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Top Ten Video Game Resurrections

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This upcoming weekend is more than just a well deserved break and an excuse to eat more fish than usual! There’s a few religious conotations attached to it as well, dealing with a super-saviour showing the Romans who the real Israeli Wolverine was! Romanes eunt domus! So in keeping with that theme, we’re taking a look at several video games which also managed to come back from the dead.

Tomb Raider

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Let’s face the facts: Lara had become a joke. Between new iterations of the game that just kept on devolving into a parody of big-breasted physics to Angelina Jolie ruining the franchise with two terrible films, it was high time that Ms Croft got a chance to reinvent herself.

And that’s just what we got this year, with the latest remake. Sure, she may spend way too much time falling off of everything, but the latest Tomb Raider is more than just a back to basics approach. It’s a game that actually makes you care about Lara Croft again.

Splatterhouse

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You want to know how hard the original Splatterhouse games were? They were so damn difficult that it had to ship with a label warning you not to play it if you were a pussy.

Splatterhouse was so damn difficult that it would murder anyone sitting next to you, just to teach you a lesson. That game hated you so much, that it would put decapitated horse heads next to you while you slept.

And that’s a tradition that the remake kept firm and intact, back in 2010. And with a bitching thrash metal soundtrack to boot.

Duck Tales

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You want to know how excited I am for this remake? I’m staking my reputation that the remastered version is going to be as majestic as the magnificent Space Duck! It’s a game that was impossible not to love back in the day, and provided that Quackcom doesn’t cock up the basics for the remake, should be alive and well on downloadable platforms later this year.

There’s no way that this can fail. What could possibly go wrong?

SimCity

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Yes, we know that you’re upset that your single-player game is slapped with “it’s not DRM, it’s MMO stuffz” by EA, but you’ve got to admit: When you do get the game running, it’s a work of art.

Controlling the minute details of a city is the kind of game that will appeal to anyone with OCD, while the more sadistic personalities amongst you will have a chance to build a nuclear power plant on top of a school and hope for mutations.

Yeeeesss, I am your god now, SimCity…

Mortal Kombat

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Two years old and still going strong, the latest Mortal Kombat was a game that fighting fans had been asking for, before it arrived to rip their spines out and decapitate them.

Mortal Kombat was bloodier than a dinner party where I served Mexican food, and twice as brutal. And it wouldn’t have even been possible without a certain other game Lazarusising itself back from the dead, that went by the name of…

Street Fighter IV

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2008 was a crap time to be a fan of games where your fists spoke first and spin-kicks were considered to be valid rebuttals. Fighting game fans had to be content with lacklustre anime fighting game adaptations and annual 2D brawlers until then, with nary a Tekken or Dead or Alive in sight.

And then Street Fighter IV arrived, launching pound cakes into the collective faces of gamers. It wasn’t just a nostalgic blast from past. It was a benchmark setting tour de force that kicked off a new arms race in the fighting game genre, as developers realised that people were more than ready to shell out some cash for a genre that they had never stopped stalking or calling at three in the morning.

Not that I did anything like that.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

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So here’s the funny thing. XCOM was due for a refresh, which would have arrived last year in the form of an alien-busting FPS game.

Needless to say, the market that the game was aimed at, was about as interested in that game as the DA is in allowing people the constitutional right to get absolutely hammered on a Sunday.

So while that game went through delays, scraps and general dickery, another XCOM game got the green light. The idea was simple. Make a game that would fill the gap until the XCOM FPS could be finished, and do it in a manner that would make the fans happy.

And did it work? Buddy, it sold a little too damn well and received near-universal praise. Tactical, lengthy, engaging and absolutely heart-breaking when you lost a soldier, it was the XCOM game that should have been made in the first place.

And with an iOS version on the way, an even larger audience is going to get a slice of some extra-terrestrial busting action.

RayMan Origins

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RayMan is a great franchise. It’s also a franchise that has been overshadowed in recent years, by those damn Rabbids, who look more like hairy toes with eyes than credible villains.

But when Ubisoft finally did commit some resources to a proper RayMan game, the result was one underrated platformer that was simply sublime in its execution.

Of course, a port was on the way for the Wii U, before Ubisoft deci
ded to delay things a bit for the artier RayMan game to play catch-up on other platforms. And despite the fury that followed from all the tens of Nintendo fans that were looking forward to the game, you can bet your rabbids they’ll still want the game when it arrives.

Because everyone loves Rayman.

Sam and Max

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If you never grew up with games that arrived on roughly several dozen stiffy disks, then chances are that you missed out on the early days of the Point ‘n click phase that the industry went through.

Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Broken Sword…These were just a few of the hit games in that genre back then. But the adventures of Sam & Max? Man, those were the manic days. They had their moment in the spotlight, and much like many other LucasArts games that were actually decent, faded into obscurity.

Until Telltale Games brought them back that is. Bigger, crazier and armed with actual voices, the two seasons of eipsodic games that were made kept the spirit of Sam & Max intact, while making for a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

Deus Ex Human Revolution

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We’ve mentioned before how Deus Ex Human Revolution is a flawed masterpiece, but as a canonical entry into the franchise, it is superb.

Those rich Renaissance influences, that magnificent soundtrack, those memes about asking for things and getting something else. It’s hard to not appreciate just how well the core product is, even if you did have to endure boss fights where channelling praxis points into hacking left you pretty much underpowered.

But hey, at least you hacked Barrett’s PC and spread nasty Facebook rumours about him before he offed you, right?

And it’s totally better than that Dues Ex Human Resources game.

Last Updated: March 29, 2013

30 Comments

  1. Sorry, I’m unable to agree that Simcity deserves a mention in this article.

    Reply

    • Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

      March 29, 2013 at 17:13

      lol, yeah, SimCity sticks out like a sore thumb. And it reminds me of this old Sesame Street classic. Sing along with me Wyzak.

      Reply

    • Jonah Cash

      March 30, 2013 at 17:02

      They should do Simfarm again, and make it that you don’t just make money with strawberry fields…. I currently have about 30 fields, no more space left…

      Reply

      • Oldgamesrule

        April 3, 2013 at 22:11

        Try oranges. The’re not in the default crop list but google can tell you how to add it. MUCH less work and can sell for as high as 45000 per harvest.

        Reply

        • Jonah Cash

          April 4, 2013 at 07:53

          Awesome!! Will search for it, thanks man!!

          Reply

    • Sean Carbutt

      April 1, 2013 at 12:14

      Playing Sim City is like kissing your sister, you know you enjoyed it, but you can’t tell anybody about it.
      The only 2 I agree with are Deus and Xcom

      Reply

      • Purple_Dragon

        April 1, 2013 at 18:04

        You like kissing your sister?

        Reply

  2. Jonah Cash

    March 29, 2013 at 19:14

    Hahahaha you know Full Throttle? Played it through two times last year, and probably at least once a year since 2000… I love that game, great story and you needed to think a little bit as well!! So angry that number 2 never saw the light of day, but it does give number one a hero status among my games that is reserved for only the absolute beauties out there…

    Reply

    • Andre116

      March 30, 2013 at 08:25

      I probably have not played that game in 10 years. For some reason the intro still sticks with me. ” When I think of Maureen, I think of two things: asphalt and trouble”. Great game!

      Reply

      • Jonah Cash

        March 30, 2013 at 17:00

        It is actually abandon ware now, you can find it over at “Classic gaming network”. They have a couple of great games which I have given new homes and made them less abandoned… I also have Simfarm, which is not always online… I have more strawberry fields than the town have street corners…

        Reply

        • Lupus

          March 30, 2013 at 23:05

          Then kicks in the Gone Jackals – Legacy song :-). Loved that game, played it 5 years ago again and clocked it in less then a day though. Once you know what you are doing it’s really easy to do.
          X-Com I finished two weeks ago 🙂 interesting game yeah 🙂

          Reply

          • Red Worked

            April 2, 2013 at 14:09

            Holy crap. I finished that probably… in 1996~. It has crossed my mind a couple times to go find it again, but now that you guys point out that it’s available as abandonware, I’m gonna go give it yet another new home.

  3. Admiral Chief Erwin

    March 29, 2013 at 23:41

    DEUS EX!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply

  4. Purple_Dragon

    March 30, 2013 at 08:21

    Why do you guys say Angelina Jolie “ruined” the Tomb Raider films? I don’t think they were that bad, I thought they were rather entertaining?

    Reply

    • Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

      March 30, 2013 at 10:15

      I agree somewhat. I don’t think she ruined the Tomb Raider franchise (Tomb Raider was already ruined by the time the first movie came out), but her ham acting didn’t help those movies either.

      The one thing that’s become increasingly apparent about Ms Voight is that (a) she didn’t inherit her estranged father’s acting ability, and (b) she plays the SAME character in every… SINGLE..MOVIE!! Salt, Wanted, Tomb Raider, Mr and Ms Smith… She has zero range…

      I think the only movies where I was actually impressed with her was Hackers.. Girl Interrupted … oh.. and Beowulf… That creepy Angelina Jolie mannequin managed to have greater acting range then the real deal… which always confused me.

