clearly didn't. And criticising it for not doing that is obviously not the issue. But retrospectively criticising ME1 and 2 for the same is unfair and incorrect.

Mass Effect 3's failure affected the entire series. It made most of your choices meaningless.

@mems_1224: And again, that is ME3's shortcoming. 1 and 2 delivered on their promises of choice and consequence perfectly well.

You're going in circles.

Sonic Adventure by far.

Was praised at release, it still has fanboys, but it is responsible for the awful direction that the series took.

It brought all these negative elements to the series:

+Glitches/lack of polish

+Terrible gameplay modes where you don't play as Sonic

+Generic overworld

+Abysmal camera

+A bizarre over-emphasis on story

It's always really weird to me when people slam Sonic 06 but then wish for another Sonic Adventure. Sonic 06 was completely in the Adventure mold.

STFU

Life is Stange added a few more bells and whistles to the Telltale experience. None of it is all that fresh or game changing. If you wanna make the argument that Telltale's formula has grown a bit stale, then fine, I would agree with you. However, you can't also in the same breath tell me that Life is Strange is a much better game because that would be horse crap. Life is Strange doesn't "fix" or dramatically improve upon previous Telltale games. You still have to wait insane amounts of time before each episode and your choices still don't matter all that much. Life is Strange also has unique flaws of its own as well. It's definitely not a game that pushes the genre forward. The main thing it accomplishes is that it looks 15x better than the games on Telltale's engine. The facial animation stinks, but the environments and lighting are beyond anything from Telltale.

You would have to be a complete fool to think that The Walking Dead damaged Telltale. Need I remind you that Telltale of the past were known mainly for Sam & Max and boring CSI games? You look at them now, they have The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Minecraft, Borderlands, and Batman all under their built. They don't get big properties like that by making complete shit. They are critically acclaimed, and they have accumulated a popular following that their previous titles never had. You would have to be insane to think they're in a worse off position.

Talking about sales for one platform is a lame argument. Telltale has its games on consoles and mobile, and they definitely have an audience on those platforms. Don't even bother bringing up Steamspy. None of their games require Steamworks. Besides the first walking dead, I own all other Telltale games on other services such as GoG and the Telltale website. Seriously, don't even start with this sales crap, Telltale is quite successful with the games they release.

Wrong.

Life is Strange has more emergent gameplay, a sense of exploration, more puzzles, a unique mechanic that's adds to the former things I listed, and a storyline with themes that break the mold in gaming. Telltale does not have these things. You can find things in Life Is Strange by walking off the beating path or using a rewind mechanic at a certain moment, more you can say compared to a Telltale game. And unlike Tellate games, Life is Strange actually organically fits choice and consequence into the narrative. Instead of being a mechanic that sticks out, it flows with the narrative. The choices in the game are not about how many endings you can get, but about fitting with the themes of the narrative.

Lets see, Borderlands was actually good, but Minecraft and Game of Thrones are letdowns. Walking Dead season two wasn't as well received as the first, and The Wolf Among Us was mixed. Their sales are also in notable decline from game to game. People are getting tired of the same formula and the bugs they don't fix. They are in a worse off position right now than right after The Walking Dead was released, and that is what matters. The stuff they did before it is irrelevant to this argument. Their formula has reached saturation.

So does Life is Strange. It has five platforms that the game is available on, and a mobile version isn't released. And you don't think the PSN and Xbox Live sales of Life is Strange aren't great and better than the three telltale games released or finished in 2015? And really GoG's sees less sales than Steam for the vast majority of games. Life is Strange blew Telltale away in head to head in awards, acclaim, and sales. Facts are facts.

Telltale got beat. they either learn from it and adjust, or get beat harder. And it seems like they refuse to adjust but double down on saturation.

So killing Wrex in ME1 is meaningless in ME3? Are you clueless?

Hell, you are locked out of a key outcome in the quarian and geth conflict due to choices made in ME2.

Are ME3 detractors this stupid?

