Analysis: Franchise Games

Originally written on 4/6/2011

More than once, when I’m trying to review a game, I have to think about how it stands up against the rest of the genre, or if it’s based on an already pre-existing intellectual property, how it stands up against the series. Note, this should apply for sequels, as well since they have just created a franchise of their own.

Around Mario’s 25^th anniversary, there were a slew of celebratory videos promotions, and interviews from his creator Myamoto. One of the best and most beloved games in the Mario series has to be Super Mario Bros 3. However Myamoto said in one of those interviews that it was his least favorite game. Apparently, there was a mindset at Nintendo at the time that repeating your old work “didn’t make sense.” Why would anyone pay and play that when they could still play the first? That mindset explains Super Mario Bros 2, as well as Zelda 2. So whatever they come up with, would have to be significantly different from the first. Myamoto thought that Mario 3 was too similar to the first for his tastes. Thank goodness Capcom didn’t believe that or else we might not have The Blue Bomber.

When you see a game with a title that you recognize, it automatically conjures up images and feelings that you associate with the original. That’s both the delight and difficulty. What a title means to you is what it means to you personally and what it means to someone else is something else entirely. That game title might have everything someone ever wanted, while to you, it’s missing the very core and soul of the experience. This places an incredible amount of responsibility on the designers.

Star Wars

Let’s begin with Star Wars, that’s one of the largest “franchise” games out there. When you talk about Star Wars, you can open up a flood gate of feelings from fans. I don’t imagine that there’s any definitive Star Wars game that is all things to all fans. Star Wars games chop up the experience into very focused games.

X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter put you in the seat of a starfighter, reliving the average rebel pilot’s experience. There’s even a Death Star run. But, you can’t be a Jedi. You could imagine you’re a Jedi, for all the difference it makes on the story. But there’s no real significant Jedi abilities. You’ll have to wait for another game for that.

Dark Forces 2 was one of the earliest opportunities to be a Jedi, or at least a Jedi in training(I’m skipping those weird Atari games). Force push,, pull, lightning, jump, heal, swinging a light saber all around. You might be able to say Super Empire Strikes Back also let you be a Jedi, in its own way.

Republic Commando and Battlefront focused on the experiences of being the common soldier fighting for one side or another.

Some of these games tell their own story, exploring never before addressed points in the time line like The Force Unleashed or Shadows of the Empire. The story takes just as much priority as the gameplay. It crosses the line between game and an electronic choose-your-own-adventure book.

There’s many many more titles like Rebel Assault or Knights of the old Republic. But they all represent one or more of those focused experiences. That’s what all these games have in common, they all recreate portions of the experience.

Let’s take another franchise,

X-COM

With a new X-COM in the works, will it be an X-COM game, or just have the X-COM title? X-COM has always, to me, been about overcoming the incredible odds that are stacked against you from the very beginning. Even as the game goes on, you have to be prepared to overcompensate. Things never really become “fair.”

Part of the X-COM experience deals with the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. The new version looks to have it, a board with missions all over the country, choosing to take one mission or another, your actions during the mission change the outcome. I just haven’t seen if there’s any base building elements or base defense missions.

There were a few games in the series that focused on one aspect or another. X-COM Interceptor focused on the shoot down scenarios of X-COM with some base building and research. X-COM Enforcer was all tactical action. It departed a bit more from the formula, but it’s another window into the X-COM universe.

Megaman

Pretty much all of the original numbered series and the X series remain true to their roots. But when they branch off from that into Battle Network, MM Zero, and Star Command, they take away the essential elements to their experience. Anyone who sees the name Megaman expects a particular experience. By taking that all away, the players and fans are being robbed.

Mario

A “Mario game” to me will probably mean going to its roots on the NES. Yes, I know, “Mario Bros” came out before “Super” was added to its title. But I believe Mario is at his best with side scrolling, goomba stomping, shell kicking formulas. Mario 64 was an interesting direction and I wouldn’t mind seeing that formula continue in addition to the side scrolling versions like New Super Mario Bros for the DS and the Wii. The fact that Myomoto doesn’t like to repeat himself, he prefers to innovate every time, we can expect to see Mario do many more sports and party games before another Mario 64. A revisit to Mario 3’s world or Super Mario World would be a treat in Mario 64’s style. For some reason, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy 2 just never resonated with me as strongly as those classics. You could have replaced the main characters with happy smiling fish and it would be just as good.

