In your opinion. the 3 most milked series/characters in gaming

[AC9breaker]

My nominations go to Tomb Raider series, Guitar Hero franchise, and the Sonic franchise. At the very least, games that usually have Mario, are for the most part, surprisingly fun.

[Kylie]

Any Capcom game gets extremely milked if it even does remotely well.

[Akaimizu]

Halo isn't even close to this milked contest. Considering they're pretty much on only 4 games, and the fifth is a Real time strategy game. One might say overrated, but milked, nope. Halo came at a good time. Might have made a lesser impression on the PC, but the timing was what made Halo when it came out. It presented storyline and characters that freely presented you with atmosphere and detail (plus events) while you were fighting. And not only was the fun enemy AI competing quite well with the current PC benchmark (Half-life 1), it had cool friendly AI fighting with you (something Half-life didn't address) making you feel like a strong participant in an ongoing war. Not to mention, the characters who spoke, delivered lines and actions, could be in different places, doing different things, while they did it, based on their supplemental actions in response to quickly changing combat situations. Half-life, on the other hand, had it's Disney Ride attraction aspect of *set pieces* that delivered your dialogue and story detail as you played, but always at that specific location, doing the exact thing, just waiting for a player to trigger a location to talk or move in a precise manner. I followed PC shooters at the time, so I do know that Halo did bring certain things that was more of an evolution than something completely new. However, if you didn't see things in the order it came out, it wouldn't seem as good. Still the changing situations, and harder difficulties forcing the player to make good use of friendly AI, which in turned forced the player to get better at being able to change their role of engagement at a moments notice (which was a big part of the skill involved) was an experience that was quite new at the time. (And somebody finally thought to allow folks to use the friggin' gun body to melee somebody instead of switching to a specific melee weapon to hit something) Nobody on the PC has been able to site what else did that at the precise time, and I didn't expect them to, because I also played those games. The sequels, like most sequels, they usually live off the success of the previous one, plus enough people liked the story setup to want to know what happens next.

It's no different than Elder Scrolls, in that regard. While the series was always ambitious, introducing it to the consoles (a medium in which such a game was not considered for) was likely the best move they could've made for the popularity. It seemed that market was ready and thirsting for such a game, and somebody finally took the risk and did it. Of course, the result was that the popularity of the game exploded. It went from a game with a small cult following to a big name. Goldeneye would be another big example. Even more so, outside of split-screen, and the concept of increasing multiplayer modes, it didn't offer as much depth of combat as the PC games did, but console players were obviously thirsty for such a popular PC medium, that it took off. (It also introduced the pleasure of rumble feedback for weapons fire and the tactile recognition of being hit using the rumble). Still, never underestimate the power of bringing some PC sophistication to the consoles, and do it in an accessible manner. Halo is just 1 of those games that got popular by such a move. There are others who cemented themselves based on that aspect. You couldn't have Animal crossing without the Sims. Do something to make it more accessible, put it on consoles. Wallah!

Still, I'm a bit surprised nobody mentioned multiple Capcom releases over some of these (until the last post). If Street Fighter hasn't been considered milked, I don't know what to say. They even beat any single SNK franchise for how much the milked it. Not to mention, I wouldn't even go into details for how much even the same exact Street Fighter game has been milked with multiple console releases, and multiple revisions of said game. I'm not even talking just how many Street Fighter 2s or Alphas (with different numbers or words like Gold) there are. You could count the milking just on how many Street Fighter Alpha 3s (actual revisions of it, not just ports) are available.

You have Resident Evil actually try to climb up the milking ladder. It's just too young to compete with the Street Fighter milking. But they're doing their job of making re-releases and revisions of the same exact Resident Evil game on top of sequels and side-stories.

Third, I'd have to say Tetris. Yep it's definitely a puzzle game, and while many have been milked to high heaven, most are still too young to compete with the milking of the Tetris. The game was around before it was on a Nintendo system. However, the versions and revisions of the game still haunt us to this day. I expect more to come in the future. They even milked a Tetris to releases which offers absolutely no new twist or game mode to the game, but allows you to collect stuff from it that adds to something not in the game. Like a screensaver or something.

I guess, for me, I tend to use milk to mean how much money does a company continually try to gain from the same games, not so much as a measure of whether the release loses appeal. Madden could fit the list, but I'd rather not do sports games as the same level of milking is almost expected of all successful sports games, these days.

