Which Franchises IP decline has crushed you the most?

[Joviwan]

Black Isle - Where have all the RPGs gone?

Their name isn't quite as good in the industry as it should be, anymore, after clusterfucks like Knights of the Old Republic 2 and NWN2. Granted, I honestly don't think KotOR2 was their fault, but that's my opinion. *hugs his baldur's gate*

Did you actually play NWN2? Because I honestly wonder how you can think of it as a "clusterfuck" and be so enamored with Baldur's Gate at the same time. When I bought it, I had been expecting something equally soulless as the first NWN - I mostly bought it because of all the fan modules. I was positively suprised.

Admittedly, NWN2 isn't as good as BG2 (what is?), but it's at least the equal of BG1. Certainly no clusterfuck.


Back to the topic: Why the hell hasn't anybody mentioned Looking Glass Studios yet?! Blasphemy! Ultima Underworlds! System Shock! The Thief series! How could you forget them, you vile heretics? ( )

What Stark said. Additionally, the modified Aurora engine they released with the game required half a dozen mods to RESTORE all the functionality from the original, on top of the fact that it was technically clunky, and the game it shipped with looked like ass.

That being said, I didn't get a chance to play through it. I got in a few hours as a drow before the hellaciously terrible difficulty curve for LA characters at starting level started hurting the experience. That, and the iconsistency with everyone's hatred for my race-slash-township. "GRAR! Your a drow, kill you!", "GRAR! Your a harborman, kill you!" "GRAR! Actually, we don't really care that your a drow, despite your entire race being evil, or the fact that your a harborman. Doesn't really matter. KILL YOU!"

[Stark]

We've been over this before: you sucking at a game doesn't make it bad. MoO2 was utterly broken balance-wise, and the custom race thing just made that worse with it's woefully unbalanced picks. Turtling does not work in strategy games, deal with it: the lack of a proper dip system wasn't a problem at the time (look at the competition) but some of use expect quality anyway.

MoO1 was just as easy (they all had poor AI) but at least they had an interesting economy control system that didn't involve 'farmers' and 'scientists'.

EDIT: pointed at Shep, I really should stop using the quick-reply function.

Regarding LGS, they didn't 'decline', they evaporated. We can bemoan Thief 3, but it's hardly the only casualty of console-ports.

[MKSheppard]

We've been over this before: you sucking at a game doesn't make it bad.

Did you even play the same game I did? I spread out as fast as I could, but no matter how I did; the enemy AI always seemed to have a absurdly insane build bonus; the only real way to defeat the AI ship swarm was the black hole generator, which could wipe out the stacks they preferred. If you didn't have the BHG, you were pretty much screwed.

MoO1 was just as easy (they all had poor AI) but at least they had an interesting economy control system that didn't involve 'farmers' and 'scientists'.

I much preferred Moo2's "Enslave/Exterminate" system. It gave me great pleasure in committing mass genocide on useless Klackons on my planet.

[Stark]

In MoO1 you killed them all too, at least if you used neutronium bomber swarms.

And no, I probably didn't play the same game you did - I'm talking about the 90s game called 'Master of Orion' where on middling difficulty it was almost impossible to die (barring Sakkhra pop explosion). I think I played maybe 2 or 3 games where I wasn't always leading in tech and econ, and you whinging about 'zomg hardz' is laughable when as a teenager I'd regularly win the game with a single huge ship, marching around the map Ur-Quan style killing everyone with the help of the aforementioned neutronium bomber swarms. The only way it was really hard (aside from jacking the diff and giving the AI huge bonuses, which I hate) was intentionally handicapping myself by taking a suck race or sitting on my hands. Expansion was easy in the MoO games, since there were seldom many habitable worlds in range.

PROTIP: the defence slider should not always be above 50%.

[Covenant]

MoO3 sucked because it was a bad game, and was just stupidly complex-ized and really not all that fun... but MoO2 was a ton of fun and it really was stupidly easy. I've had people say that Star Wars: Rebellion/Supremacy was hard, but once you know the system you can absolutely massacre the game. The same stands for MoO2. If you play one of the 'good' races or use the customization options you can just demolish it. Telepathy or Creative just basically autowins it for you. And even if there's someone left to oppose you after you seize Orion and get the Avenger on your side, you can always just mass-produce stellar convertor-equipped Titans and Doomstars to blow away anyone else's worlds and/or go right to Antares to win the game.

