Worst Video Game Remasters?

[RedHeadAngel]

I was talking to a friend about terrible video game remasters, and his pick was Skyrim SE, because he said it didn't actually do anything except grant a slightly better graphical enhancement. Sadly, I have to agree. Aside from having more modding potential, SSE doesn't really have much more to offer than the original game. Also, I haven't really messed around with other remastered games. At least, none that were bad.

 

What are some bad remastered games that you've played? To be clear, this is about remastered games, not reboots.

[FauxFurry]

The worst kind of remastered game actively damages the game's aesthetics like the Grand Theft Auto trilogy collection or Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. I would rather take minimal adjustment to visuals over outright defacement.

[davisev5225]

Anything that tries to censor outfits/visuals of the original version, and anything in which the developers decide to make grandstanding political statements (or any politically-motivated changes within the game).

[DragAndPlace]

Games that only do a texture upscaling. Not only do their file sizes add up a couple times, but sometimes outright broken textures make their way into their final product. Even if all worked fine, textures can only do so much on low poly models. I can hardly appreciate the difference on the original RE4 Steam release with the high-res textures, for instance.

 

Or games in a series that reuse assets from later entries in an attempt to modernise the visuals, no matter whether the styles were vastly different. Halo CE:Anniversary (if you can count that as a remaster) doing a weird mix of Halo: Reach and Halo 3 stuff comes first to mind. Thankfully with this game, you can return to the original graphics with the press of a button, literally.

 

A game (or rather trilogy) that combines these two aspects is Mass Effect:Legendary edition. ME1 shifted the colour pallette form a purple hue to a light blue, made some environments too light and clean and even removed a couple light sources. ME2 did not fare much better, removing some reflections and shadows for whatever reason. ME3, the game who sees the least improvements, suffered the worst loss: multiplayer.

 

These are the worst offenders, but I have not played many remasters. I don't particularly dislike these releases.