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Games that actually were the "_____ killer"

Mass Effect > KOTOR

I would say SWTOR, but that only dealt the finishing blow.

RIP KOTOR 3.

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I think that's a personal preference though. Halo certainly isn't objectively better than either of those games.

Ummmm yeah it is? I can say that based on controls alone. You can go back and play the first Halo and enjoy it no problem. Both Perfect Dark and Golden Eye haven't aged well when it comes to gameplay, controls, and just about everything else.
 
You'd better expand on that because you're just talking about completely different situations.
Star Wars didn't replace Flash Gordon because it took some sort of inspiration from it. It's a product aimed at a completely different generation which also came out in a completely different environment, both in terms of distribution services and how buzz can spread with wide spread Internet and social media.

Anyway you cut it, "undertale > earthbound" is just a silly statement trying to pass as witty.

If you ask a gamer what is Undertale and what is Earthbound, most will wonder what the hell Earthbound is. Earthbound holds special to my heart no doubt but its popularity has remained only via cult whereas Undertale has reached through more audiences (coz PC) and has been much more heavily exposed than Earthbound.

I think Undertale as a killer to Earthbound is wrong, admittedly, but I'd rather call it a replacement to that kind of game that draws in the wit and the charm and is heavily reliant on the "feels" through RPG elements, which Earthbound was well known for (unless you can name more popular games that are like Earthbound). Undertale will topple Earthbound in terms of sheer modern popularity and if modern gamers were to think "a charming RPG oozing with wit and feels and thoughts etc.", they'd think Undertale.

Also, Undertale is more accessible than Earthbound hence wider reach of audience, same with Touhou shmups compared to Cave shmups (though they are getting Steam releases, has the sail passed or will it be popular, only time will tell, but that's a completely different topic).
 
Honestly TF2 always felt like Team Fortress Source and not a true sequel where as Overwatch feels like a true successor to TF. Still bums me out to this day that we never got that original TF2 (the one that was still running on HL1 engine) because it looked crazy and was doing a bunch of new stuff where as again TF2 was literally just Team Fortress running on the source engine.
Uuuuuuh, TFC and TF2 are completely different from each other apart from the superficial layers. TF2 brought some themes and gimmicks over but they barely resemble each other gameplay wise.
 
It's really hard to name games that have actually achieved this.

CoD4 > MoH is indisputable.
WoW > MMOs in general. So much that every MMO tried to become WoW, which was sad for Ultima and Everquest fans.
Counter Strike > Arena Games. Before Counter Strike, Quake 3 was king (around here it was UT, but you get the idea). After Counter Strike, every competitive shooter had to be a tactical team game. Extremely dissapointing.

There are others I'm not so sure of.
Rockband killed Guitar Hero... along with the whole genre.
Fifa has always been bigger than PES, even if this last one sometimes has its moments of brilliance, but it predates it.
DOTA ruined RTs tournies. Sure, they exist, but against DOTA2 and LoL they're merely a blip on the radar.
I'd even like to say that Mario 64 killed platformers in general. People just didn't know where to go from there, but that'd be a bit too much.
 
People say that CoD killed Halo, but I think Halo put up a very strong fight at first since MW and Halo 3 often times traded places for number one on XBL and both games did huge numbers of players for years at a time. It wasn't until Reach that it was clear that Halo didn't quite have the pull to sustain a superhuge playerbase without changing something. Halo 4 changed plenty, but the changes 343 opted for only seemed to exacerbate the issue. So if anything, Halo was as much a victim of its own people as it was a victim to stiff competition.
 
Halo killed itself.

Similarly, Call of Duty surpassed Medal of Honor because MoH tried to copy it; ended up losing its identity.
 
People say that CoD killed Halo, but I think Halo put up a very strong fight at first since MW and Halo 3 often times traded places for number one on XBL and both games did huge numbers of players for years at a time. It wasn't until Reach that it was clear that Halo didn't quite have the pull to sustain a superhuge playerbase without changing something. Halo 4 changed plenty, but the changes 343 opted for only seemed to exacerbate the issue. So if anything, Halo was as much a victim of its own people as it was a victim to stiff competition.

It didn't happen overnight, but that's mostly because so many people took to Halo 3 simply because it was the assumed "place to be" for online shooters. Once MW had changed that, the impact on following games was pretty easy to see coming.

I disagree that Halo was as much a victim of its own people as much as it is CoD. Sure, 343i hasn't been able to bring Halo's popularity back, or even stop the decline... but the changes made to the series have mostly been because the writing was on the wall the moment MW2 came around. Someone above brought up what Counter-Strike did to Quake/UT/etc. I honestly think that Halo was going to end up in a similar position regardless. The casuals that were making Halo as large as it was were never coming back, and the hardcore that want the games to play like they did back then are likely far fewer in number than they'd like to believe (and many of them probably wouldn't drop CoD, Destiny, or whatever else they're playing today to return anyway).

Halo killed itself.

Similarly, Call of Duty surpassed Medal of Honor because MoH tried to copy it; ended up losing its identity.

MoH would have had no reason to try and copy CoD if CoD hadn't surpassed it. That's pretty much the clearest sign that an IP has been surpassed.
 
