7 Video Game Series That Lost Their Way & Need the RE2 Treatment

Video Game Series That Need the Resident Evil 2 Treatment

Silent Hill

Silent Hill is the probably the most obvious franchise that would use the Resident Evil 2 treatment. Silent Hill and Resident Evil are both popular horror series that veered more towards action as they went on, and many believe they both lost what made them great.

Whether it’s a remake of one of the first two games or a new game entirely, a fresh coat of paint and a back-to-basics design could go a long way for enhancing Silent Hill’s iconic brand of unsettling horror and making it accessible to newcomers.

With improved graphics, better voice acting and revamped controls and combat, Silent Hill could once again become a gem of the horror genre. The dark environments, disturbing psychological horror and creative enemy designs are there, they just need modernization.

Hopefully one day we will have a Silent Hill 2 Remake we are as confident to recommend as we are for Resident Evil 2 Remake. With Kojima’s Silent Hills crashing and burning, this franchise, and Konami in general, needs a win badly. We want to believe.

Video Game Series That Need the Resident Evil 2 Treatment

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

In an alternate timeline, 2015’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 might have been the nostalgic resurgence of this beloved series on modern consoles, complete with all the fun and attitude we would expect from that. Sadly, this wasn’t the case.

Pro Skater 5 is about as opposite as you can get to the Resident Evil 2 Remake. Whereas RE2 Remake is a polished love letter to its original game, Pro Skater 5 is the definition of a cheap cash grab, riddled with technical problems, bland levels and barely improved visuals.

However, if the build-up to Pro Skater 5 told us anything, it’s that fans are eager to relive the glory days of Tony Hawk. If Activision makes an earnest and well-polished revival of Tony Hawk, nostalgia will likely do the rest for them just as it did with the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

The game doesn’t even need to be that complicated. If you give fans a decent looking, purely skating game with an awesome soundtrack full of 90s punk, we are all going to eat it up. We are ready.

Video Game Series That Need the Resident Evil 2 Treatment

Star Fox

Star Fox has had a strange history. While Star Fox 64 was a massive hit that influenced future 3D games, the series has lived in its shadow ever since. The Wii U’s Star Fox Zero looked to be the series comeback but was marred with technical problems and frustrating controls.

In between these games, Star Fox took detours away from its traditional Arwing combat in favor of on-foot gameplay, most notably in Star Fox Adventures which is basically a Zelda game with a Star Fox skin.

For Star Fox to have a future, I see two possible paths. Option one: Go back to the simple ship combat of the original games but with an overhauled art style and control scheme and a big focus on making an arcade-like experience with lots of replayability.

Option two: Take Star Fox into the open world, or galaxy. Reinvent Star Fox as a modern action RPG with room to explore, both on and off the ship, all while maintaining the delightful corniness and charm of Fox and his gang.

This is ultimately the decision of whether to treat Star Fox like the Crash N.Sane Trilogy or Resident Evil 2 Remake. It’s clear Star Fox has a old-school charm about it, now the question is how far does Nintendo need to go to make that charm successful in the current generation?

Video Game Series That Need the Resident Evil 2 Treatment

Banjo Kazooie

Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie are two of the most beloved games of the Nintendo 64, standing proud with Super Mario 64 as some of the most well-remembered 3D platfomers ever. However, with the divisive Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts and the general decline of the genre, Banjo has been quiet for some time.

In 2017, Playtonic Games released a Banjo spiritual successor called Yooka Laylee, and while the game isn’t bad, it wasn’t the sort of modern take on the series that many fans desired. Archaic gameplay decisions, repetitive designs and an unruly camera were just some of what held Yooka Laylee back from greatness.

However, Yooka Laylee’s Kickstarter as well as the desperate pleas for Banjo in Smash Bros. show us that there is a demand. While 3D platformers aren’t the powerhouses they once were, games like Super Mario Odyssey, A Hat in Time, Snake Pass and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy show there is still a place for them.

We need a Banjo reboot with stunning graphics that let us see the intricacies of Banjo’s fur but will also hit us with the iconic “Guh-huh!” so that we get instantly transported back to our childhood again.

If a remake/reboot of Banjo that gives us the music, writing and overall charm we remember from the 90s with the tight platforming and level design we expect from modern Nintendo games, it could sell very well. Easier said that done, obviously, but we can dream.

Video Game Series That Need the Resident Evil 2 Treatment

Fable

The Fable franchise has been a tortured one as of late, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. The first three Fable games were received at various levels of good to great, and the series seemed like it would likely remain a staple for Microsoft. Then came Fable Legends.

Fable Legends was a multiplayer game set in the Fable world, announced in 2013 but then cancelled in 2016, alongside the news that Fable developer Lionhead Studios was closing down. Now, nine years after Fable III, we still haven’t seen a new mainline Fable game or any official news.

However, early last year it was reported by Eurogamer that a new Fable was in development by Forza Horizon developer Playground Games. A fresh team working on their first open world RPG could be a great fit for a revitalized Fable to release and stand out in the current market.

While Fable’s witty British humor, life sim elements, morality systems and branching combat options will carry over well, there are a number of elements of the games that haven’t aged the best over the decade. Most importantly, the combat will need to be tighter than its predecessors in order to establish itself like RE2 did.

Whoever is developing the next Fable will need to the take the soul of what makes the series unique while also transitioning into a tighter gameplay system and a more modern quest structure. We want to see a Fable free of fetch quests, and with a world that feels rewarding to interact with.

Video Game Series That Need the Resident Evil 2 Treatment

Onimusha

With Onimusha: Warlord’s recent HD remaster for Xbox One, PS4, Switch and PC, there is more attention than there has been in a long time on the Onimusha name, which was largely a distant PS2 memory. Through this remaster we have learned that Onimusha doesn’t really hold up in 2019, but it could.

Similar to Resident Evil 2, there is a good game hiding within Onimusha’s outdated controls, strange puzzles and just plain bad voice acting. Despite all of these problems, Onimusha still has a fun, if simple premise and is generally an enjoyable experience and a great piece of video game history.

With Capcom receiving praise for translating Resident Evil 2 to the modern era, its hard not to think about Onimusha, which released only three years after RE2, getting a similar treatment.

An Onimusha remake or sequel with the same level of tweaking and modernizing that Capcom put into Resident Evil 2 could bring the series back to its peak in the early 2000s. While the remaster is great, we want to see what this series could look like with the full remake treatment.

For more on the Onimusha: Warlords remaster, check out our review.

Video Game Series That Need the Resident Evil 2 Treatment

Dino Crisis

Let’s stick with Capcom and swing for the fences. Dino Crisis has always been seen as Resident Evil’s campy and cheesy sister series, but it was a ton of fun and was actually surprisingly successful. I mean, who doesn’t like dinosaurs?

After the first game, Dino Crisis sort of went off the rails with Dino Crisis 2 changing into an arcade-y action game and Dino Crisis 3, for some reason, going into space. Space dinosaurs might sound cool, but the end result was the effective death of the series.

Seeing as the original game was developed by the same team that made Resident Evil and it plays remarkably similar, a remake in the style of Resident Evil 2 makes sense. A survival horror game that plays like the RE2 Remake with the added layer of campy dialogue and deadly dinosaurs sounds like a treat.

Also, with the popularity of the recent Jurassic World movies, we might be in a prime market for a wild dinosaur horror game. Similar to RE2, Dino Crisis would be an awesome nostalgia trip and a way of preserving a fun piece of gaming history and introducing it to young gamers who might have never heard of it.

What games do you want to see get the Resident Evil 2 treatment? Let us know in the comments and be sure to check out our Resident Evil 2 Remake review.