Even the great remakes/updates: leaving a bitter aftertaste?

[Sketcz]

What I want to say, is purely emotive based, and difficult to describe.

But does anyone else get the feeling, that there is something not quite right with many of todays even fantastic game updates or remakes?

Ill highlight 3 cases in point, Resident Evil Remake, Panzer Dragoon Orta and Metroid Prime. (there are scores others, but lets focus on these 3)

3 games, that for whatever reason, has me yearning more for the games that went before them.

Many of todays remakes/updates are excellent, well apart from RE:E

RE:R in my opinion was vacuous and terrible, too dark, and with far too many trivial uneeded elements tacked on with crudest of sticky tape.
In short it was no where near as good as the first incarnation on PS1 or the sequels that followed. Not nearly as scary either.
Why they felt the need to update so much, is beyond me, and for all the graphical updating its had, it doesnt look as good as the original. Im not talking quality, quality is better, but immersion and that certain "jeno ce qua". The roughness, was stranegly appealing.
Imagine a sandwhich, 1 from a professional, that follows all the hygeine rules with clean cut edges and a neat filling. Perfect, but it lacks taste.
Another, made by a slob, a bit rough, and with non-descript bits. Not a good sandwich, but damn it tastes better.
I just didnt like the new graphical look, I cant explain it any better than that.

But even so, even with the better updates, it still feels somehow hollow.
MP feels like a 3D remake of SM, all the main similar locales, just with different names, and a few extra bits tacked on. But in the end, the dissapointing

final boss, who seemed to have no relevance to the metroid universe what-so-ever and is a testament to absolutely crap games design

made me after so long, not enjoy it anymore. I imported it early, having been reading and dreaming it about for months, then whilst playing, I loved it thoughrally, and told all my PAL cube owning friends how great it was.

Then suddenly, it hit me, this game will never have the longer term appeal of SM.
SM I would list as my number favourite game. (admit it, we all have a number 1)
But MP, whilst fun for a while, I ended up forgetting about it, and that made it taste all the more bitter.
Compounded by the fact that its not really metroid. Gunpei Yokoi is dead, and so is the series really.
It not even Japanese! It was made by some company in Texas I believe.

It plays like an A-Z of things that the designer thought, hey, lets give them everything they want, and they'll be happy.
But they didn't take the game further like it had way in the past.

And heres the crux of my argument:
These remakes very rarely develop the games we love. Sure MP was 3D, but really, what new direction did it take us in? The visors? pah! To me it felt like a retreading, like a remix of a great song, done badly. But the original was so good, the goodness still shines through. Does this make sense?
The new designers, not wanting to mess with it, simply gave us what they knew we loved, without giving us anything new to love. (damn, thats a good rhyme)

Sure, its a good game, excellent even, I am not disputing that, but why does it feel so wrong inside? Why do I yearn for the Metroid prequels, whilst this hides away hidden on my game shelf? Its not even a guilty pleasure, it just makes me feel guilty full stop.
In the end, I couldnt bare to see it, and feel ill when I see people proclaim it as the best of the year. My instincts tell me that somehow it has betrayed the prequels it calls its bretheren.

These updated games seem changed too much, and yet, they feel like too much of the same. In the end, it doesnt feel like the series anymore, in my eyes at least.

PDO is the best of the bunch, visually so good it kills brain cells, and with some excllent gameplay.
Its also filled with plenty of loving goodness from previous games, such as endings and intros to the prequels, and of course PD in its PC form.

But it also adds something new, the rapid need to morph, and very different styles of play. I could debate wether this is a good thing or not all day, playing both sides, and Im still not certain. Sometimes I feel it goes too far, and yet sometimes it feels right.

But I keep thinking, this isnt really team Andromeda, this is Smilebit.
Perhaps I care to much about the name, which is the worst thing a gamer can do.
Perhaps to me, PDO fares better than the other 2 games listed, is because its universe is so fully fleshed out, its not so easy to diverge from it?
Im playing through it right now, and am enjoying it, but Ive started to develop that same creeping feeling that I had with MP. Little things, here and there, it feels not quite right. Like certain things shouldnt have been revealed. Would it have been better if I had known less about the empire than I do now?

Anyway, modern updates to old games, no matter how good they are, they lose something, be it in the graphical transition, or the demise of the old teams/key designers.

Deep inside my gut, even though I innately enjoy them as games, they dont feel right, they somehow end up not feeling as good as previous games, even though by todays standards they might be excellent.
Almost as if, in some way my expectations have been shattered.

Am I simply being my usual luddite self?
Do I have some kind of stomach ulcer that gives me these gut feelings?
Am I simply hoping for too much from updates?
Or does anyone else feel the same about modern updates?
Does anyone even vaguely know what I mean?

[Crispin]

Nice post, I'll tell you first and foremost to stay away from Worms 3D

I'm not the biggest fan of Metroid Prime, in fact I hate it, but that is neither here nor there.

As a game, I believe it to be ****ing awful.
As an "experience"?

****ing revolutionary. I hate the thing, but it deserved an EDGE 10.

You need to take Metroid Prime as the latter rather than the former. The weapons/visors add nothing to the game, merely necessitating some fiddly switching between weapons and visors. But looking at the 3D world in heat mode? Amazing. The First Person viewpoint added to the experience. You WERE Samus, with the alien interface, and the clever reflections, and the ability to see you bones in X-ray mode.

The tension as you explore for the first time an area is palpable. On the nth time through and seeing the same respawning monster for the nth time, it loses the tension, but there you go. It is a stylistic masterpiece, and for many people this is able to overcome the flaws in the game.

The same applied to Steel Batallion, an odd game, with seemingly inconsistent production values, a quirky learning curve and the lack of a pause option.

But that doesn't matter. Because for one moment, one brief moment, you ARE an EVA pilot, a Gundam pilot, Optimus Prime even. Whatever. Totally immersed, this is an "experience" not a game. And that isn't a bad thing. It is a superb experience (helps though that the game is at least average).

This WILL be good on live. Providing they stick in some basic modes such as team deathmatch and assault the base modes as well as more structured mission objective modes, this WILL rock.

You will have players in light VTs reenacting classic scenes from movies, to see what happens:

One shall stand; one shall fall.

Why throw away your life so recklessly?

That's a question you should ask yourself, Megatron.

No! I'll crush you with my bare hands!

You have to take Metroid Prime as an "experience" not a game. Unfortunately the game usually has to be competent. And after a while, the tension disappears, leaving a rather annoyingly repetitive game.

And, yes. I know it is a Metroid Game. But nothing worse than backtracking for half an hour as you remembered some inaccessible object only for it to turn out it is a missile expansion.

Or the best one ever. Get one room closer to the object, after half an hour of travelling, to find there is another untraversible room you can't cross between you and the object. And then it turns out, you just unlocked a load of nasty and annoying enemies in all the early rooms. But this isn't the place for a critical analysis of Prime.

Take it an amazing adventure for at least 15 hours, not a game.

Oh and SCANNING MODE ROCKED. Albeit each one took too long, and the scan log should be automatically written to the card after each scan.

[Sketcz]

Yes, at first, a great experience. Spot on there.
But afterwards, it didnt quite feel "Metroidy".

Thanks for the post, as always, an interesting sideways look at a topic.