I know first-hand that every series is bound to have a bad game here and there, either due to being rushed or just running into a dry period and rehashing ideas from old games, but a few series stick out in my mind that have taken the fall and never been the same since.Being a guy who likes writing top ten lists, I'll go ahead and give you my top ten most shark-jumping series' in recent memory.

10. Shadow Hearts

I first grabbed Shadow Hearts title as a recommendation for a decent RPG at Game Force, having been sorely disappointed with Suikoden 3, Final Fantasy X, and the terrible .hack games.Well, to my surprise, it turned out to be a good game in spite of its often-dull graphics pretty bland soundtrack; it had a gothic horror setting that wasn't overbearingly depressing, some fun characters, and while not overly challenging, it did provide enough difficulty to keep me from being bored.

Then along came 2, which did away with a lot of the horror elements and laid on the humor a bit more thickly.The storyline also seemed slightly cheesier in comparison, but it was still a solid game in its own right; they'd kept a lot of the fun characters and gameplay elements of the original, and it carried on the general premise nicely for a direct sequel in spite of the story continuing from the "bad ending" of the first game.<Br>

Now, the ending of 2 made it pretty clear that the next game would follow another plotline entirely, but never did I imagine what they would do with it.Talking kung-fu cats?A ninja who fights with road signs and giant saws?Everyone's suddenly wearing thongs and leather belts on every inch of their clothes?Guitars that contain gatling guns and rocket launchers?Well, to keep this list from growing too long, they did away with most of the aspects I liked of Shadow Hearts; that is, the fact that weapons and character designs were, for the most part, fitting with the setting of the early 1900s, characters had actual personalities instead of just being swathed in belts and chains to prove how HARDCORE they were, and their mannerisms were appropriate for the era instead of being flashy and impractical. Not to mention that the third game's storyline was easily the weakest yet, and the gameplay featured almost no challenge at all.If they make a 4, let's hope that they get back to what made this series great.

9. Metal Gear Solid

Yeah, I know I'm going to catch hell for this one.I enjoyed MGS 1 and 2 for doing what few other games had managed to accomplish before - bringing a series to 3D while maintaining the same overall gameplay as its 2D predecessors.Unfortunately, every game since has missed the ship and become, well, gimmicky and boring.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is the prime example of this.The "survival" element in MGS3 ultimately just slows down the gameplay, requiring you to go under the menu and cycling through several tedious commands every time you get hit.Having to swap camo so often and crawl every inch of the way to stay hidden only slows things down even more.Even with all of this, though, there seems to be little point to stealth at all; you can sustain huge amounts of damage before dying, so there's little discernable penalty for just treating it like a third-person shooter and killing everything in sight.Not to mention that the bosses are just pitiful; once you memorize their attack patterns they're about as easy to beat as Glass Joe.

Then came Metal Gear Acid, which was an interesting concept but ultimately it just got boring too quickly; 90% of your time (and cards) were just spent trying to traverse the maps 3-4 tiles at a time.It was even worse consideirng you had to click through about six menus just to make one move, watch your character slowly walk over to the desired tile, click through a few MORE menus to end your turn, and repeat.Even Wasteland for the Apple II didn't have this much menu navigation.

FInally, there was Portable Ops.It too showed promise with its storyline and more traditional style of gameplay.But it got sour shortly thereafter.As with MGS3, its "innovations" ultimately add little to the gameplay or the story; there seem to be absolutely no repercussions to letting Snake get gunned down and having a generic grunt casually walk through each stage unabated.The unreadable radar and clumsy camera also make it impossible to see what you're doing or where any soldiers are until they've already spotted you and put sixteen bullets in your chest.

Finally, the hand to hand combat controls try to mimic those of MGS3, but that doesn't exactly work out well on a system with no pressure-sensitive buttons and fewer buttons to work with.In fact it's reminiscent of Spider-Man for the NES."Okay, hold the button for this effect, tap it once for this effect, tap it twice quickly and press THIS direction for effect C, and THAT direction for effect D!"I've never once gotten this system to do what I actually WANTED it to.

As for Portable Ops Plus, I think I'll pass.An "enhanced" version of a game that removes several features and the entire plot?No thanks.

