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CARRiON

Games that failed the jump to 3D

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As not to go wildly off-topic in the Sonic thread, what other games started out in the 2D space and failed to make the jump to the 3D space have you played? How bad was it? Or maybe (rarely?) it's flipped and a 3D game tries to have a 2D entry in the series that fails?

I remember being a fan of the classic Earthworm Jim games on my first PC way back, so when my dad "acquired" a copy of Earthworm Jim 3D I was ecstatic, only to find the camera to be extremely awful and the controls to be janky as hell. Plus it was just really ugly. RIP Earthworm Jim.

I know Jazz Jackrabbit 3 was going to be 3D, but it got canned. Probably a blessing is disguise eh?

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Castlevania had some pretty unplayable 3D iterations if I recall correctly. Pretty much nothing like the oldschool Vania games.

Busby was never really that good, but Bubsy 3D was obviously the final blow for that franchise. It's one of the ugliest games I've ever seen.

Very few people seem to agree with this, but personally, the 2D Zelda games hold my attention far better than the 3D ones across the board.

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Its hard to say. I generally consider fps games on console to be a chore to play. So, I would have to say the metroid prime series. While you can get used to playing them on a console, they still don't match up to the 2d games in terms of how they handle. A mouse and bigger FOV would change all of that.

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Yeah, those 3D Castlevanias are a disgrace.. I wouldn't say unplayable, but they've all had serious problems.
Castlevania 64 had framerate and camera issues and the PS2 games had downright boring level design.

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It'd be better if there were less 3D games, and less constant remakes for HD "improvement" or whatever. They even tried to make Nethack into 3D, but it turned out all retarded. They just didn't get that it's all about gameplay, the graphics don't mean shit (in fact, plain ASCII works just fine for that, but simple tiles work ok too).

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Stronghold, a medieval RTS series
The first 2 games were amazing. Every other game after that was awful. They came back to the 2nd game in the series and made an expansion pack that was even worse than any of the 3D sequels, which is pretty hard to do. But they found a way.

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Castlevania obviously, CV64 was a total disaster, not to mention it's near impossible to complete, see the AVGN episode 81 and you'll see.
Also Bubsy 3D, it doesn't make any sense, it's weird and awful.
Also Sonic '06, awful game, extremely difficult and boring as shit.

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arguably the Worms series? i don't know how well the games was received, but Armageddon seemed to play a lot better than Worms 3D and Worms 4 Mayhem did. although Worms Reloaded and Open Warfare 2 were 2D games as well, and they had pretty terrible, slippery physics IMO.

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How about Duke Nukem?
Started out as 2D and it was fun.
Went 2.5D and it was even more fun.
Went 3D and it went bad.

And maybe Blood?

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Voros said:

How about Duke Nukem?
Started out as 2D and it was fun.
Went 2.5D and it was even more fun.
Went 3D and it went bad.


Duke is actually a great example, as I found none of his actual 3D games fun.

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Shinobi, Castlevainia as stated, The 3d Street fighters, the 3d mortal kombats(when I say 3d I mean mechanics), For me personally lagacy of kain, should have stayed a super bram stoker zelda game as it was. I'm having a hard time thinking of more that have failed.

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Voros said:

How about Duke Nukem?
Started out as 2D and it was fun.
Went 2.5D and it was even more fun.
Went 3D and it went bad.

And maybe Blood?

What?
Are you kiddin' me?
Duke3D was great back then and still is today, it's a lot of fun and same can be said about Blood.

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^what came after Duke3D(which is 2.5D btw)?
And what came after Blood?

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Voros said:

^what came after Duke3D(which is 2.5D btw)?
And what came after Blood?


Duke Nukem Forever
Blood 2

Both being terrible, actual 3D sequels

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One Must Fall 2097 on DOS was a great 2D fighting game, it still has a tiny following.

One Must Fall: Battlegrounds in 2003 totally bombed. I was a fanboy during its development and was a beta tester. The development team was pretty small and IMO were a little too ambitious. I still like both games though, and the memories they bring.

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Flashback. As a sequel, Fade To Black was neither necessary nor any bloody good.

I could also argue Syndicate, but that's another topic entirely ...

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Viscra Maelstrom said:

arguably the Worms series? i don't know how well the games was received, but Armageddon seemed to play a lot better than Worms 3D and Worms 4 Mayhem did. although Worms Reloaded and Open Warfare 2 were 2D games as well, and they had pretty terrible, slippery physics IMO.

I actually enjoyed Worms 3D/4 more than classic 2D ones.

Imo, Mortal Kombat failed to jump to 3D, at first. MK3 was in 2D and was great, but the following MK4 was in 3D and was crappy, and all the following games before the remake were real shitty. The remake changed the situation, however.

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I only like the MK games that have a wide range of characters.

The new ones have that mostly, but UMK3 was plain awesome.

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Agreed, Earthworm Jim 3D was HORRID.

I also preferred Heroes of Might And Magic as a 2D game...the 3D graphics made the game shit.

fraggle said:

Super Mario Bros.

Fight me.

TraceOfSpades ground pounds Fraggle!

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Warcraft (3).

SimCity (4).

For the purposes of this topic, it's obvious that 2.5D games should be considered 3D, not 2D. Anything that uses vector-based graphics to achieve a 3D-like effect should be considered a 3D game.

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Most of the games that wer 2D or 2.5D failed to Jump to 3D. Because they forced most of those games to be 3D. We should not forget that it was trendy from 1996-2001 to make your 2D game into a "3D WORLD FULLY RENDERED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOW 3D!!!"
Plus the Tech was still new and not a lot of experience.

Like i said in the Sonic post, MK series is a fine example. MK4 was crappy and to make thing worst the Home version were so butchered...

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AndrewB said:

For the purposes of this topic, it's obvious that 2.5D games should be considered 3D, not 2D. Anything that uses vector-based graphics to achieve a 3D-like effect should be considered a 3D game.

Visually it looks 3D, it feels 3D, but it's an illusion.
It's really 2D, and that is the fact.

2.5D should be considered as its own compared to 2D and 3D.

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I don't really get the hate for Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. The combat was smooth, the music was great, and everything about it just had a fantastic look and feel to it. The dialogue was laughably bad, though.

I'LL KILL YOU AND THE NIGHT!!!

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Voros said:

Visually it looks 3D, it feels 3D, but it's an illusion.
It's really 2D, and that is the fact.


The exact same thing can be said about "true 3D" games such as Quake. They're nothing more than a collection of 2D polygons that are contorted and distorted to fit onto a 2D pixellated surface. By your logic, literally every video game ever made that I can think of is 2D.

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Yeah, I agree with AndrewB - If it has an X, Y and Z axis, it's a 3D world. Doom's engine was 2.5D from a technical standpoint, but the world itself has 3 dimensions.

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Voros said:

^what came after Duke3D(which is 2.5D btw)?


After Duke3D, there was Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, which wasn't bad at all.
Is it different? Yes. Is it a Tomb Raider ripoff? Maybe. But it's not a bad game.

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AndrewB said:

Warcraft (3).

SimCity (4).

Warcraft 3 is an almost perfect example of a game going 3d and succeeding in almost every metric. How did it fail?

Simcity 4 though, while a great game imo, it certainly has more than it's fair share of issues.

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