7 Games That Are Ready to Resurge
Published 4 months ago
Pond-eringsTable of Contents
- Body Harvest
- Conker's Bad Fur Day
- Crimson Skies
- Dante's Inferno
- Freedom Fighters
- Hybrid Heaven
- Kill.Switch
- Honorable Mentions
Body Harvest
An early title for the Nintendo 64, DMA Design's 1998 game release Body Harvest was an ambitious 3rd person shooter with an emphasis on vehicles and a fledgling open world. This was disappointing since DMA Design only went on to work on a few modest game franchises like...Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and L.A Noire.
As one of its earliest game titles Body Harvest suffered from the limitations of its console release. Between the imprecise N64 control scheme and the limited visual draw distances the game missed the boat on headlining as a early open world game. It was regarded as being 'average' quality and failed to garner much of a legacy. Even compared to DMA's other games it wasn't well regarded and it never gained any traction in forming its own franchise.
Body Harvest didn't raise much fan fare when it was re-released in 2025 in a compilation with other 90's PlayStation games.
Body Harvest featured time traveling soldier Adam Drake fending off an alien invasion of Earth. The game takes you to Greece, Java, America, and Siberia throughout the 20th century. The player has to prevent aliens from harvesting the human population and drive the aliens away. Players accomplished this with a mix of exploration and combat. The environments are pretty vast for 1998 and each area has its own distinct style, and their are multiple different vehicles to aid in traversal. Combat is a bit of a mess, third-person controls lacked precision and held back combat significantly. The N64 controller wasn't well designed for precision aiming and the overall targeting design of Body Harvest shooting mechanics.
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Conker's Bad Fur Day for the N64 was released by
Rareware in 2001. While it received generally good reviews, it was seen as a commercial flop. This was in part due to it being released so close to the end of the Nintendo 64's console generation and it being generally regarded as "too mature" for regular Rareware audience. Despite this, it went on to hold a certain level of fame as a cult classic.
The game was successful enough that a sequel wasn't written off entirely. At first a sequel failed to materialize from because the company was bought by Microsoft in 2002 and the project was shelved.
After a re-release in 2005; Conker: Live & Reloaded
, a renewed effort to build a sequel emerged, but it languished quietly before being canceled again. It saw more life added to it when Bad Fur Day was included in Rare's classic game compilation in 2015.
Bad Fur Day's dark humor and mature dialog was part of the games draw. Combining the classic Rare bright and colorful art style with innuendo and jokes that pushed the envelope of its ESRB ratings. The game itself was left open with Conker becoming a king and essentially returning right back to the beginning of the story; staggering out of a bar. While information about a potential sequel were not widely circulated, its been hinted that it would involve the aftermath of Conker's disastrous tenure as king. There is still strong audience appeal for Rareware's style of games; sharply written, colorful platformers. Even Bad Fur Day's mature rating doesn't demonstratively push it out of contention for a relaunch.
A renewed narrative with more of Bad Fur Days pop culture driven story elements such as things from; John Wick, Avatar,
The MCU, Mad Max, Breaking Bad, etc. I'm hesitant to say more, since I know I can't match the writing of Rareware's golden age.
Crimson Skies
An arcade flight combat game from Zipper Interactive and
Microsoft Studios, Crimson Skies was an amazing early PC game. Based on an earlier Tabletop game of the same name, Crimson Skies was released in 2000 to positive reviews and financial success. The game did well enough to spawn a sequel Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge and a series of miniatures in 2003
Praised for its high octane combat, frenetic dog-fighting, and intense action set pieces. The top notch voice acting work continues to put even modern games to shame. Of special note is the world building, marrying alternate history with a 1930's diesel-punk spin. The result is a high flying adventurous world of sky pirates, Americana nostalgia, and swash-buckling intrigues.
A new sequel would see 20+ years of improvements and would represent opportunities to blowup the scope and scale of the graphics and gameplay. We could see a new game with players operating their own pirate zeppelin mothership, conducting raids and heists while battling other players for territory and prestige.
Or a more story driven interpretation; such as the original two games, could expand the scope of gameplay with modern graphic processing upping the scale of battles while being augmented with new mechanics like increased scope to plane building, management mechanics for your zeppelin, pilot training, etc.
There is also the prospect of advancing the timeline and/or continuing Nathan Zachery's story. It could be interesting to see how the alternate history plays out. Will it see the same course of events like World War II breaking out or will it have a more pirate history context, with the pirates of Crimson Skies facing the same challenges as the pirate republics of the Caribbean and Nassau?
Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno was an action adventure game from Visceral Games, the makers of the Dead Space games and released by Electronic Arts in 2010 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox360, and the PlayStation Portable. An all around solid game with particularly good level and art design. It was however repeatedly dinged by critics and fans alike for its repetitive combat systems. It was a surprisingly good I match for the God of War
franchise at the time, but that worked against it, as it was seen by God of War fans as a clone rather than a unique title.