8. Star Fox

Another great Nintendo series that went down the tubes, due mostly to deviating so far from what made the original great - fast paced shooting action. Adventures, meager platformer that it is, wasn't even intended as a Star Fox game; game called "Dinosaur Planet" until Nintendo decided to add Fox as the lead character for the Gamecube's launch. Then came Assault; while it sticks to the Star Fox formula, it relied far too heavily on on-foot third-person shooter stages and had new "sleeker" designs for all the vehicles and characters, giving it the flavor of a meager Halo clone. That and it was extremely linear; there's only one set of stages, minimizing its replay value.

Finally, there's Command, which was arguably an even bigger mess than the previous two, attempting to clumsily add a turn-based strategy aspect to the game and sporting an extremely awkward touch-screen control system. This was apparently a means to have the game resemble the unreleased SNES game, Star Fox 2, but really, it just felt forced here.

Let's hope that if they ever make another Star Fox, Nintendo brings this back to what made the first two (three if you count Star Fox 2) great - fun, fast-paced shooter stages, multiple pathways and numerous secrets.

7. Tony Hawk's Millions of Skating Games

As with many who grew up with the NES, I really enjoyed popping in Skate or Die and playing all of the events for a while, wondering why EA had released that awful turd of an action game instead of a proper sequel.Well, some ten years later, Neversoft had apparently decided to do something about the lack of great skateboarding games, and released Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to fill the gap.Like many, I really enjoyed the game; I played through, found all the tapes, and mastered racking up huge comboes and getting tons of points.It was a fun game to play.But then the second game arrived, and things quickly went downhill.The goals were much worse (usually just boiling around to picking up items), the point requirements were just plain ridiculous and almost totally dependent on the new "manual" system that let you balance on two wheels between ramps and rails,and the soundtrack was terrible.It just wasn't fun to play anymore. The later games did nothing to improve these facts either; the soundtracks just kept getting worse and the goals even more tedious.Come on guys!

6. Lunar

Another series that started off very strong with Lunar: The Silver Star, which featured some great characterizations, a thrilling storyline, and actually challenging gameplay.Hell, to date it's still one of my all-time favorite RPGs.The second game was still a solid title, though the villain was rather dull and the plot more or less a rehash of the first.

But the third game fell victim to the curse of trying to be "new and different" and ended up not being any fun to play.Now, maybe I'm alone in this, but I find being able to select whom you target with spells and attacks, getting both experience AND items at the same time from battle, and not being punished for taking advantage of basic gameplay features (like, oh, DASHING?) all contribute to an enjoyable gameplay experience.Game Arts seemed to disagree, making them all defining features of Lunar: Dragon Song's gameplay.So, while it pains me to say this about a series containing one of my favorite games, Lunar has jumped the shark.

5. Metroid

Metroid on the NES was a great, innovative title for its time, featuring some very cool gameplay features, an awesome soundtrack, and a suprisingly large, non-linear game environment with plenty of hidden pathways and secret items.The series' definitive classic, however, was definitely the SNES update/sequel, Super Metroid.It vastly expanded the environment, added in a ton of new gadgets, lots of new secrets, and several new bosses; everything you'd expect of a great sequel.Unfortunately, all of the following games seem to have missed the point - Zero Mission, Fusion and all of the Prime games are strictly linear and don't feature nearly as many cool items.Not to mention that the 'stealth sections' are really forced and just not fun.I still eagerly await a proper followup to Super Metroid where they forego 3D entirely and just make a gigantic 2D game world that pushes the DS or Wii's capabilities to their limit.Oh man, that would be sweet.

4. Mega Man

It pains me to say this about one of my favorite series, but Mega Man is one of the prime examples of shark-leaping.I really liked all of the NES and SNES titles, and even the X and Legends games were pretty good for the most part; they kept the same basic gameplay elements while managing to add enough new gameplay elements to keep them fresh.

