*You can listen to the audio version on Me-Time Gamer Podcast – Episode 4*

If you’ve kept up with your video game backlog, you know when a new generation of consoles comes strolling in that you might not finish all your old generation games, definitely what happened to me. As of lately, a truck load of popular games have come out has “REMASTERED” or “HD” and gives you that chance to play your favorite ones on your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, which is great or is it? The real head scratcher in all of this comes a point where the consumer has to ask him or herself, “Is there too many old games coming to current consoles?” This is a valid question that many influential people in the gaming community have asked or they’ve been asked, and their responds are all over the map on this subject. So, are we tired of remastered games?

Well, this question could be seen in many perspective, such as, if we take Last of Us which was a highly successful game when it came out in June 2013, we saw that the game came out as a remastered and got people who didn’t get the chance to play the game on PlayStation 3 to play it on the PlayStation 4, in this case it worked out for the best. Remasters can present an opportunity to new players of a certain console to get acquainted with popular games of the past or just give other gamers a second chance at a game they might not thought about the first time around.

That’s great and all but is it always a good idea to bring an old game out of retirement just for the heck of it? To answer that question we must look at what’s done to the game to see if it’s worth it. Let’s take as an example Final Fantasy VII, granted it hasn’t come out yet, but it’s confirmed that it will be a port from its original version on the PlayStation One. If you were on the interwebs during the announcement you saw that this didn’t go so well with the Final Fantasy fans. Porting a game and slapping a “HD” in the title doesn’t make it an enhanced experience of the original version, it just looks like you’re trying to make a quick buck on old properties.

With that said, sometimes it could be a great idea to re-release games on new consoles with updated graphic, new animations, and so on to give the gamers a real new updated specimen of a great game. For this example, I will use Grand Theft Auto V that came out not too long ago on new consoles and just brought the game to another level. In this case, Rockstar even added a new first-person mode which blew everybody away because it gave players something new and creative for that series.

Here comes a big problem with remastered games, how can I justify re-buying a game for another $70? That depends on you, if you’re lucky you might get a deal like the one I had when Last of Us on PlayStation 4 came out. My local video game dispensary gave me the game for $25 if I brought the PlayStation 3 version back, that’s a deal, but the game was normally the price of new games. To be honest, I would have never got TLOU if that deal wasn’t there. Can developers argue why paying full retail price is a good idea? I don’t think so. Personally, I think HD-a-fied games should come at a lower price because a good majority of people who buy these games probably already own the previous version, that’s the feeling I get across video game groups I follow.

I think the last point I would like to make is can we take a break from releasing these old and improved games? Ya, we should because there has been too much of them lately and it really makes you wonder if they’re stretching their teams to thin and might have an impact on other games they could be pushing harder on or making sure they work. With the influx of remastered games we have seen a tsunami of broken games, something to think about.

At the end of the day, the only thing you need to remember is you need to put your money where your mouth is because if you don’t dish out the bacon, developers will stop putting out these remastered games. If you think about it, a lot of people will complain about re-releases but when their games come out, they will be the first one in line to spend those hard earn simoliens to get a chance to replay their favorites, I know will.

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