What’s The Bloody Point? Changing A Successful Franchise, I’m Looking At You EA!
If you’ve missed my previous 2 What’s The Bloody Point articles, it’s a bi-weekly rant that I publish here on MMOGameCentral, discussing some of my biggest peeves and concerns in the gaming industry, and today I take a look at the inevitable f**k up that companies force themselves to do after releasing a great game.
We’ve all picked up a game we grew to love, whether it’s an RPG title or FPS game, games we adore earn a special place in our hearts. So why is it that the game companies then have to attempt to milk the living crap out of it? Replacing that loving memory with a burning hatred for game developers. I’ve highlighted a few of the most recent ones that come to mind, but this isn’t a new trend, Paperboy 2 anyone?
Tiger Woods 13
Following a totally awesome experience on The Masters (Tiger Woods 12), I couldn’t wait to pick up my copy of Tiger Woods 13, hell, I was at the door on opening time day of release. Texting a couple of mates on the way home, reliving some awesome nights on Tiger Woods 12, contemplating how much more awesome the newest installment could be, I was about ready to burst when I got home. Had prearranged for a few buddies to come over so we sat down for a serious golfing session. Going through the traditional confusing process of loading up characters and profiles, we got to playing. Within 30 seconds of playing, the atmosphere in the room changed from that of excitement, to mourning the death of a great franchise. Why in the hell would you totally remove all of the fun aspects of offline multiplayer? Remove course mastery, remove any challenge thanks to the easily tweaked caddy shots and cut out half the courses we’d already paid for in the previous game. Sure, some of the online features are awesome, but we’ve always played the Tiger titles as an offline game, competing for experience points and bragging rights. So now we couldn’t compete for masteries, and half the time only player 1 earns the full experience points to avoid boosting, get a grip. After an hour of the game, we reverted to Tiger Woods 12 and I returned my copy to the store. EA are also responsible for a large amount of the whining I did last week over Day 1 DLC content. Way to go.
Fight Night Champion
I really enjoyed the early Fight Night games, took a couple of years out but picked up Fight Night Champion from Blockbuster a while back. Expecting the same fearless brawling I experienced in the previous titles, I was met with a piss poor boxing simulation game that seemed to remove half the difficulty and all of the action from the previous titles. A self-proclaimed master of the punching sticks, I used to be able to combine hay-makers with huge uppercuts effortlessly, destroying my human opponents in the first round, 90% of the time. So instead of basing it on the combination of parry and stick movements, they added the R2 button that changed punches to power punches and removed the parry option altogether. Why? It doesn’t make the game more fun, it wasn’t exactly hard before, so making it easier was a dumbass move. Instead of trading massive blows and ending a fight in 2-3 rounds, my friends were forced to watch as 2 of us dueled it out for 20 minutes. Fight Night was never a simulation title, sure the storyline in Fight Night Champion was great fun, but again they totally changed the approach of offline multiplayer. Oh yeah, and EA again are involved.
I could easily list a dozen more game franchises that have done exactly the same thing. What’s the bloody point? I’ll avoid Tiger Woods 14 and the next Fight Night, purely because they didn’t offer what they managed with previous titles. What games spring to mind when you think of a great franchise gone wrong? Leave a comment below and let us know.
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