Are Remastered Games Unnecessary?

It seems in this day in age, remastered titles are flying around everywhere and simply cannot be ignored. With series such as, The Bioshock Collection, Resident Evil 4, even Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare getting polished up. It’s not hard to see where all the money is in rebooting.

With that being said, there are some that are for reboots and others that are against it. I myself am a big fan of remastered games from older eras, feeling that it allows the player to experience a title that they might not have been able too back in the day. I know if it weren’t for the ‘HD Collections’ series, I wouldn’t have gotten to try my hand at I.C.O or Hitman 2: Silent Assassin.

This brings us to the question at hand, are remastered games unnecessary? A bit of a loaded question, sure, but one I feel needs addressing with the steady rise of HD upgraded games through the past few years. To get right into to it, I believe that remastered games are kind of a wash-up. Here’s why:

Just porting, not remastering:

Marvel Ultimate Alliance, eat your heart out. The difference between actually remastering a game and just porting it is such a major one. To keep running with Ultimate Alliance, the game is fine for it’s time. However, time is fickle and leads to innovation. Innovation that would leave games like Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, X-Men Legends and the aforementioned Ultimate Alliance in the dust. To clarify, these games were all 4-player, top down, action role-playing games. Games that were understandable then, but when you go back to them you wonder “How did I ever finish this?”. So by porting a game like Ultimate Alliance without fixing or tweaking some things, it’s going to be a poor outcome.

Justifying the price tag

Not so much an issue for the PC master race as it is for console users, pricing a remastered game can be a tricky scenario. First off, you have to look at the content involved with the purchase. If you were buying, let's say, Alan Wake remastered and with it you were able to get the game, the two DLC packs and a poster. Would that justify a 50-60 dollar price tag? Depends on your financial situation I suppose. Second, you need to see what games are available, HD collections are especially sneaky with this. So, you're at your local games reliator and you notice the Killzone: HD Collection. You have the last two games in the series, but not the first. Is it worth it? Both of these things really do need consideration before purchase.

Justifying the remaster

The last of the three, this one isn’t so much ‘if you should buy the game’ rather than ‘is the game worth your time’. As I mentioned in the opening, The Bioshock Collection was the one of the more recent franchises to get a new coat of paint. However, this raises the of question of “why?” What was wrong with the original series that they needed to bring it back updated? Was it simply to sell to fans with new consoles? Was it a gesture of love or greed? I think we all might know the answer, but it’s still one of those questions that lingers in the corner of your mind, like wondering if the milk is overdue.

All in all, remastered games certainly have issues that make them look unappealing, but if you wanted to experience the old nostalgia from a game that you used to own, then this spike in HD upgrades is definitely for you.