The current generation of consoles has seen the fruition of countless franchises that have been a driving force in the market for years with quality installments. The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii have had their fair share of top-notch franchises; GameZone takes a look at the top five franchises that have helped shape the current console generation.
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Mine in no particular order:
#1 COD4
COD4 made COD explode and become a staple and standard for a lot of shooters.
#2 Gears/Uncharted
Both popularized cover systems, and Uncharted influenced developers with its set-pieces
#3 Just Dance and health-oriented games
Brought back dance games without the stupid dance pad. While no alternative for vigorous exercise, it got people off the couch.
#4 God of War
While it's from last gen, it became a sort of benchmark for a lot of hack n slash games THIS gen. A lot of which launched nearly BESIDE GoW3.
#5 Elder Scrolls and Fallout
While quality was a bit of an issue, they really shaped up for Skyrim. Regardless, their titles served as major inspiration for other RPG titles.
Wii:
- For most, it was Brawl and Galaxy that defined it.
- For the casuals, it was Wii Sports and Wii Fit.
- My personal favorites, it was No More Heroes 1 and 2.
360:
- For most, it was Gears of War that mainly defined the 360.
- For the casuals, Call of Duty and Kinect games(?)
PS3:
- For most, Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted, Heavy Rain, Gran Turismo, God of War, LBP, Infamous, Killzone.
- My personal favorites.... same as above(minus Killzone) lol
1. Uncharted
1(A). Gears of War
3. Assassin's Creed
4. Little Big Planet
5. Call of Duty : Modern Warfare
Mario, Halo, and God of War have all been fantastic this gen but stem from a previous gen...they are what they should be, well made successors to their previous installments.
It was hard to not put a game like Just Dance/Wii Fit as motion gaming and using games to help exercise have really taken off this gen.
Lastly. Batman is awesome. But I feel that AC pretty much laid the blueprint for the Batman games this gen. Batman is like Metal Gear/AC with a Batman skin. And that is not meant is a negative comment about Batman but rather that I see its roots elsewhere.
Good topic though...
Of all the lists i agree with yours the most.
Although the only one i'm not so sure about would be Assassins Creed, maybe switch that out with Wii Sports
That's a good list there. Uncharted, Gears, AC and Modern Warfare have done so much this gen. I would swap LBP for motion controls (in general) and that'd be my list.
really revolutionary for its time and for what it did, gameplay, storywise and online.
havent put that many hours in a cod title since.
Mario galazy
wii sports
MGS4 (look how many ppl bought a ps3 for it)
GT5 (biggest sony title another console spike)
gears (new IP with a lot of hype and marketing
Halo (biggest reason ppl bought a 360)
and of course MWF.
everything else helped shape it also in different ways like innovation from LBP also etc.
"1. Uncharted
1(A). Gears of War
3. Assassin's Creed
4. Little Big Planet
5. Call of Duty : Modern Warfare"
Honorable mention:
BioShock
Batman Arkham
Mario Galaxy
Love, hate or indifferent, the COD series, was (still is) far and away the driving force behind this generation as far as attention, most played and sold franchise. Most other shooting franchises are now chasing it. Which I personally think is a bad thing. I like variety, not copy cats.
My two favorite new IP's were Uncharted and Gears of War.
Uncharted - Scripted Action Sequences
Gears Of War - Cover System
Call Of Duty - the blueprint that every shooter would try to emulate and is the inspiration for the vast amount of shooters we got this gen.
some could argue about other series but these three are the ones many devs took inspiration from, you see alot more stuff emulated from these series in other games than any other series.
it sold more than 5mil THAT time
now it probably surpassed 6mil+
That list is shit.
Everyone's got their personal favorite but SMG2 was the best of this gen imo
Original ideas + vivid visuals + polished gameplay + amazing music = gaming nirvana
Take Uncharted OFF!
Like it or NOT! Call Of Duty must be on the list!
