Should Video Games be Remade?

Is Videogame Land falling prey to the same disease that has befallen Hollywood in recent years with their continual reboots, rehashes and remakes? In recent times along we've had our childhoods taken apart, stamped upon and spat out the other side with films like Total Recall, Robocop and The Karate Kid sullying their memories and making us pine for the 80's where film makers actually, for the most part, put storyline, and occasionally massive amounts of violence, above some flashy special effects, now is this happening with quality video games from our childhood too?

2014 sees the rehashing, updating and bringing into the 21st century some of our favourite games from our childhoods with Wolfenstein: The New Order, new games featuring Abe from the classic Abe's Oddysee and a newer version of Carmageddon all having recently been released or on the way to being released. The big question is, will these updated versions of classic games having us reaching for our SNES' and Mega Drive's or will we be pleasantly surprised?

Wolfenstein

Originally released in 1981, Castle Wolfenstein was a stealth based action-adventure shooting game released for the Apple II before finding its way to MS-DOS, Atari and Commodore 64. This game inspired the Wolfenstein game that most people know and love to this day - Wolfenstein 3D - that was released more than a decade after the first game.

Since that release more than 20 years ago there have been three further titles, with Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory did well, but the 2009 version for the PS3 and Xbox 360, the first on these platforms, did so badly that Activision had to lay off employees of the developers, Raven Studios. The New Order comes out at the end of May, but will we see it resemble Wolfenstein 3D or the game from five years ago that was so poor we purchased, played for ten minutes and have left it to collect dust ever since?

Oddworld

Released in 1997 on the Playstation, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was greeted with plenty of positive reviews, with GamePro giving 9/10 and Game Informer rating it 9.25/10. It's immersive visuals and audio were especially singled out for praise, while the gameplay that sees the titular character, a Mudokon slave, look to escape from the meat processing factory he works after discovering that he, and his fellow Mudokons, are to be the next product for the company is always engaging and incredibly challenging.

This saw the game have a long shelf life and it is still a large nostalgic favourite by many gamers of the era and although there were two direct sequels in Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus which follows up directly after the first game ends and Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee where you play as another alien, Munch who is a Gabbit. Although these two follow ups did reasonably well, they never really captured the essence of the first game and with this remake due for a second quarter release this year will we see something new on the next gen consoles or will the new coat of paint actually take something away from the brilliance of the original version?

Carmageddon

Inspired by the 1975 cult classic movie featuring Sylvester Stallone Death Race 2000, 1997's Carmageddon is a racing game unlike any other. You win each race by taking the chequered flag, wrecking all of the other cars or by killing all the pedestrians on the level. Unsurprisingly, it was a rather controversial game and, as such, much loved by basically for the fact that you were able to run people down, a type of game violence that attracted so many people to the Grand Theft Auto series later on.

The game spun two sequels in 1998 and 2000, but Reincarnation is a full on reboot of the series and with the fact that funding for the game came from a Kickstarter campaign, at least in part, and the new updated graphics for the car violence means that this game is sure to have a large target audience, meaning it is likely to do well. Just like the film that inspired its creation, will bringing the game into the 21st century take it from cult classic into the big time?

The fear with reboots and remakes is that the creators move away from the storyline and gameplay while focusing on flashy new graphics in an attempt to bedazzle the target market. This would surely not work well with Wolfenstein and Abe's Oddysee and, as with the first of the two could fundamentally damage the developer, while a game like Carmageddon may benefit from barely tampering with the gameplay and updating the visuals.

If you're looking for updated visuals and some excellent gameplay then play The Dark Knight or Tomb Raider: Secret of the Sword. These admittedly are reboots themselves, that have been ported from small screen to big screen and back again across many different consoles and platforms! These have even been made into online slot games which you can play here.