What Dead Game Series Would You Resurrect?

[CraigTheCylon]

Honestly not sure why this question's been on my mind this week, but it's one I'd like to see some opinions on.

Now, no game franchise lasts forever, even the ones that've been around for as long as we've been alive. One day Mario will squeeze his widening gut down his last warp pipe, Final Fantasy will deliver a Fantasy that is actually Final, Atari will stop trying to squeeze a few last pennies out of Alone in the Dark's withered body and let it die in peace, et cetera. Some get to go out on their own terms, one last hurrah from the creative minds before they move onto fresh pastures. But most don't. Be it declining sales, behind-the-scenes drama, one hell of stinker after a line of great works or whatever else, every year another series is cut down with what feels like plenty of life left in it. So, the question then - if you had the power to bring back a buried game IP, what gets the nod?

I've got two to start with - Dead Space and MySims. As games they couldn't be more different, but they've got 2 things in common: they were published by EA, and got screwed into nonexistence by EA.

I imagine Dead Space doesn't need an introduction, but just in case: a sci-fi horror-shooter that came out of basically nowhere and showed up the big guns of the genre something fierce, it put you on a derelict spaceship with about 95% of its running lights broken, and left you to figure out what precise sort of s*** went down, while using a variety of improvised power tools to tear bits off impossibly angry corpse monsters that would very much like to do the same thing to you. It had incredible set-pieces, strong writing, amazing incidental world-building and maybe the best sound design in any game up to that point. It earned its success...but being successful under EA means that EA start taking an interest in you. It didn't hurt Dead Space 2 so much; there was a tacked-on multiplayer mode, but it was easy to ignore, and the main game was a worthwhile follow-up, with stronger character work and an interesting new world to explore. Unfortunately, by the time Dead Space 3 released, the rot had set in. The previous game's collection of weapons had been stripped out in favour of a 'create your own gun' setup that was...fine (although being able to create a rivet-firing chaingun with an underbarrel rocket launcher and acid bullets kinda stripped out the challenge just a little bit) but nakedly existed solely to propagate everyone's favourite AAA trend, microtransactions. Worse, the entire campaign was mapped out as a 2-player co-op experience, which necessitated an increase in enemy count and a decrease in scripted events, essentially sucking all the horror out of this horror series. Dead Space 3 underperformed by series standards, and while there was never an official announcement of its end, there's been no mention of another game in the 3 years since, and series developers Visceral have been allocated different projects. I'd desperately love to see it make a return, because even in 3 the game's core mechanics still held appeal, and the points where it went wrong are so easy to point out that it surely wouldn't be hard to get Dead Space back on track.

MySims wasn't quite as big a deal, but it did well for itself for a time. The first game, released on the Wii back in 2007 or so, was sort of an Animal Crossing riff with less emphasis on social calendars and more on construction; not content to simply live in a virtual town, you were pressed with building every new arrival's house and furniture using a simple interface that looked and felt like stacking shaped wooden blocks. Last time I checked in on my town of Alapalooza, I'd spent over 140 recorded hours there. That game was a fierce life-killer when it got its hooks in you. The series stayed on Wii and diversified with each new release, retaining the same cubic characters and construction-heavy gameplay but going in different directions with it. MySims Kingdoms made you a sort of magic handyman, crossing between multiple themed islands (wild west land, spooky land, mad science lab land...) and helping people out not just with building homes, but with repairing or improving power systems or water piping, forcing you to think your tinkering through a bit more logically. MySims Agents walked further away from the construction idea, limiting it to simple block-arrangement puzzle stuff, in a title that was somewhere between a 3D platformer and a point-and-click adventure. You were now a detective, still looking to help people, but more by navigating conversation trees and using spy gadgets to unearth clues en route to solving the day's mystery. Stolen pizza scrolls, a wrongly-accused yeti, afternoon tea with a kraken, and more nonsense besides. It's hilariously simple - like, a one-armed 8-year-old could beat it inside of a week simple - but I keep going back to it at least once a year. I mean, look at this:



Don't you want to know what the context for that is? Why does he want his skull so badly??

But yeah, MySims also died, and it felt like EA being EA again. Not quite so blatantly as with Dead Space, but they forced the series to grow too fast, and in too many directions. It felt like we weren't even waiting a single year between MySims releases, and while some of the spin-offs worked (MySims Racing sits among the upper echelons of Mario Kart knockoffs), a bunch more didn't. And then they got greedier and decided to take the series multi-format with MySims Sky Heroes, an aerial shooter that feels like the All Range bits of Star Fox played at half-speed with borked controls. I don't know for sure how the sales turned out for that one, but evidently they didn't justify the extra effort to port the game for PS3 and XB360, since Sky Heroes was the last MySims. I don't honestly know how I'd bring it back - there always seems to be some new cutesy wannabe-series rearing its head every other month these days, and most of the successful ones operate strictly on phones - but damn, I do miss Alapalooza, and the MC Escher nightmare fuel I cooked up to keep a bee girl's tomato crop watered, and Jenny sulking at me because doing her PA job is distracting her from her fanfiction writing...