Castlevania

I’ve expressed my disappointment with Lords of Shadow in the Old vs. New section. It’s mainly centered around the removal of everything familiar from the series. It has about as much to do with Castlevania as the Doom movie had to do with the game. It didn’t do anything to recreate the experience or feel of the other games.

Ghostbusters

This one is very near and dear to my heart. The Nintendo incarnations were atrocious. I won’t even bother to much they failed. I’d rather focus on how much the new game succeeded. Part of being a ghostbuster is the incredible amount of destruction they always seem to leave in their wake. The game has that, and in fact keeps a running tally of how much damage you do. The game’s story is slightly convoluded in order to recreate some famous scenes like the battle with Stay Puff’t and Slimer in the Sedgewick Hotel ballroom. If they weren’t in there, I would have wished they were there. Besides getting a proton pack, the game remembers to include the slime blower. If it wasn’t included, I’d have wished it was. The old team back again, the original cast, the writing, seeing them all back in action is half of the experience right there. It wouldn’t be right to make a game without them. I’m highly doubtful of Sanctum of Slime’s “new” ghostbusting team. And I think that might be part of why Extreme Ghostbusters didn’t last. There are only two things missing from the game. The first was being able to drive Ecto-1 and blare the sirens. And there’s even a joke about it in the game, “hey, why don’t we let the rookie drive? Naaah.” I don’t know if I could stay on the road, I’d just end up ramming into everything. The second thing is that it was missing a force feedback vibrating mouse. I imagine they tried it but the motor ended up burning out too quickly.

Max Payne

We’ll see what happens with Max Payne 3. But it won’t be Max if he is no longer a melodramatic master of metaphor. It wouldn’t be “him” if they decided to take out his grim narration like they did to Deckard in Blade Runner Director’s Cut. If the comic book cut scenes are replaced with all in-game cinematics, then that’s another strike against it. “When you’re staring down the barrel of a gun, time slows down” is what Max says. Bullet time may be the only thing they keep since it’s being developed by a whole different studio. We’ll see. But all of that, plus the insane gunplay, is what makes Max who he is. The concept art I’ve seen and preliminary descriptions in press releases don’t look or sound encouraging.

Metroid

Most of the negative things that I’ve read about Other M involve the issue of the voice acting. Until Other M, we had an image in our minds of who Samus is, and her personality. Nothing along all the other games really contradicted who she was in Other M, but it left much open to interpretation. And different people interpreted it differently. Or, it could just be for the purposes of the story like I speculated in my other Metroid article. Regardless, that unintentional and perceived change in the character did much to cause dissatisfaction with the game.

Superheroes

This one is probably the most difficult to get right. Any one character from any comic has several interpretations depending on the time period(golden age, silver age, modern age, pre crisis, post crisis). Any one character has probably been around long enough to have gone through many major life changes. For example, Batman, he had a bat dog named Ace a long time ago. People were asking if Robin would be included in the new Arkham Asylum. If they had said yes, which Robin would it be? Dick Grayson? Jason Todd? Tim Drake? Damian Wayne? The good villains go through just as many changes as the heroes. The Penguin was a criminal that eventually retired to run a high class bar. The Riddler gave up his life of crime to run a private detective agency.(wouldn’t it be cool to see them team up?) Mr Freeze’s disease has advanced so far that he is just a head in a jar at this point. Poor guy.

For any superhero game to tell a story, there’s many variables to consider. Who to consider? Which version? What aspects of the character do they include or reference to? For another example, Tony Stark. Should a game(or movie) focusing on Iron Man bring up his battle with alcohol that brought him closer to death than many of the villains in his rogue’s gallery. That was a very pivotal event for the character. Some fans who think that’s one of the most important events in Tony Stark’s life, would be disappointed and maybe cry fowl that it was neglected in a game. So, any superhero game is difficult, based on the amount of material to take into consideration.

