Skyward Fire

The past few years have been great for the video games industry. Amazing titles being launched ever so frequently ensured to keep an avid gamer happy throughout the days. Not to forget to mention, the advancement to the next generation of gaming, as the world witnessed the launch of three new consoles more or less around the same time-period. Franchises were really true to the spirit of the game and kept the power flowing by constantly enhancing the graphics, gameplay etc. of upcoming titles. Other than these obvious facts, a certain aberration has indeed been observed. A truly appreciable change in the trend of game-development is that, the designers have begun to experiment with the franchise itself and carve out a game in a whole new genre. This is not a very new thing, but looking at the number of aberrations in so many franchises, certainly forces one to acknowledge the potential of this trend.

Command and Conquer; if we say it out loud, it instantly brings to memory the fast paced tank rushes and full motion video sequences that made the series so intriguing. Somewhat around 2002, a new game hit the stands by the name Command and Conquer:Renegade. Any C&C fan would not leave out a game launched freshly that was obvious, so the game sold over a million copies in the very first month of its launch. What gamers were delighted to see, was that it wasn’t an RTS game. It was a First Person Shooter! How did this happen? A franchise doing so well, that their last game at that time, Red Alert 2 was still selling like hot cakes; changed genres? Quite unnatural, yes, but not an attempt in futility, simply because Renegade was an amazing game. The battle over Tiberium between GDI and NOD was just begging to be made into an FPS. Many gamers fantasized seeing all the action up-close and with Renegade, it was delivered so well.

Killzone on the Play Station 2 was a big let down. It was a good shooter, no doubt but could have been a lot better. When Killzone was announced for the PSP, gamers couldn’t help but sigh out loud, as no one expected it to be anything but an FPS with bad graphics and horrible gameplay, as FPS titles on the PSP don’t really sound as if they would go a long way. Lost Boys (now known as Guerrilla) did a fantastic job by making Killzone: Liberation an over the top , third person shooter, which won the hearts of gamers all over and took portable multiplayer action to a new level.

Same can be said for the Warcraft franchise. World of Warcraft needs no introduction. 12 million users online are proof enough. Starcraft, Star Wars, Quake , Mario, Sonic etc. are some other franchises that changed genres for the better. Sadly, this doesn’t always work. Commandos was a great franchise literally torn to shreds by the horrible execution of its FPS version called Commandos: Strike Force. Its all about hits and misses actually. You cannot expect raging success every time. Nonetheless, it is very creative to change genres and bring a lot of excitment to the table. Lets just hope we see Halo Wars soon!