Game Series That Jumped The Shark

Am I the only one who honestly thinks a game franchise has gone on long enough? I ask only because my thoughts turned toward the new Pokémon games coming out, Black and White. What are they going to use for opposing versions afterward? They already covered colors and gemstones, so what's next? Pokémon: Apple and Banana version?

I honestly think Pokémon is one of those series that has gotten so tiresome. "You've caught 493 of the lil' bastards, now go catch another 150 more! You'll only be able to use six still!" I stopped playing at Diamond/Pearl-era, because it was the same formula recycled. Catch a bunch of little monsters, power grind them, make them fight for you, collect gym badges, rinse and repeat. Save for the few games on the N64 and Gamecube, everything else was just used over and over. What can we expect in Black and White? Will we be able to catch God? No, wait, we already caught him in Ruby/Sapphire, or whatever generation Jirachi was in.

This rant leads me to ask the question, what game franchises do you think have become tipped cash cows?

I thought Arceus was supposed to be God.

Pokemon mythology sure is confusing.

Final Fantasy.

FFXI was the last good FF game, anyone who disagrees is a fool.

I would disagree. I stopped trusting Final Fantasy when they decided to make FFX2.

And how about Sonic the Hedgehog? He seems to be running in circles the past few years. It's like they can't decide what to do with him any more. Give the poor dude a few years off and come up with something new, please.

Miss Prince wrote:

I thought Arceus was supposed to be God.

Pokemon mythology sure is confusing.

I think all the legendary Pokemon are gods (except Mewtwo... and Deoxys too, maybe?), but Arceus is the Creator God Pokemon. It's not very monotheistic or whatever. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I don't really play a lot of games, so I don't have many thoughts on what series should have died

Lurv wrote:

I think all the legendary Pokemon are gods (except Mewtwo... and Deoxys too, maybe?), but Arceus is the Creator God Pokemon. It's not very monotheistic or whatever.

There are only few actual 1 of a kind legendarys in the games going off lore.
The Birds are supposed to be a representation of the elements in balance with Lugia as the "step outta line and I'll bitch slap you" overseer.
The Dogs are actually just old pokemon that died in a fire that Ho-oh brought back to life, with ole rainbow feathers overdoing it and making them so stupid powerful they can't sit still
Then you have Groudon, Kyogre and Rayquazia which are ment to represent that Japan has a fetish for the Earth, Sea, Sky theme.
With the 4th Gen you have the Keeper of Time, Keeper of Space and Keeper of this weird ass parallel world that exists for no actually explained reason. And God.
In this latest generation we have two pokemon who represent Yin and Yang and prolly one or two others.

All other 'legendarys' are either so flighty or just plain hard to track down that they might as well be one offs, Genetic Experiments or Accidents come to life or Pokemon that hide from people like an emo (DARKRAI!!! ).
The difference is catching one of teh named examples should prolly cause the pokemon world to flip it's shit and possibly implode.
The rest, not so much.

Oh and FPS's or RTS's set in World War 2 can kindly all fuck off forever, make up your own original conflicts for a change or piss off.

why are they still making sonic games

^ they're getting better dude have you seen Sonic Colors? Holy SHIT.

TheIan wrote:

my thoughts turned toward the new Pokémon games coming out, Black and White. What are they going to use for opposing versions afterward? They already covered colors and gemstones, so what's next? Pokémon: Apple and Banana version?

Yeah man, Game Freak have totally wrote themselves into a corner on this one. It's not like they can change that tiny aspect of the games! And hilarious joke dude i spat mountain dew all over my keyboard ty

Quote :

I honestly think Pokémon is one of those series that has gotten so tiresome.

This is fucking bullshit of the highest order regarding Pokemon. How is it tiresome? There is no established canon for manchildren to spergelord over and force them to continue playing the series ["But I need to find out how the story ends!"], each generation shift brings in new gameplay features and develops multiplayer interactivity further [I'm avoiding stuff relating to B/W because I don't want to be spoiled, but isn't there something along the lines of wi-fi co-op or something equally ridiculous?], and GameFreak make a shit load of money whilst remaining in the mindframe of "We want to make entertaining games". How can it be tiresome?

Quote :

"You've caught 493 of the lil' bastards, now go catch another 150 more!

Yeah man, that's bullshit. It's like, I complete Mega Man, and wait what's that? I have to fight eight more Robot Masters in a different game I don't have to buy? That's fucking bullshit!

And what, were you like "Well, Game Freak, you can make up to 500 pokemon but once you break that number we are THROUGH, mister"?

