(electronic chiming) - Some games really, really want to improve on their formula, and some, in that noble
pursuit, go a little too far. Hi folks, it's Falcon,
and today, on Gameranx, 10 video game changes
fans absolutely hated. Starting with number 10,
"Gears of War: Judgment." Right from the start,
you could tell Epic Games had something real good
going with "Gears of War." It's a series that has, for
more or less, better or worse, remained mostly unchanged
from the first game. Almost any major changes are met with a certain degree of
hostility by the fan base too, because it all just worked right
immediately from the start. And everybody has their own preferred way that they expect these games to play. The only game that ever really deviated significantly from
the formula was "Judgment," the often-forgotten
fourth game in the series. Switching developers from
Epic to People Can Fly, the game made some fundamental
changes to the gameplay. Movement was a little faster. You switched weapons by pressing Y instead of the control pad. And at least, at first, you
couldn't carry a shotgun and a rifle at the same time. The faster, more arcade-style pace made for a pretty fun campaign, but the multiplayer
changes just weren't great. That and the new modes
were pretty unbalanced and never really got better. (explosion blasts)
(monsters roaring) The game underperformed commercially. And even though, on the whole, I really don't think it's a bad game, actually, a pretty good game, it's not necessarily what I would call a full "Gears of War" entry in terms of what the actual mechanics are. But more importantly, the multiplayer is a huge part of the
"Gears of War" experience, and it was half-baked. A lot of the changes
felt pretty arbitrary, like changes for changes' sake. And the changes that did matter,
mostly made the game worse. At number nine is "DmC: Devil May Cry," The seventh console generation hit the Japanese gaming industry hard. Many of the biggest
publishers struggled to adapt to a changing landscape
and, because of that, a lot of once-great gaming
franchises nearly met their end, like "Devil May Cry," for example. After the somewhat lackluster
sales of "Devil May Cry 4," Capcom attempted to do something
drastic with the series and handed it off to Western
developer Team Ninja, who went on to reboot the series in a way that was supposed to give
it more mass market appeal. Now, here's the thing, the game actually ended up being good. I don't think it's a bad game
at all. I enjoyed playing it. But nothing about it feels like a proper "Devil May Cry" game. Instead of being gothic and campy, "DmC" is grungy and juvenile. Combat is dumbed down. There's no lock on. And in a move that really
upset the fan base, the game was locked at
30 FPS, which, all right. I don't really know why this was the case. It wasn't, like, the most complex game graphically of its generation or anything. But beyond that though, Dante
didn't even have white hair. Like, there's a reason fans
started calling him Donte Like with an O instead. Dante versus Donte. I don't know. That's not even taking into account the many ways the developers seem to go out of their way to make
fun of the old games, which made fans of the original games less inclined to give the reboot a chance. The game failed to meet
Capcom's sales expectations. Didn't goat terribly. Like, it sold all right. But it wasn't the smash
hit they wanted either. As far as Western-developed
entries of Japanese IPs go, hardly the worst. Again, I wanna stress that
the game is actually good. (weapons clashing)
(upbeat rock music) But it's far from the best, and it's also incredibly far from what "Devil May Cry"
actually normally is. What I'm saying is it's
really understandable why it didn't do so well. And if it had just been a
completely different IP, like a new one, it probably would've had
a much better chance. At number eight is "The
Bureau: XCOM Declassified" Revealed back in 2010, years
before the actual "XCOM" reboot by Firaxis was even announced. The game that would become "The Bureau," which was, I guess,
tangentially related to "XCOM." Just about the only thing that seemed to carry
over between the games is that you played some
kind of government agent and there's aliens. That's about it. "XCOM" is a series mostly
known for strategic gameplay but this game had almost none of that. Instead, it's a third-person shooter that plays like a slightly more
complex "Mass Effect" game, if you didn't have role-playing in it. The whole thing ended
up being a kind of weird and disappointing diversion
from what "XCOM" fans would actually be interested in. Honestly, the original version
of the game was first-person and had you fighting
bizarre geometric aliens. It was even further away from
anything resembling "XCOM." But it sounded more interesting than, you know, just kind of tangentially making an "XCOM" game out of this. (explosions blasting)
(monsters growling) There aren't any sales numbers
available that we can find, but it seems unlikely the game was able to make a profit for 2K, and along with mostly negative reviews, the game was quickly forgotten. It's more of an interesting failure than a complete disaster, but still, an interesting
failure is a failure. And number seven is
