Successful series reboots?

[Gameguy]

The other thread got me thinking, were there any reboots that really were successful with bringing new life to dead or dying series?

I guess Wolfenstein 3D with the later expansion packs/Spear of Destiny continuing from Castle Wolfenstein would count, just not sure how many more would be considered as successful. Really needing to create several new games to resurrect a franchise, not just a single new game years later that's quickly forgotten.

[Tupin]

Though it was mentioned in this thread's twin, I think the new Tomb Raider did really well for itself and was fun.

GTA III is kind of like a franchise reboot.

[kupomogli]

A few people mentioned in the other thread that they didn't like Twisted Metal, while I personally thought it was the best in the series. Whenever I hear people complain about it not being as good as the rest, the thing that's always brought up, and the only thing that's ever brought up, is the missing drivers. The storylines in the Twisted Metal series were all good, and they were nice to watch, but Twisted Metal has always been about the amazing gameplay, and this one doesn't fail to disappoint. Sure it would have been nice to have additional driver stories and what "prize" Calypso gave to them but doesn't take much away from the game when they were always fairly short to begin with. The latest ones having three characters, four actually counting the priest, the movie clips were much longer and detailed than any other in the series, and while having fewer drivers, the storyline is done better. Maybe they were going to have additional stories in sequels if the game did well, instead of coming up with a new idea and making the stories shorter like they did in the older games.

Onto what they did right in the new title though. First off, the weapons. Aside from some camera issues with alternate specials from Vermin and Meat Wagon, the specials as well as some of the random weapons were reworked and new ones were added. Not a fan of the new ricochets, but everything else works really well. There are a few tricks with the weapons as well. A headshot with a sniper rifle is an instant kill, and getting a headshot isn't that easy, but during a team game, if you have a character who is playing as either Road Boat or Talon, two vehicles who suck an enemy to the front of their vehicle and then shoot them off, or Talon who can carry them up in the sky and drop them. If you use the sniper rifle and just sit there while the ally has them, when the other player is shot off the front or dropped, you'll be able to get a headshot before they regain control. This works best on the slow but high HP vehicles, kind of killing off the best benefit these vehicles have.

Not including the games last boss, there are eight multiplayer maps, most which are massive in size with hidden areas, shortcuts, etc. Best maps in the series. The size of each map is designed for a lot of players, but if you're playing only with one to four friends at home, you probably don't want to play on the entire stage on some maps. They've actually reworked every single map in the stage so that some of them have around four or five different variations, so if you want to only play with two people, you can use the drive in and you won't be respawned a few minutes away every time.

So yeah. I thought it was a great game, the only issues it had, other than not having as many characters, was that they were missing out on some fan favorite vehicles, and the online didn't work and wasn't fixed until atleast six months, where now it finally works regularly. Another thing is on my fat PS3 after a PS3 update, the game never fails to crash immediately after the timer starts going down. Works fine on my slim.

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Lords of Shadow. Many people hate this series because it's not done by one of Konami's Japanese development teams. I'm a huge Castlevania fan and the series has just been going to shit. Portrait of Ruin isn't terrible, but it's where it started going downhill. Some people like Order of Ecclesia but I thought it was terrible as almost every boss in the game was shmup style memorization and every area in the game was pretty much point a to b. I enjoy Lament of Innocence, but the level design was filled with rooms that looked exactly the same in every area. Curse of Darkness took that to the extreme and the game was very long hallways in between room while also reducing Hector's speed to a third of Leon's from LoI and changing the combat system to the shit Dynasty Warriors combat. I tried replaying this game, haven't played since the year it came out which I finished it with Hector and Trevor. Played around four hours and couldn't take it anymore. Just an absolute pos game, but I wouldn't say that Curse of Darkness is the worst it's got. Harmony of Despair and Order of Shadows is pretty much rock bottom for the series. Maybe even Castlevania Judgment. I didn't buy it, but it looks pretty terrible.

