The Hot Topic Returns

[Nag]

 

Quote

GameCentral readers name the video game franchises they’ve fallen out of love with, from Call Of Duty to Fallout.

 

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Xane, who asked what series did you used to play a lot but now don’t? Is it on purpose or because you don’t own the right console? Or perhaps you’ve just drifted away from the series over the years?

 

Everyone seemed to have at least one franchise that fit the bill, with Sonic The Hedgehog, Halo, and Assassin’s Creed coming in for a lot of stick in particular.

 

[OCH]

Thinking about it, probably Hitman. I started the series with Hitman 2 on PS2. After that I sought out and obsessed over the others (even the dodgy Hitman 1 on PC) Yet haven't played a Hitman game since Blood Money (2006). Which is one of my favourite games ever and is near perfect. Something about the games following that didn't feel right, so I haven't been back.

[shinymcshine]

Resident Evil

 

I really enjoyed 1-4 but I felt the broader franchise just lost its way.

 

I don't think it was helped with every dreadful entry to the film series either, where I waited in anticipation that just one might follow the videogame series, but none really did. 

 

I bought, but never finished Code Veronica, then there was the mixed reception for 5 & 6, a bunch of spin-offs and remakes, and sadly, despite its good reputation (and having a dabble on it during a PSVR demo) I've still not been drawn to RE7, or been tempted by the recent remakes.

 

Maybe it was just that those early games seemed quite innovative, before the influx of other zombie games.

 

[DANGERMAN]

I would have said Football Manager. I used to play that every year, put literal months of play time in to it each season. It was always a question of what I was doing while playing Football Manager. But after missing years and years I did get back in to it and again put literal months in to it 

 

I suppose Sonic, but I did really like Mania and Generations, so it's not like I haven't played any, Mania is the most recent one. 

 

Soul Calibur? Haven't played that since the 2nd one. I haven't played FIFA or PES in years and years either 

[Maf]

The big one for me is Metal Gear Solid. From the age of 10 up until I was 20 I was a Metal Gear Solid fanatic. I played those games backwards and forwards and almost non-stop, especially the first 2. MGS1 I have probably played no less than 40 times. As a kid in the PS1/N64 era it was the only PS1 game that was in the never ending rotation with Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Lylat Wars and Ocarina. Finish it, start it again, finish it, start it again, finish it, start it again. MGS is still top 5, all time, dead or alive for me. Probably always will be. 
 

The hype around MGS2 when that came out. Man, it was a game that when my mum bought it for me the whole way home I couldn’t stop looking at and examining the box. It was like holding the holy grail. Just wow I am holding Metal Gear Solid 2. Add in the PS2 was still new and the best console ever at the time. To have the next Metal Gear Solid game on it ready to go. Crazy. The game doesn’t hold up for me like the first one but at the time I adored it and played on every difficulty. I even remember staying up really late night after night with the official Prima strategy guide and methodically going through each area and crossing off the list of dog tags in the back of the book one by one through Very Easy to European Extreme. 
 

Loved Metal Gear Solid 3 as well, obviously. Even today MGS3 is a top 20, possible top 15 game of all time for me. Things were a bit different at that time and I had fallen off video games a little bit but even then when that game came out I played it maybe 5 times in the first 2 weeks trying to work out what the fuck these frogs do and trying to unlock every cutscene. 
 

Then MGS4. Now I love MGS4. I know people don’t like it and it ties everything up in a bow too much and it probably explains too much and yada, yada. You are right but I don’t care I loved all of it. I almost cried at the end when the camera looks away and you hear the gunshot. Everyone at the time wanted Snake to commit suicide because they were all a bunch of brainless, bloodthirsty, shock value chasing pack of dogs. I wanted a happy ending. I followed Snake’s story for 10 years through childhood to adulthood. Personally I felt like we collectively had gone through enough, lol. Let the guy rest.
 

After that it was done, though. The closure on it was so perfect I just can not get hyped in nearly the same way for a MGS game. Even when MGS5 was coming and no one knew how light the story content of that game was going to be I just didn’t really care. I had interest in it and actually enjoyed playing it, but no where near as much and in a complete opposite way in which I enjoyed MGS before. Gameplay being first, all the voice actors were different, the style was different. The fact that it felt so not-MGS is the only reason I did enjoy it because if it really was meant to be a true sequel instead of just an excuse for Kojima to experiment it would of been a slap in the face. Especially the way it tries to tie back in with Punished Snake and be all about language and whatever. Maybe I was too grown but it all seemed very fucking stupid and forehead palming to me.
 

The series at this point isn’t going to continue in a meaningful way so I don’t have to care about it anymore. But even if they announced tomorrow that Kojima was back, Metal Gear Solid 6 is live, here we go. I still wouldn’t care about it (Although that would be nuts given all the circumstances). I don’t even want there to be another game called Metal Gear Solid. If they stopped at 4 and never made another one I would have been perfectly happy and content and it wouldn’t fall in to the category of “series you’ve fallen out of love with”. Because, unless there is some truly, creative, brilliant things cooking at Konami *cough* Metal Gear Survive *cough*. I just don’t see there being a way that I could ever be a real fan of this series ever again. Which I would have been totally all right with had it ended with MGS4.

 

!

[one-armed dwarf]

I think also Hitman actually. Absolution took a lot of the fun puzzle elements and turned it into more of a dull stealth action game. After the backlash they brought it all back and arguably made it better than ever in Hitman 2016, but for some reason without Jesper Kyd's soundtrack it doesn't feel quite right

 

As for MGS a thing about that series that made it harder to enjoy over time is how the localisation got progressively worse in each game. There's a reason for that of course, Kojima was very precious about how his works got translated after MGS1 apparently had a very loose and fast localisation. But it sounded much better for it (compare any MGS1 cutscene to MGSV, the PS1 game has better voice acting and script)

[Maf]

The first 4 games all the sound the same to me. Localisation and scripting was not a thing I was thinking about at that age. Unless it’s some particularly squeaky cringe anime I don’t think that hard about it now. 
 

