With the likes of Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time, Halo 4, and now Gears of War: Judgement Day, we've seen a recurring theme here in 2012: the passing of a game franchise from one developer to another. Is this a good thing? Cassidee from Leviathyn.com weighs in on the matter.
Original Destiny artist Darren Bacon recalls how Bungie reacted to the art style change of Halo 4 by 343 Industries.
Bungie at that time became the most wonderful bunch of hypocrites in the gaming industry. Knowing this now, gosh the entitlement they felt was out of this world.
Nothing like buying yourself from Microsoft because you don't want to be the Halo Studio anymore, and the FIRST THING you do is sign your next IP over to Activision, for a DECADE, while they are in the middle of ousting the heads of Infinity Ward so they can exert even more control over COD while screwing out the devs at IW...
Should've come as no surprise then that Activision gutted the content of Destiny 1 before launch and was a horrible partner through Destiny 2, until history repeated itself and Bungie had to split from Activision only to wind up in the arms of another major conglomerate that also doesn't know how to handle these unmanageable devs.
Tti their credit they praised the technical abilities of 343 and I remember at the time thinking halo 4 was a huge graphical leap above reach everything else was rubbish when I actually got to play it but there was no doubt it looked good for the 360 and is probably the best looking game on the system.
But ultimately I think bungie has always had a leadership problem and going independent ultimately proved this it's only getting worse with studio heads being outed by Sony for abuse allegations seems like all bungies past success has been in spite of management not because of it.
But really I think the bungie we have today is not the same one we had in that Xbox era of Bungie
I liked the artstyle change. For the most part. Something looked worse but most of everything else looked better. Weapons and vehicles for sure. The wraith come to my mind instantly.
And how can they get mad when the bungie changed it with Halo Reach?
I know a lot of people dislike Halo 4’s arts style, but there’s thing about it I like and dislike. Personally, the Halo 4 design of Master Chief’s armour is my favourite depiction of the character’s armour.
LLC: "I love games, that bit is probably obvious. But I’m getting on a bit, and was thinking about some the games that need to come back."
TNS: “With the recent release of the incredible Silent Hill 2 remake, we reflect on the most underrated game in the series, Silent Hill: Homecoming.”
I didn’t hate it, in fact, I think the hate is unwarranted. It doesn’t have anywhere near the same feel of a Team Silent game, but if this were PTSD fake army man in spooky town: The Game, I think people would have really liked it more.
Now all I want to play is PTSD Fake Army Man in Spooky Town: The Game.... that sounds like a helluva game, lol
Conceptually, Homecoming works. On its surface the narrative is interesting and adds a lot of depth to the lore of the town. The misfire was in its execution i.e aping way too much of its visual cues from the feature film and themes from Silent Hill 2. The developers treated the game as a series of bullet points and checklists of what a Silent Hill game is supposed to be: Cult? Check. Otherworld? Check. Pyramid Head? Check. Trauma? Check. Sexy Nurses? Check. It felt forced instead of genuine and organic. It's a real shame because at its core there was a lot of great material to work with: a fraction of cult members branching off to do their own thing, Alex being a supposed military man, blood pacts and child sacrifice. This is all great stuff. It's just a shame that it never really came together.
Short story: it was mediocre with fun combat.
No memorable characters, no memorable atmospheric set pieces or visuals, lots of in-your-face gore, fucking around with lore by putting PH where he doesn't belong ...
And the ending where Alex also becomes PH and makes a roar was funnier(i remember laughing from disbelief) than the UFO ending in this instalment.
It wasn't terrible. It's one of those "if it didn't have this title" sort of games. It's actually pretty solid, but doesn't live up to the rest of the mainline franchise.
Downpour, however, and I'll die on this hill, is a highly underrated game.
I didn't hate Homecoming. It wasn't as good as 1-4, but it definitely wasn't bad. Downpour I think was just bad. But Homecoming was fine, and the music was really good. It was the game that came out after the movie, so they Americanized it. Pyramid Head was misused and was based on the movie design, not the classic Silent Hill 2 design. The town as well was not consistent with the other games, but rather the movie. The green Welcome to Silent Hill sign from the movie was even in Homecoming.
Don't forget DMC... Ugh DMC... Sorry to anyone who is looking forward to that game, but at least understand why someone who's been there since the beginning would dislike it.
Halo 4 looks... Well, to be honest I can't quite tell yet. Reach was great, but the ending blew... Not the premise of the ending, but the way it was done.
Sly Cooper, I've honestly never played any of them before, but I am looking forward to this new one for sure! Guess I need to give the HD Collection a go before it comes out.
Though in all honesty, just look at what Retro did with Metroid Prime. Those games were freaking fantastic, even if they did go in a different direction from the old school games.
A bad thing. the go the god of war series has changed directors each time. But each one , in my opinion, has taken the franchise an improved on it.
343 was made specifically to make Halo games and a lot of the original people who made Halo CE went over to 343 so it's not like they handed the game to a developer with a track record of terrible games and completely changed everything like Obsidian or Ninja theory. From the recent books as well they have done a good job sticking to the lore of Halo to story wise the game should be fine. I mean they could be handling it poorly but from what has been shown they are doing fine and we'll get to find out for sure on monday
There will always be dangers in handing a precious IP over to a different studio, especially if the studio in question is inept in some way that it damages the IP in question. Team Ninja's character assassination of Samus Aran is a good example of what happens when you let the wrong developer have your IP.
Or you get garbage like Metroid Other M.