BY ALEX BARNARD
Games like Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, and Halo dominate the video game market each year by relying upon their long-time fans. Original IP’s, typically lack a dedicated fan base, and therefore tend to be crushed in terms of sales. Modern Warfare 3, although criticized for being a complete rehash of previous installments by critics, sold around nine million copies in its first month released. Bulletstorm, an original game published by Epic Games, may have received critical acclaim, but its poor sales of around 300,000 in its debut month steered the company away from green lighting a sequel. Due to this sales contrast, it is easy to understand why many sequels tend to shy away from changing up game play very much. Prototype 2, Darksiders 2, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter all added small improvements to their franchise, however as is the case with many sequels, they didn’t add enough to truly differentiate themselves from previous games in the series or target a new market. This year, several franchises have released sequels with substantial changes that make these games stand out and drive their respective genres forward.
Forza Horizon is a unique diversion from the realism that the franchise is known for. Forza Horizon brings an open world and an arcade-like racing experience that sets it apart from the other games in the Forza line. The previous more realistic games were all created by Turn 10 games, Microsoft’s in-house racing game developer. Although Turn 10 assisted with Forza Horizon, the majority of the game was created by Playground games, a new game studio made up of previous employees of other studios, including Criterion Games, Bizarre Creations, and Codemasters. The new staff uses their previous experience to bring interesting changes to Forza Horizon.
The game takes place around a racing festival in Colorado, and rather than racing on confined tracks similar to earlier installments, driving takes place throughout the open land of the state. When moving from event to event, players can explore the world openly. This freedom encourages players to drive wherever they choose and explore challenges like “speed traps.” Some events are extremely different, such as the car vs. plane races, which, however ridiculous sounding provides a new form of game play for a “realistic” racing franchise. Despite all of the significant changes, features return from previous Forza games, including high definition car models and realistic handling. However, the changes brought to Forza Horizon make it feel fundamentally different.
Sleeping Dogs went through a long and complex development cycle. However, the quality of the final product is a strong example on how a little extra time can truly help make a big difference. Sleeping Dogs was originally True Crime: Hong Kong, a sequel to the poorly received True Crime series. The publisher, Activision, cancelled the game for “just not being good enough.” Publisher Square Enix picked up the title, then renamed, polished, and released it to great sales and high critical reviews. Unlike the previous iterations of the series that were essentially a barebones edition of Grand Theft Auto, Sleeping Dogs focuses on an undercover mechanic. This game includes RPG elements, and a strong melee combat system. It’s almost better that True Crime: Hong Kong was renamed, for the game is a massive improvement to the quality of the series and truly stands by itself as a terrific open world game.
Halo 4 is the first main game in the series created by developer 343 Studios, and with them they brought a different approach to the universe that Bungie Studios created when the first Halo came out over ten years ago. The previous Halos had a campaign mode that focused on a global struggle with the player, utilizing an assortment of fully automatic weapons to play as a hero and save the world. Halo 4 brings a much smaller self-contained story. The game begins with Halo’s main character, Master Chief, and continues as Chief slowly works his way through strange locations and faces enemies that the game makes clear are more powerful than the actual player.
Halo 4’s multi player mode is a nice divergence for the franchise. Although much of the game play remains the same in principle, the ability for players to create their own load out, eerily similar to Call of Duty’s system, brings a greater amount of customization to the series. Many of the weapons in Halo 4 behave differently than the default weapons of past Halo games, and this gives the multiplayer a slow-paced, more tactical game play. The multi-player also opens itself up for new players by showing where weaponry and equipment spawns on the map, a move that ensures that simply memorizing where weapons spawn will not allow a Halo veteran to dominate in every match.
At first glance, Black Ops 2 is just another game in the annual Call of Duty series. Although the multiplayer remains mostly the same, massive changes have been made to the games often-neglected single-player campaign. Black Ops 2 features a branching single player story in which the decisions of the character have a direct impact on the story. Branching story lines are often associated with niche titles where the campaign is the main focus, and the choices made in Call of Duty rival those of any campaign heavy title. The decisions made in Black Ops 2 are often hidden from the player; where simply reacting too slowly can have drastic repercussions for the storyline of the game. Black Ops 2 brings an innovative campaign to a series that needed a single player hook, and should be a model to follow for many more first person shooters.
Although 2012 has been a great year for franchises to make positive changes, some games completely miss the boat. Resident Evil 6 attempted to add an assortment of new shooting controls to make this zombie game faster paced and more interesting to play. However, this change has the game feeling like more of a Gears of War knockoff than a slow paced game of survival that the franchise is known for. These changes may have been fine if the story was limited, like other third person shooters, but the Resident Evil 6 constantly rips controls away from each player in order to tell its long, somewhat convoluted story. Past Resident Evil games were far from perfect, but changes brought to this installment steers the series away from the slow paced horror elements that had made it great to begin with.
2012 has been a great year for video game fans. Some of the top franchises like Halo, Forza, Call of Duty have made many more drastic changes to their formulas. These changes help innovate the games’ already successful game play styles and will hopefully influence others in the future. Although making changes to successful franchises may not always work out, this year has been a strong example on how taking risks can lead to better games.