[DreXxiN]

Fucking Cloud
Fucking Sephiroth

Fucking Cloud
Fucking Sephiroth

Fucking Cloud
Fucking Sephiroth

Fucking Cloud
Fucking Sephiroth


Now, this may sound more like OVERRATED, than milked, but the extreme amount of fanfic's and crappy spinoffs that have come out of FF7, in my opinion, makes it the most unreasonably milked game.

[Akaimizu]

Don't worry. FF7 will get there eventually. We haven't seen the last of FF7. More of it is practically inevitable.

[Tetsaru]

Mario, Sonic, and Final Fantasy, hands down. They're all icons of their respective companies, and were critical to their success.

I know New Super Mario Bros. Wii is coming out next month, and Super Mario Galaxy was a big success (with a sequel supposed to come out next year), but let's face it - there's been too many Mario Party/Kart/sports/Olympics games in comparison to actual PLATFORMER games lately, and many of the games that ARE platformers are on handheld consoles and/or are re-releases of old games. The fact that Nintendo went with the whole "flailing your arms around with motion controls is more fun than the tried-and-true methods of gaming that WORK" route with the Wii, instead of keeping up with online trends and hardware upgrades that Sony and Microsoft did, also didn't help much in promoting "good ol' Mario games," seeing how their more hardcore gamer audience was abandoned for people who have never picked up a video game in their life and play Wii Bowling because it helps combat their arthritis in their old age... >_>;;; It's cool to hear that video games can do that nowadays, but DUH, that's simply NOT the demographic to cater to.

As for Sonic... oh geez, here we go again. You started out strong, then you fucked up somewhere down the line, and now you just keep getting worse by throwing in random shit you don't need... what else can I say? Sonic just needs to be put back in his original environment (I'd kill to see a game similar to Sonic 3 + Knuckles, but NEW, on PSN/Xbox Live/Virtual Arcade, etc., similar to how Capcom released Megaman 9) or else let him die off. Giving him swords and putting him in racing/sports games, as mentioned above with Mario, just isn't going to cut it - that just turns into more shovelware no one wants to buy, save for some overprotective mother who doesn't know shit about video games, and buys it for her kid because "it looks cute." I see it happen ALL THE TIME. Read up on these things, people... -_-X

And yes, Final Fantasy is Square-Enix's cash cow, but it's not their only series (Dragonquest, Chrono Trigger/Cross, Xenogears/saga, Star Ocean, Brave Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve); and come on - any series that can stand up to the likes of Mario and Sonic in terms of longevity deserves some credit. Also, keep in mind that, although each Final Fantasy game shares common themes with each other, their storylines are mostly independent from each other - not like how Mario's always trying to save Peach from Bowser, or how Sonic's always trying to keep Eggman from taking over the world with his robots. YES, FF7 is whored out like crazy (the original was a great game, it's only natural that they tried to expand upon it), and YES, there are bad Final Fantasy games (FF8, FF10-2, and Dirge of Cerberus for me), but they've always found ways to impress me, and I can't wait to see how FF13 and FF14 turn out next year.

[DreXxiN]

I actually thought FF7 was the worst FF..Please don't kill me.

(Albeit of course when it came out in 1997 it was fucking AMAZING.)

But yeah, Mario has dragged out too long as well..

Sonic being dragged out wouldn't bother me too much...if it wasn't done in all the wrong ways.

[Randomness]

The problem I have with calling FF milked is mostly that its FFVII that's been milked to death. Well, some of the rest of the series too, I guess...

I'd say sports games for sure. New version every year=silly, especially just for updated rosters.

Mario... well, most recognizable gaming character ever, probably. And a shitload of games. Yeah, plenty of milking going on. The most common spinoff is RPGs, and those have all been decent. But milked... well, inevitable.

Sonic... can't QUITE call it milked because the volume of releases isn't as high as others. On the other hand... quality is somewhat lower. Mario and FF do tend to be solid games.

Truthfully, its more a list of major franchises than massive milking.

New topic:Milked series that aren't 15+ years old.

[DreXxiN]

New topic:Milked series that aren't 15+ years old.

That comes without question:Halo.

[BIG OLAF]

That comes without question:Halo.

As I stated. Thank you for agreeing. As for the question "milked" vs "overrated", Halo is still being "milked". If Bungie just stuck to halo being a game series, it wouldn't be so bad. But, come on. Novels, comic books, Halloween costumes, it's own friggin cartoon (soon), and (last but not least) Halo Waypoint, the new Halo-themed segment in the Xbox 360 dashboard, just to try and shove Halo down people who may not like it's (like me) throat.