Once a rare and sought after breed, nowadays remastered games seem to be springing out of the ground left, right, and centre. A week can’t simply roll on by without mention or rumour of yet another game being re-released on slightly newer tech.
This year alone we’ve seen plenty of remasters come to both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Chief among these are the third instalments of both God of War and Gears of War alongside Devil May Cry 4 and even Resident Evil. There has also been a few notable digital remasters such as Journey and Homeworld, as well as handheld revamps like Xenoblade Chronicles and the sublime Majora’s Mask.
Some five or six years ago, remasters were almost completely unheard of. Although there were definitely cases of video games being optimised and re-released on other platforms, this was a relatively unknown practice, but in today’s climate, it’s not uncommon for studios to eye up their recent string of last-gen hits, and who can blame them?
Not only are they cheaper to make than sequels and new IP, there’s also a healthy demand that has yet to show signs of fatigue. This camp is mainly comprised of those who missed out on playing the original version of a game, and those who adore it enough to consider a re-purchase on newer hardware.
However, one question that continues to float around is this: which games are truly deserving of being remastered? The go-to answer is, of course, the “classics” – landmark games that have dropped jaws around the planet in years gone by. Games like Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2, God of War, and Kingdom Hearts.
God of War was in fact that one game to kickstart this recent remaster trend. Prior to the launch of God of War III (a truly seminal game, for anyone asking) Sony Santa Monica e-mailed its fans a survey, quizzing them on upcoming extras they’d like to see in the game’s special edition. The survey seemed innocent at first, touting the usual bits and bobs we like to see, but then something caught our collective eye. A HD remake of the first two God of War games, complete with trophy support.
The rest, as they say, is history and soon demand for the God of War remasters skyrocketed. (Re)developed by the talented folks at Bluepoint Games, they were eventually released on Blu-ray to rave reviews. I remember being so excited that I even imported a copy from the United States just in time for my eighteenth birthday.
Inevitably, more remasters were soon to follow. Under the “HD Classics” label we saw series like Splinter Cell, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Raccoon, and Prince of Persia all go under the knife. They just kept on coming with smaller remasters also cropping up via digital storefronts.
Compared to many of the remasters we see today, these ones actually felt warranted. It seems that, somewhere along the way, this nostalgic edge has been marginalised in order to help publishers bridge the gap between the two most recent console cycles. Games like Hitman and ICO originally launched almost a decade before being spruced up whereas The Last Of Us was out for little more than a year.
Stefan shared his thoughts on the matter a few months ago, with his opinion being that we need a more universal approach:
Just the act of preserving our gaming history through remasters is inherently worthwhile, and shouldn’t really be restricted just to the games that are “good”. Of course, those will be on the frontline, and we’ve seen the vested interests of major companies playing out with remasters after just a year or two.
However, there’s also some rather exciting projects like the recent Mega Man Legacy Collection, with Digital Eclipse porting the games into the Eclipse Engine. This then acts as a middle ground for these games to be run on existing and future platforms with ease. The more games that are recreated in the Eclipse Engine, the more of our gaming history can be preserved for the ages and brought to new platforms in one fell swoop.
When it comes to remasters, there are no right and wrong answers. Even the ones that seem cobbled together and grasping are still enabling a sizeable part of the market to re/experience a catalogue of games they might otherwise pass on. For that reason alone, it’s hard to get mad whenever publishers give their old games a fresh lick of paint.
Tuffcub
The music industry has been remastering albums for years, the video game industry has just cottoned on to the idea recently.
tactical20
Not comparable. A remaster of an album is more like a GOTY edition. What’s happening with video games is like owning an album on CD, then having to buy it again if you want it on your iPod.
Starman
Agreed. Music remasters are usually at least 10 years old. Certainly not a year or two. Not the same thing. And you don’t need a remaster version of an old cd to play it on a new cd player.
MrYd
A GOTY edition of a game tends to come with the game and all the DLC that was previously released.
Remastered albums often have a lot more than that. You might get all the B-sides (for younger people, songs from albums were often released on small slabs of plastic with 1 or more extra songs that were too crap to go on the album. Or wouldn’t fit with the rest of the album despite being excellent songs. Depends on the band)
Or you might get a whole bunch of stuff nobody has heard before. Early demos of songs seemingly recorded on a wax cylinder in a train station.
The sound is sometimes better, and every now and then someone remasters an old album in 5.1 sound, which then just sounds weird.
And sometimes a whole series of albums get remastered until you’re about 20 years into the career of a band and the record company gets bored and the rest never appear.
In this weird analogy which I’ve obviously thought about too much… The DLC is like the b-sides you might get. The old demos found on a dusty tape in a cupboard are like vague ideas for some new levels they never got around to finishing. Better sound is like having a game run at 1080 instead of 720 or less. The rare 5.1 sound that really isn’t much of an improvement is like an old 30fps game suddenly running at 60fps and looking a bit odd.
I don’t think we’ve got enough evidence so far to see if a series of games gets remastered up to the point where they decide to stop without finishing all of them.
JR.
I don’t mind them. It’s great if you haven’t already played the game before and you don’t HAVE to buy them if you don’t want to.
I guess it comes down to quality. If it’s a quick cash in with minimal effort, I’ll avoid but if it looks noticeably improved and I really want to play it, I will. I’ll choose to play the best version available. For me it’s like buying a remastered, re-release of your favourite movie.
