Remakes are all the rage now. As much as I don’t like most of them, I understand they’ll keep coming. Some are needed while others just show a studio and or publisher are out of ideas or doesn’t want to spend too much money on something new and or ambitious that can flop.

I hate when they remake old games that hold up fine today. Remakes should only be done for a few reasons. The game is extremely old, visually and mechanically, or it doesn’t work on modern hardware. The games ambitions weren’t able to be fulfilled in its time, due to hardware limitations and or early days of a certain genre or gameplay style.

What makes a good remake? A good remake should strive to recapture the atmosphere of the original. This is where many of them fail, with a lot of developers dropping the stylistic approach of the visuals. Instead, they’ll try to make the game look super photorealistic. I remember when they showed off the System Shock remake and people loved it. After a few years of development, the devs showed an updated trailer with a realistic art style. Then those who donated lost their minds ,and Nightdive would end up going back to the original vision. Chasing photorealism loses the part of the games originality and lasting appeal, as well as the remake will age faster.

There’s also times when devs begin overdoing the art and add random unnecessary detail. An example would be in the Dead Space remake, where Issac went from looking like he was wearing a space suit to looking like Iron Man. There’s also the trend of in remakes the main characters get bulkier. I don’t view this as being a result of modern graphics, more of a design choice to add that unneeded detail.

Gameplay wise you want to preserve the uniqueness of it. Remove the clunkiness away but keep its charm. Many remakes turn to trend chasing and give the game the generic tropes of today. Fallout went from a 90s RPG to a 3rd person action rpg and didn’t lose its charm. This wasn’t a remake but still makes my point. The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater remake took the refined gameplay from Pro Skater 4 and put it into the first two games. Shadow of the Colossus is a rare remake. It kept the original game intact and put updated graphics over it. The problem was the gameplay was always clunky.

Another issue remakes have is the removal of content. Unless it detracted from the initial game, leave it in there. Resident Evil 3 took everything great about the original and threw it out the window. The clocktower, nemesis choices, and the worm were gone. Then they made the map smaller. The game became this horrid generic third person zombie game. I like to see unused content from the original game in.

Speaking of RE3 content removal, levels should be largely the same, unless it’s horrible or doesn’t make sense. One thing the RE2 remake could’ve done was reduce the crazy backtracking. That was my biggest gripe with that game. I get that its an RE motif but, it got tedious quick. There was also Conker Live and Reloaded, a heavily censored Bad Fur Day remake with multiplayer.

Then there’s the tonal changes in modern remakes. The original may have been slow paced rpg while the new is streamlined action adventure. Character dialogue and motivations will be unnecessarily changed and in most cases this is a downgrade. The Gears of War Ultimate Edition was not a remake but proves my point. The game went from having this survival horror feel, to feeling like an action game. The Coalition had went as far as redoing the cutscenes.

Devs have tried to inject their new political ideas into old games. The whole Dead Space bathroom gate was one of these. I understand stuff can get overblown, but this is a remake. If you’re bold enough to change something, fans should be bold enough to criticize it.

Gaming needs a new type of remake. Im open to devs remaking old games that were trash into good ones. Deus Ex: Invisible War, MOH Rising Sun, Thief (2014), and Sonic ’06 are good examples.

EA had the easiest remake gold mine. They should’ve taken the Star Wars assets and then remade the first two Battlefront games and finished the 3rd one. Then put them into one game with a unified multiplayer and galactic assault with coop.

A good remake should be about renovating the structure rather than building it back from scratch. Devs should look to give it what it needs not what they want it to have. This is why its always good to have the original creators help. Keeping what made the game great, but changing things that haven’t aged well or what has been refined since. This is very subjective but can also be quite obvious.