Hate COD forever but more people played it than any friggin game, PERIOD!
Ridiculous list!
next gen COD will be history
I would have said:
- COD
- Gears
- Uncharted
- Mario Galaxy
- Assassins Creed
I felt Call of Duty should have been in place of Super Mario Galaxy while Gears of War should have been on the list, in favor of Batman.
In no particular order:
Call of Duty
Gears of War
Halo
Uncharted
Assassin's Creed
Like it or not, Call of Duty is one franchise that definitely defined this generation. It is the dominating franchise that spawned zillion competitors! How do you leave something like that out?
It's kind of like Super Mario Galaxy. An extremely highly rated game (probably the highest of all games discussed so far) and bought by tens of millions. However, I haven't noticed any shaping of the industry.
The games on my list:
Gears of War -> re-affirmed 3rd person shooter and revolutionized cover mechanics. It is also the game that technically really started next generation.
Halo -> Revolutionized multiplayer and variety in modes. Forge is still the best and seemingly one of the few level editors on console.
CoD -> Fantastic scripted events. Spawned gazillion copycats and almost a major genre of it's own in FPS.
Uncharted -> Production quality is almost unmatched. Everything together is just beautiful. Not many games are so well put together.
Assassin's Creed -> Apart from being a fantastic game, huge franchise, it is also the game that sparked the smoothest climbing mechanic. Although, I would put this at the bottom of the list and even replace it with Wii Sports. That game is highly unique and spawned copycats.
Heavy Rain might be another addition, although it really is just an interactive movie so I'm on the fence.
I think SM Galaxy deserves to be there, it has sold over 10.5 Million copies. That is pretty significant. And it is a fun game.
Mass Effect is awesome but it's not original. Bioware has pioneered this RPG style years ago. Look at the influence Gears has on Mass but how Mass influences only itself.
This list is ok I guess. Halo has been around 10 years now. Halo 3 didn't do anything Halo 2 couldn't. Uncharted did take the cinematic adventure up 10 notches. Arkham is awesome, but it's biggest influences are that of Metroid and Castlevania. I got to agree with Assasin's Creed. It's one of the most original franchises around. Mario Galaxy oh hell yes. I think the concept of gravity and how the created the levels surpassed Mario 64 and quite frankly all 3D platformers in ages.
No matter what your feelings are towards this franchise,it did shape one of this generation's strong points,which is the multiplayer
Would have to disagree with Halo, it helped shape the last generation but in my opinion not really that one. Perhaps Mass Effect would have been a better choice.
Mass Effect should also be there. Before that game, we had little to no console experiences that had that level of player dialogue and also the ability to import saves which had an impact on the sequel.
so many shooters and not many original titles and ideas.
Sorry you didn't catch any of it.
There's plenty of interesting new things to get into like LittleBigPlanet , Braid , Mirror's Edge , Journey , Portal , Heavy Rain , Fez , Demons Souls , Super Meat Boy , etc , etc. It's deep well.
Good shooters only represent a small fraction of what's really avaiable to gamers. If people would spend more time playing the games than concerning themselves with something so trivial and uninformed as "too may shooters" .... they may actually learn something about the industry.
Games that would have been better examples, Gears of War, (horde mode, the epic train battle, shoot from cover style gameplay, and heavily textured beautiful graphics) Crackdown (super human free roam destroy city game play) and COD, for obvious reason. These games have influenced many other games, and have been in some way copied by many other games, of this gen.
CoD shaped FPS and Uncharted shaped the action/adventure games, what did SMG and Batman did? lol
Those are the ones i can remember of the top of my head.
Maybe I misunderstood the articles title, but by "helped shaped this console generation", do they mean console generation as a whole, or in relations to the specific consoles??
