I agree with the 'end of an era' comments. A lot of my favourite games series seem to be doing that nowadays.
Spyro - First one was charming, sweet and a joy to play. The second one was so superb it hurt. The third one seemed like a lazy remake, with a good dollop of naffness thrown in. The fourth one seems too close to the third; I think the series is wearing thin. I think Insomniac did the right thing by ditching it and letting someone else (namely Digital Eclipse Software) make a mess of it.
Crash - Naughty Dog wisely realised that the Bandicoot has run his course, which is why they've put their efforts into the gobsmackingly brilliant Jak and Daxter. The fourth Crash game is basically just a remix of 3 with far better graphics.
WipEout - The first game was high-octane and hard-edged (despite the fact that its graphics now look worse than vomit on a vinyl jacket), and strangely ethereal at the same time. The second was just mindblowing. For speed, it's second only to Fusion, and it has the best soundtrack and ship design of all WipEout's PSX incarnations. Then Pygnosis made a spin-off for the N64, which despite being good fun; was mainly a rip-off of the first two PSX games. Then Wip3out came for PSX, and boy did they screw up that time. Apart from the odd moment (XPander & Know Where To Run), Wip3out's soundtrack is as dull as hell, the 'good' ships have got too good while the 'bad' ships have got even worse, creating a stupidly wide chasm. And there's no 'futuristic' feeling; it's not neon enough and feels too todayish. And W3SE is a commendable effort to recreate the tracks of WipEout and WipEout 2097, but it really destroyed them in the process (I mean, they took away the speed pads before the big jump on Gare D'Europa, and they lit up the dark tunnel and took away the falling snow in Sagarmatha! And don't get me started on how much they've moved Altima's weapon/speed grids), and it reeks of cash-in. WipEout really should not have gone beyond its first two incarnations in the 32bit era. Thankfully, Fusion looks like the series' saving grace; it got a 9/10 in OPS2M, and I've played the demos to death. And despite the lack of Tim Wright and mitDR, the soundtrack is brain-meltingly octane. Which is good. In short, Fusion is the biggest, baddest, boldest racer ever to hit a console.
But as I said in another topic, lots of games go on hiatus for a while.
The Metal Gear series totally skipped the Genesis and SNES days and was resurrected on PSX.
Metroid skipped the N64 era, and is now back for GameCube.
Luigi went on hiatus for N64, now Mario's on hiatus (not including Mario Kart 64, of course).
Ninja Gaiden skipped the PSX/N64 days and is now possibly coming for XBox.
After a while, most good franchises go on hiatus for awhile, then come back when the time's right.
Let's just hope that Oddworld's not dead; just resting.
Don't forget also that the move to PS2 bollocksed it up a bit as well. OWI used some third-party software to help make the game engine, and because it was compatible with both PS2 and XBox; it could be ported over. But the changeover wasn't entirely successful, and so they had to cut out a lot of mangled code. The PS2, whilst being able to push fewer polygons at a time than XBox, actually has more things called GFLOPS than the XBox. I'm not entirely sure what they do, but apparently it means that the PS2 can actually handle more complex fire and water effects than the Box can.
And since AE used the same game engine as AO, it's likely that ME will use MO's engine. As Danny said in another topic, let's hope to see a big improvement in SO; when they've got all the pooey code cleaned up. Lanning himself has even said that he wasn't totally happy with MO.
It's a shame that you've decided to shut down Oddworldian, but I understand. I'm starting to lose interest in Oddworld myself, and I sometimes wish that Oddworld had stayed as a one-hit wonder, shrouded in awe.
Let's just hope it isn't permanent, and that OWI will rekindle our excitement with a mindblowing game in the future, and there will be a glorious reunion of fulfilled hope.
As Niteowl said, we've waited ages (due to the console switch), and that's helped to kill our enthusiasm. That's the reason why so many people have walked out on the whole-year-overdue WipEout Fusion (not me, though. Unashamed WipEout nerd over here!)
Edit: shit, that was a big post!
[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: One, Two, Middlesboogie ]
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