Are classic franchises becoming too bland?

With the recent releases of Front mission Evolved, and Castlevania Lords of Shadow, it makes me think about what these franchises are becoming. It makes me think that the older games of some franchise are becoming stale, so they decide to hand them off to a 3rd party developer. Now this is not a bad way to come up with some creative and fresh ideas to make the game appeal much more to a broader audience, but in the end it may destroy the interest of older fans.



I recently got Castlevania Lords of Shadow and, do not get me wrong, it is an awesome game. But it definitely is not one of the most creative games when it comes to terms in game play. Its a combination of Dante's inferno (which itself is similar to God of War) and Shadow of the Colossus. What makes it so entertaining is the difficulty of the game. Its the combination of action and the somewhat difficult nature of the game that requires you to think and time every action you make. I have had to fight some battles multiple times just because of terrible reaction times and taking time to get used to the battle system.

This new Castlevania game has totally thrown away the original formula of the older games, which leaves many older and more hard core fans in the dust. While the new iteration is able to please and attain new fans that were not necessarily interested or comfortable with the older ones, it still makes me wonder why they threw it out to a third party developer. Were they short handed? Or were Konami's main teams occupied with other projects so they could not work on the new Castlevania game? Mercury Steam seems like a newer game developer, and they definitely were lucky to acquire such a franchise to make their big break in the video game world.

Castlevania is truly a beautiful, beautiful game...

Their resume is surprisingly lackluster, only making 3 other games: Jericho, American Mcgee's Scrapland, and a cellphone game called Zombies. I am still truly baffled by the fact that they obtained such a job. Jericho received less than amazing reviews (61-66%) . Lords of Shadow is an awesome game in its own respect, it is very polished and looks very nice, which means Mercury Steam is competent enough. But giving a franchise like Castlevania to a company with, by most accounts, ONE good game to their name? And it just makes me curious as to why they decided to be so uncreative with the game play (albeit there are a few creative twists) when they could have done so much more with it.

The other franchise that a well-known company passed off to someone else for development was Front Mission. Now this series has never really seemed all that popular, but with the most recent release of Front Mission Evolved, the game has totally been butchered, unlike Castlevania Lords of Shadow. The series started out as a 2-d side scrolling shooter on SNES, and evolved and became a turn based strategy RPG, which was pretty good (although I have only played the 3rd and 4th one). Now, sadly, it has been transformed into rather unintuitive and uninspired 3rd person mech game.

This game looks pretty neat, but the game play just falls flat

The only taste I have had of Front Mission Evolved is one multi-player match at PAX 2010. The game took a total 180 degree turn away from turn based RPG (as the last two iterations were). It is now an extremely slow paced and boring 3rd person mech shooter like Armored Core. It has very little similarities to the AC series other than its a 3rd person mech game, and it is not even close to as polished as other games in the series. However, I could be wrong since I only played the multi-player aspect of it, but the reviews on meta critic seem to have my back. I love mech shooters, and I did find some enjoyment within the game; I mean seriously, I can go back and play the older PS2 Gundam games and find some enjoyment in them! But... then again... I am a huge fan of that particular series.

I just wonder why Square Enix chose Double Helix Games to work on Front Mission Evolved, like Mercury Steam they do not have that great of a resume (at least in their recent releases) consisting of Silent Hill Homecoming, and GI Joe rise of Cobra. They have a long list of games they have made on their website, but its all due to merging multiple companies. The Silent Hill game they created is another re-imagining (game mechanics wise, not sure if it is part of the canon) of a long lasting franchise they I cannot simply touch upon due to the fact I haven't really played many of the games.

Its interesting to see the evolution of older franchises becoming something more by handing it over to a 3rd party developer. Even though these companies may not implement the most creative ideas, it is possible for them to produce a very enjoyable game- so long as you do not expect something that is more akin to the older games. Especially Castlevania Lords of Shadow, sadly it borrows many aspects from recent games, but on the other hand it gives a great twist to game play utilizing the shadow and light magic that creates strategy within each battle. However not all companies are obviously able to do this, as Front Mission Evolved was definitely not the greatest re-imagining of the Front Mission series. If companies continue down this path of handing these large franchises over to 3rd party developers; I hope they do their research in to the company rather than tossing it to any ol' company. Oh, and instead of completely redesigning the game, I hope they at least keep some of the original design rather than tossing it out completely.

picture sources
http://www.el33tonline.com/past_article/2010/10/26/castlevania_lords_of_shadow_review/
http://kotaku.com/5547527/front-mission-evolves-into-action-game-this-fall