Game Franchises that they screwed up....
 

I've been playing Commandos 3 recently, and it made me think how bad they messed up this series. The first two games (Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty) were difficult but great games, but the last two were needless complex and definitely not user friendly.

Unfortunately, I can't play the old ones any more because they run WAY too fast on my current PC.

Any other game franchises you can think of that were really good that they messed up in further versions?

Masters Of ORion

Front Page Sports Football Pro.

End of list.

http://wiw.org/~jess/turbo.html

With this program you can temporarily slow down your pc and run old games at normal speed.

NO DOUBT!!!

Do these programs work well (no side effects or anything)? Does this just clog up the system by sending a lot of NO-OP commands to the processor?

Bob

i dont know what exact commands are run but its just a loop afaik

I've used it hunners of times

Baseball Stars

Anyone who played Baseball Stars II knows what I'm talking about.

High Heat - each year worse than the one before.

Amen

Sigh... :(

I have to disagree, they have patched MOO3 and now its very playable. It's really a new game, not a sequel and that's how I've played it. I recomend downloading the newest patch and trying it out.....

Great!


Masters of Orion

Nope, it works great. I use CPUKiller whenever i get my XCOM craving.

that was the same reason i got the wee app - to play XCom. Then i got the XCom collector's version and it runs fine without artificial slowdown.

When was the most recent patch? The first patch helped but there were still significant problems with multiplayer code.

(Setting aside that IMO there were some design missteps as well, which gradually put me off the game.)

Agree with the choices listed above, and adding a few more:

Ultima
HOMM
Civ (not totally, but some)
EA NHL Hockey

Baseball Stars 2 was like getting kicked in the nuts.

seconded

Master of Orion
Front Page Sports Football
Baseball Mogul

The problem with BM had less to do with it getting "screwed up" with subsequent releases than it had to do with being "completely unchanged" from the original. But like MOO and FPS:F it is a series that has lost my interest entirely.

The most recent patch is version 1.25 and it was released July 2003. It has made the game very playable, also MOO3 is a very different game. The game now does alot of little things for you and you have to Macromanage it, not Micromanage. Think of it as, you are the Lord of you Race and you control everything a leader would. This means, you don't need to control every little facet of your empire, just set your preferences and watch your race grow. Now if you are into Micromanagement, just Turn the AI control off and be very careful because your empire can get out of whack.

You know. I paid good money for MOO3. I really should give it another try with this patch just to see how it plays.

I also paid full price for Moo3 :( and I hated the game, it just wouldn't play right. Now with this patch, it plays pretty good...

I should check and see if that's the last one I had. If they got another patch out, maybe they fixed some of the outstanding multiplayer issues. Ideally, maybe they even fixed the severe brokenness in the combat engine (edit: like how the ECM and cloaking system is completely fvcked).

I'm aware of this. I have some pretty major problems with how the AI macromanages things, I think there are issues with the design of the player interaction with the AI and I think there are fundamental problems with the ways in which the player exercises control over the development of planets. In particular, I think the AI is completely incompetent at managing the impact of technological development on planetary productivity, it's a major PITA in the late game to go through and rip out the excess mining and farming DEAs that I no longer need because I'm running huge surplusses.

Agree with a lot of those already said.

Probably the most dissapointing sequel for me though was Myth 3, after how much I loved the first two it was a huge letdown.

Man I wish Bungie would make a new one, such great games.

Not as severe, but Red Baron. I'll never understand why they decided to take out all the little things that made the first so damn fun.

Front page sports Football for sure, that was by far the best combination of Graphics and management until they tanked it!

The Fallout series, just because they let it die.

Last I heard, Fallout 3 is in development by Bethesda.


As for the topic, Leisure Suit Larry and the X-Wing/Tie Fighter space combat sims from LucasArts as X-Wing Alliance blew. I'd be happy if they just updated the graphics for both those games.

Tie Fighter....I spent MANY MANY hours playing that game. Definately a top 10 all-time for me.

Deus Ex: Invisible War. The sequel to my favorite game of all time sold out and bastardized for the Xbox. They're practically giving it away now at EB Games.

Interesting, I thought X-Wing Alliance was awesome. Obviously, YMMV.

X-Com because I can't get the $#%$#@%#$! thing to run on XP
(Bill Gates fault)

visit the abandonia site, they have an xp-compliant version

Link?

STARCRAFT II
 

Because they haven't made it yet!!! :mad:

I read that and I am holding out hope, but I have been disappointed too many times in the past so I am taking a wait and see approach....with fingers crossed.

Matter of opinion. A boatload of things are still very fundamentally broken, which was why I finally walked away.

I went back and looked into the state of things again, because I didn't remember whether 1.25 was the last patch I had used or not. The picture is a lot less flattering even than it was back then, at least then, IGtari and QSI had recently made an attempt to fix the game. Since then, they've basically decided not to throw good money after bad and they'll be very happy with the profit they made, thank you very much. I suppose I bear some responsibility for that, having bought the game based on pre-release information and expectations and missing the more ominous rumblings right near release. Well, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me; if they ever do a MOO4, not only will I not buy it, I will actively encourage other people not to buy it either.

About the only redemption here is that a guy with way too much time on his hands and an unreasonable amount of skill hacking disassembly has engaged in direct patching of the MOO3 executable and succeeded in fixing some of the bugs that QSI were too incompetent to handle and IGtari has no interest in handling. Maybe I'll get a halfway decent game out of it then... I'm sure a number of the design problems will still annoy me, but there may still be a fundamentally enjoyable game.

Any EA Sports series other than FIFA.

Hardball

any ea sports series period.

Rollercoaster Tycoon

Make My Video for Sega CD

definitely the X-Com series. I was very hopeful for the series because I loved the first three games (though now I can't get any of the to work on my comp). However my faith started to waver when X-Com Interceptor came. I enjoyed the game but it had plenty of flaws.
I had really high hopes for X-Com: Alliance, but that got canned or is on permanent hiatus.
And X-COM: Genesis too got the ax early in its environment.
I didn't even bother to pick up Enforcer

EA'S Jungle Strike series didn't make the leap to the PS2 or X-BOX. Very big dissappointment.