The "Peak" of a series?

Post by **racketboy** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 9:21 pm

GagaMan wrote:
racketboy wrote:
GagaMan wrote: Bust-A-Move: Bust-a-Move 4.
I have to say pt 3 was the peak.
I think the funky combo system in 4 ruined it.
I have yet to pick up Bust-a-Move 3, but 4 has definably been my favorite. The combo system made things more competitive and unpredictable for me, sort of like Puyo Puyo. After that, though, the games sort of went a bit down hill. The Wii one is alright though, except the multi player mode is crap and it's far too easy. BAM4 has beautiful high res sprites (at least in the DC version) too.

Well, with puzzle games, I like predictability. At least with Puyo Pop Fever it seemed a little more reasonable and had the Fever Mode as opposed to just random things blowing up.

Post by **loser13** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 3:07 am

Mario-Mario bros 3 for the fact you had and inventory, could fly, and levels were absolutly huge not only from side to side but up, down and every other direction.
Final Fantasy-Final Fantasy 7, not ONLY cause im one of those ff7 fanboys, but because if finally gave the series the cinematic feel it always deserved.
Gran turismo- Gran turismo 2. More cars, more tracks, and perfect control. I always felt like 3 and 4 were just living on pretty graphics and not new features/innovation like the previous efforts.

Post by **tHePhAnToM!??!** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:48 am

legacy of kain - Defiance i have played the entire series and though soul reaver was a fantastic game, defiance just wraps it up perfectly. i never saw the end to that one coming. jade cocoon - jade cocoon the first. tenchu - tenchu 2. wipeout - wipeout 3. i cant remember anymore right now i am too tired. o and the x-men arcade game was the hottest shit around. well besides the speed racer game i use to play all the time.

Post by **Mozgus** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 8:55 am

tHePhAnToM!??! wrote:tenchu - tenchu 2.

I've sat here for 5 minutes thinking about Tenchu. The series clearly fell to shit after the 3rd one. Tenchu 1 introduced us to everything and it was a great start, and it still has one of the greatest game soundtracks of all time. But Tenchu 2 came along, fixed my complaints with the controls almost entirely, brought in a better selection of levels, a map editor, a great third character, but did away with the music almost entirely. 3 brought in a pretty good soundtrack, and completely redid the controls to be much more responsive, and it looked much better, but for some reason I just didn't get into it as much.

Eh, tie between 1 and 2 for me. Tough call.

Post by **marurun** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 10:27 am

I think the Final Fantasy series hit its peak at FF3 (jpn) on the NES. Later games have added cinematics but the mechanics were pretty much cemented at 3.

Post by **tHePhAnToM!??!** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:02 pm

i love tenchu 2. Tatsumaru had some strong fucking hands man. just chopping enemies down with his bare hands. but my fav will always be rikimaru. many people have fallen to the stab straight down the head and then crack the neck move.

Post by **marurun** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:23 pm

Here's a controversial opinion for you... I think the Super Mario Brothers series peaked with 3 on the NES. As far as games go I consider All Stars + SMW the best overall, but I think the level design, play control, and game balance was its best in SMB3. SMW is great, but I don't feel it's as carefully constructed as SMB3.

Post by **Gamerforlife** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:46 pm

Actually, I think Final Fantasy peaked with FF X. Sure FF 3(6 in Japan)was a genuine classic, but it wasn't the series' peak. FF 7 put FF on the map in a serious way and brought a whole new level of graphical quality to the series. The rpg genre become much more popular because of FF7 and other games copied it. FF X brought the graphics to a whole new level and finally brought voice acting to the series.

It's been downhill from there. FFXI was some stupid online game, FF X2 had some cool stuff like the battle system and the new game plus, but the story was crap(since FF X's story didn't need a sequel in the first place), the game's design was aimless and random and the game made a mockery of women and the franchise itself. FF 12 was pretty good overall and brought some serious new changes to the formula, but they were not all for the best(stupid random treasure system) and the story(while decent)was not one of the series' best.

I love the Tenchu series, especially the second one(for the story and the new blowgun item). I can't say which installment is best though since I still haven't finished the third one

Tecmo's Deception-Kagero Deception II
I wonder how many of you reading this even know about this series. They're all awesome, but it seems like there were no major changes to the series after the second installment.

Curious racketboy, if you're reading this, what games do you have in mind for this article you're thinking about doing?

Post by **dwarpdesign** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 10:50 pm

marurun wrote:Here's a controversial opinion for you... I think the Super Mario Brothers series peaked with 3 on the NES. As far as games go I consider All Stars + SMW the best overall, but I think the level design, play control, and game balance was its best in SMB3. SMW is great, but I don't feel it's as carefully constructed as SMB3.

I utterly agree with every word of this statement.
SMB3 is to me hands down the greatest game ever, certainly the greatest Mario. Most of the rest of the series I can't even beat. No motivation. SMB3 calls me back frequently, year after year, to play thru and beat every level again and again. No other game for any system inspires that in me.

Post by **Gamerforlife** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 7:28 pm

Mario 3 is the last traditional, platform based Mario game that I find truly relevent. Super Mario World was just more of the same though less inspired, and Sega(in one of the company's coolest moments)put the game head to head with Sonic and showed everyone how dated Mario had become. Mario 64 was overrated with its boring mission based structure and bad camera, and a character who just wasn't interesting anymore. It was easily bested by other platform games to come after. I'll take Crash Bandicoot or Conker's Bad Fur Day over Mario 64 any day of the week. Oh, and the commercial with Crash calling out Mario at Nintendo HQ? BEST.....VIDEO GAME.....COMMERCIAL......EVER!!!!

To be fair though, I think games like Super Mario rpg, the Paper Mario games and Luigi's Mansion made Mario games cool again. I even like Treasure's Wario game on the Cube. These games moved away from traditional Mario gameplay however. Some franchises really need to do that, like Mortal Kombat

I wish they'd stopped putting out Mortal Kombat fighting games and give us stuff like Shaolin Monks. As a fighting game, MK can't really hang with the other big dogs today. Even in the old days, it wasn't as deep as the stuff Capcom and SNK put out. It was awesome then because of all the shocking violence, cool characters, interesting universe, cool graphics, chop socky feel and tons of secrets. That stuff translates better to a brawler/adventure game like Shaolin Monks in my opinion. I loved that game more than any of the traditional MK fighters.

While some will call MK 2 the peak of the series(and with good reasons), I would go with Shaolin Monks. I want more MK games like that.