Remastered Or Recycled?

As many of you may know, The Last of Us Remastered has arrived on PlayStation 4 as a supposedly new and improved version of Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed masterpiece that came to PlayStation 3 last year. This is, of course, one of the many games to have made the transition from last-gen to current-gen over the last nine months since the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 finally hit shelves. We have Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition and Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition out already and both Grand Theft Auto V and Metro: Redux are on their way. These types of games are clearly becoming a commonality, at least during these early stages following the new consoles’ launch, in which next-gen games certainly feel few and far between. But are these re-releases something the gaming community should learn to accept and cherish, or a discomforting cash-cow that we should try to avoid?

Let’s be an optimistic bunch and look at the positives first. Well, next-gen re-releases give newcomers a chance to play a great game for the first time on their brand new consoles, whilst simultaneously allowing true fans of said game to play it all over again, but this time with all the new bells and whistles attached. Games that may have been struggling, on a graphical level, with the technical limits of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 can now really have a chance to show off everything they have to offer using the power of the new generation. The Last Of Us Remastered can be played in a significantly smoother 60 frames per second compared to the 30 frames per second that it ran on with the PlayStation 3. It might not sound like much, but this is just one example of a technical step-up that can have a real tangible effect on the gameplay experience, thus making the game all the better for it.

As hinted to earlier, there really aren’t a lot of exclusively next-gen games out on the market right now, so re-releases (which actually go out of their way to publicise how they have been made specifically for next-gen consoles) might actually be the best investment for your brand new console right now. You’re bound to get a bang for your buck; for instance, whilst a £60 game like Infamous: Second Son features a measly eight hour story, re-releases often come packaged with all previous DLC and extra content for you to delve into. Finally, re-releases have been able to re-release for a reason;they’re widely considered to be great games. Purely based on the quality of the game itself, you know you won’t be going wrong when you buy such a title.

However (and it’s a big however), for some people, enhanced graphics really don’t justify a second purchase of what is essentially the same game. A lot of people sniggered at the VGX event when an Eidos Montreal developer wouldn’t stop going on about how they improved Lara’s hair for Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition before answering a resounding “no” to the question as to whether the game will feature any new content at all. Moreover, whilst an SD to HD remake often creates a vast difference in the graphical quality of a game, there’s only so far you can go from a technical standpoint with a next-gen re-release, and the limited extent to how far you do go again can’t really justify the asking price. Secondly, the kind of gamers who have already bought a next-gen console are the kind of people who are looking for something new and fresh. They’re also the kind of people who have already played these re-releases and are no doubt feeling a tad of disappointment underneath this gaming déjà vu. A final major put-off is the ever-present whiff of a cash-grab by the developers, no matter how altruistic their intent might have actually been.

The desirability of a next-gen re-release, then, really depends upon the eye of the beholder. For some, they might be the perfect way to finally try out that game they’ve been longing to play in all its remastered glory. For others, however, the next-gen re-release is a major let-down on their hopes for the next generation of gaming.