I'm questioning thus because SMG did absolutely nothing to shape the ps3 or 360. All it did was reinvented how the Mario series was played.
mainly uncharted, littlebigplanet, heavy rain, god of war, metal gear solid, gran turismo, heavenly sword, demons souls, valkrie chronicals, motorstorm, twisted metal, flower,ni no kuni journey, yakuza, ratchet and clank and maybe socom. and with the last of us, beyond, lbp k, theres tons more to see what defined it.
360
halo, gears of war, forza, fable.
wii, mario, zelda, starfox fzero
Lay off the bath salts before you start eating faces.
Your just trolling
2. Bioshock
3. Gears of War
4. Gravity Rush (Yes. It's that good.)
5. Flower/Journey
2 world at war
3 mw2
4 black ops
5 black ops 2
Troll city?
Its too bad too. After R2 strayed too far from RFOM I think the series lost a lot of people. R3 was sick!
Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid 4 helped define the Playstation 3
Gears of War helped define the XBOX360 (not much else aside from IP's that exist on other platforms like Mass Effect, however Microsoft managed to make them most represented on their platform).
Gears of War
Uncharted
Call of Duty
Mass Effect
Wii Sports
Those were all huge franchises that were either new or blossomed to help define this generaion.
1.Uncharted
2.Call Of Duty
3.Little Big Planet
4.Mass Effect
5.Assassins Creed
None of them are higher than the other but he listed 5 franchises.
I knew what he meant.
To me, that would be, in order:
5. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - While Uncharted 3 had it's improvements, it was Among Thieves that helped pushed things forward, offering cinematic storytelling on an unparalleled scale. To this day, it continues to inspire devs to start looking at creating cinematic experiences in a similar vein.
4. Gears of War - Oh man, talk about a generation for the cover system! While Gears of War didn't invent its play-style, it perfected it and opened up a wealth of people to capitalize on the fray. Since the 2006 release, many titles now have similar cover systems, weapons wheels, and shooting mechanics.
3. Wii Sports - Had it not been for this game here, I think the Wii wouldn't have taken off the way it did. Furthermore, had it not helped the Wii become the monster success that it is, Sony nor Microsoft may have felt the need to apply their own motion control solutions.
2. Halo 3 - Who could forget one of the biggest launches in entertainment history? Not only did this title break records commercially, it was one of the most talked about events in US history. Not many games can, nor will, ever be able to claim such a feat!
1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - If you were to call this the generation of the FPS, you'd have to include the most influential title of the entire gen. Never before have so many "clones" co-existed in the same era, and with many of the original Modern Warfare's innovations still not topped, love it or hate it, Call of Duty continues to be this industry's biggest IP, and Modern Warfare is the one to thank!
Please don't put America down by saying that a video game was one of the most talked about events in US history.
Ever heard of the moon landing, the emancipation proclamation or the JFK assassination?
Pfft, kids these days.
Let me educate you a bit - one major US event doesn't invalidate another. In the gaming world, specifically in the United States, very few things in entertainment will top Halo 3's presence just prior to release and during. It's even more comical that you suggest a video game can't make that mark when Call of Duty continues to do just that - break records all over the place, yep, IN the United States.
To conclude, you offered no logical debate of your own - and then ironically insinuated that someone was "young and naive" here.
You cannot go back on your word in an argument and talk specifically about the gaming industry. The comment you made was about America in general. Thus, this proves you're whole argument invalid.
Here's some important advise, next time you make a post please think about what you are saying before you write it down. Thank you.
As much as the series has now fallen off the graces that gamers once held it. COD4: Modern Warfare deserves to be on that list, hate the later instalments or not but i doubt anyone can deny that positive impact that COD4: Modern Warfare has had on this console generation.
If anything, the top 3 games would have to have been Gears of War (Cover mechanics and making co-op a major feature this gen), Call of Duty (Re-inventing online FPS) and Wii Sports (motion based gaming, mini-game comps) Anything else, could be up in the air, I think.
I would also replace Assassins Creed with Modern Warfare/Call of Duty.
Another change I would make is swapping out Mario Galaxy for Wii Sports.