Videogame remakes you loved, hated or want to see

[psylockolussus]

Okay I played 3 videogame remakes this year. And there are rumours that there will be more like Resident Evil 4, The Last of Us and Metal Solid Gear. So I think this might be a cool idea for a thread.

Remakes I thought are good:
Resident Evil 2
Mafia

Remakes I thought are disappointing:
Resident Evil 3
Shadow of the Colossus

Remakes I want to see:
Resident Evil Code Veronica
Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City/San Andreas
Resident Evil Zerø
Resident Evil 1 Again (I bought the remake this year, but haven't played it because of the fiXed camera and this just looks so different compare to the remake of Re2/3)
Assassin's Creed 1 (I just want a remaster but I'll take a remake just so I can eXperience all the main AC games)

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Looking at my library I don't have many remakes in it at all relatively speaking; I have more remasters but those don't really count here.

People tell me the Final Fantasy VII Remake is great but I just can't get on board with the way they split the game up and are now just getting around to adding even more content to part 1 (Yuffie) on PS5 that wasn't there on part 1 of the PS4 version. I hate the way they went about this so I haven't bought it and am just gonna wait until they finish it up.

The modern Resident Evil 2 remake is pretty great and I have that one, but that is already popular so I'll put a word in for some more obscure ones.

The Trials of Mana remake on modern platforms is even better overall than the Super NES original thanks to gameplay changes and content addition.

Duck Tales: Remastered is not really a remastering of the NES game but a full remake of the old game that I enjoyed a lot (plus the production value of the voice cast from the 1980s cartoon) even if the new level at the end made me yell a bit at its difficulty.

Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete on the PlayStation are both great remakes of the Sega CD role-playing games. If I have a complaint for each it’s that L:SSSC loses much of the great music of the Sega CD game for new compositions and L:EBC loses some interesting story scenarios that existed in the original, though both also add much in their favor.

The Dragon Quest series and Final Fantasy series remakes - if you can call them that - for PSP (Final Fantasy I & II and Final Fantasy IV Complete Collection) and DS (Dragon Quest IV, V, and VI) and 3DS (Dragon Quest VII) are great.

I didn’t like the new 3D art and difficulty changes to the complete 3D remakes of Final Fantasy III and IV on DS and PC though even if the new story additions are fine and round out their stories more. The mobile/PC ports of the good (except for the music quality and resolution) Game Boy Advance remakes of Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI unfortunately don’t look so hot because the assets are all at different mastering resolutions thrown together which makes them graphically look inconsistent.

Ditto for Super Mario All-Stars on the Super NES being good. There’s some minor changes in the physics of the originals but I don’t really care.

Metroid: Zero Mission on Game Boy Advance is a great reimagining of the original title that started it all.

There's unofficial fan remakes on the PC that are excellent like AM2R (Metroid 2 remake) and the Streets of Rage Remake (Streets of Rage series remade into one game), both of which were so great that Nintendo and Sega shut the original developers down as they didn't want to have to compete with them.

 

[metaphysician]

People tell me the Final Fantasy VII Remake is great but I just can't get on board with the way they split the game up and are now just getting around to adding even more content to part 1 (Yuffie) on PS5 that wasn't there on part 1 of the PS4 version. I hate the way they went about this so I haven't bought it and am just gonna wait until they finish it up.

Pretty much this. Though I would add to this that I also don't trust that the final product will at all be worthwhile. One, they conveniently cut off the first part right when they would need to transition into more open world gameplay, which I suspect is because they don't actually know how they can *do* that yet. Two, they cut the story off right after initiating major plot divergence, which means they will increasingly not be able to crib from the original plot. . . and Nomura hasn't been lead on a game with good writing since. . . um, Kingdom Hearts 2, if I'm being generous.

Basically, I expect the successive parts to be a mix of poorly reconceived gameplay and KH3 level terrible writing. And you'll need to pay about four times as much as a normal game to "enjoy" it all. Thanks but no thanks, what you should have *actually* done was an HD remaster, like people had been asking for all along, and which could have been completed and released for a tiny fraction of the cost about 10 years ago.

 

[Sithborg]

Nomura is off FFVIIR at the moment, so I would not worry too much about him. No idea if he will return for part 3 or not.

 

[henzINNIT]

Because of their significance to the franchise they're attached to, I would like to see Ghostbusters and Enter The Matrix remade for a modern standard. I'd love KOTOR 1&2 remade also but I fear they'll be inferior in today's climate.

I really enjoyed the recent Tony Hawks 1&2. That was good fun.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

what you should have *actually* done was an HD remaster, like people had been asking for all along, and which could have been completed and released for a tiny fraction of the cost about 10 years ago.

They could have done that, whatever this mobile chapter/episodic game ultimately turns out to be could have been the full remake - cheaper and faithful to the original - instead of so blatantly designed around a business model where the art is secondary.

 

[metaphysician]

They could have done that, whatever this mobile chapter/episodic game ultimately turns out to be could have been the full remake - cheaper and faithful to the original - instead of so blatantly designed around a business model where the art is secondary.

Honestly, I don't even care about 'purity of the art' in this case so much. I strongly suspect that a more conventional remaster *would have made them more profits*. Yes, it wouldn't be able to sell for $200 per full copy, and it *might* not have sold as many copies as the FF7R sold at its hyped up release. . . but it would have cost a tiny fraction of the budget, and it would have been finished 5-10 years sooner. Time *is* money, and a million dollars today is worth a *lot* more than a million dollars ten years in the future.

Nomura is off FFVIIR at the moment, so I would not worry too much about him. No idea if he will return for part 3 or not.

I suppose I should be more fair and precise, sigh. I sometimes refer to Nomura as being responsible for this and that, but that is a little unfair on my part, since I don't know what problems are actually his specific responsibility. It would be more accurate to say that I have no trust in the studio that Nomura is currently the leader/figurehead at Square-Enix, the one that does the big name Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts titles, and where Nomura is the creative lead and director for at least most of their work for the past 15 years. In truth, I tend to figure most of the problems are systemic, lingering effects of Square-Enix's bad transition to the HD development era. Nomura may have some dubious creative quirks, but his main "vice" is simply that he couldn't fix a broken creative culture, and its entirely possible that *no one* could have done so. Its almost a miracle things turn out as well as they have, when you have horrible practices like "the art team starts building high cost cinematic sequences years before the script and storyline is finished".

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

There's a PC/Windows fan remake of Sonic Triple Trouble for the Sega Game Gear that released recently that's great called Sonic Triple Trouble 16-Bit.



I forgot to really list many remakes I thought were bad in my first post so I'll throw in the obscure remake of Lufia II for the DS. It turned the original turn based JRPG into a clunky action RPG with different art and unintuitive maps and a different story and I didn't get very far in it but enough to know I didn't like it.

 

[MarvelFan]

Want this remake so badly:

Marvel Superheroes: War of the Gems

Dino Crisis

Time Crisis

Final Fantasy X

 

[Wolvieboy17]

I've been wanting to replay the Ezio AC games again, but they've dated so badly haha. Would love a proper remake (as opposed to recent but average remaster)

 

[Deck Rickard]

I haven’t played too many remakes but Diablo II Resurrected is pretty great. I also really enjoyed the Final Fantasy 7 remake, but I’ve never played the original so I’m not sure how it compares.

The Dragon Quest IV remake was decent but I’m so beholden to the original (I guess because it’s so intertwined with my childhood) that I couldn’t really get into a revamped version with new dialogue and such.

I would love to see remakes of:

Shadow Run (Sega Genesis)
Earthworm Jim 1 & 2
Castlevania 2
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Zelda: Link to the Past
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Road Rash 1-3
GTA: Vice City
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind & Oblivion