• Welcome to ZD Forums! You must create an account and log in to see and participate in the Shoutbox chat on this main index page.

The last greats

As gamers we follow more than one franchise at a time, and as gamers we're often repeatedly disappointed when one of our beloved franchise falls into a downward spiral.

So this is a thread to name the 'last greats' of a franchise youre still trying to love.

For example, the last great Final Fantasy was X, in my opinion.

The last great Pokemon was Gold.

The last great Zelda was Twilight Princess.

Etc etc.

What are your 'last greats' of a series?
 

Cfrock

Keep it strong
Joined
Mar 17, 2012
Location
Liverpool, England
I don't about the "still trying to love" part, but the first thing I think of here is Halo: Reach.

I know Reach gets dumped on by a lot of people (muh sprint) but, honestly, the criticism is coming from MLG players who started *competetive screeching* as soon as their oh so delicate meta was touched. The only thing wrong with Reach is Armor Lock (and yes, it hurts to spell that without the 'u') because it's antithetical to the design philosophy of the series, but I won't rant 'muh armor lock' here.

Reach isn't perfect by any stretch (there's a great video by Raycevick in which he makes a convincing case for the entire first mission being the wrong way around) but it is, in my opinion, the best of the Halo games. The gameplay is the tightest and most refined in the series, the weapons are interesting and all fun to use, it looks fantastic, the music, goddamn Marty, the music is amazing. Elites are back, who have always been more interesting to fight than Brutes. The Brutes themselves have finally found their place and are fun enemies to fight, instead of the bullet sponges they were in Halo 2 or the Not-Elites they were in Halo 3. A wealth of options for custom games, a Forge mode that lets you create just about anything, a Firefight that's actually worth playing, fantastic multiplayer with great game modes and great maps (until 343 ruined it by forcing MLG-approved 'community' maps into every playlist), and a story that manages to be emotional despite being a prequel whose ending was spoiled on the fifth page of the first Halo's manual. This game was amazing, the (almost) perfect farewell from Bungie. It's a shame Bungie themselves didn't care about it enough to give it their full attention, instead putting the "B team" on it while the rest of the team started working on Destiny. With the same love they showed Halo 3, Reach could have been, dare I say it, flawless, or as close to as it could have been.

The ending to Reach, that final image of the Autumn drifting towards the first Halo, accompanied with a message thanking us for being with Bungie on the decade-long journey that had been Halo, genuinely had me welling up. It was such an appropriate reminder of where we'd been with this franchise over the years. My best friend and I became friends because of Halo. I owned an Xbox 360, and subsequently all the amazing games I would have missed out on otherwise (like one of my all-time favourites, Dishonored) because of Halo. I think about games as more than just something to pass the time with in large part because of Halo (but also Morrowind). It was a beautiful way to end Bungie's tenure as the series developer.

And it immediately became a big pile of crap as soon as 343 took control.
 

Dio

~ It's me, Dio!~
Joined
Jul 6, 2011
Location
England
Gender
Absolute unit
The last Great Zelda was Twilight Princess. The 3D series took a delve into mediocrity after that, never hitting the spot as TP did.

We have Suckward Sword which focussed on Wii motion plus rather than improving on the enjoyable gameplay of past titles. The story whilst featuring prominently was poorly thought out and the segmented and unbelievable overworld was not enjoyable at all when before in WW and TP you were given large worlds to roam in.

We then had BoTW which was praised for doing what the Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor and Assassin's creed all did long before and doing what Skyward Sword should have done. It had a big open world. Unfortunately gave us nothing worth exploring the big world for. Story was both poor and didn't feature prominently. Game kind of felt like a test area developers were working on and not really a living world. I've played open world games with both good gameplay and story so this experience was underwhelming.

The last great Halo was Halo 4!
It had a new team behind it and felt somewhat fresh but not too dissimilar to past games. Great soundtrack and introduces an interesting new foe, The Didact. At the end there is the heartbreaking death of a long term companion setting up a good scene for a sequel where the main character would be dealing with his loss....But no along comes halo 5. Brings back the dead character making the death scene utterly meaningless and has them star as the ****ing villain. Forget The Didact and the return of the forerunners theres an evil AI to deal with now. Well **** you Halo. Killed my interest in the future of the series with that one. And in terms of gameplay, if you play single player the friendly team members are utterly ******** and get themselves killed all the time.
 

misskitten

Hello Sweetie!
Joined
Jun 18, 2011
Location
Norway
My problem isn't ongoing series I love having a downward spiral (the ones still going are going strong), but that they've been cancelled. Granted one of my other favourite series that was unfortunately cancelled did have a bit of a downward spiral before it happened. I would say Fable 2 was the last great (though the story was a bit of a mess in that one), though I did still love Fable 3 despite its flaws. I didn't even bother to try the kinnect-based one, and I was not hopeful for the game they ended up cancelling since it was going to be nothing like the original three games. I do still have a hope that one day perhaps it will be resurrected and then they perhaps finally will make the Fable 4 I so desperately want.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
The common name of the series/IP is in brackets.
I am not saying the games listed here are the best in the series, just the last relatively good ones.

