Alive and Re:Kicking

When it comes to the announcement of video games, nothing kicks the hornet’s nest quite like the words reboot and re-imagining. These words, accompanied by a new developer and art direction will, more often than not, send long time fans of a franchise into a bile riddled frenzy, spouting unwarranted hate at the new development team, calling for boycotts and drumming up ridiculous petitions. Thankfully this attitude doesn’t last forever, as people learn to love something old, in a new way, all over again.

It’s the constant use of “re” as a prefix that allows developers to delve into a long forgotten, and much revered, back catalogue of games for both inspiration and shameless plugs. For the most part, these franchises have grown stale, recent sequels have been lacklustre and the IP is in dire need of more than a lick of paint if they are to succeed in today’s competitive market.

Many of these titles wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in today’s retail market, never mind a current digital one, so there’s a real need to take the property in a new direction and breathe life into a near-dead, but much loved franchise, if they are to make a triumphant return.

With that in mind, we’ll be taking the rose-tinted glasses of subjectivity off to bring you a series of articles that will delve into what made the original titles so interesting and what a reboot means for the series. All change can’t be bad, right?

Our first piece will be coming at you later today, when we take a look at the classic Syndicate and how Starbreeze has brought corporate warfare into the high-definition era of gaming.