Cancelled or shut down? If you wanted a cancelled game to come out, 99 times out of 100, it was your imagination making it into a great game, and they cancelled it because it wasn’t coming together.
For games that were shut down, for me, it was Robocraft. It was only shut down recently, but the version of the game that I loved from about 2017-ish was basically replaced a year later with a version of the game that I was not a fan of, and it stayed that way until the game’s and studio’s closure. I had to get burned by Robocraft in order to come to some realizations about the rot at the core of live service games, and it informed a lot of where I spend my time and money now.
Cries in Star Wars: Battlefront 3
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The Black Isle version of Fallout 3 (Van Buren).
Bethesda’s version had expansive and impressive maps and visuals, but the writing and world-building were subpar compared to Fallout 1/2 and New Vegas.
Black Isle Studios planned to include a dual-combat system in the game that allowed for the player to choose between real-time (Bethesda Softworks’ Fallout games and Micro Forté and 14° East’s Fallout Tactics) or turn-based combat (Fallout and Fallout 2) but real-time was only included due to Interplay’s demands.
I suppose you’re most-likely aware of them, but if you wanted more turn-based Fallout, have you looked into Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3?
They are on my “to play” list. :)
I am most probably not good at the game, but in Wasteland 3, it felt like you needed the first round advantage, otherwise you would get blown to pieces before you could even act once. That burned the game for me.
Good pick! I was so bummed when I heard that was cancelled.
But would this game have been successful, given the kind of games that were being released at the time? It would most likely have been the end of the series.
That’s a fair point. We did have Arcanum in 2001 and while it’s arguably legendary in CRPG circles, I don’t think it did all that well commercially.
I think it probably would have been the biggest success of the 3 games. But you’re also probably right that it likely would have been the end of the series. Bethesda making them into 1st person open world games was probably the best thing that ever happened to the series. At least in terms of achieveing widespread success.
PT. Still have it saved on my PS4 I think.
Star Wars 1313 is a big one for me. Same with Battlefront 3, both would have been amazing. RIP og Lucasarts, you were a real one.
Also, Retro Studios has had a few concepts that sounded awesome. They were planning a few Zelda spinoffs I would have really liked to see. Heroes of Hyrule and the Sheik project looked cool as hell.
Star Wars Galaxies was such an ambitious MMO at launch.
Crazy in depth crafting system, especially with regards to pets. With how materials were randomly generated and cycled out it created a market that actually experienced booms and scarcity.
Some of the servers went almost a year before all the materials required for certain weapons spawned. And the materials all had random stats that would affect the item you crafted.
Also a surprisingly advanced and customizable… ‘class’ system, which was really more like a whole bunch of branching skill trees you could mix and match basically various ranks of… allowing many weird, but often effective, hyrbrids of ‘classes’ that… could either focus on one main ‘class’, but augment it with certain abilities from other ‘classes’…
And then the Combat Upgrade happened, and everything got streamlined.
Also… being a Jedi/Sith used to be… exceptionally rare and difficult to pull off.
IIRC, basically, some kind of insane random seed type thing gave each of your characters a very, very tiny chance of being force sensitive… but you wouldn’t even know this unless you also found basically a hidden event/questline, and then that would unlock a whole set of force skill trees, allowing for a range of jedi to sith abilities, with some kind of mix effectively being a ‘gray’ jedi.
Finally… SWG … still appears to me to be the only MMO that actually attempted to implement a working, player vs player, bounty hunting and tracking system, within an mmo… as a core game mechanic of a player ‘class’.
Though I haven’t played all mmos, so I may be wrong about that.
… Also an entire skill tree for basically being a mayor and running your own player built town. A whole skill tree dedicated to like… administrative capacity and zoning laws.
Do MMOs even… do player built cities anymore? Or did they just mostly switch over to ‘you have a house in the set aside ‘suburb’ instance’?
Came here to mention Star Wars 1313.
Haven’t played Outlaws, but I guess that’s the closes we have come to that. Maybe a non-ubisoft game similar to that?