      CGI Angelina Jolie > Real Angelina Jolie… CONFUSED!

      Reply

      • Troy Adamson

        March 30, 2013 at 14:52

        I liked her in Taking Lives.

        Reply

        • mornelithe

          April 1, 2013 at 17:40

          She was also good in Gia.

          Reply

          • Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

            April 1, 2013 at 17:57

            Yeah, that’s right, she was also in Gia. That was a pretty cool movie.

          • mornelithe

            April 1, 2013 at 19:16

            Yeah, much like DiCaprio (though he’s made better decisions later in life) with Basketball Diaries, Jolie’s choices of movies the majority of her career have been….less than stellar. (Cyborg 2 and Gia being the noteworthy exceptions, ok only Gia…but Cyborg 2 was awesome). Maybe she just likes playing a badass hah.

      • mornelithe

        April 1, 2013 at 17:41

        Her best film is probably Gia, a movie on the life of Model Gia Carangi

        Reply

  5. Andre116

    March 30, 2013 at 08:29

    Finished XCOM last night. Great game. I hope a 2nd one is in the work (and that they don’t just spend their time and effort making Apple versions of the game). Guess I’ll ramp up the difficulty and have a go at it again.

    Reply

  6. Marius Jacobs

    March 30, 2013 at 08:45

    Absolutely agree that X-COM must be there. I haven’t tried Sim City yet due to the DRM thing. My ethics and activist side tells me not to buy and try, but I am curious and should have stable enough internet to play.

    Sam & Max – Legend!!

    Mortal Kombat – What a chill game to play with your bra’s

    Heard good things bout Tomb Raider. Will def be giving it a try.

    Reply

    • Johan de Wit

      March 30, 2013 at 16:47

      Sim City isn’t as bad as everyone made it out to be, the game is good and my entry level Uncapped 1Mbps ADSL makes is not a problem to play. I did not experience any issues AND got Mass Effect 3 for free

      Reply

  7. Rolamd

    April 1, 2013 at 01:23

    Why simcity?

    Reply

  8. OVG

    April 2, 2013 at 06:56

    TOMB RAIDER BABY!!!!!!!!

    They deserve all the KUDOS. That studio is pumping passion out and very attuned to their fan base.

    I expected a re-boot but I did not expect what we got. I dont know what it is, the voice acting? the mo cap? the crazy music? the tight controls? the pumping set pieces, THE BEST PACING THAT NEVER GETS DULL and wicked kill animations. What ever it is, its the most enjoyable game that I have played in a long time. REKINDLED MY GAMING VIGOR and its a game that has understood the gamer.

    Thanks to Uncharted for setting the bar and stealing her mantle.

    Who said competition was a bad?

    WELL DONE Crystal Dynamics.

    P.S. I LOVE YOU Camilla-Luddington

    Reply

  9. matthurstrsa

    April 2, 2013 at 07:12

    One point and click you missed: Day of the Tentacle. Absolute classic!

    Reply

  10. Arjen Barnard

    April 5, 2013 at 15:31

    Notice how Diablo wasn’t on the list. *cries in corner*… why Jay why… *cries in corner*

    Reply

  11. Nicholas Gatewood

    April 11, 2013 at 13:23

    “all the tens of Nintendo fans that were looking forward to the game”

    Haha, so true. They only noticed the game when it was delayed for release on the other platforms. Personally, I was just hoping for a Vita port; I’d take that over a PS3 version any day, even without co-op.

    Reply

  12. Paul Fouche

    April 11, 2013 at 14:37

    theme hospital should be remade!

    Reply

  13. Yobokkie

    May 2, 2013 at 15:54

    Good article but:
    “Of course, a port was on the way for the Wii U”

    Be careful, your ignorance is showing! 😉 This was a totally new game that was supposed to be an exclusive to the Wii U and was supposed to be released in the launch window. So the anger was more in the fact Ubi had gone back on their word and delayed a game that was finished, to make PORTS for the other consoles. Even the developers protested ubi’s decision and to “make happy” ubisoft is releasing the multiplayer challenge mode for free to Wii U users.
    But yeah, it’s not a ‘port’. So either your terminology or information is wrong. If you’re going to hate on the big N at least have your ducks in a row. Whilst most gamers in SA are dragging their knuckles and playing more BF/ COD/ Killzone/ Gears of War/ God of War, there are some of us who know you should never ignore Nintendo completely.

    Reply

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