Plus, they usually come with all the dlc and extras thrown in which is another great reason to revisit them.
cam_manutd
Definitely a mixed bag. I think some games deserve a remaster if they didn’t sell by the bucketload or were constrained to a single platform that didn’t do the game justice.
Games like Final Fantasy 10, God Of War, Metal Gear Solid I have enjoyed immensely when replaying them. I have bought quite a few remasters as I never got round to playing the originals. The Jak trilogy, Resident Evil HD etc are genuinely worthwhile.
Now, I think we will see this trend evolve into ‘remakes’. I say that lightly because Gears Of War ultimate edition didn’t completely reinvent itself. Final Fantasy 7 is another where the direction could go in a completely different way.
Some of the HD remasters are super cynical. The prototype games, Sleeping Dogs (which I foolishly bought) did not present a big graphical remaster over the original.
Platform exclusive games being made available through remasters is an excellent feature of the remaster process. Xbox gamers got their hands on the majority of the MGS series while Playstation gamers now get to play one of the best maligned shooters in Metro 2033.
So, a mixed bag then in my opinion. There is genuine quality and need for remasters. The Uncharted collection looks to be another great collection with the addition of new game modes and trophies. The Halo collection was very ambitious for using last gen netcode. These examples are what future remasters should adhere to rather than being a HD’ify’ lick of polish.
Average or muddling games like Prototype or a game where not much has changed-Sleeping Dogs is bad practice. Remakes could be good if they update the original with modern controls. Imagine Goldeneye with modern precision controls or the original Red Faction?
How good would have Black been if it was in HD? Could Burnout 3 benefit with better traffic density and controls? The possibilities are endless. Hopefully we see more remasters that do more with the original game rather than chuck some polish at it.
JustTaylorNow
Each to their own.
Not all remastered are bad, if you look at exclusives games so far (gears, GoW3, UC collection, TLOU, MCC) these are wanted remastered, people would gladly replay these.
But then they are third parties remastered, that nobody wants like prototype, devil may cry, that 4 horseman game, nobody wants that. Before considering releasing a remaster, at least do a pole on the game, see how many are willing & want the game..
Give us Bioshock 1 & 3, keep 2!!!
Mick939
Im all for it. The uncharted re release makes me happy as hell id love an mgs4 remaster
cam_manutd
Now there is a game that should have been remastered before MGS5
tactical20
I wouldn’t care if there were loads of other new games available, but as it stands, remasters are just another reason why my love of gaming is gradually dying off this generation. My PS4 gets switched on once or twice a week, and that’s usually just for Netflix. Combined with a focus on ‘sharing’ and overpriced crappy Indie games, I find myself disliking Sony more and more as the months go by. I certainly haven’t spent anywhere near the kind of money I did during the PS3 life-cycle. Of course remasters wouldn’t be so prevalent if PS4 had backwards compatibility, like Xbox One, but instead Sony insult their customers by thinking it’s perfectly acceptable to ask people to re-buy games they already own. At least the remasters on PS3 were clearly upgraded. The ‘upgrade’ from PS3 to PS4 is minuscule compared to PS2 to PS3.
PKMaxxx
I’m not against the idea of remastering games with classic status. The problem is that plenty of companies seem to see this fad to rehash old assets and push remasters that nobody has asked for. Darksiders 2. Dishonoured. Enough already! I didn’t buy my new console to play improved versions of old games. If I’d wanted to do that I would have bought a PC…….
Starman
I don’t mind if it’s a true remaster such as Halo 2 or Gears Ultimate that I played years ago and am happy to go through a properly remastered version.
There should be some honestly though in calling a lot of these “remasters” what they really are which is ports. Upping the frame rate & resolution of a 1-2 yr old game doesn’t make it a remaster. It’s a lazy port. Musicians don’t re-release an album a year later and call it a remaster.
MrYd
GTA V was never called a remaster was it? It was just the PS4 version arrived a lot later, for whatever reason (fairly obvious they were just sat on it, not wanting to harm PS3 sales and waiting until enough PS4s had been sold).
TLoU is a good example of something that _was_ called a remaster but really wasn’t. It was just the PS4 version arriving late again.
And that Borderlands “pre-sequel” was another delayed PS4 version, but did come with a proper remaster of Borderlands 2 for free.
One of those I don’t have a problem with, one is a good example of lazy, greedy practices labelled as something they’re not, and one is how to almost do it properly (almost, because they missed out the original Borderlands).
Starman
I think devs & publishers weren’t expecting the new gen consoles to sell as quickly as they did, and knew their games would suffer because of it. Look at the sales for gran Turismo 6 vs 5. So we ended up with no F1 game for the first year, and the likes of Borderlands, GTA5 & others getting quickly ported/remastered over.
beeje13
Agree with the quick ports, they are definitely not and should not be classed remasters.
beeje13
“Remasters” are not all the same and should not regarded as such. Either way, developers/publishers can do what they want with their intellectual property, and the notion of which games ‘deserve’ remastering is purely subjective. If you don’t like, don’t even look twice, no one is being force fed these games and there are plenty of alternatives.
TSBonyman
I don’t mind, i only buy the ones i’m interested in and don’t begrudge people who never played them before having the opportunity to do so now.