HD remakes, do we hate em or love em?

It all started with....

The last couple months, there have been a couple sounds from the Sony base speaking of HD remakes from older SD games, like PS2 games. Last year, it started for me with the HD remake of the first two God of War games. The resolution was raised, trophies were added and it played on a constant 60fps. After it was received pretty well by the audience, Sony started thinking about other games like Sly Cooper, Prince of Persia, Ico & Shadow of the Colossus. The Sly Cooper HD and Prince of Persia HD trilogies have already been released, with 3D support. Which will follow? What should we make from it? Is it a way to purely cash in some dollars, or do they really consider the nostalgic feelings of gamers?




Dear Sony, I would like...

In november of 2010, rumors started to spread that Sony wants to make a lot more HD remakes. Third party developers now see the financial advantages of making HD remakes and start to code their old games to new resolutions. Not only do we now have Prince of Persia, Sly Cooper, Splinter Cell (not mentioned before, but it is released), series like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy are seriously being considered now. I, as fan of the MGS series, would like it very much if they would make a HD remake of the MGS Trilogy. A HD remake of the GTA trilogy wouldn't be so bad either. Though there is something exploiting about these new HD trilogy remakes. They do sell and bring in a lot of cash, so why not? Plus, you are not obliged to buy it. Why does it still feel like exploiting?

2005, the year of promises

Remember this one?

Remember the E3 of 2005, where Sony announced the PS3, showed a trailer of Motorstorm and said the PS3 could play PS2 games and upscale them to HD automatically? Well, that last one, backwards compatibility, was removed with the second model of the PS3, to save money on making the console. Gamers were raging through the cities with torches and forks and started to throw stones on the Sony building till it collapsed....well ok, they just raged on the internet, but you get the point.

Sony came up with a treaty, they would make backwards compatibility available again through software. I don't want to be a Sony basher here, but man, did they fail on that. It didn't work properly, didn't support most of the old titles and it was even uglier than on the regular PS2. What to do about this? Simple, make some HD remakes of the most popular series, sell it for a nice price and gamers will forgive, or not. Some people still, literally, don't buy it.

Holy, exploit or skip?
Either you like the remakes or not. I could make a screenshot of my head when the news came out about HD trilogies.

At first I was like:

November 2010: 'They will probably make a MGS HD remake of the trilogy'
Then I was like:

Some gamers consider the HD remakes of their favorite games as holy, a gift from Sony. Some people, like me in the beginning, think it's still a form of exploitation and a lame excuse for their failing backwards compatibility. Some people just don't care and skip the HD remakes and focus on the new games, which actually isn't a bad idea. Still, when they add GTA to the HD factory, I'm not gonna let it lie there all by itself in the store.

So where is the Xbox 360 in this?

A couple days ago, a rumor spread on the internet about a Halo HD remake (scheduled for late 2011), built on the Reach engine, including an online co-op. Despite this remake, Microsoft didn't really partake in the same HD hype as Sony did. Why? Well, I think because the Xbox had better graphics than the PS2 and the PS2 already had some going series on the console, where Xbox started new series like Fable, Halo and Forza. The sequels are mostly on the Xbox 360. Plus, games like Halo play fine on the Xbox 360 anyway.

This article may feel like a Sony bash, well, it kinda is a bit. They promised a good working backwards compatibility, instead of focusing on that, they dropped it and started making these HD trilogies to cash. But when they make HD remakes of games like Metal Gear Solid, I probably couldn't help myself from buying it, damn you Sony!