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[EverydayBeast]

What set of games went through growing pains to come out with something new?

 

[SegaShack]

Street Fighter comes to mind

 

[Brendon Auger]

Assassins Creed
No Mans Sky

 

[Codes 208]

Call of Duty. Fresh off the heels from some of the devs of Medal of Honor the series I felt they didnt find their true calling for the series until CoD4 when the series not only became a juggernaut fps, but a worthy contender for plenty of the big boys at the time like BF2, counter-strike, TF2 and Halo 3.

 

[Gander]

Tomb Raider has come a long way, it has amazing production value now.

 

[MAtgS]

3D Sonic never seems to stop going through growing pains.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Assassin's Creed

That franchise is all over the map in terms of quality, so many ups and downs.

 

[cookiebandit18]

The sonic series, if you consider generations to be a good game. They really worked hard to make a 3D system that matched their ideals for speed based gameplay. Resident evil also went through growing pains, but I dunno if those had anything to do with the new RE game being good.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Dice Engine always goes through some rough patches but the outcome is always worth it imho so that's my vote.

 

[Larxia]

Tomb Raider has come a long way, it has amazing production value now.

I wouldn't say that. Sure they offer more impressive scenes and are more impressive visually, but they completely ditched any sort of gameplay and are now just interactive movie with constant scripts and "loots", so in my opinion it's now in it's down more than ever.
It has a bigger budget and production, yes, but gameplay wise it really went downhill.

 

[120v]

Elder Scrolls 1 and 2 were a little before my time but had i played them in the mid-90s i would never imagine it to be the behemoth it is today

 

[Hanon]

3D Sonic never seems to stop going through growing pains.

Sonic Adventure 1/2, Heroes, Unleashed, Colors, Riders 1/2, and Generations are good games. knock this narrative off.

 

[deriks]

Sonic, the thread

 

[Ge Os]

Street Fighter comes to mind

But SF keeps growing pains, specially V.

Also, KOF has a lot of UPs and DOWNs... more DOWNs than UPs, I hate to admit.

 

[SegaShack]

But SF keeps growing pains, specially V.

Also, KOF has a lot of UPs and DOWNs... more DOWNs than UPs, I hate to admit.

Very true, I was thinking of SF1 specifically though.

 

[MAtgS]

Sonic Adventure 1/2, Heroes, Unleashed, Colors, Riders 1/2, and Generations are good games. knock this narrative off.

And yet still it keeps having growing pains. Adventures haven't aged well, Colors is 90% 2D, Forces is 99% 2D.

 

[Fuz]

Very true, I was thinking of SF1 specifically though.

SF1 was absolutely amazing.

 

[zombie_gamer87]

Mortal Kombat

 

[Joe T.]

I think an argument could be made for Final Fantasy considering how long it's been around and how divisive each new entry seems to be with fans of the series. There wasn't a whole lot of growth in its early years, but that picked up some steam in the transition from SNES to PlayStation. FFXV has shown us it still has a lot of growing left to do, but the series has definitely changed a great deal over the course of its lifetime and given us some strong entries in a variety of sub-genres, like FF Tactics and the two MMORPGs (though I personally view XIV as regression rather than progress).

 

[Kadayi]

Definitely the AC series. First game was just all over the shop. Thankfully 2 was a massive improvement, however it's been a little erratic since then.

 

[Skyn3t]

Maybe the first AC had rinse and repeat gameplay, but from the technical standpoint it was jaw dropping at time. A true next-gen leap.

 

[Makariel]

Far Cry, the first was a tech demo with stupid AI that was sold as revolutionary, the second was great in principle but had many flaws, with the third it finally got into gear. Also, all of them were from different developers.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Call of Duty was shit for the past 10 years for the sake of putting "would if it were in the future!" to rest. Now that the future shooters came and went people know what the hell they want and that's why developers went back to World War shooters.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

GTA didn't nail the gameplay until the leap into 3D with GTA3.

BlazBlue didn't earn my respect until late in the series (Chronophantasma) because the mechanics took a while to come together. Earlier titles didn't have the smooth flow that I expect out of my ASW fighting games.

The Raiden series also comes to mind. Raiden 1 and 2 are just too clunky and twitchy. Raiden 3 is okay but not great. However, Raiden 4 and the spin-off Raiden Aces series are really solid. The most recent one -- Raiden 5 -- is pretty fun

 

[Killer751]

Zelda.

 

[Vader1]

I mean, all the 3D Zeldas were pretty great I thought.

 

[wolywood]

Grand Theft Auto before 3.

 

[wolywood]

Uncharted....the first game had promise but really came into to its own with the sequel.