Bad Representative Games

[Maniakkid25]

So, given the current game taking the world and my attention by storm, I'm reminded of something that I once said long ago on the old forum. In a review of Resident Evil 4 (2005), I said...

Resident Evil 4 is what happens when you take Resident Evil, and remove everything that makes it Resident Evil. Whether this is a good or bad thing is still being debated by fans very, VERY heavily.

While this quote has not aged well (it turns out I'm the only one who thinks its still controversial), it gets to the heart of what this topic is about: games that, good or bad, are TERRIBLE representatives of the series they come from. Stuff like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and Starfox Adventures. These are the games were you can legitimately say "It's a fine game, but it's a BAD [insert series here] game."

As implied above, I think the poster child for this is Resident Evil 4 2005. Before this point, Resident Evil was a horror game, about choosing your battles and keeping yourself alive in the tensest situations. But then Resident Evil 4 went "Survival Action" (as it proclaims on the back of the box), and became a game of mowing down goons! But, because the core gameplay loop was GOOD, it changed the face of Resident Evil for a decade to resemble that, and we all eventually forgot that this was, by all accounts, a BAD Resident Evil game! It's a good game! But not a good Resident Evil game.

Can you think of any other games that fit this mold? I've probably posted the most notorious ones, but I'm sure there are plenty of other games that you could fit this on to.

[ShiraNoMai]

A lot of people throw this line around with Breath of the Wild (Zelda). It's actually kind of exhausting to hear at this point, and I personally disagree with the take. I genuinely believe that game to be the modern remake of Zelda 1: go out in the world and kill Ganon. Open world and all, dungeon order optional. The sole caveat I'll give that is the lack of actual proper dungeons does give room for opposition. There are 120 "shrines" (mini dungeons/dungeon rooms) and 4 dungeon-adjacent areas a la The Divine Beasts.

It became a new benchmark for open world titles in the style/aesthetic, in addition to its many discoverabilities and sandbox-like mechanics via the Sheikah Slate.

Many argue that strayed too far from the linearity of the dungeon-to-quest/plot prior games in the series, in addition to the loss of traditional tools like the hookshot, sword and bow (as standard/non-interchangeable). Thus, a bad Zelda game. But a good game nonetheless!

[Moonface]

Not what I expected the thread to be about when I saw the title, not that the title is at fault at all for that.

RE4 was the first Resi game I played, but I'm not sure if I'd view that as a bad representation of Resident Evil as a whole or give that honour to RE5 instead. While RE4 definitely changed things, the campy humour was still present and it did have moments that I felt were pretty tense and bordering on horror, especially within the castle areas. RE5 meanwhile strips out whatever things RE4 kept from the identity of earlier titles and feels like the game equivalent of the majority of the live-action RE movies with Milla Jovovich.

BotW I would say is a bad Zelda game, even though I have very little experience with Zelda as a whole. The Divine Beasts are pathetic as dungeons, and the Shrines are a mixed bag; the ones that are puzzles feel very much like what I'd expect to find in the dungeons of older Zelda games, but a lot of them are also really repetitive or just dull. I love BotW as a game but I can understand how long-time Zelda fans could have been turned off of it.

[Maniakkid25]

[...]While RE4 definitely changed things, the campy humour was still present[...]

I'm highlighting this specific section because this is exactly the sort of thing that RE4 basically retconned about the series. That camp humor you talk about? It never existed. Not in 1, 2, 3, or even Code Veronica. This humor that people point to was, much like the movie "The Room", meant to be taken seriously, but the garbage acting absolutely tanked it (and yes, I'm saying Steve Burnside is supposed to be taken seriously. Stop laughing!). It isn't until REmake (the Resident Evil 1 remake in 2002) and RE0 that we see Capcom leaning into the humor it accidentally created. And then RE4 came out and solidified Capcom being completely aware of what everyone wanted, and did effectively a 90 degree turn on Leon's personality, making him a wisecracking one-line machine with a heart of gold. And it's at this point I feel I have to re-emphasize: I like RE4. I LOVE RE4! It's an amazing game! I wouldn't necessarily put it in my top 10 of the decade list, but it's a solid contender!

I'll say I understand where people are coming from with BotW, but I actually see it as a natural extension of what the games wanted to be, rather than a bad representation of what the games should be. While yes, the Zelda formula was absolutely solid for a good 4 generations of gaming (from SNES with LttP through to Twilight Princess), it's very clear in the later generation games that Zelda WANTED to be more open and free, and it wasn't until BotW that they really had the ability to stretch into that freedom. What's my evidence for this? The maps of Hyrule expanding from game to game, and it didn't hurt that Wind Waker was a massive sea that you could explore and find all sorts of secrets in. They WANTED to make the series more open, but for whatever reason (maybe Nintendo was purposefully tying the series down, maybe they felt they didn't have the memory capacity to do what they wanted, or maybe something else entirely), they couldn't. So I think BotW is much more the natural conclusion than an exception.

[Moonface]

[...]While RE4 definitely changed things, the campy humour was still present[...]

I'm highlighting this specific section because this is exactly the sort of thing that RE4 basically retconned about the series. That camp humor you talk about? It never existed. Not in 1, 2, 3, or even Code Veronica. This humor that people point to was, much like the movie "The Room", meant to be taken seriously, but the garbage acting absolutely tanked it (and yes, I'm saying Steve Burnside is supposed to be taken seriously. Stop laughing!). It isn't until REmake (the Resident Evil 1 remake in 2002) and RE0 that we see Capcom leaning into the humor it accidentally created. And then RE4 came out and solidified Capcom being completely aware of what everyone wanted, and did effectively a 90 degree turn on Leon's personality, making him a wisecracking one-line machine with a heart of gold. And it's at this point I feel I have to re-emphasize: I like RE4. I LOVE RE4! It's an amazing game! I wouldn't necessarily put it in my top 10 of the decade list, but it's a solid contender!

Ah, I didn't realize that the approach to the humour was actually different in RE at one point. I figured maybe it was trying to be serious in the first game but probably fell flat due to bad acting that could be expected in games back in the early 90's, but I never knew that the campy humour wasn't actually meant to be that and just thought it was already campy and made funnier by shit acting. XD

I'll say I understand where people are coming from with BotW, but I actually see it as a natural extension of what the games wanted to be, rather than a bad representation of what the games should be. While yes, the Zelda formula was absolutely solid for a good 4 generations of gaming (from SNES with LttP through to Twilight Princess), it's very clear in the later generation games that Zelda WANTED to be more open and free, and it wasn't until BotW that they really had the ability to stretch into that freedom. What's my evidence for this? The maps of Hyrule expanding from game to game, and it didn't hurt that Wind Waker was a massive sea that you could explore and find all sorts of secrets in. They WANTED to make the series more open, but for whatever reason (maybe Nintendo was purposefully tying the series down, maybe they felt they didn't have the memory capacity to do what they wanted, or maybe something else entirely), they couldn't. So I think BotW is much more the natural conclusion than an exception.

From a world standpoint I agree it's a natural progression of Zelda, especially when the original game is trying to be pretty open, and OoT tries it with Hyrule Field. I just think it maybe lost or diminished a lot of other core Zelda components as a result though such as the puzzles, dungeons and items and that sense of progression you get in Zelda games. BotW only has progression at the start with gaining abilities and then once you get into the full world that progression disappears because the developers approached the game with the idea of letting the player go anywhere and do anything in any order, or even not do it at all and just go fight the final boss. I've not played it but I imagine Wind Waker found a good sweet spot of being open but not having to dial back on other areas that make up the Zelda formula as a result.