More like Undertale is much more known than Earthbound, and yet the core group knows that Undertale was heavily based on Earthbound. I wouldn't say it killed it, more like it "replaced" it.
This is like saying "Shovel Knight replaced Duck Tales".
It make no sense since Duck Tales (I'm talking about the NES games) never spawned a long running franchise therefore you are comparing two games so far away in time that cannot really be linked together directly.
You may say one took some inspiration from the other but that's it.
 
Counter-Strike > arena shooters, back in the 90's. Where I'm from, at least.

Also, and this is sad,
League of Leagues > every RTS. And yes, it applies, as the entire genre was supplanted :\
 
If you ask a gamer what is Undertale and what is Earthbound, most will wonder what the hell Earthbound is. Earthbound holds special to my heart no doubt but its popularity has remained only via cult whereas Undertale has reached through more audiences (coz PC) and has been much more heavily exposed than Earthbound.

I think Undertale as a killer to Earthbound is wrong, admittedly, but I'd rather call it a replacement to that kind of game that draws in the wit and the charm and is heavily reliant on the "feels" through RPG elements, which Earthbound was well known for (unless you can name more popular games that are like Earthbound). Undertale will topple Earthbound in terms of sheer modern popularity and if modern gamers were to think "a charming RPG oozing with wit and feels and thoughts etc.", they'd think Undertale.

Also, Undertale is more accessible than Earthbound hence wider reach of audience, same with Touhou shmups compared to Cave shmups (though they are getting Steam releases, has the sail passed or will it be popular, only time will tell, but that's a completely different topic).
But the thing is that Earthbound has never been popular. And the cult following it has that has carried over for 20 years is a very slow building base due to the context of it's launch that we both agree to. Having nerds make a forum 10 years after it's launch and that has been active for 10 more years, has made it gain little traction via little droplets at a time, in which there's never a current sizeable amount of people talking about it.
It's like saying that FNaF is a Clock Tower killer due to kids and everybody really knowing what FNaF is and barely anybody knowing clock tower, despite the cult following. They're just 2 very different products of their time.

Plus it's a completely wrong use of the "X killer" term, which means that a publisher goes to compete against a very hot ip directly by trying to one up them and make the player base switch properties, leaving the previous hot one in the dust. They're made and marketed as pissing contests, which consists of Astro turfers and fanboys build up pre release hype by belittling the competition,l, so when it launches it immediately wins over people with it's promised quality and long lasting appeal. Obviously 99% of them are just poor copy cats that are barely blips on the radar only because they ape off the competitor brand to have a little notoriety.
 
I played Metroid Prime for the first time 2 years ago.

Metroid Prime >>Mirror's Edge>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The rest of FP(S) games
 
Uncharted 2>TR series
COD4>Halo series(I feel this is a bit of a stretch though because Halo was still highly popular and selling gangbusters up until 343 took over it after Reach)
CSGO>Source/1.6 Killer
 
Metroid Prime: Federation Force>> Metroid Killer.

why I laugh :'(

Wii-u>>Nintendo Killer.


yeah i'm trolling myself.

I cannot think of a real serious killer.

actually
Vanquish> gears of wars. (you know it's true)
 
Undertale isnt an earthbound killer because earthbound ended decades ago.

A good example would be WoW. It literally killed most every mmo before it and set a standard that mmos to this day still follow. Thats a killer, when it actually kills.
 
Wtf GAF most of these replies do not even reflect the topic title.
This is not about which game is better than another.

This is about what games that once were so popular you can never imagine it dying out until it finally did as another game took it's place.

I think Overwatch could be a TF2 killer if it goes F2P
 
Halo killed Perfect Dark.

It took the throne for definitive console FPS. I think the only way we'll see another PD is if they reboot it as a third person game.
 
Monster Hunter > Final Fantasy

The days of rigid, turn-based RPGs, with stylized characters and heavy storylines, is coming to an end. It's all about customization and micromanagement. Gamers want to explore terrain, destroy monsters, and enhance their characters without the encumbrance of an overbearing plot and linear gameplay.
 
COD4>Halo series(I feel this is a bit of a stretch though because Halo was still highly popular and selling gangbusters up until 343 took over it after Reach)

It was still selling gangbusters with Halo 4 also. It's more that CoD sucked all the air out of the room, preventing Halo from breathing over time.
 
That is to say, a game aimed at the same sector of the market as another popular game that effectively displaced the earlier one in terms of popularity and relevance.

Call of Duty > Medal of Honor

I think I might dispute this, simply because - and my recollection might well be off - I don't recall CoD surpassing MoH until it inherently shifted in style quite significantly away from MoH's.
 
Eve online is still going strong



If he's talking about MK64 he's not wrong. That game is straight trash.

MK64 >> CTR

See how opinions work?

Good thing this thread isn't about opinions though. Also how many Mario Kart games have there been since MK64 and how many CTR games have there been? That's what this thread is about.
 
People are a bit naive if they think Overwatch is going to kill TF2. Is it going to be more popular? Bigger than TF2 ever was? Sure. It probably already is. However TF2 has years of established economy with people invested in it. People aren't just going to abandon it.
 
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