1) Grand Theft Auto
C'mon now, you must've known this was coming. Rockstar Games basically invented the "sandbox" style of video games with their classic series of crime thrillers, but the one aspect that's always been missing is a Liberty City teeming with actual players.
The formula seems so simple to me. Players start off running petty missions for local thugs, before eventually earning a spot in one of the game's many crime syndicates, all entirely run by fellow players. Maybe you'll be able to prove yourself as the best wheelman in town, a skilled assassin, or even a business genius who knows the right way to unload some illicit cargo. The only barrier to success is your own criminal cunning. Make the right friends and you could earn yourself a major role in the operations, or even become head of the family. Screw up enough missions, or make the wrong enemies, and you may find a player has put a hit out on your head.
Honestly though, the best aspect of GTA Online is going to be seeing exactly how society functions when everybody is a potential car-jacker. I can just picture thousands of vehicles being driven by sociopathic career criminals, unable to turn a corner without seeing cars leaping from buildings or slamming into pedestrians, with massive city-wide gunfights leaving the streets painted in cartoonish amounts of blood…
Sounds like my kind of city.
2) Pokemon
It's kind of a shame that Pokemon series has wasted all of its time on crafting ever stupider-looking creatures over the years (I swear, more than half of them look like retarded beaver-dogs now) instead of fixing up the mindlessly boring combat and tired random battles. Thing is, it doesn't really matter, because the core gameplay is still addictive as hell. Capture animals, force them to fight, eventually training them to the point where they can stand toe-to-toe with the game's various demi-gods.
Seriously, Celebi is the goddess of time or something, yet you can still enslave her and make her fight for you? This series is weird.
The thing is that for a franchise so focused on themes of friendship, it's baffling that you can really only engage with people within the Pokemon Center's limited online options. Sure, being able to trade and battle monsters with dudes in Japan is pretty cool, but I'd much rather have a buddy to tag along on my adventure. Heck, if there was a real Pokemon MMO, maybe we could do more than just level our guys and try to take down the Elite Four or the Super Nine or the Majestic Twelve or whomever. Think about how awesome it'd be to establish your own gym and take on challengers, or become reigning arena champion and fend off any who would challenge your dominance.
Screw these jerks. I'm starting my own Elite Four
The real problem with a Pokemon MMO is that once released, it essentially becomes the definitive Pokemon product, which would make it hard for Nintendo to continue remaking the same game, then selling two barely dissimilar versions of it to stupid kids. Additionally, Pokemon's target age-group (see: six-year-olds) aren't exactly known for their love of micro-transactions or subscription plans, and you can imagine more than a few parental eyebrows would be raised when kids around the country are asking mom and dad for their credit card number.
Seems like a Pokemon MMO is definitely a pipedream. Still, could Nintendo make an effort to balance the encounter rate? I'd love to walk through a cave without having to fight 5,000 Geodudes.
3) Monster Hunter
The real tragedy of the Monster Hunter series is how few American gamers have actually played it. Problem is that the game first found success on the PSP, a console which didn't experience stellar sales in America, a huge problem given that the ad-hoc multiplayer requires players to be within shouting distance of each other. Trying to convince three friends to buy a badly-supported portable console along with a weird $40 Japanese game they've never heard of? Good luck.
The game is also beloved by fans of the panty shot, as evidenced by this Japanese fansite
Truth is that what the Monster Hunter series has always needed is true online play. Though Monster Hunter 3 for the Nintendo Wii almost made this happen, the underpowered console just wasn't the right fit for the game, which begs for fewer loading screens, minor enemies which actually render on everybody's screen (your teammates spent a lot of time fighting invisible foes), and some decent voice chat (does anyone actually own a Wii Speak?).
Since players share three lives amongst themselves before failure. Being unable to tell your idiot friends to run away from the fireball kind of ruins the game.