MGS5 is obviously different but for big, obvious reasons. 

[OCH]

MGS 4 was the tap out moment for me. I'd been waiting to play as Solid Snake again since the intro to MGS 2, seven years prior. Not an ageing Tom Selleck...

[Nag]

I gave MGS 3 a couple of hours and just couldn't get in to it, haven't played one since... and that's after loving the first two.

 

It's not really a series but I think my time is done with Ubisoft games, I've no interest in Far Cry, Assassin's Creed or The Division anymore.

[Maryokutai]

Fire Emblem so much. The newest game might as well be a completely different franchise to that I fell in love with on GBA and Gamecube.

 

And Yakuza. Not that I don't like them anymore but at some point there were just too many and they got bigger and bigger which turned me off because it was just too much in a relatively short timespan. Might go back to this eventually though. Maybe.

 

[AndyKurosaki]

Personally I still love the Yakuza series, and happily sink multiple hours into each release. 
 

For me, the main series I fell out with, would be Assassins Creed. AC1 was alright, though a bit too repetitive. AC2 is one of the greatest sequels of all time. But around the time that Ezios tale ended, I was getting sick of the same old format, year in year out. You’d start a new game, see a ridiculously large map, and go “What’s the point? I’ll only have all this to do same time next year”. 
 

It wasn’t until Odyssey that I fully committed to the series again. And that I absolutely loved.

[spatular]

I’ve gone the opposite way to most people on metal gear, didn’t really get on with 1 and 2, but enjoyed 4, went back to 3 and enjoyed it and really like 5 too but yeah for gameplay reasons, 3 and 4 are ace because of the bonkers story. I don’t like how snake repeats everything anyone tells him 8 times.

 

err anyway to answer the question, I guess management and rts games like c&c, transport tycoon, civ, I think it’s just a lack of time and too many games to play, so I skip the big time sink games rather than not liking them any more.

[mfnick]

Call of Duty.

 

Modern a Warfare is one of my all time favourites. I absolutely loved MW 2 and 3 as well and played all the others even if I didn’t think as highly of them. But this gen, I tried Advanced Warfare and even though it wasn’t bad I just wasn’t bothered at all. & not played more than 10 minutes of any of the other instalments. I’ve just become bored with the formula. In fact FPS games in general now bore me, unless it’s DOOM. 

[Nag]

 

Quote

GameCentral readers name the next gen games they’re most hoping for, from Street Fighter 6 to a new Tomb Raider.

 

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Grackle, who asked what franchises are you most looking forward to in the next gen? Not so much games that have already been announced but series that are all but guaranteed to get a next gen makeover.

 

Since so few games have been confirmed for the next generation there were plenty of obvious choices, from GTA 6 to The Elder Scrolls, as well as upcoming unveils like Batman and the rumoured Final Fantasy 16.

 

[Maf]

It’s not the most fitting answer because highly unlikely it would be next gen dependant, but I really want to see what is happening with Sonic Mania 2 and that team of guys that made it. I really think a team of fans swooped in and made the best Sonic game there has ever been, very quickly followed up by the actual official Sonic Team making one of the worst Sonic games there has ever been. Politics aside there must be clear indicators for Sega about where the talent is and who should get the push.

 

Ideally I think the next gen, big Sonic game should go to the fan team. Realistically those chances are zero. However it’s been 3 years since any official word on what’s happening with them, and given the amount of time you would think it would take to organise and start a Sonic Mania 2 compared to how long there has been no news on a Sonic Mania 2, the math keeps my belief alive that Sega really will let them do something big. I’m hoping they get the next level opportunity and have something crazy cooking. Maybe their own 3D game?

Probably not and it will be another 2D game. Still, a bigger budget, a move away from pixel art to something fresher, all new levels, make it the fastest game yet. Out of everything I’m just really excited to see specifically what this team does next with Sonic. 

[OCH]

A new 3D Castlevania. It is practically an impossibility, given Konami owns the IP. But I'm tired of all the retro 2D homages & spiritual successors. Throw the nostalgia goggles away and make something new and fresh... Sigh?

[mfnick]

Forza Motorsport and Horizon.

 

Whatever Naughty Dogs next thing is.

 

God of War.

 

Final Fantasy - specifically VII Remake Part 2. But also more interested in the main series if they take  inspiration from Remake, remove the shit open world but have biggish open towns to explore and build on that battle system. 

[Nag]

I want Dead Space to return, after being completely ignored this gen (not even a remaster ?)

 

I think the Resident Evil remakes prove that horror can still sell well and if the series returned to somewhere along the lines of the first two games (although I've no problem with the third game) I reckon it could do OK... EA could do with diversifying their line up a bit too.

 

Other than that the obvious suspect, Gears 6... i want it to be a Series X only game.

[Nag]

 

Quote

GameCentral readers discuss their favourite RPGs of all-time, from The Witcher 3 to Skyrim.

 

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Ishi and covers any game, from any time period. How much experience have you had with role-playing games and what is your preferred style, including Japanese vs. Western and action vs. turn-based?

 

There were plenty of different answers to those questions, with the most popular choices including Chrono Trigger, Skies Of Arcadia, The Witcher 3, and Dark Souls.

 

[bellow]

I've played so many lately and really enjoyed most of them. But the one game in the genre that I remember playing and thinking, 'this is the best game I've ever played' is Fallout 3.