Wasn’t there also a cancelled Darth Maul project?
Oh damn, I forgot about that. I think you’re right. Wasn’t it supposed to be a more mature take on Star Wars?
It’s been a while but I think so. No idea what the genre was supposed to be, a soulslike maybe or something combat/combo based like DMC?
Megaman Legends 3.
“We cancelled it because the fans didn’t show enough interest or act like they wanted it badly enough!”
I think a sizable fraction of the world’s population is still salty about that, and it’s been 14 years.
I’m a battle network fan and never played Legends but I feel for you.
Legends was such a weird series. It felt like a Mega Man take on something like Ocarina of Time.
I should give it a try for sure.
It’s a great trio of games (Legends 1 and 2, and the Misadventures of Tron Bonne) with quite a bit of depth and if you ask me a fantastic art direction for their time. The one thing I will say is that the controls did not age very well. You get used to it after a while. These games predate modern dual-stick movement and aiming and use the shoulder buttons for strafing. I think the Playstation versions are superior due to the increased number of buttons available on the controller.
I haven’t bought a capcom game since this
To be fair, they haven’t managed to put out a whole hell of a lot that’s actually compelling in the intervening years that weren’t rereleases. “Hey guys, DAE remember Resident Evil 4? The good one? We just re-re-re-released it. And some old Megaman games you already have. Full price!”
That seems pretty reductive IMO. Like RE7 and RE8 are genuinely good returns to form for the series. The RE2 and RE4 releases are remakes which by most standards improve the original releases and bring them into the current generation.
Then throw in the Phoenix Wright games, Monster Hunter games, Dragon’s Dogma games, Street Fighter games, DMC…
I would argue Capcom has been on a tear of very good games, especially in the last 5 years.
Yeah, I came to mention this one specifically. The Legends series was incredible at the time, and there was a lot of potential for a third game with more modern controls. But instead, Capcom has made it clear that they intend to simply sit on the IP and never do anything with it.
I didn’t even know about it until I read this comment, but now I’m one of the salty.
“We cancelled it because the fans didn’t show enough interest or act like they wanted it badly enough!”
🤦
PlanetSide 1, the MMOFPS that was the former record holder of “Most players in an online FPS battle,” which was eventually surpassed by PlanetSide 2.
In its heyday it was a fascinating sociology study.
During EU prime time, players would self-organize into squads of about 10 players. They would apply light pressure to the entire map simultaneously. Territorial gains would be made by attacking undefended bases.
During USA prime time, players would self-organize into platoons of about 30 players. They would press a few strategic locations with medium force. Territorial gains came from fixing operations (using a small force in an easy to defend location to keep a large population of opponents busy) and local numeric superiority at lightly defended bases.
During Chinese prime time, players would group up into a singular mass. Everyone just ran face first into the meatgrinder. No territorial gains were made.
Unreal Tournament series
UE4 movement was buttery smooth
I really am dissapointed in current gaming, thought wed have a game in each genre that supported custom content, like ue would let ppl make their own maps/weapons, etc. everquest landmark for mmo worlds, etc.
Garry’s mod/source games is about the closest we have to that. Or i guess Roblox too…?
s@ndbox but it really depends how it goes, they are leaning more towards being a game engine than something like gmod where you can bring stuff over from one world to another, like scifi element hoverboards, etc. to a fantasy world and vice versa.
maybe with desktop tools being so fleshed out well see better in game tools for creation, tho now I use blender and want more games to support mods and custom content.
The original Overwatch. I also know Apex Legends hasn’t been cancelled, but they also took away Linux compatibility so it is essentially cancelled for Linux. That’s one I miss.
Star Wars Battlefront 3, 1313 Titanfall 3
Titanfall was so goddamn fun. Hey, do you like the combat in CoD: Modern Warfare 2? Do you also want to call in a giant mech suit once in a while? Well buckle up, Buttercup, cause I’ve got a game for you!
Might sound odd to some, but Overwatch.
