Ewok's Franchise Recommendations

Ewok Recommends:

Uncharted

In 1996, Naughty Dog out to compete with the like of Mario and Sonic by creating their own mascot for the Sony PlayStation: Crash Bandicoot. They met with some degree of success, and whilst Crash never quite reached the status of Nintendo or Sega's flagship characters, he sold a fair few games and appeared in a fair few sequels and spin-offs.

11 years later, the Uncharted series arrived and immediate comparisons were made to another video game franchise: Tomb Raider. Where Crash failed to reach the lofty status of his competitors, the adventures of Nathan Drake surpassed those of his predecessor. The exhilerating third person gunplay of the franchise combined with the well designed platforming sections secured full marks on the gameplay front. Add a likeable main character, well written and frequently amusing script and excellent voice acting by Nolan 'I'm in every videogame' North and you can't really go wrong with any of the Uncharted games.

Crash may never have toppled Mario, but the Uncharted franchise succeeded in putting Drake ahead of Lara Croft in the 'coolest raider of tombs' competition. When Uncharted was first released, comparisons to the Tomb Raider series were frequent. However, when Tomb Raider's 2013 reboot was released the reverse became true, and the emphasis fell on that game's similarilty to Uncharted. Right now, Nathan Drake remains the undisputed king of platform adventure. But, as Naughty Dog move to pastures new with The Last of Us, it remains to be seen if Ms Croft's latest makeover can win her back her crown.

Alternatively, try:

Mass Effect

The opitime of a story driven game, the Mass Effect franchise did what BioWare do best in delivering a fully realised world (or in this case, and entire galaxy) with interesting characters, an engaging story, and brilliant diverging dialogue. Mass Effect works fantastically as a trilogy, comprising of three seperate and distinct stories that, when combined, form an epic and engrossing adventure.

Principal amongst Mass Effect's features is the way that the decisions you make in one game will have an impact on future games. A character you manage to save (or spare) from death in Mass Effect may return in Mass Effect 2 or 3 to give a mission, or just have a chat. In many instances these changes are cosmetic and do little to change the story progression, but they exist to make your own game of Mass Effect a little different and more personal to you than everyone else's.

Alternatively, try:

Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed didn't get off to the best of starts. There is no doubt that the first game in the series was ambitious and stylish, but it did suffer from a sense of repetition due to a distinct lack of mission variety outside the, relatively few, main assassination tasks. For me, it's still a good game that is worth playing, but it's by far the weakest entry in the franchise.

Assassin's Creed 2 turned the whole thing on its head, focussing on a direct story path with a much greater variety and a lot more actual assassinations. Each game since then has updated the formula, introducing new gadgets, refining combat and improving the dexterity of the character. A yearly release may be a little frequent, but every game in the series has offered many hours of excellent gameplay, interesting characters and an excellent (if baffling) story. Also: the next one has pirates in it!!!