Quote :

I stopped playing at Diamond/Pearl-era, because it was the same formula recycled.

... no. Sure, call out stuff like the imbalance of Water to Fire types or that the fire starter was once again to become Fire/Fighting [which they're going to do again which I concede is fucking retarded], or the fact that online battle modes are dominated by sperglords basically crunching numbers to make battling near enough impossible. But "it's the same formula recycled"? You're complaining about that? Why mess about with said formula that is obviously drawing in millions of sales for each release? Is the fact they basically changed the entire overview feature [and have changed it further in Black & White!], made online battling/trading available, changed the way physical/special attacks worked and experimented with new terrains/landmark features lost on you? Oh no, they added new pokemon and had the character follow a linear path to defeating the Elite 4 with a large number of side paths! Bullshit.

Tungsten Monk wrote:

And how about Sonic the Hedgehog? He seems to be running in circles the past few years. It's like they can't decide what to do with him any more. Give the poor dude a few years off and come up with something new, please.

NO. THIS IS THE PROBLEM. DO NOT ENCOURAGE THEM.

Seriously, 3D Sonic can be fun! It can! I really enjoyed several levels from Sonic Adventure 2, for example. It's just that Sega will not fucking let Sonic just run around really fast. No, he runs around really fast for a while and then you spend an hour fishing. Or shooting things. Or treasure-hunting. Or being a werewolf. STOP IT. STOP THE GIMMICKS RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

Just Chipper wrote:

This is fucking bullshit of the highest order regarding Pokemon. How is it tiresome? There is no established canon for manchildren to spergelord over and force them to continue playing the series ["But I need to find out how the story ends!"], each generation shift brings in new gameplay features and develops multiplayer interactivity further [I'm avoiding stuff relating to B/W because I don't want to be spoiled, but isn't there something along the lines of wi-fi co-op or something equally ridiculous?], and GameFreak make a shit load of money whilst remaining in the mindframe of "We want to make entertaining games". How can it be tiresome?

Apparently B/W got 10/10 from a lot of reviewers in Japan, and I have to admit I'm looking forward to it (despite it having the worst looking Pokemon yet, IMO). GameFreak have been pretty smart about how they develop each new generation - they release just enough in the way of new features in order to interest us. I'll try not to spoil you on what I know so far, but they're adding a lot more in the way of wi-fi, such as new areas and downloads that give you awesome benefits. They've really expanded on the storyline for this one too. You actually see gym leaders outside their gyms for once (for some reason that makes me really excited to see).

Probably the best thing GameFreak has done with all its Pokemon games is make them accessible to both kids and adults (playing it either for nostalgia, curiosity, or because they're a tourney-geek). It's why you can play the game only ever levelling up the normal way, or you can put in the extra effort to do EV training or even try for IV bonuses through complicated breeding lines. It's quite amazing once you delve a little deeper into the game. :D

Sonic has jumped every shark in the sea, plus a few whales and lobsters as well. I can find no better example of a dead series that insists on dragging its rotting corpse around.

~~

Pokémon is far from having jumped the shark - the series is still a sucess, the games are getting more refined with each generation, and just when it looked like it was getting stale, B/W came with overhauls to both single- and multiplayer, plus a major upgrade in presentation.

There's a crapload of monsters right now, but hey, more options is always good. It's not like there haven't been anything cool lately. The recent generation has a crocodile with markings that look like TTGL sunglasses, a miniature King Ghidorah, an ugly duckling that evolves into a swan, something that looks like a Kamen Rider made of axe blades, a jellyfish with a Pringles mustache and a space ant with a frickin' laser cannon attached to its head.

And Koromori. <3

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

There's a crapload of monsters right now, but hey, more options is always good. It's not like there haven't been anything cool lately. The recent generation has a crocodile with markings that look like TTGL sunglasses, a miniature King Ghidorah, an ugly duckling that evolves into a swan, something that looks like a Kamen Rider made of axe blades, a jellyfish with a Pringles mustache and a space ant with a frickin' laser cannon attached to its head.

You forgot the ice cream Pokemon evolution chain.

Halo.

First, we have Halo: Combat Evolved, which does absolutely nothing to actually evolve the genre (I'm sick of hearing that it proved first-person shooters can work on consoles. No, it didn't, Goldeneye did. Halo did nothing but demand less precision and skill, unless you were young enough to spend enough time mastering the pistol and its scope so you could ding people in the seams between their armor every time.)