Early Overwatch was great. Then some updates made it better. The only things wrong with it were design choices that were made for financial reasons. Then they made it much worse. Then they made it worse. And worse. And then they made 2, which turned it into just another ‘left-click on the target’ game, because those make more money. It saddens me that it died.
Yeah I used to be super addicted to Overwatch 1, but I bailed as soon as 2 came out. I can honestly say I’ve never played it since.
Nah, it’s pretty good now. Feels better than OW1 was, personally.
Marvel Rivals is better
Who asked?
No, seriously, give Rivals a chance. It’s free so you have nothing to lose.
Two of the original OW developers were heavily involved in its development, so the game feels just like OW did back in 2016. Trust me, you won’t miss Overwatch 2 once you get used to it.
I was on the same boat as you forever. I came back to ow2 late last year. I’ll say this. OW feels better than it ever has. Very balanced and very fair, while maintaining that very chaotic and energized feeling. They added tiered perks which really break up the monotony of the game, and also brought back loot boxes.
It feels like they realized the game became stagnant, and they’re doing as much as they can to bring it back to peak, and past that.
They also are bringing back 'classic overwatch", and I’ll say this… After you play classic and go back to regular you can feel the difference. The only thing I miss is 6v6 but it seems like that’s coming back soon too
6v6 is already back, in open queue format
I was there gandalf, I hated when they changed the game and balancing around the pro mode, only for their e-sports presence to implode anyway.
Play Marvel Rivals now while it’s still fun. It’s free.
It plays just like 2016 Overwatch did, because it was made by some of the original OW devs. The same ones who left because they were tired of all the fun metas being made boring to please the hardcore players who have no life outside of video games. That isn’t an issue with Rivals yet. Enjoy it while you still can.
Kerbal Space Program. Loved KSP1, but still salty about spending $60 on the pre release of KSP2 thinking it would help fund development. Never again. Learned my lesson for sure. Both versions are basically dead now. It was a fun ride while it lasted.
Have to see what happens with Kitten Space Agency.
I’m hopeful but apprehensive for KSA.
I’m still kinda salty that my computer would crash every time I tried landing something bigger than a probe on Eve.
The new owners recently shut down the old website and won’t accept my proof of purchase so I don’t even own the first game anymore :(
Time to sail the high seas. When they leave no other option…🏴☠️
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I keep hoping Wildstar gets the City of Heroes like revival, just hoping so so much!
That game came out. I still miss it though, but it isn’t a cancelled game.
Still keep hoping for a private server. That game ruined other mmos for me.
If an online only game comes out and is shut down sooner than the developer intended, it’s accurate to say it’s been cancelled.
Shut down is the correct term. A cancelled game is a game that never released. No need to muddy that definition.
To cancel something is to no longer do something at a future date. If the game was originally planned to exist in a year but no longer does, that meets the definition of cancelled. The OP question is strangely worded - how can you miss a game you were never able to play?
Miss the world of wildstar the most - its was a really creative theme park
Star Wars Battlefront III
Mostly every Rare game.
- Diddy Kong Pilot (the voxel version)
- Dinosaur Planet
- Donkey Kong Racing
- Twelve Tales: Conker 64
I know 3/4 of these sort of got released, but the mode-7 style Banjo-Pilot is fundamentally not interesting to me, Star Fox Adventures is fine but was a lot more ambitious when it was on weaker hardware, and while Twelve Tales looked generic, Conker’s Bad Fur Day is the least funny thing to ever attempt humor.
I didn’t forget Donkey Kong: Coconut Crackers, I just don’t mind missing out on that.
I really wish we had gotten a full release of Dinosaur Planet. Starfox Adventures is still pretty good, but it definitely lost a lot of unique ideas with the change. Not to mention, it probably affected Nintendo’s perception of Starfox as a whole. Mucked up a cool game and damaged a franchise with that one. And I say this as a fan of Adventures.
I loved Descent from back in the 90s…
The original team remade it as a VR game with a new name in roughly 2017. I played a demo of it at PAX and felt like it was 1996 all over again.