[Hotfoot]

Well, Freelancerr was released half finished after all. MS brought someone in whose job waqs basically to stop any development and get as early a release as possible. Heck, even the story was not even really finished.

I can believe that, the whole ending felt rather rushed and not very satisfying.

I do sort of wish they could have let you use a joystick as well as a mouse, but eh.

Aah Juni - finally a female who does not have to rely on clichee Nr. 1 and ridiculous outfits.

True, though I think they had a little too much fun making her ass fit into that spandex.

Ever played Beyond Good and Evil, by the by?

In fact, I think I'll play another run of Freelancer right now.

Damnit! It's supposed to be Deus Ex! There, I mentioned it! Someone reinstall it!

[The Yosemite Bear]

having your first scoutship discover that the ONLY planets within colonization distance from you at the start of the game have either A: A space Dragon, whose spawning babies, or B. IS ORION ITS SELF, Sure was the hardest game I've ever lost, as by the time I had built up enough of a fleet to handle A, the C-players had the stacks of DOOM.

now imagine that the computer does that to you for Six consecutive games of MoO

[Vendetta]

MoO3 sucked, but call me crazy, MoO2 was hopelessly easy, massively unbalanced, had terrible AI, and went fom MoO1's interesting 'spending' economy to a retarded Civ-style bullshit economy. It was fun, but it was a step in the wrong direction.

You mean it was now possible to win it, rather than have the AI show up with 391 Ships when you were fighting to put together 32 ships?

The AI might build fuckloads of ships, but it builds fucking awful ones.

I can build Titans that the enemy has to have a 7-1 numerical advantage in Doom Stars to destroy a single one, on Impossible, and that's without any Orion tech.

I don't even build Doom Stars of my own, because it would be too horrible to watch if I could stack even more heavy phasors on the things. (you can make Phasors ignore shields and armour and do direct structure damage with about a 400% bonus if you stack up special systems, and because they're relatively early tech they miniaturise lots).

[Adrian Laguna]

The AI might build fuckloads of ships, but it builds fucking awful ones.

I can build Titans that the enemy has to have a 7-1 numerical advantage in Doom Stars to destroy a single one, on Impossible, and that's without any Orion tech.

I don't even build Doom Stars of my own, because it would be too horrible to watch if I could stack even more heavy phasors on the things. (you can make Phasors ignore shields and armour and do direct structure damage with about a 400% bonus if you stack up special systems, and because they're relatively early tech they miniaturise lots).

In the Master of Orion II section of GameFAQs there's a guide of how to build the "ultimate ship". It's a Doom Star, and apparently just one of them was able to single handedly take-on and destroy "71 Doomstars, 17 Titans, and 12 battleships".

[Stark]

See I miss Master of Magic more than MoO: MoO spawned a genre, and GalCiv2 (for all it's increasingly lame bullshit) is basically the same game. MoM's '4X + ripped GW mechanics + stacked bonuses' thing has only really been used by Age of Wonders, which is just MoM Lite. All the cool combat mechanics done on the per-figure basis and the statlines build out of bonuses stacked from race, class, and equipment were great stuff in 1994, and now fantasy strategy has devolved into bloody HoMM.

Stardock say they want to make a fantasy game, and that could be cool.

[Vendetta]

MoM was still open to the same kind of twinking as MoO2 though. Invulnerable Guardian Spirit at the start of the game (Full life books) was invulnerable and had built in pathfinding, you could steamroller anything early on because nothing could hurt it at all.

Also you could make some truly nasty custom wizard combos.

Still, I think the combat was still better than MoO, and indeed pretty much anything like it since.

[Stark]

Oh hell yeah, and the magic schools weren't balanced at all, and the AI was terrible and only effective due to massive cheating on it's part, and starting on Myrror basically = you win. All those good ideas that just vanished, though, make me sad - it's lame that Age of Wonders is so cut down: you can't choose per-book to customise, your armies are single soldiers instead of the stacks (which instantly loses most of the cool combat mechanics), summons and cities are simplified, etc. A modernised, GalCiv2-style remake would hopefully fix the 90s problems and keep the cool ideas.

And, going by GalCiv2, release addons which progressively make the game retarded, cliched and inflexible, but I digress. Arceans forced into unique techs because they can't get the best engines = added value!

[MKSheppard]

System Shock 1, while it had a great plot and all that; falls apart when you think about it.