I would have to pin-point X5 as the point where the series begun to take a nose-dive, though.They just tried to add too many new elements to the gameplay and ended up neglecting stage design and character balance.Characters without armor (i.e. Zero) took way too much damage from attacks, bosses took ages to defeat due to their life bars extending as in-game time passed, and the imposed goals that determined the story branches really just boiled down to luck.As mentioned, the stage designs also just got lazy; there were some really long, tedious sections lined with spikes or crushing ceilings (with death setting you way back at the beginning), enemies just swarm the screen, giving you no chance of escaping unharmed, and there was at least one long stage where you literally fight the same miniboss four or five times in a row.X7 was also a prime offender for useless Maverick weapons; every weapon you get does about as much damage as a single saber swing or charged shot, and they're guaranteed to run out of ammo before you can destroy any bosses with them.While X8 and Powered Up turned out to be pretty good, a lot of the terrible elements of the later X games had already been carried over to the Zero series, and more recently ZX.Sorry Mega Man, you've fallen from grace.

3. Sonic the Hedgehog

I loved all the games on the Genesis; fast paced platforn hopping, fun minigames, a cool storyline (in the case of Sonic 3 & Knuckles) and some of the best soundtracks ever put to video games. It's no Mario, but it's still a satisfying experience.I was as disappointed when the Saturn version got canned, but on the plus side, it helped make the Dreamcast's launch title, Sonic Adventure, all the more appealing.While it had some slow stages and a really anti-climactic final battle, it was still a decent title.

Where the series really fell through, though, was Shadow the Hedgehog.He was a lame character to begin with, but throw in guns (nevermind that he has the Sonic Spin), vehicles (again, pointless, since he can RUN FASTER THAN SONIC), and some bland level designs and controls, and you get a really bad game.It only seems to be getting worse too; the X-Box and PS3 remake of the original features some truly terrible gameplay.I hear the Wii games is actually decent though; I'll let you know how that turns out.

2. Tales of Every Cliche Word

Another one that they did right in its earliest days, but then proceeded to strip out everything I liked in subsequent titles.Tales of Destiny was the first I'd played, and while it wasn't perfect, it had a very fun, fast-paced combat system, a decent storyline, and some cool sidequests, not the least of which was a 60-floor dungeon designed in tribute to the Tower of Druaga.Plus, hell, there were equippable items that let up to four players join in and kick all sorts of ass together.You certainly don't see THAT in a lot of RPGs.

But then along came Tales of Destiny 2 (aka Eternia), and I was left wondering what the hell happened.The voice acting was awful, the storyline wasn't anywhere near as good, and the combat system really dragged in comparison.I couldn't bring myself to play it past the first few hours.Later they'd released Symphonia, Legendia and Abyss, each one's combat system relying more and more on mindless buttonmashing, and each with consisently worse character designs and plots.Not to mention the fact that the characters act more like five year olds in every subsequent game.Seriously, I half-expected them to break into argument over who gets the red juice cup at any second.

Yet another victim of the mentality that every game has to have a DARK, convoluted story and dialog full of stupid humor.But really, that's still no excuse for ruining a great combat system.For shame, Namco.

1. Ultima

Yes, even my second-favorite RPG series fell from grace in its final days.But it had a damn good run in its prime; thirteen great games ranging over nearly fifteen years.As with many great companies, though, Origin met its doom after being assimilated by Electronic Arts.While Serpent Isle still managed to be pretty good in spite of being rushed out the door to meet EA's release date, Ultima 8 did not fare nearly as well; not only was the mouse driven platform-hopping extremely awkward to control, the story was unfinished and rather generic.Ultima IX fared even worse, with much of the original team being fired and what remained being pressured to dump the project and focus full-time on Ultima Online.As a result, the original run of the plot was dropped, and the game was totally redesigned as a linear third-person dungeon crawler along the lines of the Tomb Raider series.The engine was a mess, having terrible collision detection and crashing frequently, and the story largely ignored the events the rest of the series.In short, a massive disappointment considering the great engines, environments and free roaming gameplay of all of the other games.I eagerly await the completion of the fan-project Ultima IX: Redemption, which aims to recreate the game using the original plotline in the Morrowind engine, because this ending definitely does not do the series justice.

- Spoony Spoonicus <- 7:29:10 pm, sunday, april 29th, 2007 pdt