Then, Halo 2. Better writing! Interesting world-building! Better multiplayer balance that favors more tactics than just "pick up the same weapon every time and shoot for the exact same spot!" Single-player is still stupid-easy, but hey, at least it looks better and gets interesting. So, of course, the target demographic rails against the changes, because the game's just not fun without a scoped pistol and the spammy assault rifle that doesn't need aiming.

So then, we jump the shark on Halo 3, where singleplayer outright ignores half of the plot suggested by the second game in favor of a completely predictable ending with the absolute worst, most nonsensical throw-it-in Heel Face Turn ever (they literally threw in Guilty Spark turning on you at the last minute for the shock value,) to cap off the fact that absolutely nothing interesting happens. There's nothing special about Gravemind, he's just a villain. There's nothing special about Truth, he's just that insane despite the presentation in Halo 2 suggesting that he knew something the others didn't and planned to do more than "fire the rings out of stupid delusions 75% of the other cast has already cummed buckets of in their dialog." It's like the dev team sat in a room and said "It seems our attempt at decent writing and getting players to care about the characters failed miserably because most of our fanbase is made up of fratboys who wouldn't know decent writing if it it was on the fratpaddles spanking them. Quick! Dumb it back down, dumb it back down!" Multiplayer naturally follows suit.

ODST? Hey, remember that small portion of Halo 2? Here's a sidestory to that. Guess how it ends. Halo Reacharound? Hey, you know that human colony, Reach, everyone is talking about all the time, and about how the Covenent wiped it out? Here's a prequel about that. Guess how it ends. Totally not just milking the whole fucking thing by making what amounts to gaiden games that do nothing but copy-paste every environment we've seen in every single game.

Miss Prince wrote:

I thought Arceus was supposed to be God.

Pokemon mythology sure is confusing.

That's cuz Pokemon's are from SPACE!

here and here.

XLT-100852.0 wrote:

You forgot the ice cream Pokemon evolution chain.

...It disappoints me that the ice Pokemon in that game are kinda silly looking. The polar bears could have been cool (herpaderp) if they didn't have the cub with a booger hanging out of its nose and its evolution with a strangely distracting crotch.

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

The recent generation has a crocodile with markings that look like TTGL sunglasses,

I love Goggle-Gator! :D

Although, Buffafro is pretty cool too.

Personally, I never made it through silver or gold. I tried, but I just couldn't get into them. I tried to return to the series briefly when they came out with, what was it? Leaf and ruby, I think. It just didn't have the same magic as the originals, even though it was the same game.

On an unrelated and highly controversial note, I feel that the Legend of Zelda games have gotten rather trite. They could still salvage it, but putting out a new game every twelve months is probably not going to work. I am still hopeful, though. I used to love those games.

I realize that this particular topic is sacred to many, and I don't mean to offend anyone. You all are welcome to disagree with me, and I will respect your opinions.

Painkiller. I don't know if this counts because the really bad games were the result of the franchise name being whored out by Dreamcatcher, and the original creators- People Can Fly (now absorbed by Epic Games and coming out with Bulletstorm ) only actually developed the stellar original game and the not-so-stellar-but-still-tons-of-fun expansion pack. Here's some background:

In the beginning PCF created Painkiller, and it was awesome. Cool weapons, simple objectives, and a bonus system just complicated yet unobtrusive enough that you could breeze through the game and never look back, but you'd get more out of it if you went out of your way to do things properly. The graphics hold up to this day, the level design was gorgeous, the weapons were tons of fun and well-furnished with ammo. As a result, despite being essentially a plotless linear shooter, the game gave a great sense of freedom in spite of it's simple design. A good time was had by all.

Then there was the expansion pack, Battle Out Of Hell. It continued the Painkiller story off the bad ending for the five, maybe six people who gave a shit, and it contained ten new levels, two new guns, and the most gruesomely overpowered bonus cards ever to grace a Painkiller game. The thing is, it had been thrown together in six months largely from material that had been cut from the original game, and it showed. From one secret that contained nothing, to the constantly-reused Panzer Spider boss, to the incredibly boring Colosseum level and it's retarded Tomb Raider jumping puzzle and environmental hazard section, it wasn't as tight, smooth, or fun as the original game. It wasn't bad though, just not as good as it's predecessor. This marks the end of People Can Fly's direct involvement and the beginning of the Dark Times.