In the game there's a fluff note you find on the reactor level saying how Citadel has 200+ armed security guards, etc on station; but these guys can't even stop SHODAN when it's at it's relative weakest; but a single lone hacker, can defeat SHODAN at it's mightiest, when only you and a couple of other people are still alive on Citadel?

EDIT

Of course SHODAN could have gotten them all in one place with a fake announcement; e.g.

"All trained security personnel must report to briefing room 21 for a security briefing."

and then when they're all there, vent the compartment to space, or have a modified security robot gun them all down.

[PeZook]

System Shock 1, while it had a great plot and all that; falls apart when you think about it.

In the game there's a fluff note you find on the reactor level saying how Citadel has 200+ armed security guards, etc on station; but these guys can't even stop SHODAN when it's at it's relative weakest; but a single lone hacker, can defeat SHODAN at it's mightiest, when only you and a couple of other people are still alive on Citadel?

SS2 had a far more glaring plot hole, where Korechkin returned from the surface with a huge fucking worm attached to him and the Von Braun's crew did fuck all about it.

He wasn't even put in quarantine! You can hear about it in one of the audio logs, where a crewman makes note of how weird Korechkin looked when he got back from Tau Ceti V.

Irritated the fuck out of me.

[Molyneux]

Sonic the Hedgehog

Ever since they decided to put him in the human world and change the villain's name from "Robotnik" to "Eggman" and introduce five bazillion side characters, Sonic Team has done nothing but make shoddy games. Really sad, too

The games have stumbled in recent years, but damn it, his name was ALWAYS Eggman! They changed it to Robotnik in the US because they wanted a sterotypically "evil" name. Kind of strange that they immediately gravitated to a Russian name, though (Ivo/Ivan Robotnik).

[Sarevok]

Battletech's death was just too tragic. Just when PCs became powerful enough to realize the dreams of fanboys Mechwarrior just vanished with the medicore Mechwarrior 4 series.

[Siege]

Dynamix and the demise of the Starsiege: Tribes series is something I pity. Tribes 3 just wasn't the same. I'll second Looking Glass Studios as well, primarily for the Thief series.

[Jaepheth]

I am greatly dissappointed by the lack of Space Quest 7

And the lack of adventure games in general.

I'm also dissappointed by the decline in quality of Prince of Persia since the Sands of Time.

[VF5SS]

Battletech's death was just too tragic. Just when PCs became powerful enough to realize the dreams of fanboys Mechwarrior just vanished with the medicore Mechwarrior 4 series.

I think they should have been a little more ambitious with Mechwarrior 3. Ok so now we can FALL DOWN and STAND UP and arms can down move independent of the torso, but we've still got so-so tank like controls and no melee attacks. Since 90% of combat in the campaign seemed to devolve into running around ten feet in front of your opponent, being able to sock them in the face would have been fun.

[MKSheppard]

SS2 had a far more glaring plot hole, where Korechkin returned from the surface with a huge fucking worm attached to him and the Von Braun's crew did fuck all about it.

Even bigger one in SS1: You know the people who contact you on email on the flight deck, and are holding off a cortex reaver? Why didn't they run into the air shafts? The Cortex reaver's too big to follow

Even worse, you open a door and find a guy lying dead in a storage room; and he's holding a Mark 3 assault rifle, which can down a reaver in a couple shots! Not to mention land mines, etc

[The Yosemite Bear]

now, now ryan, that's an old RPG standby as old as Beowulf. You will always find the weapon that can kill the nasty very close by, if not on the corpse of some unfortunate victim of the thing. I mean silver bullets on the body of the werewolf hunter, a grendel's mom killing sword in her trash middan,

[Starglider]

Admittedly, NWN2 isn't as good as BG2 (what is?)

Planescape Torment.

Anyway, I second Space Quest and add the Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle series as well, but they all went down in the great graphical adventure slaughterfest.

I don't like the new Heroes of Might and Magic games. I think the gameplay, graphics and music peaked in 3 and the story and overall style peaked in 2. Leena likes the new ones but I think they're soulless, homogenised and missing the most interesting units.

I've never played MOO2, but yeah, I hear MOO3 is a huge fuckup.

The most heartbreaking decline has to be the Elite series. The first one was awesome. The second one was a cool engine with no plot. The third game was basically what the second game should have been; if you get that patches that fix all the bugs it's awesome. But then... nothing except the odd random teaser. Closely followed by the Star Control series. SC2 was great. I actually think SC3 is ok, I don't loathe it like so many of the fans. But it was a turn for the worse, and then the franchise ended, with all sequel attempts defeated.