Even the rest of the Castlevania series is hit and miss, but atleast the rest are atleast good. All three Lords of Shadow games aren't just good, but great. The series was never even intended to be a Castlevania game, but it was already almost complete when Konami cancelled it, so because people were comparing the similarities of the character design in the original trailer to Simon Belmont from Simon's Quest, they pitched the idea to Konami as being relabeled Castlevania. They reworked it, adding Castlevania references throughout the game, but still kept it subtitled as Lords of Shadow to keep it as its own series in a different timeline than the original. The first game had some framerate issues at times that could dip around 15-20fps, but overall the framerate stayed between 25-30 in most areas. Another issue with the game is the constant new things within the game, you were seeing tutorial messages all the way up to later chapters in the game 10-20 hours in. The main game though was a mix between Uncharted's traversal, Devil May Cry style combat, and even Shadow of the Colossus style bosses. Mirror of Fate for the 3DS was a mix between the classic style and exploration, where falling into pits or from certain distances up was instant death, and you also learned new skills and got extra health and magic as you progressed(but not stats.) Lords of Shadow 2 was like the first one, better bosses, two new weapons replacing Gabriel's light and dark magic for new skills and spells. The only issue the game had imo is the loading times between areas and the very strong lock on. The first game also had the strong lock on, but you could attack in another direction and it'd react. Lords of Shadow 2's lock wouldn't redirect to the direction you were holding, so sometimes you might be wanting to attack an enemy without a shield, but you'd spin around and attack the enemy behind you that had a shield and then get a quick stun, or maybe you want to attack the enemy with the shield but it won't target that enemy, etc. There's even times that there's a destructable object and Gabriel has turned around to attack that instead of the enemy right in front of me.

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DmC Devil May Cry. The storyline was easily the best in the series, being a mixture of 1, 3, and the movie They Live. The combat is debatably the best in the series, although the lock on system was a little irritating not being able to switch lock on manually when fighting against shield enemies. Mainly in harder modes, the mixture of enemies with both more shield enemies and red/blue only enemies made battles a little bs sometimes. If you hear people saying the game is easy, it's because the normal difficulties are actually reasonable for all players this time around. Harder difficulties are actually a lot more difficult. There are checkpoints in the game, but there's even a Hell and Hell difficulty where you die in one hit while enemies have their regular health in Dante Must Die difficulty with remixed enemies. Stages in DmC are also progressive rather than backtracking puzzle style stages of the others. It's debatably better or worse than the first and/or third one.

[Tanooki]

Good call on Lords of Shadow, and I for one really love the 3DS title in the line as it is like CV3, Super Metroid and God of War attack combo system got frisky and a good game was born of it.

I know it is an obvious choice, and for me I dont like most of them due to the slippy physics and the forced star coin grab just to advance the game but New Super Mario Bros resurrected Super Mario Bros which died with SMB4 aka Mario World. Also the Wii/3DS resurrection of Donkey Kong Country was quite successful after being gone since the SNES era since the GBA games were just ports.

[Jorpho]

Lots of people seemed to like the "new" Bard's Tale game, but then it has a pretty tenuous relation to the balls-hard old-school RPG originals.

[SpaceHarrier]

This may be polarizing but...

Sonic Adventure

I loved Genesis Sonic. Well, maybe not Spinball. Or 3D Blast. Those didn't feel like 'true' Sonic games to me. But the other 4 I loved. After Saturn came and left without a real Sonic game, I had almost lost hope of ever getting something that felt like classic Sonic. Then, one day, I came upon a copy of Gamefan on the magazine rack at the local Barnes & Noble. "9 pages of Sonic Adventure" the cover read. Inside lay the most beautiful, ink-soaked, amazing layout I've ever seen of a game I simply could not believe existed. I mean, at the time, there was just the blurry N64 and the chunky ps1. This looked beyyyyyyyond, like far beyond. I don't recall even seeing anything in the arcade to match it, at the time.

I got a membership to Hollywood Video just to rent the system a month early, in August 1999. I was simply blown away by the game, the graphics, the music, the feeling that Sonic was back to being Sonic. I had to reserve a system and Sonic Adventure after that, for launch day pickup. There was just no other option. I still have the t-shirt.

I don't know if this game is objectively a successful reboot, it only had one direct sequel.., but to me it is definitely my favorite reboot. I still play it constantly, heck I played it a couple days ago.

[frogofdeath]

How about the Metroid Prime series. Great games, with a different style than the originals, that were critically and commercially successful.

[Gamevet]

Fallout 3: The original titles were moderate successes, but they still had a somewhat niche audience within the PC community. The reboot for consoles and PC really kicked the franchise into the realm of top-tier titles.