ME1 and ME2 have weaker choice and consequence. That is a fact, not an opinion. In fact, most choices in ME1 and ME2 only reveal their consequences in ME3.

Capcom's business decisions led to Shinji Mikami and a lot of the talent leaving Capcom, and leaving people in charge who had no fucking understanding of why Resident Evil 4 works as a cohesive gameplay experience in the first place. It's not just Resident Evil that became a joke post that, we saw the slow dropoff of Capcom in general, that's on Capcom themselves.

Bullshit

What consequences does ME1 even actually have? Outside of deaths of squadmates, your choices do not have an impact.

Outside the Suicide Mission and the fates of tow Quarian characters, how do your decisions matter in ME2? They don't, they end up mattering more in ME3.

ME3 is the BEST when it comes to choice and consequence in a Bioware game, from its save import to choices actually having delayed consequences later in the game.

Even then, RE4 nearly killed the survival horror genre and turned it more into action. And RE4 isn't as good as say Silent Hill 2 or Eternal Darkness as a horror game.

And the first third of RE4 is easily the best, it overstays its welcome, especially the final third. It does have pacing issues.

The moral of the story here is that games only get worse over time. Sometimes they get a bit better, but then they get worse again.

No, the moral of the story is that games that are overpraised leads to companies or the industry not fixing the flaws, which leads to the downfall of the series or the genre, or starts a negative trend in gaming as a whole.

There are many games that do have flaws, were hailed as great games, but have left positive legacies. Deus Ex is an example of such a game (that it flaws were mostly in execution instead of in concept really helped its legacy).

@texasgoldrush: Dude, get over yourself. ME3 is a great game, I love it, but accept its glaringly obvious flaws, of which it has a few. Not doing so just makes you look like a blinded biased fool.

@texasgoldrush: I'm not so sure if I'd say Final Fantasy 6's story works better than 7. FF7 wasn't exactly hard to follow or anything. It was just poorly written where 6 just didn't bother trying to complicate things. In general, 8, 9 and 10 had better stories so I'd hardly consider them a flaw. The lack of inspiration for creativity is why Final Fantasy went down the drain along with Square Enix's obsession to overcomplicate the level up system.

In the RPG genre, not holding the player's hand is where the player loses focus and the story loses direction. Especially for rookie RPG players like me in the PS1 days. If the story doesn't progress fast enough, you're going to lose interest. Unless you're an RPG veteran, the elements of the gameplay aren't enough to keep you wanting to play if you don't feel like there's a point to do it. You gotta think for the rookies too, make it user-friendly so no one will feel uncomfortable playing it. That's where Final Fantasy 7 got me. Regardless of the weak narrative, the story tries its damnedest to suck you in and keep your attention. Things exploded, girls were kidnapped, there was always something to see. It was thanks to that, that I fell in love with RPG games in general. First love the story then you'll care about the elements to strengthen your party members. With 6, I just had a hard time wanting to continue because I kept losing track of where to go and I was completely oblivious to RPG games back then. It wasn't until recently that I was able to really play 6 because I now understand how RPG games work whereas before, I didn't even know how to switch equipment.

Final Fantasy 7 was the perfect beginner's JRPG for me and for many others who consider it their favorite over all. That alone is why it deserves the praise. It took enough inspiration from 6 like the strategy combat system and certain characters like Terra and had that same level of enchantment 6 gave us with its score. It was the conclusion to where 6 was heading and capitalized on its strengths like exploration, combat, creativity, atmosphere, and tried to better themselves as storytellers. 6 was great at showing everyone's side of the story but it lacked the depth to really make them feel important. Terra and Locke were some of the few who felt really fleshed out. And Terra clearly inspired them to make Aeris in 7. Terra was mysteriously powerful but she wasn't strong enough as a character to be a protagonist. That was one thing I realized playing 6 again. But it definitely felt like it was leading to 7 and felt very close in other ways. If anything, let's blame Final Fantasy 6 for Enix's failures.

Over-praised = bad quality assurance?