Final Fantasy
How the mighty have fallen. Till a few years ago, Final Fantasy was regarded as one of the most prestigious, high quality franchises of all time, good enough to compete with the likes of Zelda and, at that time, Resident Evil (lol). Ever since after Final Fantasy X, fans had been claiming that the franchise had fallen, but it was with Final Fantasy XII that the downfall began. FF13 was, well, FF13. It was very much out of the series’ character, the story was cliched, the characters irritating and the dialogue god-awful. Final Fantasy XIV was like a nail in the coffin, and while XIII-2 looks like it’s made a lot of progress over 13, it still needs work. And now, we’ve got two more games inbound. Final Fantasy Type-0 and Final Fantasy Versus XIII (if that ever comes out). While they sure look good, I think Square’s milking the franchise a way too much, and that too at a time when people will be reluctant to buy its games. They should give it a break for many, many years, and come back later with fresh perspective.
Assassin’s Creed
Just like Activision and Call of Duty, Ubisoft has gone a bit overboard with the Assassin’s Creed franchise. They saw that the AC games are successful, and bam– year after year, they’ve releasing Assassin’s Creed games, and year after year, their impact and quality and creativeness has deteriorated. Remember when you first played Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2, and how much of an impact both those games made? A year after AC2, we got Brotherhood, which, while good, was nothing compared to AC2. And in 2011, we got Revelations, which may have been pretty enjoyable, but that too was lacking in original ideas, and relied too heavily on series conventions. Even the engine is starting to show its age. Ubisoft has promised that this year’s Assassin’s Creed, probably Assassin’s Creed 3, will see a lot of big changes to the formula, but after this, I think they should stop, Too much of a good thing can be harmful, and we love Assassin’s Creed- we don’t want that to change.
God of War
Every singe God of War game we have ever played has blown us away with its scale and scope and brutality. God of War 3 and Ghost of Sparta, the last God of War games, were absolutely mind blowing too, and while the series technically finished with GoW3, there’ve been a lot of rumours about a 4th instalment recently. And while we’re excited to see what it will have in store for us, we’re most sceptical. In the last 7 years or so, the franchise has changed very little, and though each progressive instalment has been more epic than the last, we’re tired of the formula now. It’s starting to show its limitations. Sony needs to stop milking this franchise and give it a break for at least two or three more years.
Fable
The Fable franchise has never really been counted as one of the best RPG brand names out there, in league with the likes of Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Fable III was a certain deterioration in quality for the franchise, and Fable: The Journey looks even worse. Molyneux always comes up with a lot of ideas for his games, few of which are utter crap, and implements the good ones, well, not-so-perfectly. The result is always a highly enjoyable yet highly bugged and flawed game. Maybe Molyneux needs some time off Fable, try to figure things out and decide how to go about future instalments from now on. But seeing as Microsoft has so little first party franchises anyway, somehow I don’t see that happening.