At first blush, it would seem like a one and done, given the story is resolved by the end of the game with Dante fighting his way all the way through the nine circles of hell. Except that the source material comes in three acts, and Dante's Inferno only covers the first act. Hell. Even the game itself leaves the ending open. Dante tears the cloth cross stitched to his chest (ouch) and casts it aside only for it to turn into a serpent and for players to be treated to a "To Be Continued". Unfortunately a sequel never materialized. There might not be the same wealth of potential game-meat from Dante Alighieri writings on purgatory or paradise, a sequel could have pivoted the source material with interesting alterations to both the game mechanics and combat style.
It's not as if the original game completely adhered to the source material, so it could definitely build a new narrative given generous artistic license, which would have been nice. Visceral could have used another healthy IP, so could Electronic Arts for that matter.
A sequel could have seen Dante ascending the seven terraces of the mountain of purgatory, while the entirety of hell trying to pour in after him. We could have seen new mechanics, new weapons, and the new dimension that Dante has souls in purgatory that need to be protected or can be co-opted to add him in battle. My point is there was definitely room to grow, and it could have snowballed into a nice trilogy covering the all three chapters of Dante's work. Seems a shame.
Freedom Fighters
Freedom Fighters is a third person shooter from
IO Interactive, released in 2003 for all of it all of the sixth generation consoles (GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC). It was a interesting take on the third person genre at the time, especially from IO Interactive, who was mostly known for their work On the Hitman franchise. The story followed gamings other other plumber; Christopher Stone, in the midst of a alternate history Soviet invasion of New York. It blended A.I squad-based combat and guerrilla warfare ripped straight out of Red Dawn.
Freedom Fighters is one of the better intrigue plots with solid game mechanics. It was received quite well, was praised for its enemy A.I, detailed environments, as well as the scope and scale of of its combat. The player controls up to a dozen recruits under their command. It was popular enough that for a brief while IO Interactive seemed to be producing a sequel, until IO eventually pivoted into efforts to Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. The original story ended on a bit of sequel bait with Russian reinforcements arriving via submarine.
All in all, the franchise was well positioned to resurge. We could see at a continuation of Christopher Stone's story in New York or follow an entirely different battlefront on the West Coast. The use of next gen graphics would be a game changer; allowing for even greater scale of combat. We could see vehicle combat, expanded tactical command, an entire host of meta strategic mechanics that we saw in the likes of Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect.
Hybrid Heaven
Hybrid Heaven was in truth a fairly mediocre game if I'm being generous, but that's never been a real obstacle to getting a sequel made has it. A forgotten title of the Nintendo 64 era Konami's release of Hybrid Heaven in 1999 ended up pulling a proverbial hamstring trying to reach for a new kind of combat gameplay. Years before RBG combat started evolving into the diverse landscape of modern JRPG (Final Fantasy 7 Remake). Active turn based combat was prototyped by Hybrid Heaven.
The story was like a rejected The_X-Files script; President clone replacement, alien invasion, and mutant monsters running around. It had some merit for its atmosphere and its general ominous. Gameplay is divided into two parts; exploration and combat. Exploring was what you'd expect from a 3rd person game from 1999. The controls and camera where solid but not as refined as its contemporaries like Resident Evil, or Tomb Raider.
The player navigates a sprawling complex beneath NYC crawling with enemy agents, mutant monsters, robots, traps, and an alien Xenomorphy the size of a Tyrannosaurus. Combat, the game's standout feature while conceptually impressive could only reach so far with the hardware of the time. Sluggish would be one word for it but it also felt like it was on to something, it wasn't quite like a fighting games combat mechanic but instead meet rpg style combat somewhere in the middle. Melee combat involve 1-on-1 fights in an Active Time Battle style where the you build up several meters while strafing opponents and handling attacks until you're ready to strike back with a combo of your own. The move sets involved a mix of boxing, kickboxing, grappling, and counters. On this list Hybrid Heaven is really the only one that is fully clued up and has a unambiguous conclusion.
Kill.Switch
Kill.Switch was the original cover shooter developed by Namco Hometech and released in 2024 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. It laid the groundwork for future shooters as one of the earliest shooters to implement modern cover mechanics. This foundation set the future iterations of Metal Gear Solid, and paved the way for franchises like Gears of War, Uncharted, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, unfortunately, Kill.Switch was met with mediocre reviews, with much of the criticism being focused on its below average graphics and multiple animation issues. The game was simply ahead of its time; mechanically, and behind the curve in terms of design. It was oddly also seen as a offshoot of Time Crisis, another Namco game.
Kill.Switch's interesting narrative included neural control, memory loss, and an espionage plot that kept the player guessing. While less developed than some games in its genre the story had good bones and other games flourished while Kill.Switch fell flat. Similar concepts like Crysis and Metal Gear Solid go on to considerable success.
With 20 years of genre and industry advancement a sequel could stand a decent chance of reinvigorate the IP. There is clearly still interest in these kind of games with new cover shooters like Gears of War: E-Day and Pragmata show ongoing interest.