Megaman X (Mega Man X)
Mega Man 3 (Mega Man classic)
Metriod Prime (Metroid)
Turtles 4 - Turtles in Time (TMNT)
Earthworm Jim 2 (Earthworm Jim)
Sim City 4 (Sim City)
Master of Orion 2 (Master of Orion)
Ninja Gaiden 2 NES (Ninja Gaiden 2D and 3D games)
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (Shantae)
Star Fox 64 / Lylat Wars (Star Fox)
Paper Mario Thousand Year Door (Paper Mario series)
 

Ninja

Well well well
Joined
Jul 5, 2017
Final Fantasy - X for sure, the most complete game with great gameplay and an amazing story.
Zelda - Twilight Princess.
Star Fox - 64. Everything after that has been disappointing.
Mario - Odyssey. I've never had so much fun with a Mario game since 64.
Megaman - 2 for the classic series, 3 for the X series.
Call of Duty - 4 aka Modern Warfare.
Pokemon - D/P/Platinum.
 

CynicalSquid

Swag Master General
Joined
Aug 1, 2012
Location
The End
Gender
Apache Helicopter
Halo Reach was the last good Halo and Modern Warefare 3 was the last competent Call of Duty. Other than that I don't feel like many series I enjoy have gone downhill. Except, I would have but RE4 and TP on here if RE7 and BOTW where never released.
 

YIGAhim

Sole Survivor
Joined
Apr 10, 2017
Location
Stomp
Gender
Male
I don't get into too many series'.

Since I haven't played Odyssey, I'm going to say Galaxy for the Mario series (I never played Galaxy 2)
 

Lozjam

A Cool, Cool Mountain
Joined
May 24, 2015
Zelda: BotW is inevitably great, with its unique perspective of applying traditional game design to open world games. It's not for everyone, however, it oozes quality throughout the entire adventure.

Mario: Odyssey, that's an easy one.

Final Fantasy: FFXll, fight me.

Pokemon: Black and White, fight me.
 

Castle

Ch!ld0fV!si0n
Joined
Oct 24, 2012
Location
Crisis? What Crisis?
Gender
Pan-decepticon-transdeliberate-selfidentifying-sodiumbased-extraexistential-temporal anomaly
Final Fantasy XII
Believe it or not I'm not the only person who ever liked this game. Well, the Zodiac Age finally makes it *playable* but more over XII just feels like the last Final Fantasy. You know? As in a world that is not our own? Yeah sure, XIII's scifi could have made for an exceptional fantasy, but everything about that game was wrong. And XV just isn't.... it's just not.

And besides, with the exception of IX, every Final Fantasy post VI has been ****e. And yes, that includes the horrendously overrated VII.

Zelda: Twilight Princess for reasons previously stated.

Mass Effect (lol) I gave up trying to "love" this series long ago. You see, it's useful being a cynic. You learn to let go sooner rather than later to spare yourself further disappointment. I'm one of those who was never in any remote danger of ever thinking that Andromaduh was going to be anything other than total guttershite. Though its gameplay be woefully lacking, ME2 was the last great entry in this series of utterly wasted potential.

Assassins Creed
While I'm not a fan of this series by any means, I do see its appeal. I got some mild entertainment out of AC2 for a while before losing interest, but WOWIEE has this series been pimped out and subjected to so much cosmetic surgery it doesn't even know wtf it is or was anymore. Can anyone expect anything else out of a yearly cash grab?

Borderlands
The first game. By the first sequel the series had lost everything that made it appealing in the first place. Whereas the first game had no story beyond a silly premise to shoot things over and over again and take their stuff (seriously, anyone who was disappointed about the ending is dumb) the sequels all had to have these complex narratives that exist solely to be meme generators. This was right after Portal's insufferable lie flavored cake, after all. And whereas in the first game the side characters amounted to little more than outlets for amusing one liners, now all the characters had to be CRAZY!! and QUIRKY!! And they never. Shut. UP!!

The first Borderlands was such a breath of fresh air because it did what no other game at the time had the audacity to do, which is to SHUT UP AND LET ME PLAY!!! Then the sequels had to go and get all self important like every other game that takes itself way too seriously.

Riven
The Sequel to Myst is where the series should have ended, in retrospect. And in fact that was the intent. But Myst was still considered a hot property at the time so of course while series creators Cyan Worlds went about on their Uru spinoff, Presto and later Ubisoft had to keep the cash cow alive by churning out Myst's III and IV. Now granted, these entries aren't atrocious. In fact Myst III is arguably the second or third best game in the series. And Myst IV isn't total bunk even though it takes serious liberties with established lore and has some puzzle designs that ought to have been punishable by death. And if Cyan was given the chance to make Uru as they had fully envisioned it might have been worthy, but Ubisuck pulled the plug on it, the writing was already getting offensive to series lore and Cyan's technology and ability to keep up with content was sorely lacking. After Uru bombed, Cyan pinched out Myst V as a quickie resolution to the Uru saga and nearly managed to avoid shutting down for good for a long time. Though I have had fun with the series from start to finish, looking back it was probably best if it had ended with Riven.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom