If you want the perfect example of a zombie franchise, you can look no further than Homefront. While it might not feature the shambling hordes of the undead, it's a AAA series which is unwelcome, rotten to the core but refuses to die. After 2011's painfully pedestrian shooter failed to wow audiences, THQ's efforts to kick-start a new franchise with a "vast transmedia strategy" amounted to nothing. Unfortunately, rather leaving it dead and buried, Deep Silver decided to resurrect the brand, and produced the Daikatana of 2016.
I really have a hard time calling this a franchise, however I can't really hate it because it's just so...Bizarre.
ReplyDeleteThis is a game where you can somehow turn your assault rifle into a fireworks launcher, which fires near rocket-grade fireworks that have no problems killing a guy wearing full body armour.
It's a game where the city is built so bizarrely that you have tons of ramps, leading up to nothing because you're supposed to use your bike on them to escape enemy patrols, but the enemies are fully aware of this too?
It's the game where an enemy can be looking at you, so you throw a distraction, which they turn and start shooting at the second you duck behind anything, even if it's a pillar, as if this was a Looney Toons cartoon.
I really can't help but look at it and think "What happened?" Along with "This could have been really good." The bones of something good are here, it's just buried under lots of untextured fat and long loading times, if you're able to find it that is because the objective marker might accidentally point you the wrong way.
Really, while I don't have much proof behind it,what I think happened is that a studio had a lot of leftover assets and a big name. So, Deep Silver shunted nearly all their budget into the advertising campaign and told the devs to do what they could with the game, racked in pre-orders and tried to make some cash. Call it cynical if you want, but we've had far, far too many supposedly big budget games released following this idea, and a lot of big publishers went whole hog on it. Hell, just look at Gearbox's antics with Duke Nukem and Aliens, and then Warner Bros' treatment of the later Arkham games.
Delete