Franchises that failed to "evolve"

[oxymoron]

Psychonauts doesn't really concern us in this topic. It was a one-off platformer and its creator has moved on to other projects.

It concerns me so

+1

[Menegrothx]

Didn't Obsidian kickstart a project of their own? Hopefully it'll be better than the recent Shadowrun and its tablet-y interface.

Psychonauts. It's such an underrated game and beloved within the PC community. It's easily a 9 out of 10 and yet not many people heard of it outside into the mainstream.

How could an individual game "fail to evolve"? It's not a series. Anyway Psychonauts has great writing and some neat levels, but the gameplay is very mediocre and meh as is typical of 3D platformers of it's kind.

[Erik_Twice]

Psychonauts should have been a movie. Everything is great about it except the actual gameplay. Well, that and the resolution.

[EvilRyu2099]

I'll go with Pokemon, although I hardly call it a failure.. If you are talking about actual failure to "evolve", I'd say Sonic until the last two installments.. Yes they attempted to, but failed for a long time..

[Aramonde]

Concerning DW, isn't it about time KOEI made something new rather than recycling the same assets for twenty games? How about better collision physics, enemies that serve more than cannon fodder, bosses you can go one-on-one against, doing away with the asinine dialogue each time you come across a character, etc.. It boggles the mind how archaic the games play and behave.

As a long time DW fan i completely disagree with you.

How about better collision physics, enemies that serve more than cannon fodder

Have you ever played the game on the hardest difficulty? Even then on Normal enemy officers can be challenging. And even there are so what! it's still fun as hell.

bosses you can go one-on-one against

They tried that, it was called duels. It was ok but it kind of broke up the flow of the battle.

They tried to change up the attack system in 6 with the Renbu system and it sucked! In 7 they made the story mode a lot better by making you play certain DW in certain battles. It made the storytelling more cohesive and you didn't have to replay all the battles for over 40 characters to see there endings. The thing that sucked in 7 was the move sets. they limited one move set to one weapon. Were the other games every character had a different move set. I haven't played 8 yet but i'm hearing the fans are loving it. There giving all characters there own move set and keeping the story mode of 7.

Koei did try to make other games but they didn't sell well, They don't have a huge budget like other tripe A devs do. they make a game with what they have, And if the fans like it i see no need to drastically change the formula.

I guess if people weren't buying the stuff it would stop getting made, but perhaps it's like comfort food in a sense. Folks sometimes want new and different things, but other times they just want what's familiar.

EXACTLY!!! All i want in a DW game it to just beat the shit out of thousands of solders. And have crazy over the top voice acting in historical china.

[Sasha_Blue]

Psychonauts. It's such an underrated game and beloved within the PC community. It's easily a 9 out of 10 and yet not many people heard of it outside into the mainstream.

How could an individual game "fail to evolve"? It's not a series. Anyway Psychonauts has great writing and some neat levels, but the gameplay is very mediocre and meh as is typical of 3D platformers of it's kind.[/quote]

Mediocre game play?!?! I think you may be the minority on this one. It was often referred as "the best game you never heard of". It was the 1st in the series but it never caught on. The creator did actually plan a squeal for it and maybe a second squeal too, but like I said it never caught on. It is a heavily underrated game and is highy praised amongst the PC community more than the console community which I noticed.

[Menegrothx]

Mediocre game play?!?! I think you may be the minority on this one.

Yes. The platforming, combat and running around isn't very satisfying nor challenging in the right way, nor is the level design particularly memorable. I'm not talking about the visuals, I love the Milk Man conspiracy level and there were some other clever concepts&level themes, but the layout of the levels, how well they were designed.

It is a heavily underrated game and is highy praised amongst the PC community more than the console community which I noticed.

There really isn't any gameplay difference between the PC and console versions though.

You seem to misunderstand my point here. I'm not disputing the quality of Psychonauts. Like I said it's well written and has clever ideas, just that the actual gameplay part of that game isn't very good. If it was just the game with out any of the memorable characters and dialogue, it would be a very mediocre game. Something akin to Scaler and other mostly forgotten 3D platformers of it's time. It's the Tim Schafer writing that makes the game memorable.

[Hatta]

I don't know, the level design in some of those levels was pretty off the wall. I don't see how you say the gameplay is mediocre, with platformers the level design is the biggest aspect of gameplay. I think you just don't like 3d platformers, which is fair, they're not my favorite genre either. But Psychonauts had great writing, great levels, and was thankfully unafflicted with collectingitis which ruins so many 3d platformers.

What else would you expect from an outstanding 3d platformer?

[Hobie-wan]

Hey, remember when this thread was about games with more than one in a series that made them a franchise which allowed them to demonstrate if they were capable of evolving or not over the iterations?

[Flake]

Hey, remember when this thread was about games with more than one in a series that made them a franchise which allowed them to demonstrate if they were capable of evolving or not over the iterations?

The thread failed to evolve?

Kinda on topic: Is it wrong that there are some franchises that I'd prefer not to see evolve?