I could go on and on with any other character because any character that doesn’t grow, doesn’t change, doesn’t challenge and test relationships, is probably a boring one and hasn’t survived this long.

Sherlock Holmes

I’ve recently been playing the series of Sherlock Holmes adventure games. I’ve read a few of his adventures while I was in high school, though I know there’s much more I haven’t read. I know that any interpretation of him, either in game, the Robert Downey Jr movies, or the new BBC TV series will have much to live up to. He’s lasted this long as a fascinating character, so there’s been endless debate and analysis of him. He’s one of the few fictional characters that has had a real biography written about him. I honestly know of no other. But what to include?

He was a huge cocaine addict, often relying on it for inspiration like Popeye to spinach. Obviously, that’s never going to be acceptable in today’s world. He played the violin, although never very well. That’s not something I’d want to really force on an audience or player for any length of time. The author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never made Holmes exclaim or shout, his word of choice was always “ejaculated.” Reading that anywhere has a totally different connotation today.

What adventure or adventures would Holmes take in a franchise game? Would the game recreate A Study in Scarlet or Hound of the Baskervilles? Or tell a new story entirely. From what I’ve seen, they create wholly new stories for him. And that’s not a bad thing. Many of the elements that appear in multiple Holmes stories appear in the games. If they tried something crazy like making Watson a policeman and Holmes live anywhere but 221b Baker Street, I wouldn’t give the game a second look. But you know as well as I, there are some terrible franchise games out there that would do something just as drastic as that.

Alice

This makes me think of Alice in Wonderland. There’s been many versions of Alice’s story, some more radical than others. I’m thinking specifically of American McGee’s Alice and upcoming sequel, Alice: Madness Returns. In this “version” of the story, Alice is a mental patient and wonderland may or may not be a delusion. That’s quite a departure from the original source material! I don’t mind when you add depth where there was none before, like the new Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica series. You’re not really overwriting any continuity that way. But I’ll bet this new take on Alice didn’t win over anyone who was a fan of the original book. It was so different that I wouldn’t consider it a franchise game until that sequel was announced. Though on a positive note, I think it possibly inspired a few folk to read the original book.

Dante’s Inferno

Speaking of books, Dante’s Inferno. I was a huge fan of the original book! This game is one of the worst offenders and best examples of how to make a bad “franchise” game. It took everything that made the original great and threw it out the window. This main character Dante was not a poet. He planned to marry Beatrice instead of having an unrequited love for her. This Dante was a warrior, a brutal and savage one(and a rapist) while the Dante in the books shied away from any sense of confrontation(demons from hell can be intimidating). Virgil is a central figure in the books, in the game, it’s never even described why he is there.

The game was a perfect example of an action game. Would the books make a good action game? Doubtful, but not impossible. It may make for a better environmental action/puzzle game in the vain of Tomb Raider than God of War. Dante would have to navigate hell, finding ways to avoid some of the monsters like the minotaur, Cerberus, and the harpies of Dis. Talk with the people he met in the book, ask for clues on getting through to the next circle. Getting past the last circle would be a very difficult puzzle if it follows the book. Purgatorio would be perfect for that exploration, environmental action/puzzle style as well. Climbing the mountain, following the example of everyone ahead of you. And all the while, Virgil is accompanying you with commentary and dialogue from the book. Paradiso wouldn’t make for much of an interesting game. Maybe DLC only for people who wanted some closure.

Overlord

Now that I’ve got my mind thinking of darkness and evil, Overlord! Overlord II, even though it took place a generation later, the tower was destroyed, you’re a completely new character, don’t visit any of the same worlds(as they were before), it keeps everything that made the first game great. The wacky minions, the tower customization, the control scheme, and adds upon it. The game adds a lot to the series without forgetting what made it great.

End

I could go on, but I’ll leave that up to you. Post examples of good franchise games and bad franchise games. Or use my examples with your own personal spin. Say what made the original great, and what it means to you. Pick a game or a movie or some other pre existing property. It can be a movie that came from a game or a game from a movie, or comics, or books, or anything.