God I can't half ramble. Your turn!

[Midvillian1322]

Time splitters and Army of Two off the top of my head. And I know army of two hasnt been dead that long but i loved the first two games so much I want more.

[Panfoot]

Half Life - I know it's a meme at this point, but the Half Life series is one of the only game series I can still go back to every few years a play through all the way and enjoy just as much as when it released(I've probably beat Half Life 2 at least 7 or 8 times now, and bought it on original xbox, 360, and PC even). I just want to see the story finished, just to leave of on a giant cliff hanger and then never address why the won't even make a new game is just cruel.

Silent Hill - I love horror games, and the older SH games were fantastic(specifically 2 and 3), but this series is definitely dead and gone now that Konami doesn't make games anymore.

Condemned - First game was fantastic, 2nd game was still good but went a bit to weird in the end, would still like to see a new one though.

[CraigTheCylon]

Time splitters

YES. God yes. TimeSplitters 2 is still my all-time high bar for multiplayer shooters. If only Free Radical hadn't torn up their credibility with Haze...

Half Life - I know it's a meme at this point, but the Half Life series is one of the only game series I can still go back to every few years a play through all the way and enjoy just as much as when it released(I've probably beat Half Life 2 at least 7 or 8 times now, and bought it on original xbox, 360, and PC even). I just want to see the story finished, just to leave of on a giant cliff hanger and then never address why the won't even make a new game is just cruel.

I pretty much missed the Half-Life hype wagon. Was too young and impatient to really 'get' it at the time - I recall going through Opposing Force's boot camp tutorial about 100 times because I thought it was cool, then insta-quitting when the game proper started - and by the time I got caught up I feel most of the series' high points had been superseded elsewhere. That plus I wasn't gaming on PC anymore, and The Orange Box got a downright crappy PS3 port. But I know the pain of an unfulfilled cliffhanger.

[Nyssane]

Dino Crisis, for sure. This series would've made more sense to go the action route than Resident Evil. But I'd still want some of the survival horror elements to return, and of course a badass leading lady like Regina.

[Midvillian1322]

YES. God yes. TimeSplitters 2 is still my all-time high bar for multiplayer shooters. If only Free Radical hadn't torn up their credibility with Haze...

I pretty much missed the Half-Life hype wagon. Was too young and impatient to really 'get' it at the time - I recall going through Opposing Force's boot camp tutorial about 100 times because I thought it was cool, then insta-quitting when the game proper started - and by the time I got caught up I feel most of the series' high points had been superseded elsewhere. That plus I wasn't gaming on PC anymore, and The Orange Box got a downright crappy PS3 port. But I know the pain of an unfulfilled cliffhanger.

Golden eye, time splitters 2 , and army of two. Are my favorite shooters of each generation. If Destiny 2 can take what are the smoothest FPS controls ive ever played and give it a good story that will probaly be the best of the next gen generation.

[tsaimelemoni]

Dino Crisis, for sure. This series would've made more sense to go the action route than Resident Evil. But I'd still want some of the survival horror elements to return, and of course a badass leading lady like Regina.

God yes. DC was great (no, there was no weird third game in space or something), and I'd love to see it return.

[Professor Moriarty]

Startropics.

[Immortal Weapon]

Darkstalkers, Fatal Fury, Metal Slug and Mega Man Legends.

[Huntsman Spider]

Darkstalkers, Fatal Fury, Metal Slug and Mega Man Legends.

With you on Darkstalkers, and Mega Man Legends, too, I'll admit. Hell, I'd be glad to see Mega Man in any form back in development at Capcom.

[Midvillian1322]

Xmen Legends

[nickthemkfan]

Dead Space!

[Jeremi]

Top three that come to mind are Darkstalkers, Rival Schools and Breath of Fire.

[Midvillian1322]

Not sure how It would Work now but one of my favorite games as a child was Bubsy. SO for Nostalgic reasons id love for that to make a comeback though i have no idea how it would work. That and Toe Jam and Earl were games I played alot when I was little.

[Panfoot]

Not sure how It would Work now but one of my favorite games as a child was Bubsy. SO for Nostalgic reasons id love for that to make a comeback though i have no idea how it would work. That and Toe Jam and Earl were games I played alot when I was little.

They did re-release the original 2 games on steam a couple months ago(as one titled, Bubsy Two-Fur, for 4.99), but I can't ever see that series getting brought back to life after Bubsy 3D.