The Lifecast crew discuss death, nitpick the categories for The Game Awards and discuss their favorite cartoons growing up.
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Many of us have to wait what seems like an eternity to finally get that long-awaited sequel or prequel we have always craved. But there are some games that don’t take such a long development cycle. I’m talking about annual entries of games. Some examples would include Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Madden, Fifa, and Halo to name a few. However, it seems like people are looking at these series with more and more disdain.Why is this? My thought: it’s the problem of too much of a good thing.
The Madden series may not be perfect, but it has definitive reasons to come out every year. Image Source: Walmart.com
Sometime people want a sequel but what they get isn’t what they had hoped for. You also run into the problem of people taking it for granted. “Why should I get excited for this? It comes every year.” For some games however, it’s expected. Mostly sports games have these annual installments. This makes sense as rosters change, new players are added to teams, members are drafted and stats changed. People want to use players in a different way, and introduce new ones on their team. There’s a reason for the sequel there. This it ties into another problem annual releases have: not enough reason.
Let’s take Assassin’s Creed. The series has done such great work trying to bring history to life and making a great saga. However, after the third game, the response to them went down. This was due to the third game finishing the framing narrative of the series. Assassins Creed 4 did well however, as people saw it as less restrictive and less likely to be bogged down by a narrative many thought had run it’s course. But then Unity and Rogue were released. People picked up on the purpose of these. The story and experience wasn’t as important to the developers. What was important to the developers was keeping the game popular.
Probably the lowest point of the series, Assassin’s Creed Unity highlighted the lack of polish and the want to push out a product. Image Source: Moby Games.com
This is counter-productive however. If you want something to remain popular, keep it fresh. Keep what people loved about the old but give them something new. It can be alluring to have an annual upsurge of millions of copies sold for your development company. Even though Infinite Warfare isn’t what people wanted, it’s still selling copies. But it’s projected to sell much lower than hoped. The numbers have been consistent over the years, but they seem to be going slightly down. More than that, they are resonating worse with fans. Hopefully annual releases can become “I can’t wait for that this year” instead of the same thing, but a different year.
Next year the Resident Evil movies finally come to an end with “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter”, and with it, hopefully the end of horrible game adaptations.
It’s amazing that the series has been going on so long. Critics hate it. Fans hate it. But yet its still continuing as a series. Why? The reason is that most of its revenue is coming in from foreign markets, which more than double what’s being made from its showings in North America. However, now thats its over, the brand will end and so will the foreign market’s interest in this kind of movie. Because when you think about it, these kind of movies aren’t really made anymore.
Hitman tried its hand at a movie once more last year, but its critical reception and abysmal box office have shown a difference in the era of game movies. Image source: Foxmovies.com
With the power of the internet, movies are now swapped and changed much more than in the 90’s. Back then, studios would make video game movies and gave little attention to the source material during production. Now? Studios are coming under fire because they didn’t get the original Sly Cooper to voice the character in his upcoming CGI movie. Series fans seem to hold more power than ever, if really because they are a good amount of the demographic the movie is aimed at. The keyword may not essentially be good, but faithful. That is what’s getting people to give it a shot.
Resident Evil tried way too late to be faithful to the original games’s designs. Although credit where credit is due, their version of Wesker is beautifully over the top. Image source: comicvine.gamespot.com
People don’t want to see Mario and Luigi in an apocalyptic alternate dimension with little references to the game, they want to see Mario and Luigi as they are in the games. The movie Warcraft coming out has designs for the orcs that are nearly pitch perfect to how they are presented in the game. Studios know that they can’t do whatever they want with a license, they have to research it, respect it, and be close enough for the fans to recognize it as a faithful adaptation of what they love. The Resident Evil movies changed almost everything about the story but key character names and certain monsters. Nowadays, that won’t cut it anymore.
While not the best movie, Ratchet and Clank was far more faithful to its source material than nearly every other video game movie to date, with the much of the game’s voice cast, designs, and comedy all present. Image Source: Comicsbeat.com
The Resident Evil movies have seemed to beat expectations and continue on its ludicrous and nonsensical storyline that has managed to jump the shark more than a low-rent Vegas stuntman. However, as it finishes, it brings hope that video game movies can start to be what people always wanted them to be. Effort is now at the forefront of making these movies, as the Assassin’s Creed and Sly Cooper seem to have gained a lot of attention, so hopefully Hollywood won’t disappoint.
Whether it be good or bad, this movie has Michael Fassbender. What more do you need? Image Source: Screenrant.com