Painkiller: Overdose began as a fan mod, and good lord does it show. I don't know what exactly happened for them to get official backing and permission to release Overdose as an honest-to-God Painkiller game, but I'm thinking it involved one individual informing another that he had pictures of him with the senator's wife. Overdose's problems were many and varied, and many of them were confusing in light of the fact that the creators were allegedly fans. Some of the new weapons were quite well-designed and implemented, but ammo for everything was scarce, and many of the levels were claustrophobic, eliminating the feeling of freedom that the original game had and highlighting the flaws with this kind of game. But in addition to bad decisions, much of the design was just buggy: there were enemies who damaged you before their attack animations played, spawn points that probably require five or six dimensional calculations to actually make sense, and insta-kill puddles. (I assume those were a bug. If they weren't, the designers were actually setting out to make people hate the game as much as possible.) Overdose had the unholy trinity of shoddy design, poor implementation, and bad writing.

Did I mention the writing? No, because thus far, it hasn't really intruded on the game. Sure, there's the occasional cinematic where something about a war between Heaven and Hell is bandied about, but the original games had a lower plot density than a porno flick. All this, however, changed in Overdose. The story is about some half-angel-half-demon who wants to kill the angel Sammael (the creepy, androgynous Mr. Exposition from the first game) for very poorly explained reasons. This wouldn't be a problem, except that the designers were under the tragic delusion that people wanted to experience this character in actual gameplay as well as the cinematics. As a result, at a number of given events, the character had a chance of burbling one of a very small pool of one-liners, none of which were funny and all of which got old very, very quickly. In short, Overdose apparently went out of it's way to remove the fun from the original Painkiller, then add stupid, annoying extra shit that added nothing.

The came Painkiller: Resurrection.



. . . sorry. Painkiller: Resurrection.



. . . I can't seem to stop doing that. Anyways, Painkiller: Res-



-the last Painkiller has basically the same story as Overdose: began life as a fan mod blah de blah de blah. But if it took pictures involving the Senator's wife to get Overdose the official blessing, God only knows what it took for this one. Pictures involving the Senator's wife's dog, at the very least.

The last Painkiller game is basically everything bad about Overdose distilled: it has an even worse story that's even more intrusive on the action, and has traded out being merely buggy for being downright broken in some places: the original Painkiller used a rope bridge at a few points and it worked fine. In this one, however, the rope bridge physics are so fuxed that if you try to cross it at any speed, it'll glitch out and either drop you through the geometry to your death, or spaz out and hurl you off the geometry to your death. It took me about six reloads to finally get across, and even that was more luck than any kind of skill.

In fact, the geometry in general is just fucking broken. On numerous occasions, I found myself trapped outside the levels because I accidentally jumped onto a block with no defined top or somesuch. Instead of simply failing as a game, the last Painkiller doesn't even function on a basic level as a game.

However, the design for the first level is very pretty. That, and that alone, is what the game has going for it.

So that's the story of Painkiller: from wonderful, adrenaline-fired throwback, to a good but lackluster expansion pack, to a shitty sequel, and finally ending on a sad, pathetic, broken shadow of a fan mod. The first game was a beautiful experience, but at this point, good riddance to bad fucking rubbish.

Ally wrote:

Alhazred's post

There are at least two things you don't understand.

First, the phrased "jump the shark." This means something good has hit a point that obviously indicates it's no longer good. You seem to have never liked Halo, probably for no other reason than it was liked by casualfags. Therefore, you can't say it jumped the shark.

Second, "Heel Face Turn." That's a bad guy going good. That has nothing to do with Guilty Spark. If anything, it was a Face Heel Turn. But even then, he was never really on your side, he tried to kill you way back in the first game.

Also, if you think the single player is easy, put it on Legendary. It should make it challenging.

gaijinguy wrote:

The tragic story of Painkiller.

So, so very true. I actually bought Resurrection as soon as I learned it had co-op. I then felt very, very silly.

Also, the enemy pathfinding. In Painkiller, while the enemy AI wasn't more advanced then "Attack the player," and this was what they intended, in Resurrection, they do such advanced things as running towards you while on a staircase but getting stuck on the stairs instead of falling off, and running towards you when there are giant obstructions in the way. Of course, the frequency is the real problem here, as it's not an excusable bug but rather something nine out of every ten enemies do.

...I may go play the original Painkiller now just because it's so awesome, thinking about it makes me want to experience the whole thing over again. This would also serve to wash the taste of Resurrection out of my mouth. Eventually, Bulletstorm will serve this purpose (FIRE IN THE HOLE! +10) but that is not yet out.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Ally wrote:

Alhazred's post

There are at least two things you don't understand.

First, the phrased "jump the shark." This means something good has hit a point that obviously indicates it's no longer good. You seem to have never liked Halo, probably for no other reason than it was liked by casualfags. Therefore, you can't say it jumped the shark.