Monster Hunter is dying to be made into a real MMO, especially since the game features no actual leveling, with all character progression related to the looting of monster parts, which can be forged into new equipment. As much fun as it is to fight the same monster fifty times hoping that it'll drop a Pale Spleen (0.01% drop rate), the game really needs a bustling city hub, where players can actually trade items with each other. And instead of spending an hour inputting friend codes or constantly swapping into ridiculous four-player sized servers, I'd love to be able to simply pop into town and find some bros who want to kill dragons.
What sucks is that there actually was a Monster Hunter MMO in Japan, known as Monster Hunter Frontier. The game was even ported to the Xbox 360, yet there are still no plans to bring it stateside. Also, it seems that future Monster Hunter titles may be stuck on the similarly underpowered Nintendo 3DS?
Artist rendition of how to play without the optional Circle Pad Pro ("only" $20!)
Sigh…
4) Red Dead Redemption
For me, Red Dead Redemption is the game that proved Rockstar Games was more than a one trick pony. In the years following the success of Grand Theft Auto III, the company's other wares seemed far too similar to their flagship title, either more car driving (Midnight Club), hyper-violence (Manhunt) or less ambitious versions of the sandbox experience (Bully, The Warriors).
It's kind of like GTA with a b-movie license…
That's why I was blown away upon seeing that Red Dead Redemption was more than Grand Theft Auto with cowboy hats. Instead, Rockstar had taken a largely forgettable PS2-era action franchise and used it as the basis for a true Western epic. Though the game retained some of that textbook Rockstar humor, it was definitely a much more mature outing than their other titles, and it was awesome to see an cowboy game able to sell amongst a sea of Modern Warfare clones and tired RPG epics.
Really I just want to buy a variety of attractive cowboy hats for my character…
Point is that the MMO genre is similarly littered with games that all seem based in tired genres: fantasy, science-fiction, superheroes, etc. Red Dead Redemption proved that cowboy games work, and while every developer fights over who has the best spaceflight mechanics, I'd much rather be riding my trusty horse through the Old West. It would be truly awesome to be able to put together your own posse of bandits or lawmen, even taking out bounties on truly despised rivals. Here's hoping Rockstar sees the potential of RDR Online so we can start saddling up!
5) Borderlands
Me and my old roommate once shared an apartment in South Central Los Angeles, more commonly known as "the Ghetto." Given our financial situation, we couldn't afford many luxuries, so though we were both huge fans of Borderlands, trying to play co-op on our cramped standard definition television was not the multiplayer experience of a lifetime.
Now obviously Borderlands is made more enjoyable when one can buddy up with friends online, though even with Borderlands 2 on the way, the number of co-op players is capped at 4. As much fun as this is, populating the world of Pandora with other teams of battle-hardened warriors would be awesome, especially given the game's already thrilling arena combat. The game already has most of the elements of an MMO to begin with: helpful NPCs doling out various quests, monstrous bosses waiting for the right raiding party to take them down. It seems that the only barrier is the technology, and we're hoping that Gearbox figures out how to deliver the full massive multiplayer experience in time for Borderlands 3.
After all, the best part of Borderlands is showing off your ridiculous arsenal of guns. When I'm picking off Skaags from a mile away with my x4 Radiation-inducing Hyperion sniper rifle (with regenerating bullets and hyper-accurate zoom), I want more people than my crappy roommate to know about it.
MMORPGs have been around for quite awhile now, though recently it seems that plenty of developers have been rushing to jump on the profit train, spurned on by the growing popularity of the Free-to-Play (F2P) model, as well as the success of franchise-inspired titles like DC Universe Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Personally, I'm extremely excited that Sega is finally pushing out a true sequel to Phantasy Star Online (playable on the PS Vita and Android phones no less), and the recent announcement of a planned Elder Scrolls MMO has set the series' fanboys into spastic fits of jubilation. Seriously, if there's an Elder Scrolls fan in your house, you'd do well to read up on what to do in case of a seizure (keep a wallet handy).
Anyhow, though there are countless MMOs out there already, it seems like there's always room for more. That's why I'm taking a look at five gaming franchises ripe for the treatment. Do you agree with these picks?