"Silent Hill: Homecoming." Another formerly Japanese-developed game outsourced to Western developers during the seventh generation of consoles, "Silent Hill: Homecoming" didn't actually get terrible
reviews at the time. But these days, most fans see it as the beginning of
the end for the series. Developed by Double Helix, the game had a greater emphasis on combat compared to previous "Silent Hill" games. Rather than just taking
influence from the games, it took a lot of ideas from
the divisive, to say the least, "Silent Hill" movie. Like how the game transitions
into the Otherworld and the presence of the
Pyramid Head monster. That's also what makes the game different from anything else on this list. The developers didn't
really go out of their way to make something different. It just sort of happened that way because they clearly had different ideas as to what a "Silent
Hill" game actually was. Like they'd probably played
them and also seen the movies and stuff got jumbled up in their heads, and they probably thought
about "Resident Evil" as well, and it just kind of
became a bit of a mush. For fans of the series who were used to the surreal atmosphere
of the previous entries, this game felt like a major
downgrade in a lot of areas. And the additional combat abilities actually made the enemy encounters
significantly less scary. Overall, the game just isn't as grotesque and frightening as the
best games in the series, even if the monster design is on point. And the soundtrack was, I mean... Before I stopped this entry, I have to say the
soundtrack was really good. At number six is "Metroid: Other M." You know how this works, right? Great series, and then
another developer comes in, doesn't know or doesn't understand what made the series good to begin with, and then botches the final product. 99% of the time that is what happens. But sometimes, it doesn't
take someone outside to come in and ruin a sequel. Sometimes the original
creator's perfectly capable of ruining a series all by themselves. Easily one of the most misguided and baffling sequels of all time, "Metroid: Other M" took
what was originally a series all about exploration and
environmental storytelling and turned into a cut-scene filled, "Metal Gear Solid"-like
game with very bad story and boring gameplay. Created by "Metroid"
director Yoshio Sakamoto and developed by Nintendo
SPG and Team Ninja, the creators of "Ninja Gaiden," the game, I mean, when you say all of that sounds like it should
have been a slam dunk, but it was, in fact, "Metroid: Other M." The game has almost nothing in common with previous "Metroid" games, other than the main character. The gameplay's completely different, explorations mostly gone, other than a few hidden
upgrades dotted around, there's almost no
non-mandatory backtracking, and the powers aren't
earned through exploration but rather authorized by Samus's boss in one of the most bizarre
excuses I've ever seen in a game for why you don't get all of
your weapons at the start. Seriously, the reason
Samus can't her Varia Suit that protects from the
heat in the super hot lava is not because she doesn't have it, it's because her boss hasn't
given her the thumbs up yet. (explosions blasting)
(tense music) The whole game is filled with
WTF moments like that too. It's a total mess. One of the biggest missteps for a series that's normally associated
with very high quality. For years it seemed like this game was responsible for killing "Metroid," and considering the
sales and fan reception, it probably almost did. And number five is
"Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts." Easily one of the weirdest turns for a game series out there, the Xbox 360 sequel took the series as mostly known for being a
3D platformer collectathon into a game about building vehicles and solving various challenges. That's really what you're
doing most of the game too, creating different types of vehicles to overcome the variety of challenges that the game throws at you. Now, it's a very creative sandbox game and it's pretty clever, and
can be fun once you understand how the game wants you to think. But it's almost nothing
like the previous games where the emphasis was on platforming. The game left a lot of fans just completely scratching their heads. But if all it was was a little diversion, until the third "Banjo" came out then, whatever, it's
just a side game, right? That was more than 10 years ago, and Rare has not made a proper sequel to the "Banjo-Kazooie" games. At this point, it seems
unlikely that they're gonna. And number four, "The 3rd
Birthday - Parasite Eve." The "Parasite Eve" series is not one that we would really call
mega-consistent, to begin with. The first game is an interesting
mix of survival horror and RPG. The sequel is more of a
standard action-horror game. And "The Third Birthday" is... Um, I don't know what the
hell The Third Birthday" is. I mean, besides completely insane, I can't even begin to describe the story. The gameplay is almost
as crazy as the story, so I'm probably not gonna be able to describe that too well either. It's a third-person shooter, but it has this bizarre
twist that the main character has the ability to
body-jack humans nearby. So a lot of the gameplay involves swapping between soldiers
mid-mission to access new areas or get weapons necessary