Second, "Heel Face Turn." That's a bad guy going good. That has nothing to do with Guilty Spark. If anything, it was a Face Heel Turn. But even then, he was never really on your side, he tried to kill you way back in the first game.

Also, if you think the single player is easy, put it on Legendary. It should make it challenging.

Had I not seen potential in the first game, I probably wouldn't have bothered with the much-improved second, would I? Just because something starts out sub-par and improves later doesn't mean it can't jump the shark.

(The heel/face label was, indeed, backwards, and I am appropriately ashamed.)

(Also, Legendary was still pretty tame.)

Jumping the shark sort of implies a deviation from the original (and better) origin of the series. Like, you know, Happy Days changing from a nostalgic highschool sitcom to the Fonz doing ridiculous crap for no reason. Pokemon has in no way done this. It has been slowly improving in quality with every incarnation with very little backsliding. If you are bored with the series because it barely changed then it is just that, you got bored with it. It says nothing for the quality of the games. Hard-core fans (and there are hundreds of thousands) like the way the series stays true to its roots. The people who never got into another game since Red/Blue were not that into it in the first place, dismissing the series when the novelty wore off. There is nothing wrong with that, but claiming that means the series jumped the shark is utter bullshit.

If you want a change-up to the Pokemon formula there are games outside the core series, you know. Most of them incorporate the hundreds of monsters theme into them pretty well. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is obvs a Mystery Dungeon game, but it utilized the different types, the recruiting idea, and the different move sets in a way that makes it feel very much like a Pokemon game with a different approach. Pokemon Ranger is like this as well, and the Gamecube Pokemon games had a significant change-up as well; the first one eliminated wild pokemon altogether and had you steal your mons from trainers. The spin-off games are not quite as high budget or high quality, but I love the idea of keeping the core series very samey and incorporating spin-offs for doing things differently.

IDK, I know Pokemon already has tons of defenders on this board and my input is unnecessary, but if I were going to point my finger at one game franchise in the history of everything as the poster-child for consistent quality over a long period of time it would be Pokemon, hands down.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

IDK, I know Pokemon already has tons of defenders on this board and my input is unnecessary, but if I were going to point my finger at one game franchise in the history of everything as the poster-child for consistent quality over a long period of time it would be Pokemon, hands down.

If I honestly thought Pokemon had declined in quality, I would say something about it (rather than defend it out of nostalgia value). But you're right - the formula may be cliche by now, but the consistency of it all is actually the best part. I think one of my favourite things is trading Pokemon to other games. It just adds another layer of emotion to the game - you catch a Pokemon, raise it up on your grand adventure, and when you're done, you can transfer it to your new game to help you out or even get it to breed and then raise its child. I kinda like having that feeling of a bond.

zombieliquidocelot wrote:

Personally, I never made it through silver or gold. I tried, but I just couldn't get into them. I tried to return to the series briefly when they came out with, what was it? Leaf and ruby, I think. It just didn't have the same magic as the originals, even though it was the same game.

On an unrelated and highly controversial note, I feel that the Legend of Zelda games have gotten rather trite. They could still salvage it, but putting out a new game every twelve months is probably not going to work. I am still hopeful, though. I used to love those games.

I realize that this particular topic is sacred to many, and I don't mean to offend anyone. You all are welcome to disagree with me, and I will respect your opinions.

I don't know, if you one of these morons that hold up Ocarina of Time to be the greatest Zelda game ever that nothing has ever touched since then yes, Zelda has indeed Sharked jumped, it will never reach that hight again and any attempts to do so will fall flat.
Now if your like me and think ever Zelda at least attempted to improve on the last and did have it's own unique twists and turns along the way, then no, Zelda Hasn't sharked jumped because it keeps improving, keeps changing in small ways and never stops being fun.

I really hope they get away from the vehicle gimmick for the next handheld installment. Sailing was okay, a bit more enjoyable on the DS than on the Gamecube, but the train was mostly boring.

Miss Prince wrote:

I really hope they get away from the vehicle gimmick for the next handheld installment. Sailing was okay, a bit more enjoyable on the DS than on the Gamecube, but the train was mostly boring.

But I'm always cool with riding Epona.

Yeah, Epona was kind of different, though, in that you could walk almost anyplace you could ride Epona. I mean, you used her to get over the occasional obstacle, but once you were over you could dismount and run around if you wanted, and slash stuff and shoot arrows and chuck bombs to open up caves and so on. Couldn't really do that with the boat or train.