to fight the enemy. It's all tied together, like I said, with a totally incomprehensible story. I think probably one of
the most incomprehensible to ever be in a video game. It's nonsense. And the more you think you understand it, the less you actually know. I'm not going to try to summarize it because I'm not going to be able to. The whole thing has
almost nothing in common with "Parasite Eve," other
than the main character, who acts like a completely
different character compared to how she was in the first game. Seriously, the only
way to know these games are the same series is if
someone told you that they were or you notice that they both
say "Parasite Eve" on them. Somehow the game actually reviewed okay. I don't know the reason for that because it is not something
I would review well. Despite that, sales were fairly low, and the "Parasite Eve" franchise has been dead in the water ever since. At number three is "Dynasty Warriors 9." Of all the games out there
that tried to go open world, "Dynasty Warriors" probably the worst. Seriously, I did the before
you buy on this channel, and if you go back, you can just detect the
disdain in my voice. I was so disappointed in that game. Before "9," these games had a formula, and what they did, they did really well. Now, by 2018, they were starting
to get a little bit stale. Like we'd seen that formula
a lot of times at that point. And the more interesting versions were starting to be the other franchises that they did warriors for, like "Hyrule Warriors" for instance. But out of all the ways they could have refreshed the series, going open-world was the
worst possible option. So instead of taking place
within well-crafted levels, the entire game takes
place in empty fields. Basically, if you know what
an abandoned MMO looks like, if you've ever logged into an MMO that is way past its prime, that's basically what
this game looks like. You got all these way too big of areas, you do basic boring quests, and then you have the large-scale battles. Which are fun, I'm not gonna
say that they're not fun, like, they're the only good
part of the game really, but they almost always take
place in a flat, boring field with nothing else going on. For such a long-running franchise, it was hard to imagine them
putting out a main entry this, like, frustratingly horrible. But they did that. Not a lot else to say, just look at it. That's what they did. And number two was "Fallout:
Brotherhood of Steel." The original "Fallout" games were really great for
their reactive world, and they were filled to the brim with a lot of role-playing opportunities to play a character however you wanted to. So what did Interplay do when they brought the series onto consoles for the first time? Well, take everything like that out. "Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel" is just a bad "Diablo" clone. It's got weak combat, dull environments, and a nothing story, to say the least. Instead of being open like
the original games too, totally linear. Instead of being able to
use your own character, a few pre-made ones choose from. Whole thing's dumbed
down, basic, and dull. Basically, it's somebody saying, "Wow, console gamers are
dumber, so they'll just think "that this is the same
thing as 'Fallout,' right?" "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance" managed to be something
completely different from the PC games by virtue of
just being a really fun game. But "Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel" did not get anywhere near that. At number one is "Tony Hawk: Ride." By 2009, the "Tony Hawk"
franchise was on life support and it needed a new direction
if it wanted to survive. You can probably tell by my tone, that's not what happened. (laughing) Seriously, you start
to go into that cadence and it's like, well, either you're reading a story to a child or there's some element of
face fastidiousness here. Yeah, Activision went and made things way worse for "Tony Hawk." "Tony Hawk: Ride" is the one with the plastic skateboard peripheral. Don't need to say anything else. That's enough. You know. Game was basically unplayable, and that skateboard controller was hard to use in even
the best conditions. It also broke frequently
and it wasn't fun. Like, it was a bad gimmick, just terrible. Why would you do that? The game got terrible reviews too, especially for the time, and sales were pathetic
for a "Tony Hawk" game. Why? Because, oh, I don't know, maybe you made a "Tony Hawk" game that required a plastic
skateboard peripheral! Yeah, "Wii Fit" is fun. "Tony Hawk is" a completely
different thing from "Wii Fit." Don't do this! This is a series that just
can't seem to catch a break because when they decided to go back to the classic gameplay
of the original games, the game was still terrible. Like, do you remember "Pro Skater 5?" It was an attempt to
be like the old games, but really sucked because
whoever developed it, I don't even remember at this point, didn't know what the hell they were doing. I mean, at least we finally
got the "Pro Skater 1" and "2" remakes. And even if those end up being the last "Tony Hawk" games we ever get, at least they went out on a high note. And that's all for today. Leave us a comment. Let
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